Stella turned to grin at Molly. “He’s written. It has to be him. No one else sends me letters. Oh Molly, I think I might faint from the excitement. Even if Mammy is cross I know I can talk her round and it will be fine. Oh Molly! It’s him!” She felt tears prick at her eyes and she hugged her friend and then ran the rest of the way to the house, no longer caring about the ache in her feet or the pull in her back. She had waited for this letter for a month and it was here and she just was not able to wait for it for a single moment longer.
Bustling through the door, she threw her bag to the floor and ran to the kitchen where she knew she would find her mother. Kathleen looked up from where she was bent over the sink scrubbing some clothes and Stella could barely hear a thing around her, her heart was beating so fast.
“Seán says there’s a letter,” she gasped.
Kathleen dried her hands, her face drawn. Stella tried not to read too much into it. Even though her mother had told her she needed to find her own happy ending, she had known she would be wary about her hearing from Ray again.
“Yes,” she said, reaching to the shelf. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
“I don’t want a seat, Mammy. I just want the letter. Is it from him? Is it from America?” Her nerves were rattling so much she could barely think. She just needed to see what he said – she needed to feel close to him again. She needed to know she was forgiven and that he understood and most of all that he still wanted her.
“Pet, please, have a seat. There’s no rush.”
Stella could see the letter in her mother’s hand, she could see the crisp envelope and, unable to resist for a moment longer, she reached out and snatched it.
“Stella!” her mother said.
Stella looked down at the envelope and the familiar writing before her. Her heart sank. She didn’t understand. There had to be some problem. She turned the letter over, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. It was her writing, her return address as she had penned it on the back. He would have known it was from her and yet, in a scrawl she didn’t quite recognise someone had written Return to Sender and popped it back in the post. It wasn’t even opened. He hadn’t even read it. And who had sent it back? Her heart sank when she thought of how she had poured her heart and soul into every page. There must be some mistake. She looked at her mother – as if there was a chance Kathleen would have the answers and would be able to tell her it was all some mistake.
“I don’t understand,” she muttered, sinking to the kitchen chair, the ache in her feet and the pull in her back all the more acute. And this time they were accompanied by a dizzy, floating feeling right at the back of her neck. Kathleen poured her a glass of water from the sink and sat down beside her.
“I don’t understand,” she repeated. “I don’t . . .”
“Maybe it’s for the best, pet. The past is sometimes best left in the past,” her mother said.
“But, Mammy, I was writing to tell him I was sorry. To explain that I didn’t mean it. That I loved him.”
“You didn’t mean what? Oh, Stella, pet . . . what did you do?” She slumped to a seat and took her daughter’s hands in hers.
“I told him I didn’t love him. I couldn’t leave you, Mammy . . . not when . . . not when things were how they were and I had to make sure he didn’t come after me. I thought . . . I thought I would get over it.” Stella shook her head, staring back again at the letter.
“You stayed for me? For us?” Her mother’s voice broke.
“You needed me, Mammy.”
“Oh, pet!” Kathleen said, pulling her daughter into a hug, “I love you with all my heart. You didn’t have to do that.”
Stella didn’t respond. She knew that when Ernest had died she had done the only thing she could have done and stayed.
Taking a deep breath, she continued: “I broke his heart, Mammy, and he doesn’t forgive me. That’s the only explanation. I wrote telling him I loved him and I still wanted to be with him and he couldn’t even bring himself to read the letter.”
Kathleen sat wringing her hands. “Oh, pet. What have we done? What have I done to you?”
“You’re not to blame yourself, Mammy,” Stella said, guilt heaping on guilt that her mother was being hurt by this anyway. “I’m a big girl and I made my own decisions . . . I just . . .” She turned her face to the letter again. “Oh, Mammy,” she said, tears falling, “where do I go from here? How do I make him understand?”
“You try again, pet,” her mother said. “If he’s worth it, you try and you keep trying. True love is, well, it’s hard work but you don’t give up on it. You don’t get many chances in this world at it so you sure as hell don’t give up on it when you think there is still a chance. You try, my pet, until you can’t try any more. He was a good man – and if he is half the man your father was he will listen eventually.”
Stella nodded and hugged her mother before picking up the letter and standing up to go upstairs.
“Dinner will be ready soon, pet!” Kathleen called after her.
“I’m not hungry,” Stella replied as she made her way to her bedroom, took out her notepad and pen and started to try again.
“Try again,” she whispered, “and try harder.”
So for a second time she poured her heart out, imploring him to read the letters to try and understand. And in addition she wrote about her day – about the sunshine, about how the sun glinted on the Foyle and the river was calm. She wrote about the shiny cobbled streets and how Molly Davidson was doing really well, thank God. She wrote about the latest gossip from the Base and how she was sure some of the men were still using their little flat. And then she wrote of how she could never forget him, how she would be sorry for the rest of her days and she begged him, once more, to give her a second chance.
When she sealed the envelope and wrote his address on it – his home address in the suburbs of Boston where he had told her there was a basement apartment waiting for them – she kissed his name and offered a silent prayer up to anyone who was listening that this time the letter would find him and he would find it in his heart to forgive her.
And at the same time she vowed to pull that old suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe and start filling it again for the day when she would travel to America and she would see him again.
Even when the second, and the third, and the fourth letters were all returned to sender, she kept the suitcase resting on Dolores’ old bed and filled it with bits and piece and stored some of her wages in a small savings jar in the left-hand corner.
And each time the letters came back, after she allowed herself a time to feel that crushing blow she would whisper to herself the words her mother had spoken to her that first day. “Try again. Try harder.”
And when Christmas arrived, with still no sign of the man she loved loving her back – when Dolores was telling her to give up and move on – her mother gave her a simple card with a short inscription.
“When Life says give up, Hope whispers ‘Try it one more time’.”
In that envelope her mother had placed a bundle of notes . . . almost enough, along with her own savings, to ensure a passage to America.
Stella looked at her – her eyes wide with disbelief. “We don’t have this kind of money, Mammy. How did you?”
Kathleen smiled sweetly. “That’s nothing for you to worry about. You just worry about finding a job, getting a visa. Getting sorted. I know you want to go, pet. I know you want to try and see him face to face, so this is your chance.”
“But we can’t afford this.”
“Never you worry, pet,” Kathleen said, kissing her daughter. “It’s the least you deserve.”
It was only later Stella realised her mother was no longer wearing her engagement ring or her wedding ring.
Chapter 30
I hope you understand why I couldn’t give up. Why I can’t give up. I have to be able to tell myself I did everything I could. That I tried everything I could. I couldn’t live with myself
if I didn’t.
* * *
Derry, July 2010
“So my grandma sold her jewellery to pay for you to go to America?”
There was no two ways about it. I was gobsmacked. But also in awe. I could not believe my grandmother would have parted with the jewellery which was no doubt so precious to her.
“It was the only thing she had of any monetary value,” my mother said. “But she said material things were unimportant to her. Sure she had all she could want with us, and after how I looked after her when Daddy died she was determined that I get something back.”
“But to go to America? When he had been returning your letters?”
“It was madness,” my mother laughed. “When I think of it now. If you had told me you would do something similar at twenty-two I would have given you a very stern talking-to but at the time it just seemed like the right thing to do. And, dare I say it, it felt hopelessly romantic. But you didn’t go to the States for a holiday in those days – you moved, lock, stock and barrel – so when we decided I was going I had to set up a life for myself before I even left. Thankfully Molly’s family in America was able to set me up with a nannying job prospect in Boston, which would get me my visa, and cover my board and lodgings with a little bit left over, because Lord knows every penny was sunk into getting me there in the first place. You know in those days you couldn’t leave with nothing either – you had to have a suitcase filled to bursting to prove to immigration you weren’t destitute. Every neighbour in the street gave me their cast-offs to make up the weight.” My mother was smiling, lost in a memory of a time gone by.
I wondered why I had never heard these stories before – perhaps it was because I had never asked. My mother had always seemed so much older than me – so distant in many ways. We never had the bond some mothers and daughters have – we never had the bond she clearly had with her own mother. Then again I was such a daddy’s girl, I never gave her much of a look-in. It was my father I ran to when I was hurt or needed advice or wanted a hug. My mother – I suppose I had taken her for granted. Seen her as a square – someone who lived her quiet life in her quiet house in her quiet town. I hadn’t realised the heartbreak she had lived through. I had never stopped to listen to the stories of her life back in Ireland, preferring my father’s company. And now, the more I heard, the more she was developing into glorious Technicolor before my eyes and the more I wanted to know – about her, about Ray, about Dolores and Peter and Molly Davidson and the cast of characters who were coming to life for me.
God, I had been selfish. So wrapped up in my own life – my own misery – to pay much heed to anyone else. But that would change, I knew it.
“So the funny thing was I arrived at the O’Donnells – in their fancy brownstone which had two bathrooms and fluffy eiderdowns on the bed and a garden with a swing-seat. I thought I had arrived at Buckingham Palace! Mrs O’Donnell showed me to my room – my very own room – in the attic and I swear there was more furniture in it than there was in the good room at home. A dressing table, and a wardrobe, a bed and a locker, a chest of drawers too and a desk where I could write letters home. The curtains . . . I’ll always remember the curtains for as long as I’ll live. Red velvet they were. I was almost tempted to haul them down and make myself a fancy dress like Miss Scarlett in Gone With the Wind. Of course when I unpacked my case – all the decent stuff, not the fillers from the neighbours – I swear I only filled one drawer and not even half the wardrobe. Probably not even a quarter of the wardrobe. I had two pairs of shoes – my work shoes and the fancy ones I had worn to the City Hotel with Ray. Well, Mrs O’Donnell, her face a perfect picture, asked me when the rest of my stuff was arriving. How could I tell her this was the rest of my stuff, and half the neighbours’ too?” She topped up my teacup and moved closer. “Her children were terribly terribly spoiled, you know, and she expected the sun, moon and stars for my board and lodgings. I had thought life at the factory was tough! But the thing that kept me going, which got me through the long days and the longer nights missing my family back home, was knowing that, as soon as I could I would travel to Ray and see him face to face.”
“But he still hadn’t responded to your letters?”
She shook her head. “Not a one was opened. You have seen it yourself. Each and every one of them marked with Return to Sender. I knew he must have been very angry – so I suppose if I’m honest I was scared and, ridiculous as it sounds, given that I had travelled half the world, I put it off a little. It was one thing to have a dream – but when I started to worry if that dream was foolish, if he would reject me to my face . . . then the fear really kicked in. I could take the letters, in a way, because I could tell myself he was reacting to an inanimate object – and he could pop a letter back in a post box. But once he saw me he would have to listen to me. And if he didn’t forgive me, he would have to tell me, face to face, to leave. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough for that.”
I sat and looked at the woman across the table from me, her hair soft and white glinting in the sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window, her hands frail and thin. I thought of all I had read and heard. I thought of how she had nursed my father through his illness – never faltering, never leaving his side – making him feel loved and cherished. I thought of how stoically she had sat at his funeral, how she had held court at the wake afterwards when all I was capable of was lying in a heap until Craig persuaded me to at least try and be sociable with the mourners. I thought of how she held her family together after my grandfather’s death and I wondered how anyone could ever doubt how strong this woman was.
“But you had to do it?”
“I did.” She sat her teacup down and took a deep breath. “I never in a million years could have imagined what happened that day. In hindsight I was foolish, but it had just never crossed my mind.”
Chapter 31
Boston, October 1962
Autumn in New England was stunning. The leaves fell in a cavalcade of rustic colours, covering everything they could before being whipped by gentle breezes into gutters and gullies. The rain fell hard, but it still had a hint of warmth about it so that a walk in the rain remained something pleasurable, even with two unruly children who still thought it was fun to play tricks on the nanny. How Stella longed for home and the familiarity of Seán’s smile! He could be a wee devil of course but when she told him to behave he would do as he was told – unlike Laura and George, who would stick their tongues out and go on with whatever devilment they had been up to. After a particularly trying week in which Laura had developed a dose of chicken pox and was, as a result, even more huffy than usual, Stella had been almost delirious to get off two days in a row. Her earlier fears about tracking down Ray had dissipated in a final flurry on the day Laura had thrown up on her three times and blamed Stella herself for standing in the way. Nothing in life could be as scary as life with a precocious eight-year-old.
Thankfully Mrs O’Donnell was all too well aware of how challenging her children could be – and had frequently thanked Stella for her efforts. “I know they’re lively,” she had said nervously over her cup of tea. “But with you it seems to be a little more contained.”
Stella had nodded and tried not to think about what it was like before she was on the scene.
However, feeling a debt of gratitude to the young nanny, Mrs O’Donnell had granted her request for two days off together and had dropped her at the bus station that morning without asking too much about where she was going. Stella had simply said she was going to visit an old friend – one she had known in Derry – and allowed her boss to believe it must be a GI bride or similar.
For the two-hour bus journey all she could think of was how he would look, what she would say and if it would work out. She played out every imaginable – or so she thought – scenario in her head. She tried to be positive, to think of home. To be strong. She tried, though her hands were shaking, to tell herself that she had not made up the time they had together – that
she was not looking at it through rose-tinted spectacles. That it was okay – that it would be okay. That no matter what life had thrown at them they had been so madly in love. She touched the brooch he had given her gently on her lapel and closed her eyes as the bus juddered along the city streets. She had come this far and she could not go back now.
* * *
The street was just how she had imagined it when he had spoken of it. Tree-lined. Large lawns, now covered with a carpet of orange, gold and brown leaves. An elderly man was raking the leaves and stopped to tip his cap to her and smile and she smiled back, wondering about the futility of his actions. Sure ten minutes from now his lawn would be covered again.
The houses were perfect little boxes, with steps and porches, swing doors and screens. Almost every porch nursed a swing-seat or deck-chairs – even now in the cooler weather. She imagined you could fit two or three of the houses in her street back home into every house on this street. A few lawns had American flags flying by the mail boxes. It was the picture of perfect suburbia and she wondered how her life would have been had she moved here and married Ray the previous year. Would she know the name of the man now raking his lawn? Would she know which kid on the street had left their bike at the end of the driveway? Would she be at home in their basement flat making Ray’s lunch waiting for him to come home from work? Would she have been pregnant perhaps? She put her hand to her stomach. She could have had a baby just like Dolores, who had given birth in June to a downy-haired baby girl. Leaving her niece had been hard – but then the arrival of Baby Bernadette had seemed to give Kathleen a whole new lease of life. It had made her own parting a little easier to bear – although there had been one moment when she wondered if her mother would ever let her go.
There was little point, she thought, as she walked on looking for the number of the house where he lived. She hoped he would be in – or someone would be in. She hoped he was close by. Wouldn’t it just be wonderful if he could sense that she were here – if he could feel it?
The First Time I Said Goodbye Page 26