‘Do you mind me asking, where was she laid to rest?’
‘With Aunty Lily.’ I began to twiddle her wedding ring on the chain round my neck. ‘I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies – she couldn’t be in better company.’
‘That must have been a difficult day for you.’
‘It took place sometime after dark, but I wasn’t there. My father and Father Vincent buried her before I was discharged from the hospital. It was all very hush hush.’
‘Do you visit the grave?’
I shook my head. ‘I could never face it.’
‘Do you think you could face it now?’
‘Maybe … some day. When the time is right. When I’m ready to let her go.’
‘Only from this life, Frances. She’ll always be in your heart, where she belongs.’
Placing my hand on my chest, I inhaled a languishing breath. ‘God, how I’d have loved her.’
‘You still do and you always will.’
‘Remember I told you about the three knitted sets I found in my mother’s drawer, and that all that was missing was the white bootees?’
‘Yes.’
‘The day my father drove me home from hospital, I made him stop outside a drapery shop and I went in and bought her white bootees. I still have them. I carry them around in my pocket on her birthday.’
‘That’s good. It’s comforting to have something to hold on to.’
‘Imagine if she’d lived, Lesley’s son Simon would have a sister only five or six weeks younger than himself.’
‘Did you ever see Lesley again after she had her baby?’
‘No. I thought about writing to her a while back, but I’ve changed my mind.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I have to move on. If our paths are meant to cross again, then they will.’
‘Che sera, sera.’
‘Yes,’ I smiled, ‘according to Aunty Lily.’
Epilogue
4 February 2000
It’s Friday evening and I’m just over my second week at college. I’m doing a six-month course in gardening and landscaping. I do believe I’ve finally found my niche.
After I left hospital early last month, I moved to Salthill in Galway and rented a one-bed-roomed apartment not far from the sea. And yes, I have a room with a view. It was daunting at first, setting up home in a strange town, but I’m beginning to feel a little more at ease in my new surroundings, especially since I started my course. Apart from the fact that it’s keeping me busy, I’m enjoying the company of the other pupils, who are mature students like myself. The weekends, however, are still pretty lonely.
Once a month, I travel to Dublin to see my therapist. We talk less now about the past, and more about the future.
A couple of weeks ago, I jotted down my new address on a scrap of paper, slipped it into an envelope and sent it to my father, just to leave the line of communication open. I miss him dreadfully. When I picked up my post from the front doormat an hour ago, I saw his handwriting on one of the envelopes and I’m just about to open it. My hands are shaking.
Later
The final piece of the jigsaw:
1 Feb. 2000
Crosslea
Dear Frances
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past few weeks about all them questions you want answering, and to be quite frank, I’m not sure that any good will come out of it. If your mother were alive, she certainly wouldn’t approve. She sincerely believed that the truth could only ever hurt you. All I can do is hope and pray that she was wrong in her thinking.
For what you’re about to read, I am heartily sorry.
You were indeed born just three months after your mother and I got married, but as I said to you before, your mother wasn’t in the family way: she wasn’t that kind of girl. Your Aunty Lily was your birth mother.
The man who spoke to you at her funeral was a schoolteacher and her one-time fiancé, Emmet O’Sullivan. The engagement lasted only a couple of weeks, however, because Emmet soon became aware that Lily was concealing a pregnancy. When your grandfather heard that Emmet had reneged on his promise, he stormed around to his digs and demanded an explanation. Under duress, Emmet told him that Lily was expecting and that he, never having interfered with her in that way, was not the father.
That night your grandfather gave poor Lily the mother of all beatings and threw her out. Your mother, disgusted by her father’s brutality, packed both their belongings and left with Lily. Having nowhere else to go, they arrived on our doorstep. My father insisted that both girls move into our guest bedroom until arrangements could be made for Lily to go away to have her baby. Lily, however, had other ideas, as I discovered about a week later when I found your mother on her knees by the bed, sobbing and clutching her rosary beads. She told me that Lily was planning to go to England to have an abortion. The poor woman was devastated. All she kept saying was – We can’t let her do it, Joe.
Secretly, I had my own worries over an incident that had occurred one night the previous January. Around half past ten your mother turned up on my doorstep in flitters. Your grandfather, she said, was on the rampage, looking for Lily, who was supposed to have been home two hours earlier. Knowing what would happen to her younger sister if her father caught up with her, she begged me to go out and look for Lily, which I did without any hesitation. A fella I met in the street told me that he’d seen Lily earlier that day knocking about with Sadie Sweeney, undesirable company by anyone’s standards, so I drove straight out to Sadie’s cottage to see if Lily was there. I could hardly believe my eyes when I got out of the car and saw the pair of them in through the kitchen window dancing around the floor in nothing more than their slips. I went inside and told Lily to cover herself up and to get into the car at once. It was only then I realized they were both blind drunk.
While Lily was picking up her clothes off the floor, the other dirty tramp was pawing at me and trying to get me to kiss her. It was woefully embarrassing. Lily wasn’t even fit to tie her own shoelaces, so I bent down and tied them for her. Then I linked her arm and took her out to the car. As soon as I started the engine, she began to sob. She didn’t want to go home to face her father, she said. She was very distressed. Despite her reckless behaviour, it was impossible not to feel sorry for the lassie. When I pulled up half-way down the lane, all I ever intended doing was comforting her. But she hadn’t buttoned up her coat, and she smelled of perfume and she asked to be held. I don’t know if her lips rose to mine or mine descended on hers, or they met somewhere in the middle, but one way or another I lost all control of myself. Afterwards, I wept bitter tears.
When I discovered Lily was pregnant, I hoped and prayed that she would come and tell me that I wasn’t responsible, but she didn’t and I, to my shame, was too much of a coward to ask her. I didn’t want to lose your mother, Frances. That woman meant the world to me. I had the height of respect for her. A man could go home after a night out with your mother with a clear conscience. She was a clean-living lassie, and a devout Catholic. She begged and pleaded with Lily not to go through with the abortion, offering to raise the baby for her. Eventually, after many long and emotional exchanges between the two women, Lily agreed to go to Dublin to a Mother and Baby Home, run by nuns, to have her baby. There were, however, three conditions she insisted upon: one, that she enter the home under your mother’s name – she wanted no hand or part in the child’s life, even down to having her name on the birth certificate; two, that I would be named as father of the baby and not Emmet; and three, that after the birth I would give her a couple of hundred pounds, enough to allow her to start a new life in England.
Although the night before Lily left for the home, I tried, when I found her alone in the scullery, to broach the subject of whether or not I was, in fact, the baby’s (your) father, she never gave me a straight answer, saying only that I would be, and wasn’t that all that mattered?
Your mother, either not realizing or refusing to question the e
xtent of Lily’s experience with men, insisted that Emmet had to be the father, backing up her conclusion with one question – Sure, who else’s could it be?
If only Lily had left things as they were, instead of confessing all to Xavier in a letter before she died. It was only then that I knew for sure that you were my flesh and blood. I’ll never forget the look on your mother’s face when she read that letter. It ruined everything: our relationship with Xavier, my relationship with your mother, but most of all, your mother’s relationship with you.
She never forgave me, you know. I begged her to, even on her deathbed. But all she said was, Tell Frances I forgive her, and then she drew her last breath.
As I said, Frances: I’m heartily sorry.
Daddy
P. S. Your grandfather Murphy died just ten years ago in an old folks’ home down in Cork. As far as your mother was concerned, her father had died the night he beat the pregnant Lily, and she did not attend the funeral. You see, she was the kind of woman who found it hard to forgive. I suppose you were the lucky one.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Patricia Deevy, Michael McLoughlin and everyone at Penguin Ireland. To my editor, Alison Walsh, for your expertise, your advice and your encouragement; I am very grateful.
Thanks to my parents, my sisters and my extended family – especially, my aunt, Vera McGrath – who are constantly supportive and interested – cheers: I hope I do you proud.
To the people who supported me locally, Joe McCabe, Michael McDonnell, Donagh McKeown, Michelle and Philip in Keegan’s bookshop, Carrickmacross and Ann and John in Crannóg bookshop, Cavan.
For their comments and support, thanks to Sue Leonard, the members of bibliofemme.com, Mary Gallagher of the Irish World in London and Lucille Redmond.
For their help in my research, thanks to my brother-in-law, Sergeant Pasty Baldwin and Teresa Mansfield.
Part of this novel is about the highs and lows of teenage friendship. I couldn’t help looking back on my own teenage years while writing this book and thinking how blessed I am to have shared this sensitive and exhilarating period with my lifelong friend, Deirdre O’Donoghue. So, to you, Deidre, thanks for your loyalty, your strength and, above all, the crack.
A huge thanks to my agent, Jonathan Williams. Along the way, your encouragement has inspired me to do better.
And, finally, to Eamonn, Kevin and Olivia: for making me feel like a success, every day of my life.
THE BEGINNING
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First published by Penguin Ireland 2007
Published in Penguin Books 2008
Copyright © Denise Sewell, 2007
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ISBN: 978-0-141-90204-3
The Fall Girl Page 26