The box felt very light and I hoped with a sinking dread that it wasn’t empty. I placed it on the desk and, with trembling hands, lifted back the lid. “Yessss!” I hissed, punching the air when I saw the contents. I began to lift the articles out one by one.
There was a pink teddy bear with a white ribbon around its neck, a squeaky rubber Mickey Mouse toy that someone had obviously tried to eat judging by the teeth marks all over it, two pieces of paper and a black and white photograph.
I looked at the photograph but it meant nothing to me. It was of a lady, obviously posing to have a professional picture taken. She looked stiff and uncomfortable with her hand resting on the back of a chair as she stood poker-straight, wearing a buttoned-down flare coat and a hat with an ornamental hatpin at the front. I turned the photograph over to see if there was any writing on the back but there was nothing only stains and signs of discolouration.
Luke came back to join me and told me that I needn’t worry as Mammy and Donal had left to go down to the Smugglers’ Inn to get some wine for dinner.
“What have you found?” he asked, peering over my shoulder.
I shrugged and passed Luke the photo. “Mammy loves to talk about family history. She’s shown me lots of photographs in the past but I know I’ve never seen this person before.”
“Wonder who she is?” Luke said. “She looks like she’d be fun. I think she’s trying not to smile.”
Studying the photograph again I saw that the lady did seem to be struggling to keep her face straight. A slight twitch could be detected at the corner of her mouth.
I pursed my lips and put the picture to one side, then turned my attention to the rest of the box’s contents. Upon opening the first folded sheet of paper I stopped short and hugged it to my chest.
“Omigod, Georgina’s name’s on this!” I gripped Luke’s arm in excitement.
With further investigation, it appeared that the article in question was a baptismal certificate. I was transfixed. Not only did it contain my mother’s name, it also gave details of people with the same surname who had been appointed as my godparents.
“Hilary Delaney and Gerard Delaney,” Luke read over my shoulder. “Your aunt and uncle maybe?”
Hilary Delaney and Gerard Delaney, along with Georgina, had all attended a baptismal ceremony at a chapel on the Ormeau Road in Belfast for me when I was just five days old, according to the dates given.
I picked up the photograph again. “Do you see any resemblance?” I asked Luke who looked quizzically at me before taking the photograph from my hands and looking at it closely.
“Not instantly,” he said, “but it’s hard to tell. It’s an old black and white photograph and she’s wearing a hat. It’s not exactly clear but I bet I could magically enhance it with my equipment if I took it into the office with me.”
“No,” I said at once. “Mammy must never know that I’ve found it or that I’ve been doing any investigating. Everything must be left exactly as it was. I don’t want her to suspect anything.”
“Belfast is quite a long way from Donegal,” Luke said, frowning as he looked at the baptismal certificate again. “I wonder why you ended up being christened there?”
“Well, I was born there too. Look at this – there’s another piece of paper here. It looks like a drawing.”
The scene, which was sketched in pencil, depicted a bus stop with a variety of people standing waiting; there was a row of old houses behind this, one of which had a sign advertising clothing alterations. It was very detailed with lots of shading to convey the light and shadows of the surroundings and the patrons waiting at the bus stops all had intricate expressions drawn on their faces.
I was puzzled. “What does this have to do with anything?”
I turned the sheet over delicately, realising that it was already creased. This revealed nothing until I spotted a faded letterhead on the top right-hand corner of the page, telling me that the paper came from somewhere called St Catherine’s Lodge.
Chapter 19
Two months had passed since my big discovery and life had reverted to normal (or as normal as my life ever could be which wasn’t very). I had looked for St Catherine’s Lodge in the phone book, searched for it on the internet and asked my well-travelled colleagues from work if they had ever heard of it but so far had come up with absolutely nothing. It seemed to be a very elusive venue indeed but that only added to the mystery of it all and made me even more curious about where it was and indeed what it was.
It was the month of September and a very busy time within the college as new students were arriving daily (with their mammies and daddies) looking bewildered and scared in the morning but vamped up, dressed to kill and ready to take on the world or at least the town the same night). The more seasoned students who were in their placement year were coming to see me to discuss their future prospects. Some knew instinctively what they wanted to do and where they wanted to go but others needed guidance and that was something I was rather good at (great at fixing other people’s lives – positively shit at steering my own in the direction it needed to go).
I was trying to prepare questions for an induction quiz that was to take place that night but found my mind constantly wandering. My inability to concentrate was most annoying and people were starting to notice.
“Forgotten anything, Ruby?” Mr Reid enquired as he sauntered into my office and left student forms on my desk that needed a second signature.
Shit. I hoped I hadn’t misplaced a student (stranger things have happened, believe me) or missed a deadline.
“Your medical. You were supposed to go yesterday and didn’t show up. The clinic in Belfast phoned me this morning to see why you didn’t arrive. Any particular reason?”
I could have given him a list, starting with the fact that I knew I was fighting fit (seriously how many muscles were you in danger of straining sitting at a desk and organising a few students) and ending with the fact that I hated feckin doctors and knew that they weren’t crazy about me either. I shrugged my shoulders instead.
“Give me their number and I’ll reschedule it.”
“I’ll ring them and tell them you’ll be there tomorrow in the early afternoon,” Mr Reid responded. “Are you all right, Ruby? Anything you’d like to talk to me about?”
“I’m fine,” I lied and he carried on about his business and left me in peace.
Frankie wasn’t oblivious to my scattiness either but unlike the rest of the world she knew what was causing it.
“And you’re sure there was no address for this St Catherine’s Lodge?” she asked, not for the first or even the twenty-first time. “You couldn’t have missed it?”
I viewed Frankie with an impatient frown until she raised her eyes to heaven and set a cup of coffee in front of me. “Sorry, I know, stupid question, I’m sure you were far too thorough to have missed anything.”
We were sitting in my office having a well-deserved cup of coffee at eleven o’clock. I usually stipulated that a sticky bun was to be had in conjunction with the said coffee, but Frankie had banned herself from eating anything more calorific than a Weetabix bar and for some reason had presumed I would be delighted to accompany her in this tasteless venture. I feckin wasn’t but, as she was worse than Gillian McKeith with a sore arse, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. I looked dismally into my coffee cup.
“Frankie, I keep telling you – I practically devoured the box and its contents, I was so eager to get my hands on them. I examined every item really carefully but there was definitely no address. Nothing except the St Catherine’s Lodge letterhead. I presume it’s somewhere in Belfast as that’s where I was baptised and three members of the family who were so keen to get rid of me were hardly likely to traipse around the country looking for an ideal christening venue, were they? The only problem is that nobody seems to have heard of this lodge place. I’ve asked everybody. You have no idea how it broke my heart to leave the information and the photo there but I couldn�
�t risk Mammy finding out that I’d seen anything. Things are strained enough as it is.”
“Have you been speaking to her lately?” Frankie asked gently.
“No,” I said shortly.
I had been thinking a lot about what happened and the more I pondered it, the more betrayed I felt. Like it or not, I was part of Georgina and she was part of me. Whether I’d been wanted or not, she had carried me for nine months and her blood ran in my veins and I deserved some answers. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that I could embark on a full-scale relationship with her at this stage in my life nor did I want to, but a recognition of my being would be nice and Isobel Ross owed it to me to try and make that possible, after all these years, by sharing what she knew.
I had been a mischievous, impish child (who had the misfortune to earn herself the nickname ‘Ketchup’ at school – you work it out) but was good-natured along with it and totally idolised my parents. My adoption had never really created much of a dilemma for me as a youngster as I had always known about it. The trouble didn’t start until the teenage years where crises of identity are rife at the best of times, never mind when you have a valid reason and really don’t know who you are. I had asked lots of questions about my adoption, all of which my parents had tried to vaguely answer whilst sidestepping any reference to my mother as they pretended not to know anything about her or her whereabouts. I didn’t get any hard concrete information, however, which never ceased to infuriate me and turned me into a rather difficult pubescent teen (yeah yeah, I know nobody’s surprised). I was about sixteen when a plan formed in my head which involved going to get my birth certificate and tracking down my birth mother once and for all. I spent the next few years romanticising about what our first meeting would be like and how we would relate to each other. I wanted her to tell me about the circumstances before and after my birth and also wanted the name of my father so I could track him down too.
Frankie had obviously tired of her own company as she had drained her cup and was on her feet and ready to leave.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to be rude or anti-social – it’s just that –”
“You’ve a lot on your mind. I get it, honey,” she said, giving my hand a squeeze before letting go, then taking a deep breath. “Look, Ruby. It’s nice to be able to be there for you for a change instead of it always being the other way around. It gets a bit daunting being the Crisis Queen after a while. You’ve always been there for me through thick and thin and we’ll get through this too. I know I wasn’t very understanding about your need to find your birth mother when you first talked about it and rather cross when you absconded in a confused state but I’ve been thinking and, although my mother annoys the feckin shite out of me, I don’t know where I’d be without her. Isobel is and always will be your mother but I do realise that you have a need to know who you really are and where you came from. It’s only natural. I can’t imagine how you must feel and the questions that must be tormenting you.”
She put her arm round me and gave me a little hug, before going out and closing the door gently behind her, leaving me to my thoughts.
She was right. I did have loads of questions and they were tormenting me. I just wanted silly bits of information that other people never think about. Who did I look like? What were my grandparents like? Did I have any brothers or sisters? Had Georgina loved my father or was I the product of a fumble in the back of a car? Why did she not keep me? Would our meeting mean that the empty void, that had been in my life ever since I could remember, would be filled? It was strange: I was usually a very jolly, sociable, inexplicably mad person but even though I could be surrounded by a thousand people I could still feel bereft and abandoned and be the loneliest girl in the room.
Chapter 20
I finished work and made plans to go to the butcher’s on the way home to purchase the two biggest steaks available as I wanted to cook (‘cremate’ would probably be a better word but God loves a trier) something special for Luke and have a romantic night. He really was one in a million and I didn’t show my appreciation often enough. I had printed out a recipe from the internet earlier and was going to attempt to make teriyaki steak (a fancy way of saying steak dipped in sauce in my book) and surprise him. And astounded and shocked he would be as my culinary abilities usually only stretched to heating the oven and shoving something in and even then I usually forgot about it and it ended up burnt (on reflection I wondered if Luke was mad in the head, wanting to spend the rest of his life eating takeaways).
I also wanted to cheer him up as he’d had yet another encounter with his parents over the phone a few days before. Once again asking if Luke could be a good son and give them a hand. (Translated this meant that they had fecked up whatever their latest wackiest venture happened to be and expected Luke to bail them out.) They were prone to starting ‘get rich quick’ schemes but could never see them through and they didn’t do it so that they could support their children either. It was simply a way of funding their mad existence. It never ceased to enrage me how two people could be so selfish as to behave this way but, although Luke liked to give off about them, nobody else was allowed to. He liked to explain their actions by describing them as ‘free spirits’. (‘Freeloaders’ would have been a more appropriate term, methinks.) We’d had a bit of a falling out as I didn’t agree with him lending them any more money but he had hotly protested, saying that when all was said and done they were still his parents (an insult to loving mammies and daddies everywhere) and he had a duty to look after them.
I grimaced as I thought about them. I had only ever met them once and that was quite enough. His father, Fred, was a grotesque character who had a colourful array of swearwords which he aired regularly in a loud booming voice. He stank of beer, sniggered at his own jokes and enjoyed nothing more than to annoy anyone within his unfortunate company by commenting on all their shortcomings. He had nicknamed me Tommy (short for ‘tomato head’) on his last (it very nearly was his feckin last) visit home and I was seriously unimpressed. His mother, Beverley (“Call me Bev, babes”) was an extremely irritating woman with a nasal voice who thought that she was God’s gift to men (younger men especially) and was deluded in the extreme. She had brassy blonde hair, wore clothes that were too tight (and not in a good way) and put her make-up on with a gardening implement. She had absolutely no maternal instincts whatsoever and did nothing except embarrass her poor children when she was in the vicinity. I felt particularly sorry for Mandy. Although I wasn’t my own mother’s biggest fan at the minute, I didn’t dispute the fact that every girl needs a good female role model in her life and Beverley Reilly certainly had never been that.
“Hi, Seamus,” I said by way of greeting when I entered the little butcher’s shop in Swiftstown.
“Hi, Ruby, I don’t often see you in here,” the butcher answered. (Don’t get excited – he only knew me because he used to play cards with my daddy and had kept in touch with me after Mammy left for potholes new in Donegal.)
“Is it a special occasion?”
“Very special, Seamus. I’m cooking for a change.”
“I see. What can I get you?”
“Can I have two of your biggest juiciest steaks, please? I’m going to treat my man tonight and convince him that he has made the right choice in a future wife.” (Oh feck, perhaps I was setting the bar too high?)
“Well, in that case I’ll give you two of my best fillet steaks. Take this bottle of soy sauce and some onions and mushrooms as well.”
“I’ve got a recipe here, Seamus,” I said, gesturing at the sheet of paper that was sticking out of my pocket.
“Start small, Ruby, and then you can experiment. Coat the steaks in soy sauce, then sear them on each side on a high heat, then turn the cooker right down and let them cook slowly and tenderise. Do the onions and mushrooms in a separate pan and cook them in butter. I can give you some nice baby potatoes as well if you like.”
“Might as well go the whole hog while I’m
at it,” I agreed, scribbling down notes on what he was saying.
He put everything in a bag for me, charged me only half the price he should have and wished me good luck.
“You won’t need it anyway, Ruby. You’ll be fine. Your fella will know that he’s landed on his feet with you whether you burn his dinner or not.”
“Oi!” I said with a laugh. “Don’t be writing me off just yet. I stayed with my mother last weekend and you never know what might have rubbed off.”
“How is she?” Seamus asked with a smile. “Tell her I was asking for her. Your mother is a lady.”
“I will,” I said, the smile fading on my face. I wondered what everyone would think if they knew that she was consistently lying to me about my birth mother even though it was my right to know the truth.
When I arrived home I tidied up (by this I am referring to washing the breakfast dishes, making the bed and lifting a week’s worth of clothes from the floor). Frankie is not allowed upstairs in my home because of my fear that she might suffer a heart attack as the result of an obsessive-compulsive inclination to want to scrub.
I love my house. It is situated in the middle of a terraced row on a side street in Swiftstown. It has a cosy sitting room and kitchen downstairs and three bedrooms and a converted attic (a bomb-disposal site might possibly be less messy) upstairs. It also has a small garden at the front and a bigger space at the back which is perfect for sitting out on hot summer days (but as this is Ireland and the weather is crap, this has only been accomplished about three times in six years).
I hummed as I took Seamus’s advice and poured soy sauce on a plate and then proceeded to make sure that the steaks were well coated. I left them to soak while I chopped onions and mushrooms, popped the baby potatoes into a saucepan and left out the tub of pepper sauce that I was planning to use as an accompaniment.
The phone rang just as I was about to start cooking the steaks and I mentally swore at the caller’s lack of consideration (a military operation might have been viewed as less important than this experiment).
Anyone for Me? Page 12