‘Well, you spoke to her, and she sounded fine,’ Fintan said, coming around to where Sophie sat to put his arms around her. He kissed the top of her head. ‘Didn’t you say she sounded fine?’
‘I suppose so . . .’ Sophie agreed in a half-hearted way. ‘Claire wanted her to stay the night, but Heather’s insisting that she needs to be home for the funeral.’ She looked up at Fintan. ‘She does need to go to the funeral, doesn’t she?’
‘I think so,’ Fintan said. ‘It would look awful bad if she didn’t.’
Kirsty sat in the front seat reading out the directions to her father, as it was the first time he’d ever driven into a strange part of Glasgow in the dark and he didn’t want to get lost – especially on a foggy, frosty night. It was a long drive into Glasgow from Rowanhill and over to Bellshill, then they followed the long road out towards Calderpark Zoo and then straight into the city.
Claire had given clear and precise directions and Fintan was relieved when he saw the signs for Giffnock coming up.
‘You’ve been a good navigator,’ he told his younger daughter. ‘I wouldn’t have managed as well without you.’
‘Och, it was easy enough,’ Kirsty said, ‘and doing a journey like this has given me a feel for driving myself.’
‘You?’ Fintan said, glancing over at her. ‘You’re thinking of learning to drive?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, for a start it’s an expensive business, and you’re very young.’
‘Michael Grace is driving,’ Kirsty told him, ‘and he’s younger than me.’
‘But he’s a lad,’ Fintan said, laughing at the idea now, ‘and he’s training to be a mechanic. There’s not many young girls your age learning to drive and nobody I know in Rowanhill.’
‘Maybe I could be the first,’ Kirsty said quickly. ‘I want to be more independent, and I don’t like Larry having to pick me up all the time.’
Fintan negotiated a corner. ‘How could you pay for driving lessons and afford to run a car?’
‘I’ve got quite a bit saved up in the Post Office,’ Kirsty reminded him, ‘and I’m going to be earning quite a bit more at the weekends now. The hotels I’m booked into pay over double what I was getting with the band.’
‘True enough,’ Fintan said, ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ There were far worse things she could do with her money, he thought.
‘I was wonderin’ if you might take me out for a few lessons . . .’
‘I might have guessed there would be a job in it for me,’ he laughed.
They came into a very quiet, residential area now.
‘I think we’re nearly there,’ Fintan said. ‘It must be one of these roads here or hereabouts.’
He drove on for another little while then eventually pulled up in front of the granite house. ‘Well,’ he said giving a little sigh of relief at having eventually reached the right destination, ‘it looks like this big mansion thing is Claire’s house.’
Kirsty thought her father’s voice sounded as though he was proud of his sister having the house mixed with a tinge of apprehension. ‘Do you feel nervous going in here,’ Kirsty asked quietly, ‘seeing as it’s the first time?’
‘Not really,’ Fintan said, turning off the car lights. ‘Maybe just a wee bit awkward . . . the way things have been.’
‘Are you happy to see Claire again? D’you feel you’ve missed her?’
‘Of course I’ve missed her,’ Fintan said in a low, slightly hoarse voice. ‘She’s my young sister . . . how else could I feel?’
‘Well, I’m looking forward to seeing her again, because it’s been over two years since I last did,’ Kirsty stated, ‘although I suppose I’m just a wee bit nervous about meeting her husband.’
‘Well, don’t be,’ Fintan said, opening the car door. ‘He’s a very nice man – he’s a real gentleman.’
They both got out of the car.
Kirsty looked at her father in the half-light of the yellow street lamp. ‘He’s a good bit older than her, isn’t he?’
‘I suppose he is,’ Fintan said, nodding his head.
‘Does that bother you?’ Kirsty asked.
He thought for a moment. ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘He’s a nice fellow, so I don’t think the age makes a whole lot of difference – it was the religion that caused all the trouble.’
Then father and daughter walked up the steps to the house, both wrapped up in their own private thoughts.
Heather was sitting up in the corner of the sofa, tired and pale-looking but feeling much better than she had earlier in the day. After a two-hour sleep she’d wakened to find Claire sitting in an armchair opposite quietly reading. When she woke properly they sat and talked for a little while, then Claire went into the kitchen and brought her back a tray holding a bowl of home-made chicken soup and two slices of thick, crusty bread.
‘Eat it all,’ Claire told her. ‘You’ll feel much better when you’ve got something inside you.’
When she started eating, Heather felt surprisingly hungry. Both the soup and the bread were lovely, and she sat quietly eating until it was all finished. Claire indicated that she should just put the tray down on the low coffee-table in front of the sofa.
‘Well done,’ her aunt said, smiling at the empty bowl. ‘That will do you good.’ She looked up at Heather now. ‘What’s happened? I’ve got a feeling that you’re upset about something. When you came out of the taxi this afternoon you looked as though you’d maybe had a bit of a shock . . . as if something had happened.’
Heather looked back at her aunt and suddenly her eyes filled up with tears. ‘Everything’s gone wrong,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘And I think a lot of it’s my fault.’ Then, she laid her arms down on the side of the sofa and put her head on top of them and started to cry in earnest.
‘Nothing can be that bad,’ Claire said, coming over to comfort her. ‘I’m sure it will all get sorted out.’
‘But it can’t be sorted out,’ Heather sobbed, taking the clean handkerchief that her aunt had retrieved from her jeans pocket. ‘You can’t sort things out when somebody is dead.’ The torrent of tears came again until finally she had exhausted them.
For the next two hours Heather sat and talked and talked, while Claire sat beside her on the sofa and listened – offering the odd word of comfort here and there where it was appropriate.
‘You’ve had a tough time,’ Claire told her when she had finished the whole story. ‘But it’s not your fault.’
‘I feel in some way it is,’ Heather insisted. ‘I feel as if I could have handled it better, tried to get through to him in a way that would have left him feeling all right about it.’
Claire squeezed her hand. ‘You did everything exactly right, and you need to believe that. It’s not your fault if an ex-boyfriend became obsessed about you – it’s entirely his fault. And it’s certainly not your fault if he got drunk and wandered out in the road in the middle of traffic.’
For a moment Heather thought she should perhaps remind Claire that Rowanhill didn’t have enough vehicles on the road to be worthy of the term traffic. That it was quite an unbelievable coincidence that a taxi should appear as Gerry Stewart was in the middle of the road – but she decided against it. Claire was obviously so used to city traffic that she just presumed if you walked out in the middle of the road a car would eventually hit you.
‘I feel so bad about Gerry’s family,’ Heather whispered now. ‘About the ring and how they were hoping we’d get engaged . . .’
Claire had looked her square in the face. ‘Do you want my advice?’
Heather nodded.
‘Keep the ring and say nothing.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘What’s the point in hurting them any more? Let them think what they want to. Let them think you were going to get engaged if it gives them any little bit of comfort.’ She took both Heather’s hands in her own and squeezed them. ‘That poor, poor woman has lost her son . . . her heart will be broken. You and I will neve
r know how that feels.’
‘I feel so sorry for her,’ Heather said, dabbing the hanky to her eyes. ‘They’re a very nice family, that’s why I felt they deserved to know the truth.’
‘Look, Heather,’ Claire said gently, ‘you’ve done your best to tell the truth about the break-up and it sounds as if the poor woman doesn’t want to hear that. She just wants to feel that everything was fine in her son’s life right up until the minute he died.’
‘And I want her to feel that too,’ Heather said. ‘I don’t want her to know that Gerry went a bit weird because I know it would just make the whole tragedy worse.’
‘If you feel well enough tomorrow, do the dignified thing and just go to the funeral,’ Claire told her now. ‘If you don’t, you’ll regret it when it’s all over . . . and there won’t be a single thing you can do about it then.’
There were some minutes of tension when Fintan entered his sister’s house for the very first time. All the awkwardness and difficulties that had caused the family estrangement seemed to suddenly swim in between them, demanding some sort of acknowledgement.
‘I’m grateful to you for looking after Heather today, and I’m delighted to be out visiting your home at long last,’ Fintan said as he embraced her. Kirsty had already greeted her aunt and had gone on into the sitting-room to see her sister, leaving them to talk in private.
Claire was immediately on the defensive. ‘I’m glad I was able to help Heather, but I wish that you’d come to visit me just for the sake of it. I wish it hadn’t been a duty call for you.’
‘Now, Claire,’ he said, taking his young sister’s hand, ‘things aren’t that simple . . . and shouldn’t we be grateful things have moved forward?’
‘Why did we have to wait until this happened for you to see me or until Lily was in hospital?’ she asked, hurt staring out of her piercing green eyes. ‘You had no excuse not to come to my house, Fintan. You were always invited – you and the rest of the family.’
Fintan bowed his head. Like all the Grace men he hated these kinds of family confrontations and avoided them at all costs. It was only when there was a fear of any harm coming to his own girls that he was forced to come down with a heavy hand. ‘I don’t want to row with you, Claire . . .’ he said in a low voice. ‘There was no deliberate decision not to come to your house . . . it was just the way things happened with the wedding.’
‘Andy’s a good man,’ she said, a tremble now evident in her voice. ‘He’s never done anybody any harm in his life . . . it wasn’t his fault that we weren’t able to get married in the Catholic Church.’
‘It’s all in the past and forgotten,’ Fintan told her. ‘We don’t need to go over it all now.’
‘But it’s not in the past,’ she insisted, ‘and it won’t be forgotten until we sort this out properly.’
Fintan sighed now. This had not been the best of days. ‘I’m heart sorry about the way this all happened . . . but all families have their difficulties over things like religion. It would eventually have changed one way or another and we would have sorted it out.’ He shook his head. ‘There wasn’t a day that went by that we didn’t miss you . . .’
Claire cleared her throat. ‘Well, it’s nice to hear you saying it . . . but I might not have known it if it hadn’t been for Heather taking sick at work.’
‘Well, maybe we can all learn from the situation,’ Fintan said, ‘and try to make sure these things don’t happen again.’
‘She’s welcome to stay the night – or stay for as long as she likes,’ Claire said, bringing in a tray with cheese and cold-meat sandwiches and warm sausage rolls. She went back into the kitchen and came back the second time with homemade apple tart and slices of cherry cake.
‘What do you think?’ she asked her brother, putting the plates down. ‘Do you feel she’s well enough to travel home with you tonight?’
Fintan looked across at his pale-faced daughter, his brow furrowed. ‘It’s up to you, Heather – whether you feel up to it or not.’
‘I’m a lot better,’ Heather decided, ‘and I do need to go to the funeral in the morning. Whatever happens, I couldn’t miss it.’
‘If you just make it to the chapel for the Mass,’ Kirsty said, ‘that will be all you need to do. You can go home and go to bed after that.’
Heather closed her eyes and nodded, unable to bear even the thought of it. She made herself eat a quarter of a ham sandwich and a small piece of the fruit cake even though she still had no appetite. If she fainted again, at least she would know it wasn’t through her own stupidity of not eating.
After they had finished eating and drinking a second cup of tea, Claire took them all on a guided tour of the house before it was time to leave.
‘It’s beautiful!’ Kirsty breathed, taking in the double spare room with the white furniture and the matching coloured glass lamps at either side of the satin-covered bed. The other spare room was a twin with similar furnishings. ‘It’s like a hotel – a really lovely hotel.’
Claire laughed embarrassedly but looked delighted at the compliments.
‘I’m very lucky to have all this,’ she said as they walked back downstairs to the sitting-room. ‘And I suppose that’s one advantage of marrying an older man. They have things like houses and cars organised by the time you come on the scene.’ She waved her hand around the hallway. ‘I only had to pick the colours for the decorating and add a few more womanly items in the sitting-room and bedrooms. Most of the things were already there.’ She looked at the girls now. ‘I have to say that the spare bedrooms were decorated with you two in mind . . . I kept hoping some day that you might start coming out to stay the odd weekend.’
Kirsty and Heather both nodded in agreement.
‘Now we know our way out here, you won’t be able to get rid of us,’ Kirsty laughed.
Just as they went to sit down again for a last few minutes, Andy McPherson came rushing through the front door in a smart pin-striped suit and carrying a dark overcoat and a leather briefcase. He beamed with delight to see his wife’s relatives.
‘I got held up at the office and I thought I might have missed you all,’ he said, shaking hands with Fintan and smiling warmly at the two girls. ‘And how’s the patient?’ he asked. ‘Feeling a wee bit better, I hope?’
‘A lot better, thanks,’ Heather said, feeling herself blushing. The whole situation of her fainting and causing all this fuss was now becoming very embarrassing and she knew more of it lay ahead when she got home to Rowanhill. There would be her mother all worried and telling her that she shouldn’t have gone to work in the first place and then there would be Mona, dying to know every detail about what happened. That’s, of course, if she was still speaking to Heather for having gone out to Claire’s house.
‘A drink, Andy – Fintan?’ Claire asked the men.
‘A gin and tonic would be lovely,’ Andy said. He turned to Fintan. ‘There’s whiskey and brandy or there’s a few bottles of beer there.’
‘I’m opening a bottle of sparkling wine,’ Claire stated, ‘so if anyone else fancies a glass?’
Fintan thought for a minute. One wee drink would do no harm driving and it just might help them all to relax. ‘A glass of beer would be lovely, thanks.’
‘What about the girls?’ Claire said, looking straight at Fintan. ‘Are they allowed a glass of the wine? It’s not very strong.’
Fintan shrugged then smiled. He only worried about them getting into situations that they couldn’t handle because of drink – but he knew they couldn’t be in safer hands at the moment. ‘Och, I suppose a wee glass won’t do them any harm . . .’
Kirsty got to her feet, delighted that her father hadn’t shown them up. ‘I’ll give you a hand to carry the drinks in,’ she told her aunt, trying to suppress a childish, delighted smile.
After a few moments, Heather followed the two females in, feeling a bit self-conscious at being left with the two men.
‘The glasses are in the cupboard over th
ere if you don’t mind getting them,’ Claire told Kirsty, then she went into the fridge to get the wine. ‘Will you have a glass of wine?’ she asked Heather when she appeared at the door.
‘Maybe just a small one, thanks,’ Heather said. She looked around the bright, modern kitchen. ‘You’ve everything in this house, haven’t you?’
Claire paused, the wine bottle in her hand, peeling the crinkly gold paper off the top of it. ‘I suppose we have a lot of nice things . . . but Andy works very hard.’
‘You don’t work now, do you, Claire?’ Kirsty asked, putting three wine glasses on the worktop.
She shook her head and smiled. ‘Not since I got married. I keep busy around the house and the garden and I meet up with girlfriends in the city a couple of afternoons, and then we have people out at the weekends or we visit them.’
‘Oh, it sounds really glamorous,’ Kirsty sighed. ‘It’s just the kind of life I would like.’
Claire smiled. ‘From what I hear, I think you have a very exciting life already, Kirsty. Heather was telling me all about your singing career – you’ve done very well for a young girl so far.’ She turned to the side now to carefully pop the cork from the wine, and then she quickly poured some into each of the three glasses and let the first bubbles settle down before filling them up to the top.
‘Oh, would you get a bottle of beer from the fridge please, Kirsty?’ she asked now, reaching into the cupboard for a beer glass and a tall chunky glass for Andy’s drink. She went into another cupboard for the gin and a small glass bottle of tonic. She mixed the drink then added ice cubes and slices of lemon which were already cut and wrapped in the fridge.
‘If you girls would put the drinks on a tray from the bottom cupboard,’ she said, ‘I’ll just sort a few bowls of crisps and nuts for us to have with them. Some evenings Andy enjoys relaxing with this then we have our dinner a bit later.’ She laughed. ‘He particularly likes it when we’ve got pleasant company like this.’ She halted, an anxious look coming over her face. ‘You will come back out to see us again, won’t you?’
The Grace Girls Page 37