The Prodigal Sister: An emotional drama of family secrets

by Laura Elliot

  ‘Do you have children?’ Tim asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Neither had we. When the crunch came it made it easier.’

  ‘It’s always easier without children.’ If she says it often enough she might begin to believe it. ‘We tried for a baby but I never managed to conceive. The doctor said there was no reason but it simply didn’t happen.’ She shrugs, smiles. ‘Time is the healer, isn’t that what they say? Time to move on. Time for closure. I hate platitudes.’

  She leans against his shoulder and remains silent for a moment. When she speaks, he listens, nods occasionally, waits without interrupting when she hesitates. She is conscious that the information she relays is factual, clinical.

  ‘We’d fallen out of love long before then, of course.’ She bangs her heels off the side of the wall, barely conscious that she is doing so until Tim places his hand on her knees and stills her agitation. ‘I’ve no memory of when that happened. You’d imagine it’d be etched on your soul, wouldn’t you? The moment when something so fundamental to your happiness no longer exists. But love simply seeped through the pores of our marriage and left nothing behind.’

  ‘Nothing?’ he asks

  ‘Nothing,’ she repeats. ‘Except memories and regrets, too many regrets.’

  He strokes her arm, his fingers gentle on her skin. For such a burly man, he seems to have an innate sensitivity. She trusts him, had done so from the first time they met, and knows he will not demand more than she is prepared to give.

  ‘Are those regrets behind you now?’ he asks. ‘As you said, you’ve moved on with your life.’

  ‘Yes.’ She nods, knowing she lies. She lifts his hand and presses it against her lips. ‘Thanks for listening, Tim. I bet you didn’t expect to comfort this endangered species from Ireland tonight.’

  ‘If anyone’s endangered, it’s me,’ he replies. ‘You’re seriously affecting my heart.’

  ‘Don’t make me responsible for a cardiac arrest.’ She keeps her tone light. It is so long since she has been drawn into the warmth of a man’s gaze. She finds it as disturbing as dust lifting on old times.

  ‘You could be, if we don’t meet again.’

  ‘I’m surprised you want to see me again.’

  ‘Why is it so surprising? I meet a wonderful woman who happens to feel as passionately as I do about animals. She makes me laugh, holds my attention every time she speaks, intrigues me because I feel as if I’m barely touching the surface of her personality. Truthfully, this woman has come between me and my sleep.’

  ‘Tim, I’m only here for a short while. Why complicate matters—’

  ‘What’s wrong with complications?’

  ‘I avoid them wherever possible.’

  ‘By living in your sanctuary?’

  ‘I’m not a nun, Tim. My sanctuary is for injured animals.’ Her breath quickens when his fingers rest against her bottom lip, touch the moist inner curve.

  ‘Is it?’ He cups the back of her neck and draws her to him. His beard hides a soft mouth and his warm, exploratory kiss demands nothing from her except an acknowledgement of the time they have spent together. He eases away from her, his hand still resting against her neck, the slight pressure holding her close. She can break it easily if she chooses. She is adept at defusing such tensions but she makes no effort to resist when he kisses her again.

  ‘Why don’t you come to the wedding with me?’ she asks when they return to his Jeep. The question, impulsively asked, is immediately regretted. She has no need for a man at her elbow when Cathy walks up the aisle. He nods, reaches for her hand.

  ‘I’d like that very much.’

  ‘So would I.’ Surprised by her response, she feels her throat swell, her eyes fill with a sudden stinging need to cry. She blinks away the threatening tears. She needs to get a grip on her emotions or she will turn into Julie. She rests her head on his shoulder as he drives her back to her sisters.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Rebecca’s Journal – 1996

  The For Sale sign is down at last. Heron Cove is sold. Cathy should be pleased with her share. Our parents’ will stated it be divided equally between the four of us but we couldn’t sell until we heard from her. I guess moving to New Zealand helped make her mind up. The solicitor representing her was unable, or unwilling, to give me any information on her whereabouts. Client confidentiality. Well, she has her share now, along with her legacy from Gramps Gaynor. A tidy sum with interest. Amazing that she never touched it while she was in London. How did she survive? She stole money from me. A pittance. It wouldn’t have lasted more than a day.

  Her solicitor was a portly man with an inbred superiority…or, perhaps, I just hate him because he has access to information denied to me. According to Sheila, Melanie Barnes is studying law. No doubt she will find it a satisfying experience to indulge her obsession with the macabre by embracing the legal profession, with its wigs and gowns fetishes. I don’t contact her any more. I can’t force information from her and there’s something in her eyes, a dangerous knowledge that glitters hard as a diamond. It frightens me. She knows the answer to the question I’m afraid to ask. Or so I believe when I lie awake in the small hours.

  I don’t belong in our new apartment. It’s close to Jeremy’s office. At night the city lights blaze below us. They seem to sway like waves on a retreating tide. In the morning, my dark suspicions fade and there is only space for the reality of my life, for what I can see, touch, smell, embrace, and try, once again, to make a baby. Each month adds to my anguish. Jeremy too. But he is busy with work. I suspect his disappointment is tempered with the pressure of his newest ad campaign. Our gynaecologist advises us to relax. There’s absolutely no reason why a healthy couple like ourselves can’t conceive a child. We must find something else to occupy our minds. Jeremy wants me to invest the money from Heron Cove in stocks and shares. No way, José. I know exactly what I’ll do with it. I’m going back to college and investing the rest in the sanctuary.

  Heron Cove is in new hands. Already, the owners are making changes. I walked past last week. There’s a new front door and the front garden has been cobble-locked. Lydia Mulvaney was about to climb into her car. She hesitated when she saw me, then came forward and spoke to me for the first time since I accused her son. She figured I must have heard from Cathy when the For Sale sign went up. We were formal with each other. I told her the truth. I know nothing. She asked me if I still believed Kevin was responsible. I wanted to shout, ‘Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes!’ but the words stuck in my throat and I could only reply, ‘I simply don’t know what to believe.’

  Kevin is studying engineering in Cork. Is she lonely without him? She has plenty of friends, artists like herself with paint under their fingernails–and the old masters they discuss are not their husbands. She looks older, her features more hawkish, her cropped hair has turned grey. I wish she was still my friend.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Havenswalk

  Conor lands the first trout and quickly dispatches it with the cosh. The proper term for the cosh is a ‘priest’ but ever since the time Conor landed a massive blue fish and yelled, ‘Where did I leave that fucking priest?’ and Lyle doubled-over laughing before admitting he used to be a priest, Conor leaves the word out of his fishing vocabulary. Another trout hits the deck, then another. Once the catch is sufficient for tonight’s menu–Ruthie plans to serve stuffed trout–he is content to let the boat drift. The afternoon stretches before him.

  His aunts have done the fjords and are heading back to Queenstown. Mel Barnes arrives this evening. She plans a week of yoga and meditation with the other guests before chilling out for the wedding.

  The first time Mel visited Havenswalk, Conor, who was nine at the time, thought she had stepped straight from a vampire’s coffin. He is older now. Last year she stayed for a month. By the time she left, he was in love with her. Just looking at her sent electric shocks through him. Ridiculous, considering she was even older than his mother.
But age made no difference to his feelings. All that black lace, skinny leather boots and eyeliner, her coal-black hair with the fringe hiding the dark mystery of her eyes. It’s impossible to imagine his mother looking like a Goth, whereas Mel looks as if she started playing with bats in her carry-cot.

  Mel used to be called Melancholia. In bed, in secret, he whispers, ‘Melancholia…Melancholia…Melancholia…his hand moving faster and faster until he gasps into his pillow and becomes calm again. If anyone knew…just thinking about being discovered brings him out in goose bumps. His father might understand, man-to-man talk, except that Conor finds it impossible to talk to anyone, even Lyle, about his feelings for Mel.

  ‘When did my mother become a Goth?’ he asked her when she stayed with them last year.

  ‘She was never really into the scene,’ Mel replied. ‘Behind all the drama, Cathy was a sweet young girl whom everybody loved.’

  Everybody still loves her. All the guests and staff, and her friends who come to visit, tell him he is lucky to have such a thoughtful, understanding mother. Yet she wanted nothing to do with her family for more than fifteen years. He knows she was up the duff but that was the nineties, not the Dark Ages. Had she considered aborting him? His expression hardens as he squints into the sun. Birds glide over the lake, claws for surf boards and giddy from the morning heat. To have missed all this. He toes a dead trout out of his way, suddenly unnerved by the frozen eyes staring at him.

  Born into the lives of two women and living in the relative isolation of Havenswalk, it had taken time to sort out the difference between his own life and that of his friend Oliver, whose father trained the youth rugby team. On Saturdays he took Oliver and Conor to matches where the fathers standing on the sidelines seemed to have only one function: to roar at their sons, the referee, and the opposing team. By the age of eight Conor understood enough about sex to realise that fathers did not pop from Christmas stockings or come gift-wrapped on birthdays. He questioned his mother about his own father and she replied, ‘This is not the time, Conor,’ or ‘When you’re older, we’ll talk.’

  He sometimes wondered what would have happened if she had not become ill. He was ten years old at the time and the sound of her coughing in the next room, a hoarse, barking sound, scared him. She was never sick, not that he could remember. Usually she was the one cooling him down, nursing him back to health. It unnerved him to see her lying so listlessly in bed, as if a natural order had turned upside down.

  On the morning she named his father, he entered her bedroom and found her staring at the ceiling. Her cheeks were red, her skin hot. He sat by her side, inarticulate and uncomfortable. What if she died? He was filled with fear. She always said that mates become family when you lived abroad but Alma and Hannah and the others were not family, no matter how hard she tried to pretend.

  He seized the opportunity to ask again about his father. When she evaded his question, he grew angry. She fucked someone once and he was the result. Oliver had stated this fact when they were discussing fathers in the school yard, but it sounded different then. Speaking it out loud seemed to shrink her into the bed. Fat, slack tears trickled down her cheeks and neck. He was ashamed yet a sullen insistence kept him silent, waiting for her reply.

  ‘Your father’s name is Kevin Mulvaney,’ she said. He listened, almost afraid to breathe in case she stopped talking, as she explained how, being only fifteen when she discovered she was pregnant, and Kevin two years older, they were too young to become parents. She was frightened over what they had done and ran away. She shook her head when Conor asked if she could contact his father. Kevin was working as a volunteer engineer, sinking wells in Africa. That was all Mel had been able to tell her. Lydia, his mother, had died and he had no plans to return home to Ireland.

  It was the only time his mother mentioned his name. After she recovered, it was as if their conversation never took place.

  ‘Our secret,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’

  Knowing his father’s name made it even worse. He composed an essay about volunteer work in Africa and was asked to read it out in class. He wrote a letter to his father and signed it Conor Mulvaney but never posted it. Then, last year, just when he believed nothing would ever change, his father entered their lives and nothing has been the same since.

  Chapter Forty

  Queenstown

  The sound of music draws them into the Bindwood. Tim recommended the pub, the place to go if they want to hear good music. The small floor is crowded with dancers, the air loud with conversation. While Lauren finds space, Julie pushes her way to the counter and orders drinks. She studies her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Her hair, twisted upwards and secured with two geisha pins, makes her neck look longer, slimmer, her chin more elfin. She is Lauren’s creation. Before leaving the camper, her sister took out her cosmetic tray and transformed Julie from a domestic goddess into a femme fatale. Astonishing, Julie thinks, as she reluctantly turns her attention from her reflection to the barman, what can be achieved with a few tubes and colour palettes.

  After a brief pause to allow the dancers time to recover their breath, the music begins again. The fiddle player holds an electric fiddle against his chin and dances the bow across the strings. An ageing rocker in Buddy Holly glasses grabs the microphone and launches into a version of ‘Tequila Sunrise’. A group of bikers, menacing in black leather, enter. The Ringwraiths are obviously following the same route as the Lambert sisters. The bikers approach Rebecca with a tattered copy of the Southern Eye. She looks mortified as she autographs it for them and is then whisked onto the floor by a rock-chinned biker. Another biker looks as shocked as a small boy when Julie informs him of the near-accident that resulted from their reckless driving. He insists on ordering a round of drinks as an apology.

  More people crowd into the bar. The heat grows overpowering.

  ‘Time to boogie, Mamma Mia. On your feet this instant.’ Lauren’s fingers drum against the table, her feet vibrate to the music.

  ‘Check out the guitarist,’ Julie shouts as she follows her onto the floor. ‘Does he remind you of anyone?’

  Lauren glances at the guitarist, who chews gum, a laconic expression on his long, narrow face, his brown hair drawn back in a sleek ponytail. She shrugs, shakes her head. ‘He looks vaguely familiar. Don’t ask me why.’

  As if aware that he is under scrutiny, the guitarist glances towards them. His eyebrows lift when he smiles and Julie, embarrassed to have created such a response, looks away. Her head is beginning to buzz, a danger sign she has learned at her peril to ignore. The door to the beer garden is open, the tables empty. She leaves the pub and sits down beside a narrow stream, banked by white bell-headed flowers. The rippling flow is soothing, a change from the crashing waterfalls and rivers that have marked their journey so far. The noise from the bar fades to a faint throb and the breeze, floating from the stream, cools her cheeks.

  ‘Excuse me. Can I speak to you for a moment?’

  Unaware that the music has stopped, Julie is surprised to see the guitarist standing in front of her.

  ‘Are you…you have to be Julie Lambert? I recognised you as soon as you came in.’

  He smiles again and the surge of memory forces her to her feet.

  ‘Sebby! Oh my God! Sebby Morris.’ She flings her arms around him. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t recognise you. You haven’t changed in the slightest.’

  ‘You haven’t either. How long is it? Nineteen? Twenty years?’

  ‘Say that softly.’ She covers her ears in mock-horror when he sits down opposite her. Impossible to believe she had not recognised him at first glance. ‘I can’t believe it’s really Sebby Morris…’

  ‘Actually, it’s Seb now.’

  ‘Mmm…Seb. OK, Seb it is.’ His eyes are more hooded than she remembers, his features sharpened with age, but still attractive enough to send shock waves through her. ‘I thought you were in Australia.’

  ‘Australia, Japan, the States–you name i
t, I’ve been there. I came here a few years ago. So far the scene’s been good. What about you? Still joined at the hip to Paul?’

  ‘Still a hip joint.’

  ‘God, I fancied the pants off you.’ He laughs and slaps his hands off his knees. ‘Not that I ever had a chance. That jealous bastard made damn sure I never got within an ass’s roar of you.’ He reaches across the table and holds both her hands. ‘What are you doing on the South Island?’

  ‘Touring with my sisters. We’re meeting Cathy. She also lives here.’

  ‘Cathy? Is she the Goth?’

  ‘Was. She’s into the holistic lifestyle now and has a yoga centre near Nelson.’

  ‘I must check her out next time I’m up that direction. What’s the name of the centre?’

  ‘Havenswalk. It’s on the web.’

  ‘So, update me on the family?’

  ‘Jonathan, my eldest, is nineteen now.’

  ‘Jesus, you can’t have a son that old!’

  ‘We had a head start, remember?’

  ‘I heard.’ He grins. ‘I wasn’t surprised. The two of you were hot. Do you still sing?’

  ‘Of course not. It was just a kid’s thing.’

  ‘You don’t lose a gift like that.’

  ‘You know what they say? If you don’t use it, you lose it.’

  ‘Rubbish! Maximum Volume could have been bigger than U2, and we had the advantage of having a brilliant female vocalist.’ His eyes, slate-grey and warm with memory, embrace her.

  He is talking about a stranger whose skin she once occupied, someone she glimpses occasionally when she has time to pause and remember. The Glam Rock image. All those bows and pirate hats and embroidered jackets, shaking her shaggy hair as she strutted across a stage in knee-high boots, her energy exploding in song and music. A different image today. Her blonde hair clipped short, easy to blow-dry, and the face of a woman who knows exactly what the end of each day will bring.