Eventually George emerged triumphant from the cellar. He made his way towards Aidan, loosening his tie and swinging his briefcase. He reminded his partner of a schoolboy on the last day of term.
On the train that would take them to Verona, they sat opposite one another, soaking up the view and relaxing. They would spend the night in a quaint little hotel before George talked to a man about sparkling wine. Then, after a leisurely lunch, they would head to the airport and home. At least, that was the plan.
It was at dinner that evening, outdoors under a roaring orange sky, that George admitted his intention to remain in Italy.
‘I don’t understand,’ Aidan said, in some alarm. ‘The plan is –’
‘The plan was. I’ve decided to head to Tuscany and pick up some decent Chiantis, then go on south.’
‘Hold on! You said that southern Italy had nothing to offer but offensive glugging wines.’
‘No – I said it had little more than off ensive glugging wines. It’s the “little” that I’m looking for.’
‘You’re just avoiding.’
‘Don’t start.’
‘So come home. It’s time.’
‘I’m trying to get a business running here in case you haven’t noticed.’
‘You can pick up a few decent Chiantis over the phone.’
‘Aidan, I really appreciate you coming on this trip but I’d also appreciate it if you’d allow me to live my own life.’
‘You’re so selfish. Your parents are going through hell and your sister needs you.’
‘My parents deserve to go through hell and Harri – well, she understands me and she wouldn’t change me.’
‘Not like me,’ Aidan said. ‘It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it does,’ George said, and sipped some wine.
‘Sometimes I really hate you.’
‘So go home!’ George spat, and with that, he disappeared down the road. He didn’t come back to the room that night, choosing instead to book into a single.
Aidan spent a restless night alone before he made his way to the airport. You really are an arsehole, George, and I don’t know how much more I can take.
Harri woke up to her doorbell. She steadied herself, knowing instinctively it was her mother – or, at any rate, the woman who had pretended to be her mother. She opened the door to reveal Gloria, pale, thin and frail.
‘Hello, my darling,’ she said.
‘Hello, M-Mum,’ Harri stumbled over the word.
Her mother flinched. ‘Any chance of a coffee?’ she asked, clearly trying to keep her hands away from her neck.
Gloria followed her into the kitchen and sat at the counter while Harri put on a pot of coffee. ‘How was Wexford?’ she asked then.
‘Hell.’
‘Right. I suppose it would be.’
Harri couldn’t seem to sit still. Instead she was watering the plants on the windowsill, cleaning the counter or fixing her stool.
After a long silence Gloria said, ‘You must have questions.’
‘Millions,’ Harri agreed, ‘but I’m not sure I’m prepared for the answers.’ She poured coffee that really wasn’t ready to be poured and handed her mother a mug.
Gloria didn’t complain. ‘Will you allow me to explain my part in this?’ she said.
Harri nodded. Her mother seemed so vulnerable and scared and she knew Gloria’s heart was drenched in her own pain.
Gloria took a breath. She closed her eyes for a moment or two. When she opened them she spoke. ‘I was mad with grief. Not only grief. I plunged headlong into sudden menopause because of the hysterectomy. In the 1970s there wasn’t the same understanding that there is now. There weren’t the same therapies, and God forbid that you’d talk about your feelings or answer that you were anything other than fine.’ She took another breath and a slug of horrible coffee. ‘Those first few weeks I was sectioned – they felt I was a risk to myself and maybe to George. Maybe I was – I don’t remember much about that. I remember the wards, though. They were filled with women. Some were older, some were like me in their thirties, and then there was a teenager – her name was Sheena. I remember thinking it was a terribly exotic name.’ She took another breath before she fixed her skirt and wiped her mouth.
Harri stood by the counter silently.
‘Poor Sheena had attempted suicide nine times. She was only eighteen. She was a sweet thing but consumed by a terrible darkness that you have to experience to explain so I won’t even try. She and I took walks together in the corridors. Sometimes we’d chat and sometimes we’d walk in silence. I’d known her three weeks when her mother brought her some items from the local shop – chocolate, toothpaste, a magazine. An hour after her mother had left Sheena was found dead in the bathroom having suffocated herself with the plastic bag.’
‘My God!’
‘I left the next day,’ Gloria continued. ‘I couldn’t stay there, not after that. Duncan took me home to George and Nana, but I wasn’t right. I lived on prescription pills while Nana was mother to George, and Duncan stayed out working late. Then one day that call came. Soon after, Duncan brought you home and laid you on my knee. I don’t remember what he said. I do remember I didn’t want to look at you or touch you. I was horrified that he would try to replace my baby girl but then you smiled at me and your hand rose towards mine and you grabbed my finger – you had such strength for a little one. I fell in love. There and then I knew that you had been sent to me. It took me a while to get back on my feet but that day I knew I could.’ Gloria smiled at her daughter sadly. ‘We should have told you and we were going to when you got older but time passed and it just got harder and harder, until we convinced ourselves that it really wasn’t important. We were wrong. We know we were wrong and we are so, so sorry, my darling.’
‘Mum,’ Harri said.
‘Yes, my darling.’
‘I’m glad you think I saved you. I just wish you’d thought to do the same for me.’
Gloria’s smile faded. ‘I don’t understand.’
Harri shook her head. ‘You knew I felt like I didn’t fit in all these years, yet you let me think that there was something wrong with me.’
‘No, darling, I swear I didn’t.’
‘Yeah, you did. I deserved the truth, and you should have been honest. Maybe if you had been I’d be married today, and maybe not, but at least I’d know who I was and why I was such a mental case.’
‘You are Harriet Ryan. You’re not a mental case and you are my daughter.’
‘And yet you seem like a stranger.’
‘Oh, Harri!’ her mother cried.
‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I need to be alone now.’
Her mother rose from her chair. ‘I understand,’ she said, and without another word she left.
After that Harri put on the electric fire because, despite the fine night, she was cold in her bones. She opened a bottle of red wine, one that George would have described as cheap glugging crap, and turned on the TV. She stared at the screen, show after show. Goodbye, old life. Hello, couch-potato existence.
26 June 1975 – Thursday
It’s been a long week. Betsy got sick with colic and I swear I thought she was going to die. Matthew and me stayed with her. (The correct grammar is ‘Matthew and I’ but I think ‘Matthew and me’ sounds better.)
But, hold on, I should start with Monday. Matthew was wearing a new leather jacket his dad had brought him from Monte Carlo. It’s really cool – he looks like the Fonz but way better-looking. Anyway, along with the jacket came a blonde woman, Giselle something (I think she’s French or maybe German or Dutch). She looks our age but Matthew says she’s twenty-six. His dad has moved her into the house. They look weird together. Matthew’s not really interested in talking about it. He says she is one in a long line and soon she’ll be gone. She’s really beautiful, though. I wish I looked like
her. So along came Tuesday and after work I called in to see Sheila, who wasn’t at home and her mam was really awkward about telling me where she was and she even went red in the face and her dad told me to go home, which was weird because usually he’s as sweet as pie.
I was on my way home when I met Dave, who said that she was in the hospital being pumped out. I didn’t know what that meant so he told me she’d stolen vodka from the bar and she and Dave went to the castle drinking. Sheila did more drinking than Dave so she got really sick and he ended up carrying her to the hospital!!!!! He says he’s in big trouble at home and Sheila’s parents have refused to let him see Sheila again. I felt sorry for him. I mean, she robbed the booze, she drank most of it and he got her to the hospital – they should be thanking him. Adults are spazzes. Matthew called down to me later (I always get embarrassed when he sees my house – I’m such a peasant compared to him) and we went to visit her when the coast was clear. It was fun sneaking around and, let’s face it, I know the place well enough to be able to.
Once Sheila’s mother had left the building Matthew and me went in and Sheila started crying. I felt really sorry for her. There was black stuff, mascara, maybe, all over her face and she said her mother wouldn’t let her wash it off and had told the nurses to leave it. She was stuck in bed with a needle in her hand. I told her I’d walk her to the bathroom and help her wash her face. I don’t care what her mam says. She didn’t want to – she said she felt too sick. She had the shakes like old man Jeffers except Mam says he has Parkinson’s and he’s expected to die soon. Sad. I like him.
Sheila was let out of the hospital on Wednesday but she hasn’t been seen since. I’ve gone up to the telephone box in town a few times to ring her but her mam says she’s not allowed talk on the phone. It must feel like jail to be grounded in the summer. I wish we had a phone because going up town every time I want to call someone is a nightmare.
Anyway, back to Betsy. Last night Matthew came to tell me that she had colic and she was bad with it. I went to the stables with him straight away. Poor Betsy was really sick. Henry said she had an increased heart rate, which is bad. She was obviously in a lot of pain, sweating and rolling around. I wanted to cry but I didn’t because I didn’t want to be a spaz about it. Henry gave her paraffin oil, which he said would act as a laxative which basically means that she would shit all over the place. He gave her a sedative too but it didn’t seem to help the pain. Matthew and I stayed with her, even though it was after eleven and Mam had warned me to be home by then. I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to leave Betsy. Just after midnight shit came pouring out of her like nothing I’d ever seen. Matthew and I got out of the stable just in time. She shat straight for an hour and then she seemed to improve.
I got home after one and I thought Mam would kill me but she didn’t notice!!!!! She must have gone to bed early. Thank you, God. Matthew and I didn’t kiss while Betsy was sick but we kissed all the way home. I think I could fall in love with him. I think maybe I already have. Tomorrow night we’re going to the carnival. God, I love the carnival especially the bumpers. Sometimes when I’m behind the wheel of a bumper car I feel like I’m driving a real car and I’m an adult and I’m heading off into the sunset and free to find my own way in the world. I can’t wait to really be able to drive. I can’t wait to really live. We’re going to try to help Dave sneak Sheila out. Matthew is bringing the ladder! I can’t wait.
10. Tension Towers
The waiting area was empty save for Susan and her decidedly distant husband, Andrew. He chose to sit on the other side of the room, camped beside a table piled high with magazines that he pretended to flick through. Christ, Andrew, I’m not contagious. It had taken weeks of persuasion and every ounce of guile she could muster to talk him into accompanying her. Although he had remained stubbornly and steadfastly silent in her presence for six months, bar the odd monosyllable, and it was obvious that he agreed to counselling to get her to shut up, she was relieved when he had finally acquiesced. However, she didn’t hold out much hope. Susan was just tired of talking to a wall and desperate for a conclusion to their misery one way or another.
She wished he would sit next to her but didn’t dwell on it. Instead she focused on the painting, large and looming, on the wall above her defiant husband’s head. In it a man and a woman sat on the remote ends of a bench both facing forward, both forlorn. At first they seemed completely apart, strangers even, but then it became apparent that while the man’s hand was tight by his side his index finger was lifted and poised as though it was about to creep towards the woman, whose hand lay open and waiting. Susan looked from the painting to her husband’s face. If I left my hand open he’d slap it. He hated being in her presence so much that he appeared distracted, irritated, itchy, even. She wondered why he hadn’t left her. Why don’t you just go? Why had he sworn her to secrecy? He didn’t want Beth to know what was going on. That was only one of the things she hoped a visit to therapy could help answer. She’ll hate me, not you. He was adamant. It was all he had said that night six months and four days before.
‘Don’t you dare involve our daughter in this!’
‘But can you forgive me?’ she’d begged.
That was the moment when he had stopped speaking and the moment that their relationship had truly ended. What was left was an illusion. They were stuck in some sort of torment-ridden limbo. Can’t you just forgive me?
The door opened and a couple came out of the consulting room, the man leading the woman, both staring blankly ahead, neither their faces nor their posture revealing what might be waiting inside. The door closed. Minutes passed. The door opened. A man in his early fifties with wavy salt-and-pepper hair smiled at Susan and Andrew.
They stood.
‘Mr and Mrs Shannon?’ he clarified pleasantly.
‘Yes,’ Susan replied.
‘Good. Come in.’
They followed him inside. The room was larger than she had expected but then again the rooms in Georgian houses often were. It occurred to her that the Georgians might not be known for their propensity towards personal hygiene but they did have the luxury of space. She smiled to herself. Andrew gave her a filthy look that suggested he would not tolerate anything that approached optimism. There wasn’t any sign of a couch. Instead two comfortable chairs were positioned in front of an antique mahogany desk accompanied by an ox-blood leather and mahogany captain’s chair. At least he has good taste.
Andrew noted that the chairs were far enough apart to negate the necessity for physical contact. Good.
The man sat and smiled.
Susan attempted the same but her lip stuck to her upper front teeth giving her, she was sure, a pretty frightening appearance.
‘Let me introduce myself. I’m Vincent Mayers.’
‘Hello, Vincent,’ Susan said, trying to work saliva into a desert-dry mouth.
Andrew said nothing. Instead he focused on the framed document indicating that the man before him had a PhD. It will take more than that.
‘So let’s cut to the chase. Why are you here, folks?’ Vincent asked.
Silence.
‘How about we start with you, Susan? Why are you here?’
Susan’s eyes widened in shock. She hadn’t expected to be put on the spot immediately. She’d thought he would start off slowly, maybe get to know them through a little chit-chat. He would ask how they’d met. That was a great story. Or enquire as to whether or not they had kids, and they could talk about Beth and how well she was doing in school and what a lovely voice she had, or how long they’d been together. A lot happens in twenty-six years – they could have talked for a while about the passage of time. Or even a more basic introductory subject such as the weather, especially as it was unseasonably hot for late May, or the fact that the Kirov Ballet would be performing at the Point the very next night.
Why am I here? Oh, God, I feel sick. Her insides were drying, possibly terminally, and t
he PhD’s question had the effect of wiping her once busy mind clean. Another silence.
‘Andrew?’
Andrew didn’t even pretend to engage. Instead he stared blankly ahead.
Vincent sat back. The silence extended. Andrew gazed out of the window, acting as though he was calm, but his hands clasped in his lap suggested he was not as comfortable as he pretended. His wife was clearly agitated, her hands moving excessively as though she was seeking a suitable place to rest them. She was sweating and, judging by her involuntary lip-curl, her mouth was dry. Vincent offered her water, then sat back and resumed watching them.
Susan desperately wanted to cry.
After the thirty-third minute had passed, Andrew looked her way but a little to the left and beyond her. ‘Are you ready to go home now?’ he asked.
She nodded sadly and they left without another word. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a refund. They travelled in separate cars. Susan wasn’t ready to return to the house of silence so she drove around the city, directionless, guided only by the one-way systems those around her found infuriating. The radio played but she didn’t hear it. Instead she was remembering the recent past and in her mind she returned to the Shelbourne Hotel and the double bedroom on the second floor.
It was mid-afternoon in winter and she had been trembling, charged with an erotic excitement she’d forgotten she was capable of. The builder called Keith had approached her, handing her a glass of vodka he’d procured from a well-stocked mini bar. She had drunk it in one and he had laughed at her and she had laughed along with him, embarrassed that she was shaking.
‘I’m sick with nerves and don’t tell me I’ve nothing to be nervous of,’ she had said. I’m worse than a stupid schoolgirl.
‘I promise.’ He made a scout’s honour sign with his hand. ‘Peanut?’ he had ventured, holding out a packet, making her laugh again.
The Truth Will Out Page 11
