Left Unsaid

by Joan B. Flood

  LEFT UNSAID

  JOAN B. FLOOD

  © 2017, Joan B. Flood

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, for any reason, by any means, without the permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Doowah Design.

  Photo of Author by Ayelet Tsabari.

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Manitoba Arts Council for our publishing program.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Flood, Joan B., 1949-, author

  Left unsaid / Joan B. Flood.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77324-009-1 (softcover).

  --ISBN 978-1-77324-010-7 (EPUB)

  I. Title.

  PS8611.L64L44 2017 C813’.6 C2017-904686-1

  C2017-904687-X

  Signature Editions

  P.O. Box 206, RPO Corydon, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3M 3S7

  www.signature-editions.com

  To my mother, Bríd Flood.

  Sorry you won’t get to read it, but then, you did

  manage to get white roses on the windowsill that time.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  1

  My visit with Maggie hadn’t gone well. She’d been agitated and rambling on about the scarf again. Not even the little song she loved calmed her. The Matron dropped in on my visit, which was never a good thing. Either something had gone wrong with Maggie or fees were going up. This time it was the fees. To add to things, the long bus ride home from Dublin was ripe with the smell of wet woollen coats and rattled by coughs and sniffles. Maybe, I thought, I’d catch pneumonia and die and wouldn’t have to worry about Maggie, Ma and Da and the farm, and money ever again.

  We jounced our way down the country in the wet dark so that by the time we neared Kiltilly I’d almost forgotten a world existed outside the bus’s confines. When we reached the village I was weary and loath to go home to the conversation I’d have to have with my mother and father about what to do about money and Maggie. My older sister Maggie had been up in St. Mary’s, a private home for the mentally ill in Dublin, for years and we’d mortgaged the farm to the hilt to pay for it. A new increase in fees and we would lose everything. Literally. A hard choice was coming: Maggie or the farm. And what would become of Ma and Da with the farm gone? We’d have to rent a house somewhere for the three of us. There was nothing suitable in the village, and anyway, it would break their hearts to move. It would break what was left of mine, no doubt about it. A rise in fees would come sooner or later, I’d known. I’d wrestled the questions the last few months when I couldn’t sleep, when my past folly was written in plain, luminous letters on the ceiling. Delia Buckley, I said to myself then, you are a madwoman. What were you thinking? So instead of walking out home right off the bus I stopped by Peggy O’Shea’s café and gnawed on the problem as I sat with my tea and apple crumble piled with fresh cream. The cup of tea was steaming hot, just the way I liked it. I tried to put my worries aside for the moment.

  The door opened and Daniel Wolfe walked in. I didn’t welcome the sight of him. He stood in the doorway, the light catching the raindrops on his ankle-length dark grey coat, his trilby set low on his forehead. Peggy had risen to attention behind the glass cases displaying buns and pastries.

  “How are you today, Mr. Wolfe?” she called across. “We don’t see you in here too often.”

  “Fine, fine,” he called back.

  He walked over to my table like I’d sat there waiting for him. He had changed. Of course he had. It was 1990, not 1968. He took off his hat, shook the rain off it, and held it three fingered at his side. His hair was grey, almost white. He carried a bit of extra weight now and deep lines that held his mouth in parentheses. He still had that air of entitlement he’d always had. Too bad I hadn’t been so quick to see that about him when I first met him. But then, I’d only been a girl, really, for all that I was twenty-three years old. Innocent.

  “Good day, Delia,” he said, as if we’d spoken to each other on a regular basis, which we hadn’t. Even though we lived in the same small village we had gone years without meeting directly or speaking. He was often away on book tours or travelling. When he was in the village he didn’t exactly hang around. He had someone to shop and fetch for him. Besides, we didn’t travel in the same social circles, him being part of the gentry and me being a villager. “May I sit with you?”

  He touched the back of the chair across the table. I was about to say no, but Peggy had her eyes out on sticks on us from behind the counter, so I nodded. He settled himself into the seat and Peggy was beside him in a flash taking his order for coffee and a scone. I stayed silent when she left, giving him nothing. He sat back in his chair, comfortable as if in his own living room. We stayed that way until Peggy delivered his cup of coffee to the table. She wiped away imaginary crumbs with a cloth that left wet streaks behind, but as neither of us said a word she had no option but to move off and take up her task of overseeing things from behind the counter.

  “Delia,” he said again when we were alone. He stirred sugar into his coffee. After a long draw on his cup and a shift in his chair, he spoke again.

  “Look, Delia, I’m sorry for the past, how it was. Believe me, I am.”

  Not nearly as sorry as I am, I thought. I sipped my tea. It had cooled off and gone bitter.

  “I’ve come to see you because I want to make amends. And to ask something of you.”

  “You think you can make amends?”

  It came out like the hiss of a scalded cat. I clamped my lips tightly around my teeth and sat back in the chair.

  “No. Not really, but I can help you now. I know how things are with the farm.” The whole country probably knew how deeply in debt the farm was. I said nothing, though it embarrassed me that Daniel Wolfe would know about my family affairs. He sat for a moment, then continued. “And you can help me. I’m willing to pay you well, Delia, more than well. Please hear me out.”

  He hadn’t changed, then. He still believed he could buy his way in and out of anything. I listened to his proposition all the same, too full of curiosity not to. I wondered how he knew where to find me. Mind you, it was my habit to go up to visit Maggie almost every week. Everyone in the village knew that. Nobody drove to Dublin because of the congestion on the carriageway and hassle of parking when they got there, but today I wished I had taken my car. Everyone knew, too, when the evening bus arrived. Still, it was unnerving to think he must have been waiting for me.

  �
�I’ve got cancer, Delia. Riddled with it. There’s nothing to be done for me.”

  “What cancer? How bad is it?”

  The nurse in me couldn’t help but ask.

  “Esophageal. Stage IV. I’ve six, maybe twelve months at best. Right now I’m deciding on what treatment, if any. I don’t want to spend the time I have sick from treatment that ultimately won’t work.”

  Not many people opted for none. His decision surprised me, as I thought of him as a person who put himself first at all times. Maybe that’s what he was doing, opting for a possibly shorter but better-quality life.

  “Maybe treatment will cure you,” I said.

  “You’re a nurse, Delia. You know how unlikely that is.”

  He was right. Still, you had to offer hope. He wanted me to care for him because he knew me, trusted me, he said. Please, he said. I wanted to tell him no, to walk away, turn my back on him the way he’d done to me those years ago. He offered a lot of money. I told him I’d think about it.

  “That’s all I ask, Delia. That’s good enough,” he said.

  I walked out of the village on the Limerick Road. It was a walk I loved in any weather. I had grown up in Kiltilly and lived in the same farmhouse just outside the village all my life except for the few months I spent in Wales years ago, when I was in my early twenties. I knew to within a week when the lilac in Mrs. Green’s garden would bloom each spring and how bountiful the conkers would be in autumn by the blossoms on the horse chestnut in May. I’d watched the martins gather on the electric wires for their migration every year since I was a little girl, their chattering drowning out the other birds, and the eerie silence when they’d left on their long migration and the cold descended on the land. I had celebrated my greatest joy, grieved my worst nightmare, and vented my most awful sufferings on this road. I’d come this way after a patient’s death, weary in my bones, and felt my spirit lighten at the sight of our modest farmhouse nestled below the rise of the meadow.

  This night my heart did not lighten when, through the bare winter trees, I first saw the light from our farmhouse. I stopped at the side of the road as the rain pelted down with renewed force and filled my nose with the earthy smell of turf carried from chimney smoke. It was there in the dark, the light from my home showing me the way forward, that I came up with my scheme to keep Maggie where she was and save the farm. If Daniel agreed and it turned out to cost me sleep for a while, well, there was plenty to keep me awake anyway.

  2

  “Hello, I’m back,” I called as I opened the front door. My mouth watered at the smell of onions and potatoes, mutton and thyme that greeted me.

  “Well, how was she? Was the bus late? We’re just having our tea and I kept a bit of dinner for you. Before you get your coat off go find your father, see if he’s nearly done with the milking. It’s too much for him, really, it is.”

  Mam rattled it all off without waiting for an answer. I didn’t even try, simply went right out the back door to find Da. He was in the shed milking the last of our few cows by hand. The sweetish smell of warm milk permeated the air. He squatted on a stool, head against a cow’s flank, hands pumping rhythmically.

  “Tea’s ready,” I said.

  “Aye, I’ll be right in, five minutes. I’ll not keep you. Keep your news for me, right?” He didn’t turn. His hands kept their rhythm as the milk hissed into the bucket. He loved those cows, and I thought him happier since we were down to only a few that he could milk the old-fashioned way. He wouldn’t last long if we moved away with nothing to occupy his hands. I patted his shoulder and went back to the house.

  “She’s much the same,” I reported over the meal. “She seems well enough, wandering a bit, as usual. Probably tired, the nurse said. She’s not better, that’s for sure.”

  We had never expected Maggie to need care for so long. When she first became ill we were sure she’d get over it. We even had her home with us a few times, but each time she deteriorated to the point Mam couldn’t cope on her own. We never did have an explanation for her condition that made sense to me as a nurse, but as her sister who knew her well I understood her state.

  “I need to get up to see her,” Da said. He’d been saying that for years. He’d never go. Maggie didn’t recognize him, and he couldn’t take it. He always sent her sweets, though, and still managed to find the ones coated with soft sugar she’d loved as a child.

  “The fees are going up again.”

  Mam concentrated on spreading a thick slab of butter onto her bread. Da put his cup down and looked at me.

  “What? They just went up not so long ago. How much?” he asked.

  “Enough,” I said. Telling the exact amount would make no difference anyway as the level was just about over our heads as it was.

  Mam wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I don’t know. We can’t keep it up. I don’t know what we’re to do.”

  “I can go to the bank tomorrow. Maybe we...” Da left the rest unsaid.

  “We can’t,” Mam said. “We’ve used up all we can. The manager warned about that last time.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Don’t swear.” It was my mother’s automatic response to swearing of any kind.

  “Well, if there was a time to, it’s now. “

  “Maybe we should look for somewhere else for her, outside Dublin, like. It would cost less.” Her voice was flat with defeat. It was a familiar round for us.

  “But, sure we searched high and low last year. Everywhere was full and they were awful places anyway. Not enough staff. They know her in St. Mary’s. She knows them,” I reminded them. Reminded myself.

  Mam put her fork and knife down and lined them up neatly on her plate.

  “Your father and I talked about all this after last time. I don’t know what else we can do. We can’t go on. Could we have her at home, do you think?”

  “Jesus, no. We tried that before. She needs looking after all the time. Who’ll do it? You and Da can’t and I’m not even at home some evenings when I work. I’m not even in Kiltilly sometimes. Getting someone in would cost more than where she is.”

  “We could sell the farm,” Da said.

  Mam and I stared at him in silence.

  “We could,” he said again. His eyes were on his plate as he spread raspberry jam on his bread.

  “No. We can’t.”

  Da looked up at my sharp tone. We stared each other down a moment, then Da cut his slice of bread in two.

  “Who’ll take it on when your mother and I are gone anyway?”

  “I will. You know I love it here.” I was surprised I even had to say it.

  “You have your own work, you couldn’t run the farm,” Mam said. “Could you?”

  “Maybe not, but I can keep the land in the family. Besides, most of what we’d get if we sold would go to the bank.”

  “Well, you’ll have to make a hard decision right off the top,” Da said. “It’s the farm or Maggie now, isn’t it?”

  “Let me think about it for a couple of days. I might be able to come up with something.”

  “If ye can ye’re a miracle worker,” Da said. “Haven’t ye done everything all along?”

  “Well, just wait a few days, ok? “

  He patted his shirt pocket for his glasses and gathered up the paper.

  “Daniel Wolfe is ill and wants me to look after him. As a private nurse, like. He offered good money,” I told my mother when Da was out of earshot. The words were out of my mouth before I meant them to be. We were at the kitchen table with a last cup of tea before getting on with the dishes. Mam’s head swivelled toward me. I tried not to squirm like a schoolgirl under her gaze, and not for the first time I wondered how much she knew about Daniel Wolfe and me.

  “Daniel Wolfe? What does he want with looking after?”

  “He’s sick. He wants me to come up to the hous
e and look after him. The trouble is, he won’t last long, so we’ll be back talking about this again before a year passes. But it’s another year. Maybe we can figure something out in that time.”

  Mam got up and emptied the teapot into the sink.

  “You can’t be seriously thinking of it, surely? That man! After the trouble he caused Maggie,” she said. “When were you discussing this with him? Sure, he’s hardly ever in the village.”

  “Trouble he caused Maggie? What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know exactly what went on, but he has something to do with Maggie’s state. I’m not a fool, you know. She makes no sense most of the time, but I can pick up the gist.”

  “I told you, Mam, Maggie had nothing to do with him as far as I know. She’d have told me if she did,” I said.

  “Well, he’s mixed up in it somewhere. I’m certain of that. When did he talk to you?”

  She sat back down at the table and fiddled with her teacup. Her wedding ring was loose on her finger and rattled against the china. She’s getting old, I thought. I reached across the table and touched her hand.

  “I stopped off at the café when I came down. He was there, and he asked me. It would help us out, Mam. “

  “Well, I hope you said no.”

  “I said I’d think about it. The money is good. Maybe I’ll say yes. It means I won’t be here too much for the next few months. Can ye get on without me?”

  “Of course we can, pet. It’s your work. Haven’t we always got on without you when you’re at your work?”

  I walked up the back field just after dawn. I missed the old dog, wished she were still alive. The company would be welcome. Sleep had been erratic, interrupted by my nightmare of being caught in coloured gauze, careening around trying to save myself from something. I’d woken fighting with the air, my hair drenched in sweat. Next I dreamed of Maggie, her arms outstretched calling for baby, baby, but there was none to give her.