The Stone House

by Marita Conlon-McKenna

  Patrick, once the baby was home, seemed to be able to magically forget that their second son was smaller and weaker than their other two had been.

  ‘For God’s sake, Moya, leave him be. He’ll be fine.’

  Moya understood her mother’s fierce devotion and care of Sean for those nine months of his life, now that her own instincts were driving her to protect and constantly watch her own small son.

  Maeve Dillon bit her tongue and held her peace as her son-in-law ignored the family crisis and refused to even do so much as lift a cup, prepare a meal or bath one of the children, complaining only of himself and how much work he had to do.

  ‘Moya, you must say it to him,’ she urged, aware of the cracks in her daughter’s marriage. ‘You are a family and these are his children.’

  ‘Leave it, Mammy. Patrick works very hard to support us all. The house and the children are my responsibility.’

  Call her old-fashioned, but Maeve Dillon didn’t agree. She and Frank may have had their fair share of ups and downs over the years but she had always felt that somehow they were a team. She stayed on one more week and then, looking at her small grandson fed and content dozing in his cot, she realized that the time had come for her to go home.

  ‘Danny will be fine,’ she assured Moya, as she packed her bags. ‘He’s starting to thrive, you can see it in his face, and didn’t the nurse tell you he’s put on almost half a pound since her last visit.’

  ‘I know, Mammy. I know but I can’t help myself.’

  Maeve Dillon suspected that her daughter had a picture in her head from years ago that would not be shaken, a picture that she herself still replayed again and again. ‘Moya,’ she said gently. ‘Remember, he’s not Sean!’

  Moya watched Danny all the time, when he was awake, when he slept. A baby alarm was fitted beside his cot, even though he slept in the room with Patrick and herself. ‘Christ, how am I meant to get a good night’s sleep and do a day’s work!’ he complained, eventually moving into the spare room.

  Fiona and Gavin were confused that she was so devoted to their small brother and so reluctant to leave him.

  ‘Mum, you promised you’d come and watch me swimming!’ complained Fiona. ‘Why can’t Daddy mind Danny for the afternoon?’

  ‘Listen, pet, Daddy will go with you today and I’ll see you the next time, I promise.’

  As the time went on she couldn’t bring herself to do anything, her life revolving solely around the baby and his needs.

  ‘One of my clients is sponsoring a big horse race in Paris,’ Patrick announced, flinging his briefcase on the couch and hugging her. ‘All expenses paid by the company. Junior partners and their wives invited along for a luxury weekend.’

  Moya could sense the panicky feeling deep in her stomach.

  ‘You’ll have to tell them I can’t go,’ she said simply.

  ‘Why? We can get someone to mind the kids. It’s only a bloody weekend, Moya. Just think – all those designer shops and you with a Visa card to hand, not to mention rambling around the Louvre.’

  ‘Patrick, I’m sorry. I can’t leave Danny, you know that!’

  ‘He’s a baby, he’ll be fine at home with his sister and brother. I’m sure we can get a babysitter. The kids like Amy, or even if you feel she can’t manage, we’ll get one of those nanny services. Tony and Beth use them all the time for the twins.’

  ‘Patrick, I’m not going!’ she insisted. ‘You go and enjoy yourself. I’ll stay home with the kids.’

  ‘I don’t fucking want you to stay home,’ he shouted, like an irate schoolboy. ‘I want you to fucking come with me!’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, closing the conversation, sending her handsome charming husband to Paris, on his own.

  When he returned from Longchamps, Moya knew something between them had changed. Patrick was different. It was barely perceptible, for her husband was as charming and witty and generous as usual, and his bad mood lifted as he presented her with Yves Saint-Laurent perfume, a gold bangle, and a book about Monet’s garden. There was a cute ‘Hello Kitty’ backpack for Fiona, as well as a GI Joe and a rugby shirt for Gavin and an expensive Baby Mini outfit for Danny and a complete set of Babar the elephant books for the family. Gifts that proclaimed what a wonderful husband and father he was, and helped disguise the guilt she saw reflected in his eyes.

  Moya felt sick to her stomach as she recognized the difference in him: adrenalin pumping, the excitement of the new, a certain almost giddy devil-may-care attitude that was most unlike him. He took phone calls in secret, going out to sit in the car or going up to the bedroom, claiming he could hear nothing with the noise of the kids. Moya watched him, tortured by the signs of his distraction. She did not know if she should confront him, demand answers, but sensed that declaring herself a shrew wife who would scream and cry and let fly with unproven allegations might herald the descent into a nightmare from which there would be no escape. Instead she kissed him and thanked him and asked him about the trip.

  They moved warily around each other for the next few weeks, both complaining about tiredness and fatigue, avoiding the pretence of lovemaking.

  Patrick complained about the office, the long hours needed on this new project, the restructuring of assets, figures that didn’t add up and the overtime that was expected of him. She almost felt she was colluding with him when he cursed his boss Ken Mitchell and ranted on about having to work so late and at weekends.

  ‘It will pass,’ she’d remind him, ‘and then we’ll all get back to normal.’

  She made no mention of the late-night calls to check up on him and her chats with Jerome Wells the night porter, who assured her that Mr Redmond was definitely not in his office.

  Patrick was having an affair. She was sure of it. Other women survived it! If rumour and gossip were to be believed, at least two or three of the senior partners had been embroiled in affairs. She thought of stoic Louisa Firth and Caroline Clifford, good corporate wives who had not rocked the boat and who concentrated on enjoying the fruits of their husbands’ labours and raising their kids. Moya sighed. She was different from them. She had never imagined a time when she would not be in love with Patrick, would be detached. Never contemplated a life alone!

  The children adored him. They needed a father. She herself had found Patrick charming and irresistible from the minute she set eyes on him – women couldn’t help but be attracted to him. She’d known that from the start. What she hadn’t known was that Patrick enjoyed it, flirting, arranging the odd discreet rendezvous. Perhaps some had been innocent, but now she could see the dropping of inhibitions and his encouragement of a relationship that was as dangerous as it was romantic.

  ‘Patrick, I know about Paris,’ she said one night when she could bear it no more. He’d slumped on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, wearing the navy Ralph Lauren pyjamas she’d bought him for his birthday.

  ‘You fucking wouldn’t come with me to Paris. You didn’t want to be near me! She was there, she . . .’

  ‘Shut up!’ Moya screamed at him. ‘I don’t want to hear about her, to know about her. I just want her out of our life! Out of your life.’

  Patrick said nothing.

  ‘Otherwise the children and I are lost to you. Do you hear me? I can’t live like this any more!’

  ‘It’s over,’ he flung back at her. ‘I’ve already ended it.’

  Relief washed over her as she composed herself. She was too tired and exhausted to fight and she believed him when he buried his dark head against her breast and promised it would never happen again. She had to believe him, as she wanted her marriage to work.

  She felt she was swimming in a deep deep pool and if she stopped moving she would drown. She had gone to talk to her local GP, who had listened and told her she was not depressed, just anaemic and exhausted, and prescribed a tonic and told her to try and be kind to herself.

  ‘These days women try to do too much. You’ve had to cope with a small premature baby who
doesn’t sleep much, two children and run a home while your body deals with a bunch of crazy hormones that are dipping like a rollercoaster and tries to recover from childbirth. Is it any wonder you feel like hell?’

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the sixty-year-old Glaswegian’s candid assessment of her problem.

  ‘But I promise, Moya, within a few weeks you will be feeling much better.’

  The doctor was right. She’d gone to the local health shop and bought up a ton of healthy foods and herbal remedies and had started to go swimming with Fiona and Gavin one day a week. She had to stop blaming Patrick for the way she was feeling and take control of her own life. She loved the children, and she supposed she loved Patrick despite everything but she knew she had to start thinking of herself.

  Everything changed one day when she was changing Danny’s nappy and he kicked out with his right leg and hit her in the ribs.

  ‘Ow! Hey, buster! Don’t treat your mum like that!’ she warned. She stopped, realizing for one bliss-filled minute what she had said. She looked at his naked body stretching and moving, his arms trying to catch his toes. Her son was a bruiser. A small bruiser, but none the less a bruiser! Overwhelmed with gratitude she blew a raspberry on his skin, which sent him into peals of laughter.

  ‘Danny boy, you are a normal baby.’ She laughed, feeling the constant pressure and weight of fearful anxiety slide off her, as she enjoyed motherhood again.

  With Patrick it was harder to reclaim their relationship and return to the couple they’d been before, as they were still mistrustful of each other, but Moya was determined to hold her marriage together and keep her husband.

  It was not the perfect life she had imagined for herself!

  Reading about the collection of Irish women painters on show at the Hamilton Gallery for two weeks, she decided to go to town for the day. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had visited a gallery or taken the time to sit and study a piece of art, lose herself in it. Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, Nano Reid – they were certainly images to conjure with, she thought as she arranged for the children to be minded and collected. She’d got her hair cut shorter so it emphasized her eyes and bone structure and had treated herself to facial, nails, pedicure, the works, feeling the despair slough off like old skin.

  Two days later she took the ten o’clock tube to Victoria and headed for the gallery in Kensington.

  Entranced, she stood looking at the light brushwork, the feathered strokes of women who had captured the landscapes of their own familiar places. She was moved by their originality and individual style and yet haunted by the sense of recognition. Their work, like old friends, comforted her. Red barns, brown hens and the Devil’s Glen! Patchwork fields and blue jugs of buttercups! She sucked them in.

  ‘Aren’t they wonderful!’ smiled the gallery owner, watching her as she studied each picture. ‘Have you seen them before?’

  ‘Well, perhaps a few, when I was living back in Dublin. But putting them all together like this makes something different of their work. I suppose it celebrates them.’

  ‘I could have sold most of them a hundred times over,’ confessed Brigid Barrington, the gallery owner. ‘But they go back home to their rightful owners on Monday week and we go back to our regular exhibitions.’

  The gallery was a large rectangular room which overlooked the street, a bright space flooded with light with nothing to distract the eye. One or two visitors came in to enquire about the price of the painting in the window.

  ‘Told you,’ mouthed Brigid, as she explained it was not for sale.

  Half an hour later Moya found herself sitting on a stool enjoying a coffee and reminiscing about her work for Taylors and for Sylvia in the Martello back in Dublin as it lashed rain outside.

  ‘If you ever are looking for a bit of work, I often need an extra pair of hands for openings and cataloguing,’ offered Brigid.

  Moya demurred, explaining about her family.

  Brigid burst out laughing and pulled a black-and-white photo of three small boys in pirate hats brandishing swords from her desk, declaring, ‘These are my three sprogs! If it wasn’t for this place I would have walked the plank years ago.’

  Brigid pressed a business card into her hand and made her promise to give her offer some consideration. Moya smiled to herself as the sun came out: she would think about it. Walking up towards Harvey Nichols, she decided it was time to shop. New clothes and lingerie! She was dumping anything that was a reminder of the awful times she’d gone through. Comforted by the fact that Patrick could definitely afford it, she spent a fortune, bumping into Eleanor Palmer in Harrods, who declared she’d never seen Moya look better.

  ‘Will you join me for tea upstairs?’

  Moya, who’d forgotten about lunch, was delighted to. It felt almost sinful sitting having Earl Grey and cucumber sandwiches and a slice of Bakewell tart at four o’clock with one of England’s great murder mystery writers instead of chasing to collect Fiona from school. Her neighbour Linda had offered to do it as well as manage the boys. She confided in Eleanor how hard the past few months had been.

  ‘You deserve to get out, my dear, now that the baby is well again. Can’t beat a little outing to town. Always did me good.’

  Moya sat back. Her mother would love to meet Eleanor. The two of them would get on so well together.

  ‘I’ve a book launch at six,’ mused Eleanor. ‘Dudley was meant to have come along, but as usual he’s let me down and is stuck in that stupid office of his.’

  Moya tried not to laugh, for Dudley Palmer was one of the most senior partners in Maxwell, Palmer and Mitchell’s where Patrick worked.

  ‘Hates those kind of things! He can’t stand publishers or those journalist types. Always rub him up the wrong way. Don’t suppose you fancy joining me, my dear? Douglas Carton is an old friend of mine and it should be a bit of fun.’

  ‘I’d love to.’ Moya couldn’t believe it. She’d just been reading in the hairdresser’s that his last book, Silver River, was going to be filmed in Ireland.

  Picking up her mobile, Moya phoned Patrick, telling him he’d better make sure to be home on time so he could collect the kids from Linda’s and to take a pizza out of the freezer for tea.

  ‘Can’t you do it?’ he began to complain.

  ‘No, I can’t,’ she said, switching off the mobile and putting it back in her bag.

  ‘Everything all right, my dear?’

  ‘Never better,’ she laughed, asking Eleanor to give her the low-down on Douglas Carton, who wrote thrillers and was always in the bestselling list.

  ‘The two of us have the same editor and of course you know he won the Golden Dagger Award, the year after me.’

  She took a deep breath as Eleanor rambled on. Tonight Patrick would have to go home, feed and change and talk to his children and put them to bed!

  Chapter Twenty-three

  SUMMERS IN ROSSMORE were sacrosanct. They were Moya’s sanity-saver, as she left England behind and returned home for those few precious weeks during July and August. The children on school holiday, bored and restless, were spared the rounds of summer camps as sandals, swimming togs and neatly ironed shorts and T-shirts were all packed in the bag ready for the seven-week-long visit to Ireland.

  The Stone House basked in warm sunshine, tall Michaelmas daisies and montbretia trailing up the driveway to welcome them. The children screamed at the sight of their grandparents, jumping up and down with excitement as Patrick and Frank carried in the luggage. Every year it seemed the same, unchanging.

  ‘There’s tea in the kitchen,’ her mother would announce as like a ravaging horde they descended on the house.

  Talk about an understatement! The table was laden down with her mother’s baking. A huge cream sponge, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate éclairs, and apple tart, oatmeal flapjacks and iced buns with hundreds and thousands sprinkled on the top. The talk was nineteen to the dozen as the kids fought for attention and tried to fill in for their gra
ndparents all they had accomplished over the past few months.

  ‘I was a butterfly in our school pageant and I had to do a ballet dance with two other butterflies, Granny.’

  ‘She looked beautiful, Mum, I have the photos to show you.’

  ‘I got a new football.’

  ‘My tooth fell out and fell in the garlic bread at Mummy and Daddy’s dinner party.’

  ‘Did you find it?’ asked Frank, trying to keep a serious face.

  ‘No. Somebody ate it!’

  ‘Oh good God!’ murmured Maeve.

  ‘Danny!’ reminded Moya, helpless with laughter.

  ‘But the tooth fairy still came though I hadn’t a tooth to leave under my pillow.’

  ‘Well that was a good thing then. Decent enough, those fairies,’ agreed Frank, pulling his grandson onto his lap to see where the new tooth was cutting through.

  Moya could feel the tension seep from her body as the children and herself relaxed and were wrapped in the comfort of her family home and she settled back into her old bedroom, the window looking out on the apple trees and her mother’s vegetable patch.

  Patrick would only stay for the first week or ten days, depending how busy he was in work. They always stopped off at his parents’ home in Dublin for a night or two following the ferry journey. Robert and Annabel would set the big dining table for dinner and make a huge to-do about having guests to stay. Over-excited, the children would eventually go to sleep, leaving the adults to talk until late into the night, Moya making sure to slip away to bed leaving Patrick time on his own with his parents.

  Things were different in Rossmore, where they spent much of the time on the beach, playing football and rounders, watching the children swim and splash in the bracing chill of the Irish Sea, trailing up and down to the house with towels and deckchairs and beach balls and lilos. Patrick would organize day trips to local sights and play golf on the course overlooking the sea, the tired look gone from his eyes. At night there were family dinners in the kitchen and, on the patio, Frank Dillon pretending to cook on the barbecue as sausages and steaks sizzled while her mother served big bowls of new potatoes and tossed a salad of lettuce and scallions, freshly pulled from the garden. Uncle Eamonn, home for a few weeks’ summer break from Chicago, entertained them with his stories. Aunt Vonnie and Uncle Joe invited them over for Sunday lunch, her cousins and their wives and girlfriends and children all part of the huge family get-together.