The House On Willow Street

by Cathy Kelly

  Danae was not a woman for clutter. Her home had a few beautiful pieces she’d picked up over the years—a bit of driftwood from the beach, a lovely earthenware jug made by a local potter, some blue glass that she sometimes sat flowers in during the summer—but there was very little junk. It was the legacy of a childhood spent moving around, never staying in one place for long. Her mother had taught her there was no point in having much stuff because it only got in the way when you needed to get out in a hurry.

  “Better to be able to throw your few bits into a suitcase and be off,” Sybil would say, as if this was a great gift.

  Danae didn’t know any other way to live. The tenement on Summer Hill was where they’d lived the longest. Not that they put down roots there or made friends among the neighbors.

  “We’re better than the likes of them,” Sybil would say, “never forget that.”

  She never went to the laundry with the other women on washing day. Instead, she washed her lovely silk lingerie herself, draping it over a chair in front of the fire.

  “They’ll never have seen a pair of silk cami-drawers in their lives,” Sybil would say, holding up a delicate peach garment with its exquisite lace.

  Danae knew what the other women made of her mother. She’d heard them talking: “Thinks she’s Lady Muck,” they’d say. “All fur coat and no drawers.”

  But they were wrong. Regardless of what she might say, Sybil didn’t really consider herself above everyone else. The reason she tried so desperately to cling to a sense of superiority was because it was one of the few things left to her. Dignity was long gone. The men had taken that.

  Big Jim was the first that Danae could remember. She must have been about three or four back then. She’d thought he was her daddy, because they all seemed to live together and other children had daddies. Then one night he came home in his cups and hit her mother such a clatter that she flew clean across the room and landed against the window like Danae’s beloved rag doll before sinking to the floor.

  “Daddy!” shrieked the little Danae.

  “I’m not your father, you stupid child,” he’d hissed at her. And then he left.

  Danae had rushed to her mother’s side. But Sybil was made of the sort of stuff that said you didn’t cry, you didn’t need to be comforted. No, you got up on your own two feet.

  “I’m fine,” she said, dragging herself up by the curtains, wiping the blood off her mouth with one hand. “Do you know, I think it’s time we moved out of here.”

  “But, but . . . we like it,” Danae said fearfully. It was small, but she had her little bed in one corner, behind the chest of drawers, with the curtain around it. And she had her rag dolly, her only toy.

  “No,” said her mother. “The rent won’t be paid now, with him gone. Time we were off.”

  Two small suitcases and a small valise was all it had taken. Danae had had to drag one of them, small though she was.

  “Quiet now,” her mother said as they crept down the stairs. “If you wake the landlord, there’ll be hell to pay.” Sybil laughed, quietly. “Whatever’s to pay, we haven’t got the money for it.”

  They’d made it out safely that time. Then on to the next place, the next town.

  Sybil came from better stuff, she told her daughter. There were many stories about the good times in the past. Lovely times with servants and beautiful clothes and lovely meals. Always enough to eat.

  “Too much,” Sybil would say. “Far too much. The waste!”

  Danae’s mouth watered at the thought of food you could waste. They were living on a thin soup made of bones that her mother had beseeched from the butcher, saying it was for the dog. But we haven’t got a dog, Danae wanted to say, but she knew better. Her mother was also adept at digging up a few vegetables here and there from other people’s gardens.

  “They won’t miss them,” she’d say. “Isn’t it a kindness to let someone else share a little of your good fortune?”

  Each time they moved, Danae had brought her few books with her. Two on the lives of saints—her mother had been going to throw them out; the dratted nuns had given them to her. “Fling them in the fire,” she’d said, “we might as well get some use out of them.”

  “No,” cried Danae, “I like them. I like to read.”

  So the lives of the Little Flower and Maria Goretti had been saved, along with the story of Edel Quinn and a copy of Wuthering Heights.

  “You’re a curious little thing, with your head stuck in a book there,” said Mr. Malcolm, one of the nicest men her mother had met up with.

  “I like to read,” said Danae carefully, not really looking up into his eyes, because you never knew what sort of man Mother might bring home. Sybil never knew herself; that was the problem, Danae was beginning to see.

  Sybil had never been what you would call a reliable narrator. All the stories of her past had to be taken with a pinch of salt because she was inclined to make her own role bigger or smaller, depending on circumstances.

  When Danae had fallen out of the cot at the age of one, Sybil had barely been in the room at all, for goodness’ sake! A woman couldn’t spend her entire time watching a baby: she needed a bit of time to do her hair. The cat had taken much of the blame, on that occasion. When a chip pan caught fire and the whole house had been in danger of burning down, Sybil had risked life and limb to rescue her darling daughter. Any talk of the fire brigade’s involvement was glossed over, along with their reprimand for having two chip pans and a frying pan all going hell for leather on the one gas stove with the kitchen curtains flapping around nearby.

  The fact that Danae had been left with a small burn on one leg was something she should be grateful for. If it hadn’t been for her mother’s speed, she could have been a lot worse off.

  Sybil liked to be the heroine in every story. She was never happy until she was in the spotlight. It had taken Danae years to realize all this.

  And then into their lives had come kind, jovial Bernie Wilson. He wanted to marry Sybil. Marry her and make an honest woman out of her, now that the baby was due.

  Widows with children, Danae heard other women in the flats talking, were more likely to marry again rather than widows without children.

  “Men like ones who’ve been broken in, who know the score. And with chiselers, they know the score.”

  But Bernie wasn’t like that: he was special.

  Sybil was full of grand names for the baby, something to rival Danae.

  “Could we not have something nice and simple?” said Bernie, “I was thinking Morris, if it’s a boy. That was my father’s name, God bless him. And maybe Alice, if it’s a girl?”

  The baby had been Morris. Lying in her bed in the little cottage in Avalon, Danae recalled those years when she’d lived with Bernie and Morris as the happiest of her life. There had been stability then; a stability she’d never known before.

  But for all her lack of clutter, on top of Danae’s big old wardrobe there were three boxes of things from the past.

  In the first box was the diary she’d been asked to keep.

  The second contained her wedding dress, carefully wrapped up in tissue paper—something she’d never been able to throw out.

  In the third were her white satin shoes from the day, and her bouquet, also wrapped in tissue paper. She hadn’t thrown it. Somehow, in the wildness of the day and the excitement and the great drama of entering the Rahill family, no bouquet had been thrown.

  Perhaps that had been the bad luck that marred the day, Danae thought. But no, the bad luck had been written in her life long before that. The bad luck meant she chose men the same way her mother chose them, for all the wrong reasons. Except her mother had finally found a good one in Bernie. Whereas Danae had made the worst choice of all right at the outset.

  When she got home from Dublin, Mara hugged her aunt and said, “Whenever you’re ready to tell me, Danae, tell me. I love you, I wanted to understand so there wouldn’t be any danger of me hurting you inadvertently. T
he last thing I wanted was to upset you.”

  Danae had stood in her niece’s embrace and closed her eyes.

  “You didn’t hurt me, love. I’m scared to talk about it. It was not a good marriage, not a good childhood either. That’s why your father and I are so different, because we have different fathers. Bernard, your grandfather, was a good man. Morris was lucky.

  “It was different for me when I was a child. Life was painful and my marriage was painful, that’s why I didn’t tell you. Give me a little time to get used to the idea of talking about it, and I’ll tell you. It shouldn’t . . .” she paused, thinking of what Belle had said, “. . . be a secret.”

  Later, she took down the box with the diary and the cuttings and all the various bits of paper relating to what had happened, and she laid them on her bed. They were all tied up with a black ribbon and Danae didn’t even want to undo the package. Opening it would be like letting a bad spirit out. As if the box was a genie’s lamp and undoing the ribbons was the spell that would release it into the world.

  No, Mara could do it. As soon as Danae got up the courage to give the box to her. Mara could read everything, and then she’d know.

  Because Danae didn’t think she had the heart to tell her beloved niece the whole story.

  13

  Did everyone in Avalon know, Tess wondered as she walked down the town to pick up a few groceries for dinner. Was everyone staring at her thinking, Poor Tess, her husband has left her and found someone else? Tess herself was never a person for gossip. It was partly her father. Dad had never been a gossiping sort of man. He’d quite happily walk into the village shop in the morning with scenes of wildness going on all around him and ignore it. Suki had once said that if half the town had been seen frantically kissing the other half of the town, he wouldn’t notice. He’d just go in and say, “Good morning, lovely day, isn’t it? I’m sure I saw a red kite out there this morning. Very unusual. Thought they were gone from Ireland. Terribly exciting!” And then he’d wander off with his newspaper, not even looking at the scenes of bacchanalian craziness around him.

  Consequently, Tess worked on the theory that life could be difficult and that you never knew what was going on behind the curtains. She’d learned this partly from living in the big house all her young life, when outsiders would assume the Power family ate off the finest Sèvres china with silver cutlery, when in fact they were all sitting around the kitchen table shivering like whippets in the cold, hungrily tucking into Anna Reilly’s Irish stew.

  When they’d finally sold Avalon House and she’d come to live in the village in the beautiful little house she still lived in, she knew people were talking about her, but there was pity in their eyes when they looked at her because she was well liked. And there was pity in their eyes now. She was convinced of it whenever anyone looked at her.

  Poor Tess Power, the last to know. Split up from her husband. And what was that story about a trial separation they both agreed on? That was clearly a ruse. No, Kevin must have left her and gone out and found himself a younger model.

  The women would feel sad for her and the men . . . maybe the men would think that Kevin had got it right, trading in forty-something Tess for a younger model.

  In the butcher’s she looked at various cuts of meat, knowing she really needed to choose the cheapest for Sunday lunch. Maybe lamb shanks, she thought. Cheap, and if they were cooked slowly enough, they fell off the bone and made a beautiful stew. Yes, lamb shanks, she thought.

  “How are you, Tess?” said Joe the butcher, in his normal friendly tone.

  “Fine,” said Tess, knowing she sounded brittle and wishing she didn’t.

  “Great,” said Joe, “what can I do for you today?”

  She gave him her order, all the time wondering what he thought or whether he knew.

  In the cake shop, she bought some Rice Krispie slices for Kitty’s lunch. On Fridays the children were allowed to bring in something sweet, and Tess generally managed to bake something during the week. But she wasn’t able to concentrate. Her mind kept flitting off whenever she thought about anything normal. Flitting off into the craziness of Kevin and Claire and what it all meant. What had she done? The whole thing was her fault. She’d let him go. And had he really loved her at all?

  “Hello, Tess,” said the girl behind the counter in the cake shop.

  Tess’s mind went blank. What was her name, what was her name? Erm . . . Sophie, yes, Sophie.

  “Hello, Sophie,” she said gratefully. “I’ll have two of those Rice Krispie cakes and one French stick, please.”

  It was dreadful to be buying those cakes when they were the easiest thing in the world to make, but she felt so tired at night, so weary. And once dinner was over and washed up, she only had the energy to sit blankly in front of the TV and look at it, not really taking anything in. Staring into the middle distance. She was doing her best for the children. When she was with them you wouldn’t think there was anything wrong, you wouldn’t think that her life had been ripped apart. No, Tess Power would not let her beloved children down. And no matter what people were talking about, she would show the stern Power backbone.

  “Thank you, Sophie,” she said with a bright smile.

  Let people talk: they would see that she was well able for anything the world threw at her. Groceries bought, she turned and headed back up the town, toward the shop. She saw Danae on the way and waved hello at her. That was the nice thing about people like Danae. They weren’t garrulous. Wouldn’t offer an opinion. Wouldn’t say anything. Danae, Tess decided, was probably the only person in the entire town who you could sit and have a cup of tea with and she’d never ask a single personal question or offer a personal detail in return. But then, Tess thought, Danae had always struck her as a lonely figure, someone on the outskirts, not quite a part of Avalon. No, it was easier to be talked about and live in the town like a normal person, even if your husband had run off with a twenty-nine-year-old illustrator. Easier to do that than live in the half-life of loneliness.

  Vivienne had been minding the shop for the half hour while Tess was out buying dinner.

  “Someone came in and was very interested in that little round table with the darker inlay,” said Vivienne excitedly. “I told her you’d be back in half an hour. She said she’d come back.”

  “Oh Lord,” said Tess. “They often say that, but they don’t mean it.” She was quite used to people coming in, examining things, promising on their mother’s life they’d be back in half an hour when they got the money from the cash machine, and then never appearing again.

  “No, she looked like she really meant it—and I can tell,” said Vivienne. “Hasn’t been a bad day at all, you know. You sold those teacups and I sold four, four of those new skirts I got in, so it’s been a good day.”

  Yes, thought Tess. It’s been a good day. Let’s concentrate on the positive and not mention Claire or wonder if everyone in town knows that Kevin’s now in love with her. She knew all too well that once Vivienne got started on the subject of Kevin and Claire, there was no stopping her.

  Vivienne had very firm views on how she should treat Claire.

  “Ignore her,” she’d said, when Tess had broken the news to her. “You shouldn’t meet her. She’s beneath you. She’s a child.”

  “She’s twenty-nine,” said Tess, finding herself in the odd position of defending Claire. “And she’s not a child. When I was her age, I had a child and was married,” she added.

  “You should steal him back, give her a taste of her own medicine,” said Vivienne heatedly.

  Again Tess had to intervene. “She didn’t steal him, Vivienne,” she said tiredly. “He was . . .” She paused; she wasn’t sure exactly what Kevin had been during the trial separation. Was he like a library book in the recently returned slot, which was where everyone in the library seemed to go first, as though the fact other people had chosen them somehow made the books more interesting. Kevin had been in the recently returned slot and Claire had pi
cked him up. Tess really had nobody to blame but herself.

  “I know what you should do,” pronounced Vivienne, “you should start dating that gorgeous Cashel hunk. That’d make Kevin jealous. Actually, forget making Kevin jealous: go off and date Cashel. I would.”

  “I told you,” Tess said, “Cashel and I have history, there’s as much chance of him dating me as him dating the man in the moon or the woman in the moon, whatever in the moon.”

  No, Tess thought, best not to get Vivienne started on that subject. “Thanks for minding the shop,” she said brightly. “I’d better put my shopping away and get ready for when Miss Small Round Table turns up.”

  “Great,” said Vivienne, and marched back into her own shop.

  Alone, Tess thought how much easier it was to be angry than sad. If she let herself be sad, she fell apart. Anger was far more productive. Anger had got her through telling Kitty the news.

  Kitty had taken it better than her brother.

  “Does that mean that you aren’t married any more?” she asked. “Will you be getting a divorce?”

  Tess knew that many of the children in her daughter’s class had divorced parents, for which she was grateful, but she had never planned on being one of them.

  “Not yet,” she said cheerily. “Daddy says Claire is a lovely person.”

  She had no idea how she managed to say it without wincing but if it would spare her daughter distress, she could do anything.

  Kitty put her small head to one side, considering. “I like having Daddy living here,” she said. “Can’t he move in here with Claire?”

  “No, darling, he can’t. That’s not the way it works. He’ll live with Claire and it will be your second home, with another bedroom and everything.”

  “Can I take Moo with me when I stay over?” Kitty asked.

  Tess felt the anger flood through her at the prospect of another woman putting Kitty to bed and tucking Moo in beside her.