The House By Princes Park

by Maureen Lee

  ‘If everyone already knows, then it’s not gossip.’

  ‘Do you think not? Ah, well, I don’t suppose it’d hurt.’ She was obviously dying to spill the beans. The truth is,’ her voice dropped to a whisper though the garden was empty except for themselves and a couple of birds, ‘Neila Kenny was Eammon Conway’s bit on the side for nigh on ten years.’

  ‘Never!’ Ellie was genuinely shocked. ‘You mean they slept together?’

  ‘I doubt if they slept much, but they definitely did the other,’ the woman said smugly.

  ‘For ten years! But this is Ireland! I thought you couldn’t get contraceptives. How could they have made love for ten years without having babies all over the place?’ Ellie was annoyed. She’d only made love for five minutes with the son of Eammon Conway before she was up the stick.

  Mrs McTggart dropped her voice even lower. ‘Neila’s never had periods, so she can’t have babies.’

  ‘How the hell do you know that?’

  ‘Everyone knows everything about everyone in Craig-moss,’ said her informant, tight-lipped, as if she disapproved. ‘But you see what’s happened, Ellie? Felix has taken over his father’s woman, just as he took over his shop and his house. Now he’s stuck with her. One of these fine days they’ll probably get married, or so everyone expects. There’s some people, and Felix Conway is one, who are far too good for this world. That man’s a saint.’

  Chapter 16

  LOCAL BUILDING FIRM GETS MUCH NEEDED HELPING HAND, ran the headline in the Echo.

  ‘Crisis-hit Doyle Construction has been taken over by Medallion, the company responsible for some of the most impressive buildings recently erected in London and other major British cities. A spokesman for Medallion said all outstanding contracts would be honoured and completed on time. Matthew Doyle, founder of Doyle Construction, is being retained as Managing Director of the Liverpool arm of this prestigious company, though he will not have a seat on the board...’

  Ruby laid the paper down with a sigh. Matthew hadn’t thought to tell her the good news himself – she assumed the news was good – he’d left her to find out for herself.

  She sighed again because she knew this wasn’t true. Matthew hadn’t wanted to tell her himself. It wasn’t thoughtlessness on his part. He hardly came to the house nowadays, and then only when he knew there’d be other people there, at evenings and weekends. He’d stayed upstairs only for a few weeks before purchasing a one-bedroom flat in a modern block in Gateacre. Greta had helped put up curtains.

  How she must have hurt him! Ruby cringed. But then all she’d done was hurt him since they’d met. He must love her very much, she thought, to have put up with it, with her, for so long.

  But did he still love her now, she wondered? Perhaps he’d given up. He’d been about to open his heart and in return had received the equivalent of a slap in the face. She wouldn’t be surprised if he hated her.

  Ever since, on the few times they’d met, she’d looked at him in a different light, not as a friend, not as the man she’d once found so very irritating, but as a lover. She realised she would quite like to go to bed with Matthew Doyle, lie in his arms, marry him if he asked. The excited thrill she’d had when they first met, which had never completely gone away, returned with a vengeance. The half-spoken acknowledgment of his feelings had unlocked the key to her own heart, sadly too late.

  One of these days, Ruby vowed, she’d get Matthew by himself and force him to say the words he’d been about to say on that brilliant February morning. He may have given up on her, but she hadn’t even started on him.

  ‘Forty-one!’ Greta grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. ‘I don’t feel forty-one. Do I look it?’

  ‘No way, sis.’ Heather was sitting on the bed, conscious that it was twenty years almost to the minute that she’d been in exactly the same position, doing the same thing, watching her sister get made-up on her birthday. Then, Greta had been twenty-one. ‘Do I look forty?’ she asked. It would be her own birthday in two weeks’ time.

  ‘Hardly thirty. Is this lippy all right?’

  ‘It’s a bit dark. You’ve got a thing about dark lippies. With your colouring, you need something lighter.’

  ‘You always say that.’

  ‘You shouldn’t ask my opinion if you don’t want it.’

  Greta rubbed the lipstick off with a tissue and applied a paler one. ‘Does that look OK?’

  ‘Much better.’

  ‘What shall I wear?’ Greta got up and examined her half of the wardrobe.

  Heather shrugged. ‘Anything’ll do. It’s only the two of us going for a meal.’

  ‘We should have had a party.’

  ‘Who would we have invited?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno. People from work?’

  ‘They’re all married,’ Heather said. ‘We’d have been the only single ones there.’

  Greta took out a frilly chiffon frock and examined it critically. It would look good with her black velvet jacket. ‘I’m surprised Gerald isn’t coming for Easter,’ she remarked. ‘It’s only next week. Moira will be home from Norwich, and there’s Matthew, Daisy and Clint. We could have had a family party then. Mam would have been pleased.’

  ‘I’m not seeing Gerald any more.’

  ‘Why not?’ Greta span round so fast she nearly fell over. She looked at her sister with amazement. ‘I know you only started off as friends, but I thought it had got serious.’

  ‘It had,’ Heather said calmly. ‘He asked me to marry him.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘At first, I didn’t know what to say. I thought about living in a strange town, leaving this house.’ Heather glanced around the familiar room. ‘I tried to imagine what it would be like, not seeing Mam every day, you, our Daisy. I wondered if Gerald’s children would grow to love me, and would I ever love them?’

  ‘And what did you decide?’ Greta sat on her bed and the sisters looked at each other across the small space between, as they’d done thousands of times in the past.

  ‘I decided I could do all those things.’ She gave herself an approving nod. ‘I said, “yes”, to Gerald.’

  ‘But I thought you weren’t seeing him any more!’

  ‘I’m not.’ A wry smile drifted across Heather’s stern features. ‘I didn’t tell anyone about getting married. I was waiting for the right opportunity, I suppose. One night, not long after he proposed, Gerald rang. We were discussing things, the future. He told me how much he earns in the bank. It was a lot less than I do, so I suggested it would be best if I got a job as a legal clerk in Northampton and he looked after the children.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He nearly hit the roof.’ Her eyes rolled, as if she still felt shocked by the memory. ‘He said it was the daftest idea he’d ever heard and he was surprised at me. Men went to work, women stayed at home and did the housework. Apparently, any other way and civilisation would crumble.’

  ‘Cheek!’ Greta gasped.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Heather said indignantly. ‘I said it wouldn’t hurt to discuss the matter and he lost his temper. That was how he felt and there was to be no discussion, so I told him I didn’t want to marry a man whose mind was so made up he wouldn’t talk about things. Then I put the phone down and we haven’t spoken to each other since.’

  ‘He’s bound to call again, apologise.’

  ‘Then he needn’t bother. I’ve finished with him.’

  ‘Oh, sis! And it happened just like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’ Heather snapped her fingers. ‘One minute I loved him, next I never wanted to see him again for as long as I live.’

  ‘That’s amazing.’

  ‘I know, and it’s also a bit scary.’ Heather’s eyes grew round. ‘Say I’d married him, and then discovered what he was like.’ She jumped to her feet. ‘C’mon, Grete, else it’ll be too late to go out. I hope you’re not intending to wear that frock, it’s awfully thin, and it’s cold outside.’

  Greta
couldn’t be bothered arguing. She put the chiffon frock back in the wardrobe, and took out another, warmer one. ‘I was rather hoping you’d get married,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Then I wouldn’t feel so bad if I got married meself.’

  From past experience, Heather knew Greta would always do exactly as she wanted, including getting married. It had hurt, being used, then ditched when someone more appealing appeared on the scene like the time in Corfu, but it didn’t stop her from loving her sister. The thought of life without Greta, living in this room on her own, was horrible, but it seemed Greta didn’t feel the same.

  ‘Have you got some chap up your sleeve?’ she asked. Greta had gone out a few times recently and refused to say who with.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Greta giggled. ‘It means I’ve got some chap up me sleeve.’

  Three months later, on a melting July day, Greta’s missing daughter returned to the house by Princes Park with her beautiful two-month-old son whose name was Brendan.

  ‘You’re just in time for the wedding.’ Moira had opened the door. She’d only been home from university a few days herself.

  ‘Whose wedding?’

  ‘Our Mum’s. She’s getting married to Matthew Doyle next Tuesday.’

  The birth had been extraordinarily easy and quite painless. Ever since it had been imminent, Mrs McTaggart had been coming every morning, just in case, and Neila Kenny deserted the chemist’s and came afternoons.

  One morning, just after eleven, Ellie felt a twinge and phoned Dr O’Hara who came straight away. Two hours later she was the mother of a perfect baby boy. It was that easy.

  ‘Why do some women make such a fuss?’ she wanted to know when the doctor placed her newly-born son in her arms.

  ‘Because some women have a much harder time than you. Ask Mrs McTaggart here what she went through. I was there.’

  ‘Agony,’ Mrs McTaggart said dramatically. ‘Hours and hours of sheer agony, and each time was worse than the time before. What are you going to call him, Ellie?’

  ‘Brendan,’ Ellie said promptly.

  The older woman went pink with delight. ‘I hope he gives you as much pleasure as my Brendan gave me.’

  Dr O’Hara raised his eyebrows. ‘Does that include landing up in a Belfast jail?’

  ‘It does indeed, Doctor. I’m proud of him, and so would his daddy be if he was alive.’

  ‘I like the idea of having a son named after an Irish terrorist,’ Ellie said with a gleeful smile. She looked down at the baby. He had a fluff of reddish hair, large blue eyes, a plump face and plump, pink hands. The blue eyes were fixed intently on her face. ‘He’s staring straight at me. He knows I’m his mother.’

  The doctor gave Mrs McTaggart a knowing smile. ‘Babies can’t see properly for the first few weeks, Ellie.’

  ‘I thought that was kittens.’

  ‘It’s babies too.’

  The front door slammed, there were heavy footsteps on the stairs, and a red-faced, strangely bright-eyed Neila Kenny came rushing into the room. She looked just a little bit mad.

  ‘I saw Doctor O’Hara’s car outside. Oh, the baby’s come! Is it a boy or a girl?’

  ‘A boy,’ Ellie said proudly. ‘I’m calling him Brendan.’

  ‘Let me look at him. Can I hold him? I wish he’d come this afternoon when I was here.’

  ‘You can hold him some other time, Neila,’ Dr O’Hara said. ‘I’d like to see him at his mother’s breast right now. She and Brendan need to get used to each other.’

  Ellie felt a tiny bit embarrassed, undoing her nightie, and exposing her breasts in front of three people, one of whom she wholeheartedly detested. She wished Neila would go away, not stare at Brendan as if she’d like to eat him.

  Her son attached himself to her left breast and began to suck loudly.

  ‘Very good,’ the doctor said approvingly.

  ‘It hurts,’ Ellie complained. ‘Me breasts feel dead tender.’

  ‘That’s quite normal. Let him try the other breast once he’s had his fill.’

  ‘How will I know?’

  ‘Brendan will let you know, don’t worry.’

  A few minutes later, Brendan set up an angry wail and was transferred to the right breast. To Ellie’s intense irritation, Neila seemed to think it necessary to lend a hand. ‘I can manage meself, thanks,’ she snapped.

  Mrs McTaggart offered to make a cup of tea, but the doctor refused and said he had to go. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow, make sure everything’s all right, but don’t hesitate to give me a call if there’s a problem.’

  ‘I’ll be looking after her, Doctor,’ said Neila, ‘don’t worry. I’ll ring Felix in a minute, tell him to bring more nappies and one or two other things. He’ll be thrilled to bits it’s a boy.’

  ‘You’re all heart, Neila. Ellie’s lucky to have you.’

  Ellie didn’t think so.

  Before, time had crawled by. Now it flew. Brendan, already a big baby according to Dr O’Hara, seemed to grow bigger by the day, not surprising considering the amount of milk he consumed. Ellie’s breasts were sore, and she had to grudgingly concede she couldn’t have coped without Neila Kenny, who abandoned the chemist’s altogether and came to Fern Hall every day. Ellie had assumed bathing a baby, changing nappies, were the sort of things that would come naturally to a mother, but they seemed to require a knack she didn’t have. Brendan was terrifyingly slippery when he was wet, and it was impossible to hold a squirming baby with one hand and wash him with the other. Nappies got in a terrible tuck and came off faster than she put them on. Neila could do all these things with incredible efficiency having had five younger brothers and sisters to learn on.

  Brendan was demanding, but a good baby, according to Mrs McTaggart, far better behaved than Brendan the First, who’d screamed his bad-tempered little head off for three whole months, so much so that Mr McTaggart, bless his heart, had threatened to throw his latest son out of the window.

  The new Brendan slept in a cot beside Ellie’s bed and required feeding twice, sometimes three times, a night, followed by the inevitable burping. Ellie would scarcely have closed her eyes, when she would be alerted by an urgent cry. ‘I’m hungry again,’ Brendan would yell. Next morning, she would hand him over to an eager Neila before going back to bed for a few hours of much needed sleep.

  The amount of washing was horrendous. So many baby clothes, bedclothes, dozens and dozens of nappies; dirty nappies, soaking nappies, nappies drying on the line, nappies dried and aired and ready for use. Mrs McTaggart helped when she could, but she had other tasks to do and only came three times a week.

  Despite her utter weariness, there were some mornings Ellie went back to bed and couldn’t sleep. Although she knew the cot was empty and Brendan was safely downstairs, her mind remained alert and expectant, as if any minute there would be a desperate appeal for food. After a few hours, she would give up trying to sleep and go downstairs where there was always work to do.

  It was on such a morning, when Brendan was six weeks old, that Ellie came down, aching for a cup of tea, to find the front door open and Neila coming in with the baby in his carrycot on wheels.

  ‘Have you been out for a walk?’ she asked.

  ‘I go most mornings, didn’t you know?’

  ‘You never said before. Did you go to the village?’

  ‘We needed shopping done.’ Neila removed a nylon shopping bag from the tray under the pram and stared at her aggressively. ‘Do you mind?’

  Ellie minded very much her baby being examined by the entire village and his likeness to Liam – very strong – commented on.

  ‘Everyone’s surprised,’ Neila remarked, ‘That you’re not getting yourself ready to go to Geneva.’

  ‘What’s in Geneva?’ Ellie nearly said, then remembered Liam was, and he was supposed to be her husband and she was supposed to be joining him when the baby was born. ‘Do I look as if I’m ready to
go Geneva?’ she said irritably instead. The furthest she got was the garden. Her hair was lucky if it got combed once a week, she’d forgotten what make-up looked like, and was wearing a maternity frock because she’d put on so much weight none of her old clothes would fit.

  ‘I’m surprised Liam hasn’t rung, or you haven’t rung him, or that you haven’t written to him or he to you.’ Neila lifted Brendan from the pram, put her large, red hand on his fluffy head and pressed it tenderly into the curve beneath her chin.

  Ellie resented her baby being touched by the hateful Neila Kenny. ‘You’re surprised at an awful lot of things. If you must know, I’ve written to Liam twice since I had Brendan.’

  ‘You didn’t ask me or Felix to post the letter.’

  ‘That’s because I asked Mrs McTaggart.’

  ‘Liam hasn’t answered.’

  ‘Do you examine the post?’

  ‘I pick it up off the mat when I come in, don’t I?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not a spy like you.’

  Neila’s big hand spread over the baby’s back, the other supported his bottom. She said angrily, ‘I’m not a spy. I can’t help but notice things, that’s all.’

  Unable to think of a reason why Liam hadn’t replied to her imaginary letters, Ellie turned on her heel and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Neila followed, Brendan clinging to her the way a monkey clings to a tree, as if she were his mother.

  ‘You never married him, did you, Ellie?’ Neila spat from the kitchen door. ‘He ran off and left you. He doesn’t give a damn about you or Brendan.’

  ‘Say that were true,’ Ellie said tiredly, ‘What business is it of yours?’

  ‘I’m worried about Brendan, that’s all.’ The horrible woman kissed Brendan’s rosy cheek. ‘He needs his father.’

  ‘I didn’t have a father,’ a seething Ellie pointed out. ‘He died before me and me sister were born. Neither of us seem to have come to any harm.’

  ‘Ah, but you had a proper home, a family. What sort of life will Brendan have with you on your own? No husband, no job, nowhere to live.’