Strays and Relations

by Dizzy Greenfield

  ‘Pull over Dizzy, I’m going to be sick,’ said Sugar. She extracted herself from the car. Her face an unforgiving shade of sea-green blended well into the background.

  ‘I wish I could drive,’ she said.

  ‘You have too many speeding points, remember. Frankly, my insurance company wouldn’t touch you, missus,’ I added.

  We perched on the bumper, had a fag, admired the view. We were lost, but it didn’t matter. Sugar stared ruefully at the beermat on the dashboard, which promised “Lovely day for a Guinness”. She squinted her eyes to read the directions written in tiny scrawl.

  ‘We should have turned left by the farmhouse,’ she said helpfully.

  ‘Which farmhouse?’ I asked, gazing down at the scene below us, farmhouses dotted all over the landscape.

  Around teatime, we found the little cream-and-green bungalow. Plastic gnomes and baskets of gaudy flowers lined the driveway, welcoming us to ‘Dun Roamin’ Bed and Breakfast – Vacancies.

  Mr and Mrs Looney were kind. They offered us lifts, asked after our well-being like we were part of their ever-increasing family, and all within ten minutes of meeting us.

  Later, we watched the Irish version of Take the High Road with Mammy and Dada, and the rest of the clan of Looneys. We perched on the sofa in their front room, sipping tea as if it was perfectly normal to be part of the family. So far there were eight children, but from the look of Mrs Looney’s tummy, number nine wouldn’t be too long before making an appearance.

  Afterwards, we got a lift in Mr Looney’s mustard-coloured Allegro. We were heading out to sample the Killarney delights, whilst Mr Looney was heading out to get petrol.

  ‘What time will you be coming home now, girls?’ he called, as we jumped out of the back seat of his car.

  ‘Oh, about ten o’clock,’ I lied.

  ‘We have the key that Mrs Looney gave us,’ said Sugar. ‘Don’t wait up.’

  At one thirty in the morning we found Mr Looney had done as requested. He’d also locked us out good and proper. Unfortunately, Sugar had forgotten the key.

  ‘Give me your coat, it’s got to be in one of those pockets somewhere,’ I said, searching Sugar’s long brown army surplus. ‘You just haven’t had a good enough look.’

  ‘I left it in the room, I remember now,’ she said.

  We decided to climb in through a half-open window. Sugar started well, her head and shoulders fitting easily through the gap, but she got stuck halfway in, so, with only her front half inside, her backside hung down over the windowsill. Her legs were left dangling.

  ‘You’ve eaten too much honey, Winnie,’ I giggled, reaching up to heave and push at her backside. ‘You’ll have to stay here until you’ve lost weight.’

  After a few more pushes, I managed to free Sugar from the window. I heard the thud as she landed safely inside the bungalow.

  ‘You’re a little Eejit and never forget it,’ I called after her.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’s it. Why don’t you go and piss off somewhere else? You’re not coming in.’

  As much as I pleaded, it was no use. Sugar wouldn’t give in and open the front door. Unless I disturbed the Looneys, I would have no choice but to stay outside. But after some time snoozing next to the bird table on the front lawn, I was awoken, ‘Dizzy! Diiiizy! Are you cold?’

  Sugar was still inside the bungalow. Her silhouette framed at the window – enlarged by the huge army surplus coat and illuminated by the bedside lamp – gave the illusion that she had greatly magnified her normal outline. She dangled the front door key, but she remained firm, refusing to open the front door even when I appealed to her better nature, snatching the key out of reach as soon as I got near.

  ‘You’ll have to climb through the window, Dizzy, like I had to.’

  She turned her back and walked away, the black beanie hat firmly attached to her head, its little bobble bouncing along. I watched as she got into bed, popped the key under her pillow and grinned at me. Then she reached for the pulley cord and plunged the bedroom into blackness.

  ‘Let me in, you daft cow,’ I said. ‘If you don’t, I’ll put your beanie hat on the bird table.’

  ‘Night, Dizzy…’

  I heaved myself up at the bedroom window, clinging to the sill with my fingernails. Temporarily suspended, I desperately tried to pull myself up onto the ledge. I’m glad that Mr Looney’s asleep, I thought, as I fell off the window ledge. At least he wouldn’t witness me crashing into the carefully cultivated rose bushes he’d planted beneath.

  It was all very silly, but by three in the morning, Sugar and I had both finally made it into our room.

  Chapter 7

  A Discovery

  Next day, we started the dire task of searching church records to try to find out about Marie’s family. We gained some dubious information from a local man with a limp, and a horsecart driver, with no top set of teeth, who we quizzed as he drove us round Killarney Lakes. We even had a confidential chat with a priest. Then, hallelujah! It looked like we had found the correct records for the family.

  By mid-afternoon we found ourselves at a graveyard near Tralee. This is where we thought some of the family were laid to rest. There we stood, two naive young girls, confronted by the imposing iron gates of the cemetery. We were astonished at the sheer number of graves, at the silent sea of grey stones spread out before us.

  ‘We ought to split up. It’ll make the job quicker. Will you be okay, Dizzy?’ Sugar asked.

  We both got on with our search alone. I stood in the drizzle amidst the grave stones watching Sugar in the distance. She had given up a fair chunk of her holidays to accompany me with this thankless task, using up her precious days off from the wildlife park.

  The inscriptions on the graves gave me an insight into the lives of those long dead. Some of the plots were overgrown and forgotten, whilst others were well tended. Brightly coloured trinkets and mementos stood out against the starkness of the Celtic crosses. The Mary Mother of Jesus statues were like tiny candle-lit shrines.

  After about an hour, Sugar beckoned me over. She was standing facing one of the stones, her head held low. Tears and rain ran down her face. She glanced up as I read out loud my natural mother’s name.

  *

  Unable to grasp what Sugar had found, we stood in the drizzle staring in silence at the gravestone. In all my thoughts of the birth family over the past thirty years, it had never occurred to me that my mother might be dead.

  Marie was only just eighteen when we twins were born. The stone inscription informed us that she had died in 1985. She would have been just thirty-five years old. Although the inscription gave no indication of her year of birth, this didn’t seem particularly unusual. We had seen countless graves like this. Many of them had missing information.

  I gazed across the deserted graveyard, at the hundreds of stones lined up. The silence was broken only by the occasional crow calling and the distant rumble of traffic. I decided there and then that there would be no more searching; it was all over and done with.

  We drove back to Killarney in silence. The windscreen wipers swooshed and thudded their protest at the never-ending rain. Everything felt so bleak, like a Sunday afternoon in winter, not like the holiday we had imagined.

  That evening, we went out to listen to a local band. We also needed to rearrange our plans for the rest of the trip. Sugar was forlorn, imagining my disappointment.

  ‘Okay Dizzy? I’m so sorry about today darlin”. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  ‘I’m Okay, missus, thank you. You’ve been a star. It’s a shock, but at least it’s over. I can get on now.’ Unlike my best friend, I had a feeling of closure on the sorry adventure. The search was over.

  ‘But Dizzy... it’s just the beginning, there could be other family out there. What about your father?’

  ‘No, no more.’


  I tried to look at anything but her beautiful face. My own tears were not far from the surface, but this was no time to be maudlin. I didn’t have any interest in finding my birth father; all I had thought of was my mother. To my mind, back then, my father was never going to be in the picture.

  Sugar brightened, wedging the beanie hat further down onto her head. ‘Come on then, Dizzy,’ she said. ‘Let’s get partying.’

  Bless Sugar.

  After about two hours, with more wine inside us, we decided to recreate a Riverdance performance down Killarney High Street. It was there that we met Tomas and Tierney. Sugar was going for a full reel, arms firmly by her side as her feet moved at speed. She had just jigged past the Irish-cum-Chinese restaurant when she crashed into Tierney.

  Tierney and Tomas had been watching our tipsy Irish dancing with some amusement. Tierney leaned back against a wall, arms folded across his chest. He looked pleased with himself, a little bit smug that he had found us.

  ‘Where are you two girls going?’ he asked, laughing out loud. ‘Sure Michael Flatley would love you to join him, but he’s not available, so you will have to come with us.’

  And what else could we do but join Tierney and his nephew Tomas for the remainder of the evening? Guinness and wine poured out of the bar as if Killarney had previously been experiencing a drought. Sunday night was live music, so we danced and jigged around the pub with some abandon. The smoking ban had just been introduced in Ireland, but we couldn’t be sure that it had taken effect – it certainly hadn’t in this particular pub. Every man, woman, and a few assorted hounds, just went to the ladies at the back of the pub for a smoke. The toilets had their own party going on.

  Tierney, although old enough to know better, spent the next three hours trying to persuade Sugar to marry Tomas. Unfortunately, as the evening drew to a close, the drink took effect. Tierney seemed to be rapidly running out of good things to say about his nephew. In a last ditch attempt, he finally threw down his ace.

  ‘And he isn’t a mad axeman, you know. He has a lovely farmhouse.’

  Sugar, bored but tipsy too, lifted her T-shirt to reveal her newly pierced belly button. Tierney’s eyes widened. He straightened himself up, all the while steadying himself against the pub wall. He looked as if this was the most exciting thing that had happened to him for several years. As a fifty-something married man, it was not what he had come to expect these days in Killarney High Street.

  Temporarily lost for words, he paused to take a gulp of his Guinness, his eyes all the while staring intently at Sugar’s belly button. He blinked and his eyes widened further. Then, appearing to recover well from the shock of the sight of her navel – he gave a slight cough, pulled his coat down, and tried to return to his previous state, where the glimpse of a navel would be a thing of only fantasy. We were all unprepared for what he said next.

  ‘Jesus! I’ll be up all night now having a wank,’ he said. He reached inside his coat pocket and produced a business card. ‘Here’s my phone number, in case you get into trouble.’

  We decided we really should be getting on. But trying to extract ourselves wasn’t easy as Tierney insisted on accompanying us to the taxi rank. As our cab drew away, we looked out of the back window at his waving figure. Standing under the street light, he persisted in blowing Sugar kisses. We threw his telephone number out of the taxi window when we were safely out of his sight.

  The next day, we travelled to Limerick, staying in a bed and breakfast whose proprietor had a penchant for taxidermy. She kept a strange, but vast collection of stuffed animals. A tabby cat resided on the stairs, a poorly-looking stoat hung about in the breakfast room, while a flea-bitten fox kept guard in the porch.

  We got locked into a pub till the wee, small hours, danced across the Thomond Park Bridge at dawn, and finally headed off to the Wicklow Mountains to stay with some old wildlife-park friends. After all the madness, it was good to see some familiar faces.

  *

  At our friends’ house, it was all peat fires, good Catholic children and Avoca jumpers. Initially, we were glad of the rest. After only a few days, though, Sugar and I became bored. Staying at their remote, peaceful house up the mountain was all very well, but we were keen to do some wandering.

  So, one day, in search of adventure, we wandered off. We went to explore the loch at the base of the mountain where our friends kept a small rowing boat. It was an unusually warm day, for Ireland. The water looked calm. Sugar and I decided, without our friends’ permission, to take the boat out onto the water. Our mission was to try to get across the loch.

  It took an hour to hoist the boat from its resting place. Then we grappled with its lead weight until we could safely manoeuvre it into the water. Whilst we toiled, the Irish weather chose to change without us noticing. We climbed triumphantly in and searched around our feet for the oars. Finally we pushed off.

  We only managed to travel a few yards, no more than fifty – still trying to find the oars – when the wind picked up. The little boat rocked and tilted in warning. Alarmed, and slightly surprised that we’d forgotten one of the oars, we took frantic turns with the remaining one. With some manic paddling, I tried to get us back to the shore. We were terrified. Amid laughter and screams, the one of us not in possession of the oar used her hands to move tiny droplets of water to aid our safe passage. The wind was crafty, though. With just a few small gusts, it succeeded in moving us further out into the loch.

  I’m not sure whose idea it was to change places to help us to get to the bank more quickly, but at one point we were both standing up in the rowing boat and holding on to each other as we tried to get our pathetic selves into new positions. We failed. Both ended up facing each other, so we rearranged ourselves again. By now, the rear end of the boat was alarmingly low in the water, with both of us teetering on the same seat.

  After half an hour, and a strong breeze that thankfully sent us in the correct direction, we finally reached the shore. With one last effort, Sugar crawled up the boat on her hands and knees.

  ‘Hurry, missus! Jump on the bank! Women and children first!’ I yelled.

  ‘Dizzy, you’re not so true, brave and fearless now, are you?’ she called back.

  It was only another hour before we had the boat back in its place on the bank. We felt totally useless. Our friend had told us that she rowed the boat as a lone adult, whilst balancing two toddlers, a baby and a golden retriever. For wildlife girls, used to dealing with all sorts, we weren’t as tough as we thought.

  It was during that stay with our friends, in their cottage, up on that remote mountain side, that I fell in love again. He had red hair, a naughty sense of humour and a Wicklow accent. He was called Max. He was aged three.

  Sitting with the delicious Max down by the loch in the spring sunshine, I had a feeling that I ought to stop messing about working at the wildlife park. Will and I should get on with trying to have a primate of our own. I knew Will wanted children, although he never said it out loud. I didn’t know how I would manage, even if Will and I were lucky enough for it to happen. But thanks to this Irish epiphany, I was, at least, willing to give it a try.

  It seemed that finding out about my past had allowed me to move forward at last. Or at least that’s what I hoped.

  I told Will about everything when I got back home.

  ‘Right then,’ he said, ‘Best we get on with it before you change your mind.’

  Still, I was nervous. I knew Will would provide his usual solace – but he couldn’t be pregnant for me – or give birth. These were events that you had to cope with on your own. Even Will’s support, however constant and unwavering couldn’t help this time. But there was a bigger more terrifying thought – what if Marie had given me away because she had had no maternal instinct? And what if I didn’t have any either?

  *

  The day after our daughter Sasha was born, Sugar bunked off from wo
rk and hurried to the hospital. She was the first of our friends and family apart from Will to see her.

  It was three days after Princess Diana’s death, and some of the new mothers were crying. I couldn’t be sure if it was to do with motherhood, or they were genuinely upset.

  The tears I shed were not for Diana.

  Chapter 8

  A dog called Tuesday

  The autumnal days that immediately followed our daughter Sasha’s birth, brought me closer to Mum and to thoughts of Marie and the horror of what she had been through when she lost her babies. Holding Sasha, feeling that she was so much a part of us, made me yet again question her decision, the circumstances that had forced her to relinquish her child. Tear after tear fell for Marie, just one of the many Irish Catholic mothers who would never properly know their children. Holding Sasha – an actual blood relative, helped to get things in perspective – it brought home to me how utterly devastating it must have been for Marie.

  Sasha remained an only child. Will and I decided that we really couldn’t go through another fifteen months of sleepless nights. I tried not to put her on a pedestal, but failed by over-mothering her. I was lucky; I had the pleasure, the sheer daily delight, in watching her grow. And, as we watched her turn from chubby baby into slim, leggy girl, I couldn’t help wondering if she looked anything at all like Marie.

  Having no memories of my birth mother, I was preoccupied with keeping memories for Sasha, convinced that having information from her past would help nurture and develop her roots, her sense of self.

  This found me keeping every newspaper clipping from her primary school achievements. I kept each one of her teeth, her first shoes, a lock of her baby blonde hair, all the wonderful pieces of art that she made.