Sharif carried on despite the look on Zeinab’s face, horrified at the mention of illegitimate children, long-lost parents, and now homosexual men. ‘Anyway, his surviving partner, Tim O’Flaherty, needs to return to Ireland to attend to some legal affairs there, regarding his family land. Carmel’s father has arranged that we all go and take a tour of the West of Ireland. Tim hasn’t been back to Ireland for years, and since it is to take place while you’re here, we’ve checked with Joe and we have room for one more. Isn’t that exciting?’
Zeinab looked like she would rather have had a root canal than go on this trip with these awful people. She was clearly appalled, but she managed to recover her composure. She clearly longed for Sharif’s approval almost as much as she wanted to undermine Carmel and Nadia. Carmel glanced quickly at her husband. He was suppressing a smile; he seemed to enjoy scandalising his aunt.
‘Well, it will be lovely to spend some quality time with you. You’ve always been so busy when Tariq and I visited before. And I have never been to Ireland, I hear it is very...er... green?’ This last was addressed to Carmel with the fakest smile she had ever seen.
‘Oh, yes, very green indeed, and lovely.’ Carmel smiled. ‘It’s a special place; you’re going to love it.’ She hoped her parents would’ve been proud of her defence of her homeland.
Chapter 5
‘Would you mind horribly if I pulled out?’ Tim asked as he percolated the coffee in the bright, sunny kitchen he had lovingly decorated with Brian. Carmel had rung earlier to see if he was free, and he’d been delighted. They’d enjoyed a lovely lunch together, and Carmel felt she’d cheered him up a little. Brian’s death had taken so much out of Tim, and he seemed suddenly much older than he had when Brian was alive.
‘The right thing to say is of course not’—she grinned and made a silly face to make him smile—‘but the truth is yes, I would. Look, Tim, I don’t want to pressure you, though I kind of am, I know, but you being there was going to make this trip easier for me. So, selfishly, I do really want you to come. I was dreading it too—well, I still am, I suppose—but, to be honest, of late, I’ve not had much time to think about it, what with Nadia’s sister being here. And now that she’s coming to Ireland with us, well, you’ll see for yourself, but she’s a handful.’
Tim stopped and looked at her.
‘I made one last attempt to speak to Rosemary and Charles last week.’
Carmel waited. He never really discussed his son and daughter; Carmel just knew they were estranged.
‘I thought now that Brian is gone, they might... Anyway, they made it very clear they still want nothing to do with me, not now, nor at any time in the future.’ The pain was written all over his face.
‘Why not?’
He poured her coffee.
‘I approached them a few years ago. I never said anything about Brian or anything at that stage, but they were not willing to even meet me. Then, soon after Brian died, I don’t know, I just wanted to see them, to explain things in my own way, not the version they would have got from Marjorie, so I convinced them to meet me in a hotel bar. I told them everything; I mean, they are middle-aged people now. But they said that as far as they were concerned, I had abandoned them when they were very young, they’d grown up without me, and they didn’t need me. They are very bitter at how I deserted their mother, as they see it. The realisation that I was gay seemed to be something they found disgusting, by the way they reacted, but it changed nothing. In fact, it made things even worse. So, I left that day, devastated, but there was nothing I could do. Now that I have this land in Ireland, I was going to offer them each a fifty-percent share, call it bribery if you like, and so I wrote to them both and made the offer. I got this last week.’
He pushed a letter towards her.
Carmel took it out of the envelope and unfolded the thick cream paper. It was a solicitor’s letter threatening a barring order if Tim ever tried to make contact with either Rosemary Taylor or her brother or any member of their family in the future.
‘Oh, Tim, I’m so sorry.’ She wanted to hug him, but she resisted. He stood tall and erect, his white hair brushed back from his high forehead. He wore a shirt and tie every day of his life, and while he wasn’t forbidding exactly, he was somewhat private and a little bit aloof. She knew he’d told nobody about his life, his loss of Brian or his children, except her, and she was profoundly touched.
‘So that’s that. I never had a relationship with them to lose, but any hope of a reconciliation is truly dead in the water now, isn’t it?’ He shrugged.
Carmel nodded. There was no point in giving false hope.
‘We are a lot alike, you and I,’ she said. He nodded slowly. ‘We’re both a bit outside of the world, a bit, I don’t know, separate. Others seem to interact more easily with society.’
‘They had normal upbringings by people who loved them. I think that’s the difference.’ Tim sighed. ‘But, yes, we have a lot in common.’
‘So this is the reason you won’t come to Ireland?’ Carmel asked, glancing at the envelope with the solicitor’s letter.
‘There seems no point. There’s a young couple renting the place, farming it; their family and mine have been neighbours for generations. I have enough money, my needs are few these days, so I just haven’t the heart for it.’
Carmel knew going back to Westport would be hard for him, but she believed it would ultimately do him good, as it would her. Bury the ghosts, as it were.
‘Please reconsider, Tim. We are your friends, and Joe and the McDaids are Brian’s family, which makes them yours, too. My dad was only saying the other night that you and Brian had a long and happy marriage, and that makes you a McDaid, too. Sure, neither of us exactly fits the bill, but they are offering us their hospitality, their homes and hearts, and maybe we should take it. To hell with your children; they’ve made their choice. Let’s go over to Ireland, to Brian’s family, and tell them who you really are. Claim him as yours after all these years. Let them know their uncle was loved and had a full life, a happy life. You can let them know how much their uncle Brian meant to you, be authentic for maybe the first time. I know you probably think I’m begging you for selfish reasons, and I am to a certain extent, but I really do think it would do you good as well.’
She saw the impact her words had on Tim. He wasn’t able to speak for a second. Then he said, ‘Maybe you’re right. It would feel good to be honest, especially with people who loved Brian, too. I hated sneaking around. I always wanted to reassure him that it wasn’t because I was ashamed of him, or of what we had, but because I promised Marjorie I wouldn’t ever reveal what I was. She felt it was the least I could do for her after treating her so badly...’
You could only barely hear the hint of an Irish accent, after sixty years in the UK.
‘And now the thought of going back,’ he went on. ‘Dublin would be OK, but Mayo... I don’t know if I can. I was forcing myself to go as it was, thinking if it would fix things with Charles and Rosemary, but now that it won’t...’
‘Are you not even a bit curious to go back, to be in the house where you grew up?’ Carmel hoped she wasn’t being insensitive, but the idea of having a home and having no interest in it was a hard one for her to grasp.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ve no happy memories there. It wasn’t a particularly happy house, even before my father threw me out. My mother was fervently religious, to the point of obsession actually, and my father was a bigot. They were well matched. I never fitted in, and back then, nobody spoke about anything. Really, they didn’t. Farming, the price of things, the neighbours—that was all they talked about. I knew there was something wrong with me, from a very young age, but I could never tell anyone. I didn’t even know what it was to be honest. But when the local lads were chasing after the local farmer’s daughters, driven on by lust and greed for land, I just didn’t get it. I definitely lacked the lust part, and the idea of farming even more land filled me with horror. I didn’t want
to farm the land I had, but as an only child, my future seemed set in stone.
‘One girl, Kitty Lynch, was my friend. She seemed to just like me for me and didn’t make any demands. She was the one that got me into gardening, actually; her parents’ garden was the talk of the town. Brian took over the garden here, but he was into all the exotic plants. I love wild flowers. When I lived back in Westport, I planted a wild flower garden in some waste ground at the back of the house. Mam could see it when she was at the kitchen sink, and she said it cheered her up no end to see the different flowers coming at different times. I think it was the only time in my life that I pleased her. My father thought it was ridiculous, of course, that a young fella would be planting flowers when there was farming to be done, but he ignored me most of the time anyway. Just more proof that I wasn’t what he wanted in a son, I suppose. All through my late teens, and up to the time they threw me out really, Kitty and I would pal around, getting wild flower roots in the hedgerows all around, so everyone thought we were the makings of a match, though we were never more than friends. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have cracked up. I left without a word to her. I’ve always regretted that.’
‘Is she still there?’ Carmel asked. ‘I’ve no idea, though I doubt it. She’d be seventy-seven now. She didn’t come to my mother’s funeral, so I’m assuming she’s either dead or has moved away. I wouldn’t blame her, getting out of that God-forsaken place.’ He sighed heavily.
‘Were you never tempted to go back, after your father died? See if you could patch things up with your mother at least?’ The idea of having a mother, knowing she was there, and still choosing not to have anything to do with her was strange to Carmel.
‘No, never. That night when my father found me in the barn with Noel Togher, well, it wasn’t pleasant. Noel was married, the previous summer, but he was gay. He and I sought each other out, almost intuitively, but there was no relationship—we never talked, we just met occasionally and, well, it was the release valve we both needed, I suppose. I hated myself, and in a way, I hated him too. It was complicated; I was so screwed up, as they say nowadays. My father came into the barn, I think he might have seen us go in, and he was armed with a big shovel. He clouted Noel across the back of the head, knocked him out, drew blood and everything, and then he beat me up. I let him, even though I was bigger than him by that stage. I don’t know, maybe I felt I deserved it or something, but he really tore into me. Blood, broken ribs, the whole lot. He called me all the names he could think of, and then he told me to get the hell off his farm and to never darken his door again. So I didn’t. I left that day. I didn’t even stop to say goodbye to Kitty. I felt terrible, but I was in such a state after the beating my father gave me, I would have frightened the life out of her, and anyway, I couldn’t face her. I was so ashamed.’
Carmel sat in silence. Tim had given her the outline of the story before, but this was the first time she’d heard the details.
‘The only place I could get to was England,’ he went on. ‘I had no money, no real skills, no friends… I was so lonely at first over here, I wrote to my mother. She replied, care of a priest I knew down in Cricklewood. I don’t know if my father told her why he threw me out, but I don’t think he did because she didn’t mention it. All I got back was a short note, all about saying my prayers and going to mass and all of that, but nothing more. She wrote again, later, to tell me my father had died. He got cancer,’ he paused. ‘I didn’t go back.The next time I had anything to do with her was arranging her funeral. I lived up on the Kilburn High Road at that time. I’ll never forget the feeling, turning the key in the lock of my flat when I came home after burying my mother, the emptiness, the loneliness. I’ll take that feeling to the grave with me.’
‘Is that why you married?’ Carmel asked gently. ‘Because you were lonely?’
‘I suppose so. I thought if I could just ignore the part of me that was attracted to men, then everything would work out. Marjorie was nice. She was a well-brought-up girl who wouldn’t dream of having relations before marriage or anything, so I was off the hook on that front, for the entire courtship. She would say how lucky she was to have met someone so respectful, when her friends’ boyfriends were forever trying to grope them in the back row of the pictures. She was nice, and she used to bring me home to her parents’ house for tea. It felt so comforting to be in a proper home. I was living in that flat in Kilburn, that’s where all the Irish were, and I’d got a job in Lloyds Bank. Just a clerk to start with, but I was making progress, so from Marjorie’s perspective, I was a good, safe bet. I didn’t drink or smoke or go with women. I was steady and likely to be able to provide for her. So she angled for a ring, and eventually, when I could think of no more excuses, I proposed marriage.’
Carmel was confused. ‘But you surely didn’t think it would work out?’
Tim sighed and sat back in his chair, the home he and Brian had built together all around him, giving him comfort.
‘I don’t know. I just thought maybe I could deny that part of me. I’d never had any relationships with men after the Noel experience, and that wasn’t a relationship at all. Marjorie was going to break it off if I didn’t propose, so I asked her. I know, to someone of your generation, it seems mad, but I can’t tell you how different things were then, not like now, where homosexuality is fine, no problems. It wasn’t like that then. Back in Ireland, you could be arrested, put in prison, made to take chemical castration drugs. It was terrifying, and even in London, society was not accepting. Marjorie and a nice safe life was a much more appealing prospect.’
‘So you married, and then what?’ Carmel was intrigued.
‘Well, we married, and she had the children, Charles first then Rosemary. I managed that much, though I doubt it was much fun for her, and for me, well, it was awful. And then, once the children were born, she announced that she was more or less done with the sex thing. Lots of women of her generation felt that way, I’m told, that it was a nasty but necessary business, and once you had your children you could happily dispense with it all. That suited me perfectly, and you know, Carmel, we kind of rubbed along together fine for a while. The children were lovely, and I was promoted in the bank. We had a nice house, played tennis, went to drinks parties, it was all fine.’
Tim stopped, and Carmel wondered if he was finished with his confidences. Even though she’d known him almost a year, this intimacy was new.
‘I’m sorry, this must be boring you to tears, listening to my tale of woe.’ He went to gather the cups.
‘No, quite the opposite actually. It’s so interesting. What happened between you and Marjorie if everything was going along fine?’
‘Brian happened.’ She could hear the pain of losing Brian McDaid in Tim’s voice, as raw as the night she came to tell him Brian was dead. He died in Aashna with her and Sharif beside him, and she’d wanted to be the one to break the news to Tim. They’d said their goodbyes, and Brian hadn’t wanted to put Tim through watching him die, so he’d asked Sharif not to tell Tim that the end was as close as it was.
‘I met him through a work thing. He was in insurance, I was in banking, not exactly rock and roll, or what you’d imagine two young men in the late sixties to be like. Films and so on always present the sixties in London as all Carnaby Street and flares and outrageous behaviour, but we were so conservative. Suits every day, church goers, neither of us drank in those days… But when we met, I don’t know, something just clicked. We played tennis together, a perfectly reasonable activity for two young men; we even took up golf. We were both hopeless, but it allowed us to spend time together without arousing suspicion. I... Well, we, I suppose... We fell in love, and for me, it was the first time. For him, too, I discovered, and we just couldn’t get enough of each other. He’d heard about places, down in Soho, where men would go, to be together, so one night we arranged to meet, and down we went.’
Carmel tried to visualise Tim and Brian, terrified but excited to go somewhere they could relax tog
ether. Life was so hard for gay people then, compared to now. She thought of her friend Zane, the care assistant at Aashna, with his endless swiping left or right on Grindr, the gay dating app.
‘How did it go?’ She was almost afraid to ask.
‘It was...marvellous, really, an eye-opener, no doubt about that. We must have stuck out like sore thumbs, the scene was so very camp, even then. Lots of sequins and colour. We got two beers and sat at the bar, another first for us, and just took it all in. It was the first time in my life I didn’t feel like a freak of nature.’
‘Did Marjorie find out? Is that what ended it?’ Carmel was hanging on every word.
‘Yes and no. She didn’t like Brian; she was very racist against the Irish. A lot of people were; signs up on digs: no blacks, no dogs, no Irish. It was rampant, and even though I was Irish, she always complimented me on having lost my accent completely. I never spoke about Ireland, never wanted to go back, so as far as she was concerned, that was fine. I suppose I lost my accent on purpose, immediately I landed here, but Brian, as you know, was a pure Dub, and there was no getting rid of his Dublin accent. Marjorie hated that. Maybe on some level she knew, sensed something, who knows? Anyway, she said she didn’t like him and she didn’t trust him and that she didn’t want me seeing him anymore, like I was a child. We fought, and she demanded to know why I was so determined to go against her wishes. So, I just blurted it out. I think I actually wanted something to happen. I wasn’t happy sneaking around with Brian while simultaneously playing happy family with Marjorie and the children.’
‘So you just told her you were gay?’ Carmel was incredulous, trying to picture the scene.
The Carmel Sheehan Story Page 33