‘I’d better go,’ said Maeve, but he didn’t reply.
A tiny old woman in a pale blue coat was walking up the path. Maeve quietly slipped away, heading for the park gates. As she turned into Merrion Row she caught a glimpse of McCabe towering over the small woman as they stood face to face, a blaze of spring flowers surrounding them.
Someone had spat in the phone booth and slag was running down the glass. Maeve thought about searching for another booth, but she couldn’t wait any longer. When she shoved the card into the slot, her hand shook so much she could hardly dial the number. She smoothed out the little scrap of paper. It had grown damp and crumpled in her pocket. When a woman’s voice answered, she hung up without saying anything and then slammed her hand against the phone in frustration. She had to try. She had to at least find out if it was the right house. Laboriously, she dialled the number again.
‘Hello, I’d like to talk to Mr Lee, please. Mr Diarmait Lee.’
‘Hold on, he’s just here.’
As soon as she heard him pick up the phone she spoke, before he had a chance to say anything, before she had even heard his voice.
‘Diarmait Lee?’
She waited in the silence.
‘Yes?’
Maeve couldn’t speak. She only wanted to hear him talk.
‘Hello, are you still there? Can I help you?’
‘Umm, my name’s Maeve. Maeve Lee Kwong. I’m fourteen years old. My mother was Sue. You knew her. You and my mum . . . When you were in Sydney . . . She never told you . . .’
It was the man’s turn to struggle to find words. The stillness was like a ringing. It made Maeve want to hold the phone away from her. How could silence be so loud?
Finally, he said, ‘I’m your dad, aren’t I?’
Maeve couldn’t speak. She nodded into the receiver even though she knew it was stupid.
‘You still there?’ he asked, his voice deep and gentle.
‘Yeah,’ she said softly. Could he tell she was crying? Her breath came in small gasps.
‘Where are you? You’re not phoning from Australia, are you? Sure, it sounds like you’re next door.’
‘I’m in Dublin with my school. We’re on a school trip, me and my friends.’ She’d dreamt of this conversation for so long, of all the things she’d tell him about herself, and now she just sounded stupid.
‘Dublin,’ he breathed, long and slow.
‘Yeah, Dublin.’
‘How’s your mum then?’
‘She’s dead.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I’m sorry.’
There was another awkward silence. She could almost hear his thoughts. How strange it must feel to be Davy Lee. To have a daughter you didn’t know you had telling you her mother had died. Maeve shivered.
‘Look, it’s a lot to take in, you know.’
‘I don’t want anything from you.’
‘Jesus Christ, it’s not that, girl. It’s just it’s a lot to take in. She was beautiful, your mum. She was . . .’
Maeve dropped the phone. She couldn’t talk any longer. She sank down onto the floor of the phone booth, the receiver dangling beside her, and fought back the tears. She could hear the man on the other end, calling to her.
‘Maeve, are you there? Maeve?’
Wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket, Maeve reached out for the phone.
‘I want to meet you. We can’t be talking through this blasted phone. Where are you staying?’
Maeve bit her lip. ‘We’re leaving Dublin tomorrow. We’re going to this other school in Kerry and staying with some homestay.’
‘Kerry! I’ll be close to you then. I live near Dingle. Who will you be staying with?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s allowed,’ said Maeve. ‘I’ll think about it. I’ll call you back. I promise. I promise I’ll call you back.’
She didn’t wait for him to reply. Her head was whirling. She put the phone back in the cradle and walked out into the Dublin morning.
33
Confessions
They left Dublin in sleeting rain. A ripple of excitement ran through the group as McCabe and his mother boarded the bus.
‘It’s incredible, isn’t it?’ said Steph. ‘Like a kind of fairy story or something. The lost mother and the lost kid and they find each other. It’s so cool that McCabe is bringing her with us. She must be stoked.’
Maeve watched as McCabe helped his mother settle into her seat. She seemed even smaller and more fragile than Maeve had remembered her.
‘But it could be scary too,’ said Bianca.
‘Yeah, scary,’ said Steph.
‘Really scary,’ added Maeve. ‘Bunka, Steph, there’s something I need to tell you.’
Steph and Bianca gasped as Maeve revealed everything that had been going through her mind since she’d first heard about the Irish trip.
‘But why didn’t you tell us before?’ asked Bianca.
‘Yeah, we could have done something,’ added Steph.
‘I had to do it alone.’
‘But you asked that Margaret to help you. And you didn’t even tell me!’ said Steph.
‘I never thought she’d know him. I was just trying to make conversation. It was a total fluke.’
‘But this is great!’ said Bianca. ‘I can’t wait to meet him.’
‘Hang on!’ said Maeve. ‘I don’t even know if I want to meet him.’
Once they were out of Dublin and on the motorway, the bus sped through the soft green countryside. Maeve was exhausted after her revelation and slumped back down in her seat while Steph and Bianca talked excitedly about what they thought she should do next. Roadside sculptures, like monuments from another time, stood on the green verge – a man with birds in his hands twice life-size, a fish, standing stones, and twisted modern bronzes. Beyond were fields of such a lush green that even the grass threw shadows of deep blue.
Maeve tried to eavesdrop on McCabe and his mother, in front of them. Mostly they sat quietly together, watching the view. Maeve couldn’t squash down her hungry curiosity. Why weren’t they talking much? She felt she had so much to say to her own father and she hadn’t waited nearly as long as McCabe.
They turned off the motorway and drove through ancient villages. Everything looked so old, as if it had always been there. They stopped for lunch in a small town full of houses painted in gaudy pink, blue and purple. Ms Donahue and McCabe each took a group of girls to separate cafés. The Musketeers followed McCabe’s group into a tiny, steamy tea-house, just as the clouds broke and poured icy rain on the streets.
‘Great,’ said Maeve. ‘We’ll have to wait for a table.’
But just as she spoke, McCabe waved them over. He was sitting in a window seat framed with pink, lacy curtains with a pot of tea and a plate of barmbrack between him and his mother.
‘Don’t be shy of joining us,’ said McCabe. He stood up and organised two extra chairs. ‘We’re nothing to be frightened of.’
‘Call me Deirdre, please, girls,’ the old lady said. ‘It’s lovely that you and your Ms Donahue have allowed me to tag along. It must seem very strange to you.’
Bianca leant forward and Maeve could see she was about to blab, to tell Deirdre that Maeve had found her long-lost father as well. Maeve kicked her hard under the table. The silence stretched out.
Deirdre picked up her teacup and put it down nervously so that it rattled on the thin china plate. ‘I know what you’re probably thinking, girls. I know you’re thinking how could a mother give up her only son. But I never meant to give him up. I lost him when I wasn’t much older than you. I went back to get my little boy and they told me he had died, so I wasn’t to know. I wasn’t to know.’
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ said McCabe, reaching out to grasp his mother’s hands.
Maeve, Bianca and Stephanie looked at each other and blushed. Bianca and Steph picked at the pale crusts of their sandwiches.
‘We think it’s great you’re here,’
said Maeve. ‘Everyone thinks it’s great that you and Sir found each other.’
For the first time, Deirdre smiled. ‘Sir, is it? Is that what they call you, Colm? Sir?’
McCabe nodded and then suddenly they both laughed.
The bus arrived at a secondary school outside Tralee in the late afternoon. After all the old buildings, the girls had expected something at least as gothic as St Philomena’s, but St Brigid’s was made up of a collection of portable classrooms standing in a grassy field. The room they were taken to was obviously a science classroom but one of the long tables was laden with cakes and cups of tea.
‘Don’t they get sick of drinking tea all the time?’ whispered Bianca. ‘I could kill for a cup of coffee. They’re just like the English – tea, tea, tea.’
‘Or the Chinese,’ said Maeve. ‘My grandparents drink tea all day too.’
Ms Donahue came up to the Musketeers and drew them around her. ‘Listen, girls, I think it would be really nice if we could do something to honour the occasion. The school has gone to a lot of trouble to welcome us. So I want you three to do a little performance for them. You all know “I Still Call Australia Home”, don’t you?’
Bianca groaned. ‘You want us to sing it for them?’
‘Yes, exactly. You especially, Bianca. You have a beautiful voice. Remember, this is a performing arts tour!’
The girls looked at each other and then dutifully followed Ms Donahue to the front of the science room. Bianca stood in the middle and Steph and Maeve flanked her as they bellowed out the song. Maeve shut her eyes as they repeated the chorus. Would she still call Australia home if she met her father? What if he asked her to live with him? What if she had to start calling Ireland home?
When they’d finished the song, the audience burst into applause, shouting and hooting their appreciation. Then a tall, skinny boy came to the front of the class. His face was a mass of freckles and he kept his head down so his curly brown hair fell across his eyes. One of the teachers introduced him as Fergal O’Sullivan.
‘We’re going to respond to your lovely performance with a bit of traditional Irish dancing. Young Fergal is going to perform a broom dance.’
The boy looked up and grinned shyly at his audience before starting a complicated manoeuvre with a broom. Maeve thought it was the weirdest dance she’d ever seen. He leapt over the broom and twirled it to one side, narrowly avoiding the Bunsen burners on the lab bench. When he’d finished, everyone applauded and some of the students yelled out his name, until he blushed again.
Maeve was glad when they were led out of the school by their homestay host, a pale, red-headed girl called Hannah.
‘C’mon then. Mam will be waiting at the gate,’ said Hannah. She picked up one of their bags and they all dashed out through the rain to where a battered little blue car stood by the kerb. After a hurried introduction, they squashed into the back seat alongside Hannah’s little brothers and sister. Maeve was sure she wouldn’t be able to remember any of their names.
‘Wow, this place is so cute,’ said Steph as they crossed the threshold of Hannah’s house. The front door opened straight into the living room and Hannah’s brothers tumbled over the doorstep and immediately began wrestling on the stone floor.
Hannah’s mother stepped over their bodies. ‘Don’t mind the boys. Come and make yourself at home.’
She went to the wood stove that was set in an old-fashioned chimney and kindled it. Then she put a lump of peat on the sticks.
Tea was already set out on a table in the back kitchen – kippers and cheese and dark, seedy, brown soda bread. Maeve thought it was delicious, though she could see that Steph and Bianca weren’t so sure.
‘You make yourselves at home, girls,’ said Hannah’s mother.
‘Maeve’s family is from around here,’ said Bianca.
One of the boys laughed through a mouthful of bread and cheese and the crumbs went shooting out over his lap.
Hannah’s mother reached across and slapped him on the arm. ‘Mind your manners, Liam,’ she said. Turning back to Maeve, she asked, ‘You’ve got a drop of the Irish in you, then?’
Maeve could see they didn’t believe her, that they thought she looked one hundred per cent Chinese. It wasn’t lost on Maeve that there hadn’t been a single Asian student at St Brigid’s. Even in Dublin, there had been plenty of Africans but not many Asians.
‘Maeve’s dad is Irish, isn’t he, Maeve?’ said Bianca.
‘So that explains your name. I wondered about it. We spell it M-e-d-b, not like how you write it, but she’s the same queen.’
‘My dad’s called Diarmait Lee. He lives near Dingle.’
‘Ahhh, Diarmait Lee, you say? Now I see. Sure, if I didn’t see his paintings just the other week hanging in a restaurant in Tralee. Strange they are but very lovely. And if Diarmait Lee is your father, that makes sense of it.’
Maeve nodded uncomfortably. She had no idea what his paintings looked like or where they were hung. Obviously they didn’t think it strange that Diarmait Lee had an Asian-looking daughter.
‘And I suppose you’ll be visiting your dad, then?’ asked Hannah.
Maeve squirmed in her seat. All these questions. She wanted to thump Bianca for her good-natured blabbing. ‘Maybe,’ she said, and then she fell silent, picking at the salty kipper on her plate.
That night, Maeve and Steph shared a double bed while Bianca slept on a rolled-out mattress on the floor beside them. Hannah and her sister had given up their room and gone to sleep in the same tiny room as their brothers.
‘Listen, guys, you have to shut up about my father. I so wish you hadn’t told Hannah and her family,’ said Maeve. ‘I don’t even know if I’ll be able to see him.’
‘Why not? We met up with Ben, didn’t we?’
‘But it’s different. Your parents wanted you to meet up with him. I’d have to have my grandparents’ permission. McCabe will flip if I ask him to talk to Por Por.’
Steph turned onto her side and stared at Maeve in the half-light. ‘Why are you making this so hard for yourself?’
‘Because it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do and maybe, maybe I don’t want to do it.’
She turned onto her side and shut her eyes tight, trying to imagine that she was home in Sydney. But where was ‘home’? The boarding house? The flat in Potts Point? Her old bedroom back in Balmain? There was nowhere that was completely home any more. She tried to think of the things that made Sydney home. She saw herself at dance class, spinning across the old school hall while the fans spun lazily above her. She imagined sitting beneath the jacarandas at St Phil’s with Steph and Bianca, or tumbling in the grass with Jackson at Coogee. She saw her grandparents at the breakfast table, Por Por fixing her a cup of tea while Goong Goong shook out the newspapers and smiled at her over the top. And she imagined lying in the folding bed beside Ned’s cot, the warm, sweet, comforting smell of him. She held him in her mind’s eye as if she was really holding him in her arms, and sleep came to her at last.
34
Full circle
The next morning, while they were being shown around Tralee, Maeve made sure that she fell behind so she could walk with McCabe.
‘Sir?’ she said. ‘I need to ask you something.’
McCabe tried to smile, but Maeve could see his mind was far away.
‘Are you okay, sir?’
He ran a hand through his hair. ‘We had a rough night last night, my mother and I.’
‘Isn’t the B&B you’re staying in any good?’
He hesitated before he spoke. ‘Maybe you’ll understand, Maeve, because you know what it means to lose a parent.
‘Last night, my mother came to my room. I was already in bed, reading, and she came to say goodnight. To kiss me goodnight. All through my growing up, I used to pray, every night, that my mother would find me. When I was a little boy, I used to fantasise about having her come to my bed in the orphanage and tuck me in. And here I am, an old man, and my mother,
at last, she’s there with me. I wanted to laugh at the irony, but then I saw the grief of it was breaking my mother into pieces. You see, every night, since she put me in St Bart’s, the orphanage I grew up in, every night, she’s prayed for me. Not for the growing boy, nor the living man, but for my soul. She thought I was dead. She’d gone back to the orphanage and they’d told her I was dead!
‘So here she was, fifty-eight years later, come to say goodnight to her son, and she started to weep. For all those lost years. The things she’s missed! The things we both missed out on! I’d always thought I was the one who suffered – a boy without a mother – but she was broken, utterly broken by it. The waste of it all. She never had the chance to meet my wife, Gabrielle, never had the chance to see her grandsons grow up. I was all she had, and she’s led her whole life alone. I’d never thought . . .’
Maeve reached out instinctively, but he pulled away and brushed his hand across his face.
‘So she started weeping, grieving for all those years without me, and then she couldn’t stop. I held her in my arms as if she was a little child. All night, she wept. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand it would be like this for her.’
Maeve felt a cold twist in her chest, as if her heart had stopped beating for a moment. What if it was like that with her father? What if he fell apart? Or what if she did?
They walked on in silence, neither of them listening to the chatter of the other girls ahead of them or Ms Donahue’s directions.
‘I’m sorry, Maeve. It wasn’t appropriate for me to tell you all that. What were you going to ask me?’
Maeve looked up at his weary face. ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’
The other girls chatted loudly, jostling each other as they queued for tickets. Maeve drifted through the cultural museum in a daze, hardly paying attention to any of the displays. When they finally had some free time, she walked straight to the nearest phone booth. She fingered the phone card for a moment before pushing it into the slot.
Foxy John’s was in the main street of the town of Dingle, a dusty, battered-looking pub that also doubled as a shoe repair shop. Maeve saw McCabe raise his eyebrows questioningly at her dad’s choice of venue. She knew he was taking a risk in bringing her to Dingle. It was definitely bending the rules to exempt her from the planned program, especially without her grandparents’ permission.
The Secret Life of Maeve Lee Kwong Page 18