‘I’d really like to meet them,’ I said one afternoon.
‘They’d like to meet you too. My mother especially.’
‘Do your parents know about us? About me?’
He nodded. ‘I record all our conversations and send them the tapes each Friday.’
He always deflected questions about his family with a joke. ‘I mean it, Aidan. I really would like to meet them. I’d like to see Ireland too.’
‘And so you will, Arabella, so you will,’ he said. ‘If I survive meeting your family first.’
We had two weeks in Melbourne together. He loved Australia: the warmth, the big sky, the sounds of the birds, the relaxed people, the casual turns of phrase, especially the way shop assistants farewelled him with ‘See you later’. Where were we going to meet up again? he wondered. He and Walter got on well, especially when Aidan spoke in German. Mum flirted with him and made lots of bad Irish jokes that he pretended to laugh at. Jess welcomed him as a new member of her audience. She’d even prepared a performance especially for our arrival. We were barely in the door from the airport, still getting to grips with the bright light and summer heat, when she’d ushered us all into the kitchen where she’d arranged a row of chairs. First she danced an Irish jig. Then she sang a soulful version of ‘Danny Boy’. As she took a dramatic bow and we applauded, Aidan leaned across to me and whispered, ‘Does she do children’s parties too?’
I loved him even more in that moment.
We hired a car after Christmas and drove up the coast to Sydney. On New Year’s Eve, we stayed in a cheap hotel without even the hint of a harbour view. On New Year’s Day we took the coast road back to Melbourne. He asked me to marry him when we were halfway there. While he was driving. I had to ask him to pull over.
‘Did you just ask me to marry you?’
He nodded.
‘Just like that?’
Another nod.
‘Yes, please,’ I said.
‘You can change it,’ he said later that night as we lay in bed in an ordinary roadside motel. ‘If you want to make it more romantic when you’re telling your friends and family. You can say we were climbing the Harbour Bridge and I threw myself off and as my parachute opened you could see I’d handstitched the words “Will You Marry Me, Ella?” onto it.’
‘I’m not telling anyone anything.’
‘Because it was too ordinary? Because you regret saying yes? Because I turn your stomach?’
‘Because it was too good.’
I met his parents a month after we returned to London. We flew to Dublin, hired a car and drove down to Carlow, two hours away. Aidan laughed when I kept saying how green the fields were. But it looks just like Ireland should, I said. I was amazed to see road signs and place names in English and Irish. Aidan pronounced each of the Irish words for me. I loved the sound of them. We passed a thatched cottage with whitewashed walls and he patiently took photographs of me in front of it.
His own family house was an ordinary bungalow on an ordinary suburban estate outside the town of Carlow. His mother was quiet, welcoming, kind. His father was more difficult to like. He barely drew breath from the moment we arrived. I put my foot in it almost immediately, purely through nerves, by making the mistake of saying the south of Ireland was part of the UK.
‘We fought for that term “republic” and you Australians should do the same thing,’ he said to me.
I knew Aidan’s mother’s name was Deirdre and his father’s was Eamon, but I called them Mrs and Mr O’Hanlon. Aidan apologised for the formality, but I liked it. The formal terms matched their house. It was so orderly compared to my own family and to Lucas’s house in London. There was a formal sitting room, which they called ‘the good room’. Meals took place at specific hours. Mr O’Hanlon sat at the table while Mrs O’Hanlon fetched and carried. There was no grace before meals – Mr O’Hanlon had very strong views about the Catholic Church too. He listened to the radio news on the hour, turning up the radio until it was finished, regardless of whether there was a conversation in progress or not. Over the weekend I heard a lot about British imperialism, Australian republicanism, American conservatism, German efficiency, the incompetence of the Irish government, the foolishness of the local council and the shocking state of the roads. They were lectures, not discussions. He didn’t seem to care what his wife or Aidan thought, let alone what I thought. We were just his audience.
I also heard a lot from him about Aidan’s brother Rory. About the number of people he employed. His head office in Dublin. How much he’d contributed to the Irish economy. His big house. His big car. His success with women. ‘He’s a catch, I’ll give you that. The one who finally snares him will be one lucky woman. But she’ll have to be pretty special.’ I didn’t hear Mr O’Hanlon ask Aidan anything about his studies or work.
Aidan seemed different there. He was quieter. Distracted. We slept in separate rooms. I reached for his hand once as we sat watching the TV news with his parents and he moved away. We had our first moment of tension that night as we walked down to the local pub.
‘Aidan, is something wrong?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want to break up?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Are you ashamed of me?’
‘Never.’
I stopped walking. ‘Aidan, please, what is it? It’s like you’re a different person here.’
‘I know,’ he said, after a few moments. ‘That’s why I left.’
I felt him relax as soon as we got in the car to drive to Dublin airport. By the time we boarded our flight he was the Aidan I knew once again. He held my hand the whole way. I was happy, but I was also confused. It wasn’t that I expected everyone to play Happy Families. God knows my own background was complicated enough. Back in London, I asked more questions and got some answers.
‘Why didn’t your brother come down on the weekend to see you too?’
‘He was busy, I guess. He’s very successful. You might have gathered that from my father.’
‘I’d like to meet your brother,’ I said.
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Aidan answered.
Three weeks later, Aidan mentioned his brother was going to be in London for a work trip. At my insistence, the three of us had dinner together. Rory chose the venue, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Knightsbridge.
‘I’ll pay tonight,’ he said almost as soon as we walked in. ‘I know you student types. You’re always skint.’
He was the opposite of Aidan in every way. Well groomed, dressed in expensive clothes. Loud, his accent a kind of affected American twang compared to Aidan’s soft Irish accent. Confident. Sexist. Dismissive. Opinionated. His father’s son, in every way. I tried my best to be friendly but after his fifth joke about Australians, the fourth time he talked over me, and the third time he spoke to the waitress’s chest rather than her face, I gave up. When Rory suggested he and Aidan ‘party on’ – ‘You can work out the Tube home for yourself, Ella, can’t you?’ – I was grateful and relieved when Aidan said no, that we both had to work early in the morning.
‘Work!’ Rory laughed. ‘Is that what you call it!’
‘Arrivederci!’ he said, too loudly, as we said goodbye in front of the restaurant. ‘That’s Italian, isn’t it?’
‘Was he like that when you were growing up?’ I asked as Aidan and I walked to the Tube station.
‘Worse.’
But he was still Mr O’Hanlon’s favourite son. I’d seen that when I was in the house. It wasn’t said, but the intimation was there. Rory’s got a proper job. You just spend your time speaking foreign languages. His mother loved Aidan, I’d seen that. But she was overshadowed by her husband. I imagined most people were.
‘I’m sorry, Ella,’ Aidan said out of the blue later that night. We were in bed. The lamps were off, the light coming in through the curtain soft, the noise of the traffic a steady, comforting hum.
‘What for?’
‘My brother. My father. What I wa
s like when we were in Ireland. I’m sorry my family isn’t one of those warm, welcoming, musical, storytelling Irish ones you were probably expecting.’
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. ‘Aidan, I’m sorry my mother couldn’t stop flirting with you. I’m sorry my stepfather only wanted to discuss German tenses. I’m sorry my half-sister kept up a one-woman show. I’m especially sorry you didn’t get to meet Charlie. He’s the only normal one. That’s why he lives thousands of kilometres from us all.’
He turned over in the bed so he was facing me. He sounded so vulnerable, his voice quiet in the darkness. ‘I had to get away, Ella. Not from my mother. From my brother, my father. They’ve always been like that. Life’s about money, opinions, prestige, possessions, status. I don’t care about any of those things. Rory thinks it’s hilarious to call me the eternal student, Dad just thinks I’m a waster, that studying for studying’s sake is pointless, that I should come home, cap in hand, and beg Rory for a job. He said I should ask him if I can work at his company’s airport desk, that at least my languages would be useful there, all the foreign tourists —’
It was the most he’d ever talked about his family. Afterwards, I told him the truth. I said it didn’t matter to me at all what his father and brother were like. That I loved the fact languages were his life’s work. That I loved him, I wanted to marry him, live with him, spend the rest of my life with him, not with his brother or his parents. I curled in around him and kissed him and told him we’d just have to make our own family, a great big family. We’d have a dozen kids, maybe more, and we would be the most perfect, well-balanced, un-messed-up family in the whole world.
I heard a soft laugh, felt a kiss against the top of my head. ‘Ah now, Ella. We don’t want to bring up a tribe of goody-two-shoes kids who never put a foot wrong, do we?’
‘They won’t be goody-goodies. Our children will be perfect and we’ll be the perfect parents.’
‘Of course we will. The ideal parents.’
‘With ideal children. They’ll be delightful, quirky, intelligent, well behaved —’
‘Grow up speaking ten languages each —’
‘They’ll spell before they can walk —’
‘We’ll never argue in their presence —’
‘Never,’ I agreed. ‘We’ll stay together, devoted to one another, until we are both one hundred —’
‘Our children and our children’s many friends will love us for our independent spirit and our open-house policy —’
‘They’ll come to us with any problems, secure in the knowledge our advice will be helpful, heartfelt and hands-off.’
‘We’ll embrace their partners, their choice of occupations, their lifestyles, their hairstyles and their fashion styles,’ he said.
‘We’ll be babysitters on demand but we’ll never once be a burden or source of guilt,’ I added.
‘We will conveniently die on the same day to save them any excess trouble and expense.’
‘Having won the lottery when they are all in their thirties, we’ll also have ensured they are secure for life but only once they’re settled in their respective careers and with down-to-earth values.’
We would be everything our parents hadn’t been, we agreed. Of course we would. And then we had kissed and made love and then we had slept. And from that night, that whispered conversation became the secret blueprint for our life together.
We’d had so many plans. So many hopes and dreams. We’d been joking that night, but not completely. That’s what we had wanted. Our own big family. Our chance to reverse what had happened to us. We wanted to give our children a happy, secure home. Encouragement. Love. Constant love.
We’d already made a start on our big plan with Felix. We loved being parents so much that we’d been trying for a second child. We couldn’t wait to give him a little brother or sister. We’d been trying for a baby the same month that he died. The same month that everything changed.
The same month our marriage ended.
Standing there in Lucas’s kitchen, I shivered. It wasn’t cold, but I felt like I was surrounded by ghosts.
I thought of Aidan going back to Ireland for the first time since Felix died. Of his mother being in hospital, being sick, and Aidan going to visit her. I tried to imagine Aidan with his father. Would Mr O’Hanlon have been sympathetic about Felix? Would his brother have made the trip from Dublin to see him? Or would it have been left to his mother to say all that Aidan needed to hear from his family?
I suddenly remembered something. I’d convinced myself that I’d had no contact with them since it happened. But I had. I’d spoken to Mrs O’Hanlon the morning I left Aidan.
I’d been in our Canberra apartment. My suitcases were at my feet. I had just finished writing my farewell note to Aidan when the phone rang. I wouldn’t have answered but I’d thought it might be Charlie. He usually rang around that time. But it was Mrs O’Hanlon.
It was the first time she and I had spoken since it happened. Aidan had rung her the day after Felix died. He called from our bedroom. I was in the living room, with Mum and the priest, or perhaps it was the funeral director. Aidan had asked me if I wanted to speak to his mother, but I wasn’t able to.
She had never met Felix. We’d sent her photographs and promised to bring him over to Ireland when he was a bit older, and she had sent cards and presents on his first birthday. But I wasn’t able to talk to her that day. I could barely speak to my own mother.
Since my first visit to Ireland, I’d met Mrs O’Hanlon again just twice. She’d come to London with a friend to see a musical and we had met for afternoon tea. It had been stilted but nice. Her friend did most of the talking. Aidan and I had also flown back to Ireland for a final weekend before we moved to Australia. Rory had been there that weekend too. It had mostly been about him.
We’d invited the three of them to Canberra for our wedding, of course, but Mr O’Hanlon didn’t like air travel and Mrs O’Hanlon didn’t want to leave him on his own. Rory accepted. ‘Someone has to fly the flag for Ireland!’ he emailed. He sent a stream of emails in the weeks beforehand, asking us to book him into the best hotel, asking for the names of the top car-hire companies in Australia, telling us he was going to use the trip as a tax write-off. The week beforehand, he cancelled, citing work pressures. ‘No recession in my business!’ he emailed. He sent a dozen bottles of Moët & Chandon champagne as an apology.
After Felix was born, Mrs O’Hanlon and I had more contact. Aidan and I phoned her once a month or more. Aidan would do most of the talking and then I would have a few minutes speaking to her too. We talked about what Felix was up to developmentally, anything funny he had done, but mostly we seemed to talk about the weather in Canberra compared to the weather in Carlow. Perhaps if she had met Felix, if she and I had spent more time together in person, we would have had more to talk about, but we never got beyond pleasantries. One of us invariably made the remark that it was a shame we couldn’t swap some of that Irish rain for some of our Australian sunshine. We’d laugh, as if we had just thought of the idea, and then I would put Aidan back on.
The O’Hanlons sent flowers to Felix’s funeral. A huge bouquet, with a card from the three of them. Our prayers are with you. Mrs O’Hanlon had also had a mass said for Felix in their local church. I heard that from Aidan. She had phoned several times, but I still hadn’t spoken to her myself.
Until that morning when I was leaving. After an awkward minute of weather conversation we both fell silent. It was as if neither of us could bear to mention Felix first. As the quiet stretched out, I realised I wanted to tell her the truth.
Mrs O’Hanlon, I’m leaving Aidan today. I have to. We’re destroying each other. I’m so sorry.
I imagined trying to explain to her why. How there wasn’t enough room in this small apartment for all our pain, for the guilt, the blame, how our sadness was pressing against the walls, how his tears, my tears, were like poison, that we couldn’t console each other, couldn’t even begin
to console each other, when all we could feel ourselves was such sadness, such —
I took the coward’s way out. I said nothing. I pretended someone was at the door. I said goodbye, telling her in a strangely bright voice that I’d be sure to tell Aidan she’d rung. As if it was a normal day, we were a normal couple, that we did normal things like tell each other about missed phone calls.
But I didn’t tell him. I’d already written my farewell note. How could I add a P.S. now? Your mother rang. Please call her back.
I left with one suitcase. I took some clothes, some books, my share of photos of Felix and that was all. I knew I had to keep moving, I couldn’t carry much with me. And in the first days and weeks afterwards, whenever I would wake in the middle of the night I would tell myself it wasn’t because I’d left Aidan that I felt so bad. I somehow managed to convince myself that the reason I was feeling so guilty was because I hadn’t told him his mother had rung.
Chapter Twenty
Dear Felix,
So many things happen that I wish I could show you. Not just normal things, like dogs and cats and cars and trains. I’d have shown you all of those things, but I’d also have taken you to galleries. Museums. Even really boring ones, with steam engines and old cars, if that’s what you’d have liked. Today I was out walking and I saw a little boy about your age, on a kind of a tricycle thing with a long stick attached. His mother was pushing it along, so she was doing all the work, but the little boy either didn’t know that or didn’t care. He was smiling so widely, with such a look of triumph as though he was Evel Knievel, a stunt-man, a daredevil, not a little boy being pushed along a city street on a plastic bike by his mother. And I realised in his head he was that stuntman. You could see it in his eyes, in his expression, in his smile.
The House of Memories Page 19