Hello from the Gillespies

by Monica McInerney

  ‘I know you’re there, Ig. And keep your beady eye off my password. I’m changing it daily to keep it safe from you.’

  ‘I’ll just wait til you leave your email open like last time, then,’ he said, pulling over a chair beside her.

  ‘So you didn’t hack into it?’

  ‘I’m good but not that good,’ he said. ‘How’s your website going?’

  ‘It’s not. I haven’t had a single email from a single hairdresser with any horror stories. I lie. I had one, telling me off, saying there’s enough negativity in the world and all her clients are lovely. What is it with these positive people? Do I just have evil blood running in my veins, Ig?’

  He nodded.

  ‘All right. Let’s try again. Can you help me do another site? A sickeningly positive one? I read an article once that said apparently all people really want to do is look at celebrities and cats. So let’s do one like that instead.’

  Ig took over the computer. Once again, it didn’t take him long to set up a basic site.

  ‘What do you want to call it?’ he asked.

  ‘Let’s tell it like it is. Call it “Photos of Lots of Lovely Celebrities with Nice Hair and Cats that Look a Bit Like Them”. Is that too long?’

  ‘I’ll make it fit,’ Ig said.

  An hour later, it was ready. Ig had turned out to be as fast at finding digital images as he was at website set-up. Genevieve sat back and called out names of celebrities from one of Lindy’s gossip magazines. Ig swiftly found photos of them. Together they scrolled through the hundreds of photos of cats online until they found one that looked even vaguely similar. Genevieve didn’t bother with a caption, simply getting Ig to post the two images side-by-side. She started laughing six pairs of photos in.

  ‘I don’t care if no one but us sees these,’ she said, laughing again as Ig matched a photo of a fully-wigged Dolly Parton with a groomed white Burmese. ‘I want this to be my job forever.’

  ‘Now what?’ Ig said, after they’d posted twenty pairs. ‘Do you want to go live now?’

  ‘You even know that term? You’re spooky. Yes, go for it.’

  With great ceremony, Ig pressed a key. They both sat and looked at the screen.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘How will anyone know it’s there?’ Ig said.

  ‘Good question,’ Genevieve said. She gave it some thought. She’d learnt a few social media tricks while in New York. A friend there had worked in marketing for a drinks company and knew ways to spread the word quickly, leaving links and catchphrases on other websites and blogs across the internet. Genevieve activated a Twitter account she hadn’t used in months and sent out a message on that. She jumped from blog to blog, chat room to chat room, leaving a link to the new site on each, with the same tagline each time. Cats! Celebrities! She did it fifty times.

  ‘What are you two doing?’ It was Lindy.

  ‘Nothing,’ they said, spinning in their chairs so the screen was hidden.

  Lindy rolled her eyes. ‘You’re more childish than Ig, Genevieve. And he is a child. Dinner’s ready.’

  ‘You’ve actually cooked for once?’ Genevieve said. ‘I’m impressed. What are we having?’

  ‘Toasted cheese sandwiches. You have to make them yourself.’

  In the kitchen, Lindy, Victoria, Genevieve, Ig and even Celia took turns with the ingredients and the grill. Angela hadn’t joined them yet. She was outside with her camera again, taking what looked like close-up shots of the stone work on the woolshed.

  They were all still sitting around the table talking when she finally came in. She was smiling.

  ‘Victoria, I’ve remembered,’ she said. ‘The best cure for morning sickness is dry toast.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Nick was in the dining room of the Westport hotel. He’d just finished a full Irish breakfast and was now on his third cup of coffee. He’d slept badly. Not because of any jet lag. His own thoughts had kept him awake. Thoughts of home. Of the kids. Of Angela.

  He reached into his pocket and took out her Christmas letter. It had lost the power to hurt him. He was reading it for a different reason now: because she had written it. The old Angela. He still didn’t like what she’d had to say but reading it somehow kept her close. This was what she had been thinking about, for all those weeks he’d been trying hard not to worry her. She’d been worrying anyway. About him, about the kids. She should have been able to talk to him about all of this. But he had been too preoccupied with his own worries, distracting himself with the family research —

  ‘More coffee?’ It was the young waitress. No thanks, he said. He wanted to get on the road again.

  In the middle of the night, he’d made some decisions. He would stay in Mayo one more night, drive out to the area his uncle had said was the Gillespies’ homeland. Take some photos. And then tomorrow he would head south to Cork. Not north to Donegal. He hadn’t been able to find any definite address for his Gillespie ancestors up there. He did still want to see Errigal, the Donegal mountain the station was named after. But not on his own. For now, he’d go to Cobh, where he knew his ancestors had sailed from.

  Before he left, he checked his emails on the hotel computer. There was one from Genevieve.

  Hope all still going great with Carol. All fine here. We’re thinking of you. Lindy sewing up a storm with her reunion cushions. Was that your idea? Genius if so!

  He had no idea what she was talking about. He still hadn’t decided what he was going to do about the reunion. He hoped being in Cobh would help him decide. It was time to phone home again. Time to tell them what had happened with Carol too.

  Outside in the car, he took out his phone and dialled the Errigal home number. It rang and rang. They must all be out somewhere. He’d try again later.

  In the kitchen at Errigal, the phone finally stopped ringing. No one had answered it.

  At first, Victoria had thought she’d got away with it. Thanks, she was about to say to Angela. I’ll let my interviewee know about that dry-toast tip. But then Angela sat down beside her and continued talking.

  ‘What did you say you were, Victoria? Nearly three months pregnant? You might be lucky and not get any morning sickness at all.’

  Across the table, Lindy was open-mouthed. Celia looked equally shocked.

  ‘I knew it!’ Lindy said, recovering. ‘You kept denying it, but I knew. Are you pregnant too, Genevieve?’

  ‘No!’ Genevieve said.

  ‘Well, if it doesn’t rain around here, it pours,’ Celia said.

  Angela looked around. ‘I’m so sorry, didn’t everyone know?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Victoria said. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise it was a secret.’

  ‘But who’s the father?’ Lindy asked. ‘It’s not that radio guy, is it? The married one? Or is it Fred Lawson? Oh, Victoria!’

  ‘It’s neither of them.’ Genevieve answered for Victoria. ‘It’s someone else.’

  Victoria nodded. ‘I’d just started going out with someone before I left Sydney. It’s his.’

  ‘You were having an affair with Mr Radio and another guy?’ Lindy said. ‘God, you were busy.’

  Victoria started to cry and ran out of the room.

  ‘Oh, well done, Lindy. Thanks for that,’ Genevieve said.

  ‘I was joking. How come you’re the only one around here who is allowed to joke?’ She stalked out, slamming the back door behind her.

  Genevieve found Victoria in her bedroom. She was sitting on her bed, still crying.

  Genevieve held her close, rubbing her back, waiting for the tears to stop.

  ‘It’ll all be fine,’ she said. ‘It will be. Don’t worry. And maybe it’s better everyone knows now.’

  ‘It’s not better. Genevieve, what am I going to do? You heard what Lindy said. About the father. Everyone will be asking me.’

  ‘And we’ll tell everyone else about your other boyfriend. It’ll be fine. I promise. I’ll help you.
’

  Victoria just sobbed again. Genevieve held her tighter.

  There was a quiet knock at the door.

  ‘If it’s Lindy, I don’t want to see her,’ Victoria said. ‘Ever again.’

  It wasn’t Lindy. It was Angela. ‘May I come in?’

  Victoria and Genevieve exchanged a glance. This was the first time Angela had sought them out. The first time she had come into any of their bedrooms. They watched as she took a seat on the antique chair beside the dressing table. It was where their mother always used to sit whenever she came in for a chat.

  She apologised again. Victoria and Genevieve assured her again that it didn’t matter. That they would have told the rest of the family soon in any case.

  ‘Please tell me if this is none of my business,’ Angela said. ‘But I think you should tell your mother. I know that if my daughter were pregnant, I’d want to know, to help her in some way.’

  ‘I’ll phone her tomorrow,’ Victoria said.

  ‘What would you say to Lexie if she did get pregnant?’ Genevieve asked. ‘In circumstances like Victoria’s?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s for me to say.’

  ‘Please, Angela,’ Victoria said. ‘You’re a mother. It’d be really helpful to hear what you think.’

  Angela was quiet for a moment. ‘I suppose I’d want to know how she felt. Was she sure there was no prospect of a relationship with the father; was she was truly aware of what lay ahead, what it would mean to have sole care of a child.’ She stopped there. ‘And then I would say, you have to do what is best for you. I know I didn’t have a clue when I got pregnant for the first time. Then I found out I was having twins.’

  ‘Twins?’ Genevieve said.

  Angela frowned. ‘Not twins. Just one. Lexie.’

  The sudden tension in the room dissipated.

  ‘You’re an adult,’ Angela said to Victoria. ‘It’s your life, your body, your baby now. But you also have a family around you. That will help. I didn’t. If it hadn’t been for Joan —’ She stopped again.

  ‘Joan?’ Victoria prompted.

  ‘Not Joan. I’m getting confused. It it hadn’t been for my next-door neighbour in London. She was wonderful. She was there nearly every day. Will was a wonderful father, he still is a wonderful father, but at times like that you really do want women around you.’

  Standing up, she made one of her usual abrupt departures.

  She was barely out the door before Victoria started talking.

  ‘She is coming back. She is,’ she said. ‘You heard her. First about twins. Then Joan. It’s like Ruth said: her memory will come back in fragments. I think it’s started.’

  ‘But why now?’ Genevieve said. ‘Because we were talking to her about personal things? About being pregnant? Being a mother? Maybe that’s where we’ve been going wrong, treating her like Angela the tourist. Maybe we do need to talk to her as if she still is Angela our mother.’

  ‘Ruth said we shouldn’t. She said we need to go along with what she says to us, let her take her time, just be pati—’

  ‘Don’t say it. We’ve tried that. And nothing’s happened. Why don’t we try a different approach? Ruth said herself that it’s a constantly changing science, that no one knows what the brain is capable of doing. So let’s do our own experiment.’

  ‘I’m not sure. Lindy might say the wrong thing. And Ig is just a kid.’

  ‘Not them. Us. We try it, whenever we’re alone with her. And keep it to ourselves for now too.’

  Victoria chewed her lip. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We can’t wait forever, Victoria. Your baby is going to need a grandmother.’

  After his second night in Westport, Nick was on the road again, halfway between Westport and Cobh. Two hours down, two to go. The rain had finally stopped. The sun started to show itself for the first time since he’d arrived in Ireland. Nick had to pull off the main motorway and drive several hundred metres up a quiet, country lane. Not because he was lost.

  Because it was so beautiful.

  This was the Ireland he had expected. On both sides green fields stretched out. There were mountains in the distance, the glint of water from either a real lake or a newly formed flood lake. The light was so different to what he was used to. Softer, muted; everything blurred but still full of colours. It wasn’t just grey now. There were countless other shades: green, orange, yellow. A shaft of sunlight hit the side of the mountain, illuminating a whitewashed building.

  The morning before, he had visited the area near Westport where his ancestors had come from. He’d seen small, rocky fields surrounded by stone walls. The low grey sky. Alongside the modern houses there had also been the ruins of several buildings: either sheds or houses, he couldn’t tell. There was a soft, misty beauty here. The sound of the wind through the trees. Silver lakes surrounded by reeds. In the distance, the steep slope of Croagh Patrick. He knew it was called Ireland’s holy mountain. He saw a small flock of bedraggled sheep, several cows in a corner field. He climbed over a stone wall and walked to the top of the nearest hill across the muddy ground. He kept thinking about his Gillespie ancestors. How it must have felt to leave this land, where every field, every bend in the road, must have been so familiar. How it must have felt to find themselves on the other side of the world, battling new weather, huge distances, under the vast Australian sky. Knowing they would never see these fields, their families, their homeland again.

  He took out his phone now and dialled home. It was early evening there. Genevieve answered. He asked about Angela first. All was fine, Genevieve told him. Everyone was home, except for Victoria. She’d gone into Hawker. Any big news, he asked. None at all, she said. What about you?

  A bit of news, he said. He told her about Carol. Two minutes later, he was regretting it.

  Genevieve wouldn’t stop laughing.

  ‘It’s not that funny,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Dad, it is. It’s terrible, but it’s funny. I’m so sorry. So what on earth have you been doing if you haven’t been driving around with her? And why didn’t you tell us when it first happened?’

  He told her the truth. That he hadn’t wanted to worry them. He told her what he’d been doing in Dublin. The few genuine facts he had uncovered about the Gillespies. And that he was now on his way to Cobh. Not because of the reunion. It would probably be cancelled. But he still wanted to see what his ancestors would have seen more than one hundred and thirty years earlier, as their ship sailed out to Australia.

  ‘You might cancel the reunion? Why? You found all those Gillespies around the world yourself, didn’t you? Not Carol? We’re bound to be related in some way, even if they’re only our twentieth cousins five times removed. Don’t cancel it yet, Dad, please. I can’t begin to imagine what Lindy will do about her cushions if you do.’ She told him about them. All two hundred of them.

  He agreed to postpone the decision for now. ‘I’d better go,’ he said. ‘You’re sure Angela’s okay? That you’re all okay? You’d tell me if there was any news, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Of course I would,’ Genevieve lied.

  She had her fingers crossed as she said it.

  After she hung up, she joined the others in the lounge room. Everyone except Victoria was there, watching the final episode of Pride and Prejudice. Over recent days, one by one, they’d all started watching it with Angela.

  Genevieve leaned against the door. ‘Would it spoil the ending if I told you they —’

  ‘Shut up, Genevieve,’ Lindy said from her spot on the sofa. ‘Don’t spoil it.’

  ‘Do you mean you haven’t guessed what’s going to happen? Have a look at the cover of the DVD, Lindy. Is that a giveaway who might be ending up with who?’

  ‘You are so cynical. No wonder you’re still single.’

  ‘And you’re not? You’re having a Skype affair, Lindy. You’ve seen Richard in real life for what, four hours in total. So don’t pretend you are the queen of love’s young dream to me.’

 
‘That’s enough, you two.’ It was Angela. ‘Stop teasing her, Genevieve. We’re trying to watch this.’

  Lindy was wide-eyed. Even Ig turned around.

  In shock at hearing what had definitely sounded like Old Angela, Genevieve did as she was told.

  It was only after Mr Darcy and Lizzy had driven away in their carriage, and the image was freeze-framed on their kiss, that she dared to speak again.

  ‘I talked to Dad, if anyone cares. You know, that man who is normally here? Who is travelling around Ireland on his own?’

  ‘How is he getting on?’

  It was Angela speaking, again.

  ‘He’s good,’ Genevieve said. She tried to keep her voice calm, to hide another sudden dart of hope. ‘He’s great. It’s all going well. He’s on his way to Cobh now.’

  ‘Did you tell him about the cushions?’ Lindy asked.

  ‘I sure did,’ Genevieve said. ‘He thought it was a great idea.’

  She wouldn’t mention the Carol disaster. Not yet, at least.

  ‘I’ll be in the office if anyone’s looking for me,’ Genevieve said.

  She sat at the computer, drumming her fingers on the desk. What a night for Victoria to be out on her date with Fred. Genevieve was tempted to pick up the phone and ring her anyway to tell her about Carol. After being apart for so long, juggling time zones every time they wanted to talk, she relished every minute of being in the same place as her sister.

  Victoria had been so sweet earlier. Nervous, excited. Genevieve had done her hair and make-up. She’d also helped her choose her outfit. They’d decided on a pretty summer dress, in daisy-printed cotton. Genevieve had pulled out two pairs of sandals. ‘Either of these would look great,’ she said.

  ‘No, thanks. I’m wearing the lucky boots.’

  ‘It’s twenty-eight degrees.’

  ‘I’m wearing them,’ Victoria said.

  Genevieve had been secretly delighted. She’d given them to Victoria two years earlier, when her twin first moved to Sydney and was trying to find work. Genevieve was in New York, but they’d still been talking daily on the phone.