Fiona

by Gemma Whelan

  “Can you enlighten us about this, Uncle Frank? What exactly will be the nature of the intermediation?”

  Frank smiled disarmingly, and Fiona felt a wave of guilt and shame for having anything to do with him.

  “It’s all very simple, Declan, really. Your father wanted me to help out, that’s all. His wish, you know, was to have his children happy and in accord. I’ll try to help if I can.”

  Before Declan could reply, Mr. Stanley intervened.

  “Excuse me. But we need to continue with the formalities of the will, so I need to record both of your wishes and then proceed from there. If I may?” And he politely looked towards Fiona.

  “Fiona, could you please let me know your preference regarding selling or keeping the land and the property?”

  Fiona cleared her throat and tried to sound firm and convincing. She had been rehearsing this for hours in her mind. “I would like to sell it. Both the house and the land.” Despite her best efforts her voice quavered.

  Mr. Stanley recorded her response and then turned to Declan and posed exactly the same question.

  “I want to keep it. I’d like to keep it all. And I’m in a financial position to eventually raise the money to pay my sister the market value for her half of the property.“

  Stanley duly noted Declan’s comments and then looked at Frank.

  Frank cleared his throat importantly and looked from Fiona to Declan. “Do either of you have an opinion regarding each other’s choice? I’m not saying this will have any bearing on the outcome, mind you, but maybe it will help us reach some common ground.”

  Fiona hated him more by the second. He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She hated herself for feeling even a moment of compassion for him earlier that day at the funeral. In her mind, he was a mean and devious man, but he also held her in thrall. And she had to escape his clutches.

  Just as she was about to speak, Declan asked if the two of them could have a moment alone. Stanley nodded, and he and Frank walked towards the kitchen, closing the door behind them.

  “Fiona, I have no idea what Dad was up to, but it seems really pointless to hold us hostage like this.” Declan was livid.

  “Well, I can see his point” Fiona rejoined. “This is the only big joint decision we’ll ever have to make, and he wants us to try and agree. Mind you, I think that’s a tall order. Just saying I understand his impulse.”

  “Yes, but look at our choices. We have to agree to let it go completely or to co-own.”

  “And I want to let it go completely. Declan, can’t you see how much better that would be? Your life is in the States now. And you could buy a house here in Ireland if you want to come and visit. A house somewhere in the countryside, if that’s what you want for your family.”

  “No, I want this house!” He was vehement. “You’ll get what you want either way. You’ll get the same amount of money eventually and can use it as you want.”

  “But not my freedom. If you stay here you will keep the family connection.”

  “But you won’t have to come. I mean you’d be welcome if you wanted to, but there would be no obligation.”

  “But I’d know you were here. That your children were here. Here in this house.”

  “And why is that bad? I know there are a lot of bad memories, Fiona, but there were a lot of happy ones too, if you’d let yourself remember them. We’re a new generation. Our children are a newer generation.”

  Fiona was struck by his use of “our children,” the mere mention of the possibility that she might have children. She flashed on the memory of Declan serenading her with the song about “dying an old maid in the garret.”

  “But the memories. They’re ingrained. Maybe as a psychologist you believe they can be excavated and purged . . . ”

  “Or maybe as a writer you believe the same thing?”

  “I write because I have to. I always thought that if I didn’t have to spend so much time making ends meet . . . I honestly never even thought about our ‘inheritance’—Mam and Dad were so young. We’re only in our thirties.” Fiona choked up at the thought of both of her parents gone—and so much unfinished business.

  Declan nodded and then indicated the door. “They’re outside, waiting.”

  Fiona tried to get her emotions in check.

  “I don’t want to give up this house.” Declan resumed. “I can’t let our past, our history vanish just like that.”

  “Our past is locked in my brain, in my body. I want to let the house go, be free.”

  “You are full of contradictions, Fiona. I know that a part of you loves this place; a piece of your heart is here. And yet you want to fling it away. My past and my history are here, too, not just your version. I can’t let you throw it away so blithely.”

  “We’re at their mercy then.”

  “Yes. The lawyers. And Uncle Frank. I find it hard to believe Uncle Frank would let all that Dad worked for just vanish like that, pass into the hands of strangers.”

  Fiona was affected by Declan’s passion. It seemed like his desire to hold on to the home of their childhood was equal to her need to be rid of it. She realized that she didn’t know him, her only brother, now her only surviving immediate family member. They had grown into strangers and established separate lives, and now they floated in this same orbit around the planet of their home. Declan was part of the pain, specific and general, that was trapped in the fabric of this house, and she was aware that in letting it go she was letting him go, too.

  Her victory felt hollow to Fiona as, up in her bedroom, she wandered about putting the finishing touches to her packing. This was her old bedroom, the girls’ room, the one she had shared with Orla. The wallpaper was the same—pale blue with a light rose flower pattern. The double bed against the back wall had a wooden headboard with an inlay design of leaves which Fiona and Orla had delighted in tracing with their fingers.

  Frank’s voice reverberated in her head. “All I’m saying is that I can see Fiona’s side of things.”

  She folded the black dress into the battered brown suitcase, and her brother’s heated response echoed in her head.

  “And you can’t see mine—the value of keeping the property in the family?”

  Beside the wardrobe, a tall bookshelf held some of her books from childhood, school and university, a collection ranging from Louisa May Alcott, through the Brontës, Jane Austen, John Keats, Samuel Beckett and D.H. Lawrence. Her Alice in Wonderland stood next to a poetry collection of T.S. Eliot. Fiona opened up the book and read the inscription, “Christmas 1962, Love to Fiona, from Auntie Rita and Uncle Frank.” Her godparents.

  “Your father’s wish was that if the place were to stay in the family it would be owned by the both of you—not just one of you. So what you want, Declan, is not one of the options. What Fiona wants is.”

  Fiona had a sudden memory of a younger Frank, smelling of fresh baked bread, and of Auntie Rita, small and thin, always by his side. Her legs were the same shape all the way up and looked like twigs. Her head always reminded Fiona of a round rosy apple that had just been polished up with a soft cloth. It was tiny and heart shaped, and there were two big pinkish red spots right in the middle of her white cheeks. When Fiona asked her Mama why it was that Aunt Rita and Uncle Frank didn’t have any children, she said that it was because God hadn’t blessed them with any yet. Aunt Rita had two little babies who were born before their time and then died, and, please God, they might be able to have a healthy baby yet, Mama added. When Aunt Rita gave Fiona Alice in Wonderland for Christmas, she was very bubbly and happy and the pink circles on her cheeks were even brighter than usual. When Mam came back home from the sanatorium in February she told Fiona that her aunt was going to have a baby and that, God willing, it would arrive in the summer. And it did, a little girl, full term, dead two hours before birth, strangled by the umbilical cord. Aunt Rita died half an hour after delivery.

  Frank started to drink heavily after the untimely deaths. Fiona wondered if he had h
ad a shot or two of whiskey while in the kitchen with the lawyer that afternoon. His voice had been excitable and his color a tad high.

  “Would you not think of selling up, Declan, and moving on with your life in America? It seems like the sensible thing to do.”

  “Are you supposed to take sides, Uncle Frank? I thought your job was to mediate?” Declan could barely control his rising anger. He turned to the lawyer.

  “Is it possible to sell the house to my wife Julie?”

  Mr. Stanley shook his head. “I’m sorry, Declan, but your father worked with me to be sure his wishes were crystal clear. There’s a clause that specifically states that the house can not be sold to another family member. So, I’m afraid the two of you will need to come to terms with the conditions. You do have three months from today.” His voice was calm and measured. “Talk in the meantime, back in the States. You have until the end of the summer. And I’ll provide you both with complete copies of the will.”

  “Yes, yes.” Frank was excitable, “but wouldn’t it be better to get it settled now with the two of you in the one room? I think your father would have wanted that.”

  Fiona sensed that Frank was the one who wanted so desperately to put the past behind him. She recognized the edge of panic, carefully controlled, as one recognizes oneself in a cloudy mirror. But Declan was not going to cooperate.

  “I can get other legal counsel if I wish. I’ll consult my lawyer. And I can wait three months.”

  It was his right. And anxious as Fiona was now to move through the window of escape that had presented itself, she realized that three months was not that long to wait. She had plenty of work to occupy her, and maybe she could actually get started on that second novel.

  She plopped her copy of Alice in the suitcase and then picked up her mother’s tea cozy that she had found in a kitchen drawer. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she let her fingers travel over the textured linen and trace the pattern on the hand-embroidered cloth. She had very few mementos of her mother—part of her ongoing effort to avoid the past, to keep memories at bay. She explored it thread by thread, as if it were a map. Deep pink and purple flowers with yellow centers, pale green stalks, carefully wrought. It was a miniature garden sown by her mother’s hands. Then she picked up her father’s diary. He had willed this to her and his violin to Declan, the only personal items he had assigned specifically in his will. She untied the brown shoelace and selected a page at random.

  “May 15th, 1961. Just got back from the sanatorium. It breaks my heart to see my lovely Anna so weak and worn out. She’s fighting as hard as she can, but the doctors aren’t hopeful—then again they gave her six weeks to live over a year ago, and she’s still hanging on for dear life. She’s heart-broken that she can’t see the children, but it’s too dangerous, and of course the doctors won’t allow it. She’s afraid they’ll lose all memory of her, and today she said that maybe that was for the best, so they wouldn’t be so torn up when she died.

  Fiona was mesmerized. That her father had written down some of his innermost thoughts and feelings and that he wanted her to have access to them. She read on.

  “I got the shock of my life when I got back and saw Fiona and Nellie huddled over a doll that Fiona was making. She got this notion a while back of making a doll of Anna, so Orla wouldn’t forget her, she said. So, I went along with the scheme and got her the bits and bobs to make a doll. Nell has been helping with the cutting and so on, though Fiona herself was already a fine little seamstress for a child who just turned seven. What put the heart crossways in me was the sheer likeness, the doll was the spitting image of Anna. It was as if she captured a bit of her spirit while making the imitation—uncanny it was.

  Little Fiona gave me a big hug and proudly showed off her handiwork. Then she announced that she and Nellie were going to the shops on their bikes to get some trim for the doll. She said Orla was having a little sleep and Declan was keeping an eye out for her, as he worked on his crossword puzzles. She has the whole household organized! And she’s a resilient little lady. As she was leaving she informed me that she didn’t need any money because she had some left over from last time, and then she thrust the doll in my arms.

  ‘You can mind Mama ‘til we get back, Dad. That way you won’t be lonely!’

  My heart was aching all over again as I slipped Nell a few pounds. I sometimes wonder how much heartache a body can endure.”

  Fiona closed the pages gently, pushing its secrets back inside. Her father’s private grief. She was struck by her Dad’s characterization of her, her sunny disposition and determination. Her resilience. Where had all that gone? She slipped the diary inside her mother’s tea-cozy—she would save the rest for later.

  She felt a soft, blurry sensation all over, a vagueness. Fiona discounted it having anything to do with the generous shot of Irish whiskey she was nursing. She had taken to having a glass at night while she was here—it gave her comfort. But this sensation, it came from something else. She felt they were in the room with her, the spirits of this old house. They seemed to be all around. They didn’t follow or frighten her, they just hovered, and cast a gossamer thin veil over her head and form and clung to her body.

  She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound.

  “Sorry, did I frighten you? I knocked several times, and you didn’t answer.” It was Declan. His voice was cold, formal. “I’m going to be leaving early in the morning.”

  Fiona noticed that her brother was carrying a glass of whiskey, too. Was this place and each other’s company turning them both into sots?

  “We have to work it out, don’t we?” she offered.

  “We have three months. I plan to fight as hard as I can. Frank is on your side, so I seem to be outnumbered, but I plan to explore all legal avenues.”

  Fiona looked him square in the face. “I’m going to fight my corner, too.”

  Declan nodded. “I’ll try to contact you in a couple of weeks.” He looked tired. “I’m a bit pre-occupied with Julie at the moment. She’s still not well, and she’s all on her own with Una.” Declan’s voice catapulted Fiona across the Atlantic, and she had a stab of regret that she had never made the effort to visit her brother’s family. She realized that their daughter Una must be about seven by now.

  “When is she due?”

  “December, around Christmas. Actual due date is the 23rd.”

  The day before Orla’s birthday, Fiona thought. She had been a Christmas Eve baby.

  “Maybe we can work it out over the phone?” Fiona suggested, unconvincingly.

  “Or meet up with Frank half way?” Declan countered, jokingly.

  “In Kansas City?” she smiled, and placed her hands over a set of imaginary guns in imaginary hip holsters—remembering the game of Cowboys and Indians they had often played as children. She realized that Kansas City really was about half way—as children these names had mythical resonance, not clearly connected to a concrete place.

  “How’s about Dodge?” Declan laid his glass on the chest of drawers and matched her gesture by letting his hands hover over his own imaginary pistols.

  “At High Noon?” she proffered.

  “With pistols drawn!” They spoke in unison and drew their guns simultaneously. They held the stand-off for a minute, fully cognizant of the real tension beneath the game. Then they released their hands, lifted their whiskey glasses, took a drink but did not toast. Declan said goodnight and started for the door. As he was leaving Fiona called his name and he turned back around.

  “I think,” she said, “that we should both have our hearts checked.”

  He stared at her for an instant and then realized what she meant. A momentary softening. “Yeah. But they didn’t have any history, did they, either of them?”

  Fiona shook her head. “Not that I know of. But we do now.”

  Declan nodded, and left.

  Fiona reached for her Eliot collection and sought out her favorite passages from Burnt Norton.

  “Time
present and time past,

  Are both perhaps present in time future,

  And time future contained in time past.”

  She thrilled at the mystery of the lines, the confusion, the deliberate mixing up of past, present and future. Like Alice hurtling down the rabbit hole and landing in Wonderland.

  “Footfalls echo in the memory,

  Down the passage which we did not take,

  Towards the door we never opened,

  Into the rose-garden.”

  Fiona added this to her collection in the suitcase, clamped it shut and laid herself down to rest.

  EYE OF THE STORM

  Excerpt from a novel by Fiona Clarke

  In the middle of my second term at St. Catherine’s boarding school, I failed the first ever exam in my life—Science. I was mortified. All through primary school, I was among the top three in my class but never attributed this to any cleverness on my part. Neither my parents nor teachers had ever paid a compliment or passed any remark at all to indicate that this was good, bad or indifferent. And I wondered if maybe I really was stupid like Conor was always saying I was.

  I was summoned to the Reverend Mother’s office. Such a summons was an indication that you had done something particularly bad, so bad that the ordinary nuns felt it needed to be attended to by a higher authority, and that higher authority was The Very Reverend Mother Mary Assumpta. Since all nuns were married to Jesus, hence the middle name of Mary, I assumed that Mother Assumpta must have the status of one of the principal wives.

  The first thing I noticed, after I knocked on the door and walked in, was the abundance of books and piles of papers strewn about the office. For some reason, I found this comforting in my terror. There were a few holy pictures on the walls, one of Jesus and Mary and one of the namesake of the order, St. Catherine. My eye also picked out a plaque which denounced the Seven Deadly Sins. I could recite them in my sleep—Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth. The brief comfort I had garnered from the sight of the books vanished in an instant. I had definitely been guilty of Sloth.