“Rosa, she mesmerised me. I saw only her, I cared only about her. There was a magic about Grace. I pined for her attention, because only then did I feel one hundred per cent complete. When she flashed a smile, my heart gladdened. When she frowned, I worried. When she showed her displeasure, I was ashamed.
“I loved every bit of her. She was never afraid. I fell in love with her that day in the hospital as she fretted over her fitting. I was completely hooked after I met her in the park.”
Rhya stuck her head around the door. “Rosa, enough of the talk with Uncle. You surely have things to do.”
Rosa slowly got up, kissing Vikram goodbye.
7
Parnell Square, Dublin, March 1984
“There is a lot more in the attic: boxes mainly, light enough, clothes probably. What will the men do with all them?” The foreman overseeing the clear-out of the house waited on the landing for an answer.
“Isn’t that why I got a skip? Chuck them.”
“Are you sure? It could be the family silver you are throwing away.”
“Knowing the judge, I very much doubt it.”
The workman stepped into the room. “All the same, it couldn’t hurt to have a quick look.”
“No, thank you.”
“You might be sorry, when there’s a crowd around the skip.”
“I doubt if anybody would be interested in my father’s old legal files.”
Shrugging his shoulders, the workman backed out of the room.
Emma could see the judge, hunched, leaning into the pool of light from his desk lamp. On a rare occasion, he would motion her to sit. Holding his place with his finger on the document he was examining, he would look over his glasses and ask what did she want. On edge, she would garble her words, he would snap at her to run along. She remembered the time she had spent days composing the sentences she needed to tell him she was unhappy and hated school. Shuffling her feet, she had knocked over a small pile of folders stacked near his chair.
“Mind where you go,” he said, not raising his eyes from the papers in front of him.
She spoke so quietly she was not sure if he heard her.
“Not liking something is no reason to give up.”
Underlining a word on the text, he clicked his teeth in annoyance, scrawling his comments in red at the margins. She slipped away. If the judge heard her leave or the thud of the door when she shut it, he did not let on.
Emma turned away as the workmen trailed up and down the stairs to the hall. Edging her fingers down the piped line of the linen skirt, riding the pleats, she watched from the window as Angie Hannon sidled past the skip several times before stopping to examine a coffee table.
When one of the workmen threw a pile of files on the rubbish heap, she stopped him, persuading him to lift down the table and carry it to her door. Emma threw up the sash window and called out, “Mrs Hannon, do you want to come in and see if there is anything else you want? I am having a clear-out.”
“I suppose I could. I have a few minutes before my Mass.” She made for the door and the stairs. “My God, are you moving in or out?” Angie peered around a stack of boxes in the hall. “What’s going on?”
Boxes and boxes were piled high, with the name Grace scrawled in thick black marker. Stumbling, confusion clouding her face, Emma hit against a high stack of boxes, making it shake.
“Where did these come from?”
The foreman stepped from behind a tower in the front room. “I told you.”
“Don’t touch them.”
“You said—”
“Don’t touch them.” Tremors hurled up her body, buckling her knees and gripping her stomach. When Angie ran to her, she let her pull her gently into the library.
“You need to sit down, dear. Something has spooked you, for sure.”
“These are my mother’s things. I never knew any of it was in the house.”
Somebody called out that everything was down from the attic and Emma jumped to her feet.
“Now, now, these boxes are going nowhere. You catch your breath,” Angie said gently, pressing Emma back onto the chaise longue.
A man carrying a wide box stepped into the library and placed the box beside her. “A pretty fancy box. I would open it first, if I were you. We are moving to clear out the old kitchen in the basement. Will you want to inspect anything there?” Emma shook her head.
The box took up the width of her arms. Once white, it was now covered in a layer of fine dust, the string faded a green-grey. Behind the dust, the name Sybil Connolly, Dublin was set in plain black print.
“I had better scoot along.” Angie Hannon stood and watched Emma for a few seconds. “Will you be all right?”
Emma nodded, walking to the hall with Angie. “It is just a shock, I hardly know where to start.”
“The box in your hands is as good a place as any.”
Angie looked at her watch. “I had better get going or I’ll miss the first collection.” She whipped out the door, stopping only briefly to berate the workmen. “Will you quieten down a bit? They can hear you cursing in the city centre.”
Glancing into the front sitting room, Emma looked around. Stacks of boxes like a child’s playing bricks everywhere, four abreast on the upholstered couch, spanning the width of the window.
Placing the outsize rectangular box on the floor, she eased the top off gently, her hair tumbling down, blocking out her face, her hands trembling. A cloud of dust blustered up around her as she pushed back the cover and pulled on layers and layers of white tissue paper, which piled up and crumpled around her.
A dress, ivory, ruffled with lace and inlaid with satin ribbons, was folded neatly. Emma lifted out the dress, standing up so it unfurled to the ground in a hurried whishing whisper. Layers of pleated frills were topped with lace and interwoven with pale-blue ribbon. The skirt spread out in tiny pinched pleats, a series of Chinese fans fluttering their messages. It was heavy to hold, the taffeta underskirt setting the pleated ruffles in place. Emma held it to her, swaying from side to side. The whoosh of the linen as it swept across the carpet made her swing faster and faster, the room twirling until she felt dizzy. Falling between two boxes on the couch, the linen spread around her as if it owned her.
She felt at home here, probably for the first time. All the times she had dreamed of her mother, wanting to feel her comforting presence, her soft touch, all the times she imagined it. Passing her hand over the linen, she disturbed the fabric and a faint hint of perfume waved around her. Pulling the nearest box on the couch, she nudged the cardboard flaps open. A bundle of silk scarves lounged like sleeping snakes.
Placing her hand into the well of colours, she heard the klssss of the silk as it moved, disturbed after years locked away. Not checking what she was picking, she pulled, latching on to one long scarf. It slithered out in a haze of royal blue, green, purple, the colours bouncing in the light, throwing bars of colour at the mirror over the mantelpiece. Crumpling it to tame it around her neck, she pushed the linen dress aside and jumped up to look in the mirror. Settling her hair on top of her head, the scarf complemented her long, graceful neck. Then, abruptly, she let her hair fall down.
There was no going back to Australia, but what life could she make here among the forgotten treasures of a long-dead woman? Opening two more boxes, she tumbled out the contents, sifting through the clothes and losing track of time, only stopping when she heard the chat from the people standing at the bus stop outside the window. Peeping out, she saw a man finish his bottle of Coke before leaning over the railing and letting the empty bottle smash to the basement.
Cross, Emma ran to the door, but the man was already boarding a double-decker.
“You will have to put up some sort of netting. They don’t care about anyone.” Angie Hannon, on her way home from Mass, was carrying a small white box. “I stopped off at the Kylemore and got you some cream slices: they go lovely with a cup of tea.” She hopped up the steps and placed the small box in Emma’s
hands. “Don’t worry, I won’t be imposing myself. I am off out with the women’s club today.”
Emma smiled and made to go back inside. Angie called out softly, “Your skirt: it is a Sybil Connolly, isn’t it?”
Emma spun around. “How did you know?”
“Anyone with an eye for fashion could not miss a Sybil Connolly. Sure, didn’t she bring linen from the bog to the city?”
“I found it in the house.”
“Look after it. A vintage treasure, it is.”
“I didn’t realise.”
“I always heard your mother was a right looker and stunning in Sybil Connolly.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Emma’s throat tightened and pain flared through her that so many knew her mother and she did not even have a faint memory: a favourite name or nursery rhyme, a touch, a look. Anger swelled inside her at her father and she wanted him to be alive so she could cross-examine him, demand answers.
Angie Hannon called out to Tom Harty’s wife and Emma, taking advantage of her distraction, slipped back inside her front door.
What good was it opening these boxes and rummaging through the life of the mother she had never known? She should lock up this place, run away, but where would she go? There was no home back in Australia, just a lot of other possessions she did not care about and a husband busy playing house with another. She kicked a box, so light it skidded across the tiles in the hall. It hit a stack piled too high and the top box toppled over, the contents spilling across the floor.
Not bothering to pick up the items, Emma climbed the stairs, stopping on the fourth step to look back down the hall. The black and white tiles glinted in the light spilling in from over the door. It was the judge’s house. It still had his smell, and she expected him to call out from his library, to hear him clear his throat as he read his files.
Her hand on the brass knob of the first-floor drawing room, she hesitated, pulling in a deep breath and automatically checking her clothes were straight, as if she expected somehow he could still be there.
No doubt he would have had something to say about her choosing not to speak at his funeral. It was, she knew, the final cut: the public show that she could not speak of her father, even in death. He would not have liked either that she wore grey: a lightweight colour to display the depth of her grief.
Turning the knob, she swung back the cream door. The walls were painted a sage green, the ceiling and its plasterwork, once brilliant white, now tinted yellow. The couch, deep mustard velvet, spanned the width of the faded rug, which had flowers picked out in blue, green and burnt yellow. Two fireside chairs upholstered in embossed gold stood on guard either side of the black marble fireplace. A low mahogany table ran between the tall windows. There were no curtains, but the shutters were half across.
Tentatively, she walked to the window, her eyes on the distant mountains. Pushing back the shutters, light fell into the room. She sat on the mustard couch, the stillness walling around her.
A bar of sunshine crossed over the room. Two pigeons patrolling the windowsill pecked and cooed. Somewhere on the street, a man shouted across the road to a friend. A double-decker bus revved up the hill out of the square. Emma sat in the corner of the velvet couch, at peace for now amidst the city bustle.
8
Our Lady’s Asylum, Knockavanagh, April 1954
A blue-black magpie rested on the branch of the small tree in the front garden, tipping back and forward with the bounce of the wood in the wind. It caught the flash of Grace’s purple top and stared at her. It stalked her, never giving her the satisfaction of being able to count two for joy. She wanted to rap on the glass and make it fly away, but she could not, for fear of drawing down the attendant on top of her.
She saw the Morris Oxford as it slowly trundled around the bend after the security gates. Weeks she had been here, and now they had come for her. A giddiness grabbed hold of her and she pulled Mandy to the window.
“I told you he would come back for me. Martin would never leave me.” Grace tugged at her hair. “I have to comb it properly. I will need my clothes. They haven’t given me my case yet, so I have no make-up.”
“Don’t lose the run of yourself.”
“I am leaving.”
“If you say so. I will save you some bread from lunch. If you are here when I get back, so be it. If you’re not, you’re not.”
Grace, her eyes shining, began to fuss, flattening her hair and pinching her cheeks to raise a bit of colour.
One of the attendants called out her name. “Grace Moran. You have a visitor. Smarten yourself up.”
“Can I please have my case and my own clothes? I am going to need them.”
“Whatever for? You were supplied with perfectly good clothes. Now get them on, we don’t have all day.”
Mandy put an arm around Grace. “You can have my lace collar.” She reached under her mattress, pulling out a cream collar tarnished with rust spots, unravelled and frayed at one corner.
Grace licked her finger and rubbed a stain from her plaid skirt. “What will I do if Martin won’t sign me out?”
“Come back here and eat the bread I saved for you.” Mandy caught her by the shoulders. “If he is taking you away, don’t forget me.” Her eyes were staring, spit pressing out of her mouth.
“How could I?”
“It would surprise you how quickly a memory can be wiped, once a person realises they can get through those gates.”
The attendant beckoned to her. Grace slipped on the shoes stored under her bed.
“No funny business – follow me to the visitor’s room.”
Grace nodded, smiling at the other patients as they watched her leave.
Teresa, who sang all day and cried all night, ran up and hugged her, whispering loudly in her ear. “Run for it, dearie, when you have a chance.”
Roughly pushed back by the attendant, Teresa cried out, “Get your hands off. I’ve been assaulted.”
The nurses laughed. “Assaulted? Calm down, sweetie, or a nice cold bath is on the cards,” one of them snapped.
Violet McNally was standing looking out the window when the attendant opened the door. She moved across the room, catching the young woman’s hand to press a crisp banknote to it.
Grace edged into the room, perching on a straight-backed chair. She took in her aunt, who was settling into an armchair, unbuttoning her red-wine tweed coat, which had a circular red rhinestone brooch at the lapel. Carefully Violet took off each black glove and placed the set in her handbag before shutting the clasp with a loud snapping noise.
“Would you like tea?” Violet gestured to the small table with a lace tablecloth where a silver tray was laid out with china cups and a big pot of tea covered with a knitted cosy. “So kind. They even thought of biscuits.”
Grace, tugging at her cardigan sleeve, shook her head. “Where is Martin? Why isn’t he here?”
If Violet heard the question, she ignored it. “It is cool out. Hospitals are always warm. You probably don’t feel the cold.” She smacked her hands together, reaching over to the tray to pour tea into a gold-rimmed china cup.
“I want to go home. Why isn’t Martin here?”
Violet, who was shovelling her second spoon of sugar into the tea, stopped what she was doing to look directly at Grace. “You are mightily interested in your husband all of a sudden.” Violet finished ladling the sugar into the tea and, picking up her cup and saucer, stirred slowly. She gazed at the picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall above Grace, as if she drew some strength from it. “Martin Moran is a judge and a good man. He did not deserve what you did to him. He has left all this unpleasant business to me.”
“I want to come home.”
“Why? So you can carry on with another man and heap more shame on us all?”
“I love Vikram Fernandes. You can’t take that from me.”
Violet placed her cup and saucer carefully on the table. “How dare you even mention his name? Have you no shame
?”
Grace jumped up. Agitated, she paced to the window, momentarily distracted by a young woman outside rummaging in her handbag, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. The woman scrabbled in the bag before giving up and running along the path. She was laughing loudly, calling out to a man who was standing there smiling, holding a lighter in his hand.
“Martin would never leave me here.”
Violet sat back, stretching her legs out in front of her. “My dear, nobody is leaving you here. You are not well. It is up to the doctors.”
Grace swung around. “See what they have done? Look at me.”
“I understand you have resisted the therapy, so ably prescribed.”
Grace did not answer.
“It is entirely up to you when you leave here. Do as the doctors say and you are halfway there.”
“Am I? I don’t know what they are telling you, but there is nothing wrong with me. I want to come home.”
Violet McNally poured a fresh drop of tea into her cup. “Start being a good patient and you may find things are different.”
“I will go mad if you leave me here. I hear mice scurrying at night under the beds. Doesn’t Martin care about me? I am his wife, after all.”
“He is your husband. Did you ever care for him?”
“You were wrong to get me to marry him.”
“Nonsense. You did not resist.”
“Vikram will find me.”
“The Indian chap? Bolted like a greyhound from a trap. Married to a good Indian girl by now, I should think.”
Pain streaked across Grace’s chest and a loud ringing burrowed into her ears. “You are telling lies.”
“Why would I? He has skipped off, nothing more, nothing less.”
Grace stood, squalls of anger bursting through her. Violet was still talking, but she only saw the smug set of her lips, the indifference in her eyes, heard the icy tone of her voice. Grace lunged, her fists clenched.
Violet was too fast for her, catching her tightly by the wrists, squeezing her so tight her nails dug into Grace’s skin as she screeched for help.
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