by Carol Coffey
“Tomorrow? No, that’s grand. It doesn’t matter. You’ll fly in? Ah yes, that’s better. Train is awful long. Grand. He’ll be delighted to see you earlier than expected. Yes, he’ll understand. Well, you’ll see when you get here. Good days and bad days . . . yes . . . oh yes . . . grand so . . . grand . . .”
I know Aishling is speaking to someone Irish because she keeps saying “grand” which she once told me means “that’s fine”.
When she puts down the phone I stand in front of her, anxious to know who it was and to see her repeat the other half of the conversation to my mother.
“That was Deirdre. She’s coming a day early.”
There is a crease on her brow that tells me that something is suddenly worrying her, something she hadn’t really thought of before or, in her enthusiasm to reunite the couple, had pushed to the back of her mind.
“I . . . I hope he recognises her,” she says, biting down on her lower lip and looking at my mother expectantly.
“You did tell her how he is, didn’t you?” Mother asks.
“A . . . little. I didn’t want to spoil it”
My mother frowns at Aishling but says nothing.
Aishling shrugs her shoulders, trying to unload her sudden doubt and goes into the Penance Room to tell Father Hayes but he is asleep on the chair with the sun in his face so she leaves him and goes about her duties.
After my mother organises Father Hayes’s clothes for tomorrow, she drives over to Kora’s house to try on wedding outfits. Mother is Kora’s bridesmaid and is wearing a long green dress that matches her eyes. Even Jimmy seems to be looking forward to the wedding. Yesterday, I watched as my mother helped him try on a dark-blue suit. He grumbled as she pulled the jacket around him but, when she left to get sewing pins, I watched him smile at his reflection in the mirror. When she came back, he tried to tell her something but she didn’t understand. I watched his face turn red with frustration as he repeated the words twice. I know how he feels. I want to tell him that it is best to stay quiet, that it is useless to try to communicate with most people.
The following afternoon, a taxi pulls up and we all watch out the Penance Room window as a tall, slightly overweight woman slowly raises herself onto a walking stick and waves her arms about at the taxi driver who is lifting two huge suitcases from the boot. Another equally tall woman gets out the other side and helps her onto the path. The women have the same dark-red hair and only Deirdre has a tell-tale narrow silver streak running along her parting. My mother opens the door and welcomes them. Aishling is directly behind her and speaks to Deirdre in Gaelic.
Deirdre breaks into a huge smile. “Oh, thank you . . . it’s so long since I heard anyone speaking Irish. Music to my ears!”
My mother looks a little put out. I can see the crease appearing on her forehead. It is the same frown she wears when my father is speaking Gaelic to Aishling which they only do when they have been drinking and are reminiscing about their homes.
Aishling picks up on my mother’s discomfort and quickly says, “You’ve developed a slight American drawl, Deirdre.”
“So my brothers tell me,” Deirdre replies cheerfully. “Forty years in America. Guess it rubs off after a while.”
“This is Emma Monroe. She’s the owner of the nursing home,” Aishling says.
Deirdre introduces her daughter who has been standing behind her mother, trying to keep both suitcases upright.
“She’s cranky because we didn’t go to the hotel first but I just couldn’t wait another moment to see Aiden,” Deirdre says as her daughter frowns and thrusts her large bony hand towards my mother.
“I’m Megan,” she says as she moves closer. I can see she has the same large green eyes as her mother.
The pair come inside and my mother quickly introduces them to the residents. I can see Deirdre scanning the room for Aiden and she looks deflated when he is not there.
“Greta, one of our nurses, is helping him get ready,” Mother explains.
I can almost feel the skip in Deirdre’s heart as she puts her hand to her chest and takes a breath. I know that only now has she truly realised that she will see her first love again.
“I – I can’t believe it,” she says with tears in her eyes.
“Mum!” Megan says, slightly embarrassed.
“Why don’t you come into the dining room and have a cold drink while you are waiting,” Mother offers but before they move Aiden appears at the end of the hallway with Greta by his side.
I see Aishling and Mother’s jaw drop at how different he looks in his suit and tie. His face is freshly shaved and his grey hair is slicked back with oil. Greta makes herself scarce and my mother goes into the dining room, leaving only Aishling to reintroduce the pair.
Aiden makes his way slowly down the long hallway towards them with the help of his old cane.
Deirdre begins to cry. I can see her chin tremble. “He looks – so helpless,” she says. Her daughter moves closer and takes her hand.
“He’s fine,” Aishling reassures her.
“I – I’d – hardly know him,” Deirdre sobs but Megan squeezes her hand tighter and moves her mother towards him.
Aiden stands still and looks at Deirdre and then at Megan. His eyes light up.
“You found me,” he says in English.
“I did,” Deirdre says.
He moves closer, his weak eyes trying to focus clearly on the women. He stops a few inches from them and holds out both his arms. His legs buckle a little and Aishling moves forward to steady him. Deirdre gulps at his frailty but her expression changes when she sees Aiden reach forward and put his arms gently around the young American.
“I’ve waited so long, Deirdre! You still look so beautiful,” he says.
Megan tenses and moves back a little. “I’m Megan,” she says with a voice that bounces off the floor. I know she must have said this rudely as Aishling gives her a sharp look.
Aiden looks confused as he moves his gaze from one woman to the other. He then looks at Aishling and an expression of complete bewilderment spreads over his lined face.
Aishling, unable to bear his pain, says, “Aiden, this is Deirdre,” pointing at the older woman and moving him towards her.
Deirdre’s chin wobbles again and she quickly wipes tears from her eyes. She reaches forward and wraps both her arms around him then stands back, taking in his face, his eyes, his smile.
“It is you, Aiden. It’s really you!” she says through her tears. She begins to laugh and only then does Aiden realise who she is.
“Deirdre! A stór!”
The two stand wrapped around each other, unable to believe that they have been reunited, if only for a while. Aishling opens the dining-room door and beckons for Deirdre to go inside. She helps Aiden in and leaves the two alone to talk. Li places cold drinks and cakes on the table and excuses herself. Aishling then takes Megan into Mother’s office and offers her some refreshments there. I stand outside the partly closed door of the dining room and watch but I can only see Aiden’s face. I push the door open a little wider but when Deirdre looks up I shrink back and decide to watch them talk through the window.
I move out onto the porch and down the side of the house. I climb on top of the three bricks I have left there for snooping purposes and find that I have an excellent view of their lips. Aiden reaches out his left hand across the table and Deirdre takes it. They begin to speak in Gaelic and I sigh. I remain there in case they revert to English and watch the conversation flow easily between the two as if they had never been parted.
At last Deirdre throws some English words into her conversation and Aiden’s eyebrows move upwards.
“I’m rusty,” she explains in English, “and there are so many new words that I never knew in Irish. You know, microwaves and things like that. There were none of these things when I left Ireland so I have no word for them.”
Aiden smiles but I don’t think he understands what she means. He looks as though he is lost in his yout
h and is smiling at the girl Deirdre once was.
“Microwaves,” he says slowly.
I watch Deirdre tell Aiden that she was married to a kind man who unfortunately died some years back and that even though she had a good marriage she never stopped thinking about her first love. I watch her tell him that she went to America to get as far away from her memories as possible and that she has never returned to Ireland since but that she thinks that, now they have seen each other again, she might make that trip. During her entire story, Aiden nods and smiles. Sometimes his face looks sad and sometimes happy as she recalls the life she went on to have without him. She tells him that she never stopped wondering what might have been and that most important to her, then and now, was that he was content with his life as a priest. She said that that would have been the only thing to make their parting worth it.
“So . . .” she asks. “Were you happy, Aiden?”
Father Hayes looks at her and reaches into his pocket. I can see his right hand fumbling for his rosary beads. He presses the hard beads into his hand and his mouth turns downward.
“Yes. I was,” he replies.
Deirdre smiles weakly but leans further over the table and grips his hand tighter. Something in his face has told her he is lying.
“Really?” she asks again.
“Yes,” he says.
Deirdre leans back and stares at him. I watch her tap her flat brown shoes on the linoleum as she decides whether or not to take this conversation further.
“How long have you been here?” she says.
“Oh a good few years now. I don’t know exactly. I get . . . a little confused at times.”
“Don’t we all?” she says, squeezing his hand tighter. “But, Aiden, why aren’t you living in a priest’s house? Isn’t that the norm?”
Aiden looks away from her and stares out the window. I duck and laugh at my silliness as I know he cannot see that far. I know he is not trying to delay his answer but that he is genuinely trying to remember the sequence of events that resulted in him coming here.
“Aiden, were you really happy?” she asks again but he doesn’t answer.
“I got sick,” he says, answering her previous question as to why he was not living in a house for clergy.
“Sick?”
“I . . . became . . . I became sad.”
Deirdre swallows. I feel she knows that at some point during this reunion she will find out exactly how Aiden’s life has gone but she wonders if she is ready to hear it.
Then out of the blue, as if Aiden knows this, he goes on. “Every day of my life I imagined myself meeting you off that train. I remember the past more clearly these days. Other memories are not so clear. But I remember the beautiful sunset that evening and how I looked out my kitchen window knowing you were waiting for me but I knew . . . I knew if I went to meet you that I could not have gone through with it. I’d have had to let my mother down. I knew that for you there would be another love. You were so beautiful. Any man would have been lucky . . . but Francis was dead and my mother now had only one son. All her hopes were on me and I couldn’t let her down, Deirdre. I had to choose but you had children and grandchildren . . . you were all right . . .”
Deirdre interrupted him. “I wanted these things with you, Aiden.”
He lowers his head and she regrets her words.
“But I understand. Aiden, we were both robbed of our life together. We both suffered but you suffered far more than me. I am not angry with you. I am sad for you and for me . . . for what we could have had together.”
Aiden looks up and tears fall freely down his face.
“I should have gone to the train,” he says, sobbing.
Deirdre fights hard to hold back her tears.
“It took me a lifetime to see that I made the wrong choice,” he goes on. “I was a terrible priest because it wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t for me. I don’t tell people. I stay quiet and pray. I was reluctant in my duties. As I reached middle age things changed. I remember that now. I became nervous and anxious over things. They – they asked me to leave when I got sick so the sacrifice I made for my mother was for nothing. In the end I let everybody down.”
“I’m sure you were not a terrible priest,” she says, squeezing his hand. “You were a kind man, so loving to me. They were lucky to have you.”
Deirdre looked more intently at him, reading his face, trying to reach out to the lost man in front of her, to tell him that all was not lost.
“So much time has passed, Aiden. Is there any point in wondering what might have been? It doesn’t change anything. I lost my first baby when he was a few weeks old and, you know, I spent years wondering what he’d look like, what I’d dress him in the day he started school, what colour his Communion suit would be. I even thought about these things when I had my second-born and third. There came a day when I said, what do these thoughts change? They don’t change a thing. They just make you miserable.”
Aiden nods and his eyes glaze over. He looks like he is returning to his inner world. Deirdre notices this and reaches forward to bring him back to her.
“You can never go back,” he says as his mouth narrows and turns downward as though he is trying not to cry.
“You know . . . I’m an old widow now on a stick but would you like to kiss me?” she asks, smiling shyly.
Aiden looks at her as though she has woken him from a dream. He reddens a little but leans forward and kisses her lightly on the cheek. She laughs.
“Like how you used to kiss me!” she says, rubbing his thin hand.
Aiden smiles like a schoolboy and stands shakily. She moves toward him. He puts his hands on her shoulders and gazes at her face.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says and she laughs which makes him smile.
“And you are still a charmer,” she says. “So are you going to kiss me or not?”
Aiden steps closer and kisses her so gently that you would think she could not feel it but she moves her heels off the ground and inches even closer to him. He kisses her in the same sweet gentle way and she puts her hand on his face and then smooths his hair.
“I remember that kiss,” she says but there is a sad look in her eyes.
She knows that the man in front of her is not the Aiden that left her behind but a shell of the man, the remnants of her love beaten down by a life of missed opportunities and disappointment. She also knows that she is no longer the naïve country girl she once was and that she too has experienced many losses in her life and although they are both changed people, they have been given a chance to make their peace with each other and with those responsible for keeping them apart. She wipes small tears from her eyes and links arms with him.
“Well, will I introduce you properly to my daughter?” she asks, laughing. “Now, Aiden, if you thought I was wild, this one will shock you!” She laughs as she leads him out of the dining- room door and up the hallway.
He stops suddenly and digs his cane into the floor. There is something he has to ask.
“Deirdre . . . do you forgive me?”
“For loving me? Aiden, the only person we need to forgive is your mother. I can do that. The thing is, can you?”
Aiden looks down and I know that he is struggling with this question. Now that he has made his peace with Deirdre, he knows that his deep-rooted grudge against his mother is the one thing that is preventing his mind from finding peace.
They move forward and my mother meets them at the door of the Penance Room. Deirdre tries to help Aiden across the room even though she is also walking with a stick.
“I had my hip done,” she tells my mother. “Blasted thing is still sore.”
“Will you stay for lunch?” mother asks. “Our cook has made an Irish dish especially for the occasion. Bacon and cabbage.”
Deirdre accepts and thanks my mother for her hospitality. I think I am the only one who notices Deirdre grimace slightly so I know she doesn’t like this dish. It reminds me of something my father
says. “Why do people think I like haggis just because I’m Scottish?” My father really hates haggis.
When we all sit down to Li’s lunch, I notice that Aiden has returned to his silent self and that faraway look in his eye has returned. Every once in a while he looks up from his plate and smiles but it usually immediately after Deirdre has laughed at something someone has said. I spend the hour watching him with interest as his expression continually changes from amazement to find that she is here to that faraway look that tells me he is once again waiting on a summer’s evening for that train to arrive. I wonder if he will remember that she was here and that he had a chance to make his peace with the love of his life.
As Deirdre and Megan leave for their hotel, my mother decides to invite them to Kora’s wedding which is now only five days away. Deirdre happily accepts while her daughter frowns in the doorway.
“Oh we’d love that! That’s Saturday and we leave the following morning so it’d be a nice end to our trip. Em . . . would it be all right it I visited again tomorrow? I’d like to see Aiden as much as I can while I’m here.”
Megan sighs and shrugs her large shoulders.
“You can do your own thing,” Deirdre says to her daughter with a cross face. “I’ll be fine getting here. I’ll catch a cab.”
Mother agrees and says it would be good for Aiden and that Deirdre can visit as often as she likes.
The rest of the day is spent organising the residents’ clothes for the wedding ceremony. Victoria is very excited and plans to wear her red dress again but this time she also plans on wearing the red lipstick that she bought when on a recent shopping trip with Greta in town. My mother and Greta have noticed Victoria becoming more assertive since Penelope, who has reluctantly agreed to play piano, became distracted with her music sheets. When Kora asked her to play, we were all shocked that she agreed and were even more shocked when she said that it was a pity that nice German man had left as she had enjoyed playing with someone who knew about real music. Reverend Williams, who replaced my grandfather when he died, will conduct the ceremony. He is getting on in years and my mother says he will soon hand most of his duties over to a younger minister.