“I’ll rest after tomorrow,” she said.
“That’s when your mammy will need you most, pet. It’s one thing – all this fuss and carry-on with a wake – but it’s not then you have to worry about. It’s what happens afterwards when the house falls quiet again that she will need you most. There will be a lot to be done, Stella. And you’re the reliable one. She’ll need you.”
Stella knew what Mrs Murphy was getting at. She didn’t need her to spell it out any further. She knew because the thought had entered her mind the moment her father had exited her life. She was the reliable one. The sensible one. The one Seán had climbed into bed beside the night before and sobbed to, as she hushed him into sleep before spending a night staring at the ceiling thinking that no matter how it would break her heart there was no way on earth she could leave now.
And it wasn’t just that her family relied on her for what she did around the house but also because she knew her mother would not recover from this easily. And with one wage now – the wage that put the roof over their heads in the first place – there was no way the family could manage without her own contribution. No, she would have to stay and she would have to direct more of her wages into the house to keep them afloat. Maybe if the older boys found work she could think again – but then again could she trust them not to drink their wages down the pub? She was sure their priority would not be making sure the wains had shoes on their feet and food in their tummies. She had mulled it over through the night and it seemed the only way forward.
So when the postman had dropped off her passport among the condolences the following morning it had seemed particularly cruel. She had hidden it in the bottom of her drawer and mentioned nothing to anyone – not even to Molly Davidson who had come to offer her sympathy and had told her life was too short not to take risks. She had just nodded and offered a sad smile while thinking that it was one thing to take a risk with your own life but not with that of the family that needed you.
“Mrs Murphy,” she said, on the cold step, “thank you for your kindness. I know what my mother will need and I intend to be here to support her as much as she needs me. You have nothing to worry about on that score – please believe me.”
“Good girl, Stella,” Mrs Murphy said, understanding perfectly well what she was being told. “Your daddy would be very proud.”
* * *
Mrs Murphy had been right, of course, about the quietness of the house after the funeral. With not even the clocks ticking the place seemed almost desolate. There was no music playing on the wireless. The younger boys had gone to play in the street and Stella watched them through the curtains kicking a football half-heartedly, as if they were doing it just to amuse her. Dolores had gone for a walk with Hugh and the older boys had gone to the bar with some of their neighbours for one last toast for Ernest.
Kathleen sat in the empty front room – just a few chairs left, the mirrors still covered, the rest of the furniture shipped out to neighbours to accommodate Ernest’s coffin. She sat and she stared at the wall, her face sheet-white. She had maintained her decorum through the Requiem Mass, while all around were falling apart. Stella, yet to break down, had held her hand, hugging Seán into her on the other side. But as they walked to the cemetery to lay his remains to rest, she thought her mother might collapse. As they lowered Ernest into the ground Kathleen’s sobs had echoed through the city cemetery and had cut through Stella like a knife. And yet, she found even then, as she gave herself permission to cry, no tears would come. She stood, angry at herself while mourners passed on their best and she walked away, dry-eyed, wondering what part of her was broken.
Looking at her mother now, in her chair, she wondered perhaps if her mother was broken enough for both of them.
“Mammy,” she said softly. “Why don’t you go to bed? You’ve not slept. You need a wee rest and I’ll bring you some soup later.”
Kathleen nodded and Stella helped her upstairs and slowly helped her change into her night clothes before tucking her into her bed, trying not to think about the fact her father had died there not two nights before.
She kissed her mother softly on her forehead. “Try not to worry, Mammy. Try just to rest. You must be exhausted. I’ll take care of the children and get the house back in order. You take as long as you need.”
Kathleen rolled onto her side and, with a soft sob which was almost as heartbreaking as her cries at the graveside, she fell into a deep sleep.
And she didn’t get out of her bed for two more weeks.
* * *
Stella fell into a routine of sorts. She talked to her supervisors at the factory and they let her leave for home half an hour earlier to make sure to have dinner on for the family. She would get up half an hour earlier in the morning to put the porridge on and stay up later at night to make sure the school lunches were prepared and all the clothes washed and ironed for the morning. She would rake out the fireplace and set it before she left for work, instructing the older boys to light it in the late morning, and Dolores would help her peel the potatoes for dinner. Each night it felt like a slap in the face to set two places less at the table. She would set a tray for her mother and carry it upstairs and coax her into eating. Kathleen rarely spoke and if she did it was to tell Stella that she was a great girl and that she would be lost without her. There was no mention of Ray. No mention of the move to America. No one asked and Stella didn’t mention it. Meanwhile a letter had arrived – from Ray, unaware of her great loss and wondering why she had not been in touch. Just like her passport, she stashed that letter in her bottom drawer and the suitcase that she had been filling at the bottom of her bed was now back on top of the wardrobe. She said nothing still and, the times she spent not caring for her family, she spent wondering just how she would break the news to Ray that she could no longer come. She knew, in her heart, that he would not let her go easily. But she could see no other way. She had tried to convince herself that it would be okay. That her family would be okay. But she knew in her heart of hearts that it was down to her. She had even considered asking Ray to move back to Ireland when he was demobbed – but to what? No jobs? No prospects? When he had it all waiting for him at home? A refurbished basement apartment. A job which no doubt paid better than anything that could be offered in Derry. And what kind of a wife would she be to him anyway? Overnight she had inherited a ready-made family – her own family admittedly – but one which she would have to take care of for a long time. The boys were young. Her mother – God love her – she didn’t know when she would get out of bed and when and if she did how well she would be. She couldn’t imagine Kathleen without Ernest. The pair had been completely and utterly inseparable – much like she had hoped she would be with Ray. She knew she had been with him only a few months – and she wouldn’t dare in her mind compare her relationship with him to that of her parents, thirty years married, but she felt in a way she understood what her mother was feeling. But she was about to tear apart the great love of her life. She had wondered if she had been melodramatic to think that way – to imagine her and Ray’s relationship to have been some great love affair in the grand scheme of things, but she felt it was. She felt he had taught her so much, that theirs was a unique connection. So because she knew he would pursue her, she knew she had to make the break as clean as possible and the only way to do that was to lie. Lie and tell him it was never true. That she never loved him.
In the darkness of the night, when the younger ones were in bed and she was alone by the fire she put pen to paper and wrote.
Dear Ray,
I hope this letter finds you well. I am sorry that I have not written but it has taken me time to find the right words. This is not an easy letter to write and it won’t be an easy letter to read and for that I am sorry. I am more sorry than you could ever know. If there was any other way I would find it, but I’m sorry.
You should never have put your faith in me. I was never worthy of the love you gave me. I played along, because I was caught u
p in what we had. I was caught up in what you offered me – what you thought of me, what you made me believe. But it wasn’t real. You must have known that? It was a fantasy and I’m afraid to say, Ray, I used you. I was going to go along with it but you are too decent a man for me to do that. You deserve better. You deserve a love affair with someone who loves you back – not just someone pathetic like me dreaming of a life in America.
The fact is, I was using you, and I’ll understand if you hate me. But at least I am telling you now. Telling you before we make the mistake of getting married and being lumbered with each other. That girl next door is probably still available, Ray – and she will love you because you are truly loveable. But when push comes to shove, I just can’t lie any more. I want to stay here – to find my true love. To be with someone who means something to me.
I’m sorry to have lied to you. You deserve better and with God’s grace you will find it.
Forgive me. I never meant to hurt you.
Sincerely,
Stella
She sat back and read the words again – hoped they sounded as harsh as she had planned. Each one had hurt her as much as they would hurt Ray but she needed to let him know that it was done – that her place was in Derry – that they had no future together. She would post the letter without telling anyone. If her mother asked, she would say it was she who received a Dear John letter and that she was sad, but happy to stay. She would put the whole thing down, if anyone asked, to a moment of madness. Tell them she had been carried away by the romance the twinkly-eyed stranger from America had offered her.
Folding the letter and putting it in the envelope, she sealed it, wrote his address and slipped it into her coat pocket to post the following morning.
Then she raked the fire one last time for the night, knocking the fading ashes out of the grate and into the pan. She put up the fireguard, switched off the lights and climbed the stairs to bed. She peeked at her mother, lying unmoving in her bed – still on her own side with her hand reached over to where Ernest used to lie. In the darkness Stella could not tell if she was asleep or just lying there, awake and silent, as she did so often these days.
Stella pulled the door closed and went to the bathroom as she did every night and brushed her teeth. Then she went into her bedroom, closed the curtains and undressed before brushing her hair and climbing into bed and pulling the covers over her.
It was then, and only then, that she finally gave in to the tears which had eluded her for the last few weeks. Her pain was such she was sure it was physical – she wondered if her heart was about to give out and, though she was only twenty, she was destined to follow her father into the grave. She cried then until her throat was sore, her eyes dry and her pillow soaked and until she could do nothing but give in to sleep.
When she woke in the morning, she knew that finally things had changed – and they would never be the same. And she knew the pain she had felt the night before was the breaking of her own heart. Only she was still breathing, just – and there was porridge to be made and children to be got out to school and a house to be run. That was simply how it was meant to be.
Chapter 28
I should have trusted you to tell you the truth. But I thought I was doing the right thing. I was a fool, Ray. A silly fool and I will never forgive myself, nor should you. But still I hope you will.
* * *
Derry, June 2010
“I had to make him believe there was no chance. And more than that I had to make him hate me,” my mother said, her eyes watering. “It was the only way. I know that sounds silly, but I knew he would have given everything up for me – but it wasn’t the life we had planned. I couldn’t ask him to do that for me. I couldn’t ask him to move away from his family, from his prospects, from the life we had planned, to come here and take on responsibility for the Hegarty clan. There were no jobs. No prospects. I couldn’t bring him back here to nothing.”
“But Dolores? And Uncle Peter and Uncle James? Would they not, could they not have stepped in?”
My mother shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t feel they could at the time. With the benefit of a life of experience I’ve often wondered if I was too soft on the lot of them – but that’s hindsight. I know that at the time I was being told I was the sensible one – that my mammy needed me. And she did. She cut a pathetic picture in those days, Stella. She was lost without him.” A tear slid down her face. “She had it tough when you think of it, with a young family to mind and no money coming in. I was lucky to have your father as long as I did. I was lucky in a lot of ways. I’m not saying I’m any great hero because I’ve got out of my bed every day since your father died, but it was different for my mother. She was a strong woman – please don’t think she was anything other than that – but in those early weeks and months I think her heart was just so clean broken she couldn’t function at all. We didn’t talk about depression or the like in those days – not really. Everyone had it tough and everyone just got on with it or hid it behind closed doors. She did try but it was hard on her. Very hard.”
“But it was hard on you too,” I said, as softly as I could.
She smiled weakly. “Yes. We were a great pair, two broken hearts under the one roof. Great craic we were in those days – I think we near drove each other mad.”
“But did no one ask? Did no one press you to go to America? Did Ray not write back?”
She shook her head. “I never heard from him again. I couldn’t blame him. What did I expect? I told him I had lied, that I didn’t really love him and that I had been using him. There was no response to that, was there? All I heard, eventually, was formal notification my visa request had been turned down. I imagine that was down to him but he never approached me again.
And as for people asking? There were some whispers. The factory girls of course. That supervisor of mine had a laugh to herself. She enjoyed the old ‘I told you so’ for quite some time. With my mother, I just told her that it had ended. She either didn’t have the strength to ask more or was afraid of what I might say. The older boys were delighted that someone else would continue to put food on the table for them, but to be fair to them they upped their game when it came to looking for work. And Dolores?” At this my mother dropped her voice to a whisper. “Well, she quickly became too concerned planning her wedding to Uncle Hugh to worry about me. I think she knew not to push me too far for a response. She might not have liked what she was going to hear. The only person who ever knew the truth was Molly Davidson – strange, isn’t it? The pair of us became confidantes of sorts. A miserable pair we were too, for a while.” My mother snorted. “Nursing our broken hearts together. She walked me into the factory every day in those early weeks. She said it was sad how things don’t always work how you would have planned and I suppose she should have known. I’ve often wondered how she is now. How she got on. I must look her up while I’m here.”
With that my mother closed the photo album and stood up.
“You know, I think it’s time for a cup of tea. I’m parched. Have you noticed, Annabel, how the tea is so much nicer here? After I moved to the States I used to get your granny to send me little care packages – always a box of tea and some biscuits. The biscuits rarely arrived in one piece but I would stretch out that box of tea as long as I could – one cup of decent tea a day would make the box last for ages. And then I would get her to send me another box.”
I followed her into the kitchen, trying to imagine how it used to be. She put the kettle on and stared out into the back yard. “God, it seems like a lifetime ago,” she muttered as the kettle boiled and fizzed. “It was another world. Not the worst, but different.”
I thought of how her life had turned on its head and wondered for a moment how she could think it was not the worst? And then once again I reminded myself just how lucky I was – bereavement and relationship breakdown aside. At least I had made the decision freely to walk away from Craig – even if I hadn’t made it sooner. At least I had choices
where my mother had felt she had none.
“Do you not feel bitter about it? Angry even?”
“I did,” she said, dropping two tea bags in the teapot and pouring boiling water on top.
She moved around the kitchen effortlessly, taking cups from the cupboards, milk from the fridge. It may have been someone else’s home now – it may have been far removed from what it was when she was younger, but she clearly still felt a sense of belonging here.
“I mean,” she continued, “not at the time. Not when it was happening. I didn’t feel angry or bitter. I just felt desperately sad for a long time. And then, I suppose when I went to America and it didn’t work out, I felt angry for a while. I felt it had all been such a terrible, terrible waste and I felt angry then. It just felt unfair. I’d watched enough movies and read enough books to believe that people should get their happy endings and I really thought I would get mine. So when I eventually went to the States – when I went to find him – that was when I got angry and bitter. And I’m not proud, Annabel. I wasn’t a very nice person for a while. I was horribly unhappy and I closed myself off from everyone. Those days were darker than the days after your grandfather died and it was only when I met your daddy that I came out of them.”
She poured the tea and handed me a cup.
“He saved me, you know. Your daddy. He brought me back to life.”
“Was he never worried about you and Ray?” I knew it was an awkward question to ask but still I had to ask it. If you loved someone so much, surely a part of your heart would always remain with them? Sure weren’t we back in Derry now looking him up – planning to go to a Naval Base Reunion, trying to close some circles?
The First Time I Said Goodbye Page 24