The Grace Girls

by Geraldine O'Neill

‘Everyone has their own way of going on,’ Heather said, unable to stop herself. ‘And I think the way they live is actually very nice. They have a beautiful house and they made us all very welcome, and Claire really looked after me the day I took not well.’

  ‘It’s the least she could do,’ Mona stated now. ‘You’re her brother’s daughter. You surely don’t think she was going to turn you away from the door when you were sick and didn’t know anybody else in Glasgow?’

  Heather bit down hard on her lip and took a deep breath. She knew perfectly well that nothing she said would make Mona or Janey agree with her, so there was absolutely no point in saying any more.

  ‘I can knit again now,’ Lily informed Kirsty, holding up a set of small plastic red needles and a ball of yellow wool that had been one of her rejected Christmas presents a few weeks ago. She had a little basket on the floor beside her filled with different coloured balls of wool.

  ‘So, what are you going to knit?’ Kirsty said, shifting Whiskey further along the couch. She lifted up a ball of black wool and placed it beside the yellow one.

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ Lily said, pondering the matter.

  ‘You could always knit yourself a nice scarf,’ Kirsty sug­gested, amusement flickering in her eyes. ‘That black and yellow would go lovely together if you did it in stripes.’ She started to laugh aloud now. ‘You’d look like a lovely big bumble-bee!’

  ‘You cheeky thing!’ Lily said, wagging her finger like a teacher at her cousin.

  ‘You’re only supposed to say nice things to me tonight – I’ve decided that if people aren’t nice to me all the time, I’ll just go back and stay in the hospital.’ She giggled away for a few moments, then her face suddenly became serious as she remembered. ‘Did you not like Frankie the porter that was on my ward?’

  ‘D’you mean the wee Teddy boy that was goin’ out with the dental nurse?’ Kirsty teased.

  Lily tutted and folded her arms. ‘He was really nice – and if you’d been nicer to him and not laughed at him, he might have finished with his girlfriend and started goin’ out with you . . . and then you could have brought him round here to visit me.’ She smiled now. ‘You could even have got married to him, and Heather could have been your bridesmaid and I could have been your flower girl.’

  Kirsty shook her head and laughed, delighted that Lily was back to her old, devious ways of getting what she wanted. ‘You should be a fairy-tale writer,’ she told her young cousin, ‘because you have the greatest imagination.’ She prodded Lily gently on the arm. ‘I wouldn’t have taken that Frankie in a lucky-bag! And I’d love to have seen what the dental nurse was like – she must have been desperate to take him an’ all.’

  Lily rolled her eyes to the ceiling and sighed like a world-weary adult. ‘I feel sorry for you, Kirsty Grace. You’ll end up an oul’ maid – for no one will have you the way you go on. You’ll definitely never get a boyfriend.’

  A male Irish voice suddenly boomed from the doorway that separated the kitchen and living-room. ‘What are you talkin’ about? Sure she already has a boyfriend!’ It was her Uncle Tommy from Wishaw, and he looked as if he had already downed a few bottles of Pat’s beer.

  Kirsty looked at him, startled – as did her parents and Mona and Pat and Tommy’s wife, Janey. She hadn’t seen Tommy for ages – what on earth was he rambling on about?

  ‘She not only has a boyfriend,’ he said, smiling and nodding round the assembled group, ‘she has a boyfriend wi’ a big fancy car. Don’t you, Kirsty?’

  Kirsty shook her head, a sinking feeling suddenly coming to her stomach. ‘No,’ she said, trying to sound bright and breezy and wishing that everybody else hadn’t stopped to listen. ‘I’m not going out with anybody at the minute . . .’

  ‘Who d’you think you’re kidding?’ he beamed, enjoying an audience for his banter. ‘Sure, I saw you last Sunday afternoon getting off the bus at Carfin – I was driving the bus, so I couldn’t miss you.’ He shook his head now, laughing. ‘She got off the bus as nice as you like, and there the fella was waitin’ for her in his big fancy Wolseley car.’ He looked at Fintan. ‘Sure the price of that car would buy you a decent house!’

  Fintan looked across at Kirsty, his face stiff and white. ‘Who was this?’ he asked.

  Sophie was sitting beside him, looking from her husband to her daughter, not quite sure what was going on.

  Kirsty felt her neck and chest burning up. She looked over at her mother. ‘That was on Sunday when I was going over to that lassie’s house in Carfin that I used to go to school with . . .’ To her own ears now, the story sounded feeble.

  ‘Now, don’t be tryin’ to kid us all!’ Tommy went on, oblivious to the mayhem he was causing. ‘I saw you with my own eyes, and that was no girl sitting in the car along with you. It was a fella – and no doubts about it! You and the fella were kissin’ and cuddlin’ in the front seat like a pair of lovebirds.’ He shook his head. ‘You can’t tell me that he wasn’t your boyfriend.’

  Kirsty was so red-faced and stunned that she could do nothing except shake her head.

  ‘And where did you say the car went?’ Fintan asked Tommy in a low voice.

  ‘Oh, it went tearin’ off in the direction of Motherwell,’ Tommy said, exaggerating wildly for effect. He held his hands up and slid one off against the other. ‘It went tearin’ off like a bullet out of a gun!’

  Fintan slowly nodded his head. ‘I see,’ he said. But Kirsty knew from his tone of voice and the look on his face that it was going to be very hard to make Fintan Grace see anything about this situation at all.

  Chapter 62

  Kirsty had tried to explain the situation until she was blue in the face, but there was no shifting her father.

  ‘And you can forget all about the singing!’ he told her the minute they walked back into their own living-room. ‘As far as I’m concerned that man has turned my daughter into a liar and a cheat – and it’s to be hoped that that’s as far as he’s gone.’

  ‘Fintan,’ Sophie interrupted, her voice high and strained. ‘At least give her a chance to explain –’

  ‘Explain what?’ he snapped. ‘Do you not realise that your daughter was out all night with that man in a hotel? Do you not realise that she’s been seeing him behind our backs for months?’

  ‘Daddy,’ Kirsty pleaded in a choked voice, ‘I’ve already told you that nothing happened . . . I told you the truth. We had separate rooms in the hotel, and all we did when we were together was talk.’ Tears were running down her cheeks now. ‘The only thing I didn’t tell you was that I went to meet him on Sunday for a couple of hours.’ She looked at her mother. ‘I was going to see a friend and then I decided that I needed to see Larry . . . I felt we needed to talk about everything.’

  ‘And where did you go?’ Fintan demanded. Sophie came across the room to hold onto her husband’s arm – half-comforting him and half-holding back his temper against their daughter.

  There was a silence as Kirsty came to the conclusion that the only way out of this was to tell the truth. Or as much of the truth as she felt her father could take.

  ‘We went for a run to Motherwell . . . and I asked him if I could see where he lived.’

  Fintan gave a deep shuddering sigh. ‘Are you that stupid, Kirsty?’ he said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘The man’s only after what he can get from a young, innocent girl.’

  ‘He’s not!’ Kirsty almost screamed. ‘He never laid a hand on me . . . and it was me that admitted I had feelings for him first.’ She dug into her skirt pocket for her hanky to dab at her eyes. ‘He thought it could never work between us. I’ve liked him for months.’

  ‘It’s true, Daddy,’ Heather suddenly said from the doorway. She looked anxiously from her sister to her father. ‘Kirsty told me all about liking him weeks ago . . . she came in one night all upset because he’d told her that he didn’t want anything to do with her. He told her that she was too young and he didn’t want her to be hanging a
round after an older man.’

  Kirsty felt a little wave of relief at Heather standing up for her.

  ‘Well, if that’s true, what made him change his mind?’ Fintan demanded.

  ‘Well,’ Kirsty said, swallowing back her tears, ‘I tried to forget all about him, but when we got stranded up at the hotel last week . . . we got closer. We sat talking for hours.’

  ‘And?’ Fintan demanded.

  ‘And we both realised that we really loved each other . . .’

  ‘Loved?’ Fintan repeated. ‘Loved? You don’t know the meaning of the word – you’re only a girl, for God’s sake. All he’s interested in is getting you into bed, and you’re so naive and stupid you can’t see it.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Fintan!’ Sophie said now. ‘Will you give her a chance? She’s told you what happened –’

  ‘She hasn’t told us half of what’s happened . . .’ he said in a broken voice. He went over to the armchair by the fire now and sank down into it, his head between his hands.

  ‘Daddy,’ Kirsty said, coming over to kneel by the side of his chair, ‘I swear to God I haven’t done anything wrong . . . and apart from the age difference, there’s no reason why me and Larry Delaney couldn’t be together. He’s Irish like yourself, and he was brought up as a Catholic . . . he’s got a lovely house and he’s done very well for himself. A lot of fathers would be delighted for their daughter to meet a man like that.’

  A silence fell on the room, where all three women looked across at each other and waited.

  Eventually, Fintan Grace lifted his head. ‘From tonight onwards,’ he said, ‘I want you to account for every move you make, and when you come in from work in the chemist’s shop I don’t want you to move outside this house.’

  ‘But my singing . . .’ Kirsty whispered, thinking of the bookings she had this coming weekend and the weekends after. Thinking about Liz Mullen’s wedding and the other people she would be letting down. Thinking of all the great plans that Larry had for her to become a top cabaret singer.

  ‘You can forget the singing,’ he told her, his face white and grim. ‘And you can forget all about Larry Delaney.’

  ‘I can’t forget him,’ Kirsty told him, her voice cracking.

  ‘In that case,’ Fintan said, looking her straight in the eye, ‘you may walk out that door now and forget all about us.’

  Chapter 63

  After she had phoned Larry Delaney and told him that she could never see him again, Kirsty had just withdrawn into herself. She spent the evenings up in their room listening to her radio or she went across to Mona’s to sit with Lily or watch television with her cousins. She had never spoken another word about what had happened and she had only had the most perfunctory conversations with anyone in the house.

  Sophie was worried sick, and torn between Kirsty and Fintan. In all the years she’d known him, he had never taken such a stance over anything. And while Sophie knew that he had fairly strict views on religion and had insisted that the girls give it its proper place in their lives, he had still been a reasonable and open man.

  And she was very worried about Kirsty. She was neither up nor down – her mood could only be described as completely flat. She was just going through the motions of living every day, but not really taking part. It was as though she had put her life on hold – as though she were waiting for something.

  When Heather had had the awful upset over Gerry Stewart back in the New Year that had been bad enough. But at least her reaction had been fairly normal, and she was gradually getting back to her old self. But this with Kirsty was different, and Sophie instinctively knew that things weren’t going to go back to the way they were. Something was going to have to give one way or another and Sophie had no idea what would make that happen.

  She decided to leave them to it for the time being, and retreated upstairs to hide behind her mountain of sewing.

  Heather felt equally awkward and decided she needed to talk over the situation with somebody – but there wasn’t a single person she could think of that she could talk to about it. She had called up to Liz’s house over the weekend, but Liz had only wanted to talk about Jim and how depressed he still was about what had happened to Gerry. The wedding had been put back until March, since there wasn’t such a rush on it, and it would give them and their families more time to save up.

  Although Heather would have loved to have talked the whole thing out about Kirsty and Larry, she knew that Liz might use the situation to hurt Kirsty in the future if it suited her. And Heather wasn’t going to take that chance. She might not agree with what Kirsty was doing and she might not like Larry Delaney, but Kirsty was still her sister, and she didn’t want anybody else hurting her.

  One Wednesday, during her lunch break, Heather suddenly decided that she would phone her Auntie Claire and ask if she could come out at the weekend.

  ‘That would be just perfect,’ Claire told her, ‘and it would be company for me because Andy’s got some kind of conference on Friday and Saturday night in Edinburgh and he’s staying over.’ She’d halted. ‘He doesn’t like leaving me, with this fellow still on the loose.’

  ‘It’s the same out in Lanarkshire,’ Heather had told her, ‘all the shops are sold out of padlocks and chains, and all the women are too scared to go out at night on our own.’

  ‘Well, Andy has plenty of locks on all our doors and windows,’ Claire told her. ‘So we needn’t worry too much about it.’ Then she’d asked, ‘Would Kirsty like to come out as well? Has she got anything else on at the weekend?’

  ‘No,’ Heather said in a low voice. ‘But I don’t think she’ll want to come . . . she’s not feeling very sociable at the moment.’

  Kirsty had only shrugged when Heather told her that she was going to stay in Glasgow the following weekend.

  ‘Claire said you’re welcome to come as well,’ Heather ventured, when she went upstairs to find her sister lying on the bed staring up at the ceiling, the radio on low in the background.

  Kirsty turned to look at her with dark-ringed eyes. ‘I don’t think so . . . and anyway, I’m sure my daddy wouldn’t believe where I was. He’d probably turn up at Claire’s house to check if I was really there.’

  Heather paused. ‘Are you all right, Kirsty?’

  ‘What do you care?’ Kirsty asked in a flat voice. She moved her gaze back to the ceiling. ‘You’re every bit as bad as my daddy . . . you never gave Larry a chance. You wouldn’t even listen when I was trying to tell you all about him.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Heather said now. ‘I wish I had listened properly . . . I wasn’t feeling too good and I –’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Kirsty said, closing her eyes, shutting out her sister and shutting out the rest of the world. ‘It’s too late now.’

  Chapter 64

  Heather had been very grateful to get the train out to Giffnock on the Friday evening. She was glad of the chance to escape from home, and she also felt that Kirsty would be glad to have the bedroom all to herself.

  It was a pity that this thing had happened with Kirsty, because everything else had started to look up a little bit. Lily was now home and improving every day and Liz was feeling and looking much better after her miscarriage. Heather felt that she, too, was finally getting back to her old self.

  She had lain awake on numerous nights going over and over the situation about Gerry until she eventually realised that there were no answers to it all. However she thought about it and analysed it, there was nothing different she could have done about it. The bottom line was that she didn’t love him and he just couldn’t accept it. It was not her fault, and she now knew it.

  In the same way, she had realised that she couldn’t get involved with Danny in the office. Thankfully, he hadn’t taken it at all badly, and had asked Marie to accompany him to the wedding instead. And things had improved with Sarah as well. When she heard the full story about Barbara, Heather had felt quite sorry for her workmate, and had made a point of joining h
er and Marie at the tea break the following day. Gradually, they had got back to their old way of working, and when Sarah insisted on apologising properly for the way the weekend out at her house had gone, Heather accepted it graciously.

  Later in the week Sarah had brought her mum’s knitting pattern for Heather to borrow, and had suggested that they might try another weekend together.

  ‘Some time,’ Heather had agreed. ‘Maybe in the spring when the days are a bit longer – and after the murderer has been caught.’ It had been weeks since it happened, but the story still dominated the newspapers and the radio news.

  Although the other difficulties that Heather had experienced were now fading away, she felt very bad about Kirsty, and annoyed that it had all happened at the same time. Heather just hadn’t been in the right frame of mind when Kirsty came home walking on air after spending the night with Larry Delaney. She regretted judging the situation so quickly and harshly and would do anything she could to repair it. But she knew, as Kirsty had said, that it was all too late. The situation had been taken out of her hands.

  Claire was waiting for her at the station as arranged, waving profusely and excited in the way a young girl Heather’s own age would be, with her perfectly bobbed hair bouncing up and down.

  ‘Oh, you look so much better!’ Claire said, examining her niece closely. ‘Your eyes are much brighter and your cheeks have a lovely healthy glow.’ She put her arm through Heather’s then and said, ‘We’re going to have a great weekend, I’ve planned lots of nice things for us to do, starting with a meal out tonight at a lovely little local hotel.’

  They walked along to Claire’s Morris Minor and as they drove out towards the house, Heather thought how lovely it would be to live in a big city and just catch a train or a bus that would have you in the city centre in much less time than it took her to travel from Rowanhill.