“He cheated on me.” Her voice shook.
“Well then, perhaps he’s not worthy of you. Better to find that out now than later,” Brigid pointed out.
“But it hurts so badly. I feel I’ve wasted those years with him. Now I have to start all over in a relationship, if I ever find someone, and I’ve to get another job, too.” Marie-Claire burst into tears.
Brigid threw back the duvet and got out of bed with a sprightliness that belied her eighty years. She put her arms around her beloved great-niece’s shoulders and Marie-Claire cuddled into her embrace.
“I could tell you there are other fish in the sea. I could tell you there’s a whole fresh start awaiting you, a new chapter in your life. But you don’t want to hear these clichés now. The wound is too raw and you think it will never heal. It will. I promise you. All I can say that might bring you some comfort is that this too shall pass, and it’s all right to grieve what you perceive as your loss, but time will change your perception of it. And you know it’s always possible to forgive, when the hurt has lessened. If you feel you could forgive this young man in time, do it. Forgiveness can be a very powerful gift for both of you. It could even strengthen your bond immeasurably,” Brigid counselled. She gave Marie-Claire a comforting squeeze. “I’m eighty, remember? I’m supposed to be wise,” she added lightly.
“Oh, Mère, thank you for your advice. It’s been hard pretending everything’s OK.”
“I think your parents know something’s up.” Brigid kissed the top of her head before getting back into bed. “Mothers and fathers know their children and know when something’s wrong, so my advice is to tell them and let them comfort you as only they can,” she advised sagely.
“You’re right, Mère.” Marie-Claire wiped her eyes with a tissue. “There is a bright side, though. If it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be going to France with you.”
“I can’t wait. Now get into bed; we have a very early start in the morning.”
“Yes, RM.” Marie-Claire grinned. “But when we get to Les Quatre Vents. I’ll be bossing you around.”
Later, in the dark, listening to Brigid’s soft breathing, Marie-Claire felt certain that she would never be able to forgive Marc. It was natural that Brigid would tell her to forgive, she being a nun and all, but being realistic, Marie-Claire didn’t think it was going to be an option she would take. And on the subject of forgiveness, she wondered how her grandmother was faring. Imelda would never have been able to utter endearments like “alannah” or “dear” the way Brigid had upon hearing Marie-Claire’s tale of woe. Imelda would have been brisk and no-nonsense, telling her not to cry over spilt milk and to get on with it.
They were so different in their ways, the two sisters. But for all her sharpness, Imelda’s prickliness came from wounds that had never healed. As furious as Marie-Claire was with her grandmother for the upset she’d caused, she felt a tiny bit of sympathy for her. Perhaps when she came back to Ireland, Marie-Claire would drive down to her grandmother and see if she could get her to make that first move towards reconciliation. Because, right now, Keelin was uncharacteristically adamant that she wasn’t going to be the one to make the first move in healing the rift. Surely, with time having passed, Imelda might be open to the idea. Marie-Claire hoped so. Life was hard enough without the family being at loggerheads.
* * *
Imelda picked up her mobile and scrolled down the numbers until she came to the Four Winds. It was three weeks since the row, and she hadn’t heard a peep from any of the family, apart from Felicity, and Cormac, who was being cool with her.
She hadn’t believed that Keelin and Armand would actually go back to France without saying goodbye, despite Felicity coming to collect their luggage. Her pride had prevented her from asking her daughter-in-law what day were they meeting her en route to Dublin, and Felicity hadn’t mentioned it. But as the days dragged by and it became clear that they weren’t going to phone, let alone visit, Imelda felt bereft. Keelin was clearly very angry. Brigid might be a little more forgiving. There was nothing to do but make some sort of apology to her sister and hope that Brigid might persuade Keelin to let bygones be bygones.
The thing was, Brigid’s phone seemed to be constantly off. Or perhaps it was a dodgy signal down at the Four Winds. Imelda’s best bet was to ring the landline and ask to speak to her, though she wasn’t particularly enamoured of the idea of speaking to Una. She clicked on the name and pressed “Dial,” her heart thumping a little faster, wondering what sort of a reception she’d get from her sister.
“The Four Winds,” Una’s familiar west of Ireland burr came clearly over the airwaves.
“Una, it’s Imelda here. I’d like to speak to Brigid, please, I can’t seem to get her on her mobile,” Imelda said briskly, not even bothering to say hello.
“Well, I’m afraid you won’t reach Reverend Mother here, Imelda. She’s gone to France. You’ll have to ring her at Les Quatre Vents.”
“Gone to France! For how long?” Imelda was astonished.
“Indefinitely, Imelda. As I say, try ringing Les Quatre Vents. Bye-bye,” came Una’s crisp response, and then the phone went dead.
Imelda stared at the receiver, stunned. Brigid had gone to France, too, without even a text to say she was leaving. How long had this jaunt been planned for? It had to be since before the party, she’d imagine. No one had said anything to her about it. Typical! The whole lot of them couldn’t care less about her. All going on holidays behind her back. Did they not think that a holiday in France might have done her good? If she’d been invited to go with them, she might have kept her powder dry at the party and not been driven to vent her resentment at their treatment of her. But this slap in the face was one more example of the way she was treated by her so-called family.
Well, she’d had enough of them. If they could hurt her, she could hurt them.
Imelda slammed down the landline handset, picked up her mobile phone, and scrolled down her contacts until she came to her solicitor’s number and pressed “Dial.” It was answered almost immediately. “Annie, it’s Imelda O’Brien. Can you give me an appointment to see Garrett, please? I want to revise my will,” she said, her lips a thin line of disapproval, her eyes narrow slits of fury as she drummed her fingers impatiently on the kitchen counter, waiting to be given the date that would see Keelin, Marie-Claire, and Brigid summarily disinherited. No ifs, ands, or buts about it!
Chapter Forty-Three
Brigid flung open the duck-egg-blue shutters and opened the window to breathe in the fresh Pyrenean air. Below her, the fields of the Durand family’s vineyard stretched to meadows and hillsides beyond, shaded by the majesty of Mount Canigou. It was a view she never tired of.
It was hard to believe she’d been in France for nearly three months, but the heat of the morning sun, shining on the red roof tiles of the houses in the village below, was growing stronger daily, and the long shadows of winter were shortening as spring blessed the Pyrenees.
How she loved this sturdy, stone-walled maison de maître with the shuttered windows and big wooden front door. Her bedroom was on the third floor. A large, square room, with a double bed and an old-fashioned gleaming cherrywood wardrobe and dressing table. A winged armchair placed beside the biggest window was her favourite place to read, or simply watch the changing light of the sun and sky over Canigou, and the vineyards, fields, and village below. Today the sky was clear and bright, right across to the coast, the peaks of the mountains sharply etched against the azure palette.
Two days previously, Canigou’s majestic snow-capped peak had been shrouded from view by the mist weaving its way across the vineyards towards Les Quatre Vents. Brigid had spent a gloomy afternoon reading in her armchair, engrossed in a book Keelin had given her. The memoir of a woman, Fiona McLaren, who came to the conclusion that the painting that had hung in her farmhouse for many years was a lost da Vinci. The subject of the painting was Mary Magdalene—hidden in plain sight, as were many of the artist’s d
epictions of the woman believed by some to have been married to Jesus. The journey to authentication was full of revelations, and Brigid had flipped from reading the book to googling names and facts on the new iPad she’d treated herself to. The Gnostic gospels, the gospel of Mary Magdalene and the gospel of Saint Thomas, made intriguing reading.
Since she’d been in the Languedoc, where the Magdalene was revered, Brigid, who would once have dismissed the notion of her marriage to Jesus out of hand, was beginning to realise that the Church she’d served for so long, and with such blind faith, had suppressed much knowledge that would have diminished their authority.
Keelin, who was an expert on such esoteric knowledge, had driven her places where the Magdalene was venerated, and even up to Rennes-le-Château, which had become famous after the publication of The Da Vinci Code. Keelin explained knowledgeably that Rennes-le-Château had been known about long before the American author had spotted its potential as a money-spinner. Keelin had given her a copy of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, one of the first books to draw attention to the esoteric secrets of the small French village, but it was the books of a superb writer called Patrice Chaplin that had most resonated with Brigid, especially when the author wrote about the mysterious, mystical Mount Canigou, a mountain of initiation, where many, including the author, claimed to have experienced a portal that led beyond earthly realms.
Brigid had visited the famous monastery on the Mount, with Keelin and Marie-Claire, and they had climbed the winding path upwards for an hour, immersed in the mystical powerful energy that the mountain seemed to radiate. As they climbed, the summit disappeared, veiled in ethereal cloud, and the wind rose, pushing against them; it was kinder in their descent, blowing against their backs and speeding their way. A path of initiation, Patrice Chaplin had called the route in her book The Portal.
She too was on a path of initiation, Brigid reflected, as a dove cooed in the eaves. Having wasted years in dull acceptance, controlled obedience, and institutionalized rigidity, she was now hungry for knowledge. Unlike Marie-Hélène, who reasoned and questioned and was true to her own sense of self, and whose religious life was vibrantly alive as a result, Brigid had been intellectually lazy, suppressing every trace of individuality to become part of the hive mind. Now, at eighty years of age, she chastised herself for her passivity and cowardice. She’d thought she was leading a spiritual life when all she’d done was toe the party line and accept the rulings of a patriarchal, misogynistic, controlling clique of men who would never know what true Christianity meant, despite their so-called theological knowledge.
She’d had such interesting, thought-provoking conversations with Keelin and Armand on all the scandals, lies, and abuses of power that were so prevalent in the news. She read accounts of nuns throwing ice-cold water over children who had wet the bed, leaving them shivering and terrified; and mothers who had babies torn from their arms to be sold to American families. Brigid had wept reading the stories of the women trapped in the Magdalene laundries. And of their children, ill-treated and fostered to families as slave labour. It beggared belief that anyone could treat young women and children with such cruelty—let alone do it in the name of God. And then there were the accounts of those who didn’t survive: the bodies of nearly eight hundred babies found in an old septic tank in a mother-and-baby home in Tuam. How could her fellow nuns in that religious Order condone and be a part of such horror? Where was their humanity?
What would have been her own fate if her pregnancy had run to term? she wondered. Would her parents have sent her to a mother-and-child home? The shame of being pregnant outside of marriage and carrying an illegitimate child was so enormous in those days, Tom and Elizabeth Dunne might have thought they were doing their best for their daughter, hiding her shame by sending her to such an institution. After all, the nuns ran them, and no one questioned the holiness of nuns back then. There but for the grace of God went she, Brigid thought to herself whenever some new revelation broke about the cruelty perpetuated by the Church on young, unmarried pregnant women and their babies.
She’d trained with nuns who were cruel and sarcastic in a mentally abusive way, but she’d known far more Sisters who were kind, patient, and giving, and who had inspired her own behaviour when she’d become a Reverend Mother herself.
These last months in France had changed her radically. Brigid had never felt so free physically or intellectually, and as she cycled into the nearby village of Bois d’Abbés to get the daily bread and pastries from the boulangerie, she vowed that she would come back to this heavenly place. There was a situation that needed to be resolved at home, before she could truly settle into her retirement. Her very active retirement, she thought proudly, placing her bike outside the bakery, not the slightest bit out of breath.
“Bonjour, Brigid,” Madame Gironde, the owner, greeted her warmly when she entered the shop, the smell of freshly baked bread making her feel hungry. “What a beautiful morning.”
“Indeed it is, Louise. The wind has died. It will be a good afternoon for our boules match.”
“It was strong, yesterday, the Tramontane,” Louise observed, placing two baguettes, a fougasse, and a brioche in white paper bags, and taking a box filled with pastries from a shelf. “Keelin asked me to put these aside. Is she doing a holistic day today?”
“She is. I’ll do the morning meditation, but I’ll be in the square for the boules this afternoon,” Brigid assured her.
“Ah, bonjour, Brigid! Would you like to join us on a painting trip to Casteil next Thursday? Monsieur Delacroix has offered to take us in his minibus.” Madame Janvier huffed and puffed into the shop, wheezing loudly, swathed in a fog of Gitanes smoke. She was a chain smoker, which Brigid hated, but she was a talented artist and an excellent teacher.
“I’d love to. Merci,” agreed Brigid enthusiastically, forgetting that she was planning to return to Ireland.
“Excellent, we will bring a picnic. Louise can bake a few extra baguettes on Thursday morning. And some of your delicious éclairs. Enough for six of us,” Madame Janvier ordered bossily, and Brigid hid a smile at Louise’s exasperated expression. Madame Janvier was the mayor’s wife and had introduced herself to Brigid as the First Lady of Bois d’Abbés. As Brigid’s late aunt Nellie would have said of the mayor’s wife, she was “a right consequence.” Nevertheless, the Frenchwoman had made Brigid feel most welcome in the village when Keelin had made the introductions.
It seemed like only yesterday, Brigid reflected, cycling along the narrow, winding main street, past the butcher’s and barber’s and up the hill where the small chapel dominated the square where the little coffee shop and local bar were the focal points of the village.
Had Keelin not been hosting one of her holistic days, Brigid would have stopped for a coffee, a vice she had given in to with guilty pleasure for the past few months. She’d miss these little treats when she got home. She’d be back to being Reverend Mother and not Brigid, the Irishwoman who was Keelin’s aunt and who could speak fluent French. She hadn’t told anyone that she used to be a nun. She’d merely said that she was retired from a nursing career.
Would she have been treated differently if she’d said she was a nun? she wondered. It had been so emancipating just being her: Brigid Dunne from Ardcloch. Going home to Ireland, she’d have to put back on the old skin she’d sloughed off, and she didn’t want to. Whether she stayed in the Four Winds, or the convent in Limerick, there’d be constant reminders of her old life. The life she now had so many regrets about.
“Nothing I can do about it now,” she sighed, freewheeling down the hill with the breeze kissing her cheeks and ruffling her hair.
How she would love to stay longer in France with Keelin and Armand, enjoying the friendships she’d made in the village, reading the thought-provoking books that filled Keelin’s bookshelves, and absorbing the energy from the mystical mountain that she had grown to love. But there was unfinished business between her and Imelda and, until they made their
peace, if such a thing was possible, there would be constant misery for both of them.
For the sake of her family, Brigid would have to make the first move. But before she left this heavenly place she would climb the peaceful slopes of Canigou once more, she promised herself, glancing over to the dawn-caressed mountain that dominated the landscape, as she pedalled across the cobbles to her niece’s kitchen door, where she could smell the aroma of coffee brewing for petit déjeuner.
* * *
“We’ve loved having you stay, Mère,” Keelin said as she and Brigid sat looking out at the moonlight painting the slopes of Canigou, etched sharp against an indigo sky.
“And I have loved being here, alannah.” Her great-aunt smiled. “Keelin, would you mind if I borrowed that book, the one you recommended about Mary Magdalene and Iona? It sounds intriguing.”
“Pilgrimage to Iona—oh, it’s lovely, Mère. It made me long to visit Iona when I read it and when I did visit, very briefly, I was blown away.”
“I’d like to go there myself,” Brigid confided. “It seems so deeply mystical and esoteric, much like Canigou.”
“How about we go for a few days in May?” Keelin suggested out of the blue. “Maybe Marie-Claire could join us.”
“That’s a great idea!” approved Brigid excitedly. “I’d love to visit Rosslyn Chapel, too—”
“Oh, it’s amazing, Mère. And we could go and see the stained-glass window of the pregnant Magdalene in Dervaig on Mull. I’ve always longed to see it.”
“Ooohhh yeeessss!” Brigid clapped her hands, her eyes alight with excitement. “Oh my! Did I ever think I’d be having such adventures? It’s so wonderful to have you to share this awakening with. But you need to make your peace with your mother. And I need to make peace with Imelda, too. You should be sharing adventures like this with her.” Brigid sat up straight in her chair. “Keelin—that’s it! Will we invite Imelda to come to Iona with us? It could be a pilgrimage of reconciliation. For once and for all, let us sort out all our issues so we can live the rest of our lives in peace, whatever the outcome. What do you think?” She turned her bright, blue-eyed gaze on her niece.
The Liberation of Brigid Dunne Page 26