My Mother's Children: An Irish family secret and the scars it left behind.

by Annette Sills

  Chapter 34

  Apart from a group of women at a corner table surrounded by Prosecco bottles and discarded wrapping paper, the wine bar was empty. I found a seat by the window, put my glass of Merlot down on the table and took out the theatre programme from my bag. My stomach was twisted with knots as I took off my coat, unravelled my scarf and sat down. I opened the programme and stared at Dempsey’s photograph. I felt sick.

  I’d never intended that to happen. I was going to wait behind after the Q&A and introduce myself in a civilised manner. But now I’d blown it good and proper. Dempsey would have nothing to do with me and I’d never find out what happened to my brother.

  Out of the window I could see the theatregoers flooding out onto the pavement. Some were getting into waiting taxis and others were putting up umbrellas and hurrying in the direction of the train station. Two teenagers in hoodies were having a snowball fight in the road. They were scooping snow from the roofs of the waiting taxis, launching at each other and ducking and weaving between the cars. I watched, the sight triggering the memory of another snow fight many years ago.

  I was seven and we were in Mayo for Granny’s funeral. Tess always found going to Ireland stressful but that journey had been particularly traumatic. The rough crossing, the treacherous drive from Dublin in ice and snow with a teething toddler in the back seat had sent her over the edge. She spent a lot of the time cooped up in the back bedroom of Julia’s house in Westport. I was told to tell the mourners at Granny’s house that she was laid up with a bad dose of flu.

  Granny was my first dead body. She was laid out in the mysterious front room that had always been out of bounds to us kids. The cellophane had finally been removed from the sofa, the good china unlocked from the dresser and the Sacred Heart and JFK pictures dusted down. When I entered the room holding Dad’s hand, my Cleveland cousins were playing tag around the coffin and “Black Velvet Band”, one of Granny’s favourite songs, was playing on the tape recorder on the sideboard.

  Dad had forgotten to warn me about the open coffin and I was traumatised. Granny’s face was yellow and sunken, her mouth a toothless hole. I was horrified as Dad bent over and kissed her cheek. Thinking I’d have to do the same, I let go of Dad’s hand, turned and fled through the house and out the back door. The snow hadn’t let up in days. It was inches deep in the field at the back of the house. The landscape was a carpet of white, dotted with the shadowy outline of grazing cattle, the sky navy blue. The next thing I knew my cousins had followed me and were charging past me to get outside. They started making snowballs, laughing and throwing them at one another and at me too. I hesitated, glancing over at the doorway where Dad was standing.

  “Go on,” he said, smiling. “Granny wouldn’t mind.”

  We fought and played until our fingers and toes froze and our clothes were dripping wet. Then we returned inside, rosy-cheeked and exhilarated.

  It was still snowing when we set off for Dublin to get the midnight ferry after the funeral a few days later. Our knackered Vauxhall Viva was making spluttering sounds and as we pulled into a petrol station in Athlone and Dad joked that we might not make it to the port. Mikey’s teeth were playing up again and he was wailing in the back seat next to me.

  “Keep the child quiet for one minute, would you?” Dad snapped at Tess as he fiddled with the tuner of the car radio and bent over trying to listen. The newsreader was talking about the fire in the Stardust nightclub in Dublin on Valentine’s Day. Everyone had been following the story on RTÉ news in Julia’s house every night. Forty young people had died. Julia told me the whole of Ireland was praying for them and their young souls.

  Dad filled up the tank and went to pay. It was dusk and people were leaving the small church beside the petrol station after Saturday evening Mass. Some of the churchgoers were gathering on the petrol forecourt. I wasn’t paying much attention to them. I was thinking about the young people burning to death in the fire. Did they jump out of windows? Did they turn into balls of fire? I’d been having nightmares about it.

  Mikey had fallen asleep by the time Dad got back. Then Tess started to fidget and become agitated and smack her forehead. She whispered something to Dad.

  “You’re imagining things,” he replied with a frown.

  “It was her. The She Devil. I know it was.”

  “It was not. We’re miles from Tuam. It was just someone who looked like her.”

  The snow was falling heavily and the windscreen wipers were going like the clappers. Dad was trying to concentrate on the dimly lit road as Tess started to rock back and forth.

  He turned to her.

  “Did you take your tablets this morning?”

  “It was her!” she wailed, covering her face with her hands. “I’d recognise her anywhere. Dear God. She haunts me day and night. Will she ever leave me alone?”

  The car suddenly skidded and Dad grappled with the wheel then yelled at the top of his voice. “Would you shut up, you raving lunatic, or you’ll get us all killed!”

  Tess went completely quiet and still. It was the only time I ever heard him say anything like that to her. Despite his attempts to apologise and make it up to her, she never spoke to him again for the entire journey home.

  I stayed in the wine bar watching the snow for a while longer. When I’d finished my drink, I put on my coat and scarf and exited through a side door into the street. The view was like something from a Victorian film set. Narrow and cobbled, the street was a row of small neat terraces with snow-covered roofs and front doors adorned with brass. It was dimly lit apart from a couple of old-fashioned streetlamps and the inviting orange glow from a bistro at the far end.

  There was no way I was walking back to the hotel so I opened out my map to look for the quickest bus or Tube route. Unable to see clearly, I stepped back into the light of the pub. After finding my route I put the map back in my pocket and was about to step out into the street again when I spotted him hurrying past. He was walking shoulder to shoulder with a younger man on the pavement opposite. They were deep in conversation. The younger man was tall and broad with salt-and-pepper wavy hair. Both wore long dark overcoats and scarves.

  Without hesitating I stepped out onto the cobbles and followed Timothy Dempsey up the narrow street.

  Chapter 35

  I pursued the two men in their long coats along the cobbles like I was chasing a pair of cloaked villains. The snow was falling thick and fast by then and their shadowy outlines weaved through the blurry curtain of white. I wondered if they were heading for the dimly lit bistro at the end of the street. Engrossed in their conversation, they didn’t hear me approach. Then I called out Dempsey’s name and they both turned, startled. The younger man put a protective arm on Dempsey’s shoulder.

  “Leave him alone!” he shouted in what sounded like an Italian accent. “He doesn’t want to talk to you!”

  Fiftyish and craggily handsome, I could make out a pair of dark eyes, bushy eyebrows and a scar running down his left cheek. He turned to Dempsey.

  “Come on, Tim,” he urged. “We’re already late.”

  Dempsey hesitated and stayed where he was.

  “Stop!” I shouted, hurrying towards them. “I’m sorry about what happened back there! Please! I’m your niece – I’m Tess’s daughter. I just want to talk to you. Please!”

  I suddenly shrieked as I lost my footing and went skidding on a patch of ice. My bag went flying but I managed to grab hold of a nearby lamppost to stop myself landing flat on my backside. I held on to it for dear life, slithering on the spot like a bad ice-skater clasping her partner’s waist. By the time I’d steadied myself Dempsey was standing behind me with a concerned look on his face.

  “Are you OK?” he asked as he bent and picked up the scattered contents of my bag, putting them back in it.

  “I am now,” I laughed, slightly shaken. “That was a bit Torville and Dean, though.”

  “Very impressive axel, I must say.” He smiled and handed me my bag then turn
ed back to the angry Italian who was frowning and folding his arms.

  “See you in there in five, Stefano,” he said.

  Stefano made some kind of gesture of annoyance with his hands, flung his red scarf around his shoulder, then turned and walked towards the bistro.

  “Actors!” said Dempsey, shaking his head and watching him go with an affectionate smile.

  We were alone in the empty street with the snow falling silently around us. The city sounds were distant, and it felt like we were tucked in one of the few quiet crevices in London. Dempsey put his hands in his pockets and stepped from one foot to the other, tentatively searching my face.

  “You’ve a look of your mother around the eyes,” he said.

  “People say I look more like my dad.”

  He swallowed. “I was very sorry to hear of Tess’s passing.”

  “So you knew she’d died before you got my email?”

  He nodded.

  “A friend heard her obituary on Irish radio and rang me.”

  “The famous mid-west radio death-notices, by any chance?”

  He nodded again.

  “Can I ask why you didn’t come to the funeral?”

  He moved his head to one side.

  “I ... we’d been estranged for so long. It felt wrong.”

  “She was your sister!”

  He stepped back like I’d slapped him and I immediately regretted my sharp tone. I had to be careful. I’d already blown my fuse once. I couldn’t risk doing it again if I was going to get him to tell me about my brother. He lowered his eyes to the ground. He struck me as quite frail, a very different man to the quietly confident theatre director who’d answered questions in front of a huge audience a couple of hours earlier.

  “I’m sorry for what happened in the theatre,” I said, brushing a fleck of snow from my nose and tightening my scarf around my face. “I didn’t come to London to embarrass you. I just lost it.”

  He smiled weakly.

  “It’s the type of thing Tess would have done when she was young. She had a hot head on her too.”

  “She did?” I found it hard to imagine my fearful delicate mother behaving like that. “Look, Timothy, I’m not here for recrimination. I just want to find out what happened to Tess’s baby. I know you and James, his birth father, took him from the home.”

  Dempsey exhaled sharply and stepped back, his breath visible in the dim street light.

  “It’s very important to me,” I went on. “I have no family now. My only other brother died not long before Tess, and Dad passed when I was ten. They’ve all gone from me. I want to know if I have anyone else out there belonging to me.”

  I omitted the fact that he too belonged to me but it hung in the air like an icicle.

  He reached into the inside pocket of his coat. “When are you leaving London?”

  “Tomorrow lunchtime. But I can stay longer.”

  He handed me a business card. “Meet me at the café by the boating lake in Battersea Park tomorrow morning at ten.”

  I frowned down at the card.

  “How do I know you’ll turn up?”

  He sighed.

  “I’m not a monster, Carmel. I’ll be there.” He nodded down at the card. “Besides, you have all my contact details now so you can stalk me if I don’t.”

  As he turned to go he threw me a small smile. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot, Carmel. I’m glad you found me but I’m sorry, I really have to go now. It’s a work dinner with the producer of my next play and I’m already very late.”

  “Just before you go. I need to know. Is my brother alive?”

  Dempsey nodded.

  “And you know where he is?”

  “Yes, yes, I do.”

  As he walked away I watched his shadow fade in the whirling snow and the tail of his coat disappear through the door of bistro. Slightly dazed and still gripping his card in my hand, I made my way back down the street. As I passed the wine bar, the women from earlier clattered out of the door on to the cobbles, laughing and chatting.

  “Goodnight,” I said, a grin spreading across on my face.

  “Goodnight,” they replied, pulling on gloves and scarves and fake fur.

  Emerging on to the High Street, I stopped and tucked Dempsey’s business card into my purse next to Tess’s old bus pass that I carried everywhere. I pulled it out and looked at her photograph under the streetlamp.

  “I’m close, Tess,” I whispered. “So very, very close.”

  Chapter 36

  “Tess was a nervous child, very sensitive and hyper-vigilant. She cried a lot and had trouble sleeping. She’d wander around the house at all hours. My mother and father hadn’t a clue how to handle her.”

  Timothy Dempsey and I were sitting on a low leather sofa in the café in Battersea Park. Two cappuccinos and a couple of half-eaten croissants lay on the glass coffee table in front of us. Elegant in a black polo-neck, well-cut trousers and tan leather ankle boots, he rubbed his right eye. He had dark shadows under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept much either. I felt very relaxed in his company, like pulling on an old jumper I thought I’d lost but found again at the bottom of a drawer. His smile, his laugh, the rhythm of his speech, they were all disturbingly familiar. I asked him to tell me Tess’s story from the beginning. But the more I listened, the more I realised he was choosing his words carefully. Instinct told me he was holding something very important back.

  “When she was twelve or so she started mitching school. She’d take off down the woods with magazines she stole from the village shop. Mammy despaired and Daddy beat her. One time when she was fourteen she went to Dublin for the day without his permission. When she got back Daddy took off his belt and laid into her. I tried to step in but my father was a big man. She ended up in a terrible state. The poor girl was black and blue.”

  I flinched. “She never told me any of that.”

  “That was just the way it was back then, Carmel. There was a lot of ignorance about rearing kids. The strap or the stick featured highly. Tess was difficult and I suppose it was the only way they knew how to deal with her.” He picked up his coffee and sipped. “Last night you mentioned that your father passed away when you were young?”

  I nodded. “A freak accident at work. He slipped and fell into a pit and was buried under an avalanche of concrete. I was ten and Mikey was four.”

  “Jesus. I’m so sorry. I met him a couple of times when he and Tess were courting. He used to call at the house. He was mad for her. Awfully nice and he had a calming influence on her.”

  “Dad was the best. She went to pieces when he died.”

  I pictured her the day the police came round to tell us. She was sitting in his chair next to the radiogram with Mikey perched on her knee. She blanched with shock then told the officers to get out of her house.

  “So tell me. When did she meet James, the baby’s father?”

  Dempsey shifted in his chair then crossed his legs to reveal a pair of bright yellow socks under his boots. He cleared his throat.

  “At a party in the village. She was as crazy about him as your father was about her. James was nineteen, three years older than her. He was my best friend. Tess looked much older. She was a well-developed girl but very young in the head.”

  “I haven’t any photos of her as a child.”

  “I have a few you can have. Oh, she was a beauty. A natural blonde. She had great style too. She worked in the drapery store and made all her own clothes with the discounted material she got there. I remember the table in our front room was always covered with taffeta and other kinds of material in bright colours and balls of wool. She knitted too.”

  “She always loved her clothes and her knitting.”

  “As soon as she and James hit it off she told your dad it was all over. James and I had been friends since we were small boys in the national school. His family were Anglo-Irish and they lived up at the Lodge, a big house on the edge of the village. His parents were lovely people. The
y were a lot nicer than the anti-English crowd in the village would have you believe. Most Protestants at that time wouldn’t let their offspring anywhere near the local children but Dorothy and Ronald sent James to the local Catholic school early on. They were eccentric, liberal, easy-going types. I spent a lot of my childhood up there at the Lodge. James was an only child and Dorothy encouraged our friendship. She treated me like a son. She was a sprightly woman, twenty years younger than Ronald. She loved the outdoors and she was always out and about walking or fishing.” Dempsey shook his head. “At home my father had me grafting on the farm and cutting the turf. I wasn’t cut out for that kind of work. I hated it. Tess and I feared him. Your grandmother was awfully cold and very religious. She showed us no affection. Dorothy was much kinder. I much preferred being up at the Lodge. She understood the way we boys were.”

  Dempsey blushed then stared out of the window like he was locked in a dream. Three inches of snow had fallen on the park overnight. The blue-tinged morning light filtered through the branches of the trees lining the footpaths and a snow sculpture of a man dressed in a school tie and nothing else sat cross-legged on a bench opposite.

  “So Tess got pregnant,” I said, interrupting his reverie. I immediately regretted the impatience in my voice, remembering that I had to tread softly.

  Dempsey turned back. “Sorry. Yes, yes. It was a huge shock. She and James had only known each other a couple of weeks.

  “God.”

  “It only ever happened once.” He spoke quickly, circling his foot nervously in the air like he had done at the theatre and finding it hard to hold my gaze. He coughed and his voice became wheezy. “I’ve thought an awful lot about your mother over the years. It doesn’t excuse what I did but I was nineteen and barely more than a boy myself when it all happened.” He coughed again. “When your grandparents found out about the pregnancy they were beside themselves. Then when they learned that the baby’s father was James and a Protestant who had no intention of marrying Tess, they were broken. Daddy was incandescent. I was forbidden to go to the Lodge but I used to sneak up there all the same. One day I was with James in his room when we heard the sound of gunshots outside followed by a dog yapping. We peeped out from behind the curtains and there was Daddy, standing at the end of the dirt track with a shotgun and Jack our sheepdog by his side.” Dempsey sighed and shook his head. “I’ll never forget it. He had on his best suit. His daughter was pregnant out of wedlock, he was humiliated and heartbroken but he still put on his Sunday best to come up to the Lodge. It was his last vestige of dignity.”