by Simon Bourke
“Jonathan was just telling me that his birth-mother is Irish.”
“Is she, Jonathan?” Margaret asked in surprise.
“Yes, Mum. I’m Irish now,” he said, deadpan.
“No, you’re not, Jonathan. Don’t be silly.”
“I am, Mum,” he persisted, gloomy now.
“Is this your fault, Malcolm? Is that what you’ve been telling him?”
“Don’t look at me, love. I just told him that we’ll have no Irish children in this house!”
Malcolm punched his son on the arm and then scarpered to the living-room, chortling like a child. Jonathan vaulted the kitchen table in pursuit, almost knocking his mother over in the process.
“Come back, ya English buggah!” he bellowed in an implausible Irish brogue.
At that moment Sophie reappeared in the hallway, ready to resume chatting, and was instead dragged into the sitting-room by her brother.
“Oi’ve found one. Oi’ve found one,” Jonathan hollered in his new accent. “A little English gurl, oi’ve found one!”
“Put me down, Jonathan,” Sophie protested, but she was laughing too now.
She didn’t know why her brother was talking in a funny voice or why her father was hiding behind the couch grinning like an idiot, but she liked it. She liked that they were all running around like fools, it was fun. So she joined in, mimicking Jonathan’s accent and tackling her father with glee when he tried to come out from his hiding-place.
Margaret thought of following them to admonish them for being so ridiculous, but instead she stayed put in the kitchen, just listening. It had been a while since their house had reverberated to the sounds of laughter, and she wanted to savour it.
11
It was the third letter which caused her to act. On the surface, it was much the same as the previous two, but with one small difference: this one stated that it was the last of its kind. There would be no more. This was her last chance, so she called Adele. She always called Adele in times of need.
“Hi, Nades. What’s up?”
She was her usual airy self, probably up since cockcrow; organising lunches, sending kids to school, pecking her husband on the cheek, getting her house in order and generally being a domestic goddess. Sinéad, on the other hand, had crawled out of bed at midday and had used an unwashed cup for her tea.
“Adele, are you busy?”
“Not really, just watching Loose Women. They’re some laugh, there’s this wan …”
“Could you come over? It’s important.”
“Okay, Sinéad,” she said, suddenly serious. “Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine, just need to talk to you about something.”
“Okay, I’ll be over in ten minutes.”
Sinéad set about tidying up a bit. This involved emptying ashtrays and throwing various items of cutlery into the sink. Her flat was in a constant state of disarray. It was too small; a poky little kitchen, a living-room not much bigger and a bedroom which had long since been swamped by her meagre belongings. She hated it, but it was all she could afford. The alternative was moving back in with her parents – and that didn’t bear thinking about. They had tried to insist on her moving in with them during her latest bout of depression, but she had resisted, knowing that a night spent under their roof would send her over the edge completely. Her flat, bleak as it was, was preferable to a stay at that madhouse, with that woman.
The doorbell rang. Adele had been quick; she probably thought Sinéad was having another one of her ‘spells’ and had hurried over in a panic. She could rest easy on that front. Sinéad was relatively calm by her standards; if anyone was going to get into a frenzy today, it would be Adele. She alone knew about the child Sinéad had given away, but they rarely discussed it and hadn’t done in years. She had been a rock, a little trouper; always there for her, helping in whatever way she could and guarding Sinéad’s secret with her life. When everyone had wondered what had befallen Sinéad, how she’d gone from being the sparkiest McLoughlin girl to a morose young woman, Adele said nothing. She was her only confidante, the one person she could turn to when grief threatened to overwhelm her. Through it all: her failed marriage, the troubled relationships that followed, the guilt, sadness, anger and descent into depression, Adele had always been there by her side, aiding her as best she could. And now, with another potential crisis in the offing, it was Adele she turned to once more.
“What’s up, sis?” she asked as Sinéad let her in.
The youngest McLoughlin sister was the success story of the family. While Sinéad stumbled from one disaster to the next, Adele had become the daughter her parents had always dreamed of. She’d married well to a trainee barrister called Marcus, who would eventually become a defence lawyer earning six figures per annum – Patricia loved him. They lived in a four-bedroom palace on the outskirts of town, a home so regal that their mother got dressed up just to visit. Three magnificent children were produced: two girls and a boy, each lovelier than the last. They owned separate cars – a people-carrier for her and a saloon for him – holidayed in the Caribbean and hosted dinner-parties on the last Friday of every month. They were part of Dooncurra’s elite, if indeed such a thing existed. In a manner befitting the wife of a successful barrister, Adele was always immaculately turned out, sporting fashions her sisters wouldn’t discover for another five years. Despite having three children under the age of six, she maintained the svelte frame of a woman ten years her junior. The others marvelled at how she managed it, but then again she was at Pilates, aerobics and yoga every other day, why wouldn’t she be a yummy mummy?
“How are the kids?” Sinéad asked, not wanting to spring the news on her without some polite preliminaries.
“Oh, they’re in great form. Dylan loves his hurling practice, he talks about nothing else all week. We got him a new helmet the other day and he wears it around the house.”
Adele tailed off; she could see that her sister had little interest in Dylan’s fledging hurling career.
“Sinéad, what is it?”
“I’ll just put the kettle on,” she replied, heading to the kitchen.
Adele stared after her, irritated. Why did she have to drag everything out? It drove her mad. All this humming and hawing, this big build-up; just tell me, for Christ’s sake! If she tried to force Sinéad’s hand, though, she might decide not to tell her at all. She’d get all sniffy and say it was nothing. Don’t worry, I’m grand. So Adele had to sit there and wait until her highness felt ready to spill the beans.
With the tea poured, they settled in at the kitchen table. Adele saw that her sister was holding a letter. “Is that what you wanted to talk about, Nades?”
Sinéad looked at her, took a deep breath and handed her the letter. Adele took a quick slurp of her tea and opened the mysterious missive. As she read, Sinéad scanned her face for a reaction. She hoped Adele wouldn’t get cross at her for ignoring the first two letters.
The letter was short, and it didn’t take Adele long to get to the end. She put it down, and stared open-mouthed at her sister.
“Oh, my God, Sinéad,” she whispered. “Oh, my God.”
Sinéad nodded glumly.
“Aren’t you delighted? He wants to see you! Imagine!”
“Ah, I don’t know, Adele.”
“What d’you mean?”
“It’s just not a good time.”
“Are you kidding me? ‘Not a good time’? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous,” Sinéad said defensively. If she’d known Adele would react like this, she wouldn’t have told her.
“But he’s your son, Sinéad; you have to see him.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is from where I’m sitting.”
Sinéad shook her head forcibly. “What’s he going to think of me? Nearly forty, living
on my own; no husband, no children, no job. I’m an embarrassment.”
“Oh, Nades, you’re not an embarrassment. Don’t say things like that.”
“But look at me, look at this!” Sinéad said gesturing around her. “He’s probably from a well-off family; what’s he going to think?”
“None of that matters, Sinéad. If he’s anything like you, he’ll be able to see beyond all that stuff and realise what a wonderful person you are.”
Sinéad snorted her disagreement. “Then there’s the fact that I gave him away; how do I explain that?”
“We’ve been over all this, Sinéad. We discussed what we’d do if this day ever came.”
“It doesn’t make it any easier, though.”
“Well, look at it this way; would you rather risk meeting him now or ignore this letter and risk never seeing him, ever?”
Sinéad knew Adele was right. Her shoulders sagged in defeat. She’d been hoping her sister would offer her a way out, an excuse not to go through with it. She’d done quite the opposite. She’d confirmed what Sinéad had suspected, that she didn’t have a choice. She had to do this, but at least now she had someone to blame when it all went wrong.
They spent the rest of the afternoon chatting about it all. Adele’s imagination running wild:
“I bet he’s really posh.”
“I bet he’s really handsome.”
“I bet he’s really tall.”
Adele didn’t have a very vivid imagination.
By the time her sister left to resume her wifely duties, Sinéad had allowed herself to get caught up in the excitement. Maybe it wouldn’t be a disaster after all. She’d try and lose some weight, give her flat a big tidy-up, get herself in order. She could tell him she was between jobs, a career woman; that sounded better, more impressive. Before she could prepare for their meeting, though, she had another little job to do: telling her parents about their long-lost grandson.
12
She decided that the best course of action was to tell her father and let him look after the rest.
She just couldn’t face telling her mother; the condemnation, the reprisals, the drama, it would be too much. Obviously she would have to discuss it with her at some point, but it would be best to let her father soften her up first. Breaking the news to him wouldn’t be easy either, in spite of how close they were. She was his favourite, the one he’d doted on more than any of the others; the news would hurt him, just as he’d been hurt by her mysterious disappearance all those years ago when she’d vanished in the middle of the night without any warning and returned six months later, offering nothing in the way of an explanation. To his credit he’d welcomed her back with open arms, never questioning her or airing whatever suspicions he might have had, and within weeks things were back to normal, their bond as strong as ever. She and her father were different to the rest of them. They needed one another.
This was confirmed during her decline into an all-consuming depression which threatened to cut her off from society completely. She spent most of her days in bed, not leaving her flat for months on end. Over time, her visitors dried up. First her mother stopped calling, then Valerie, then Patrick and finally even Adele; but her father came every day without fail. He never stopped believing in her. He arrived at her door every evening, not leaving until she let him in, then busied himself with her dinner, heating up a stew or a casserole cooked by Patricia earlier that day. He put on the kettle, did the washing-up, the hoovering, and brought in the tea for his daughter. She asked to be left alone, complaining bitterly when he opened the curtains and let in the failing light, but he took no notice. Instead he pulled up the little hard-backed chair and sat by her side, all chatty and nice, and told her about his day. He told her how he was sick of work and couldn’t wait to hit retirement age in a couple of years. How he was going to buy a camper van and bring her off up the country to see those places they’d always talked about: The Giant’s Causeway, the Wicklow mountains, the Ring of Kerry; maybe they’d even look for the house from Father Ted, which was in County Clare somewhere. He told her stories about his own childhood, silly little anecdotes about how different life was back then. And he told her about his own mother and how she had suffered from depression. How he had had to look after her when his father died, and how she’d spent week after week laid up in bed, just like Sinéad was now. And how she had eventually got through it and resumed normal life again. Most of what he said washed over her, she just wanted to be left alone, but when he told her about his mother, her grandmother she listened intently. It was comforting to know she wasn’t the only afflicted one in the family.
“How old was she when this started, Dad?”
“Oh, I couldn’t tell you, Sinéad. I barely remember her being any other way.”
“Was it before or after Granddad died?”
“I think she always suffered with it, but it definitely got worse after my father died.”
“And what would she be like?”
“She wouldn’t be able to function; she’d take to the bed and leave me and your uncle Mike to fend for ourselves.”
“Like me,” Sinéad said to herself.
“Yes, Sinéad. But she always pulled through, and you will too.”
“Do you think that’s where I get it from, Dad, the depression?”
Noel nodded sagely. “There’s a touch of it in all the McLoughlins.”
“Really? Who else, Dad?”
He looked at her coyly. “Your old dad has been consumed by the darkness from time to time.”
“You, Dad? God, I would never have known.”
“Ah, this is going way back, Sinéad. You were only a little thing at the time.”
“What happened?”
He waved her away dismissively, less comfortable when talking about his own travails.
“The point is, Sinéad, I’m sitting here looking at you now, which means I came through it.”
He took her by the hand and looked at her intently. “No matter how bad things seem right now, they will get better, I promise you. I promise you, Sinéad.”
That was enough to set her off, but her tears weren’t the empty, hopeless tears she’d shed night after night for the past month; they were tears of gratitude and love, tears of appreciation for her father, the man she’d always loved and who’d always loved her back unconditionally.
He was right, she did come through it. It was a slow process, but with his support she found the strength to rally against what ailed her. He encouraged her to go to the doctor, something neither he nor his mother had ever tried, and it turned out to be the best thing she’d ever done. There was so much help out there, services she’d never known existed: group sessions, cognitive behaviour therapy, one-on-one counselling. It was fantastic. And then there was the medication. She’d been reluctant at first, having heard bad things about the tablets, but they provided the boost she needed to overcome her daily struggles. It took time, and there were still mornings when all she wanted to do was turn over and go back to sleep for the rest of the day, but gradually her quality of life began to improve. There was always the threat of the depression returning, it loomed over her all the time, but if it was to come back she felt better equipped to deal with it. She’d achieved a level of control; her life had become worth living again. Then those bloody letters came and threatened to ruin everything.
*
Her plan was to break the news during one of their long walks in the woods. They still shared these walks, something they’d done since Sinéad was a child, and made a point of going at least once a week. She’d been invited to her parent’s house for Sunday dinner, just her, none of the others – they had all families of their own – and this provided her with the perfect opportunity. Her father loved a long walk after his Sunday dinner. “Have to burn off all these spuds,” he’d say, marching out the back door. This coming Sunday they c
ould burn them off together. There’d be no chance of her mother accompanying them; her arthritis was so bad that she could barely walk down to the hill to the shop these days. It wasn’t so much that she hated her mother, she loved her dearly, with all her heart – she just couldn’t bear to be around her for too long. The sanctimonious statements, thinly-veiled insults and needling criticism which characterised her every word tore away at Sinéad until she had to go out to the back garden for a fag, lest she throttle her. That was just her way, Sinéad reasoned, she couldn’t help it. None of the others came in for that sort of treatment, though, they were treated like royalty on the rare occasions they came to visit. Sinéad made an effort to go and see her most days; she helped out with anything that needed to be done around the house, went to the shop for her, and played the dutiful daughter, receiving barely a word of thanks. If, however, Adele chose to grace them with her presence, Patricia would bubble up in appreciation, moved to tears as she wondered what on earth she’d done to deserve such an amazing child. For the next few days, that was all she would talk about: how amazing Adele was, how her children were a credit to her and how she was everything Sinéad wasn’t. Even Valerie, who lived fifty miles away in County Tipperary, was afforded heroine status if she so much as picked up the phone to ring her mother. Sinéad chose not to dwell on the injustice of it all. Thanks to her counselling, she was learning to adopt a more positive attitude. She was growing as a person, and even her mother couldn’t halt her progress.
“Fancy a walk, Dad?” she asked as the last plate was dried and put away.
“Yes, I think so. Will you be all right on your own, Trish?”
“Oh, I will,” Patricia replied sadly. She wasn’t particularly bothered about being left on her own, but never missed an opportunity to play the victim.
“C’mon so, girly,” Noel said to Sinéad, ignoring his wife’s plea for martyrdom.
“The woods, Dad, yeah?”
“Yep”.
Because of the damp weather, there weren’t as many walkers around as usual. Sinéad preferred it that way. Bumping into other people only ruined the sense of isolation, reminding her that eventually they would have to return to normality. As soon as they entered the quiet serenity of the forest, she began planning her assault. She’d already figured out exactly what she was going to say, so all that was left was the when and the how. Would she casually drop it into the conversation as they strolled through the ferns, wait until they were taking a rest at one of the seated areas, or just spring it on him when he least expected it?