‘It is,’ I said. ‘Even more of an emergency than being without a fringe. Mind you – imagine their trauma: house flooded, cows floated away downstream, Noah gone without them. Then the cruelest blow of all, Vidal Sassoon’s shop in Bridgwater evacuated because all the fringes have been washed away.’
‘Very funny’ she said.
A few weeks later, I saw the photographs of Marie at the wedding. There wasn’t a wig or hairpiece in sight. In fact, she looked as always, fantastic.
Chapter 20
Discussing celebrities and an invitation
Over the next few months, Marie and I got to know each other better with the help of British Telecom. Our calls were becoming a Friday-night standard and Marie usually came up with something to surprise me. One evening though, Marie rang with an even bigger surprise up her sleeve than usual. What she told me put the fringe wig into the category of trivial.
‘So, are you saying then, Marie, that Frank McCourt might be a cousin of yours?’
She paused. I could picture her looking from side to side. Then I heard her padding away, quietly shutting the door that led from her kitchen. She was barricading Jeremy Kyle, and Vernon, into her front room.
She lowered her voice, then whispered conspiratorially into the receiver.
‘Kind of, love. His mother, Angela, was apparently my mother’s second cousin twice removed.’
‘Is this fact or rumour?’ I asked.
‘I haven’t thought about it, Dervla,’ she sighed. ‘Everyone in Limerick is related.’
I could still hear the TV blaring away in the background; the Jeremy Kyle credits’ music seeped out under her front room door into the kitchen. She changed the subject.
‘I’m spring cleaning, Dervla.’
‘But it’s November!’
As she talked into her walkabout phone, the noises of her scrabbling about in her kitchen resounded down the line. Marie sounded like she was becoming increasingly agitated in her efforts to skip hibernation and begin spring cleaning. I heard the metallic scraping of pots and pans along the work surfaces as she woman-handled them into the sink. Had I asked her one question too many this time? Had I sent her into a compulsive cleaning overdrive?
‘Well, we aren’t related to Terry Wogan, are we?’ I carried on. ‘He was from Limerick.’
‘Of course not. Who do you think we are? He’s from a different part of the city, the affluent area. He isn’t from Keys Park.’
‘Is your mum still there?’ I asked.
‘Yes, she is, in one of the only remaining houses in her street. Most of the others have been bulldozed, but she won’t move. God, that would make her have an angry fit.’
‘So nearly the whole neighbourhood has been demolished, but she’s still there?’
‘Yes… it’s not a modern look around the place, the house needs decorating, but she has her family near. She can’t face moving at her age,’ said Marie.
‘Is she all right? It can’t be healthy staying there.’
‘Ha then,’ she snorted in retaliation. ‘We aren’t quitters in our family. Stubborn perhaps, you’d call it.’
She sighed and I heard her throw a pot into the sink. I didn’t believe it was a calculated response, more that she was exasperated with my questioning.
‘Anyway,’ Marie went on, ‘She’s your gran, and she wants to meet you.’
‘But she isn’t my gran really, is she?’
‘Well, she’s my mother and I’m your mother, what more evidence do you want?’ Not surprisingly, Marie sounded cross. After all, I’d challenged my birth link back to the previous generation. It would be enough to bring any of us up short.
I could never forget that, although Marie and I had been busy with our phone conversations, we still had thirty-six years to catch up on. It wouldn’t be possible to fill in the gaps. If you’d missed the years, you couldn’t just imagine them back. That said, even though we were separated in the past, by now I knew that we were bound forever in the future. What was missing, I decided, was the nurturing that binds generations together. The link to Marie’s family was still tentative. The ties that forged these links hadn’t been strengthened by love. Growing up, my links had been forged through another family’s toil, wrought with them through years of experience and growing together. My feelings for them hadn’t grown weaker since the new family’s arrival; in fact, they had become stronger than ever. In the past, I had taken the security they offered for granted. This was my epiphany: realising just how important my extraordinary adoptive family had been.
‘Sorry, that’s not what I meant,’ I said. ‘It’s just that we don’t know each other. It could be tricky.’
‘We don’t do tricky in my family,’ Marie countered. ‘We haven’t got time for such luxuries! It won’t be like that, she’ll love it. She’s been asking about you.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, of course, love. We’re all meeting up, and you’re invited. It’ll be in December in London. My brother Aedan will be there. He was adopted too. He doesn’t know his mother or most of my siblings. I knew him until he was three years old, then we were separated.’
I tried to take in the enormity of what she’d just told me.
That’s a massive thing for him,’ I said. ‘And his mother.’
‘He’s lovely,’ said Marie.
‘Can I bring Sugar with me so that she can finally meet you?’
‘Bring whoever you want. Sure, there’ll be loads of us, so it makes no difference. My family knows how to party. It’s going to be brilliant.’ Her voice dropped, as if perhaps she was being overheard. ‘I have to go. Sorry, love. I’m going up the club with Doreen and the taxi’s due in fifteen minutes. I have to put my face on; ring you tomorrow?’
‘No, don’t worry, talk next week.’
I dialled Sugar’s number. The answer phone message assured me that Sugar would get back to whoever was calling just as soon as she could.
‘Hi Sugar, it’s me, Dizzy,’ I burbled at the machine. ‘Could you come to London in December, please? There’s a big Irish family reunion. I’m going to meet them all. Even Marie’s mother – my gran. Anyway, I’m going to be meeting the whole family.’
Sugar rang back later that evening.
‘Oh, Dizzy, of course I’ll be with you. Can you give me the dates? I’ll have some time off from work. Wow, missus! You’re going to meet your gran. That’s wonderful!’
‘I had a wonderful nan. I certainly don’t need another, nobody could match up to her. But thanks, Sugar. I’ll book the hotel, it’s just so flipping good to hear that you’ll be there.’
Two paths had led me here: one well-trodden, one barely walked upon. The first was my life with Paula and Terry, Nan and Ellis, Will and Sasha; the other, the new family. In my mind, the two paths still remained separate. But rather than moving in parallel lines, like the tracks made by horses at the plough, these lines seemed to be moving apart from each other. It was as if the horses were not walking side by side, not working in harmony, but straining away from the furrow.
I would have to go to the party, but I’d already made up my mind that I wasn’t going to enjoy it.
Chapter 21
The Irish
Sugar and I travelled to London on the Friday-afternoon train, made a dash across the city on the underground, walked the last two miles and arrived at the party at gone 9pm. The Irish family reunion had started at lunchtime, so celebrations in the pub were well underway.
Before us, the fog of nicotine cleared to reveal a riot. The inside of the pub was filled with horizontal layers of smoke that drifted lazily towards the ceiling lights, where the grey, poisonous fumes collected before finding the air vent and escaping. We stood, momentarily framed in the doorway, and stared. It wasn’t hard to make out Marie’s siblings among the crowds – all drinking, most smoking, and some squ
abbling; a gathering organised so that Marie could meet her brother, also adopted – he was separated from Marie when he was a baby and would be encountering his siblings and his birth mother for only the second time.
I studied this tribe of mine, who all looked so similar, as they pushed and jostled to get the attention of the lone barman. This was the first time I had seen Marie’s family as a whole. That scene from Star Wars – the one with the creatures in the cantina – flashed into my mind.
Mayhem.
Sugar touched my elbow.
‘Go on, you’re fine,’ she whispered. She nodded towards the direction of the room. When I hesitated, she pushed me forward, into the merry confusion.
Marie, looking as pristine as ever, spotted us amidst the smoke. She tottered over on heels that looked like they should be confiscated on the grounds of health and safety and marched Sugar and me in to meet her family. First, we were introduced to Marie’s brother, Uncle Liam, who was leaning on the side of the bar, surveying all around him.
‘Are you Marie’s girl?’ he asked.
‘I am,’ I said.
‘Well, come on here and let me hear all about it now,’ he said, winking at Sugar.
Liam looked more like a man about to sell us scrap metal than a relative offering a seat on the sofa.
‘Come on and sit down here next to me,’ he said.
He planted himself on the nearby sofa and patted the empty spaces either side of him. Sugar and I duly positioned ourselves. We were next to the speakers and the Irish band was in full swing. The siblings were all joining in; singing, dancing, and falling in front of us, holding onto each other for love and balance.
‘Would you look at yourself, Sinead. God help you,’ called Liam, raising an eyebrow in the direction of a dark-haired, tiny-looking woman who was having trouble walking in a straight line. To give her credit, though, she could still dance.
‘That’s my sister,’ he told us. ‘Look at the state of her, and it’s only just past nine. We love her, but she can’t take a drink, not like the rest of us.’
‘Sinead!’ He beckoned her over with an animated hand gesture. ‘This is Marie’s daughter, Dervla, the one that got taken.’
Sinead moved unsteadily towards us. She tried to focus on my face, but she was so drunk her eyes went in different directions.
‘Derv,’ she hiccupped, ‘Dervla… I’ve never heard of you. Come and dance.’ And she staggered away.
‘She has a great job that one, she works for Alcoholics Anonymous. You’d never think that to see her now, would you?’ said Liam.
‘Does she, really?’ asked Sugar.
‘No, she’s a teacher.’
Liam’s green eyes twinkled with delight and mischief. Drinks flowed. He peered at me, getting closer, leaning in to scrutinise my face.
‘There’s a look of our Bridie in your bulging eyes,’ Liam whispered. ‘She’s a feckin’ card.’
It was impossible to speak at normal volume, so conversation was mostly shouted, but, what with the overwhelming noise, we only caught snatched sentences and odd words.
‘Drink, Dervla? Cigarette, Sugar? Oh, you’re gorgeous gals, and sure you look like one of the family, Dervla. You know,’ said Liam, ‘I’m surprised your mother had any children. Before you came along she was planning on joining the convent, taking the vows of chastity, but your father obviously got to her before the nuns did.’
This family didn’t believe in spreading themselves out to maximise the space in the room. They preferred to huddle. They sat next to or leaned on the two massive speakers, and for full effect, as the evening wore on, they also lay on the carpet, within feet of the band. This meant we had noise from every angle, reverberating off the nearest solid object. This, for us, happened to be Marie’s chest, bouncing in time to the music.
The other outsider in the room was Adean, Marie’s long-lost sibling, and we found ourselves standing together. We were scrutinised, then thrown into the tumult, both of us struggling without our familiar props to lean on. But we had each other for life jackets so, as the evening wore on and our new family got ever more inebriated, we gladly clung onto each other for help.
And when the mood changed, Marie handled everything with good grace. The first we knew that something had happened was when we saw Marie striding toward us, clasping her handbag in front of her. Her lips set in a tight line.
‘Every time I meet up with my sisters, it’s the same. I knew my lipstick had gone missing and my foundation. When I went into the ladies, there they were, Bridie and Sinead, plastering themselves in my expensive make up. I’d gladly give them anything I own– they just need to ask me.’
‘It wasn’t me, Marie,’ Sinead called over, ‘I’m not a thief. It was our Bridie. I don’t want your feckin’ foundation. Wrong colour, see?’ She pointed to her own complexion and stroked her cheek with her fingers.
‘You can take it,’ said Marie, unzipping her handbag and turning it upside down. She emptied its contents onto the table. As one determined bunch, her sisters descended, snatching up the make-up, grabbing the little black pots and tubes from each other, squabbling over the eye shadows, blushers and lipsticks, and the “feckin’ foundation!”
‘Don’t you want this, Marie?’ asked Bridie, helping herself to one of the little tubes.
‘You give that back, Bridie. I’m the eldest, give it!’ Sinead attacked from the rear. She wrapped her arms round Bridie’s neck and jumped on her back; when she turned her face to us, she was laughing.
I wondered if every one of their Saturday nights was like this.
But Sugar was going with it. By now, Uncle Liam had made her one of his own. They sat together on the sofa and supped Guinness, as Sugar told Uncle Liam all about her own Irish family.
‘Come with me, Dervla.’
It was an order not a request. Marie grabbed my arm.
‘Come and meet your gran.’
Sugar got the hang of what was happening and her hands pushed me onwards until I stood in front of Marie’s mother – presented like a package of what could have been. Small and dark-haired, she had a smile for us, but few words. In her early seventies, Marie’s mother was the same age as my adoptive mum, Paula. She was still pretty, but her life had been hard. After seventeen pregnancies, death and miscarriage and the adoption of three of her children and grandchildren, somehow she had managed not to be emotionally shut down.
‘This is my Dervla, my daughter,’ Marie said.
Her mother half turned towards me. ‘I’ve heard about you. It’s a good thing,’ she said, not making eye contact. ‘I’m glad she has you in her life.’ She nodded towards Marie.
Those were her only words. Then, she turned her face away.
Later, I watched her from across the room; she was standing alone at the edge of the crowd where the noise and chaos melted away. She was looking at her family, but not really observing – alone with her thoughts. I wondered if others noticed.
Next morning, Sugar and I left before breakfast. We needed to go and find some quiet place away from all the relations that were also staying at our hotel. We travelled down in the lift in silence, watching the numbers above the door light up. At the second floor, it stopped. The doors opened and Bridie and Sinead joined us. We travelled silently on again. Sinead stared at her reflection in the lift mirror. First, she fluffed up her hair so that it draped across her face, then she pulled it out from behind her ears and let her fingers run through its thick darkness to its ends. She looked back at me from the mirror.
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘How do you both look so glamorous this morning? And there’s me and Bridie here, looking like a couple of wolves.’
Chapter 22
A night out
But I hadn’t met all the relatives yet. Next I was summoned back to the bungalow to meet Marie’s younger sister Rosheen, who hadn’t managed to
make the reunion in Greenwich.
On entering Marie’s house, I was nearly knocked out by the smell of Domestos. She was being more frantic than usual in her effort to eradicate every last speck of unbleached anything. She darted from one room to the next, waving her dishcloth, even more energetically than usual. Marie’s battle to overcome her cleaning obsession clearly wasn’t working. Her house was so clean you could have performed surgery on the kitchen table. She greeted me at the back door, bleach bottle in hand.
‘I’ve been up since five, love, preparing for my daughter.’ She grinned and took my face in her Marigold-clad hands and planted the expected antiseptic kiss. ‘I cleaned out all the cupboards, scrubbed the skirting boards and bleached the floors,’ she said.
‘Marie, you’ll wear yourself out – it smells like a sanatorium in here. I expect Vernon’s worried he could be next to get a good rub down.’
‘What, with my weak chest, you must be kidding,’ she said.
She glared through to the adjacent room where the TV was blaring; I followed her gaze, glancing from the tiny kitchen into the next room, where Vernon, in his normal position on the sofa, was engorssed in the Jeremy Kyle Show.
Marie gave a withering look.
‘That telly drives me mad.’ she said loudly. ‘I wish Vernon would get off his backside and do something. I hate the telly. In my opinion that Jeremy Kyle is evil, look at his face all contorted with anger.’ She shot a look in the direction of the TV.
‘Vernon, walk the dog… NOW!’ she shouted. But Vernon, his expression unmoving, merely stretched a hand out to reach for the remote control to turn the TV sound up so he couldn’t hear her.
Since my last visit, Marie and Vernon had bought Radar, an English Springer Spaniel. All my warnings against getting a dog that would be better suited living on a farm or out shooting had been ignored.
‘But he’s so sweet, Dervla, and he was going to be put down,’ was all Marie could say. I’d explained to Marie about my problems with Merlin. I was worried that they’d made such an inappropriate choice of breed of dog, living, as they did, in a bungalow with no garden.
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