The Traveller's Daughter

by Michelle Vernal

  “Well feck me if it isn’t a Donohue. You’d have to be Tyson’s boy by the looks of you?”

  He held his hands up. “Yes Jonny Donohue and I come in peace.”

  Her heavily mascaraed eyes grew wide. “Feck me! Jonny bloody Donohue, it’s been years so it has. You were a lad in short pants last time I saw you. So what is it that brings you here?”

  Kitty stepped around to introduce herself then, and the woman looked at her for a moment her face paling beneath her tangerine makeup as she crossed herself. “Holy Mary Mother of God! Rosa, is it you come back after all this time?”

  Jonny reached out and offered her a steadying hand. “No not Rosa, this is her daughter. She’s named after you. Kitty Rourke er O’Connor this is your niece, Kitty Sorenson. Do you want to sit down Kitty? You’re awful white. I think maybe you’ve had a bit of a shock.”

  She waved his hand away still staring at her niece gobsmacked.

  “Er hello. I’m sorry just to show up like this, and I didn’t mean to upset you.” Kitty’s voice was tremulous, and her hand holding the tray shook as she waited to see how this woman, her aunt would greet her.

  She blinked a couple of times and then taking a step down from the caravan she pointed at the tray. “Are you hear about the money? It’s too fecking late if you are because it's gone so it is.” Her hand moved to the door once more poised to slam it shut.

  Kitty’s mouth fell open at the realisation that she thought Kitty was here to ask for the royalties her mother had bequeathed to her little sister back.

  “No! Wait that’s not why I am here. That money’s yours as far as I am concerned. It's what my mum wanted. I just wanted to meet you that’s all.”

  Kitty O’Conner’s body relaxed, and she glanced at the tea towel wrapped offering. “What have you got there then?”

  “Jonny and I we um baked you some cakes.”

  She raised an eyebrow and glanced over at Jonny. “I see, like that is it? Well, the pair of you had best be coming in for a cup of tea then.” She disappeared back inside the caravan trailing a waft of Paris perfume behind her. It had been Rosa’s favourite perfume Kitty thought, breathing it in as she followed her inside.

  Chapter 28

  Listen to the sound of the river and you will get a trout – Irish Proverb

  The sun was high in the sky as Jonny drove back down the unmade road. It was casting the surrounding fields in its golden glow. They had bumped along in silence for a few minutes before he broke it. “Well I don’t fancy your chances of getting on a flight this late in the day. I reckon you’d be best to ring up and book yourself on one for tomorrow when we get back to mine. You can stay again tonight if you want, and I’ll drop you at the airport in the morning.”

  “Thanks that would be great.” Kitty rubbed her temples. “I can’t believe it’s only been three days since I left England, so much has happened my head’s spinning with it all.”

  He cast a sidelong glance at her. “It went well today didn’t it?”

  “It did, thank you for taking me. I don’t think I could have done it if you hadn’t been with me.”

  “Ah, you’d have got there one way or another.”

  “I don’t know about that, I was pretty bloody scared about meeting her.”

  “I do. You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.” He looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read and missed the large pothole in the middle of the road. They both bounced hard in their seats. “Shite! Sorry about that.”

  Kitty rubbed her head and gave him a rueful grin. “I’ll let you off. If I head back tomorrow I’ll still be back in time to open my stall on Saturday, and to give Yasmin a break. She’s been a really good pal covering my shifts at Bruno’s for me.”

  They drifted into silence again with Jonny keeping his eyes firmly on the road. Kitty was grateful for the quiet because she wanted to replay the day’s events through in her mind.

  Kit, as Kitty had said she should call her because that’s what everybody called her these days had busied herself putting the kettle on to make tea while Kitty and Jonny sat down at the table. It was laid with a white linen cloth. Irish linen Kitty noted, spying the label on the hemmed edge. The whole set up was all very civilized; she thought with a glance round at the caravan’s interior. The space was immaculate and surprisingly roomy with a lovely homely feel to it thanks to all the knick-knacks dotted about the place. She spied a neatly made double bed down the end piled high with plump cushions. Trinkets lined a shelf along with framed photos, and she itched to get up and have a look at them, to see the rest of the family, but didn’t want to appear too forward.

  “How do you have your tea?”

  “White please no sugar.”

  “Me too ta.” Jonny chimed. “I’ll have a cuppa and make myself scarce, leave you two ladies to your catching up.”

  “You don’t have to go.” Kitty shot him a pleading look that he ignored.

  Kit was like a busy, colourful little bird as she flitted around her kitchen and Kitty

  realised, as she watched her actions that she was nervous too. The thought comforted her because nervous was better than bitter and angry.

  At last she poured the pot and placed a china cup and saucer down in front of them both before piling the cakes high onto a plate in the middle of the table. “Mm, these look good I can’t wait to try one.” Getting her tea she took one and peeled the paper off before biting into it.

  “They’re good,” she muttered her mouth full. “And you say you helped make these little gems?”

  Jonny grinned. “I did yeah.”

  “You could show my Davey a thing or two in the kitchen so you could. All the men are in Wicklow today working on a big job site there, but I think auld man Tommy is in. His is the light green caravan closest to the road. He’d welcome a bit of male company so why don’t you take a couple of your cakes over to him. I’m sure it's been awhile since he’s had a taste of the home baking.”

  Jonny nodded and picking his tea cup up, he balanced two cakes on the side of the saucer. “I’ll pop over now and take this with me.” Kitty felt like kicking him under the table for abandoning her this early in the piece. She took a tentative sip of the hot tea watching him go and hoping he could feel her eyes boring holes into his traitorous back.

  “Right now then my girl,” Kit said laying her hands down flat on the table once he’d shut the door behind him. “Where the feck do we start?”

  Kitty nearly spurted her tea everywhere. But it did the trick by breaking the tension, and they’d begun to talk.

  She began by telling her aunt that her mother had passed away earlier that year. She didn’t seem surprised, nodding as she said. “I felt it when she went. I knew she was no longer with us.” Kitty reached over and placed her hand on top of hers, and Kit smiled. “You’re the spit of her you know.”

  “It’s the haircut. I had it done for the photograph that started all this, Midsummer Lovers.” Kitty explained the story. When she had finished Kit stood up, and indicated that she should follow her. She did so, and found herself in the bedroom part of the caravan standing in front of the familiar print in pride of place on the wall.

  “We knew Michael had died, his mam Margaret made sure of that. My mam used to call her Mad Margaret, and she was that alright. We weren’t sure how she knew though, because we never heard a word from Rosa. There was a lot of bitterness over the Donohue’s not knowing where he’d been laid to rest. As I recall it his da, Martin had told all and sundry he only had the one son left, and that was Tyson after Michael and Rosa left. The only news I’ve had of Rosa in all these years was from your man Christian. He sent me that print when the money began coming to me along with a note to say Rosa was to remarry. There was no further explanation and no return address. I looked him up and wrote to him asking where she was. He never replied, so I assumed she didn’t want any further contact with any of us, and I let it be.”

  “Oh Kit, Mum never stopped missin
g you. But she never stopped punishing herself for running off with Michael either, or for leaving him to be buried in an unknown grave in France. She was so stubborn my mum but then you’d know that.”

  Kit nodded sagely. “Aye she was that alright.”

  “The longer she left it, the harder the idea of going back became and then it was too late. But I know she wanted me to come here and put things right.”

  Kit blinked back the tears sparkling in her eyes. “Ah well all that business, it’s all in the past now so it is. Come on your tea will be getting cold.”

  The two women took their places back at the table, and Kitty studied her aunt for a moment. “I knew your colouring was darker than hers, but you don’t look like Mum at all apart from around your eyes. I can see a bit of a resemblance there.”

  Kit gave a little laugh. “I was always envious of that blonde hair of hers. She was one out of the box your mam both in her looks and her ways. I bleached my mop once wanting to look like her.” Her hand strayed up to pat her dark curly hair worn a tad too long for a woman her age. “Mammy tore pieces off me when she saw it. I looked like a sheep so I did. It was awful, and it took forever to grow out. Enough about me and my hair though, tell me how you came to find me, and I am glad that you did by the way.” Kitty glowed with the genuine warmth of her gaze. “Who did she marry?”

  “My dad, Peter when she was twenty. But I didn’t come along until later. A much longed for surprise, Mum used to say.”

  “So you were her only child?”

  “Yes, it was just me.”

  “And was she happy because I know how much she loved Michael, and it must have nearly killed her when she lost him.”

  “It did but of course I didn’t know any of that until I read her journal. She wrote that she drifted for a few years after he died but yes, she was happy again. She loved Dad; he was a good man.” Kitty went on to tell her about growing up with no knowledge of where her mother had come from. She told her how hard that had been, the not knowing. Eventually, she got round to where she had begun with the story of the photograph, and how she had come to be in France where she’d met Jonny. She realised, she told Kit over her cooling tea that her mother had engineered everything with Christian. Together they had conspired to give her the journal and the dress in France. She finished by telling her that she was now beginning to suspect it had been Rosa’s plan all along that she would come back to Ireland with Jonny too. “I bought her dress with me if you’d like to see it.”

  Kit nodded her dark hair bobbing. “Oh I would. Yes please.”

  Kitty produced it from her bag and passed it over the table to the older woman who shook it out and pressed her lips together as she fought back fresh tears. “Ah God I remember her wearing this as though it was only yesterday. Our Rosa thought she was the Queen of the Fair strutting around Ballinasloe, so she did. And she married Michael in it too you say?” Kitty nodded watching as a solitary tear escaped and streaked down her cheek carving a path through her foundation.

  “She wrote in her journal that it broke her heart to leave you, you know.”

  “Did she? Well, it broke mine her leaving. I know Rosa felt we were growing apart what with me getting the learning, and that she felt trapped, but my schooling was a farce I tell you. I wasn’t cut out for all of that, not really. It should have been our Rosa who went, but it wasn’t the way things were done. The day she left us is a day I’ll never forget. The sight of her running off, it’s haunted me all these years.”

  “So much misunderstanding,” Kitty murmured.

  “Too much. I would have given my right arm for her to come back. But she was always a one your mother, too fecking headstrong for her own good. Mammy regretted not going after her when she heard she had left Cherry Orchard with Michael, and she never stopped regretting losing two of her children. Da lost himself for good in the bottle, and he found a reliable drinking partner in our Paddy.” She shook her head. “Ah, so many wrong turns made along the way, and grudges held for too long. Did you know you’ve an uncle too?”

  “I did yes. Mum said he was a twin, she told me about Joe in her journal.”

  “I was only little when Joe died. I don’t remember much about him. But I do remember that it was hard on us all, and that’s why Paddy is the way he is.”

  “He likes a drink.”

  She made a snorting sound. “That’s a polite way of putting it. He’s a drunk, my girl. It took me a long time to accept him for what he is, and to know that I can’t change him, just like I couldn’t change Da. Joe’s death was very hard on Rosa too you know with the way our mam put the care of us all on to her afterwards. She was like a second mother to me when our Mammy wasn’t up to the job, and I don’t think she ever got time to grieve properly for him. She was too busy trying to keep the rest of us clothed and fed. He’s buried down in Tuam alongside your granny and grandda.”

  “I know Mum visited their graves shortly before she died, and I wanted to ask you if you would come with me to scatter her ashes there. It’s what she wanted to be close to them both again. She wrote in her journal that she wanted to fly free back in Ireland.”

  “Ah what poetic shite, that’s your mam alright.” Kit laughed but Kitty could see the tell-tale glistening in her eyes once more. “And yes Kitty my girl, I would be honoured to go with you to Tuam.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you for coming here. It can’t have been easy for you.”

  “It wasn’t because I didn’t know the reception I would get. I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about seeing me, but I had to come for my sake as much as for hers.”

  “I’ve thought about Rosa every day that’s passed since she left. That girl was a mother to me when our Mam couldn’t be. I loved her you know?”

  Kitty nodded her own eyes tearing up.

  “She was more than just my sister, and I never stopped missing her. You coming here today well, I feel like I have got a part of her back.” Kit reached out and laid her hand on Kitty’s.

  Kitty’s smile was tremulous as she placed her other hand on top of Kit’s. “I feel the same way looking at you. It’s amazing I thought it was just me, that I was on my own. You know it ate away at Michael too leaving Jonny’s da, Tyson and his mam. Their da was a brute by all accounts. Mum bore a lot of that guilt too. She wanted me to put things right with the Rourke’s and the Donohue’s so she could rest peacefully.”

  “Martin Donohue was that alright. Excuse me.”

  Kit had got up and gone to the toilet then unable to hold back the flood of tears any longer. She returned with a wad of toilet paper to wipe her eyes and blow her nose with. When she’d done so she sniffed. “Do you know Kitty my girl, I think from what I have seen today that where Jonny Donohue’s concerned you are putting things right.”

  The photographs had come out then, and Kitty pored over them hungrily looking for traces of herself in the faces of her five cousins. Kit brightened as soon as she began to talk about her children, two boys and three girls. The girls had given her much bigger headaches than the boys had, but they were all married now and behaved themselves these days, she said. Ciara, the oldest was having her third baby and was due any day now. She lived in a caravan near Galway with her man Aidan, and their two babies, Finola and Finbar. They weren’t Kit’s first choice for names she’d muttered though pursed lips. She had her fingers crossed they weren’t going to go for the trifecta and call the new baby Fidelma, or God help them all, Fergus.

  A moment later Kitty knew where Kit’s eldest daughter’s fascination with calling her children by matching lettered names came from as she told her that Christy was married to Brendan. They lived by Ciara in Galway, and only had the one baby who they’d blessed with the nice normal name of Lily. Then there was Caitlin, she had the look of Kitty about her, Kit reckoned pointing her out. Kitty peered closely at the picture. Caitlin’s brown hair was waist length and her eyes Bambi brown, but she could see a resemblance between them. It was in the shap
e of their mouths, and a slight tilt of their noses. “Were you a bold one like her because I tell you of the five she was the one who turned me grey?”

  Kitty laughed. “No I was more of a handful when I got older and picked the wrong man.”

  Kit nodded knowingly. “Ah yes we never stop worrying us mammies no matter what age our babies are. Caitlyn turned out alright in the end, and she is a great little mam to her Devany and Beyoncé.” Kitty glanced at Kit to make sure she wasn’t pulling her leg with the latter child’s name; she wasn’t. “So do you have a fellow on the go because you must be in your thirties?”

  Kit, Kitty realised, was not shy about coming forward. She supposed too, that in the Traveller’s world she was over the hill. “Thirty-one, and I did. We were engaged. I’d even got so far as subscribing to Blushing Bride magazine but then he cheated on me, and that was the end of that. Mum never liked him. Now I think it was because she knew what would happen.”

  “She would have yes, all of us Rourke women have the sight.”

  Kitty liked the way she had been included in the equation.

  “But I think she would have known you’d meet the man who’s meant for you too.”

  “She did seem pretty certain in her journal that I would meet the right man, yes. He just hasn’t come along yet.” She gave a little laugh.

  “Oh, I think perhaps he has, the pair of you just haven’t realised it yet.”