My Mother's Secret

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  ‘Of course I do.’ Jenny threw her arms around him.

  Jenny Sheehan. It sounded good. It sounded safe. It sounded like the right thing to do.

  But of course it wasn’t possible to get married in Rome at short notice. Couples needed all sorts of things – letters of release from their parish priests, birth and baptismal certificates and other legal papers that neither Pascal nor Jenny had with them and that they certainly wouldn’t have been able to have sent to them in the time they had left, even if they knew how to go about getting them in the first place.

  ‘I don’t see why it has to be so complicated,’ she said crossly as they sat on a stone seat opposite the Trevi Fountain. ‘You’d think the Church would want people to get married.’

  Pascal agreed. They’d spent the morning realising that there was simply no hope of getting married in Rome – or anywhere else in Italy for that matter – within a few days. They’d seen newly married couples having their photos taken at the Forum or the Spanish Steps or other iconic places, but they knew they wouldn’t be one of them.

  ‘Maybe I’ll tell my mother we’re married anyhow. After all, how would she know otherwise?’ Jenny said the words more as a joke than anything else but Pascal’s eyes narrowed as she spoke.

  ‘It’s not an impossible idea,’ he said slowly. ‘After all, people come here and how would you know if they’re actually married or not? You could go home with a piece of paper that says you are and no one would be any the wiser.’

  Jenny laughed. ‘They’d guess.’

  ‘How?’ asked Pascal.

  She looked at him thoughtfully. But she couldn’t think of an answer.

  ‘What we could do,’ said Pascal, ‘is pretend we’d always planned to get married here and that’s why we came, then get married on the quiet when we get home. Nobody will know the difference.’

  ‘We couldn’t!’

  ‘Of course we could. Why not?’

  ‘What about the certificate of marriage and everything? My parents would want to see something, to have proof. I know them.’

  ‘You could do it,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen you do your fancy writing. We could buy paper and ink and do one up.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Why would I be joking?’

  ‘And why would you even consider this?’ she asked. ‘You don’t have to marry me at all.’

  ‘I want to,’ said Pascal. ‘I love you. And you’re going to have my baby.’

  Jenny still couldn’t get her head around that part of it. Having a baby was something that had been in her very distant future. But now it was part of her present. She had to think of what was best for her child.

  ‘We could take photos.’ Pascal was getting excited by the idea now. ‘You could buy a white dress and put flowers in your hair and we could go around loads of places and everyone would assume they were proper wedding photos.’

  ‘But we wouldn’t have any of us signing the register or anything.’

  ‘So what?’ He shrugged. ‘We could say those ones didn’t come out. Or that we lost the film. Or something.’

  ‘Oh man …’ Jenny was beginning to smile. ‘But we’d have to buy special paper and pens to fake any kind of legal document. And we’re on a budget.’

  ‘I brought some extra traveller’s cheques,’ said Pascal. ‘For emergencies.’

  ‘I don’t think this is the kind of emergency you had in mind.’

  ‘Unforeseen circumstances are always emergencies.’

  It didn’t really feel like an emergency, even though Jenny knew that being pregnant was a life-altering experience. But truthfully, right then, it simply felt like a big adventure.

  They found a higgledy-piggledy stationery shop near the Pantheon that had everything they needed. Jenny felt as if she was in Aladdin’s cave as she browsed the shelves stocked with every kind of paper, pen and ink. In addition to a small sketch pad, pencils and an eraser, she bought parchment and ink, a calligraphy pen and some seals. She also bought a postcard that showed a copy of an Italian marriage certificate issued in the 1940s. According to the shop owner, it belonged to two famous Italian opera singers, neither of whom Jenny had heard of. However it was the perfect template to design one of her own. The proprietor of the hotel, who was enchanted by the lovely Irish couple, told her she was welcome to use the old Remington typewriter in the office when Jenny asked if she could possibly type a letter, and so she sat at the rosewood desk and typed the words she didn’t understand on to the parchment. Then, in her best formal script, she inscribed in the spaces she’d left for that purpose the information that Jenny Marshall and Pascal Sheehan had been married in the Basilica de San Giovanni on 22 August 1975. She also copied an apostolic benediction from the Pope himself, carefully adding a photo of him at the top of it so that it looked like the one in her parents’ house.

  The framed certificate and benediction still hung in the hallway of their Dublin home, in full view of anyone who came to visit. They were on the same wall as the photo that a passing tourist had taken of them in their ‘wedding’ finery beside the Trevi Fountain. Jenny had become so used to seeing them that she’d forgotten they were even there.

  When she finished telling the story, there was a stunned silence and then Charlie guffawed.

  ‘Good on yeh, Jen,’ he said. ‘You know how to pull a fast one all right.’

  There was a chorus of doubtful laughter from the others.

  ‘Jeez, Jen, you had me going there for a moment,’ said Sarah.

  ‘My God,’ said Paul. ‘You can spin a yarn, Jenny.’

  ‘Mum!’ cried Roisin. ‘This isn’t the time for silly jokes. It’s a momentous occasion.’

  ‘It’s not a joke.’ Jenny looked at them all. ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard,’ said Summer. ‘You’re amazing, Jenny. You’re like that master forger guy in the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio! I so want to be like you when I’m your age.’

  Carl gave her a dig in the side.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘She’s old but she’s brilliant.’

  Alivia stifled a grin although she was as shocked as everyone else by Jenny’s revelation, while Steffie looked at each of her parents in turn.

  ‘Mum? Dad? It’s not true, is it?’

  ‘Your mum is right,’ said Pascal. ‘We didn’t get married in Rome.’

  ‘But … but … you must have!’ exclaimed Sarah. ‘You came home with a wedding ring. You told Mum and Dad. You can’t have … you can’t have lied about it.’

  ‘I’m afraid we did,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Those photos,’ said Davey. ‘Of you in your wedding dress. You faked them?’

  ‘They’re real photos,’ Jenny said. ‘I mean, I’m in a white dress and everything, but it’s not a wedding dress.’

  ‘But your honeymoon in Sorrento!’ Lucinda stared at her. ‘You told me all about it. About going to Capri. About Pascal giving you a flower. Jeepers, Jenny, you even showed me the damn flower!’

  ‘We did all those things,’ said Jenny. ‘We just weren’t married when we did them.’

  ‘I can’t believe you didn’t run into all sorts of problems at home,’ said Sarah. ‘Surely someone must have realised your certificate was a fake?’

  ‘I was very shocked they didn’t,’ admitted Jenny. ‘But back then things were a lot less complicated. We never had to produce it for anything important. Let’s face it, most of the legal and financial stuff was done by men, in their names. My name wasn’t on the mortgage for the house or on our car loan or anything. When the children were born, the hospital registered the births and they simply assumed we were married. After all, I’d been attending as Mrs Sheehan all the time. I suppose it would be a lot harder to do now, with computerised records and everything, but back then it was easy.’

  ‘But why would you pretend?’ asked Steffie. ‘What was the point in that?’

  ‘I was pregnant,’ said Jenny. ‘In the seventies. In Irela
nd. Wasn’t that enough reason?’

  ‘I can understand why you wouldn’t want to be an unmarried mother,’ agreed Sarah. ‘But why didn’t you get married later on, like you said?’

  ‘You let me think I was the only one,’ Lucinda said before Jenny had the opportunity to reply. ‘You let me think I was the stupid daughter who’d made a big mistake. You didn’t speak out even then!’

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ muttered Alivia. ‘Thanks for calling me a mistake.’

  ‘You know what I mean!’ Lucinda cried. ‘So does she.’

  ‘OK,’ said Roisin. ‘Are you seriously telling me, Mum, that I went to the trouble of organising a party that’s actually celebrating a forty-year-old lie?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jenny. ‘I—’

  ‘This is a family matter,’ Lillian Kinsella broke in. ‘And given that it’s obviously something you need to talk about, you won’t want lots of people around while you’re doing that. Besides, it’s still raining out there and the flooding must be getting worse. So, thank you for a wonderful day, Jenny and Pascal. We’ll see you again soon, I hope.’

  There was a general murmur of assent from the non-family guests that leaving was a good idea despite the fact that most of them would have loved to be part of the unfolding drama. Nevertheless, they moved as a group to depart from the house.

  ‘We’ll go too.’ Seamus clapped Pascal on the back. ‘You don’t need our lot here either. But give me a call.’

  Pascal nodded as other family members also said goodbye, although Charlie suggested that maybe he should stay and give Pascal some moral support.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said his sister-in-law. ‘You came with us, you can leave with us. Besides, Pascal’s grand, aren’t you, pet?’ She looked at him and he nodded again.

  ‘I’ll see you at the next community meeting, Jenny,’ said Breege. ‘Thank you for your hospitality today.’

  ‘Thanks for coming.’ Jenny couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Pulling the cloak of good manners around her, Roisin saw everyone to the door and watched as the majority of the guests hurried down the driveway. Nobody bothered waiting for their other halves to bring cars from the car park across the road. It was clear that most of them wanted to get away from Aranbeg as quickly as possible. Even when Steffie said that she’d root out some umbrellas from under the stairs to protect them, they all shook their heads and said it didn’t matter.

  ‘Do we have to go as well?’ asked Daisy, who’d followed her. ‘’Cos we’re supposed to be staying here tonight, aren’t we? I have my PJs and everything.’

  ‘I know.’ Roisin was reeling from the abrupt end to the party. ‘We have to talk to Granny and Grandad first.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter that they’re not married, does it?’ Daisy frowned. ‘Loads of people aren’t married. Tansy Miller’s mum and dad aren’t.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t matter,’ agreed Roisin.

  ‘So they’re not in trouble, are they? Or are you angry with them because we’ve had a party but it’s sort of false pretences?’

  ‘Of course they’re not in trouble and of course I’m not angry,’ Roisin assured her, although inside she was seething. All her effort, all that planning! And in the end her mother had made a fool of her. She shook hands with the last of the guests, Eleanor Sherratt, who was a member of Jenny’s art group, and said she hoped that she’d enjoyed herself.

  ‘Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ said Eleanor. ‘Great fun. And nobody cares that Pascal and Jenny aren’t married, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I … yes,’ said Roisin. ‘We need to talk about it, that’s all.’

  She closed the front door. Then she and Daisy walked back into the kitchen, where the remainder of the family, including Bernice and Summer, were still gathered. She wanted to say that they should all leave, but she was afraid of causing more upset, even though she didn’t think that anyone other than herself, Steffie and Davey should be here.

  ‘Where are Mum and Dad?’ she asked.

  ‘Aunt Jenny went upstairs while you were seeing people out,’ said Alivia. ‘I think she needed a moment.’

  ‘Dad went after her,’ added Davey.

  Roisin rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers and smudged her mascara.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Steffie.

  ‘Why on earth didn’t they say something to us before now?’ demanded Roisin. ‘Why would they let us think … They must have been laughing at me all day.’

  ‘I’m sure they weren’t laughing at you,’ said Colette. ‘Actually, Uncle Pascal seemed to be having a great time.’

  ‘They should have told us,’ said Roisin. ‘We deserved to know. I mean basically, right now, the three of us are … Well, we’re the kids of unmarried parents.’

  ‘That’s no big deal,’ said Steffie.

  ‘At least your parents are still together,’ Alivia added.

  ‘I could kill her,’ said Roisin. ‘And him.’

  Steffie and Davey exchanged glances. Both were wondering whether Roisin was more annoyed at learning of their parents’ deception, or at the fact that her carefully planned party had been ruined.

  ‘Somebody should go up and get her,’ said Roisin. ‘We need to hear an explanation.’

  ‘She’s already explained,’ said Steffie.

  ‘No she bloody hasn’t. She hasn’t given us any good reason for keeping quiet about it or for not getting married afterwards.’ It was Sarah who spoke, and she sounded angry. ‘She allowed our mother to make this huge fuss of her when she had her baby and the truth was it was illegitimate.’

  Everybody heard Roisin’s sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Sorry, Roisin.’ Sarah looked at her apologetically. ‘I didn’t mean to call you an it. Or illegitimate.’

  ‘Although clearly that’s how everyone now thinks of me,’ said Roisin.

  ‘We’re all in the same boat,’ remarked Davey. ‘Although illegitimacy isn’t relevant these days, is it? Haven’t they done away with it as a legal situation?’

  ‘So what,’ said Roisin. ‘Mum and Dad should have got married and sorted it out properly, for our sakes as much as theirs, and the fact that they didn’t … well, why didn’t they? Do they not love each other enough? Is their entire relationship a sham?’

  ‘Of course they love each other,’ said Steffie. ‘They’ve still been together forty years, after all. You wouldn’t do that if it was a sham.’

  ‘I do not think this is something that is important.’ From her position leaning against the wall, Camilla’s clipped tones drew everyone’s attention. ‘Lots of people don’t get married. It shouldn’t matter.’

  ‘What matters is they pretended,’ said Roisin. ‘They lied. For forty years!’

  ‘It was probably for Gran and Grandad,’ said Steffie. ‘And after they died, it was too difficult to tell the truth.’

  ‘Bit of a shock, though, the way it’s happened,’ commented Bernice.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been as much of one if Jenny hadn’t blurted it out when she did,’ observed Alivia.

  ‘How about I put the kettle on,’ suggested Sarah. ‘A cup of tea will help.’

  ‘Why do grown-ups always have cups of tea when there’s trouble?’ asked Daisy.

  ‘It is a social ritual,’ said Camilla. ‘Social rituals are good at difficult times. Do you want me to help?’

  Sarah looked at her without speaking. Then she nodded and they went into the kitchen together while everyone else moved to the veranda. Even though the rain was continuing to fall heavily, the outdoors area was still dry and warm.

  I can’t believe this has happened, thought Roisin as she stared out into the garden, which was becoming more sodden by the minute. Why on earth couldn’t she have kept her mouth shut and not ruined my party? She managed it for forty years. Another few hours shouldn’t have been too much trouble!

  Chapter 16

  Sarah and Camilla made the tea in total silence. C
amilla could see that the other woman didn’t want to talk, while Sarah was trying to keep a lid on the anger that was bubbling inside her.

  She couldn’t believe that her sister and brother-in-law (although he wasn’t, was he; they weren’t related in law at all!) had managed to keep the secret for so long. And it didn’t matter that they might as well have been married, that they lived their lives as though they were. What was important was that they had let everybody believe in something that simply wasn’t true. They’d played them all for fools. Sarah had sent them a card every year on their anniversary. Sometimes she’d sent flowers too. And they’d never once told her not to bother, it was all a joke.

  What was more, they weren’t sorry for the deception. Jenny seemed to think it was OK to have conned them all. She’d dropped her bombshell and gone upstairs so that she didn’t have to answer legitimate questions about her treachery. Yet they were entitled to question her. They were entitled to know what the hell she thought she’d been doing all these years. They were entitled to know why she’d lied.

  And even more than the blatant continuous lies, Sarah thought, as she heated the catering-size teapot that Roisin had acquired for the day, more than that, in pretending to have come home from Rome as a married woman, Jenny had laid out a road map for how she and Lucinda were meant to behave and forced them to follow it. Her actions had coloured everybody’s future from the moment she’d walked in the door with her fake ring on her finger, and not in a good way, especially as far as Sarah was concerned. After the initial furore, and when Jenny and Pascal had left the house for his flat, Kay had asked Sarah to put the kettle on for some tea. Then they’d all sat in the small living room while her parents tried to make sense of the situation.

  ‘She should have said what they were going to do before she went,’ Kay repeated over and over. ‘We would have been able to tell everyone about the wedding.’

  ‘She’s pregnant,’ Sarah said. ‘She was pregnant before they got married. No wonder she kept her mouth shut.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Terry told her. ‘She’s done the right thing now. He’s done right by her. We’re fine. There won’t be any trouble.’