The Gravity of Love

by Noelle Harrison

  Long past midnight they made their way down the main street of Ballycastle to a B&B that they had arranged through the publican. His sister’s place – a Mrs Coffey.

  ‘I’m beginning to like this country,’ Eddie slurred. ‘Those guys are great company.’

  ‘You’re drunk, Eddie,’ she said softly.

  ‘So what if I am?’ he said. ‘I just went through the worst days of my life. Thought I was going to lose you, Joy Teresa Sheldon.’

  She stopped walking and faced him in the pewter moonlight. ‘Eddie, I don’t know if I can forgive you.’

  He trailed his finger down her cheek. ‘Baby, please give me a chance. I promise I will never let you down again.’

  Back in their room, Eddie began to kiss her.

  ‘Darling Joy,’ he said. ‘I’ve missed you so much. I want you so bad.’

  She searched for those feelings she had held for Eddie through the years. How could they just be gone?

  ‘I want you now,’ he groaned.

  He backed her against the wall and, with his hands around her waist, he turned her back to him. Her cheek was pressed against the stripy grooves of the wallpaper. Eddie was pushing his body against hers. She could feel his erection on the small of her back. It felt wrong, but this was her husband. If she made love to him maybe her feelings would be resurrected.

  Eddie reached round and began to unbuckle her jeans. She started to feel the heat of anger rather than desire. He had betrayed her. Was she going to let him fuck her just like that? What was wrong with her?

  ‘No!’ She put her hand on Eddie’s to stop him.

  ‘Come on, baby – I want to make things right again.’

  ‘I need more time,’ she said, pushing him away and doing up her belt again.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, kissing her on the cheek and making for her lips.

  ‘I said no,’ she said through clenched teeth, afraid to spill out her rage, her sense of impotence, for if she did where would it end?

  She was glad the room was in darkness and that he could not see her tears. He would think she was crying about him. But she wasn’t. She was crying for herself. She was weeping for what she had lost.

  She sidestepped her husband and hid in the en-suite until she could hear that he had fallen asleep. Creeping back into the bedroom, she curled up in a chair in the corner of the room, lifting the curtain every now and again and waiting for day to break above the silvery Atlantic Ocean. She took out the drawing of the hummingbird design that Lewis had created for her, staring at it while she wondered what was happening now in Lewis’s world. Was he with Marnie?

  Strandhill, County Sligo, Easter Sunday,26 March 1989

  A red-haired young woman stood on the doorstep. She looked to be about twenty. She was dressed like an urchin punk: purple Doc Marten boots, skin-tight ripped jeans and a long stripy jersey with frayed cuffs and collar. Her skin was pale, a tiny smattering of freckles on her cheeks, and her dark green eyes were outlined with black kohl. She was strangely familiar. Not how he remembered Marnie, but like the echo of someone else.

  She was staring at him. He might not know who she was, but he had the feeling this girl knew exactly who he was.

  ‘Is it really you?’ she asked. She sounded a little English, although there was a soft Irish lilt to her accent as well.

  He ignored her question, not knowing quite what she meant.

  ‘I’m looking for Marnie Regan . . . sorry, Marnie Piper I mean. Does she live here?’

  ‘That’s my mum,’ the girl said, her face clouding.

  ‘Please excuse me if this is a bad time,’ he said, backing away. ‘I can come back later if she isn’t here.’

  The girl shook her head and seemed to gather herself. ‘It’s fine. I just didn’t think you would really come. I’m a bit shocked. I’m Caitlin Piper.’

  So Pete and Marnie had had a daughter together, maybe even more than one child. It hurt him to think of it, that Marnie had become a parent without him. It was an experience he would never have now.

  ‘My name is Lewis Bell,’ he said. ‘I’m an old friend of your mother’s, and I was passing through –’ He paused, swallowed. His throat was so dry. ‘I was hoping to see her . . .’ he stumbled on.

  ‘You had better come in,’ the girl said.

  He followed her down a narrow hall. He could hear loud music pounding from the open doorway of the living room. The exterior of the house was completely misleading. It looked conventional, your average suburban two-up two-down. Inside though he could see Marnie’s unique mark everywhere from the open-plan living and dining room to the pure white walls, the modernist leather couch, the iconic sixties Egg chair, the graphic prints on the walls and the shelves packed with art books. In the corner of the room was a pile of boxes; around them stacks of records.

  Caitlin pointed to the Egg chair. ‘Please sit down. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  He could hardly hear her over the music. It was awful, a woman’s voice screeching indecipherable lyrics.

  ‘I’m okay thanks,’ he said. ‘Really I’m here to see your mother. Is she home soon?’

  He noticed that the girl’s hands were shaking as she clutched them. She looked nervous. Despite the fact he had sat down she remained standing. She walked over and lifted the needle off the record on the player.

  ‘I have to tell you something,’ she said.

  ‘But when will your mother be back?’ he asked, feeling uncomfortable. He didn’t want to be left alone with Caitlin to wait for Marnie. How much did she know about him? On the doorstep she had behaved as if she knew who he was. So had Marnie spoken about him? How had she described him?

  Caitlin sat down opposite him on the leather couch. She was really staring at him, her sea-glass eyes glinting in the lamplight.

  ‘I was very angry you see,’ she said, ‘when I found out the truth.’

  Lewis looked at her, confused into silence.

  ‘She never told me,’ Caitlin went on.

  ‘Told you what?’

  ‘Do you know when I was born?’ she asked.

  He shook his head, a sinking feeling in his stomach.

  ‘November the fifth, 1967.’

  He stared at her. He was speechless – he could do the maths quite easily. If this girl was born on 5 November it meant she had been conceived sometime in March 1967, during his and Marnie’s affair.

  Caitlin stood up again. He could feel the anger burning off her. The way she moved . . . her nervous energy quite clearly evoked his lost sister, Lizzie. He was so shocked by this vision he still couldn’t speak.

  ‘So that means,’ Caitlin said in a soft but loaded voice, ‘according to my reckoning, I must be your daughter.’

  His heart leaped so fiercely he thought he might be having a heart attack. It couldn’t be true. This sort of thing never happened in real life.

  ‘No, I . . . it can’t . . .’

  ‘Are you going to deny it?’ the girl attacked him. ‘Are you going to lie to me like my mother and father did?’

  He looked at Caitlin in awe. This magnificent, raging creature was his daughter.

  ‘No, of course not. You look a bit like my sister,’ he whispered. ‘But I never knew. Why didn’t Marnie tell me?’

  ‘Maybe because you ran out on her?’ Caitlin snapped, pacing the room. ‘And my mum was proud. She was never a victim.’

  Something in what Caitlin said jarred with him.

  ‘So when did she tell you? Couldn’t she have contacted me then? I mean, she found me eventually.’ He took the postcards out of his pocket and put them on the table. ‘She sent these to my address in America. That’s why I came here.’

  Caitlin bent down and picked up the cards. She shuffled through them.

  ‘I sent you the postcards,’ she said quietly.

  He looked at her speechless, uncomprehending.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said when he finally found his voice. ‘What about the messages written on the back of each card
. How did you know all those private things between your mother and I?’

  ‘My mum never told me about you. I read her journals and everything was in them. She’d underlined those things you and she said to each other. She wrote about the whole of your affair in great detail.’

  The heat rose from his chest, up his neck, to his face.

  ‘Everything, that is, apart from why you walked out on her.’

  He felt as if the chair was shifting beneath him, as if he was riding a stormy sea.

  ‘I wrote those things down and sent them to you because I wanted to meet you, but I was too afraid to go all the way to Arizona on my own,’ Caitlin said. ‘I needed to know that you wanted to come here. I was scared you would reject me . . .’

  Lewis felt sick. Everything he had thought to be true was turning, tilting upside down. He had a daughter, and she had wanted to find him, but what about Marnie?

  ‘I loved my mum, but she lied to me my whole life because you ran out on her,’ Caitlin told him.

  The words penetrated his heart. A shiver of dread snaked down his spine. ‘Loved?’

  Caitlin’s eyes filled with tears. He could see her struggling to stay composed, but her emotion was too raw.

  ‘My mum’s dead. She passed away just over six months ago.’

  His hands gripped the side of the chair.

  ‘She had cancer. There was nothing they could do. She was gone, just like that, in less than a year.’

  Caitlin wiped the tears from her eyes. He could see her struggling, trying to stand tall.

  ‘I only found out about you after she died – when I discovered her journal. It was written the year I was born.’

  She brought the back of her hand up to her face again to sweep away more tears.

  ‘Nothing is what I thought it was. My dad wasn’t my dad. You’re my father, and I know nothing about you.’

  Caitlin could no longer speak. Her anger seemed to have deserted her. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed. Lewis looked on in horror. He felt her pain like a knife in his own heart. This stranger was his flesh and blood, his own daughter. He acted instinctively, getting up from the Egg chair and taking her in his arms. She didn’t push him away but folded into his chest.

  Ballycastle, County Mayo, Easter Monday,27 March 1989

  Just after daybreak Joy crawled into bed, next to the inert form of her husband. She drifted in and out of hopeless sleep, but in the end she gave up trying.

  She sat up in the bed and looked down at Eddie. He was still in deep sleep, lost to her. Glad, she slid out from under the covers and went into their tiny en-suite. The shower was a dribbling attachment on the end of the bath taps so she ran a bath instead.

  The hot water relaxed her body, soothed her. She tried to convince herself that Eddie was right – that it was time to return to their old life in Arizona. She had seen where she had come from: the lustrous green fields, the eternal blue sea and the ruined old house. If her mother had run away to London all those years ago she had no chance of finding her in that huge city, especially as she had probably married and changed her name. It was best to give up now. Besides, how could she cope on her own, without Eddie? She had no money, no place to go, no job. She had dedicated her whole life to her family. She couldn’t throw it all away now, though the idea of Eddie touching her ever again made her feel sick. She was so angry with him. How could she ever forgive him for what he had done?

  Joy was the only guest in the dining room, a small glass conservatory with steamy windows and overgrown spider plants on all the windowsills overlooking the sea. Today it was windy. She drank in the view of the white-capped waves, beating against the craggy shoreline. She reminded herself to take some pictures. She never wanted to forget this wild western ocean.

  ‘Would you like a full Irish?’ her hostess, Mrs Coffey asked her.

  ‘Yes, sure,’ she said, not even knowing what that was.

  She was working her way through the huge breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, sausages, beans and toast, big even by American standards, when Mrs Coffey came back into the dining room.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mrs Sheldon,’ she said, ‘but there’s someone here to see you. Shall I show them in?’

  She nodded, excitement mounting inside her. It had to be Lewis. He had come back for her. She knew it.

  But it wasn’t him. Instead an old lady with snow-white hair and a walking stick shuffled over to her table.

  ‘Good morning to you, my name is Josie Whelan,’ the old lady said as she took the seat opposite her. ‘My son met you and your husband in Polkes yesterday afternoon.’

  Josie upturned the empty cup upon her saucer. ‘Would you mind if I had a drop of your tea?’

  ‘Sure.’ Joy picked up the pot and poured her a cup.

  ‘Thank you – I’m parched. I was hurrying, you see. Wanted to catch you before you left.’

  She poured milk into her tea and took a sip. ‘Perfect,’ she said, smiling at Joy. ‘Well now, you really do look like her. There’s no denying it.’

  Joy could feel her chest constricting. ‘You knew my mother?’

  ‘Indeed I did. I worked for her parents for many years up at the house. I was their housekeeper.’

  ‘And did you know about me?’ Joy whispered.

  ‘Of course I knew about you, child.’ The old lady smiled at her. ‘You were a darling baby. Sure I helped care for you for the first year of your life.’

  Joy stared at Josie, took in her lined cheeks, her pebble-grey eyes, her wavy white hair, but she couldn’t remember her at all.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember you.’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ Josie said, clutching the gold cross hanging from her neck. ‘It’s a miracle you found your way back to Ballycastle. Surely an act of God.’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened to my mother?’ Joy asked, the words sticking to her throat as she uttered them. She was afraid to hear the truth, and yet she had to know. Had her mother loved her?

  Josie sighed and blew out her cheeks. ‘It was never supposed to go the way it did,’ she said. ‘You must know that your mother was never ashamed of you. She used to walk bold as brass into Ballycastle with you in the pram, head held high. If anyone so much as gave her a bad look she’d flash her engagement ring at them. It helped that her family had money. No one, not even the priest, dared put them down.’

  ‘But then why did she give me up?’ Joy asked in a small voice.

  ‘Her father, Walter Martell, wasn’t at all happy about the situation, but he put up with it because he believed your father was a gentleman and would marry his daughter when he returned.’

  ‘Do you know anything about my father?’ Joy asked the question reluctantly. ‘It says he was a soldier on my birth certificate.’ While she craved knowledge about her birth mother, she had no such interest in Richard Lawrence, the name on the birth certificate. It felt like a disloyalty to her dead father, Jack Porter.

  ‘Aoife met Richard Lawrence in Gloucestershire in England, while she was staying with an aunt during the school holidays. She went to school in England, you see.’

  Josie took another sip of her tea.

  ‘Richard was an army man. He was on leave when he and Aoife fell for each other. They got engaged just two weeks after they met. I always thought it a bit hasty,’ Josie sniffed. ‘I believe he proposed to Aoife so he could have his way with her before he had to go off and fight in the Korean War.’

  She sighed. ‘Aoife came home on top of the world. I remember her showing me the ring. She was too young in my opinion, just seventeen, but Kathleen Martell was delighted, and even the old man seemed pleased.’

  Joy took up the teapot and refilled their cups.

  ‘So what happened to Richard?’ Joy asked. ‘Was he killed?’

  ‘Nothing so heroic,’ Josie said, looking stern. ‘A couple of weeks after his regiment was sent out to Korea Aoife discovered she was pregnant. She wrote to him asking him t
o return. But he told her he couldn’t get leave. He told her to be patient. He promised they would marry before the baby was born.’

  ‘But he never came back?’ Joy asked.

  ‘I was told that his regiment got caught up in a nasty battle with the Chinese. Richard was injured and spent weeks in a field hospital. We were told his injuries were quite severe although not life threatening. For months Aoife didn’t hear from him. She had to tell her parents about the pregnancy. Oh Lord was Mr Martell furious.’

  Josie took out her handkerchief and dabbed her mouth.

  ‘I had a bad feeling all along,’ she said. ‘But I said nothing. The whole family were praying that Richard would recover and return to marry Aoife. Back then it was a huge, terrible scandal to have a child out of wedlock. Especially here.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Joy said.

  ‘We waited and we waited. Aoife gave birth to you. Her father wanted her to go into a mother and baby home – dreadful places they were – but Mrs Martell, bless her, wouldn’t allow it. Every now and again we’d hear how Richard was. He was sent home to England for rehabilitation, but his recovery seemed to be taking so long. Nearly two years. It became impossible to believe that he was still too unwell to marry Aoife. In the end Mr Martell went to his family in England. He demanded that their son make his daughter respectable. That was when he found out.’

  Josie clutched the handkerchief in her lap and leaned forward across the table.

  ‘Richard had got married. It seems that he fell in love with his nurse in the sanatorium he was sent to in England. He forgot all about Aoife. He forgot about you.’

  Joy pushed her breakfast away, feeling as if she might vomit.

  ‘There was blue murder then!’ Josie said, sitting back again, almost relishing her role as storyteller. ‘Mr Martell took his anger, his shame, out on Aoife. He demanded that she give you up for adoption because she would never find a husband with a child. He reckoned that if he sent her to relatives in France no one would know her sorry past. She could have a new start.’