by Cathy Kelly
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
‘Have you got a pen?’ Rae added.
She listed her phone number slowly.
‘Please call me,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Tricia whispered and hung up.
Tricia had sent a text message two days later.
Can you meet me near my home? I live in Mullingar and I can’t travel much right now.
With shaking hands, Rae had replied. Tell me when and I’ll be there.
Will drove her to the hotel in Mullingar and said he’d sit in the bar and wait while she sat in reception, as agreed.
‘I won’t come out unless you want me to,’ he said. ‘Now, Rae, she might not turn up. You’ve got to be ready for that. These reunions don’t always work out the way you want them to.’
Rae smiled at him. He’d been researching it all on the Internet and was terrified in case Rae was hurt by this long-lost daughter.
‘I don’t think she can hurt me any more than I’ve hurt myself over the years,’ Rae said simply. ‘It’s been torture. She has a right to be angry with me.’
Will stared at her for a while. ‘I can understand why you didn’t tell me,’ he said, ‘but it still hurts to think of you keeping it to yourself for so long.’
Rae knew it would take a long time, if ever, before Will could understand, but she simply couldn’t think about that now. This moment was about her daughter and forty-one missing years.
As she sat waiting, Rae took out the letter Tricia had sent her and traced the signature.
Tricia. She had to stop thinking her daughter was called Jasmine.
Rae hoped she’d be able to make Tricia understand that, no matter how phoney it sounded, she had thought of her daughter every day for forty-one years.
In the early days, she’d thought of Jasmine with enormous pain and sorrow. And as the years had gone by, she’d wondered what her daughter was doing. The summer Jasmine would be doing exams, on her eighteenth birthday, at New Year. What did Jasmine look like now? Where was she? And, the worst fear of all, was she happy? Had she been adopted by people who’d love her and take care of her properly, the way sixteen-year-old Rae wouldn’t have been able to?
Rae had been staring down at her letter, but something made her look up just as a tall, pregnant woman with dark hair and dark eyebrows walked into the reception area. It was like looking into a mirror from twenty years ago. Rae stood up as the woman’s eyes found her.
‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ said Tricia, coming face to face with her mother.
Rae knew all the right things to do. Will had been telling her them in the car on the drive here. Don’t crowd her, don’t hug her. She might not want that level of intimacy yet.
But despite all this knowledge, she put her arms around her daughter.
Then they were both crying, dark heads beside each other, making the same husky noises as they cried.
‘We even sound the same,’ Rae sobbed. ‘You should sit, you’re pregnant.’
They sat and she wanted to go on touching Tricia, to run her fingers over her hair, her face, even the swelling belly inside which her grandchild was growing. But she forced herself to hold back a little. It had to be done at Tricia’s pace.
Tricia settled herself on an armchair beside Rae’s. As if regretting her earlier intimacy, she sat back in the chair a little, creating space between them.
‘Are you happy? Were you happy?’ Rae blurted out. ‘It’s all I ever wondered.’
‘Very happy,’ Tricia said. ‘My parents had only two children, me and my older brother, and they adored us. Ruined us, my mother used to tease us.’
Rae felt a twinge of pain at the way Tricia said ‘my mother’ with such affection. Of course, Rae hadn’t been her mother. The mother who’d reared her was the real mother. Rae knew that, but it still hurt.
‘Does she mind that you wanted to find me?’ she asked.
Tricia shook her head. ‘Quite the contrary. She wanted me to find you years ago and I refused. I thought it would be like telling her that she and my dad hadn’t done a good enough job. She passed away last year.’
Rae saw Tricia’s eyes brim up.
‘I wanted to find you then, but I couldn’t do that to her memory, if that makes sense. And then –’ She touched her belly. ‘Stephen and I got pregnant. We’ve been trying a long time; we’d had fertility treatment, but it never worked. We’d given up hope, actually. And one day, bingo – I’m pregnant. I knew then that I had to see you to understand why.’
Rae nodded calmly but inside she was shaking. She knew that adopted women suffered huge sorrow when they themselves became mothers and realised what an enormous act giving up a baby was. How could you give me away? was what any mother or would-be mother would ask.
She said none of this. Instead, she smiled her warmest smile at Tricia and said: ‘That’s so wonderful.’
She couldn’t come out with the clichés like ‘It’s the most special time of your life’. After the alleged most special time of her own life, she’d handed her baby daughter over to a stranger.
Tricia beamed. It was like looking into a mirror, Rae thought with a pang. Her daughter had the same smile, the same dark brows that winged out at the sides, the same wide mouth.
Anton didn’t look like her at all. He was the image of his father. God, this all hurt.
‘How far along are you?’
‘Eight weeks. We found out early and, once I knew I was pregnant, I started searching for you. I didn’t think it would all happen so quickly, to be honest.’
There was a pause in the conversation. The noise of the hotel reception went on around them: phones ringing, people carrying bags to and from the reception desk.
Rae had to say something. ‘I can’t imagine how hard all this has been for you,’ she began, ‘especially after losing your mother. But I have thought about you every day of my life, Tricia.’
Tricia was looking down at her lap, studying her fingers intently.
‘I’d like to explain it all to you so you understand why I gave you away, but you may never understand because it was a different time, a different Ireland. Most of all I want you to understand that I loved you.’
There, she’d said it.
‘Mum always told me that whoever my birth mother was must have loved me to have given me up.’
At that moment, Rae felt a passionate affection for the woman who’d reared her daughter.
‘She was right. The nuns told me I couldn’t care for you and that the only kind thing was to give you up,’ Rae said, forcing herself to be calm and not cry. ‘I wanted to keep you, you see. When they took you, they pulled you out of my arms.’
Tricia’s head was to one side as she listened, almost detached. It was probably easier that way, Rae knew: to remove oneself from this difficult information.
‘I’d love to tell you everything,’ Rae went on. ‘Would you like to hear?’
‘Yes,’ said Tricia.
Rae nodded. She’d been through this so many times in her head: explaining to her daughter why she’d given her up for adoption. The dream-like explanations had been simpler. Now that she was sitting opposite this brighteyed, intelligent woman, she felt as if all the imaginary conversations had been geared towards a child and not a grown-up.
‘It’s almost impossible to explain what it was like forty-two years ago, finding out I was pregnant. They were different times,’ Rae started off. ‘Having a child as an unmarried teenager then was just about the worst thing you could do. It’s almost unbelievable to think of how shocking it was then. If you admitted you’d killed someone, I think people would have been less shocked. Women who had babies outside marriage were shunned. The nuns didn’t talk about it in school,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Not even to say, “Don’t do this.” It was that unthinkable. They didn’t talk about sex at all, but we knew to be afraid of getting pregnant.’
‘But you did,’ said Tricia.
Rae watched
her daughter’s face and wondered if Tricia’s expression was a little cold? Perhaps she was imagining it. How to explain that she hadn’t been recklessly and joyfully having sex with everyone, that it hadn’t been like that. She suddenly could see her mother’s cold face saying, ‘You’re up the pole, aren’t you?’ and she shuddered at the memory.
‘I did get pregnant,’ Rae said finally. ‘I didn’t tell the boy I was pregnant. I’m sure it became known in the area that I’d gone into an unmarried mother’s home. His name was Davie Sullivan.’ It felt odd saying his name after all these years, but if Tricia wanted to know, she’d want to know it all. Poor Davie. Rae wondered where he was now – flirting with jail like so many of the Sullivans, or still there in their hometown, not knowing he had a daughter of forty-one? Ten minutes in his uncle’s shop had changed her and Tricia’s lives forever. It had changed Tricia’s adoptive parents’ lives too. But Davie’s? Had his life changed?
‘I never saw him again. My family weren’t…’ she struggled for the right word ‘…supportive. They weren’t the sort of people who could cope with my pregnancy.’
‘They were religious?’ asked Tricia.
Rae wanted to laugh at the notion, but she wouldn’t. Tricia would not be touched by Paudge and Glory Hennessey any more than need be. She didn’t have to know what sort of people they were. Even if she’d been raised at a distance from them, she shouldn’t have to feel the touch of their bitterness and dysfunction. Rae could protect her from them like any mother would. ‘No, they weren’t religious. They weren’t the right people to be parents, Tricia. Some people aren’t. They’re both dead a few years.’
Perhaps one day she could tell Tricia the truth, but not yet. Perhaps there would never be a ‘some day’.
‘I went by myself to the home and stayed there till you were born.’ It was Rae’s turn to look down at her hands. She wasn’t seeing them: she was seeing the small room in the home where Jasmine had been born, and the room where they’d taken her away from Rae. ‘I said I was going to raise you myself, but the nuns kept at me, convincing me I couldn’t. I had no support. I’d be on my own with you and no money. If anything happened to me, you’d go back to my parents.’ Sister Veronica’s face was in her mind now. Those honeyed words with their powerful message. You don’t want your daughter to end up like you, do you? Unloved and alone.
The cool softness of her daughter’s hand on hers brought her out of the past. Tricia’s fingers were long and elegant, like Rae’s own hands.
‘Mum told me what it was like in those days,’ Tricia said softly. ‘She told me that it wasn’t easy then. They were so grateful for having us, my brother and I. They told me how much they thanked you and my brother’s mother. Thanks to you, we had a family.’
Rae nodded and took the tissue Tricia offered.
‘Let’s go into the bar and have tea or something,’ Tricia said.
‘My husband, Will, is in there,’ said Rae.
Tricia laughed. ‘My husband, Stephen, is in there too.’
Stephen and Will were sitting almost opposite each other, separated by the pathway through the lounge.
Both men stood up when Tricia and Rae entered. Both hesitated for a moment, clearly having been told not to intrude.
And then they came over to be introduced.
Stephen was as tall as Tricia, and nearly as dark, with a beard and blue eyes. He looked younger than forty, but then, so did Tricia. Rae held her hand out formally, then couldn’t stop herself hugging him. She was so emotional.
‘It’s so wonderful to meet you,’ she said, wiping the tears away. ‘I’m so glad about the pregnancy.’
He beamed but shot a careful look at Tricia. She gave him one back that said, I’m OK.
Deciphering it, Rae felt a surge of relief. It was going to be all right.
Will was more formal with Tricia and shook her hand gently.
‘It’s an honour to meet you at last,’ he said.
Rae gazed at him with love. With those words, he’d implied that Tricia had been a part of his life because Rae had talked about her. It wasn’t a lie as such. Only Will understood her enough to know the depth of Rae’s feelings about things. He might not have known about her daughter, but he knew now that when Rae said she thought of Tricia every day, she had.
Introductions over, the two women sat apart again and ordered tea and scones.
‘You need lots of little snacks,’ said Rae, then worried she’d been too motherly. It wasn’t her place.
But it appeared that Tricia hadn’t noticed.
‘They always told me I was adopted,’ explained Tricia. ‘I had an older brother, Leo. He was four years older and because he knew he was adopted, I did too. Mum wanted it to be open so there would be no awful secret coming out years later.’
‘She sounds wonderful and wise,’ Rae commented. ‘I wish I’d been able to meet her.’
Tricia dabbed her eyes with a tissue. ‘I wish you had too. I wish she was still here. I don’t know how to be a mother. I was the career girl. She was the one who’d have been able to tell me how to do it.’
Rae made herself stifle the shameful envy of Tricia’s adoptive mother. She’d brought Tricia up.
Then it occurred to her that she didn’t even know the woman’s name. ‘What are your parents’ names?’
‘Josephine and Tom Noonan.’
‘Josephine and Tom,’ whispered Rae. How many years had she wondered where her daughter was, and it turned out she’d been living in Galway, beloved daughter to Josephine and Tom, sister to Leo.
Tricia went back to her story. ‘I thought people had a choice when it came to babies. You could have them yourselves or have one that someone else couldn’t take care of.’
Rae nodded.
‘We were happy. I wanted to adopt babies when I grew up because I thought that’s what people did. I work in banking.’ She grimaced. ‘Not the most popular job in the world now, but I travelled a lot in my thirties. Stephen and I got married and we didn’t start trying to have a baby until I was thirty-six. I thought we had lots of time, and we didn’t. I couldn’t get pregnant. We tried it all, acupuncture, healthy diets, everything. Then we went to a fertility clinic.’ Her eyes gazed over towards where her husband was sitting. ‘Three years and six cycles of IVF, including two frozen embryo transfers. We’d almost given up. I thought I didn’t deserve it, you know the way you do.’
Rae knew. She’d felt that way about her pregnancy with Anton. Huge guilt over being pregnant again when she’d given away her first child. But now wasn’t the time to mention it.
‘Mum had bowel cancer. By the time we knew, she only had months left to live. It was so fast. And I got pregnant. After all that healthy living and doses of fertility-controlling drugs, and I get pregnant when my mother’s about to die.’
‘New life comes in all the time,’ Rae said. ‘It’s the endless cycle. We die and our children live on.’
They talked of inconsequential things for a while. The conversation had been so intense for ages, and it was nice to slip into idle chat about work and friends. Tricia talked about the smart two-bedroom apartment she and Stephen shared in Mullingar.
‘We turned the second bedroom into a study,’ she said ruefully. ‘We’ll have to make it a nursery now.’
Rae told Tricia that she ran Titania’s Palace and described it so, that Tricia clapped her hands together and said: ‘I’d love to see it.’
‘I’d love you to, too.’
An hour passed before Tricia got up to leave.
Rae knew a bridge had been crossed. She was lucky: her daughter had been adopted by an open-minded couple who’d been determined to raise their adoptive children to think warmly of their birth parents.
‘Would you like to meet your brother?’ she asked.
Tricia’s beaming smile turned on again, like a Klieg light illuminating the whole bar. Suddenly Rae could see Tricia as she’d been as a child: eager and warm-hearted.
‘I�
��d love that. Anton, I love that name. He has another brother too, if he wants. My brother, Leo.’
‘Leo hasn’t searched for his birth parents?’ Rae asked.
Tricia shook her head. ‘He’s a contented sort of guy. Very laid back.’
‘He and Anton will get on like a house on fire, then,’ Rae commented. ‘He’s like his father, he’s very calm and gentle.’
‘I’m glad you’re happy,’ Tricia said. ‘I used to wonder, too, when I was old enough to know the difference, what your life was like. I’m glad it’s happy.’
Geraldine had a new cleaner.
Zareen. Zareen now worked for Carmel, who declared her the best thing since sliced bread.
‘She’s so quick and efficient. Doesn’t talk much. You’ll love her.’
‘Yes, but where is she from?’ Geraldine couldn’t identify the name. Zareen. What language was it?
‘I don’t know,’ whispered Carmel. ‘She’s a lovely colour. Very pretty too and her English is impeccable, like someone taught her really well.’
Zareen was a statuesque dark-skinned young woman who wore skinny jeans, a pink T-shirt and had a mane of glossy straight hair. She listened in silence as Geraldine listed her duties, and repeated a few of them on the grounds that Zareen hadn’t replied and perhaps she was one of those girls who didn’t understand.
‘How long have you been here?’ Geraldine asked kindly at the end. A bit of politeness always put the girls at their ease.
‘Since I was born,’ Zareen said crisply. ‘I’m from Artane. I’m doing a Fine Arts course at night and this work is to tide me over. Did you think I was foreign?’
Geraldine blinked rapidly.
‘Goodness no.’
‘She’s very good,’ whispered Geraldine as she tried to usher Will and Rae into the small living room, while Zareen steered the vacuum around skilfully. ‘She’s going to university.’
‘Nice to meet you, Zareen,’ said Rae, and held out her hand. ‘I’m Rae. My mother-in-law says you’re at university. What are you studying?’
‘Fine Arts,’ said Zareen.
‘How wonderful,’ said Rae. ‘I’d have loved that.’