I’ll be home for Christmas

by Roisin Meaney

  Was Laura right, though, in urging her to go back to her parents, and maybe endure months of their condemnation? Should she stand by her sister and offer to let her stay on Roone? Should she talk to the parents herself, try to convince a couple she’d never met that she’d look after Tilly and the baby they hadn’t known she was having? They’d hit the roof, they’d be bound to, and who could blame them?

  And Susan. What was to be done about Susan?

  I might leave him, she’d said quietly to Laura on the phone the night before. I might have to leave him. I might come to Roone, she’d said. Could I come to Roone, just for a while, until I figure out what to do? And Laura had said yes, of course she’d said yes, but it wasn’t good: it wasn’t what Susan wanted. Despite everything, despite Luke having issued her that terrible ultimatum, Susan loved him.

  The prayers came to an end. The sun came and went as they watched the coffin being lowered into the grave, as Gavin stepped forward and threw a handful of earth onto it. Gladys making her exit, Susan and Tilly’s babies waiting in the wings – and Nell’s too, if Laura wasn’t mistaken.

  The carousel going on, the births and marriages and deaths continuing to roll around. The heartbreaks and the joys, the disasters and the miracles featuring as regularly as the next sunrise, the next high tide.

  Gavin stepped back. Laura reached across and found his hand, and held on to it tightly as the sun broke through once more. They’d started last night to repair the damage that the last several months had caused. They had a long way to go – she had a long way to go – but they’d made a start.

  She’d try to find Walter when they got home, now that she knew he was still about. She’d nag him until he revealed himself to her again. She’d confide in him like before: she’d list her fears aloud to him and he’d shunt them gently away. He’d help her to mend.

  They led the way to the pub that had been Gavin’s local since his first pint at seventeen and a half. They ate the soup and sandwiches they’d ordered, surrounded by faces that had become familiar to Laura over the last couple of days. Afterwards Gavin settled the bill and they bade everyone goodbye and piled into the car, their luggage already in the boot.

  ‘Keep in touch,’ Joyce said, ‘pop by next time you’re up,’ and Laura promised she would, and knew she probably wouldn’t. Nothing to bring them back to Dublin any more, with Gladys dead and Laura’s father as good as dead to her. No reason to make the long trek east after this, unless Gavin wanted to put flowers on his mother’s grave.

  They hit the motorway and Laura dozed, and didn’t wake until Gavin slid down his window to pay at the toll booth, fifty miles outside the capital. When he drove off again she took out her phone and rang Susan.

  ‘We’re on the way,’ she said. ‘We’ll see you in a few hours. All OK?’

  ‘Girls are all fine, but there is a bit of news,’ Susan replied, and Laura listened to an account of Tilly’s miscarriage.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She got up around noon. I wanted her to stay in bed but she says she feels OK.’

  Tilly, not pregnant any more, nothing now to fear from going home. But a miscarriage, whatever the circumstances, was still a cause for sadness. A hard lesson learned, and she hadn’t yet turned eighteen.

  ‘Tell her we’ll see her soon,’ Laura said. After hanging up she checked her watch, and decided there was time. She turned to Gavin. ‘Can we do a quick stop somewhere? I’d like to get Tilly a goodbye gift’ – so they left the motorway at the next town, and she found a small boutique whose after-Christmas sale was in full swing, and in less than five minutes she bought a ring with a little blue stone that she figured would have to fit one of Tilly’s fingers.

  ‘Home,’ she said, getting back into the car, and Gavin turned it in the direction of Roone, and home they went.

  ‘Want to talk about it?’ Susan asked. ‘I’m a good listener.’

  The girls were colouring at the far end of the table, Charlie hovering nearby. Poppy was perched on Susan’s lap, gnawing on her rubber rattle. Tilly and Susan sat side by side, Tilly in Laura’s dressing gown, eating the toast Susan had coaxed her to have.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘It’s all over now anyway’ – and she told Susan, in as few sentences as she could, about the disaster that had been her and John Smith. ‘What happened last night was for the best,’ she said, ‘I know that …’ She trailed off, still feeling unaccountably forlorn, still feeling that a cross look or a sharp word would undo her.

  ‘Tilly,’ Susan said gently, ‘you lost a baby. It’s bound to hurt, no matter what.’

  Tilly nodded, deciding to leave the last bit of toast. Deciding she didn’t really want to talk about it after all.

  ‘What did you tell Andy?’

  ‘I told him you’d caught a cold, and I wasn’t allowing you outside.’

  A cold didn’t sound like much of a reason not to join him. He probably thought she couldn’t be bothered; he probably assumed she’d been bored the day before. If he only knew how much she’d loved it, how much she’d looked forward to going with him again today.

  She needed to change the subject, so she told Susan about finding Betsy. Susan listened with growing disbelief.

  ‘It couldn’t possibly be your doll, Tilly. It must be one that just looks like it.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Tilly said. ‘Hang on.’ She went upstairs and brought down Betsy, almost fully dry by now, and showed Susan the initials beneath the bloomer leg.

  ‘That’s incredible, even for Roone. How on earth could it have ended up here? We must ask the others when they arrive, find out where they got it.’

  They left Betsy by the stove to finish drying and made welcome-home cards for the travellers. They played Snakes and Ladders while Poppy was having her nap. They sat on the window seat and watched raindrops racing one another down the glass. The day wore on, and as the light began to fade, Tilly thought about her imminent departure.

  Her flight to London was at two in the afternoon, which meant she needed to be at the airport sometime after twelve, which meant getting the eleven o’clock ferry off the island.

  She was dreading it. Although she was eager to see Ma and Pa and the others again, she hated saying goodbye to Roone and the people she’d met here, hated the thought of being so far away from them that her day would be their night.

  She hated the prospect, despite her resolve to forget him, of not living next door to Andy any more. Ridiculous, when they’d met for the first time three days ago, and a handful of times since then.

  Stop. No more of that. She went upstairs and had a bath and got dressed. She took the torn pieces of her boarding pass from the waste paper basket. Could she stick it together, would it be accepted? She left the pieces on the dressing table and went down to help Susan with the dinner.

  At three minutes to seven precisely, as Tilly was setting the table and Susan was taking Ita Fennessy’s reheated salmon quiche from the oven, they heard the front door opening – and there the others were, home from their trip.

  ‘OK?’ Laura’s hug was brief; she drew back to search Tilly’s face. ‘Are you alright?’ They stood slightly apart from the others in the hall.

  ‘I’m OK … I rang home last night. I told them where I was.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad you did that. Did they hit the roof?’

  ‘It was Ma, she wasn’t too bad – and I’ve decided to do what you said, and report him.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘And,’ she said, ‘there’s something else. My boarding pass … er, it got torn.’

  ‘Got torn.’ Laura’s face unreadable. She knew though, she must know.

  ‘Yes – I wonder if I could print another, if there’s anyplace …’ She trailed off, feeling foolish.

  Laura smiled. ‘Finally, a problem we can easily solve. Gavin has a printer, he’ll do it for you after dinner.’ She drew a small box from her pocket. ‘This is just a little something. A souvenir of your
trip.’

  Tilly opened it. She pulled out the ring and slid it onto a few fingers until she found the right fit. ‘It’s gorgeous, thank you. You didn’t have to do that.’

  ‘I know.’

  Nobody had ever given her a ring before. She’d bought herself one with birthday money a few years ago, but lost it two weeks later.

  ‘You’ll come back to visit,’ Laura said. It wasn’t a question. ‘Now that you know where we are. Now that you have the funds.’

  ‘I will,’ Tilly replied, hope jumping in and swimming around with the sadness.

  ‘I went to see Luke,’ she said.

  She outlined her visit to her father, trying to make it sound like it had gone a lot more pleasantly. ‘I told him about Tilly.’

  ‘Ah,’ Susan said. ‘And how did he take it?’

  Laura hesitated, not wishing to cast him in too poor a light to his wife. ‘He … didn’t seem too surprised.’

  ‘He knew.’

  ‘It would appear so – but he did try to make amends.’ She told Susan about the cheque that had been dropped into Gladys’s house later in the day, when they were at the removal.

  ‘Yes,’ Susan said thoughtfully. ‘That would be him. He likes to work in mysterious ways.’

  It was late, Laura wasn’t sure how late. Heading for midnight, probably. They lay in Susan’s bed, side by side. The light was off but the curtains were open, allowing pale light to pick out the wardrobe, the chest of drawers, the armchair. It was easy in the dimness. It was comfortable.

  ‘He rang,’ Susan said. ‘This morning.’

  ‘Who did – Luke?’

  ‘Yes. He told me he was sorry. He says he wants to try and be a good father to our child.’

  A short silence followed. Laura tried to picture him with a baby in his arms, a small child on his lap. Had he ever once held her when she was small? She had no memory of it; there were no photos of such a scene that she was aware of. And of course he’d never held Tilly. But he wanted to try now, and maybe it wasn’t too late for his next child.

  You’re going to lose Susan, she’d told him. You’re going to end up alone. You’re going to die alone. Had it made a difference? She’d probably never know.

  ‘So you’ll stay with him.’

  ‘For the moment. I’ll see how it goes.’

  She was giving him another chance. Maybe Laura should too. A new year looming: maybe it would bring better times for all of them.

  ‘Gavin and I,’ she said carefully, ‘have been having our own difficulties.’

  She heard the small sound of Susan’s head shifting on the pillow to face her. ‘You have. I’ve hated seeing it.’

  Of course she’d noticed.

  ‘We’ll be OK,’ Laura said.

  ‘I know you will. It’s been a tough year.’

  ‘Sure has.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Can you believe the doll?’ Susan asked.

  ‘You know, I can. Maybe I’ve lived on Roone too long. But it is pretty amazing. I nearly threw it out when Gavin produced it, but something stopped me.’

  ‘Incredible. Is Tilly going to bring it home?’

  ‘She is. She’ll probably pass it on to her little sister.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Tilly,’ Laura said. Just that.

  ‘I know,’ Susan replied. Just that.

  Outside, the moon slid silently across the sky as Tuesday night became Wednesday morning.

  WEDNESDAY

  30 DECEMBER

  Just after eight, thin fingers of light beginning to spread across the sky outside, shapes still grey and dim and fuzzy-edged. Lots of time before the ferry.

  She left her room, Betsy dangling from her hand, an old newspaper from the scullery tucked under her arm. She padded in stockinged feet to the end of the corridor and turned the handle of the white door, the one with a flight of narrow uncarpeted wooden steps leading up from it. She’d opened the door the day before, thinking it to be the linen cupboard, when Susan had sent her upstairs for a clean towel. She hadn’t climbed the steps then, but she figured they must lead to the attic.

  The higher she went, the colder it became. At the top she found herself in a pitch-black, icy space. She hugged Betsy to her chest and felt gingerly along the rough cement wall for a light switch – and found not a switch but a cord that she tugged.

  The resulting feeble glow, from a single bare bulb, did little more than cast shadows – a small window set into the sloping roof wasn’t much help – but as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she began to distinguish shapes, and to see more clearly what was around her.

  Cardboard boxes of varying sizes, piled in haphazard heaps. A jumble of suitcases and rucksacks. Half a dozen plastic carrier bags slumped against one another, miniature shoes spilling from one. Tottery columns of thick books, or photo albums.

  A metal tank on concrete blocks, presumably for water. A vacuum cleaner missing its hose, a huddle of plastic toys in various states of disrepair. A tall structure with protruding limbs, whose function was uncertain: a coat rack, part of a shelving unit?

  The silence was immense, like the place had been wrapped in cotton wool. She remembered Andy saying he liked the peace of it. A few inches to her left was a thick wooden beam, one of several that spanned the room from floor to ceiling. She looked up and saw a network of rafters that sloped down to meet them.

  As she made her way towards what looked like the most shadowy corner of the attic, she almost stumbled over something on the floor, half hidden behind one of the beams. She bent to investigate and found a little wooden doll’s house with its front wall missing. No, not a doll’s house, just a rectangular structure, like a single room, with a pitched roof. Inside, nestling in tissue, she found little plaster figurines of a kneeling woman, a man with a shepherd’s crook, a baby in some kind of a cradle. A sheep, an angel, a donkey, a cow. Nativity figures, she realised; it was the makings of a Christmas crib. She wondered why they hadn’t brought it downstairs and displayed it.

  She kept going, shivering now. Moving cautiously, fearful of disturbing any creature that might be lurking. She reached the corner beam and felt in the near-darkness until she located the angle where it connected with a rafter. She bundled Betsy into the newspaper as neatly as she could and tucked the package into the angle, and wedged it in. She took a few steps back: nothing to see.

  Here her old doll would stay, waiting quietly in her dark corner as the weeks and the months and the years passed by, until Tilly returned to Roone.

  Leaving a doll behind: she was well aware of how foolish it would seem to anyone observing her. Leaving anything behind, as if it could possibly make a difference. But it could, it could. Betsy would be her link: she would be at the end of the thread that Tilly would unravel as she made her way over land and sea back to Australia. Betsy would be her most tangible connection to Roone.

  She closed the attic door quietly behind her and returned to her room. She showered quickly and dressed, piling on the usual layers, and made her way downstairs. She took her jacket from the hallstand and wrapped Susan’s red scarf around her neck. As soon as she opened the kitchen door Charlie’s head popped up from his basket.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘No noise, they’re all asleep’ – and out he hopped, and followed her through the scullery, tail flapping.

  She stood for a moment outside the back door, drawing in big breaths of the air, thinking how impossible it would be to remember the pure taste of it when she was back in Queensland and surrounded by soggy summer heat.

  The day was brightening, the sky more white than grey now. Charlie trotted ahead as she walked through the yard, past the coal bunker and Gavin’s collection of garden tools propped against the wall. She turned right when she reached the field, and made her way to the little orchard.

  Blocks of wood, presumably from the tree that had fallen in the storm, were heaped against the low wall that surrounded the orchard. The bricks from the shed
it had crushed were gone, carted by Gavin to the far side of the field. The crater it had left behind was still there; maybe they were planning to plant a new one in it.

  She looked upwards at the tree closest to her – and saw what looked like a pair of pale green globes, no bigger than blueberries, clinging to the end of an otherwise bare branch. And there was another pair at the end of the neighbouring branch, and another.

  And everywhere she looked, she saw more. The tree, she realised, was covered with them. She reached for the lowest branch and drew it down towards her, and peered closely.

  They were apples. They were tiny apples, and there were dozens of them. The tree was growing apples in the middle of winter. In a few months, March or April maybe, they’d be ready to harvest. She walked among the other trees, examining them carefully, and found no signs of new growth on any of them. It was like one had been chosen to take over, after the first had been destroyed.

  And, for some reason, it didn’t strike her as odd at all.

  She looked up the field towards the henhouse and saw dark smudges of hens bobbing about. No sign of a man there now, no figure of any kind. Maybe, after all, she’d imagined him. She’d been tired and overwrought, and upset by Laura’s response to her arrival. Her mind might well have played a trick on her, presented her with a kindly face as a comfort.

  She looked back at the house and saw all the windows, including her own, still curtained. She whistled softly for Charlie and he came haring across from the opposite side of the field. ‘Come on,’ she whispered, turning for the gate.

  Next door was quiet too: no need for anyone to be up at this hour. She crossed the road and strode along with the sea on her left, heading away from the village. Charlie trotted ahead of her, nose almost touching the ground, stopping to cock a leg briefly on the grassy verge every few steps. After less than five minutes she reached the little lane that led to the sea. Tilly whistled again and Charlie loped back, and together they headed down the lane that widened and became sandier with each step.