by Liz Nugent
‘I wanted the abortion too. I didn’t want a baby. I still don’t.’
She stood up and blessed herself, and I could see that she had simply decided to ignore what I’d said.
‘You are too young to understand. We needn’t talk about that any more. What is important now is that you and Peter settle down and raise that child together. Give him the mother and father that you didn’t get to have for long. I’m sure Moira and Alan were good in their way, but this little boy will have two parents of his own.’
I began to weep.
She leaned over and hugged me. ‘Of course, you will be missing your mother at a time like this. What were they like, your parents?’
Nobody had asked me that, not ever. I began to think of them and I wanted to speak, but choked on the words. I thought of the fact that my father had burned his wife alive, and all of his sons too. It was something I had not allowed myself to think about. Had I made him do that? A sob escaped. Elizabeth leaned forward and enveloped me in her arms, and the tears came then, wracking my body.
‘It must be hard for you. Peter told me that you find the idea of motherhood difficult, but you know, lovey, postnatal depression is a real medical condition. In my day we had no idea why we felt so awful, but it’s quite normal to feel rage and despair. You’ll find it disappears gradually, and when you look into that little boy’s eyes and see how much he needs you, a maternal instinct kicks in.’
My crying subsided. Could it be true?
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, Delia, it’s hormones. That’s all it is.’
I had heard so much about hormones over the previous week. I wished they would go away and take the baby with them.
‘How is Harry?’
She let go of me then. ‘Harry is … well, I won’t say he’s fine, because he’s not. He went to bed after I told him about the baby a few days ago, and he hadn’t got out of it when I left home this morning, but … in time, he’ll get over you.’
‘Poor Harry.’
‘It was wrong, what you did. You know that? But you will be a faithful wife to Peter because you have learned from your mistakes, right? Peter is as infatuated by you as my Harry was. You cast a spell on my boys, but now you have Peter, for keeps. He’s a good soul, but different, you know? He’s serious and committed to whatever he does, and that includes you and your son.’
I decided that maybe I should make an effort with the baby. Peter had been so horrified by my suggestion of giving him up. And Elizabeth was insisting that I would fall in love with my son and, in a week or two, I wouldn’t be able to imagine life without him. Now that I was getting a nanny, maybe it wouldn’t be too difficult.
We called the baby James. It was Peter’s choice. His maternal grandfather’s name, though the grandfather was known as Jimmy. Peter insisted that here he would only be called James. Elizabeth was delighted. I didn’t care.
Elizabeth stayed for a week and did nearly all of the feeding and changing. At first, she was delicate about it, trying not to get in my way or to take over, but I was happy to let her, and then I saw her concern grow.
‘Delia, you really should pick up the baby and hold him close to you. You need to bond with him properly.’
‘He’ll be fine,’ I said, ‘we’ll have a nanny next week.’
Our nanny was a fifty-something Italian woman called Chiara. Peter thought she’d be too old, but we got a bargain because she came cheaply and was also prepared to cook and clean. She was self-contained, gave no personal information and asked no personal information, but she was a stickler for routine. In the early days, I asked her if she’d ever been married or if she had children of her own and she simply ignored my question and asked if she should add mustard to the shopping list. I took that as my cue to respect her privacy. I did the night feeds and the first one in the morning, and she took James for the rest of the day.
During those night feeds, I looked in the baby’s face, winded him over my shoulder, cuddled him a little before laying him down again. He cried as soon as the bottle was removed, and my cuddles made no difference. Peter said he had colic. I remember when my little brother Conor had colic and he cried solidly for a week. Daddy moved out and slept on the boat to get away from the screaming. He wouldn’t let me come with him. I remember watching Mammy and Conor crying together, and now I understood her exhaustion and misery.
Chiara ate her meals in the kitchen, alone. She made one weekly telephone call home, and maybe once or twice a month she got letters from Italy. She took Sundays off. I have no idea where she went or what she did. I peeked into her room from time to time and it was stacked with Italian romantic novels, with garish 1950s covers. Occasionally, I would invite her to watch television with us, but she refused. Peter thought she was odd, but she came from the same agency that Hannah used, and James loved her immediately.
Hannah laughed when she saw Chiara. ‘Everyone else gets a young Irish nanny, you know. You lot have so many children. Looking after them must be second nature. Are you going to have ten children, Delia? Are rubber johnnies really illegal there? How hilarious!’
There was always something patronizing about Hannah. She once quite baldly announced that all Irish people were peasants, in the context of some conversation about some ancestor of hers who had been a duke of Ormond. ‘Even Peter and you, darling, sorry to say it.’
I knew the poverty I had come from, and even though Hannah did not, she had a way of not letting me forget it. Isabelle was a lot less class-conscious. ‘Oh, bugger off, Hannah. Who cares about your bloody ancestors? You could bore for England!’
Moira and Alan and Elizabeth visited for the christening about three months after the baby was born. Moira and Alan were still together then, just about. We kept it to family – well, Peter’s mother and my ‘parents’. Peter wanted to invite his friends, but I knew that I’d be judged by Moira and Alan’s ordinariness and that Alan would lick his knife or that Moira’s tights would be darned.
Alan took the christening seriously. Elizabeth had brought over the christening robe her boys had worn as babies – a long silk gown, which James threw up on before we got to the church. Peter had hastily made contact with our Catholic parish priest. Alan was disgusted that Peter and I were no longer regular Mass-goers. ‘This heathen country!’ he declared. Peter held my hand and gazed into my eyes as the ceremony concluded. He had never stopped gazing at me.
I hadn’t told Alan and Moira much about our house move, so when we did the tour I think they were stunned to see how plush and modern our house’s interior was.
‘Lord save us,’ said Moira, ‘they’ve a phone in the bedroom. It’s like Dallas!’ She was uncomfortable with Chiara and kept trying to help her in the kitchen.
‘Leave it,’ I said, ‘it’s her job. We pay her.’
‘Well!’ she said. ‘Servants!’ But she thanked Chiara every time she entered or left the room.
Elizabeth had grown up with servants and I could see she found Moira’s uneasiness irritating. She acted cordially to Chiara, but casually reminded everyone that it was Peter’s hard work that had paid for her and the house.
I had asked Chiara to prepare something simple after the christening, so we had cucumber and salmon sandwiches and tea back in the house. ‘Have you no ham?’ said Alan.
Elizabeth produced a bottle of sherry she’d bought in the duty-free, and I was grateful for that little slip from reality it gave me. The heat was stifling that mid-August Saturday in our luxurious velvet-swathed living room, even with the French windows open, and we soon made the decision to decamp to the garden. I insisted on bringing the sherry and a few glasses. Alan disapproved of the drinking. His attitude towards me was suspicious. I think he would have preferred to see some sign of gratitude from me towards him, and even though he thought he had ‘saved’ me by marrying me off to Peter, I was spoiled in his eyes. Moira was more forgiving. She confided that Alan had become more pious since I’d left Westport. He felt that he had to
atone for my sins in some way. The cracks in their relationship were obvious. I could see the doubt in Moira’s eyes. Alan had become distant with her, telling her that he would pray for her holy soul.
On that day, at least, the baby got plenty of attention as he was handed around between Elizabeth and Moira and Alan. They vied over which of them got to change his stinking nappy. I sipped the sherry, wishing for oblivion.
Alan
I couldn’t believe my luck when Moira Gillen agreed to marry me, despite the opposition of her family. She loved me then and I knew it and thanked God every night for the love of that woman. But we were not blessed with children and that upset Moira greatly. I felt bad too, but Moira was inconsolable and we were too old for a baby by the time we put in our adoption application. It would have to be an older child, they said.
When I first saw Delia, I thought she was an angel from heaven. I never saw a child as beautiful before or since. We heard the tragic story about her parents dying in a fire on Inishcrann, and we prayed about it for a few weeks. I was the one who was keen. That girl needed a family. Moira was hoping for a younger child, but she agreed that taking Delia was the right thing to do. We were a bit worried, because of the reputation the island had for insanity and inbreeding, but the girl looked perfect. Inishcrann is the poorest of all the islands and I can’t imagine she had an easy life growing up there, but Delia never spoke much about home, or anything else.
For ages, we thought she was shy, and we tried to get her involved in clubs with other girls her age, but she wouldn’t go. Eventually, with the help of God, we accepted that we had a quiet child and we were determined to do right by her.
The Russells destroyed my family once before and ruined our good name and I suppose they have done it again with Delia. But now I believe that God made us barren in order that we could save that girl from the flames of hell. If she had had that abortion, her soul would have been damned for ever.
I don’t understand why Moira can’t see that. She has stood by my side for all these years, but she wanted Delia to have an abortion and I don’t understand it. I went to Father Matthew so many times about this, but Moira refused to go to confession. Father Matthew even came to the house, but she wouldn’t talk to him. I married a godless woman and I don’t know how I didn’t see that for the last thirty-five years.
Recently, I’ve been thinking back to the accusations made about my father by the Russells when I was a boy. What if my father did get that girl pregnant? What if all of what’s happening now is the final punishment that I must suffer for the sins of my father? He must have been guilty.
I had to leave Moira. I couldn’t reconcile continuing to live with her and being true to my faith. Father Matthew said I was being rash and that I should ‘work’ on my marriage, but how could I live with a heathen under the eye of God? The last three times I tried to speak to Father Matthew, he said he was too busy. He avoids my eye at Mass and cuts my confession short every week. I have always found solace in my faith, but if the church turns its back on me, what do I have?
17
I worked hard to get my figure back. But having a baby gave me headaches I’d never had before. Two or three times a week, I would have to lie down for the afternoon. Doctors sent me for CAT scans but nothing ever showed up. I knew it was James that caused them.
Peter worked hard to pay for the nanny and the mortgage and the baby, as he constantly reminded me when he’d come home late and exhausted. He was never too exhausted to check in on the baby. I went on the pill shortly after James was born. Peter thought it was wise ‘until we’re in a more stable financial position’. I was never going to have another child. I had already decided that before James was born.
I read the parenting books finally and followed all of the instructions to the letter. But within three months of his birth, I gave up on forming an attachment to my son. He would never settle in my arms, and cried until I handed him over to Peter or Chiara. It was obvious that he did not like me and did not trust me. Peter insisted that I must keep trying, but the screaming and crying and frustration were too much for me. The smell of baby sick and stinking nappies was revolting. I remembered the days on the island when Mammy would lock me in my room in case I harmed Conor and Aidan. Brian, though younger, was bigger than me by the age of seven, and could stand up for himself. Daddy would come home and beat Mammy for locking me up. ‘What was I supposed to do?’ she would scream at him. ‘Let her kill them?’ and I would cry and hold on to Daddy’s leg.
In Chiara’s presence, I would lie to Peter about having taken James for a walk, or report on his first smile or his first tooth. These were all things Chiara had done, or told me about. She never contradicted me, but kept her eyes averted. She was the perfect nanny. When James cried, Chiara took him away to another room or into the garden.
I spent my days on the train, heading to Eastbourne or Brighton, stopping for an occasional drink in a wine bar with a view of the sea. Peter and I were OK for a while, though he constantly warned me about my credit card spending, but we managed and I tolerated him and the child reasonably well.
Hannah and Isabelle and I went out to nightclubs and parties together. Sometimes Daniel would come with us and provide the party powder, but Peter was always too tired. He didn’t like me going out so often, but I think he grew to accept it because I always came home to him, and even though I could have cheated many times, none of the men particularly interested me. I loved the attention and the flirting and I loved the champagne. Hannah or Daniel usually paid for everything. The Jewel in the Crown was on television at the time and their set of friends were like characters from the show. I did my utmost to fit in. I thought I was doing so successfully.
One December weekend, Daniel and Hannah invited us to Cornwall, where Hannah’s uncle was having a Christmas house party. ‘Children are banned,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to park the tyke somewhere else.’ Isabelle was going too.
I was keen, but Peter didn’t want to ask Chiara to forgo her Sunday off, and offered to stay home to look after James. ‘It will be good for me to spend time with him on my own. Sometimes I worry that he barely knows who I am. Would you mind going without me?’
I shook my head vigorously.
‘I have some work to do on Saturday,’ he said, ‘but on Sunday it will be just baby James and me. And besides, it won’t cost us anything.’ He didn’t mind being left alone with James at all. By then, James was seven months old and sleeping through the night.
I was thrilled at the thought of getting as far away as Cornwall without Peter or the baby. Hannah had mentioned that the house overlooked cliffs. I hadn’t been to Cornwall before. I was sure the sea would be wilder there than any of the places I had been to on my day trips.
Hannah gave me an etiquette lecture a few days before we left.
‘Don’t wear a white blouse with a black skirt or you’ll be mistaken for a servant, like you were at Kate and Malcolm’s last week.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, darling, we all had such a laugh. Nobody wanted to tell you, but I suppose dress codes were never a big deal in that boring little town from whence you hail.’
My face burned with shame. Her instructions were mostly unnecessary. I had learned quickly from Peter, but Hannah always liked to put me in my place.
‘At dinner, your napkin is the one on the left, and your glass is on the right. The larger glasses are for red wine, the smaller for white. Don’t make eye contact with the staff. Don’t thank them, not more than once anyway. Otherwise, people will get the impression that you were once staff.’ She looked at me as if she knew. My faux pas had obviously been noticed. I was furious with myself for missing the mark so widely. Expressing gratitude was something that Moira had always taught me. I hadn’t realized I was still doing it. ‘Oh, and the plumbing there is terrible, so be prepared to fill the cistern with a bucket. There may not be hot water in the bathrooms, so you might need to bring plenty of perfume.’
H
annah’s Uncle Jory’s house was like something from the magazines in the Harley Street waiting rooms. High gates with stone lions on pillars led on to a long tree-lined avenue which swept up a rolling hill to a Georgian mansion. I could hear the waves crashing below and was immediately drawn to the sea. Behind the house, sheer cliffs dropped down to the water, though a hundred yards to the left there were stone steps cut out of the rock. I scrambled out of Isabelle’s retro Morris Minor and ran down a few steps in the darkness. It was beautifully wild down here, much more akin to what I remembered on the island. Daniel called me from the cliff top – ‘Come back up, it’s perishing, and pitch-dark!’ – and I reluctantly tramped back up the steps. ‘Bloody nutter,’ he muttered.
An adjacent field had horses grazing in it. ‘Do you ride?’ said Hannah. ‘I forgot to ask, but if you want to, I can get you kitted out.’ I remembered my days riding bareback on Inishcrann ponies along the strand behind the harbour. I wouldn’t know what to do with saddles or bridles. In my childhood, we clung fast to the horse’s mane and hoped for the best. I made an excuse about a sore back.
‘Oh,’ said Daniel, ‘I have the cure for that,’ and he showed us a small green leather pouch. ‘I have some James in here.’
James was their new name for ‘charlie’ since I went into labour after doing it for the first time. They all found it hilarious.
Daniel nudged me. ‘I always knew Delia was one of us.’
I wasn’t one of them. They knew it, and I knew it. Hannah never let me forget it. But we all played along.
As it happened, none of us saw the horses again until the day we left. A Christmas tree taller than our house dominated the entrance hall, and huge fireplaces were blazing in every room and the smell of wood smoke pervaded the house. We spent most of the weekend getting trashed on champagne and cocaine. The house was packed with people of all generations, all with the same plummy accent, the one I had perfected. Uncle Jory – ‘Call me Daddy, sweetie’ – a baronet of some kind, took a shine to me, and the fact that he was three times my age didn’t bother him at all. He followed me about the vast house and I was thankful that I was sharing a bedroom with Isabelle, who found the whole situation hilarious.