Still You

by Claire Allan

  “We have to take the rough with the smooth,” I told him.

  “Well, you make things a little smoother,” he said, touching my arm gently. “I’m sorry if I ever doubted you. You know she means so much to me. I just want to look after her the best I can.”

  “I think you already are,” I said.

  “If only it were that simple,” he replied, sadly.

  Chapter 21

  1964

  Áine didn’t believe in ghosts. Not until she saw Jonathan, Emma and Jack standing at the doorway of the house in Templegrove looking like shadows of the people she had last seen.

  It was a dull day but still it could not explain the greyness of their appearance – the dullness of their eyes and the look of apprehension on their faces. The children didn’t scream in joy as they normally did when they arrived at their grandmother’s house, and run down the hall to the kitchen to grab a cookie and pour a glass of milk that they would guzzle while imparting all their news and rubbing off creamy milky moustaches from their top lips. Jack didn’t seem quite as large as life. He seemed small – older. He was unshaved and his shirt was wrinkled. Áine could tell it was more than just the wrinkles from a long journey. The shirt had probably been shown an iron once – but not in a while and not in the manner in which Charlotte would have made sure it was done.

  Instinctively, although she had repeated to herself over and over again that she should not, Áine looked over their heads. She expected still to see Charlotte, wrapped in her green coat, a vibrant red scarf wrapped around her neck, her red bobble hat perched on her blonde curls – like a Christmas tree without the lights. That was how Rosaleen described her last year in that get-up. “Wrap some paper chains around her and we won’t need a real tree,” she had laughed while the children had threatened to do just that – just as soon as they had finished making the chains on the living-room floor while singing Christmas carols.

  There was no sign of her though – not even a hint of her on the frosty air. It felt so completely wrong. Even though Áine had known she was gone – she had grieved and wailed and sobbed – nothing had quite prepared her for the reality of not seeing her where she should be. Nothing prepared her for not hearing her sister shout “Let Christmas begin, we’re here!” and for the noise of her and her family to fill the house entirely. She only thought she knew silence before – but this was silence on a whole new level. This was a silence where there should have been so much joy and so much love. This was the silence that came when it became, finally, for the first time completely clear that someone you loved was never, ever coming back. This was a silence that threatened, if it could, to deafen you.

  Her heart was beating so fast, her mind racing, that all she could do was fall to her knees, open her arms and pull her niece and nephew into a hug and hold them as if she would never let them go. She felt their bodies, small and vulnerable, crush into her, their arms wrap around her neck, the tremble of their breathing as they tried, but failed to be brave.

  “I’m so, so, so, so sorry, babies,” she said. “I’m so sorry but I promise you that you will never be hurt again. Nothing will hurt you again. I promise,” she sobbed as the ticking of the grandfather clock at the end of the hall beat out a lament.

  “Cookies and milk!” a voice from the kitchen called, with a strength that Áine had not been expecting. “And paper-chain-making later!”

  Áine sat on the armchair opposite Jack who had yet to take his coat off. He was nursing a cup of tea but she didn’t think he had taken even one sip though her own cup was half empty and had started to go cold.

  She had never seen him look so vulnerable and, while there was a part of her that wanted to reach out to him and to comfort him – because there was no doubt he had loved her sister almost as much as she had – she couldn’t bring herself to move.

  “I know I messed up,” he said.

  She looked at him, wondering if he had expected her to reassure him that it was all okay and that he needn’t worry himself. It would be kind to tell him so – but she couldn’t. She couldn’t say anything.

  “I should have brought her home. I didn’t think. I was just in shock … I just couldn’t be away from her. I thought it was for the best. I wanted her near me – near us.”

  Áine nodded but still remained silent.

  “I know you must hate me,” he said, looking at the floor. “I know your mother … I know I have hurt her. I know I didn’t let you say goodbye – but – I didn’t know what to do. I was just in a daze. You don’t understand what it was like. To find her – in the pool like that. To realise what had happened.”

  Áine shook her head. She wished she could close her ears as easily as she could close her eyes. She didn’t want to hear what he was saying. She had thought about it so much – she didn’t need to have any more detail, to find out any more. How she looked. Had she bled? Were there clouds of pink around her head from where it had struck the side of the pool? Did she look scared? Where her eyes open? Open but seeing nothing – ever again.

  “And the children – they were in bits and I’m not the person who can explain things like that. I’m not the one who made it all better. That was Charlotte – she would have known what to say but I didn’t. I didn’t want to let her down, so I told myself I could manage and I could be in control.” He laughed then – a pathetic, pained laugh which was as close to sobbing as any laugh could get. “I know I did it all wrong and if I could do it again I would do it differently. If I could do it again I would have made sure she hadn’t had so much to drink, or that the doors had been locked or that the pool had been empty or that we had never left here to begin with.”

  Áine thought of all the things she would do differently if she could – she had regrets too – they followed her everywhere since she had heard the news – and still she couldn’t bring herself to tell him she understood. All she could manage, without letting out her anger and her hurt, was to nod her head. She was sure if she kept nodding her neck would start to ache and that she must look demented – nodding and staring blankly.

  “I know I will never be able to make it up to you, or the children, or myself for that matter for as long as I live and I know I have no right at all to ask for your help now – but I need your help, Áine. I really do.”

  His voice wavered and she saw him hastily brush away a tear – which was as foolish a folly as she had ever seen as another appeared to take its place straight away. He was, she realised, a broken man. Everything about him seemed disjointed and out of place. From how his clothes hung, wrinkled and twisted on his shrunken frame, to how his jaw jutted under the stubble that she would never have seen before. It was as if his body had folded over onto itself with the pain of the loss of her sister and she wondered if she looked the same. If she was all at right angles with herself – ragged edges that pushed everyone – even Lorcan – away.

  “What?” she said. “What do you want, Jack?”

  He dropped his head to his hands as he tried to catch his breath. Áine was aware of the ticking of the clock, the crackle of the fire and the way in which his breath caught in his chest.

  “I’m admitting it,” he said. “I’m admitting I have it all wrong. I can’t do this. I can’t look after the children. I am no good for them. Charlotte was the glue that kept us together. Without her we’re nothing. I can’t run the business and take the children to school, and host the meetings and soothe their nightmares and it is all starting to fall apart. The children are in so much pain.”

  Áine knew he wasn’t lying. Their pain was evident when they walked into the house. Their pain was mirrored on her own face – she felt it every day.

  “And I am just making it worse, Áine. I’m failing at everything and they deserve more. They deserve to be loved.”

  “You don’t love them?” she bit out, the words startling her.

  He shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. I do love them – I love them so much but I’m no good for them. They need
a mother. I can’t be a mother. They need stability and I can’t offer stability. Not now. I’m falling apart. But you … you and Rosaleen, you could offer them what I can’t.”

  He was no longer trying to hide his tears and Áine was no longer trying to pretend to be indifferent to the situation.

  “They have lost their mother, Jack,” she said. “Are you really proposing they lose their father too?”

  “Not forever – just until I can get on my feet. Get the business moved back here where we have people around us who can help us. Until we can look at each other without it hurting.”

  “I’m not sure it’s ever going to stop hurting,” Áine said. “We’re grieving too.”

  “I know,” he said. “But I know you and your mother. No matter what issues, no matter what problems, you get on with it. You treat the children as their mother would have. You bring fun to their lives. If anyone can make them smile again, it’s you.”

  “They will be lost without you,” Áine said, although if the truth was told she was sure that Jack was too broken to reach his children at the moment. They were all broken in their own way. But Áine knew there was something in what he was saying – and that having the children could help her mother heal.

  “They are lost already,” he said. “Áine, I wouldn’t ask if I saw any other solution. If I could see any way of making this better on my own. I could get in nannies and tutors and do what I need to do, but they deserve more than employees. They need love – and it breaks me to say this, but I can’t give them that at the moment. It’s all I can do every day not to drink myself stupid to forget it all.”

  Something deep in Áine’s stomach twisted. No matter angry she was at Jack, she could not watch his pain any more and she was sure her mother would love to have the children stay for a while. It would give her a lift – something to get out of bed for. She could do this – Charlotte would want her to do this, to put the children first. Whatever her sister had always said about not wanting children, she had been as natural a mother as Áine had ever seen.

  “I have to speak to my mother about this,” she said. “But yes, Jack, the children can stay. If it helps you get back on your feet – but don’t forget, they need you. You are their father – and they need you more now than ever.”

  It was his turn to nod and, despite her better judgement, Áine found herself crossing the room and offering him an embrace. Hugging, they both wept for what they had lost.

  The children didn’t sleep in their room that night. They took the teddies of course but they slept instead curled around Áine while she lay awake wondering whether she had done the right thing by taking them on.

  Rosaleen, hugely buoyed by the arrival of the children, had said it was a great idea. She had smiled – the first time Áine had seen her smile since Charlotte had died – and said it was the perfect solution and that she would never turn her back on family. She had hugged the children close to her as if she would never let them go and then, when they had begun to wriggle from her grasp, she had clapped her hands with glee.

  “We’ll have to go shopping for winter clothes,” she said. “Won’t that be nice? As soon as the shops open after Christmas we’ll go and get you both sorted. It’s a little colder here in January than it is in July. Oh and Áine, I’m sure you will be able to get the children places in the school – won’t you? We’ll have to arrange that?”

  The children had looked stricken. Daddy was going away for a little, they were told, just to get himself organised and then he would be back and they would all be happier and settled and never be parted again. But they hadn’t reckoned that “a little” would involve the need for a new wardrobe and a new school. A little, surely, would mean a few days – the Christmas break. A chance for their daddy to pull himself together and become a father to them again – and maybe play with them sometimes. Like he did before their mother died.

  If Rosaleen had noticed that the children looked stricken she ignored it – but Áine felt her heart break for them. They must feel so confused. So when they left behind the beds she had made for them and instead climbed into her bed and wrapped their fragile bodies around hers she had let them and she had kissed them both on the top of their heads and told them the kisses came from their mamma – that Charlotte had sent them down to earth with the first flurry of snow that had fallen just that evening.

  The children had jumped out of bed and run to the window to look out at the garden.

  “The snow is coming down really heavy, Auntie Áine,” Emma had squealed. “It must be Mamma sending us millions of kisses.”

  “It sure is,” Áine had said before she was able to persuade them to close over the thick curtains and climb under the blankets with her.

  She vowed then that she would do whatever she could – whatever it took – to protect the children from any further hurt.

  As the children settled in the living room the following day, sticking paper chains and watching the fire flicker in the grate, Áine slipped her feet into her boots and wrapped herself up in her good winter coat, hat, scarf and gloves and set off into the cold morning, the snow inches deep, to go and visit Lorcan.

  They had promised they would go shopping for last-minute gifts that day – although that was before the snow fell and before the children had arrived and Jack dropped his bombshell.

  Things were still fragile between them. They had tried many times to find that same sense of fun they had when they had first started courting. Charlotte liked Lorcan, Áine had reminded herself often. She would have wanted her to be happy so Áine had tried, so very hard, to be happy when she was with Lorcan. She couldn’t be cross at him – she had changed. As he had pointed out, the start of a relationship should be the fun time – the careless, carefree falling in love she had dreamed of all her life. This was far from that – circumstances had changed their romance and, while he still told her loved her and promised to try to make things work, each time she saw him she felt him pull further and further away from her.

  More than that, perhaps – as the weeks passed she cared less and felt her willingness to fight to hold on to something that wasn’t working wane further.

  She knew today would be the final straw. She knew that once Lorcan heard that she was now taking on the care for her niece and nephew that their relationship would be irreparable. She couldn’t give him any definites. She couldn’t tell him when Jack would be able to take care of the children again. All she knew was that her priority now was not holding on to something that was only limping along in the first place.

  Yet still she felt a certain sadness as she trudged through the snow to his house. There was a time when she had been so certain he was the one – when they had shared those lovely moments together in the classroom, in his car, on the beach when she could see her life open up in front of her. The life she always dreamed of – a husband, a family – everything as it should be.

  Knocking on his door, her face pink with the cold, she felt her heart sink as she waited for him. He smiled when he opened the door and ushered her in.

  “You shouldn’t have walked. I would have come to you.”

  “Your car wouldn’t have made it up Creggan Hill, the snow is lying so thick. There is barely a being about,” she said, as he helped her take off her scarf and coat.

  He directed her to the living room where the fire was blazing.

  “Let me get you a cup of tea to warm you up,” Lorcan said as she settled on the couch.

  “I’m fine, honestly,” she said.

  “Did the children arrive okay yesterday?” he asked, sitting down beside her.

  “Yes, yes, they did,” Áine said as she turned to look into his eyes. “And I need to talk to you about it.” She took his hands.

  “You’re shivering,” he said, rubbing her hands.

  “Lorcan,” Áine began and to her surprise she felt reluctant to tell him what she had to.

  Surely she could say nothing – get over Christmas, have a kiss under th
e mistletoe, a kiss at midnight on New Year’s Eve – swapping of presents and shared evenings with their families. He had promised to take her dancing, and the dress she planned on wearing, red satin, was hanging in her wardrobe. She could just say nothing and continue trying to fix things.

  She looked up, into his eyes, and saw him look directly at her. He looked tired, she noted. It was hard to explain but there was no longer the same light in his eyes that there used to be when he looked at her.

  “The children are staying,” she said. “I don’t know how long. But I imagine it won’t be short term. Jack’s not coping – he’s not coping at all – and he asked us, he asked me, to look after the children until he can pull himself together again.”

  “And you agreed?”

  Áine tried to ignore the vaguely accusatory tone in his voice. “What option did we have? The children need stability. They are lost, Lorcan. Totally lost. They need familiar faces and familiar surroundings. They need to be somewhere where they are not only being looked after but also loved. It’s what Charlotte would have wanted.”

  Lorcan was still holding her hands, but not as tightly.

  “I’m not going to ask you to understand,” she said. “And I’m not going to make promises that it will all be okay if we just hang on another while and that we will eventually get time alone together like we need. I’m not going to ask you to wait for me either, Lorcan. I think we both need to move on.”

  There was a part of her, of course, that hoped he would fight for her but the bigger part of her was not one bit surprised when he nodded sadly and said, “Well, I suppose that’s that then.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.