by Cathy Kelly
‘Rae,’ said Sister Martin sharply. ‘You’re not supposed to do that. We’ll feed the baby formula.’
‘Jasmine,’ said Rae softly. ‘Her name is Jasmine, and I have to feed her. She’s hungry, look.’
She looked at the downy dark head nuzzled close to her and the waves of love washed over her. Jasmine, her baby.
Nobody had mentioned the pure joy of breastfeeding. Rae felt as if some part of her body was dancing on clouds. Carla had said that breastfeeding made your boobs all saggy, that’s what her mother used to say. She hadn’t breastfed her baby.
‘It’s not a good idea,’ Sister Martin insisted. ‘You’ll get too attached.’
Rae jerked in surprise and the baby’s tiny mouth came off her nipple. Jasmine began to cry but Rae didn’t tend to her. Instead, she stared at the nun. ‘She’s my baby, I am attached to her.’
‘Lord help us, Rae, will you be sensible! They’ll never let you keep her,’ Sister Martin said. ‘The authorities don’t want kids having kids. She’ll be taken off you and who knows where she’ll end up while they sort it all out. In a home, perhaps. Wouldn’t it be better to let her have a decent life somewhere, a new start with good parents from the beginning?’
‘Like the people Carla talked about?’ Rae said bitterly. ‘The family with the farm and the little girl? Are they all farm families with little girls or little boys, depending on the story required?
‘It’s for your own good and for the child’s own good,’ insisted the nun.
‘That’s what people say when they want you to do what they want,’ spat Rae. Jasmine began to cry loudly. Rae cradled her close and tried to get her to latch on to the nipple again, but it was no good. Little Jasmine sensed her mother’s distress. Rae tried to calm herself but it was hard, her heart was beating so fast, threatening to leap from her chest. She would keep her baby.
‘You’re making a rod for your own back,’ Sister Martin said. ‘How much harder will it be to let her go now that you’ve bonded with her.’
‘I won’t let her go!’
The nun stared at her pityingly. ‘You will. They all do.’
Eleanor held on to Rae until she stopped crying. It was like holding a husk of a person, someone who’d let all the pain spill away with the life force. Eleanor wanted to cry herself. She’d never felt that way before when a patient cried and perhaps that had been her problem all along. She stood stoic in the face of other people’s pain. When Ralf had died, she had been unable to let go of herself and cry. For the first time since then, she wanted to sob her heart out.
They were both in the depths of grief. Rae had never been allowed to grieve for the baby she’d given up for adoption. Eleanor had been too locked into being the perfect strong woman, the psychoanalyst who knew everything, to grieve.
‘Do you want to stay here?’ Eleanor said. ‘You could come to my apartment.’
Rae nodded. It was bad enough that she’d broken down in Titania’s. At least if she left now, the rest of the staff would be able to concentrate on work and not keep staring at her anxiously. She stood and went to fetch her jacket.
‘Rae, are you all right?’ said Phyllis, who’d worked in Titania’s forever.
‘Fine,’ said Rae, doing her best to look semi-fine. ‘Just had a shock. Eleanor’s so sweet, she’s talked me out of it. I think I’ll go now. Don’t phone me at home, though,’ she added hurriedly. ‘I don’t want to worry Will.’
They crossed the square together, the tall dark-haired woman with the tear-ravaged face arm in arm with the equally tall silver-haired old lady who walked with the cautious steps of a frail person. Rae waited while Eleanor fiddled with her key in the lock and then followed her in. Normally she would have looked at the apartment with great interest, but today she didn’t. She sank on to a couch as if she wanted to hide inside it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what came over me, I’m not that sort of person, I’ve never told anyone, please don’t tell anyone, please.’
‘I won’t, don’t worry, Rae,’ said Eleanor gently. ‘There’s nothing wrong with crying. I am guessing you’ve never had a chance to mourn Jasmine.’
Rae stared at Eleanor.
‘You’re the first person in my life who has ever spoken her name. The nuns didn’t use it, nobody did. It was like pretending she wasn’t real. But she was real, is real.’
‘You might be able to meet her,’ said Eleanor gently.
‘How can she not hate me?’ asked Rae. ‘If I see her, how can Will and Anton not hate me too?’
‘Do you hate yourself for what you did?’
Rae shook her head. ‘I can’t tell them, Eleanor. I can’t even think about it, it’s too painful.’
‘Fine. I will make us tea. Earl Grey or ordinary tea? Everyone here likes their tea.’
For the first time, a hint of a smile hovered over Rae’s lips. ‘It’s one of those clichés that turn out to be true. No matter what happens in Golden Square, someone will suggest putting the kettle on as a solution.’
‘The kind gesture as comfort,’ Eleanor said. ‘It was the same in my mother’s time. Tea and what she called “curranty cake”. There was nothing that couldn’t be soothed with a bit of both.’
Rae followed Eleanor into the kitchen. Watching her make tea was calming and she began to talk again.
‘I think of her every day. What’s she doing, who she’s with. Is her hair dark like mine? Would I recognise her if I saw her? I look for people like her on the street, to see if she could be here. I would know her, wouldn’t I? When Anton was small, he worried he’d get lost and I wouldn’t be able to find him.
‘“I’ll always find you,” I told him. “Mums have this radar in their hearts that takes them to their child. You can never be lost from me.” He was happy with that, but in some ways it was a lie. Children go missing all the time. I had a daughter and the radar didn’t work. I longed to know where she was, and I didn’t. Longing with all my heart didn’t help. She was gone, gone forever.’
In her great pain, the beauty had been leached from Rae’s face. It was like staring at a death mask.
‘Maybe the radar did work,’ Eleanor told her softly. ‘You were always looking for her. You kept the memory of her in your heart, and that’s all you could do.’
Eleanor had rarely felt the pity she felt for Rae now. To give birth to a child and to have someone take that child away because that was the only way they could both survive? How unselfish an act was that? But oh, how painful.
‘I became a mother one day and the next, my child was gone. Tears are hopeless, really. You still have the hole in your heart, a hole nothing can fill. Nothing.’
Rae got up and looked out of the window. ‘I’ve made a life for myself without Jasmine, but I’ve never forgotten about her or forgiven myself for giving her up.’
‘You were a child,’ insisted Eleanor, ‘and undoubtedly they took advantage of that fact. We all know that the people in charge don’t always tell the truth, Rae. The girls in the Magdalen Laundries weren’t told the truth. They were treated like slaves and had their babies taken away. At least you weren’t kept working as a slave, but they didn’t give you the chance to keep your child.’
‘Times were different then, I know.’ Rae said it like it was a newspaper report recited from memory. ‘I’ve watched TV programmes about teenage pregnancy in the sixties and seventies. No young girl now would believe what it was like then. One teenager gave birth to a baby in a holy grotto and both she, the poor child, and her baby died. That was the fear and the shame involved.’
‘Imagine if you had a friend this had happened to all those years ago,’ Eleanor said. ‘Would you blame her for doing what you did, or would you understand?’
Rae looked at Eleanor sadly. ‘I’d understand totally for her, but for me, I can’t forgive. By not telling Will and Anton, I’ve been lying to them. I try never to lie. I grew up with lies. My father lied to the welfare so he could get dole money. His
back, he said, was the problem. He couldn’t work. I vowed not to be that sort of person – and here I am, lying, and I’ve been doing it all these years.’
She sounded so bitter. Eleanor noticed she was unconsciously holding her hands over her belly. The way pregnant women did.
‘The question is, what can you live with? Can you live with not seeing Jasmine, if this turns out to be her? Or can you live with telling your husband the truth? There are no guarantees about how either will turn out. Your daughter may be angry you gave her up. She may not understand what it was like for you, being pregnant and sixteen in 1969. Things are different now. She may want to find her father. Think about all of this.’
Rae nodded, then said: ‘Can I borrow a piece of paper and an envelope? I’m going to write back to the social worker. It’ll mean facing what it does to us all, but I have to meet her. I have to meet Jasmine.’
‘What about telling your husband?’
Rae shook her head. ‘I’ll think about all that later,’ she said.
When Rae had gone, Eleanor looked at the small travel clock that told her what time it was in New York. Noon. Naomi would be in the shop with Marcus probably. Eleanor hadn’t phoned for a week. It was part of the deal she’d made with Naomi that she would check in at least once a week.
‘I don’t understand why you had to go away, Mom,’ Naomi said almost every time.
Hearing her so upset was partly why Eleanor couldn’t bear to talk to her daughter. It was impossible to explain how devastated she felt by Ralf’s death, impossible to explain why coming to Ireland had been a good idea.
‘I needed to be by myself,’ was what she’d said every time. ‘I thought coming home would help.’
‘Ireland isn’t your home, Mom! New York is.’
I don’t know where my home is any more, Eleanor wanted to say. It was with your father and now he’s gone.
But that wouldn’t have helped.
She closed the curtains, switched on all the lamps and heated some soup in the microwave for dinner. She hoped Rae was doing OK. As for herself, Eleanor didn’t know if she’d ever be OK again.
17
Food for the Turfcutters
Your father never carried a spare ounce on his frame, Eleanor, and it was down to the hard labour he did on the farm. The hardest of all was bringing home the turf for the fire. Here in New York, they think it’s idyllic to talk about the old days and the bog. Let me tell you, there was no idyll there. It was back-breaking work.
Every home had their own piece of bog and even though there were no fences making barriers, we all knew which was our land. Bogland was passed down through the generations.
Turf was never cut until after St Patrick’s Day and then, round about April or May, your father and his brothers would head for the bog. Footing the turf is what we called it and they did it with a spade with a horizontal edge to it. The best turf was a few layers down, and by the end of a week, the men would be worn out from standing knee-deep in bog water.
Once the turf had dried out a bit, we’d all get on the back of the cart and head up to the bog to pile it into little reeks so it could dry out enough to be carried home and built into a proper stack to last the winter.
My mother packed a picnic for the bog. We’d have a few tin pongers or big tin cups the size of small saucepans to heat water for tea, plenty of soda bread, the home-made butter that was a deeper yellow than any butter I’ve ever seen since, and plenty of duck eggs.
My father would boil the eggs about noon and there was never a more welcome shout than the call to stop for a break. By evening, when your back ached from bending, little biting insects came out in force and sent us all home.
We’d all sit quiet in the cart on the way home, too tired to move, but we could always rouse ourselves later for the feast. My mother would fry great slabs of bacon with onions and sliced potatoes, and we’d gorge ourselves until we wanted to fall asleep at the table. That was a wonderful feeling, that was.
Connie didn’t want to join Gaynor’s book club.
‘You’d enjoy it,’ Gaynor said. She’d given up apologising over the Keith incident. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry and I mean it. I said too much and it wasn’t fair. You don’t have a list of attributes that no man will ever match up to.’
Except that Connie had come to the conclusion that Gaynor had a point. What was worse: being upset by an old friend being painfully blunt, or realising that the old friend was actually right?
‘Gaynor, thank you, but I’d hate to join your book club. Bet you ten euros they’re all women you know from the school run. I would have nothing in common with them.’
‘They’re not –’ began Gaynor crossly. ‘Oh, all right, they are. But we don’t talk about kids, we talk about books.’
‘And husbands and what to do when Josie’s French teacher is being a bitch, and should you get your eleven-year-old a phone in case he gets bullied on it via text message. Yes, Gaynor, I’ll fit right in!’
‘You’re so grumpy in your old age,’ Gaynor muttered.
‘Pot, meet kettle,’ said Connie.
‘What are you doing to grow your social life, then, Miss Smarty Pants?’
‘I was thinking of doing some charity work,’ said Connie, which wasn’t a total lie. She had thought about it but had done nothing. She knew from talking to Rae just how hard the work was and didn’t know if she was up to it. But saying she was thinking about it might get Gaynor off her back.
‘Rae, the lady who lives opposite, works with Community Cares. I’m thinking of volunteering.’
‘And how will that help you meet suitable men?’ Gaynor demanded.
‘It’s not about helping me meet suitable men,’ Connie said loftily. ‘It’s about having a life.’
When was everyone going to learn that she didn’t want to devote her time to meeting a man?
Saturday mornings were so lonely: Connie had never realised it before. There was no Nicky to talk to, nobody to get a cup of coffee for, nobody to clatter away in the kitchen making breakfast.
And Connie kept waking early on Saturdays, even though she wanted to sleep late. Her body clock refused to obey and she woke at half seven on the dot.
It meant she was one of the first weekend customers at The Nook, when they were still stuffing glossy supplements into the papers.
‘You’d need to be a weightlifter to manage all the papers, these days,’ groaned an elderly man hoisting two broadsheets and a tabloid into his shopping basket.
‘But it’s wonderful to have so much to read,’ said Connie, realising with a shock that this was the first conversation she’d had with another human being since she’d left St Matilda’s yesterday afternoon.
Rae was behind the counter in Titania’s Palace and Connie smiled at the sight of her.
‘Hello, Rae, beautiful morning isn’t it?’
‘Beautiful,’ said Rae.
Too late, Connie noticed that Rae’s dark eyes were redrimmed and she looked as if she hadn’t slept soundly in a week.
‘Oh, Rae, how are you?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Connie, please.’ Rae held up a hand. ‘Don’t be nice to me. I couldn’t stand it. I can only just cope today. Don’t ask why. But if anyone is in the slightest bit nice to me, I’ll collapse.’
‘Righto,’ said Connie. ‘I’ll have a latte with hazelnut syrup, and two almond pastries because I don’t think the waistband on my jeans is tight enough. I can still breathe.’
She was rewarded by seeing Rae laugh a little.
‘You’re a panic, Connie,’ said Rae lightly. ‘You should be on the stage.’
‘I know,’ quipped Connie, ‘but the back end of the horse part is already taken.’
This time, Rae didn’t laugh. ‘You’re not allowed to say stuff like that about yourself, Connie.’
‘OK, I was just trying to cheer you up.’
‘Not at your own expense,’ Rae said. ‘You see: you’ve done it, you’ve taken my mind off myself.
Don’t let me hear you do that again or I’ll tell Eleanor.’
‘Don’t you dare. I don’t want to be therapied,’ Connie said. ‘I like being a mad spinster lady, and if Eleanor tries to sort me out, I might turn normal.’
‘There’s no such thing as normal,’ Rae said grimly. ‘We all pretend to be normal, you know. But nobody really is.’
The papers carried reviews of a play in the West End starring Katharine Hartnell. Connie wondered if Megan had seen them. Probably not. Megan said she never read newspapers any more.
‘I’m afraid I’ll see my name in them,’ she said.
Connie nodded as if she understood totally. Unless she got the million cats and ended up appearing on the mad-cat-lady-who-abuses-her-animals television show, there was no way in hell she’d ever be in the newspapers.
She was ordinary. That was her problem, she decided miserably: being ordinary. There was nothing special about her. The only person who’d ever thought she was special was Keith, and he’d gone.
On Monday afternoon when she got home from school, Connie noticed the little girl from the basement flat next door sitting alone and forlorn on the steps up to the house. Since she could be only nine or ten and Connie had never seen her without her dad, she decided she’d better investigate the matter.
‘Hello,’ she said.
The girl looked up. Her face was small and freckled, and she had inquisitive blue eyes. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Are you all right? Is your dad late or –’ Connie wondered what to ask. ‘Is someone coming to take care of you?’
‘I walk home from school with my friend, Lilly, to her house, but today she hurt her knee and had to go to hospital and I came home myself.’