This is her story through my eyes. I ask for your forbearance in regards to the historical accuracies of the book. I started along the road of a serious academic study of the life of Julia, but found that I wandered into fictional territory. In the end I gave in to my flights of fancy. This is mere frivolity compared to the measured studies on the history of the period. It is something I have conjured from my imagination, based in small part on fact. Yet Julia has provided me with hours of company and helped heal my heart. I hope this little book may do the same for you.
June Fanning, Cavan, 1947
Nicholas wonders: did June Fanning ever show anyone this book? Was it ever published? Or had it been hidden here in the attic ever since she had finished writing it, unseen by anyone until this day? He can’t wait to show it to Charlie. It might inspire a whole series of work for her. Already she has been painting the apples left on the orchard floor. Close-up studies of red, gold and green orbs that were so much more than just apples, their skin so tactile you could almost bite into them. And she was drawing the trees, too. Charcoal studies that were desolate and poignant, making his heart churn with the memory of how sad he had been when he first came to Cavan.
He puts the book down on the floor, deciding he will read it together with his wife. The Secret Loves of Julia Caesar. This is a story they should share in bed at night. Suddenly Nicholas remembers the letter. He picks it up off the floor. The handwriting on the front is faded to light brown and the postmark is 1941. He turns it over. The letter has never been opened. Should he read it? He gets up and walks to the window, looks out at the blighted orchard. It is a grey day, the sun never making it into the sky, and banks of clouds press down on the broken trees. He sees a little white-haired lady wearing an orange hat riding her bicycle down the lane into his yard. It is Oonagh Tuite.
‘Good day to you!’ Oonagh says cheerfully as she parks her bicycle by the side of Nicholas’s shed. He steps out of the door hesitantly. Has she come here to berate him for breaking up her granddaughter’s marriage and then rejecting her?
‘Hello, how are you?’
‘I’m grand, young man,’ she says clapping together her bare hands, which look slightly blue and cold.
‘Would you like some tea?’
‘Well, I only came to see the orchard. I heard what that ignorant man did, and I wanted to see it for myself.’
Nicholas takes her by the arm and leads her to the orchard. The old woman tuts and shakes her head as they walk around it. She seems lost for words. Finally she speaks.
‘I wish I had a shotgun. I’d shoot the head off him.’ Nicholas can’t help but laugh at the image of little old Oonagh Tuite chasing Ray Mulraney with a shotgun. ‘I’d like to see that!’ She laughs as well.
‘So,’ the old lady says as she settles herself at the kitchen table. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m well, thank you.’ Nicholas pours hot water from the kettle into the teapot.
Oonagh fixes Nicholas with her eyes. He feels them boring into him and cannot help colouring a little.
‘Did you hear about Geraldine?’
Nicholas feels dread rising up from his belly. ‘No.’
‘She’s left.’
‘What?’
‘Yes. Sold the house and headed off to London with Grainne.’
Nicholas feels a wave of relief. At least he won’t have to bump into Geraldine in the shops every week and feel guilty and awkward.
‘She says it was all down to you.’
Nicholas looks at Oonagh and he is surprised to see she is beaming. ‘Me?’
‘Yes. She is studying music, Nicholas. She has gone back to college. Well now, isn’t that just grand? I shall miss her of course, and the wee girl, but I have to say I am delighted she has finally got rid of that awful husband. My girl would be so glad about that.’
A tear trails down Oonagh’s cheek and she takes out a handkerchief.
‘It was terrible to see the way that man treated my daughter’s child. The number of times I wanted to box him, but Paddy told me I shouldn’t interfere in someone else’s marriage, even if it was my granddaughter. I couldn’t help remembering poor June, and how I wished I hadn’t said what I did to her all those years ago.’
‘What did happen to June Fanning, Oonagh?’ Nicholas asks, pouring the tea and sitting down. ‘Why do you think she is still haunting this house?’
Oonagh blows her nose, puts her handkerchief away and then takes a sip from her tea. ‘There she was, all on her own in this little cottage, missing her beloved sister who was killed in the Blitz, and then Robert was shot down in action. I thought that was why she ran to Phelim Sheriden. I thought it was because she was lonely and grieving, and when you are in that state sometimes you do not know your right mind. You can imagine things.’
Oonagh shakes her head and looks down at the floor.
‘After she got the official letter telling her that Robert was missing in action, she went to see Phelim Sheriden and didn’t come back. There was uproar behind closed doors. Father O’Regan went to see her and tell her she was committing a mortal sin, and then my father went to see her and tried to convince her to come back to the farm and we would take care of her. There was still a chance Robert would come home. She mustn’t give up on him. I thought that too – that she had given up on her husband and was running to the nearest available man to protect her and the baby. I didn’t realize she actually loved Phelim Sheriden.’
Oonagh sighs.
‘But maybe I did know it, deep down. I saw it the day of Claudette’s funeral. I could see that June and Phelim belonged together, but I didn’t want to believe it, because it was wrong.’
Nicholas puts his hand in his pocket. He can feel the slim letter in his fingers, the paper delicate from age.
‘The whole community kept up the pressure, and because it was the war, Phelim and June had nowhere to run to. I called round in the end, and as her friend I advised her to come back to the farm, at least until she knew for sure that Robert wasn’t returning. Then she would no longer be an adulteress – a term she used, not I – but a widow. Then she could be respectable. She actually listened to me and did what I suggested. Years later she told me that she couldn’t bear to be the same as her mother – a Jezebel, she called her. She would wait, because she believed in Phelim and knew he would wait for her.’
‘So why is June haunting this house, Oonagh, if she eventually ended up with Phelim Sheriden?’
‘Oh, but she didn’t. That is the tragedy.’
Nicholas feels the cold hand pressed against his heart again, the same feeling he had in the woods the day he went walking with Kev.
‘Just one week after June returned to this cottage, Phelim Sheriden left to join up and fight in the same war that had taken her husband from her. I don’t know what words passed between them, for she never told me, but I cannot imagine how she must have felt at being left a second time. A few months later June had a beautiful little baby boy and called him Daniel, in the Fanning tradition. My family and I helped her through those tough years. She never spoke to me about her lost men. And then, one day, Robert Fanning came back from the war. He had been in a prisoner-of-war camp all that time. Oh, there was such jubilation in the community. I have no idea how June really felt. Sometimes I would see her walking through the orchard, standing at the edge of the wood and looking towards the empty Sheriden house. I think she was waiting for him, despite the fact that Robert was back. I think she still wanted Phelim. But we never heard of him again and I don’t know what happened to him.’
‘That’s awful. I mean, great that Robert Fanning survived, but so sad for June and Phelim.’
Oonagh nods and picks up her teacup. ‘Many’s the time I tried to talk to June about it, but she just clammed up, refused point-blank, said that she had had a happy life as a mother. She went on to have five more children, three boys and two girls. All those children are gone now, all over the world – Australia, America, New Zealand. They sold t
he house after she died and none of them came back.’
Oonagh puts her teacup back down in its saucer with a clatter.
‘The thing is, I don’t think June ever knew how much her husband, Robert Fanning, loved her. All that time she was waiting for true love to return, maybe it was right there under her nose. There are many different kinds of love. I suspect Phelim Sheriden was the big passion in her life, but would it have lasted? Stood the test of time? I prefer the kind of love Robert had for his wife. Steady, sure, faithful. I saw the way that man looked at his wife. She was his world.’
By the time Oonagh leaves, it is dusk. Nicholas gives her a bottle of cider for Paddy.
‘Could you give Geraldine a message from me?’ Nicholas asks the old lady as she mounts her bike.
‘Of course, dear.’ Her eyes twinkle and Nicholas knows that she knows about him and Geraldine.
‘Please tell her from me that she is going to be a wonderful musician, because she has so much heart.’
Oonagh laughs. ‘Yes, she gets it from me.’ She pauses, puts on her orange beret. ‘I hope you and your wife will be very happy here.’
Nicholas watches Oonagh wobble up the lane, her orange hat a bright point in the gloom, and wonders: should he have driven her home, shoved the bike in his generous boot? But he knows she would only have refused. It begins to spit rain. He goes into the kitchen and wanders back up to the attic to continue clearing it out. June Fanning’s red notebook sits on the dusty floor, and again he fingers the letter in his pocket.
Open it.
He is sure he can hear her speak and, even if it is just his imagination, what harm will it do if he opens the letter now, after all these years?
15th November 1941
My dear June
Your letter arrived this morning, and I have been thinking about it all day. When you wrote about Claudette Sheriden’s funeral, I could not get it out of my head, although every day here chaps are dying, not coming back from ops. You are afraid to make friends, in case it marks them for death. Our lives are transitory and we try to take each day as it comes. It is hard to think about my other life, with you back in Ireland, let alone the past.
But when you wrote to me of Claudette Sheriden’s death, everything came flooding back to me, and I thought how unfair I have been to you. Your letter was so short, June, and formal, and at first it disturbed me a little, but then I remembered how my letters to you have been so short, too. I thought you understood how bad a letter-writer I am, and did not need me to write endearments to you because you would know my true feelings, but maybe I have been wrong.
Dear June, I do love you, and think of you every day here, when I question my decision to join up and fight in this war. In a marriage there should be no secrets, yet I have not revealed to you certain things about my family. This is not right, and I shall now attempt to right that wrong and hope that you will forgive me.
You know Claudette as Phelim Sheriden’s wife, yet it was in fact my brother, James D., who loved her first. He rescued her during the Great War and brought her back to Ireland. My brother had fallen for her completely. It was under the plum trees, on his last day of leave, that James proposed to Claudette and she accepted. And so my brother went back to the front leaving his fiancée behind with my parents and I.
As you know, a few weeks later my brother was killed. It devastated my mother, for he was always her favourite, and the poor woman shut herself away for over a month. My father and I tried to carry on as normal. Claudette’s reaction was strange. She was very quiet – no tears like my mother. By the time Phelim returned from the war, recovering from his injury, it was clear that Claudette was pregnant. It didn’t make sense, for my brother had left eight months beforehand and, to my eyes, she didn’t look that far gone, but no one said anything.
My hand is shaking, for I am ashamed to write of what happened next. You know I hardly speak of my father. It is because of him, June, that my face is burning with shame as I write. One day I saw him with Claudette, in the orchard, amongst the very trees he had planted for his wife. In an instant it was clear to me. The father of Claudette’s child was my own father, and in that same instant I knew that the knowledge of this would kill my poor mother, after the shock of losing James.
Once Phelim found out Claudette was with child, he was determined to make her his wife, out of honour for his dead friend. I was in an awful quandary, for I could not tell Phelim the terrible truth, yet I was horrified that he was sacrificing his life for this woman, who I believed had schemed her way into our family. I hated her, and still do, June, and I am glad poor Phelim is finally released, and pray he may find someone more deserving of his love.
So in an effort to protect Phelim and my mother, I proposed to Claudette, although I despised her. Of course she rejected me for Phelim, who must have appeared a more appealing prospect as a husband, but she used this fact against me while I remained on the farm. She believed I was in love with her. That is why I didn’t want you to visit her, in case she led you to believe things that aren’t true. I hope you can understand.
It was after the baby was born, a full ten months after my brother had died, when she named it Danielle after my father, and he planted a whole side of the orchard with new apple trees for her, that I finally lost my temper and confronted my father. My mother overheard the row and found out everything. So you see, June, I blame myself for her death, for only a few days later she collapsed, never to recover. Now you can understand why I left my home, not to return until I knew that my father was six feet under.
My darling, please believe it was my utter shame that has stopped me from confiding in you before. Now Claudette is gone, I hope you will visit Phelim, for he is a good man. Please know how much I cherish you, and I miss you, darling. Do not be afraid – I will come back to you and look after you for the rest of my life. You are my one and only true love,
Robert
Three boxes on the other side of the attic topple over and make a tremendous clatter. Nicholas jumps up and looks around him. The window bangs open, but there is no wind. He can see that while he was reading the letter the spitting rain has turned to mist, and as the light disappears out of the sky, a gentle fog rises off the fields. He folds the letter up and puts it back in his pocket and then he tries to close the window, but the handle is wet with condensation and he keeps letting it slip out of his hand. He has the feeling that he needs to keep the window open.
You are my one and only true love, Robert.
Nicholas hears June sigh, and it makes him think: did Robert ever reveal to her the contents of that letter when he returned from the war? Did June go through their whole marriage thinking Danielle was her husband’s daughter, and that Claudette Sheriden had been the one true love of his life? Not her, not June. He wonders if two people could live together their whole lives, the length of a marriage, and not tell each other how dear they are to one another and how much they are loved. Nicholas knows it is possible. He knows many couples who live just like that, and he swears he and Charlie will never let that happen to them again. Nicholas understands now that adultery has nothing to do with betraying another, for it is an inquisition upon your own heart.
He looks at the fog and it conjures up the idea of Aristotle’s fifth element – not water or fire, earth or air, but something else. An essence that combines all four. The mist looks like smoke, catching in his throat at the open window. Yet it is without substance, an ether like air. It rises off the earth, preternatural, its smell pungent of autumn beginning, and it makes his cheeks damp with condensation. Is fog the place where spirits dwell and feel most comfortable, in its blank oblivion? Does fog have the ability to propel mortals into thoughts of another realm beyond their own? Nicholas thinks this is truly a place where fire and water can mix, and if he allowed himself to be lost in its fumes, he might be able to see beyond himself. He might see a light shining through this invisible field. A crow caws loudly, highlighting the silence of the other birds, of
utter stillness emanating from the ground below.
And through the mist swirling above the field Nicholas sees a figure standing, looking at the house. It is a tall man with thick black hair, in a long dark coat, and he stands as still as a scarecrow.
I miss you.
Something brushes by Nicholas, and it feels as if thin muslin has been dragged across his cheeks. A chill goes down his spine and he knows this is a moment of passing, a final passing.
‘Goodbye, June,’ he says to his phantom companion as she flies out the window, down to the fields to hold hands with her husband. Robert will take June across the mulch and muck and down into the earth, back home, back together. She has waited so long.
Nicholas sees a car coming round the bend in the lane, its lights cutting a path through the fog. It is Charlie returning. He runs downstairs to put peat on the fire, June Fanning’s book in his hand. He cannot wait to tell her the story of an adulteress whose husband loved her beyond death, beyond life.
THE ADULTERESS
Noëlle Harrison was born in England and moved to Ireland in 1991. While based in Dublin in the early nineties she wrote and produced plays. She has written extensively on visual art in Ireland. Her first novel Beatrice was published in 2004, followed by A Small Part of Me in 2005 and I Remember in 2008. She lives in Oldcastle, County Meath.
Praise for A Small Part of Me
‘Harrison is an intriguing and sensual writer, confidently charting out her own distinctive territory’
Sunday Independent
‘The search for redemption and the simple heartbreaking love of a mother for her child imbue this novel with echoes that you won’t forget’
Irish Independent
Praise for Beatrice
‘Harrison has written a stunning book’
The Adulteress Page 33