6
Mrs. Conway had aired Jude’s old room and made up the bed, even though Jude wasn’t due to arrive until the following week. I’d searched out a vase and had just put it on the chest of drawers intending to fill it with flowers the day she was due when the doorbell clanged through the house. I pulled off my apron and patted my hair in place in the hall mirror before opening the door.
“Yes?” I said to the woman on the step. She had a large suitcase and wore a blue wool coat way too heavy for the warm May day.
“Hello, I’m Jude. Daniel’s daughter. “
She looked nothing like the young woman in the wedding photo. She looked nothing like Daniel or her sister, Fran, either. Fran had been athletic, with a halo of frizzy red hair. Jude was dark-haired and slight, but she had her mother’s eyes.
“Oh, come in, come in.”
She hesitated on the step, turned to look back down the driveway, then stepped over the sill.
“We weren’t expecting you until next week. You should have let us know. How did you get out here?”
I covered my fluster with a flurry of questions. She found a spot for her suitcase in the hall and hung her coat on the coat tree.
“Sorry, I know. Sorry. I hope it’s all right. I got an earlier flight. Once I decided to come, I wanted to get here as soon as I could.”
About to show her into the parlour, I stopped. She’d know her way around this house better than I did. I introduced myself as Daniel’s nurse.
“Daniel is resting now. I’ll bring you tea; you must be exhausted. And famished. I’ll bring you a cup of tea and a bite to eat. Or would you prefer coffee?”
“Thanks. I’ll come into the kitchen with you. A cup of tea would be great.”
I tried to get the measure of her as I put on the kettle and set out cups and saucers. She looked older than I had thought she would, although she was probably exhausted from the trip. What was she now? About thirty-eight or -nine? She looked nothing like her sister, for which I was grateful, though she still had that quiet, watchful air I remembered about her from years ago.
“How is he?” she asked as she sipped her tea.
“For now he’s not too bad. Things are progressing a bit faster than we hoped initially.”
I slipped into my professional role and relaxed. She seemed nice enough. A straightforward sort of person, who didn’t at all remember me from her youth. And why should she? We’d never socialized, moving as we did in very different circles.
“You’ll want to rest. Daniel won’t be up for a while, unless the door woke him. Your old room is ready. Or at least Daniel said it was your old room. I’d have put flowers in for you today if I’d known...”
I let the rest trail away, worried I’d sound offended by her early arrival.
“Oh, don’t worry about a thing. I’m sorry to take everyone by surprise, but...” She shrugged.
When I had the place to myself again I tidied up and breathed a sigh of relief. Just as well she had arrived unexpectedly; at least Daniel wouldn’t have time to get all tense about it. He’d been fussing about getting to the airport to greet her. That was when he wasn’t fretting she’d change her mind. I set off to the village and left them privacy for their meeting.
Those first days and weeks she prowled the house and grounds like a cat marking territory. She called her father by his name instead of Dad, or Daddy, or even Father. She sought out Mike, and when Daniel was resting she was out shadowing him at his work on the grounds. As a result he didn’t join Daniel and me for tea in the afternoon quite as much. It was especially nice outside now that summer was coming in. The backyard was full of birdsong. Daniel had me naming the birds we heard and he was getting quite good at identifying them. Most afternoons Jude joined us. Daniel was doing his best with her, but their relationship was cool; each of them tried too hard to stay away from touchy things. I missed what ease there had been between Daniel, Mike and me, as I couldn’t quite relax in Jude’s company. How could I have conceived of such a thing a few months ago? Me, missing time with Daniel? The truth was, he’d become a patient. As always, I felt a deep compassion for the struggles people had to come to terms with their own mortality.
At one of our afternoon teas, things changed between father and daughter. Jude poured the tea and handed around the cups. Daniel’s eyes had a bit of sparkle to them again. Only the fact that he kept his movements to a minimum showed his energy was not up to much. He worked on his writing less, too, but what he did brought a weary slackness to his face these days that eased after his rest.
“The garden is gone to wrack and ruin,” Jude observed.
“Isn’t Mike keeping it up? I thought he did a good job,” Daniel said.
“Oh, he does. The larger grounds are beautiful. Just the kitchen garden. It’s gone wild. Impossible to tell the difference between the herbs and weeds anymore.”
“Ah,” Daniel said. “Well, I haven’t been here a lot and with your mother gone, I thought Mike had enough to do without that.”
The wicker creaked as Daniel shifted in his chair. A crow took up admonishment from the roof.
“Jude, you know I’m dying,” Daniel said after he took a couple of sips of tea.
“Yes, I know. I do know.”
“You will inherit the house and land. I hope you and Matthew will live here.”
“What about Fran?” she asked. “I know you’ve declared her dead, but what if she turns up?”
“Let’s leave that aside for now. This place has been in your mother’s family for generations. She wouldn’t want to see it sold. That’s what this is about, right now.”
“I would never sell it, Daniel. You must know that. Never.”
It shocked me to think that Daniel thought his daughter would sell the estate.
“It needs to be lived in, Jude. It needs life.”
“Well, by your admission, it hasn’t had much for quite a while. Since Mother died and Fran left. So why do you worry about that now?”
“Well, now I think that was a bit of a mistake. It needs life. Spending time here and having you and Delia around shows me that. You and Matthew can raise children here.”
Jude got up and fiddled with the tea cozy, then offered us the pot. Her hand trembled as she poured into my cup.
“Matthew and I are divorced,” she said when she settled herself back in her chair. “We have been for a year.”
Daniel sighed. He stirred the spoon round and round, the faint scrape off the bottom of the cup and the caw of the crow the only sounds for a moment.
“I hoped you two would live here. Raise your children here. But that’s not for me to say. Think about making it your home. That’s all I ask.”
“My life is in Canada now. That’s where I live. I know nobody here. Well, now I know Delia, but not one other living soul. I never had any friends here. We were at boarding school. Besides, what would I do here?”
“You can do what you do over there. Your art. You can do it in comfort. You won’t need to keep a job, Jude. You’ll be well off, you know that.”
“And Fran?”
“Fran is not coming back. Even you must know that by now. It is unlikely I, at any rate, will ever know what happened to her. Or you, come to that. As far as the estate is concerned, she’s legally dead. It’s all up to you now.”
Jude frowned into her cup and remained silent. Daniel leaned across and touched her shoulder.
“Just think about it, Jude. Please. Think about it.”
“I don’t know how you can give up on your own daughter. I just don’t know what kind of father can do that. A piece of paper does not make her dead to me.”
With that statement she got up and went into the house. The crow on the roof gave one more loud caw, then flew off.
“Well,” Daniel said, “that didn’t go so well. She’ll come round. She will
. Don’t you think so?”
There was no answer to this, nor did he really expect one. For all their sakes I did hope they’d make peace on the matter, but then, not everything gets resolved the way we’d like it.
“Time will tell,” I said. “Time will tell.”
Tension ran between the two of them all the next week, though they both made an effort at cordiality. Tension rose in me too as the shadow of the past wound around us like a cobweb, preventing us from untangling ourselves. In the month since Jude had come Daniel had lost some ground, and the walls I’d built to keep the past locked away began to crumble. In spite of my efforts to shun the memory of the end of our affair and all that happened next, it rose to my mind until I began to think that despite the financial ease my work with him produced, being in such proximity to him was wearing on me. Jude’s still-raw distress at the loss of her sister was no help. As a result I didn’t linger after supper, and on my next day off I went up to Dublin to see Maggie.
All the way up on the bus I was full of wondering how I would find her. The whole business with Jude and Daniel reminded me that her condition had been going on for over twenty years, which seemed unbelievable. She was my older sister, who finished her university degree the year after she left the convent, in spite of my father’s grumblings. He was proud enough of her to put on his best suit and go with the rest of us to her graduation. “Where did she come from at all?” he asked a million times. She was the first of us to get a degree. She was brave, too. She stood by me during my troubles, and was to be my saviour, before everything went terribly wrong. At first it was just obsessive worry with her, then a fear of going out, then a withdrawal into some other world where she quickly lost the way back to normal. I was in Wales at the time and came back and forth as often as I could until it became clear poor Maggie couldn’t cope anymore. I took it upon myself to see that she was all right, taken care of. It was the very least I could do. If I hadn’t involved her in my mess perhaps she’d be healthy and happy today. This whole business between Daniel and Jude stirred me up, so a visit became urgent for me. I needed to see that she was as all right as it was possible for her to be.
As the past was so much on my mind, I had somehow expected a change in Maggie one way or the other. She was no better or worse than ever. She chattered no more nor less than usual and only asked me once if it was stormy out, but it was more a matter of conversation than the fearful dread with which she often asked me. She had a terrible fear of storms altogether. As I sat and she turned the pages of a magazine she never actually read, my agitation built. Bitter regret at my own part in how things turned out, and a renewed resentment of Daniel. I’d tried to make amends for my mistakes by taking on the care of the dying, and the irony of taking care of Daniel Wolfe made my head spin. For once I was eager to get away from Maggie, but home and Kiltilly didn’t seem such a refuge anymore.
7
Daniel spent the morning fretting about Jude and the estate. He wanted some assurance from her that she’d make the estate her home. I could have pointed out he’d hardly done that himself, but, determined to keep out of it all, I took off for Peggy’s and a bit of peace and quiet as soon as he went for his afternoon rest. Barely was my tea in front of me than Jude came in. She’d found an old bicycle in the shed out back and spent days cleaning, oiling and getting new tires for it. Now she took off every day for a ride, and here she was all red-cheeked with a light sheen of sweat on her forehead. I would have preferred my own company just then, but I couldn’t let her sit alone so I invited her to join me. Far from the spoiled daughter I had expected, she was very natural and basically a kind person, which she showed often in her care for Daniel, despite their differences.
“How’re you settling in?” I asked her.
“Oh, fine. Fine. You know, it’s strange being back. I haven’t been here for about fifteen years. It’s sure changed. More prosperous than I remember. And more modern. Look at this café.”
She was right. Change had arrived quickly with the prosperity of the 1980s.
“It’s still a small Irish village at heart, make no mistake,” I said.
I was thinking about how gossip could still ruin reputations, although it seemed that the youngsters these days didn’t care at all what was said about them.
“Yes, I like that it’s small and personal. I forgot what a place like this was. People ask after Daniel when I go into shops. It’s good.”
I smeared a piece of cream on my apple crumble and said nothing. She had either forgotten that the village had another, less charitable side. Or perhaps she was insulated against it by money and position. Whenever it got too close here, the likes of her could take off for a while to live somewhere else, escape the wagging tongues.
“Lots of visitors come out here now for a holiday. I don’t remember that.”
It was true. The harbour had been done up with a walking trail and the woods up on the hill at the north end of the village had a lovely lake that the county council had decided to exploit. It was a mixed blessing for Kiltilly. It brought prosperity but it also brought a restlessness to the youngsters. They were all eager for the cities now, rather than seeing it as a necessary migration as they did in my day. They had no interest in the local drama group and only went to the small local cinema in the bad winter weather, preferring to drink at the overhauled local pub if they stayed in the village. When I had to leave here for months in Wales I thought my heart would break. Away, I missed the farm, my parents, the soft turf-scented air. Nice as it was, Cardiff stifled me, although the circumstances I was in then didn’t help.
“The weekends are wicked. You can’t get in the door here then,” is all I said.
“It is strange being here, you know. It brings the past back. Mother’s death, Fran’s disappearance, it all seems so fresh again. To tell the truth, I find it a bit hard. Last week in the village I heard someone laugh and she sounded exactly like Fran. I can’t quite believe Daniel is so ready to believe she won’t ever come back.”
Fran wouldn’t ever come back. That was the truth, but I wasn’t going to have that discussion with Jude here and now. Never, really.
“It’s best to leave the past behind you.”
“So you keep saying. But it’s not so easy to do, is it?”
No, it wasn’t. If anyone should know that it was me. I’d done a good job of living in the here and now so far, yet these last few weeks I wondered if I could bear to work out my time with Daniel. The family’s pain at Fran’s loss was hard to bear. I’d not thought much about how the family coped with it, as I’d been away and my own desperation, my bitterness with Daniel, overshadowed everything. Maggie was going off the rails then too.
“No, it’s not easy to lose someone,” was all I said, as my own losses rose in my throat and blocked out any words of comfort I might have offered. The more time I spent with Jude and Daniel, the more whatever peace I’d gained over the years faded. I reminded myself that I was doing all of this for Maggie. Mam and Da too, but mostly for Maggie. One thing I was sure of: no matter the grief and anguish of the Wolfe family, my first responsibility was to protect my own. Once I’d believed in honour and love, but I’d learned my lesson. I owed nothing to the Wolfe family. Whatever guilt I carried I would deal with, I could bear.
8
At three o’clock most days Jude went off on her bicycle and Daniel gave in to fatigue. Each day he worked on his book for a couple of hours, then insisted on putting on a show for Jude, stayed up too long, talked too much, but he wasn’t really fooling anyone. Jude was clear about his condition, but she indulged him as best she could. She hadn’t brought up the issue of her sister lately, so although their relationship was not warm, it was smooth enough. They both pretended he was in better health than he was. Jude’s way of seeing he got rest was to go out on her own every day after the midday meal. Perhaps it restored her as well. She’d take off on her bicycle for hours. Once I as
ked her where she spent so much time.
“There’s a hill back of the road that overlooks the village. I used to go there with a book on fine days after Fran left for university and I was here alone. From there I can see the village laid out below.”
A small possessive resentment rose in me. That was my spot, mine and Maggie’s. I could hardly bear that it was hers too. Ridiculous, I knew, so I tried to let it go.
This high summer day after the cheery tring-tring of Jude’s bike bell died away, I helped Daniel upstairs to his room. A week ago he had been able to make it himself, but now he was so weak and slow I hovered behind him ready to steady him if necessary as he mounted the steps.
I helped him undress. So many hollows and bones on him. As I eased his shirt off his shoulders I remembered other days when I had undressed him, the delicious pleasure of paring him down to nakedness, my body’s throb in anticipation of what was to come. The memory took me by surprise. Earlier the two of us had been watching Jude and Mike chat by the old kitchen garden. As we watched she flicked something off his shoulder. Mike reached one arm up to a tree branch, perfectly posed to show off his body, strong from all the physical work he did. As a shaft of sunlight caught the two of them, picked up the soft flirt in Jude’s posture and the answer in Mike’s, I yearned for love. There had been a few fellows I’d walked out with over the years, but my responsibility for Maggie, together with my general lack of trust after Daniel ended things with me, kept me my own woman.
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