Another Kind of Life

by Catherine Dunne

  ‘Come on, love.’

  She caressed the cold arms, waiting until the younger woman looked up at her. Then she took one of May’s hands gently in hers.

  ‘Come with me, pet. Let his dad carry him to the house. Come on now.’

  It made her sad, looking into May’s empty eyes.

  ‘It’s John,’ she said, her voice full of wonder.

  Bridie swallowed.

  ‘Let’s take care of him in the house. It’s warmer there.’

  May rose obediently, allowing Richard to take the full weight of the small, still body. She clung to Bridie’s hand, not letting go even when they had to scramble up the bank together.

  Bridie put her arm around May’s shoulders, keeping her moving towards the house. She didn’t want her to see as the two men struggled to climb the bank, holding on carefully to the now awkward, absent body of her dead child.

  May woke, her heart pounding. For a moment, she lay in the darkness, trying to piece together the fractured details of her dream. She let out a little cry of relief.

  ‘Oh, thank God, thank God it was a dream!’

  Richard was awake beside her at once. But there was still something dark beneath the surface of her memory which she could not place. It puzzled her.

  Richard took her hand.

  ‘May? Are you all right?’

  Something in his voice broke the spell and she wailed, clutching at him.

  ‘Oh, no, no – I don’t want it to be real! Please don’t let it be real!’

  She sobbed harshly, holding on for comfort. When she felt the tears on his face, she knew she was lost. It had happened; it was real. He could not make this better. She could not make it better. They held each other for a long time.

  With John’s death, she felt part of herself slipping away. She watched it go, wondering how much of herself would be left. Wondering if she cared.

  Hours somehow slipped by, becoming days. Richard still fed the animals, tended the farm, but it was all too much for him. He worked the longest hours he could, welcoming the exhaustion of his labour, sometimes working until he dropped. He toiled savagely, punishing the soil. Shovelling animal shit was better, easier than watching his wife disappear bit by bit in front of his eyes. At night, he slept badly, an uneasy, dream-filled state which brought him no rest. He was aware of May’s weeping, of her wanderings around the darkened house. He felt powerless; they spoke less and less.

  May spent her days aimlessly. With no Annie and no Tom, the house gradually began to sag. Bridie still came and brought food. She tried to get May to change out of her nightgown, to clean up a little. May never said a word to her. She knew that Bridie would eventually go back to her own life, leaving her in peace.

  This morning, she sat listlessly, counting. She had taken to sitting in the rocking chair in John’s room, sometimes looking out the window when the bright sight of water had ceased to hurt. The first Monday without John; the first rainfall; the first full week, then the second week. She wanted Ellie and Hannah to be with her, but she angrily didn’t want her sister’s daughters, her twin boys. Life wasn’t fair. Hannah had babies all the time. May had nothing, nothing at all. Why hadn’t God taken one of her baby boys? She’d still have plenty left.

  There was a sudden movement in among the laurels. May sat forward and leaned her head closer to the window. She could see nothing. Sunlight was filtering through the trees, making a constant lazy pattern on the grass beneath. She sat back again; it hadn’t been that kind of slow, leafy movement, but something altogether more familiar, more recognizable, although she couldn’t put her finger on it. She would wait. Something told her it would happen again. Suddenly, the air in the bedroom became very still; in response, she stopped the soothing, rocking motion of her chair. And then she heard it.

  ‘Mama?’

  The voice was unmistakably his. She was filled with such joy that she could hardly breathe. Slowly, she stood up, and moved as close to the window as she could get. She pressed her body against it for support. Everything was trembling; she didn’t trust her legs to keep her upright. She clung to the top of the sash. John was standing there, under the trees, in his white smock. He held his right hand to his face.

  ‘Mama, face hurt.’

  Still May didn’t move. His words were clear; she heard them distinctly inside her head, as much John’s voice as if he’d been standing right beside her. She had known it all along; he would never leave her. She knew that the thread of connection between them was much too strong for him to break. She smiled down at him, but didn’t speak. She knew she had to tread very gently, carefully, in case he took fright.

  He took his hand away from his face and she saw the bruise. No longer dark, it was again poppy-coloured in places, silvery in others. It changed emphasis as she watched. She was afraid to leave the window, afraid to let him out of her sight, in case he disappeared on her again. She wouldn’t be able to bear that.

  ‘Wait,’ she whispered, finally, and it seemed to her that he nodded in reply.

  She lurched down the corridor, holding both arms straight out from her shoulders, needing to feel the wall solid under her fingertips. She stumbled on the top stair, and had a bright vision of herself hurtling downwards, out of control, to the hallway below. Its clarity frightened her. She gripped the banisters tightly and walked carefully, step after unsteady step, down the stairs. She prayed that he would wait for her.

  The front door was already open. She stepped outside and moved quickly to her right, where the shade of the laurel trees was deepest. She stood in the spot where she had first seen him, and closed her eyes. She was able to see him again, that way, as he really was. His face, the day he’d seen Molly for the first time. His small, plump arms pulling strongly on the oars of the lake-boat. His smell at bedtime, wrapped by her body, listening with wide eyes as she and Richard told him a bedtime story.

  She stayed very still, only moving her head a little as her eyes now searched the rest of the garden for him. She could be patient.

  And there he was. Just out of arm’s reach.

  ‘John?’ she said.

  ‘Mama.’

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  He nodded and smiled at her. Then he began to move back towards where the trees were thickest. May felt rooted to the ground, paralysed in that dream-like way, as though her feet had gone deep underneath the soil. She couldn’t move, couldn’t follow him.

  ‘Will you come again?’ she asked, watching as he moved away from her. He turned and nodded. Then, just as suddenly as she had seen him, he was gone.

  The feeling began gradually to return to her legs. She stood, almost breathless, as the most profound surge of tranquillity seemed to come from the soil beneath her, filling her whole body, soothing her mind. It was the first time she had felt alive, that she wanted to live, ever since he had gone away.

  The gate whined as Richard came through into the garden. He bolted it behind him and turned, startled to see May standing there, thin and pale in her long nightgown.

  ‘May? Are you all right?’

  His voice was tentative, unhappy. She turned to him, her face calm, her eyes bright in a way he had feared never to see again.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m all right.’

  She looked down, as though suddenly noticing her nightgown for the first time.

  ‘I think I’ll have a bath. Will we have a cup of tea, first?’

  Richard’s eyes filled. He couldn’t speak.

  ‘I miss him, too,’ he blurted, his whole frame racked by sobs. May put her arms around him, drawing his head on to her breasts. She held him close, kissing the top of his head, murmuring words of comfort. Together, they made their way towards the house, Richard’s long body weak and stumbling with relief.

  As May turned to close the front door, she saw him again, standing just where she had seen him first from his bedroom window. He was gone in a moment, leaving behind him the certainty of his return.

  Eleanor�
�s Journal

  I CANNOT BEGIN to tell you of the heartbreak endured by May and Richard all that summer.

  I went to them at once, as soon as Mama telegraphed me to say what had happened. Richard was consumed with despair – I know he blamed himself, although he never confessed as much, for having permitted John, even once, to accompany him in the lake-boat. I have seldom seen a man so desperate. For her part, May never reproached her husband, not once. Perhaps she was too distracted even to make the connection. I have never seen my sister so absent from herself.

  Nothing brought her ease, or comfort, or even one hour of repose. I felt so helpless, so hopelessly inadequate in her presence, in their presence. For the first time since I had so proudly declared myself a fully-fledged nurse, my efficiency, my competence, my professional manner all counted for nothing. My cures were for the body only; none of my ministrations brought any lessening of anguish to the hearts of my sister and her husband. They had no need of me.

  I was forced to recall your words to me, on the occasion when you gently suggested that I needed to learn a little humility; that my sense of mission sometimes blinded me to the subtler needs of the human spirit. As ever, you were right. I know, however, that it gave you no pleasure that I began at that time to gain some small understanding of myself and others at the expense of my sister’s unspeakable suffering.

  How could I begin to tell her, or indeed Hannah, that my greatest happiness had coincided with this tragic time in May’s life? That I had found love where I had least dreamt to seek it? I had always known instinctively that I was destined for another kind of life, one different from my sisters’ in as many ways as is possible for lives to diverge. But nothing could have prepared me for the depth of the bond that had grown, almost imperceptibly, between you and me. In our work, our home, our friendship we achieved an intimacy which I could never imagine sharing with any man. We seek neither society’s acknowledgement of who we are, nor its approbation. God has made us, Stella, and the love we bear one another. It is enough.

  I know that I returned home to you that summer filled with gratitude that I needed to explain nothing – that you knew and understood all the enormity of a family’s grief. And I did learn some resignation, too – I know that I continue to rage against God sometimes, that I cannot discern His plan among the unfortunate people we care for and the work that we do. The difference is now that I am learning, simply, to accept that there are some things that even you and I cannot change.

  EPILOGUE

  Autumn 1906

  Hannah sat quietly in the sunshine, allowing the sound of the river to lull her into peacefulness. Eileen and Maeve played on the grass beside her, pressing smooth pebbles into a mound of sand which Richard had just brought in a bucket. They had been shrill earlier, quarrelling over spilt lemonade. As usual, Mary had come to the rescue. The two girls always stopped being pettish when Mary scolded them; Hannah seemed to have little effect on them herself. At six, Eileen was particularly conscious of her status as the eldest. When she and Maeve, younger by two years, played together, she became especially fractious if she did not get her way. Earlier that afternoon, their shrieks had set Hannah’s teeth on edge. She could feel her temper rise, sure that Eleanor’s silence indicated disapproval. Mary’s swift separation of the two small bodies and her low, urgent voice had brought about reluctant reconciliation far more quickly than Hannah ever could have.

  Alec and Patrick were nearly three: twin boys, tow-headed, slight in frame, gentle with each other, who did not take kindly to the bossiness of their older sisters. Hannah sighed, still not opening her eyes. The boys were so much easier, so much more simple in their needs and straightforward in their adoration of their father. Nevertheless, four children were a handful – both hands full. She didn’t know what she would do without Mary. The last pregnancy had ended before it had hardly begun, and she been filled with nothing but gratitude for her loss, followed rapidly by an enormous guilt. She had never even told Charles: there had been no need. Mary had helped her, cleaned her, comforted her, mistaking her sobs for grief. And now, unless she was very much mistaken, she was carrying again.

  May watched as Richard spread the sand on the grass below the oak tree, her heart turning over as he smiled at the high-pitched delight of Hannah’s two little girls. Automatically, her head turned towards the laurel trees, although he tended not to come to her if there were others around. Perhaps she would just take a walk in that direction, anyway, just in case. Hannah seemed to be asleep, and Eleanor had had her head buried in some journal or other for the last hour.

  She glanced in Richard’s direction before she stood up. As usual, he was looking at her. She tried to smile, and made as though she had simply been changing her position on the hard, wrought-iron garden chair. Her hat shaded most of her face, she knew that, so for once he shouldn’t be able to read her expression.

  He had been worried about Hannah’s visit, had tried to persuade May against it. Not because of Hannah, of course, but because of her four children. He was afraid that the presence of high, childish voices might upset her. May knew how deeply he feared for her, could read the concern that was now a permanent feature of his expression – as ingrained as though he had suddenly acquired a scar that wouldn’t heal. Tentatively, he had asked May was she sure, was she strong enough – perhaps she should wait, perhaps next year would be better. He tended to watch her so much these days: she had to be constantly on her guard.

  She had insisted. It was so long since they had all been together. Besides, Hannah was bringing her maid. If things got too much, then Mary would simply take the children away, take them for a walk, bathe them, do whatever needed to be done to children.

  She hadn’t told Richard that she wanted the exquisite pain of her sister’s brood around her. She wanted to see if she could bear it, knowing that she had a secret among the laurel trees.

  May and Richard have made us very welcome. In the four months since I last saw her, my sister has grown even paler and thinner. I do not believe she will ever recover from the loss of John. I despair sometimes of a God who will not send her another child to take his place – such a simple thing to do, such an easy way to give her back her old, uncomplicated happiness. I worry about her. There is something almost insubstantial about her presence among us – her gaze is frequently directed elsewhere, as though she is searching for something, someone. It struck me very forcibly today that she does not truly believe that John is gone, or at least, that he is not coming back. There is such a yearning, such wistfulness in her eyes that it breaks my heart.

  Richard looks years older than the last time I saw him. He looks frayed and shabby, something like Abbotsford the first time I saw it. I am puzzled that May has no one to help her here – I seem to remember that there was once a man about the farm, and a young woman to help with the cooking and cleaning. It is not my place to ask; I fear that money may not be as plentiful as they had hoped. Is this another legacy to be passed on from generation to generation? As you and I know, poverty is no less difficult to bear simply because it is covered with a discreet cloak of gentility.

  The sudden sound of metal on china woke Hannah. She sat up straight instantly. Had she really fallen asleep? And for how long? Guiltily, she looked around at her two sisters. They hadn’t moved, it seemed, and the children were still playing as before. Mary was setting a large tray with tea things on the low table in front of her. Hannah coughed, and settled her hat more comfortably, shading her eyes from the gently sinking sun. She must only have nodded off for a moment. Everything seemed to be as before.

  ‘Will you pour, ma’am?’

  Mary directed her question to May, a fitting respect towards the lady of the house. Hannah was grateful to her. She always got it right, always did the correct thing, the required thing. She could have been forgiven for letting things slip a little from time to time, given the informality that now reigned in the house in Holywood. ‘Ma’am’ had given way almost imperceptibly to ‘
Miss Hannah’ when they were alone, and after last year’s miscarriage to ‘Hannah’, once there was no one else around. Hannah had encouraged her – how could you be stiff and formal with the woman who had helped deliver your babies, who kept your husband’s dangerous secrets, whose strength kept you from impatience with those small bodies whose every need now dominated your life?

  May gestured towards Hannah. She gave a little laugh.

  ‘Oh, I feel too lazy to move. Let Hannah be Mother.’

  The warm air around them seemed to freeze for a moment. Eleanor looked up quickly, her intelligent eyes darting from one sister’s face to the other.

  Hannah stood up at once, replying lightly, ‘Oh well, if I must!’

  She was relieved when Mary appeared once more at her elbow, carrying a plate piled high with new scones. She had even brought the hot water to warm the cups. Despite herself, Hannah smiled.

  ‘Now, then, my dears! You can all once again witness the intricacies of the MacBride tea ceremony!’

  Everyone laughed. Conversation became animated; even Richard joined in. As she poured, Hannah was overwhelmed with memories of her first visit to Belfast, of the MacBrides’ drawing room, of her first hopeful yearnings for romance. She had hoped so much for another kind of life. She bit her lip. This was not the time, nor the place.

  But she couldn’t shake the feeling of helplessness which engulfed her more and more often these days. Charles was losing too much business, his native city becoming more bitter and divided by the day. Taig; fenian; antichrist. His potential clients didn’t use such words, of course – wouldn’t even think them. Professional men would never lower themselves to such working-class terms of abuse. But, behind their smooth regrets and sound financial reasons for doing business elsewhere, the same ugly reality lurked. These were difficult times, they said. Best not to ruffle any more feathers, they said. She knew that Charles was being driven inexorably into the company of men who painted slogans in bitumen on city walls in the seething darkness; men who refused to lie down, as they saw it, and accept the crumbs from the rich man’s table. None of this was new: Constance MacBride had let something slip to her recently, and then immediately become silent. But it had been enough: Hannah understood, with a bright flash of intuition, what the older woman’s fears were. She had hoped, as his mother, that marriage would put an end to Charles’s dangerous dabbling. His naivety and his recent, growing sense of injustice were an explosive mixture.