by Claire Allan
She had changed the subject subtly shortly after and now, listening to Hope talk about how she could pack up all her life, she decided to try and put a positive spin on things. “It would make it easier for you to go on your travels then, wouldn’t it? Without having to worry about where to store everything?”
“I suppose. Every cloud,” Hope said with a smile before announcing she was going for a shower.
Alone, Ava found her mind turn back to the letter they had found in the attic. She knew they should read it, that it obviously contained something which Betty wanted to share, and while she would have very much liked to continue to put it off for as long as possible, her nosiness was getting the better of her.
Maybe, however, she should get Hope to read it. Hope could edit it, after all, if there were any parts which she would deem too possibly upsetting for a hormonal pregnant woman. She picked up the envelope nonetheless and held it, wondering what it could possibly contain.
When Hope padded back in her dressing-gown, a towel turbaned on her head, Ava nodded. “I think I’m ready to read this bad boy now.”
“Are you sure?” Hope asked.
“Well, not really. But we should, shouldn’t we?”
Hope nodded. “Look, we’ll read it together. Safety in numbers and all that.”
“I like the sound of that,” Ava said softly, tearing open the envelope and pulling out several sheets of paper.
They sat close together, Ava holding the letter, her eyes fixed on the first page as Hope began to read aloud: “My dear girls, please be together when you read this. I need you to be there for one another. Hope, I know how strong you can be and, Ava, I have every faith in you.”
The girls glanced at each other and back to the letter.They both felt scared to read on.
Then Hope continued: “I have thought long and hard about writing this letter. Some things, they say, are best left in the past. But some things – some things have a habit of coming out in the wash. I sort of thought this would come out before now. That I would have had a call or a letter to tell me that the truth was out.I waited for it. I hoped for it, I longed for it and I feared it. I promised myself that I wouldn’t be the one to drop the bomb – that I would wait patiently for someone else to do that for me. As the years passed I started to realise that might never happen – but then I wondered what if it did – what if all this came out sometime in the future and I wasn’t there to explain it? I wasn’t there to answer your questions. I could forgive myself for a lot, but I couldn’t forgive myself for that.”
Ava and Hope looked ateach other again, alarmed. Ava felt her heartbeat quicken. The paleness creeping over her cousin’s face made her realise she was not alone in feeling as if the carpet was just about to be pulled square out from under their feet, sending them both heading, arse first, to the floor with a thump.
Hope read on, her voice shaking as she formed the words: “Ava, my darling, please forgive me . . .”
There was a part of Ava that wanted to put her fingers in her ears and shout “La la la, not listening! Can’t hear you!” as loud as she could while walking out of the room. The sound of her heartbeat thudding in her ears threatened to drown out Hope’s voice. Focus, she whispered under her breath as she felt Hope’s hand on hers – a steadying force when everything felt as if it was falling apart.
“Claude was my real love. I have told you that. But three years before there was someone else. It was wrong. I knew it was wrong, but I was young and stupid and thought I knew all there was to know about the world. My friends tried to warn me. Derry girls, especially Creggan girls, didn’t go out with soldiers from the British army. But, when I saw Tim, I thought we could rise above it all. He was a hopeless flirt – with his broad London accent and his buzz cut, he looked and sounded more exciting than the Derrymen with their big mops of hair and their anger at the world. So we went out – a couple of times. And he told me I was special and that we would get away from it all. And I believed him. I believed him so much that when he said he wanted to take me to bed, I let him.And I got pregnant.”
Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Ava felt a layer of her life slip away. Hope’s grip on her hand grew tighter. She dared not look up.
“You can imagine how that went down at home. Perhaps you can’t. You’ve grown into adulthood in a changed world. My parents weren’t bad people. They were scared people. I’ll never forget the look on your grandfather’s face. This was an age when girls who went out with the Brits were tarred and feathered – tied to lamp-posts, paint poured on them, signs tied round their necks declaring them to be whores. And those were the lucky ones.
My parents wanted to make things better. They wanted to sort it out. They didn’t want to have the double shame of a daughter with a baby and no wedding ring whose father was some soldier who had done a runner. But the fact that it was a Britsh soldier was beyond all endurance. So there was a family meeting. Everyone came. Ava, your mam came.”
Cora’s my mum. She’s still my mum.
“Cora had been trying for a baby for the longest time, but it hadn’t happened. She was devastated. Of course in those days you didn’t go running to the doctor. You just accepted your lot. God, she wanted a baby. She really wanted a baby and it wasn’t that I didn’t want you, Ava . . .”
The guttural sound which came from Ava’s mouth rang around the room. Her stomach contracted, her hands turned clammy and she pulled them away from Hope which was a mistake. Hope had been her anchor. With her anchor gone she was free-floating, floating away, the room swimming.
She rushed to the terrace to drink in what air she could, deep into her lungs. No amount of breathing – fast, heavy, hurried, would calm her down. The air whooshed in and out of her lungs at a speed she could barely control. Was Betty really telling her she was her mother? She couldn’t be her mother. That was ridiculous. Sure, she had seen her birth certificate. Mother’s name: Cora Mullen. Not Betty Scott. Father’s name: William Mullen. Not Tim the soldier. She had seen it. Christ, she had dug it out not two months ago when she was reorganising her filing system. It was a birth certificate. She was sure of it. Wasn’t she?Her mind flashed back over the thirty-four years of her life. Images of Cora cuddling her. Her granny holding her extra tight. Faded images of Christmas trees and Sindy houses and dolls and prams. “You’re my girl,” her mammy would say, kissing her head. Her mum crying on her wedding day. Holding her hand as she pushed Maisie into the world. She was her mum.
Then Betty’s smile. They had felt connected. How Betty had held her extra tight when she left. She thought it had been through drink . . .
Feeling her head start to swim, stars dancing in front of her eyes she felt Hope behind her, holding her up.
“It’s not true,” she said, as Hope led her to a chair. “It’s not true.”
Hope didn’t reply except to shush her tears. Ava supposed there wasn’t much she could say. Should she phone Cora, and ask her straight out? Did she even want to phone Cora? Should she still call her ‘mum’? Was her whole life a big fat lie? Who was she? Her head hurt as much as her heart.
“Give me the letter,” she said, steeling herself, and Hopehanded it over then sat beside her. She scanned it again, re-reading the words – the confession – as she rushed to read what else Betty would or could say to try and make this make any kind of sense.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want you, Ava. I didn’t know what I wanted really. I thought I was all grown up but faced with a baby and all that entailed and the fear that if people found out . . . Needless to say, Tim didn’t want to know. I told him and he didn’t even respond. He just walked away. What a big brave soldier he was.
It was Mammy who came up with the idea that Cora and I would go away to look after an ‘elderly aunt’ and when the time was right we would come back and Cora would present ’her’ baby to the world. We went to Dublin, to a distant family member who thankfully was a bit more liberal about such matters and didn’t spend five and half months making m
e feel like a fallen woman. As far as the doctors were concerned, my name was Cora Mullen. I was twenty-six years old and married and this baby belonged to me and my husband William. It was easy really.”
My whole life has been built on a lie.
“We could get away with it, because no one knew us. No one questioned the medical files. If they had their suspicions they said nothing. So I had you. Cora was by my side, with me calling her Betty and she calling me Cora and she was the first person to hold you. You were beautiful. A part of me ached for you. But seeing my sister – the joy on her face – the love for you. Knowing that I wanted to go home. That I had to be able to show my face. That I was young and stupid and had no security to offer you. I let her hold you. I let her welcome you into the world, all the time knowing that you had changed my life completely and utterly. That you had turned my life upside down.
Cora wasn’t selfish. Cora wasn’t cruel. She asked me so many times if I was sure. She held me as I cried and she apologised a million times. She offered to let me hold you so many times but, as much as I could chatter and smile and goo and gaa at you, it hurt too much to hold you in my arms.
The image of the photo they had found danced into her head. Betty standing at the side looking on. Cora grinning. How could she say Cora hadn’t been cruel? Nothing about this wasn’t insanely, horrifyingly cruel. Her grandparents? Had they been that scared? Images of wrinkly, cuddly old people who smelled of cinnamon lozenges and slipped fifty-pence pieces into her hand while smiling at her flooded her mind. They weren’t stupid people. They weren’t cruel people. Could they not have just stopped it all?
She pushed the images of her parents out of her head. She didn’t want to think about that. She could hear their voices in her head: “Never tell a lie” – “Your children are the most important things in your life” – “You mean so much to us . . .”
Her mother had never discussed her labour and delivery, Ava realised. She had said it had been eight hours but she had never said “God, it was tough!” It was always distant. This was why?
“Can I do anything?” she heard Hope say. “Get a drink of water? Sweet tea?”
“Jesus . . . tea with sugar in it makes me sick. No.No. Vodka? Have we vodka? Oh fuck, I’m pregnant!”
Cora had never been pregnant. But Betty – her poor barren aunt – well, she had most certainly been pregnant.
“Are you sorry we read it?” Hope asked.
“Of course not,” Ava said, steadying herself. “Wouldn’t you want to know? You know, preferably not when you are thirty-four and think you have it all sussed. Jesus. A letter? She tells me in a letter and she’s not even here for me to shout at? The bitch!”
Ava wasn’t really angry with Betty. Or maybe she was. She didn’t know who the fuck she was angry with. Or sad about. Or what her name was anymore. She was named after Ava Gardner, her mother had told her. Who had chosen that name? Oh Christ. She dropped her head to her hands, while Hope rubbed her back.
“Did you know?” Ava asked, sitting bolt upright. “Is that why you are here? Do you know? Did she tell you when you were here? When you had one of your midnight chats?”
“No,” Hope said. “No. She didn’t tell me much. She was still grieving for Claude. All of this is new. Jesus – I would have told you. I would have.”
Ava shook her head, which felt weird. All of her felt weird. Lifting the letter again, she read on:
I fell into a routine. And you must understand when I met Claude he was my escape. In many ways it was a blessed relief that he had to leave the city. It gave me a get-out clause. It gave me permission to move on. I don’t understand why Mammy and Daddy were so against it. They said I was selfish and walking away – but you weren’t mine, Ava. You never had been.
Was I supposed to stay and have my nose rubbed in it? To watch you growing up from a step away?
Maybe I was being selfish but I had a chance at a new start – away from it all. And I loved Claude. He knew about you. I couldn’t have kept it from him and even as he proposed he said he would understand if I couldn’t go. But you had your life and I knew you couldn’t want more love than you were surrounded with. You may not feel it now, Ava, but you were lucky.
I almost told you. When I was back for Mammy’s funeral. I wanted to. For the first time really. Cora had always said that if I wanted to tell you, someday, she would try and understand, and I came so very close. But it would have been wrong.
It’s wrong now.
I know you are probably thinking it is wrong now. But as I said – just in case it came out. Just in case you wondered.
Don’t consider me your mammy.”
As if.
“Cora always was and always will be. I just had to tell you. Don’t you understand that I had to tell you?
Claude and I never had children. We did try. It didn’t happen. The irony wasn’t lost on either of us. We had been so sure it would happen. Claude had made a crib and I bought some things. This time I would be allowed to get excited about it. But it just never happened and we tried as best we could to put it behind us. Claude was wonderful. One day, after we had been trying for a few years, I came home to find the crib in the attic. The box of clothes in the attic too. “We’ll take them down when we need them,” he said softly and I nodded. What else was there to say? What I didn’t tell him was that in that box was a small, delicate, white, knitted cardigan. The first you wore. Which I knitted myself while in Dublin. Every now and again I would climb into the attic (and I bloody hate attics!) and take it out and look at it. Just hold it and smell it. And remember you.
Please forgive me. Is that asking too much? Maybe now it is, but maybe in time. And go easy on your mam. And know that I love you for the person you have become – the person you always were.
God bless you always.
All my love,
Betty
xxxx
That’s it, Ava thought, my life in a few pages. Or what is my life. What could have been my life.
“I need to phone Connor,” she said.
Hope nodded. “I understand.”
She didn’t want to speak to Cora. What would she say? In her mind there were 101 kneejerk reactions – veering from “Feck you anyway” to “I love you and I understand” and everything in between. Connor would make sense of it. Connor would know. He would say the right things in the way he always did and make her feel better. If not better, he would make her feel less shite.Right now, less shite would be good.
Lifting the phone, trying to find the right number and finding herself with the worst case of fat fingers ever, misdialling, skipping past his number and back again, she ended up throwing the phone at the corner of one of Betty’s squashiest cushions in frustration and screaming out a swear word. She looked to where Hope was sitting, staring at the ground. She felt sorry for her, ironically. It was Ava’s life which had been blown apart but Hope looked like she could run for the door and not stop.
“I didn’t know,” she muttered again.
“I know.”
Ava sat down, the swearing out of her – too numb to cry, shaking too much to dial Connor’s number. “I’m pregnant,” she said, feeling it was the only cohesive thought in her brain. “He doesn’t know that either. This will be some phonecall. ‘Hi, honey. My family have been lying all my life. Yes, they broke the law and, technically, I think I don’t even exist. Oh and I’m pregnant.”
She looked at Hope, who continued to look so utterly forlorn that she felt a burst of hysterical laughter rise up from her until she was almost bent double with the complete absurdity of it all.
Even as she laughed she knew it was a sign that the tears would follow. They always did and when she felt that something in her shift she was glad Hope was once again there to hold her until she stopped shaking. But God, she wished it had been Connor.
“I’ll phone Connor for you if you want,” Hope offered.
“No,” Ava said, her tears subsided and the numbness returned. “
I’ll phone him. Can you dial the number though?”
Retrieving the phone from the recesses of the sofa, Hope scrolled through the numbers until she found Connor’s listing. Pressing call, she handed it to Ava who took a deep breath and waited to hear his voice. She was not expecting him to answer amidst the hustle and bustle of Brannigan’s Bar.
“Hello?” he roared over a particularly raucous cheer.
“Connor?”
“Ava? Sorry, I’m in the pub. The match is on. Hang on. Hang on.”
The cheers became muffled as she heard him mutter and excuse his way through the throngs.
“Hang on!” he shouted again and she sat back on the bed, wondering just how many jars he had sunk already. Chances are he was out with his dad, and his brothers and maybe a cousin or two and things were probably getting messy. She chewed at her fingernail, her determination to tell him fading. Not this way at least.
His voice came on the line again. Cheery, beer-fuelled. “Hello, my pet, how are you? We’re in the pub – me and the boys. Mum has Maisie.”
She drank in his voice, even though he was obviously well oiled and high on testosterone. Tears pricked in her eyes as she realised it would be unfair to tell him any of it, not here and not now.
“I’m fine, Connor. I just wanted to talk to you . . .”
There was a pause before she heard another cheer go up and Connor roared, leaving her half deaf before apologising profusely. Rubbing her ear, she heard him mutter, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, pet. They scored! They only bloody scored! Sorry, what were you saying?”
“Just that I missed you,” she lied.
“Aw,” he said, his voice softening. “I miss you too, darling. Look, it’s crazy here. Can I call you later? Or in the morning? Not long now till you’re home.”
“Okay,” she said dejectedly.
“Are you okay?”