by Maeve Binchy
Nessa, ashen-faced and trying not to let herself believe that this would never have happened if she had sent anyone else but Helen, agreed that Helen had been gone ages and ages and could get no reply. Helen had made a call to Nessa saying that there were problems but that she knew she would get in if she could persuade the child to open the door. She had called from a nearby shop where she had stopped to buy a bottle of milk for herself because she felt faint thinking of what might be inside.
That night, with Yvonne in her hospital bed, with Yvonne’s three-year-old lodged temporarily in a local orphanage until the care order could be signed, Helen told Brigid she felt restless and she would like to go out for a walk.
‘You are restless tonight,’ Brigid said absently. ‘You’ve been out to the garden a half a dozen times.’
‘I wanted to make sure it was all right,’ Helen said.
Carefully she picked up the little bundle, the boy who would inherit the Palazzo millions, and took him in her arms. She had him wrapped carefully in a towel and in one of her own nighties. She had a soft blue rug, which used to lie folded on the back of her chair, wrapped well around him.
She slipped out the back gate of St Martin’s and walked until her legs were tired. Then in a shop where nobody would recognize her and mention to one of the sisters that they had seen one of the Community carrying a baby, she found a phone and telephoned Renata.
‘I have it,’ she said triumphantly down the phone.
‘Who is this, you have what?’
‘Renata, it’s Sister Helen from St Martin’s, I have your baby.’
‘No, no, it’s not possible.’
‘Yes, but I must give him to you now, tonight, now this minute.’
‘It’s a little boy, you got us a little boy?’
‘Yes. He’s very very young, he’s only one day old.’
Renata’s voice was a screech. ‘But no, one day, he will die, I cannot know what to do for a child of one day …’
‘I don’t know either, but I bought him a bottle of milk, he seems to be taking it off my finger,’ Helen said simply.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in London of course, about two miles from the convent. Renata, have you any money?’
‘What kind of money?’ She sounded worried.
‘Enough to pay for a taxi.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘So will I come to your flat. And give him to you. No one must know.’
‘Yes, I don’t know, perhaps I should wait till … I don’t know what to do.’
‘I went to great trouble to get him for you.’ Helen sounded tired.
‘Oh I know, Sister, I’m so foolish, it’s just that it’s so quick and he is so very little.’
‘I’m sure you’ll learn, you can always ring someone and ask them. Will I get a taxi now, it might cost pounds?’
‘Yes, come now.’
‘And Frank’s not there is he?’
‘Frank, how did you know my husband is Frank?’
‘You told me,’ Helen said, biting her lip.
‘I suppose I must have. I don’t know what to say.’
The taxi man said that this wasn’t where he wanted to go. He was on his way home. South London is what he wanted. Not miles out to Wembley.
He saw the tears beginning to form.
‘Get in before I change my mind,’ he said. ‘Anyway, at least you’ve had it, let’s look on the bright side, I could have ended up delivering it.’
‘That’s true,’ Helen said, and the taxi driver looked at her anxiously, wondering would he get his fare when he got to Wembley.
She recited the address of the apartment block as if by rote and asked the driver to wait. The lady of the house would be down in a moment and would pay him.
He told the other cab drivers afterwards that he had spotted her as trouble the very moment he saw her. The moment that her eyes had filled with tears when he said perfectly normally of an evening that he wanted to go south of the river rather than up to this neck of the woods in Wembley. Anyway, he said, it all seemed to have happened at once, the lady came down and was carrying a purse with money. Classy she was and foreign, she took one look at the baby and she started to scream.
‘He’s got blood on him, he’s not properly formed, no, no, I didn’t want this! This is a baby that still is not ready to be a baby. No, no.’
She backed away from the girl in the grey skirt and jumper with her hand up to her mouth and at that moment a fellow in a Rover came along and leaped out, he took one look at what was happening and he shook the foreign woman till her head near as anything fell off, then he took the child and seemed to recognize the girl in the grey. He kept saying ‘Oh my God’ too, as if she were something from outer space.
Then there was a bundle of notes stuffed in the taxi man’s window, four times the fare out to bloody Wembley. So he had to go and he never knew what it was all about and how it ended.
It ended badly. As everything Helen Doyle had ever touched seemed to end.
She had refused to go into the flat, crying too now, louder than Renata, but neither of the women cried as much as the bewildered hungry baby that had been born in a lavatory that morning.
Sister Brigid was summoned eventually to make some sense out of the whole scene. She came with Nessa, white-faced but calm.
Nessa saw to the baby and Brigid listened to the hysterical explanations.
The Italian woman was saying that she had intended only to inquire if any mother wanted to give her baby privately for adoption, she hadn’t asked anyone to take one for her.
The tall Irish businessman was pleading for Helen, saying that she had done it for the best as she had always done everything for the best, but the world was never able to perceive it that way. He sounded tender towards her and yet terrified of her as well.
He knew her parents, he explained. Desmond Doyle had been one of his oldest friends.
‘She is the daughter of those Doyles?’ Shock was being piled on shock for Renata.
‘Yes, she can’t have known it was us.’
There was something in the way the man spoke. There was something that sounded a warning. Brigid looked from one stricken face to another to try and read the signals.
Helen was opening her mouth. ‘But I did know, I did know, it’s only because it was Frank that I’d do this, I’d never have taken a baby, and told all those lies. If it hadn’t been Frank I’d not have risked the baby’s life. I felt I owed it to him, after all, after everything …’
Brigid had worked with people for all her adult life. Mainly people who were in some kind of distress. She didn’t know what was going to be said now but she felt it was crucial that whatever it was, Helen should not say it. Helen was in mid-flight, through the tears and the gulps the story was coming out.
‘I never meant it to be like this, but they could have given it such a good life, so much money, and Frank’s too old to adopt a child, and she said he had been having heart attacks …’
‘You told her that?’ Frank snapped at his wife.
‘I thought she was a nun miles away, how did I know she was bloody Doyle’s daughter?’
Helen was oblivious. ‘I wanted to make amends, to make up for everything. To try and put things right. After all, my life worked out all right and I got everything I wanted, but Frank didn’t, he had no children and he had heart attacks, he was punished … I wanted to try and even it out.’
Renata was looking from one to another now in confusion. Out in the other room Sister Nessa had quietened the baby and Helen was gathering breath again.
‘You work with Mr Doyle still?’ Brigid asked quickly.
‘Yes, and he helped my father when he was sacked, he asked Mr Palazzo to give him back his job …’
Brigid saw an avenue of escape. She stood up as she spoke.
‘So Helen with her usual impetuous nature decided to thank you for this by getting you a child when it was not going to be easy through the proper c
hannels. Isn’t that right?’
Frank Quigley looked into the grey eyes of Sister Brigid, competent, unemotional, strong. Irish perhaps a generation ago, but now with a London accent. She reminded him of bright men he met in business.
‘That’s it. Exactly, Sister.’
Helen hadn’t stopped crying. Brigid felt she might not have stopped speaking either. With what seemed like a deliberate effort she put her arm around the girl’s shoulder.
‘Let’s take you home, Helen, back to St Martin’s. That’s the best thing now.’
‘Will I drive you?’ Frank asked.
‘No, but if you could get us a mini-cab or a taxi, Mr Quigley.’
At this moment Nessa came in; the baby was asleep. They would take him to the hospital, the one they knew, and where they were known. He would be looked after.
‘It seems a pity in a way, Sister.’ Frank looked at Sister Brigid, and she looked back. The glance was a long one.
It was a pity in many ways. They could give the boy everything, including more love than he would ever know from Yvonne.
‘Yes, but if we do this, everything breaks down. Every single thing.’
He felt she was tempted.
‘Not everything, just one little bit of form-filling. The mother thinks he is dead.’
‘Please,’ Renata said. ‘Please, Sister.’
‘I’m not God, I’m not even Solomon,’ said Brigid.
They knew it was hard for her, and they drew together, the handsome couple. Helen watched them with a look of pain in her face.
The porter had been asked to hail a taxi, and the unlikely foursome walked to the lift, Helen tearful and supported by Sister Brigid, red-haired Sister Nessa carrying the tiny baby wrapped in its blue rug.
Renata stretched out her hand to touch Helen’s arm.
‘Thank you, Sister Helen, I know you meant kindly for me,’ she said.
‘Sister Helen has a great big heart,’ Brigid said.
‘Thank you,’ Frank said at the door. He did not look at Helen, he looked instead admiringly into the grey eyes of Brigid.
‘There are countries where it is all legal. If you like, some day you can ask me and I will tell you what I know,’ she said.
‘Goodbye, Frank,’ Helen said.
‘Thank you, Helen. Sister Brigid is right, you have a great big heart.’ He touched her cheek.
In the taxi they were silent, until Helen said, ‘You called me Sister Helen, does this mean I can stay?’
‘It means we won’t ask you to go yet. But maybe now that you have faced some things you haven’t faced before, it mightn’t be as necessary to hide as it once was. Perhaps you will be able to make your life somewhere else. Travel the world, even.’
This time Helen didn’t think that Sister Brigid was asking her to leave. She felt better than she had felt for a long time.
She looked at Sister Nessa holding the tiny boy close to her breast.
‘Isn’t it sad that you can’t keep the baby, Nessa,’ Helen said with a rush of generous spirit. ‘To make up for the one you had that died. It could be a kind of substitute, couldn’t it? A consolation.’
She didn’t even notice the two women glance at each other and then look out the windows on each side of the taxi.
4
DESMOND
OF COURSE THE corner shop was more expensive than the supermarket but then it was on the corner, that’s what you were paying for. And the fact that it stayed open so late at night.
Desmond liked calling in there. There was a mad magical feel about the place and the way Suresh Patel was able to pack in so many goods on his shelves … and in such a way that they didn’t all come tumbling down. Desmond often said that Mr Patel must have a secret. Over in the big supermarket chain Palazzo Foods where Desmond worked, the principle was totally different. You had to give maximum space so that the customer could walk around and choose and best of all be persuaded by something that had not been on the original shopping list. Mr Patel’s business was the other end of the market. They came in because they had run out of sugar or they hadn’t bought anything for the supper and the shop they intended to go to had been closed. They came for the evening paper and a tin of beans sometimes. Mr Patel said that you’d be surprised how many people must be going home to a lonely evening. He often felt better off standing in his shop talking to whoever came and went.
Desmond’s wife Deirdre said she had nothing against Mr Patel personally, he was extremely polite and respectful always, but everything was that little bit dearer there. The place was a mixem gatherem, a bit like those hucksters’ shops you didn’t go into years ago at home in case things mightn’t be quite … well, fresh.
And she never knew why Desmond would stop and buy an earlier edition of the paper in the corner shop when he could have got one nearer work and had the pleasure of reading it on the way home.
Desmond found it hard to explain. There was something solid about the little place. It didn’t depend on the fluctuations of far-away suppliers and huge multinationals. If Mr Patel noticed a customer asking for something he gave it a lot of thought. Like the time Desmond had asked for red-currant jelly.
‘Is it a jam or a condiment?’ Mr Patel had asked with interest.
‘I think it can be either.’ Desmond had been equally interested in the definition. Between them they decided that once it had been bought, it would be placed on a shelf with the mustards, the chutneys and the little green jars of mint sauce.
‘Soon I will know exactly the tastes and temperaments of a fine British suburb, I will know enough to write a book, Mr Doyle.’
‘I think you know that already, Mr Patel.’
‘I am only starting, Mr Doyle, but it is all so interesting. You know the saying they have in your country about all human life is here … that’s what I feel.’
‘All human life is in my job too but I don’t welcome it as much as you do.’ Desmond smiled ruefully.
‘Ah, that’s because your job is so much more important than mine.’
Deirdre Doyle would have agreed with him, Mr Patel was right to look with respect at a man like Desmond who though well under fifty was Special Projects Manager at Palazzo. Palazzo was a name like Sainsbury’s or Waitrose. Well not quite like them, but in certain areas it was just as well thought of and back home in Ireland where nobody knew any of the others anyway, a Palazzo sounded much grander.
The Patels didn’t live in Rosemary Drive, naturally they lived somewhere else, somewhere more suitable for Indian and Pakistani people, Deirdre said, when anyone brought the subject up.
Desmond knew that in fact Suresh Patel, his wife, his two children and his brother lived in the tiny storerooms behind the small shop. Mrs Patel could speak no English and the brother was fat and looked as if he had some illness. He used to sit there and smile perfectly pleasantly but he spoke little and did not seem to be any help in the running of the corner shop.
For some reason that he never totally understood Desmond never mentioned that the Patel family lived there. That their two children, immaculate in school uniform and wearing blazers and spectacles, came out each morning from this tiny place. Desmond felt that somehow it demeaned the Patels to be thought to live in such a small place, and somewhere in his subconscious he felt that Deirdre might think it demeaned the neighbourhood to have Pakistanis actually living there rather than just trading.
The shop was busy in the early morning, people buying papers, bars of chocolate, orange drinks and plastic-wrapped sandwiches. The stuff that kept the commuters more or less alive on their journeys to work. The oil that ran the machinery of British industry.
Not that Desmond felt too cheery about his own part in British industry. He was on his way to work at the big headquarters of Palazzo Foods, the supermarket chain which was now ninth largest in Britain. Desmond had begun to work for it back in 1959 when it was simply called Prince. That was the year he and Frank Quigley had left Mayo and come to London by train, boat and
train to make their fortune. They arrived during the heatwave that went on month after month, they thought they had come to paradise.
As Desmond took his regular morning journey down Rosemary Drive into Wood Road and on to the bus stop at the corner he often looked back on those days when things were simpler and when he and Frank worked behind the counters in the two Prince Stores. One day they might be slicing bacon, another day dressing windows. Every day they met the customers and they knew everyone who worked in the shop.
It was Frank who had seen that this was a company where they could rise and rise, it was no stopgap job. Prince Foods were breaking new ground, they were getting bigger, soon they would expand and Frank would be a manager in one branch and Desmond in another if they played their cards right. Frank played his cards magnificently. Desmond had always been slower to see the opportunities. But he saw how everything was changing and saw sadly that the higher he rose, dragged, pulled and cajoled by his friend Frank, the further he got from the people, which was what he had liked about it all in the first place.
Desmond Doyle had been a thin wiry young man then with a thick shock of fair brown hair. His children had often teased him about the old photograph, saying that he looked a proper teddy boy, but their mother wouldn’t allow that at all. That was the way all young men of style looked then, she would say firmly. He looked different now, combing his hair in a way where it might look as if it was covering his head, and wearing shirts that had a neck size far wider than he wore that first summer when he had only been able to buy two shirts as his entire wardrobe and there was always one hanging on the back of a chair drying.
He supposed that many people looked back on the old days as good days even though they had been practically penniless days. He certainly did.
He could never understand why people liked the Palazzo Building so much. It was a perfect example of Art Deco, they said, a thirties masterpiece. Desmond always thought it looked like one of those big brutalist buildings you saw in documentaries about Eastern Europe. It was a square menacing-looking place, he thought, it was strange that there was a preservation order on it and articles in magazines talking about its perfect proportions.
