Divided Loyalties

by Patricia Scanlan

  ‘Come back to bed,’ she urged, wanting him, running her fingers through his damp hair.

  ‘I’ve a date with a hot tomato,’ he murmured, nibbling her ear. ‘When I get back.’

  She’d watched him leave, half exasperated, half amused. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, auburn layers sticking up wildly, a dusting of freckles across her nose, green eyes, fringed with dark lashes, a tad puffy. No wonder he preferred his tomatoes, she thought ruefully as she burrowed back down in the bed and fell asleep almost instantly.

  Imagine having to compete with a tomato for your husband’s affections, she’d complained to Shauna, who’d called over to visit later that day.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ her sister said dryly. ‘I’ve to compete with drawing boards and T-squares.’

  ‘And you’re the good-looking one in our family,’ Carrie remarked, wondering how her younger sister always managed to look so groomed and elegant. Her naturally blond hair fell over her shoulders in a silky curtain. Her eyes, as blue as cornflowers, sparkled over high cheekbones and she had a gorgeous snub nose that Carrie had always envied. Shauna was slender and petite. Carrie always felt like an Amazon beside her.

  ‘You have curves where women are meant to have curves,’ Dan constantly assured her, with an appreciative glint in his blue eyes that always made her feel good about herself.

  ‘I was dying for a shag last night and Greg fell asleep on me. I went to brush my teeth and go to the loo and when I came back into the bedroom he was snoring,’ Shauna moaned.

  ‘So much for our sex appeal.’ Carrie grinned. Shauna had giggled in spite of herself and they’d comforted themselves with a slice of coffee cake.

  Carrie spooned carrot and parsnip mash onto the heated plates, and gave a wry smile as she remembered that particular Sunday. Shauna had taken Chloe, Davey and Olivia to the zoo and she and Dan had spent the afternoon in bed making the most of a child-free Sunday afternoon.

  ‘I ended it with the Tomato,’ Dan had whispered mischievously as he slid his fingers up under her T-shirt, making her shiver with anticipation.

  It had been a loving, lusty afternoon and she had reason to remember it now, she thought ruefully, as her breasts ached with soreness. Her period was late and she didn’t need a test to know that she was pregnant. Maybe that was why she was so crotchety lately. Poor Olivia. If she thought life was tough now, wait until her nose was put out of joint by the new arrival.

  ‘Olivia, come down and have your dinner, pet, and we’ll have another go at the sums,’ she called placatingly.

  ‘Don’t want any dinner,’ Olivia shouted huffily.

  ‘OK, I’ll give an extra portion to Dad and Davey,’ Carrie challenged.

  Silence.

  Then, sulkily, ‘I’m coming.’

  Carrie smiled as she plated up Dan’s and her father’s dinner. Was that child psychology, emotional blackmail or what? At least it had worked for today. Now if she could only get a handle on those bloody sums she’d be doing OK.

  She was glad to flop onto the sofa once the children were in bed. She’d seemed to spend the evening getting in and out of the car. She’d dropped off Davey at his Scouts. Then she’d bought a pregnancy test kit, delivered her father’s dinner, brought in his washing off the line, and gone shopping for cat food for him.

  Her father had eaten all his dinner, and told her that he felt a little better. He’d looked fine to her. He didn’t look pale or flushed, but he had confided that he’d been talking to a neighbour who’d told him that one of the neighbours down the road had suffered a heart attack. Carrie could see his medical encyclopedia beside his armchair and guessed that he’d been reading up on the symptoms. One day she was going to burn that damn book, she thought irritably. Next to the Bible, it was the most well-thumbed volume in her father’s house.

  Afterwards she brought Olivia into Seashells Café for hot chocolate, as a treat to make up for their earlier tiff. Seashells Café was one of their favourite haunts. It was right in the middle of the village, beside Fisherman’s Lane, and its big bay windows had panoramic views of the coast and sea. In summer it was always packed with day-trippers to the beach, but at this time of year it wasn’t so busy and she and Olivia had settled at one of the round pine tables in the bay window. It was a bright, airy place, decorated in nautical blues and creams, and the walls were hung with a selection of framed sepia photos of the village in the ‘olden days’, as her daughter called them. They’d sipped their hot chocolate companionably and made their peace with each other, before collecting Davey, who proudly showed them his collection of nautical knots.

  Dan had arrived home around nine, yawning his head off, and wolfed his dinner.

  ‘You look whacked,’ he observed as he handed her a mug of tea and a chocolate Kimberly a little later.

  ‘I am.’ She snuggled in beside him on the sofa in the den. A fire blazed up the chimney and she felt pleasantly relaxed. ‘And it’s going to get worse.’

  ‘Why?’ He eyed her quizzically.

  ‘Remember the Sunday afternoon that you shagged me senseless?’

  ‘Yessss . . .’ he said slowly, his blue eyes widening as comprehension began to dawn.

  ‘I think I’m pregnant.’ Carrie studied him warily. They hadn’t actually discussed having a third child.

  ‘You think . . .’

  ‘Well, I’m more or less sure. I just have to do a test to confirm it and I wanted us to do it together.’

  ‘Do you want to do it now?’ Dan asked. Stoically.

  ‘Will we?’

  ‘Come on, so.’ He pulled her to her feet and dropped an arm round her shoulder.

  ‘Do you mind if I am?’ she asked hesitantly. If Dan wasn’t happy about her being pregnant she’d be gutted.

  ‘Of course I don’t if you’re OK with it.’ He smiled down at her and she felt inexplicably happy. Dan Morgan was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She was still as crazy about him as she’d been when they’d first married.

  ‘So it looks like we’re pregnant,’ he said ten minutes later as they studied the wand she held, which showed two unmistakable blue lines. His arms tightened around her and they kissed until she drew away breathless.

  ‘By the way,’ he murmured as his hands slid down to her waist and over the curve of her hips. ‘I just want to clarify one thing. It was you that shagged me senseless that Sunday afternoon.’

  ‘Whatever you say, darling. Let’s do it again. Just be gentle with the boobs, they’re ready to explode!’ Carrie whispered, tiredness forgotten as her hormones ran rampant at the touch of his fingers.

  Later as she lay drowsily in the crook of his arm she thought of Shauna. This new baby would be a playmate for Chloe in years to come. As it was, Olivia and Davey were very protective of their little cousin. Carrie was looking forward to telling her sister her news. She’d ring Shauna first thing in the morning and arrange for them to have lunch or coffee. She was glad Shauna was still at home to share her good news. It would be much nicer to tell her face to face than to say it down a phone line when she was thousands of miles away. She was going to miss Shauna like hell. Why she wanted to up sticks and head out to live in a war zone was unfathomable. But that didn’t seem to bother her or Greg unduly. As needles of rain began to hurl themselves against the bedroom window and the east wind blew in from the sea, Carrie mused that if it were her, she wouldn’t bring her kids to live in a place as unstable as the Gulf.

  She was dreading her sister’s departure to the Emirates. Their father was getting more demanding and they’d always shared the responsibility of him since their mother had died three years ago. Now, with another baby on the way, and Shauna leaving for God knows how long, Carrie couldn’t help feeling more than a little daunted.

  Shauna led such a charmed life, she always had. Sometimes Carrie couldn’t help feeling the tiniest bit envious. Wouldn’t it be lovely to go to an exotic country and have maids and nannies to help you manage? It would be fab
ulous to spend your time partying and socializing. Even though Whiteshells Bay was a picturesque little seaside village, and Carrie liked living in it, exotic was hardly the adjective to describe it.

  She sighed, and then smiled as Dan gave a low rumbling snore. She might live in a sleepy seaside village, and she might be pregnant and have an ageing, demanding father to take care of, but she had a kind, witty, supportive, sexy husband and two good little children. She wasn’t doing too badly at all.

  The phone rang, jerking her into wakefulness tinged with dread. Phone calls at this hour of the night weren’t good news.

  ‘Hello, Carrie, it’s Dad. I think I need a doctor. The pain’s gone into my chest. I think I’m having a heart attack.’ She could hear the panic in her father’s voice.

  ‘You’re not having a heart attack. Stop getting yourself into a tizzy. I’ll be there in a minute,’ she assured him.

  ‘I didn’t like to bother Shauna. I know the baby’s teething,’ her father said feebly. ‘And besides, you’re nearer.’

  ‘That’s OK. I’ll be over as soon as I get dressed.’ Carrie tried not to feel resentful. It wouldn’t have mattered if Shauna lived next door to him; their father would always call Carrie in an emergency. He and his younger daughter didn’t get on too well. Their personalities had always clashed, but since his wife’s death the hostility between them had deepened. And as for Bobby, the youngest in their family, he had washed his hands of his father just as Noel had washed his hands of him. Carrie would be wasting her time expecting any help from him. Not that he could help anyway right this minute, seeing as he lived in London, she thought glumly. She yawned as she pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She couldn’t honestly blame Bobby after the way their father had treated him. Her only brother was gay and that was anathema to their father, an affront to his religious beliefs. Once their mother had died, Bobby had gone to London, unable to deal with his father’s hostility. Understandable, but it didn’t change the fact that she was the one getting up in the middle of the night to go and look after Noel. She was the eldest; she was the responsible one. And she was getting fed up of it.

  3

  ‘Why didn’t you ring me earlier? I’d have come up.’ Shauna frowned as she untangled the phone cord that Chloe had twisted into a knot.

  ‘What was the point in the two of us being up all night hanging around a hospital?’ Carrie said tiredly.

  ‘I was up anyway with Chloe. She’s got a big bruiser of a back tooth coming,’ Shauna responded glumly.

  ‘So Dad told me,’ Carrie said dryly. ‘He said that was why he didn’t want to ring you.’

  ‘That’s not very fair on you, though.’

  Shauna knew she should feel guilty, but part of her was mightily relieved that her father hadn’t phoned. Greg would have been far from pleased if she’d woken him up to tell him to take care of Chloe because she had to drive up to Whiteshells Bay in the middle of the night.

  ‘What did the doctors say?’

  ‘They’re keeping him in; they’re hoping to have a bed for him later on today. He’s on a trolley in A and E.’

  ‘Look, why don’t you go to bed for a couple of hours? I’ll come over later and we can go and visit him this afternoon,’ Shauna suggested, anxious to offer some support.

  ‘Would you, Shauna? I’m whacked. I could do with a few hours’ shut-eye.’

  ‘Take the phone off the hook and I’ll be over in time to pick up Olivia from school,’ her sister instructed briskly.

  ‘She’ll be thrilled to see Chloe.’ Carrie sounded more cheerful. ‘See you later . . . and thanks.’

  ‘No problem,’ Shauna assured her, twirling her finger in one of Chloe’s soft corkscrew curls. She had planned to spend a few hours working on a wedding dress she was making to order. She had to hand-sew dozens of sequins and beading onto an ornate fur-trimmed jacket that was being worn over a very simple, elegant, satin sheath dress. Chloe’s nap time would have allowed her a few precious uninterrupted hours to get on with the job. It was the last dress she had been commissioned to make before she left for the Emirates and she was anxious to get it finished on time.

  Typical of her father to muck up her plans. Shauna’s lips tightened in annoyance. She didn’t know how Carrie could keep her patience with their dad; she certainly didn’t have the tolerance for him that her older sister had. She was far more likely to argue the toss with him about his deeply conservative beliefs than Carrie was.

  She had railed at their restrictive upbringing and there had been many rows in their teenage years as their father issued edicts about where they could go and whom they could socialize with. Boys were definitely off limits! Noel McCarthy was a street angel and a house devil as far as his younger daughter was concerned. Well respected in the community, he was a pillar of the Church, involved in all its fundraising and parish activities. Many times she’d been roped in to deliver the parish dues envelopes or the Easter and Christmas information cards, and she’d had to do the church collection every week.

  She had argued bitterly that it was her father who had offered to do such work, so why should she have to do it? It was no joke trudging round all the houses in the large village on a wet, windy evening with an easterly gale blowing in off the sea. Her friends would be snug and warm in their houses, watching TV, while she’d be standing, resentfully, on doorsteps waiting for people to put their few coins into the collection envelope.

  Carrie had just got on with it. She did the houses north of the church, Shauna the ones south of it. Bobby had managed to get out of all parish duties by once stuffing his ration of parish dues envelopes into the bin outside the chipper. Unfortunately he didn’t stuff them in far enough and a gust of wind had whipped a few of them out onto the street later that evening and they’d been discovered by Mrs Foley, one of the ladies of the parish committee of which Noel was chairman. There’d been consternation as Noel was informed of this outrage.

  The three of them had been summoned to the small room off the garage that Noel used as an office and interrogations had begun. Bobby had confessed to his crime after Noel had accused Shauna of the transgression, knowing of her oft-stated objections to delivering the envelopes.

  Bobby was good like that; he couldn’t let his sister take the blame for something that he’d done. Their father, red with fury, had banned Bobby from watching TV for a year and had assured him that such a crime against God’s good work would require much repentance and good deeds.

  Bobby had later whispered to Shauna that it was worth it not to have to deliver those hated envelopes. But as the days turned into weeks, and he was ordered from the sitting room when the TV was turned on, his bravado slipped and he confessed that he really missed Star Trek and Top of the Pops.

  Their mother, Anna, who had a soft, kind heart, had allowed him to turn on the TV as soon as he had finished his homework, but it was switched off at five thirty before their father arrived home from work. Noel worked as a bank clerk in the town of Swords, just north of Dublin, and Bobby prayed that he would never get moved to a bank nearer home.

  Shauna shook her head impatiently as she lifted her tired little daughter in her arms, revelling in the way she snuggled in close against her neck. Why was she swamped with all these unhappy memories? She wanted to forget those times. She was grown up now, an independent woman, free of Noel and his authority; she shouldn’t hark back to the past.

  She was determined that Chloe would never grow up with the hang-ups that were a legacy of her own childhood even to this day. A lack of self-esteem, a lack of self-worth, would not be traits that her daughter would grow up with. Noel might see himself as a good-living, God-fearing, upright member of the community, but Shauna knew otherwise, and she had the emotional scars to prove it. If it weren’t for Carrie she’d let him fend for himself. He was a small-minded bully who used emotional blackmail on his daughters and son with varying degrees of success.

  Well, no success, it seemed, in Bobby’s case, Shauna a
cknowledged, smiling as she remembered her brother’s last phone call to her.

  ‘How’s the old buzzard doing? Still saying decades of the rosary in the hope that I’ll discover that I’m not gay after all and it was only a temporary aberration? And my immortal soul isn’t damned for eternity?’ Although the words were joky and light-hearted, Shauna knew that behind them lay a deep, wounding hurt that might never be healed.

  Bobby was the baby of the family. Four years older, she felt fiercely protective of him. When their mother had died suddenly of a heart attack, they’d all been devastated. But Shauna would never forget her father saying, in his deceptively mild-mannered voice, ‘You know, Bobby, all the worry about you and this attention-seeking of yours worried your mother dreadfully. It must have put a terrible strain on her heart. Your greatest gift to her now would be for you to sort yourself out and find a nice girl and go and get married like a normal young man.’

  Shauna would never forget how her brother had paled at his father’s cruel, damaging words, turned on his heel and walked out of the house.

  ‘That was a terrible thing to say, Dad. How dare you call yourself a Christian,’ she’d exploded, hating him. ‘Bobby was born the way he is. God doesn’t judge him. God made him, God knows him. He is as beloved of God as any other soul of His creation. What sort of warped belief have you got? Where is God’s compassion and mercy in your religion? Your God is horrible. I’m glad I don’t believe in Him.’

  Noel had risen to his feet, ashen-faced at this unbelievable attack on his authority and beliefs. ‘That’s enough from you, miss, you who ignore the Church’s rulings in spite of our best efforts. God weeps to hear your ignorance of His teachings, and if you don’t like what I have to say, the door is—’

  ‘Stop it! Mam’s not cold in the grave and look at the pair of you!’ Carrie’s disgust had silenced them, and they had argued no more, but that was the day when her father had sundered the very tenuous tie of love or loyalty that had existed between him and his youngest children. It was only out of a sense of obligation and guilt and not wanting to let Carrie have to carry the burden alone that Shauna mucked in and did as much as she felt she had to.