“Do you think she’s found what she’s been looking for?” he asked me at least ten times that afternoon. It was a relief when he went to rest, and God forgive me, I was tempted to give him a sedative, just to keep him from agitating me. I did nothing of the kind, of course, but it rattled me that the thought crossed my mind.
Jude and Iris arrived just after five o’clock. Daniel was up and dressed again, the two of us installed in the parlour. He had been pretending to read the newspaper as he sipped a small Scotch, and I was pretending to read a book, as my brain hopped and jumped around from one thing to another, my ear cocked for the sound of the car engine. As it turned out, I didn’t hear the car at all. The two of us, Daniel and I, jumped when Jude’s key rattled the lock.
“We’re back,” she called out.
Daniel tried to get up to meet them, but I insisted he remain seated and went out to the hallway. In truth, I wanted to get some notion of their mood in an attempt to shield myself against whatever was to come, but all I found was the fuss of their arrival.
“I’ve asked Iris to stay here,” Jude said as she heaved Iris’s suitcase into the hall. “No point in her paying for that cottage when we have so much room here. I’ve missed her so much.”
I had to close my mouth on the protest that sat on my tongue. It would be well for me to remember this was not my house and I had no say in who came and went or stayed.
“Come in, come in,” Daniel called from the parlour.
Finally drinks were distributed and we settled in, ready to hear Iris’s adventures.
“Well, how did it go?” Daniel asked.
“Not as I expected,” Iris said. “Not at all.”
She had met with one of the administrators there, Michael Ledwith, who I’d never heard of, which was a relief, though no surprise after such a long time. He had a file ready when they met, with photos. He showed her one of a group of nurses.
“He pointed to one, and told me that was Sister Margaret Butler. She had left the hospital and gone to Australia in 1968. She came from Limerick.”
“Oh, you found information about your mother,” Daniel said, beaming.
“No. No. The photo was not my mother at all. It was nothing like her. She was a bigger build than my mother, with very dark and very curly hair. My mum was nothing like that. And she was the only Margaret Butler that worked there during that time.”
Michael Ledwith had shown her a second photograph of Margaret Butler. In this one she was on her own, a formal portrait in which she wore her Sister’s cap and badge.
“It was definitely not my mother,” Iris said, “unless my mother lied about me being her natural daughter. But we looked too much alike for that.”
Jude reached out and held Iris’s hand. A tear made its way out of Iris’s eye and down the side of her nose. She sniffed it away.
“It was so awfully disappointing. Terribly so,” she said. “When Michael said Limerick, I was so sure I had found traces of her in Cardiff. Look, I got a copy of those two pictures.”
She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and drew a brown envelope out of her bag. She passed the first photograph to Jude, who examined it and passed it on. When it got to me, I looked into the pretty face of Maggie Butler, who had indeed gone to Australia in the winter of 1968. I passed it back to Iris without comment.
“Look here,” she said. “I think this is you, Delia, isn’t it?”
She handed me the second photograph. Shocked, I took it, but my mind wouldn’t take it in. I could see nothing that made sense at all. Gradually I calmed down and was relieved to see that it was a group picture where I was in the back row, my body concealed by two rows of nurses in front of me.
“Yes,” I said. “It is. I worked there for a while. It’s where I got into palliative care.”
“When did you do that? I didn’t know,” Daniel said.
All three heads were turned in my direction. I looked at each one in turn and took a long sip of my drink. I licked the taste of Scotch off my lips.
“No reason you should, “ I said to Daniel. “1968.”
Daniel’s eyebrows rose, then descended again into a frown.
“Did you know Margaret Butler?” Iris broke the silence that seemed to go on forever.
“Yes, I knew her. She was in my sister’s class in secondary school. Then I ran into her again in Cardiff.”
Iris’s eyes lit with hope. Happy to tell her the truth about this at least, I tried to soften my tone.
“Believe me, Iris, she was not your mother. Not at all. You know that yourself. She went to work in Australia in 1968, just as that man told you. See, there she is in the front row, quite unpregnant. This photo was taken about a week before she left. And I knew no other Margaret Butler at the hospital.”
“Oh.”
The sound was small and disappointed and it cut me to the heart. I didn’t want the complication of Iris in my life. Not at all. Still, I felt real pity for her at that moment.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I don’t know where I can look next, how I can ever find out who my family is. Who I am.”
Jude handed her a tissue, then put her arm around her. “We will be your family, won’t we, Daniel?” she said.
“Of course, of course. Look on us as family. You must,” he said.
“How long were you in Cardiff?” Daniel asked me when we were alone.
“A few months only.”
It is fair to say I wasn’t terribly surprised that he asked and I was glad he had waited until we were alone to broach the matter.
“Hmmf. And you knew this Margaret Butler Iris is talking about?”
“I did.”
“Well? Could she be Iris’s mother somehow?”
“Daniel, how could she be? I was at her going-away party the night she left for Australia. It was the first week of June and if she was about to give birth, then she’s the first woman in history that did it without gaining an ounce or changing her waistline. Besides, Iris knows her mother. She told us that. She didn’t recognize this Margaret Butler.”
Daniel gave me a sideways glance, then took the pills and glass of water I offered him. He swallowed them down and put the glass back on the bedside table.
“No need to be sarcastic. I’m just asking,” he said.
“And I’m just telling you. Besides, as I said before, Butler could be her mother’s married name. She’s looking for a needle in a haystack. Now, is there anything else you need?”
He shook his head no and I could feel his eyes boring into my back as I left the room.
I went to make a cup of tea. Exhaustion dragged at me, and I was looking forward to the quiet and privacy of my room. Iris was alone at the kitchen table writing in her notebook. Perhaps because I was tired to the bone, perhaps because I was feeling contrary, I asked her what I’d wanted to know for weeks.
“So, Iris, you’ll be going back to Scotland then?”
“Oh, I promised Jude I’d stay a while. Help out in the garden and keep her company. I think she’s lonely as well as sad about Daniel.”
“Well, you should be with young people, people your own age. Hanging around us here can’t be very cheerful for you.”
“What has age got to do with it? Can’t you be friends with people of any age? I have fun here with Daniel, too. I love beating him at poker.”
I wanted to slap her with a wet rag, but I said nothing. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. Relenting a bit, I told her again I was sorry her trip didn’t yield anything useful. She shrugged.
“I so hoped to at least get a lead. It was hard to have nothing at the end. I don’t even know now if my mother was ever in Cardiff. There was no birth recorded for Iris Butler there either. She had those nursing certificates, but I don’t know if she was a nurse. I don’t know what to believe. “
“Yo
u know, Iris, your mother probably had a very good reason to do what she did. You must believe that,” I said. “Best to let it go now, and get on with your life.”
She sighed and tapped her cheek with her fingers.
“I suppose so. Daniel seems so much frailer than when I left and I was only gone a few days. He reminds me of how Mum was at the end. Is he failing fast, Delia?”
“He is, Iris. That’s the truth. Nobody knows how long anyone will live but I’d bet he hasn’t long at all. This dinner he’s so keen on having will definitely be the last social thing of its kind he will have. You can count on that.”
“Maybe I’ll do what Jude asked me to and stay until he’s gone. I want to anyway. I’ve grown quite fond of him. Besides, what is there for me to go back to?”
I put a cup of tea on the table in front of her. She heaped some sugar into it. The spoon scraped the cup as she stirred and stirred.
“You’ll build your life again,” I told her. “In time, you’ll be fine. And you have your house waiting for you. And you have a new friend in Jude. So that’s something, isn’t it?”
She nodded, gave a little smile and said, “It is. Yes. It is. She’s like the sister I never had, really. I think we’ll be friends always.”
Nice one, I told myself as I got ready for bed. That didn’t go the way I wanted at all. I was losing myself in all this mess, one minute wanting to throttle folk, the next feeling sympathy for them. Tomorrow I’d arrange for another nurse to take over so I could have time off. I needed to get away and sort myself out for my own sanity.
20
“At least it’s not raining today,” Jude said.
She was driving in to Limerick so I took the opportunity of a lift. A watery sunshine had just broken out after days of low cloud and rain. My spirits lightened with the sky and distance from the Big House. A whole day lay before me with no obligations at all and nothing to remind me of lost sisters, mothers and a dying ex-lover. Jude and I would part company in Limerick and I would make my own way back in time to relieve the nurse for the evening.
“How is your sister doing?”
Jude’s question jolted me out of my daydream.
“She’s much as always. Mam is going up to see her in a couple of days.”
“It must be so hard on you all. Was she always ill?”
How many times had Mam and I considered this as we searched our memories for past signs of strangeness in Maggie? Apart from the time she was turned out of the convent for “instability,” there was nothing to put our fingers on. But then who knows how any of us will react to a bad turn in our fortunes?
“No. She was upset by something. So the doctors think. She has withdrawn from the world, that’s the best way to describe it.”
“It’s like you lost a sister too, then, if in a different way. I’m so sorry. I’ve been trying to accept that Fran is gone, but it’s so hard. We were so close. I miss her every day. Every day.”
We drove in silence for a while, and I tried to quiet the agitation that was building in me. The road ahead blurred and for a terrible moment I fancied I was driving through the Welsh countryside all those years ago. Jude pulled up at a stop sign and I came back to the present. The car moved across the intersection. Desperate to get Jude off the subject of her sister, I grasped the first topic that came to mind.
“How’re you and Mike getting along? Seems to be going well.”
Jude beamed. “Oh, it is. He’s such a lovely guy. I’m going into the city today to get some art supplies. I’m going to draw him at work. It’ll be great to get back to art again. I’m going to set up a studio in the spare back bedroom. I’ve been clearing it out.”
“So you’ll be staying a while then,” I said.
“Seems so.”
We both laughed.
“The house is so awfully gloomy though. I’ve never felt quite comfortable there, not even when I was a child,” she said.
We were on the last stretch of straight road before the outskirts of the city. The morning commuters had gone and the shoppers and trade vans were not yet clogging it up.
“You can change it to suit yourself so you can,” I told her. “Completely redo it if you’d like. It’s a good solid house with lovely grounds.”
“I suppose so. Some nice paint and lighter furniture would help. But it seems a transgression. It’s been the same my whole life.”
“Well, you’ve made a start clearing out a studio for yourself.”
A small frown was her only response to that. We reached the first of the city traffic and there wasn’t much opportunity to say more.
In the end, I returned to Kiltilly early. I’d window-shopped and enjoyed a nice lunch in the city. I’d sat in the People’s Park and watched a small child chase birds and tumble in the grass. The sun was warm, the breeze cool, and together they restored some peace of mind. I picked up a copy of the Limerick Press to read on the bus and a fresh cream sponge cake, Da’s favourite, and decided to go back early to visit with himself and Mam.
The trees were already turning and a light scatter of leaves lay on the edge of the road. Surprised that signs of the new season had sneaked up on me, I shuffled my toes through the brown and yellow leaves, some still soggy from the rains of the past few days. They didn’t yet have the deep musty scent of autumn, and enough green leaves still hung with the others to form a light canopy. The sight of our farmhouse cheered me, and I stepped more lightly on the last quarter mile.
Da was burning rubbish in a tin drum out behind the barn. He watched the smoke rise and swirl in the breeze before dissipating. He wore an old jacket that seemed much too big for him. His thinning hair spiked up in wisps in the heat from the fire. He turned and saw me.
“Delia, I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I brought your favourite.”
I waved the cake box before him. He leaned over the barrel and poked the contents with a piece of metal. Sparks flew into the air.
We walked into the kitchen together. I put the kettle on the stove and put out plates and mugs while he washed his hands and dried them on the rough worn towel that Mam kept there for his hands after hard work. He sat at the table and watched me go back and forth getting the tea. I put a generous slice of cake in front of him.
“Are they treating you well up there in the Big House?”
“Of course they are. Jude isn’t as good a cook as Mam, mind.”
“Aye, her cooking’s hard to beat.”
“Where is she?”
He took a bite out of his slice, wiped cream from the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You look a bit peaky, girl. That’s all. Didn’t you get her message?” he said when he’d swallowed a gulp of tea.
“No. What message?”
“It’s about Maggie. She’s in hospital. Had her appendix out this morning. I drove your mother up but I didn’t stay long because of the milking. Maggie’s fine.”
“Did you see her?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. But she was sedated so I didn’t stay longer than to be sure your mother was all right. We booked a hotel for her for the night. She’ll phone you later and let you know how things are going. Everything is fine. Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”
Maggie would not like being in an unfamiliar place so I was glad Mam was with her. Jude’s words about losing a sister came to mind as I walked back to the Big House. In those early days I certainly felt I’d lost my sister.
Maggie’s decline started with her extreme dislike of going outside. She had a hundred excuses to stay at home.
“Let’s just stay in,” she’d say when I came to visit.
After the ferry trip I was always restless and wanted to set out on a walk. The need to smell the turf smoke that seemed forever in the air, to walk in Stephen’s Green and take in as much of the country as I could before I ha
d to go back to what I thought of as exile, took hold of me as soon as I landed off the ferry. But Maggie would not be persuaded out.
“What are you afraid of?” I’d ask. “You know it’s all right. Nobody will bother us.”
“You never know,” she’d say. “There’s always someone around watching. Always. You know what it’s like here.”
Nothing I said would reassure her. Only talk of the baby calmed her down. She would touch my bump. Each time she felt movement she got as excited as if it was the first time, as if she’d never felt it before.
“Do you think he can hear us? Do you think he knows when it’s you and when it’s me talking and touching?” she’d ask.
“Who says it’s he?”
“Well, he or she. It doesn’t matter, I can’t call it “it” all the time.”
In the end we named the wriggling child “Wogum,” which is what I called worms when I was learning to talk. Once, desperate to get out of the house, I asked Maggie to come shopping for baby things. She wouldn’t be persuaded.
“You know you’ll have to take Wogum for walks, buy groceries, go to medical check-ups once you’re a mother,” I told her.
She remained unmoved.
“Time enough then. Look, I go to work all week, I just want to stay home and enjoy my place, okay?” she said.
And it was almost okay until the day I got the phone call from her work to say she hadn’t been in all week and no-one had been able to reach her. My first impulse was to call Mam and ask her to check up on Maggie, but then I’d have to admit to being in Ireland about once a month and not telling them or calling down to see them. Instead I booked a few days off and got on the ferry once more.
It came back to me, like I was reliving the time I came home to see what was going on with Maggie, the time I realized she was losing her mind, the moment that I could no longer believe she’d come round, return to herself, that I would allow her to be the mother to the baby, the time I had to call an ambulance and commit her to care from where she never truly returned. So many times back then I went over and over it in my mind. In the end I had to consciously banish the whole thing so I wouldn’t go mad myself. On my walk back to the village the state I found Maggie in that day came back to me as vividly as when I walked into her flat.
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