Grace After Henry

by Eithne Shortall

  I hadn’t a clue where my brother was buried. I didn’t even know his name. I had tried trawling through news archives for traffic accidents in the weeks after I got that phone call from the adoption services, but without a name it was near impossible.

  Had he known about me? Had my brother ever thought to go to Australia to seek me out? Had he walked up this same Wicklow road, looking for the house where we were born? I imagined a man with a similar though not identical face, and with the same restlessness I carried at my core. I imagined a man who had grown up on the other side of the world with an identical sensation that something, or someone, was missing.

  When my knuckles grew sore, I stopped knocking. If there was anyone in, they weren’t going to answer. I checked the time again. Was I five kilometres from the town, maybe more? How far had that car driven me? I took one last look at the house, doing my best to peer through the frosted glass at the back, and, reluctantly, left.

  I walked out onto the country road, pulled the scrap of paper with The Sanctuary address from my pocket and flipped it over: 2 Aberdeen Street. I was meeting Larry, one of the men who’d thrown a bit of work my way, at his home for some local job, a boiler that needed looking at. I needed to head back to the guesthouse first to pick up my tools. I started walking in the direction I’d come. I could have done without having a job on this afternoon – if I stuck around a little longer the Formans might show up – but I needed the money. If only I could have discovered this sort of dedication in school, I might have had a career that didn’t leave me so frequently skint. I checked the time again and picked up the pace. If I didn’t hurry, I was going to be late.

  EIGHTEEN

  Ifollowed him downstairs, both of us stepping over the psoriasis shampoo and moisturiser that were now peeking out of the box because Betty had done such a poor job of covering her tracks. At the bottom of the stairs he turned into the living room and then through to the kitchen. I kept thinking I had it straight and then an obvious and inconvenient problem with the scenario would rear its head.

  He sat at the table and I, automatically, went to switch on the kettle. ‘Ha!’ I said. And then, ‘Sorry.’ The point I wanted to make was that there really was no situation we Irish wouldn’t try to fix with a cup of tea, even when that situation was that a man with your deceased boyfriend’s face had stopped by to fix the boiler. But all I managed was to gesture at the kettle and go: ‘It’s just . . . Pssshh. Ridiculous.’ I shook my head, and Henry smiled, though it wasn’t him. It was the nose that was different; the skin and the hair and the nose.

  ‘Your nose,’ I offered in a statement that made no sense outside my head.

  His hand traced its outline. ‘I broke it years ago. Playing rugby.’

  And I laughed because that was clearly a lie. The first time Henry met my parents, Dad asked what sports he liked and Henry said ‘ABR’, and Dad asked were they Spanish, and Henry said, ‘No: Anything But Rugby’, and Dad thought he was great gas after that.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, unable to explain what was so funny. ‘I might be going hysterical. Are you . . .?’

  But I could only laugh again because each possible question was as stupid as the last. My mind was mainly blank.

  ‘I’m not him,’ he said, as embarrassed as me to be having such a conversation.

  ‘Henry.’

  ‘Henry . . .’ He considered the word. ‘I’m not Henry.’

  ‘I know.’ Which was true. I did know, now I could see him clearly. The skin and the hair and the nose. And the voice. He repeated Henry’s name and it was so strange because it came from his mouth but it was not Henry speaking. The way he said it, it went up at the end, like a song, and he didn’t quite pronounce the H. It was like I was making tea for a changeling. I laughed again, but he was looking at me in alarm so I decided to stop laughing. And not wanting to be rude, I told this changeling that the tea was coming. I chased the water with milk and it occurred to me that I was not making tea for who I had thought I was making tea for and it was probably too weak, too milky.

  ‘I’m not picky,’ he said. ‘I don’t really drink the stuff.’

  What do you mean? You drink gallons of the stuff! Sometimes I have coffee, but you always have tea. You won’t have a biscuit without a cup. But of course, of course . . . Grace. Concentrate.

  ‘I’ll carry those over.’ He jumped from the chair and brought the cups to the table and I realised my hands were shaking, like the sails on those shitty boats at Dun Laoghaire harbour.

  ‘Is this too much?’ he asked. ‘I can come back again if it is, if I’ve given you a shock. Hell, I’ve given myself a shock. I had no idea, by the way, that this was your house, his house, that this was Henry’s house. I just got a call from Larry about a job and I was available so here I am. Crazy, ay? Weeks I’ve been trying to find out anything about him and then . . .’

  After a few sentences in that voice that was definitely not Henry’s, I was more lucid. I could think straight.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ I said, sliding a cup towards me. ‘Stay. Have the tea. Actually, we could probably both do with some sugar in it. For the shock.’ I pushed the bowl towards him. ‘So you’re not Henry.’ The laugh that followed was a lucid one because I knew what I was saying and, come on, how hilarious is that?

  ‘No, I’m Andy.’

  ‘Okay. Andy.’ I nodded. ‘But you look exactly like Henry. Almost exactly, except . . .’ The skin, the hair, the nose.

  ‘It’s crazy, ay?’ Andy observed the cracked photo frame again. ‘I didn’t know. I thought we might look alike but I wasn’t sure. There’s no record of how many placentas there were at birth, that’s sometimes how they tell if twins are identical or not. And obviously there was no DNA test . . . We look pretty alike though, ay?

  ‘Twins?’

  ‘That’s right. Henry is my twin. Was my twin. I . . . I’m sorry for your loss.’

  We both squirmed at that. And when I was done cringing, I goggled my eyes at him expectantly. There were too many questions and maybe he would just know which one to answer first. Henry was an only child. He has no siblings and certainly no twin. I had known no human better and more intimately than I had known Henry Walsh and if there was another, I would have known that too. Eventually, because this man was not taking the initiative, I stated the obvious: ‘Henry didn’t have a twin.’

  ‘Neither did I until a couple of months ago. Not one I knew about, anyway. Mum passed away last year and—’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said automatically, though what I was thinking was: Isabel Walsh is alive and well and probably planting petunias in her back garden in Donnybrook as we speak.

  ‘Yeah, thanks. When she died, I went looking for information on my birth parents. Mum would have been good with me doing it when she was alive but it was never that important to me. And then suddenly it was.’ He gave an embarrassed smile, which I automatically returned. I wanted to reach out and touch it. ‘I got in contact with the adoption services here and they told me my birth mum was long dead, there was no father listed and that, oh yeah, I had a twin. But then they came back and said he was dead now too.’

  ‘Henry.’

  ‘Right. Except I didn’t know his name until a few minutes ago. I always knew I was adopted, but I hadn’t a clue I had a brother. A twin brother!’ It was his turn to laugh, albeit ruefully. ‘There’s no way Mum knew either. She was open about it all. I asked my grandma; she was as shocked as me.’

  He turned his mug around and around but didn’t raise it to his mouth. ‘I should have gone looking for information earlier,’ he said, staring into the cup. ‘I should have. Imagine if I’d contacted the adoption services earlier, even a year before. I could have met Henry, we could have gotten to know each other. I mean . . . you don’t know how that kind of meeting could alter the course of your life, do you? Maybe he would have come to Australia to visit me this year, or been held up somewhere else waiting on a phone call from me. It’s possible, isn’t it?’r />
  ‘Sorry?’ I said. I was doing my best to concentrate. ‘What’s possible?’

  ‘That if we’d met, he might still be alive.’

  He spoke as easily as a man complaining about the traffic or the weather, and suddenly, outrageously, I wanted to slap him. I needed a minute to catch up.

  ‘So sorry now, Henry was . . . adopted?’ And I was off again, that high-pitched laugh.

  Henry was not adopted. Henry was tall like his mother and had hair like his father. There had been an adopted girl in my primary school and everyone knew before she told us because her skin was so much darker than her parents’. Henry wasn’t adopted. Henry looked like his parents. I thought of the family portrait on the piano in Donnybrook. They were a handsome family. I said it out loud, just so we were all clear: ‘Henry was not adopted.’

  ‘Yes, he was.’

  I couldn’t figure out why the changeling was nodding, but then I realised I was shaking my head.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You didn’t even know he was adopted? Did he not know? Wow.’ The changeling leaned back in his chair. ‘This really is a surprise. I assumed you knew that. No? You didn’t know? And Henry didn’t know. Wow.’

  I felt sorry for him, this man who stole Henry’s face and couldn’t seem to get his story straight. ‘No, he didn’t know,’ I said reasonably. ‘He didn’t know because he wasn’t adopted.’

  The man with Henry’s eyes and Henry’s mouth and Henry’s hands looked at me and sighed. ‘If he wasn’t,’ he said finally, ‘then how do you explain me?’

  NINETEEN

  Our first time.

  Date: New Year’s Eve 2012. Technically, New Year’s Day 2013.

  Location: My parents’ house.

  Alcohol consumed: a bottle of red wine (shared), three gin and tonics (me), two pints and a Jameson (you).

  Inebriation levels: Could still recite the Our Father in Irish and make a decent stab at walking in a straight line backwards. Possibly not at the same time.

  Soundtrack: David Gray’s White Ladder.

  ‘David bloody Gray? Seriously?’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. It’s been stuck in my CD Player since 2002.’

  ‘Jaysus . . .’

  ‘Would you rather silence?’

  ‘What if your parents come home, Grace?’

  ‘I told you, they’re at my auntie’s party. They won’t be back until the early hours of next year.’

  You’re pretending to look at the books on my bookcase. I’m wondering if you’re carrying a condom and, if not, what time the Spar down the road opens until.

  ‘If I was you, I’d just throw out the whole CD player.’

  ‘I haven’t actually lived here in six years,’ I say, as you take Animal Farm from the shelf. ‘We did that in school.’

  ‘Us too.’ You flick through the pages. ‘I remember going downstairs to my dad and telling him how I had this idea that the whole story was a metaphor for the class system – I honestly thought I was the first person to figure it out.’

  ‘Me too!’ I say, sitting up straight on the bed. ‘I swear to God. I did a book report outlining my “theory”. That’s mad. What a coincidence.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as coincidence,’ you say, putting the book back on the shelf, not where you found it but frankly alphabetised bookshelves can go and shite right now. ‘Everything happens for a reason, that’s what I reckon.’ You keep talking so I won’t notice that you’re coming to sit next to me on the bed.

  ‘Even school book reports?’

  ‘Yep. Years before we knew each other, it was written in the stars: meant to be.’

  I roll my eyes, pretending I don’t feel your thigh against mine. It’s been a week since Let’s Do Lunch. This is our third date. I know what is about to happen and I accept that I am a three-date cliché. But it’s Christmas, and a Christmas romance is even better than a summer one.

  You continue: ‘You know one in three Irish households own this album?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure that fact is on the citizenship test.’ I turn to face you, my legs crossed into a lotus position. You’re still looking straight ahead. At the bookcase. ‘That, and what’s the bestselling single of all time.’

  ‘Elton John. “Candle in the Wind”.’

  ‘Ding ding ding. One shiny harp-imprinted passport coming your way, Henry Walsh.’

  Deciding this very Irish foreplay has gone on long enough, and emboldened by the wine, I get up from the bed. I ignore the laminated Mass card for my granddad that my mother has left on the side table. I stand in front of you and confidently straddle a leg either side. You quickly get your hands out of the way and I lower my body, careful to ensure my legs bear most of the burden. I want to give off the impression of lithe for as long as possible.

  You kiss me and a warmth floods my body. Your tongue fat against mine, I pull back. I tease your lips and return to your tongue. Your hands on my side, static against the material of my tights and so secure that I almost chance lifting my feet. Almost. I edge slightly to the side, you take the hint and roll me over. You bear down on me and smile. ‘How’s it going?’

  I’m grinning too. And there’s a pause as the music seems to grow louder. You throw your head back: ‘Babylon!’

  And my whole body starts to shake below yours. You roll over and lie beside me, both of us staring at the ceiling, laughing and occasionally singing along in that mocking, quivering voice that makes me think of those dog figurines with wobbly heads that you see in the back windows of cars.

  ‘I could turn on the radio?’

  ‘But then you chance getting the News.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Let’s just turn it down, low.’

  And so I do. And when I come back to the bed, your arms are summoning me again. I am envious of how confident you are, in a room and a bed you’ve never been in before.

  I climb gently on top of you. We’re still fully clothed and it’s an hour until midnight. There’s a non-verbal agreement that we have all of the time in the world, more than the old year and the new year combined, and we progress slowly. Step by step, layer after layer, whisper into whisper, until there is nothing left to hide behind.

  And somewhere in a half-dream, I murmur ‘you, you, you’, and a year later you tell me that you heard it.

  TWENTY

  ‘So Henry was adopted.’ A statement or question, who could say?

  ‘We both were.’ This man, Andy, took a reluctant sip of his tea with Henry’s mouth and placed the cup back on the table with Henry’s hand. I let my own go cold. ‘Did he seriously not know?’

  Maybe it was my head spinning, but it really felt like we were going in circles.

  However, since a version of Henry was now sitting in front of me – if instead of being dead for the past two months, he’d been sunning himself somewhere nice – anything, I reasoned, was possible. I thought about it, I did my best, but I kept hitting a brick wall. ‘He looks like his parents.’

  ‘People who don’t know say I look like my cousins. It happens.’

  ‘He doesn’t sound like you.’

  ‘You’re not born with an accent, Grace.’ I flinched as Henry’s mouth said my name because that was all wrong too, changing the ‘a’ to an ‘i’ sound like he was making fun. ‘We were born in Wicklow, at the house of a couple that, from what I can gather, would take in unmarried mothers until they had given birth. Then the kids went up for adoption. Henry’s adoption had been arranged in advance. It was a private adoption and there was a couple waiting to take him – his parents, I guess?’

  I thought of Isabel and Conor. I found it hard to picture Isabel pregnant, she was so fragile, but I found it just as hard to picture her organising a back-alley adoption.

  Andy continued: ‘I don’t know everything yet, I’m working on it. But I know we were born on October second and that our biological mother was a woman called Frances Clinch. I know she died when I was fourteen and that she’s buried in Glasnevin Ce
metery. She was nineteen when she had us, and thirty-three when she passed away. The same age as Henry.’

  I kept track of all the inaccuracies but I let Andy finish his story. I could appreciate that sometimes you just need someone to talk to and this man clearly had a lot on his mind.

  ‘Nobody knew she was carrying twins, I don’t even think she knew. The women at these places rarely went to the doctors for check-ups – didn’t want any paper trail showing that they’d ever been pregnant. Mum said she got me on short notice, a call out of the blue that a baby was available if she could take it straight away and she jumped at the chance. She kept getting turned down, you see, because she was adopting on her own. And she wasn’t a great candidate on paper, or probably in reality either.’

  He was very excited and he really seemed to believe what he was saying, God bless him.

  Henry looked like his parents. I reminded myself of that. He had his father’s hair. But despite my best efforts, cracks started to form in my resolve.

  ‘Soon as I found out about Henry, it made sense to me. I’d always felt like someone was missing.’

  I jumped in, before the dam could break. ‘Okay, stop. Look, I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, and you seem to believe your story and you seem like a nice guy, but okay. First of all, Henry’s birthday is October the third not October second—’

  ‘That’s the date we were adopted.’

  ‘Secondly,’ I refused to be thrown, ‘Henry was born at home, it’s on his passport.’ I wasn’t actually sure your birth place was on your passport but I knew Henry had been born at home and I doubted this Aussie knew anything about the Irish passport system. I wanted him to take me seriously. ‘Thirdly,’ and this bit I knew to be true, ‘Henry never felt like someone was missing. Never. We used to talk about being only children all the time, and while I wished I’d had a brother or sister, he never did. He never felt there was someone missing.’