Left Unsaid

by Joan B. Flood

  The seas were rough that evening on the ferry crossing to Holyhead as I went to take up my post in Cardiff in 1968. On the application form I claimed I was married. I had crossed out Miss and Mrs. on the forms, and put Ms., a form of address that was becoming popular. I said that I had kept my own name. Truthfully, I didn’t give much thought to the whole women’s lib thing, just grabbed onto this because it was convenient. Nobody asked me to prove I was married. I hoped word of my deception and condition would not get back to Kiltilly and my parents. It seemed unlikely they’d hear anything all the way from Cardiff.

  The crossing itself was only a couple of hours, and then would come the train ride to the city, which would take about twice as long.

  Maggie came to see me off.

  “Go on, get on board,” she urged me as I dallied on the shore. “You’ll be all right. You will. I can go to see you and you can come here, like we planned.”

  Leaving was hard. I had no desire to live anywhere but where I did. A holiday away somewhere now and again, then home to Ireland suited me just fine. It was Kiltilly I loved. When Daniel and I were first seeing each other he wanted me to get a job in Dublin. I knew from experience that the bustle and noise, the constant traffic, the glitter of shops after dark, the anonymity of the city appealed to me for only a few days. Then pictures of home, the light over the fields, the birds calling from the hedges, the fox I’d see trot across our yard in the early morning, all these things would call me and I’d feel the urge to get back.

  “It’s not forever,” I said to Maggie just before I walked on board. “Is it?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  We hugged, then she gave me a little push forward. I turned on the gangway and she waved me on. By the time I got a spot at the railing on deck she was gone. As the ferry pulled away from the dock and the shore receded it seemed that I had my own anchor points to the land that stretched thin and gave me a physical ache. Had it been possible I would have jumped ship and made my way back. Sobs rose in my throat. It’s not forever, I reminded myself.

  As luck would have it, Adele Sweeney was on the ferry. Adele and I had been to secondary school together in Limerick. We’d sat together in our last year because, by the time I got to class that first day, the seat at her desk was the only one available. She had a glint of mischief in her eye back then and it was still there. She was a slight woman, and her natural blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail that reached halfway down her back. Last I’d heard she’d got a good job in a bank in Wexford. Before I could decide how to evade her, she spotted me.

  “Delia Buckley,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “No. I didn’t expect to see you either.”

  “Come here, sit with me. We can shorten the journey together.”

  She patted the seat beside her. I squeezed past the elderly man on the outside.

  “You going over for a bit of a holiday?” she asked.

  I told her I was going to the hospital to work in the hospice ward. “Yourself?” I said.

  “Oh, I’ve been away to Cardiff for the last few months. I just came back to meet Leigh for the weekend. You remember my sister Leigh?”

  I did indeed remember her sister. We had all been at the same secondary school, although Leigh was a couple of years ahead of me.

  As it got into the Irish Sea the ferry rolled and pitched on the swell. Adele complained that the rough seas made her queasy.

  “Go up on deck,” the man nearby told us. “It’ll be cold, but the air will help. Keep yez eyes on the horizon if yez can see it. Ye’ll be fine.”

  We took his advice. Night had fallen. We watched the stars duck in and out of the clouds and their light pick up the foam kicked up from the ferry’s wake that stretched away into the dark.

  “I’ve turned out as predicted, unmarried and up the duff, nice job in a bank or not.” She patted her belly with a sigh. I saw the barely noticeable soft swell of pregnancy. I couldn’t think of a word to say.

  “I’ve shocked you,” Adele said.

  “No, I’m surprised, that’s all.”

  “Not nearly as surprised as I am. I was on the bloody pill, you know. The shite of a doctor didn’t tell me I had to be careful for a while. Mind you, now that a baby’s on the way, I find I’m quite happy about it. That surprised me too.”

  A dozen questions whirled around in my head, much too fast to sort them out, never mind ask. Her easy acceptance brought to mind how happy I was about being pregnant when I thought Daniel and I would marry. Embarrassed, yes, shamed to tell my mother because it would mortify her, but about the child I was happy. I had lost that in my worry since things went wrong.

  “What are you going to do?”

  The question just slipped out, but Adele didn’t seem to mind.

  “Oh, I’m going to have it and keep it. That’s what I want to do. Leigh arranged for me to stay in Cardiff for a while with a friend of hers. I have a plan.”

  The sound of drunken singing wafted out when someone opened a door and came out on deck. The man stood along the railing from us and the flash of a lit match flared, followed by the smell of cigarette smoke. Adele watched the tip of his smoke glow and fade.

  “God, I could murder a fag, but I gave ’em up. They made me sick as a dog after I got pregnant. Still miss ’em though,” Adele said.

  We shifted ourselves along the deck away from the smoker.

  “Didn’t the father stand by you?”

  It was a nosey question all right, but somehow the intimacy of the dark and the strange isolation of being on the ferry overcame any polite reticence I had. Besides, she was the first person I’d met in a situation similar to mine.

  Adele’d got mixed up with a guy who didn’t treat her well. She left him after a few months. He wanted her back.

  “He was tormenting me. Called me at work all day long, turned up everywhere. He said he’d always find me no matter where I went. I didn’t believe him. I took a transfer to Dublin to try to shake him off. I met a handsome charmer there, Daniel. From out your way, I think. A real gentleman, as it turned out. We had a bit of a fling. Then Jimmy found me again. He’d tracked me down, just like he said he would. He got me evicted because he broke down my door with an axe. Threatened to kill me if he caught me with another man. He would, too, he was that mean.”

  For a second or two the name didn’t register, and as soon as it did my heart gave a terrible lurch. I covered my distress with a claim to needing to get inside out of the cold. By now most people were attempting to grab a nap. A few drunken young fellows tried to raise a song in one corner. Their energy ran out and they quieted down after a ragged few bars.

  “So why Cardiff?” I asked when we were settled.

  “Leigh found me a safe place to stay outside Dublin. It was temporary and I knew Jimmy would find me again. So she arranged for me to go to Cardiff. She’s got a friend there, you remember Margaret Butler? Peg, we called her? She’s going to help me. Then I ran into Daniel again, right there on Grafton Street. He bought me lunch and I told him about leaving because of Jimmy, and that I was pregnant. Thank God Daniel is rich as well as a gentleman. He gave me a big cheque to help me out, and the name of some doctor in London if I wanted to get rid of it. I didn’t want to, though. I’m using the money to set myself up somewhere safe.”

  I tried to keep calm while my mind grappled with the idea of two Daniels, two stories of a cheque and a doctor in London. Ellen’s words came back to me like a lash: It’s not his first affair and it won’t be his last.

  “You won’t tell a soul where I am, will you? Promise me.” She grabbed my sleeve and pulled on it. Her voice had a rough break of panic.

  “Promise me,” she said again. “Jimmy McCann really is a bad lot, and I’m terrified he’ll find me again. I don’t want him to know anything about me or that I’m expecting.”

 
; I gave her my solemn promise. She would hide from him; the whole thing was a bit scary, she said, but not as scary as Jimmy McCann.

  “I can’t tell you about it. I just don’t want any way for Jimmy to find out. Bastard. He’s made me afraid of my own shadow.”

  “I promise I won’t say a word to anyone.”

  In part to distract and calm her, in part because I really wanted to know, I said, “Tell me about Daniel.”

  “Oh, he’s older than me. Lives outside Limerick. Out your way. He’s a writer, married. Like I said, it was a weekend fling, really, but we stayed friends. He presumed the baby is Jimmy’s and indeed it could be, for all I know. It doesn’t matter to me; I don’t want either of them involved one way or the other. I’m getting out for good. I’m a bit gutted because I won’t be going back home again after this trip.”

  “How far along are you?”

  She rummaged in her purse and took out a package of mints. Her fingers worried the foil, grabbing at and missing the tab. I took one when she offered.

  “Four months. Well, four and a half, really.”

  I had to tense every muscle to hide the shaking that came over me. I wanted to scratch Adele’s eyes right out of her head. If Daniel were here I’d have gutted him right and proper. Adele asked me again to swear I would tell nobody what she’d told me.

  “Jimmy’ll never leave me alone if he finds out about the baby. He should never be within a hundred miles of a child. If I tell him it’s not his, God knows what he’ll do.”

  Not a word would pass my lips, I promised her.

  The ferry was approaching the dock. We busied ourselves with our suitcases. The distraction gave me time to gather my wits at least a bit. Torn between the need to hear more and the need to get away, I went to the washroom. I sat on the toilet and I stifled the urge to throw up.

  “It’ll be great to have company on the train,” Adele said when I rejoined her.

  Appalled at the prospect of another four hours or so with Adele, I couldn’t come up with a plausible excuse to go my own way. And there were questions, things I wanted to know, now that I was absorbing the shock.

  The carriage was hot and stuffy. Adele opened the window but it opened only about an inch and didn’t do much to cool us. Finally I had to remove my coat. Adele eyed me up a moment.

  “What about yourself?” she asked me, nodding at my belly.

  It was a relief to admit it, so I nodded.

  “The same as yourself, “ I said. “Oh, I was stupid. Just stupid. A married man. You know the old, old story.”

  She sighed and patted my arm.

  “I suppose he’s vanished now, back to the arms of his loving wife. We’re fools, aren’t we? But that’s life. You’re keeping yours too?”

  “Yes.”

  It wasn’t a lie, really, I told myself fiercely. I was really keeping the baby. She didn’t press me about the father.

  “Well, I have to ask. So does your family know? Does the hospital in Cardiff know you’re not married?” she asked.

  “No, and no. Maggie knows. That’s all. I said I was married and pregnant on my application to the hospital.”

  She laughed when I told her about how I filled out the forms.

  “Tell them he died in a car crash. That’ll get you off the hook. Nobody will ask you a lot of questions then. If anyone gets nosey, sniffle into a handkerchief and they’ll leave you alone.”

  We left each other at the station in Cardiff with vague promises to keep in touch. We didn’t exchange addresses.

  Cardiff was a godsend. The end-of-life care unit was growing and the wards were busy. There were endless meetings to discuss how new protocols were going, and endless chats with relatives who came in, nervous and glad of a more open approach to extreme illness and dying. We had a slightly larger staff, because if no relatives were available we took turns ourselves sitting with the dying.

  The small flat I managed to get was close enough to the hospital that I could walk there. It was fully furnished and comfortable enough for the months I’d be there. As I settled into the work, my initial panic at my situation died down. I knitted some baby things, including several pairs of bootees. City living didn’t really suit me. I missed Kiltilly sorely. Daniel never tried to contact me again. I was now under no other illusion but that the money he gave me was a bribe, a sop to his own conscience. Sometimes on days off I rented a car and went driving out into the lovely Welsh countryside to ease my longing for the open fields and hills around my home.

  Too restless to settle into the flat when work was done for the day, I walked the city. The rhythm and the outdoors eased my brooding. I walked aimlessly, sometimes mulling over the events of the day on the ward, sometimes dreaming of my life before Daniel, sometimes of life after my child would be born. I wondered whether the child Adele carried was a half-sister or -brother to my own. In some ways meeting Adele had given me a gift. I didn’t long for Daniel anymore. I didn’t even think about him much. It wasn’t until much later, after all the horrors, that I came to hate him, and feel that he had robbed me of my future.

  One evening as I strolled through some of the back streets of Cardiff close to the poorer area of the city, the smell of vinegar from a takeaway fish-and-chip shop caught my nose. The whiff went straight from nose to stomach, and from there it took up residence in the very cells of my body, so that for the next few months I simply could not resist the sharp, greasy odour. On every walk from then on I simply had to have fish and chips drowned in malt vinegar. Sometimes I got them wrapped in newspaper and ate them as I strolled, sometimes I sat on a bench and fed a stray chip now and again to the pigeons. If the weather was foul I stayed in the chippy and ate there.

  One evening in early March I was in one such chippy. It was a small place with just three round tables and a few battered chairs. People used the tables to wait for their order rather than to eat, but my feet were tired so I was having a sit-down supper that evening. I had just started my feast when the door opened and in walked Lesley, who worked the ward with me. She was with two other women. Mortified, I realized one of those women was Peg Butler from back home. She had been to school with my sister Maggie. I slunk down in my seat, hoping the three would not notice me. That was a wild hope, because I was the only person there besides the man behind the counter and the cook in the back. Lesley spotted me right away and came over.

  “So this is where you hide out. Trust you to find the best chippy in the city.”

  She introduced me to the other two.

  “God, Delia, it’s a small world, isn’t it? I had no idea you were here,” Peg said.

  She gave me a wink behind the backs of the other two. The three of them decided to join me at the table. At almost six months it was impossible to hide my condition. Desperate with embarrassment of being caught out by someone from home I mumbled some answer. I gathered by her wink that Adele had said something about me, but she was not about to give anything away to these two.

  “How do you two know each other?” Lesley asked.

  “We come from the same area,” I said. “My sister was in the same class as her sister in secondary school.”

  “I thought you came from different places altogether.”

  I wanted to slap Lesley or tell her to shut up, or both. Peg saved me from doing either.

  “Oh, Delia and her sister came in to the secondary school in the city. My friend Adele was in Delia’s class and her sister was in mine. Right, Delia?”

  I nodded agreement. Confidence that she wouldn’t say anything to embarrass me grew and I relaxed a bit.

  “I’m sorry to hear your husband died,” she said next.

  I nearly died on the spot myself. A flush rose up so that my face was hot enough to fry an egg on. I looked at her, sure I would find her mocking me, but her eyes met mine, cool as a cucumber. I muttered thanks.

 
; “I didn’t know your husband died. I’m so sorry,” Lesley said. “You should have said.”

  “Ah, leave her alone. She’s here to get away from all that. Adele is here, too,” Peg said to me. “She’s staying with me for a while. You two should get together. She’s expecting too. You can exchange notes. She’s a bit lonely, I think.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was exchange notes with anyone about anything at all, let alone Adele Sweeney. However, I was grateful Peg wasn’t giving anything away about me. In the end, the three of us walked back a ways together, then went our separate ways home. Peg said she’d get Adele to get in touch, and I prayed she never would.

  A fox barked out in the grounds, a short, almost enquiring sound that startled me out of the past. A lighter blue was creeping over the eastern sky and I was chilled to the bone. Iris would arrive by evening, and whatever she brought with her I would have to face one way or the other. Given her quest, it seemed mean-spirited to have withheld all that I could have told her. To tell it, however, meant giving away secrets I’d sworn to keep and opening the past I’d closed and sealed with as much resentment of Daniel as I could muster.

  19

  Jude drove in to pick Iris up at the train station in Limerick, with strict instructions from Daniel to have Iris say not a word about her trip until everyone was together.

  He was not having a good day. He was clearly exhausted, and I asked him several times whether or not he was in pain. He said no. Perhaps he too had had a sleepless night. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He made no mention of our conversation of the day before about his death, and I had no desire to talk about it this day. Iris’s return stirred up my worries at what she might have discovered in Wales, and I was almost equally divided between wanting to know all about her trip and an urgent desire to be anywhere else on earth except in the company of Iris and the Wolfe family. This resulted in a renewed if unreasonable resentment of Daniel because I had to stay to see that he was taken care of.