“You found me out.” Angie stepped into the room, looking overdressed for her surroundings.
“We thought there might be something wrong,” Andrew said, getting up to give Angie a hug.
“Is there ever anything right? Come on, the kitchen is brighter,” she said, turning on her heel.
In the kitchen, she reached into a cupboard and took out a bottle of whiskey. “The only thing that does not go off. Damp can’t penetrate the taste of a good whiskey.” She washed three glasses and placed them on the table. “I come here every now and again and drink to my boys.” She stopped midway through pouring and turned to Andrew. “I take it you told Emma.”
Emma leaned forward to rub Angie on the arm. “I was very sorry to hear it. I had no idea.”
“My boy would be almost a man now, and me and my husband would be an old couple, maybe not even on talking terms. Life has a way of messing everything up.” She handed out the glasses. “To life and the memories of those we have lost.”
All three sipped their drinks.
“Don’t be so polite. I am not going to get drunk. Maudlin, maybe, but not drunk.”
“It is such a lovely house,” Emma said, anxious in case the mood dipped.
“And a constant reminder of what I lost. And yet I can’t get rid of it.” Angie slumped down on the big chair at the end of the wooden table. “I am a sad case, hiding out in the city, pretending to be this eccentric broad when really I am a woman ground down by grief, with no idea of what to do next.”
Andrew got up and went to the window. “You would get a grand price for this place. Angie, you need to let it go.”
Angie knocked back the remainder of her whiskey in a fast gulp. “I as good as buried two empty boxes. There was little left of my boys. While I have this house, I can, when I want to, pretend there is a possibility they might come back, there might be the chatter, the laughter again, days so ordinary I thought they were boring. What I wouldn’t give for an hour from one of those days now. If I sell up, I am abandoning those dreams. They are all that keep me alive.”
The three in the kitchen were quiet. Outside, they heard a man call to his dog. A child screeched in frustration he could not have a lollipop. A wagtail landed on the kitchen sill, poking at the cracked paint before suddenly twitching into the air and flying off.
“I can pick up Timmy’s toys and lie in his bed. I get the smell of him still. With my finger I can trace where he wrote his name on the wall, where he thought I would not see it. I can lean back in Christopher’s leather chair and hear his soft voice in my ears. I can feel him take my hand and kiss it, like he used to sometimes, when I passed him by. I can’t get any of that at the graveyard.”
Emma took one of her hands. “We understand.”
“I can’t live here, yet I can’t let it go. My life stopped here and yet it is where I can find some part of it. I am in limbo, set down forever. This place is where I am in turmoil yet can also be at peace.”
Andrew mooched to the window. “You could cut back the garden. It is taking over.”
“Don’t worry, Andrew, I am not going to ask you to do it.”
He laughed. “Once a city lad, always a city lad. Cutting grass is not my thing.”
“I love the city. I hide under its anonymous cloak.”
“You are hiding wherever you are, Angie.”
“You can always depend on Andrew to say it as it is,” Angie said to Emma.
“A spade is a spade and I don’t mind saying it. Angie, it has been ten years.”
At first Angie did not answer. She got slowly up from the table to the dresser and rummaged. Pulling out a framed photograph, she propped it up in the middle of the table. “Look, that is what I had: a husband and a son, happy out. Don’t tell me to move on like you would tell a child snivelling after being caught pinching flowers from the neighbour’s front garden.”
“Christ, I didn’t mean to insult you. I was only trying to help.”
Emma examined the picture: Angie, her hair flowing down her back, her husband wearing a ridiculous canvas sun hat, a boy, maybe near eight, between them, squinting into the camera, leaning into his mother, a hand holding on to his dad’s trousers.
“Taken two weeks before. Mr Garry down the road was trying out a new camera. It took him a year before he had the courage to show it to me. He framed it up lovely, but I keep it in the drawer. It hurts too much to look at our faces, to see such innocent happiness reflected back at me. How is it we only know what happiness is when it has marched on?”
Andrew wandered outside and Angie followed. Emma stayed in the kitchen, where the clock did not tick and the fridge sat unplugged, its door propped open so mould did not take hold. On the walls, still, a child’s drawings, faded, the writing in some places obliterated by time. In the far corner a hurley stick and sliotar thrown to the side, as if the boy had thought of something better to do but could be back any minute to swipe them away and start pucking the ball.
Outside, she heard the muffled tones of the two friends and she saw them embrace.
Angie stuck her head in the door. “What are you doing hiding out in the kitchen? We thought we will have a nice lunch together before I bring you both back to Parnell Square.” Angie swept past her as Emma pushed her chair out from the table. “I will follow you out to the car, I will just say goodbye to the ghosts and lock up the house.”
She pounded upstairs before Emma had time to answer.
“We will give her a few minutes. Wait in the car,” Andrew said and they pushed their way down the shingle path, the briars whipping at their legs, the bindweed trying to trip them up. They were quiet in the car on the way back. As Andrew dropped them off at Parnell Square, he declined an invitation to tea. Angie dithered but then decided one cuppa would not hurt.
They sat in the first-floor drawing room sipping their tea, for a while lost in thought. Angie was the first to break the companionable silence between them.
“I suppose you think I am a bit mad, hanging on to things.”
“Nobody knows how they will cope with loss.”
“I feel myself it might be time to move on, but maybe I don’t know how.”
Emma caught her hand. “I am sure if the right person comes along you won’t even have to think about it. It will just feel right.
“I hope you are correct,” Angie answered, putting her teacup carefully down on the saucer. As she got up from the couch, she leaned over and kissed Emma on the head. “Thank you to you and Andrew for making this day easier,” she said, before making for the door.
18
Our Lady’s Asylum, Knockavanagh, March 1955
Grace buttoned up her cardigan to shut out the cold draught from under the window. Outside, a family were walking up the driveway, one girl, one boy skipping ahead, stopping only when their mother called out to them. The melody of the children’s chatter weaved its way to the second floor, luring the women on the ward to crowd at the windows.
They gathered and watched, the little girl bending low to pick up a small stone. Nobody said anything out loud, but each of the women nursed a sense of loss in their hearts, a deep longing for a life not lived.
An attendant barked at the group to get away from the window, before stopping herself to glance at the family walking towards reception. “Making a holy show of yourselves, standing watching those innocent creatures.”
“Are they coming up or will I go down?” Bertha asked
“What would they be doing visiting anyone on this ward? Never you mind what they are up to.” She held her hands wide to cover the span of the window. “Sure, it is like trying to herd sheep,” she laughed.
Grace picked the chair at the end of the corridor, where she could view the far fields, shining green after two full days of sunshine following a long spell of rain.
Vikram had gone back to India and she did not blame him. How could he have found her here? She did not even know the address of the place herself until Mandy had told her. How
could he come back? Did he know about her tragedy? A dull pain creaked through her body, making her bend over so nobody would see the tears plop down her face.
“Whoever put us in here has a lot to answer for.” Mandy was standing looking at Grace.
“It is my fault, every bit of it.”
“Never ever think that. Otherwise you will end up here forever.” She gripped Grace’s shoulder, shaking her hard. “My girl is five now.” Mandy outlined the figure of a girl in the condensation on the window glass. “I wish I could buy her a dress with flowers so pretty the butterflies will queue up to land on her. We will run by the sea and paddle and laugh.”
“Wouldn’t it still be too cold to get in?”
“I didn’t think of that.” Mandy, upset that a flaw in her plans had been highlighted, drifted up the ward to the nurses’ station to tell the nice nurse from Aughrim about her daughter.
Grace could not get Violet out of her head, and the marriage of convenience she had so quickly engineered and executed for her. The justification she had grandly put forward was that Grace’s mother had behaved in such a way that no right-thinking man would look at the daughter. Grace knew well what her mother had done: Violet had told her often enough.
“Your mother ran off with a Pakistani and then had the audacity to come back and marry your father when she knew she was already pregnant. How you were not born dark, I will never know. All I know is it was a mercy. Things could have stayed that way but for your mother taking up with that oily Pakistani again. Once that happened, nothing could stop our family catapulting into a shameful tragedy, which unfortunately became everybody’s business.”
Grace was weary of being reminded of the night her life changed utterly. She had been four years of age. When she fell asleep in their small red-brick terrace house in the Liberties, her mother was getting ready for a friend to come over while her husband worked the night shift at the Guinness brewery. Grace heard nothing. She was gently woken up by a Garda in the middle of the night. Her head covered, she was transferred to a patrol car and brought to Aunt Violet’s. It was several days before she was told a version of the truth: both her mother and father were dead. It was many years before she knew the full story.
“Your mother brought untold shame on all of us by continuing to carry on with that Pakistani who ran the shop off Meath Street. Your poor father was sent home early from work because he was feeling poorly and he walked in on them. The man snapped. He had had enough, and who could blame him?”
Violet held back nothing.
“Your mother had reignited the affair. Your poor father should never have taken her back in the first place. That was his fatal mistake. Unfortunately, Bert stabbed Aileen and the shopkeeper. The Pakistani managed to make it out onto the road for help, but by the time anybody was brave enough to look inside the house your mother was dead and your father had stabbed himself in the heart and was dying. You slept through it all.”
Grace remembered everybody was busy at Violet’s, huddling and whispering, and it remained that way until after the funerals. Violet, whose husband had died in a freak accident a year before, when he slipped and fell in the canal, was glad of the company. But as the years went by, Violet worried about the future of the young girl with such a troubled history.
She got her niece a job in Clerys department store serving at the jewellery counter. Grace wore smart dresses and began to talk about training to be a secretary. When Violet suggested it might be time to settle down, Grace laughed and asked if she was serious.
“Why would I bring up the subject if I was not deadly serious? To be frank, it is necessary that you start paying your way, young woman. My George left me with a very small amount of money and it is nearly all gone.”
“We could sell the house and move to something smaller.”
Violet snorted loudly again. “You would not ask me to leave my home, would you?”
Grace did not say anything, so Violet continued.
“I had a visit from Martin Moran, an eminent senior counsel who expects to be appointed as a judge of the High Court before this government goes out of power. He must get married. If he is to progress in his legal career, he needs a wife. I suggested you. Thankfully you have your mother’s good looks and that is sufficient for Martin Moran to consider you. You also have good enough manners, which I have vouched for.”
“I surely have a say in this.”
Violet, who always had her walking stick by her side, swished it high to emphasise her point. “My dear, it is simply business. If we have to carry on another month, we will go under. Martin says after the marriage I can live at his house in Parnell Square and can rent out this old house, so I may have some income. He is a kind, good man with excellent prospects, and quite willing to overlook your past. I can’t see you doing better. You won’t have to work another day in your life.”
“I am not taking part in this charade. You can’t make me.”
Violet pulled herself up to standing. “Girl, you owe me. Do you think I wanted to take you in, that I wanted a brat around my house, to feed and educate you? It is payback time and I need you to do this.”
“You are asking me to marry a man I have not even met.”
“You are overreacting. I am asking you to marry a perfectly nice and wealthy man who is about to become a judge.”
“I am not doing it.”
Violet sat down. “I suppose you are going to give me some nonsense about love and all that.”
Grace walked out of the room before Violet could say more, but her aunt followed her.
“I am the only family you have got. This is as good as it gets and you will take this offer,” she shouted after her as Grace rushed upstairs, too angry to even cry.
After about an hour, she heard Violet’s step on the stairs. She knocked lightly on the door before walking in. “Grace, I am doing this for your own good. Surely you know all marriages end up being marriages of convenience. The only difference for you is that it will be that from the start and you will have financial security for life. It is a good thing I am doing.”
“You are asking me to marry a man I don’t even know.”
“You can get to know him. He is coming for Sunday lunch and I expect you to show off your impeccable manners.”
The next day Violet had the Clerys ladies’ fashions department send out a selection of dresses. She picked a gold colour, a smart dress with a full skirt, a bodice leading to a Peter Pan collar where a small ribbon was tied in a bow. She told Grace to wear a white cardigan with the sleeveless dress. Violet said it was sophisticated-looking.
Martin Moran arrived promptly at one and shook hands politely. Grace noticed his height and how straight he sat at the table, his long slim fingers and his gentle voice. When he asked if she cared to go for a walk by the canal, she agreed.
“You know why I am here?” he asked as they were walking.
“I know Aunt Violet has a plan for me.”
“Is that such a bad thing? She has looked after you all your life.”
Grace did not answer.
“I could give you a good life. You would never want for anything and I would not ask anything else of you, only to be my wife.”
“I have a job I like.”
“You would never have to work again, Grace. I earn more than enough.”
“But I don’t love you. I don’t even know you.”
“Love complicates everything. If we can have respect for each other, it will do for starters.”
“I need time to think about it.”
He picked up a stone and skimmed it across the glassy water in the canal.
“You know, it is also a financial arrangement that your Aunt Violet badly needs, so I would advise you not to take too long.”
They walked back along the canal path, neither feeling the need to have any further conversation.
Mandy came over and tapped her on the shoulder, so that Grace jumped.
“You are far away. Nurse Gilm
artin says she might be able to arrange for us to stroll in the gardens tomorrow.”
“It would be nice to get some fresh air.”
“I told her if there is any work that needs doing, we will do it. What were you dreaming about? Your young man?”
Grace did not answer and Mandy prattled on.
“Best to remember the good things only. It makes the here and now better.”
Grace walked over to the window. “Had you a name for your girl?”
Mandy turned away. “They made sure she was taken from me the minute she was born. I only heard her cry. I will never forget that cry.”
Grace made to put a hand on her shoulders, but Mandy shrugged her away.
“We had better get in the queue for the dining hall,” she snapped.
Bertha ran over, her face full of excitement. “My Barry has come and brought the girls. I can go home today. Look, I am wearing my best dress.” She twirled in front of them in her faded nightgown, a pink cardigan buttoned over it. On her face she had patted some powder and she had slicked lipstick across her lips. “Don’t I look nice?”
“You look lovely,” Grace said.
“Mad as a hatter, that one. She is lucky,” Mandy mumbled, and Grace nodded in agreement.
19
Bangalore, India, April 1984
Rhya had only just got up the next morning when Rosa arrived.
“What time did you leave home to get here so early? Vik is still dozing.”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I got my man to drive me.”
“What is wrong, girl? No marriage is without its difficulties, you know.”
The Judge's Wife Page 11
