Left Unsaid

by Joan B. Flood

Mike put his arm around her. She shook him off, stood up and left the dining room. We sat and listened to her steps pound up the stairs.

  “Well,” Daniel said. “I have some explaining to do tomorrow, but tonight we will enjoy each other’s company.”

  Mike’s eyes caught mine. I gave a small shrug. Instinctively I’d known something had to happen in the house soon, but never dreamed it would be this night. Mike shoved his chair back.

  “Excuse me, folks. I’m just going to check...” he motioned to the ceiling with his finger.

  As soon as the door closed behind him everyone talked at once to restore some normalcy. Eventually, conversation settled on topics like the upcoming election, and gossip about people Oliver, Lil and Daniel knew. Iris leaned towards me and said quietly, “Should I go up to Jude or leave her to Mike?”

  “Leave her to Mike,” I responded. “I don’t think she’ll want to see you or me for the moment.”

  Iris gave me a peculiar look. We all settled in to eat our baked Alaska and make the most of what was left of the dinner without Jude or Mike. Oliver did his best to keep conversation going through the rest of dessert, but he didn’t get much help from the rest of us. Lil managed to keep whatever curiosity she had left to herself. It was a relief when Daniel admitted to exhaustion and his need to retire for the night.

  “So tell me about this child,” Daniel said.

  He was settled into bed, propped up by pillows. I smoothed the top of the sheet over the blankets.

  “I had a child. He died. What else is there to say?”

  “But you were to have an abortion. Isn’t that right?”

  “No. I was never going to do that. If you knew me at all you would know that. It’s not something I could do. I had a son. Our child.”

  “A boy?” he said, then let out a long breath and sank into his pillows.

  “A boy,” I said.

  “Tell me. Please tell me, Delia.”

  My son was born prematurely, by a month. Perhaps all the upset with Maggie and the uncertainty about what to do next affected me, or maybe it was merely bad luck. My blood pressure had soared. The doctor decided to induce. Michael John could have lived, perhaps; many babies did at thirty-two weeks; his chances were fair. He was a small baby to begin with, and as I lay back and waited to hear his first stuttering wail, I feared for him. I waited a long time.

  “Is he all right?” I asked.

  I raised my head and saw the doctor and two nurses’ backs as they worked together, voices low.

  “Is he all right?” I said, louder this time. I tried to get off the bed and go see them, but a nurse came and firmly pushed me back on the pillows.

  “Give us a minute now,” she said. “We’re not finished here yet.”

  As the final business and clean-up after birth took place I heard a small, weak wail.

  “There now,” one of the nurses said. She didn’t smile.

  That something was amiss was clear and became clearer as they didn’t bring me my son to hold. Instead the doctor came and sat on the edge of my bed.

  “He’s come early, so he is having a little trouble. He’s small.”

  “Can I hold him? I want to see him, at least.”

  The nurse wheeled an incubator towards the bed. My son lay there, his little chest filling up and collapsing like a balloon being inexpertly blown. The tubes attached to him looked bigger than he was.

  “Will he be all right?”

  “We have to wait and see. The birth wore him out. Stay optimistic. The two of you need a bit of rest.”

  “His colour is not good, not even with the oxygen,” I said.

  I reached into the incubator. His skin was so soft I felt the roughness of my own would shred it. I touched his hand. His fingers opened and closed on one of mine, the lightest of grips, a fairy’s touch, rather than the strong grip of a newborn.

  “We’ll do our best for him. We will,” the doctor said. “We need to get him to the nursery, now. You rest and we’ll talk later.”

  Later I sat in a hard chair in the nursery and held my son with all the tenderness I could muster while the hospital priest baptized him Michael John Buckley, after my father. That he would not survive was clear. He was detached from the tubes and weighed nothing in my arms. I inhaled his newborn scent, kissed his little head, smoothed the fine dark down that covered his skull and whispered love-nonsense to him. He stopped breathing about thirty minutes after the priest left. The nurse came to check on us but I wouldn’t let him go. She held me round the shoulders briefly and left us in peace for a while.

  We buried him, Adele and I, in the city graveyard.

  Later, on my final trip to Cardiff, I had a small headstone put on his grave with a triskele and his name and date of birth and death engraved on it. He had lived one day.

  It was not a wonder I lost the child in the end. At first it seemed like punishment for all my sins: Daniel, Ellen, Maggie. Maybe it was as the doctor told me, an unfortunate thing that happened.

  I shared none of these thoughts with Daniel.

  “I went away to Cardiff,” is what I told him. “I worked there. Said I was married and my husband died.”

  “Does your family know?”

  “No. I suppose I will tell them now. Or later. In any event, I don’t want them to hear it from anyone else.”

  “None of us will say a word.”

  He sounded so certain, but I was long ago finished with believing such assertions. No, I would tell Mam, and deal with whatever happened.

  “But what were you going to do? Give it up?”

  “It was he. Michael. He was not an it,” I said.

  “Of course, of course. Forgive me, I’m trying to get used to the idea. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  A burst of laughter came from the parlour, followed by the slam of the kitchen door.

  “What was the point? It’s past and gone, Daniel. Oh, I admit I resented you over the years, but I had my own part in it. One way or the other, it’s done.”

  “You could have told Iris this. She thinks you could be her mother, though she doesn’t say it.”

  “I told her I was not. The rest of it I considered my own business.”

  “I’m sorry, Delia, for it all. Sorry. I wish you had told me you would go on with the pregnancy. What did you intend to do afterwards?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Daniel,” I said, surprised to find that indeed, in that moment, it did not. “And I did tell you I couldn’t have an abortion. You simply didn’t want to know that.”

  “Well, now I have to face Jude in the morning.”

  He cupped his face in his hands, then dropped them to the bed.

  “Simply be honest with her, Daniel. She’s grown up now. She’s divorced herself, so she knows about human frailty.”

  “Human frailty indeed.”

  I gave him his evening meds, then wished him a goodnight.

  “Well, not much chance of that,” he said.

  28

  I dithered in the hallway outside his room trying to decide whether to go to my room or join the others for a drink in the parlour. Relieved that I didn’t have to lie about myself anymore, I knew there was still the matter of Iris to be dealt with. I was about to go back to talk to Daniel about that when Oliver came out of the kitchen with a bottle of wine in hand.

  “There you are. Is Daniel all settled in?” he said.

  I told him yes. We stood awkwardly there for a second or two.

  “Look, let’s take this bottle somewhere quiet and chat. There has to be somewhere we can hide out in this mansion.”

  The invitation brought to me how very tired I was, how much I needed a friend right then. Oliver was not exactly a friend, but he was the closest I had in the moment.

  “Has Jude come down? Or Mike?”

  “Not ye
t. Lil is bending Iris’s ear in the parlour. I’d be happy to miss that,” he said.

  “It’s a nice enough night. Let’s go sit outside.”

  We donned our coats and slipped out the back door with a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses. At the last moment I grabbed an old blanket from the box by the door. It was a fair night. There was no breeze, though the clouds moved, covering and uncovering stars as they passed. An owl hooted somewhere on the edge of the property.

  “Well, that was some dinner conversation,” Oliver said as we settled on the bench under the tree. I shrugged.

  “I wondered over the years about how you got along since I met you that time in Stephen’s Green. I’m sorry you lost the baby.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It all seems like such a long time ago, but at the same time it seems like yesterday. Meeting Daniel again and ending up nursing him was not in my plans.”

  “Ah, plans. They are the undoing of us, aren’t they?”

  I spread the blanket over both of our laps. Some nocturnal beast scurried in the bushes close by.

  “What about Iris?”

  “Oliver, how much of a scallywag was Daniel in his day? Other women, I mean.”

  Oliver shuffled his feet, the leather soles of his shoes scraping the small stones causing the rustle in the bushes to stop abruptly.

  “He liked to have a good time. I think you are the only one he was in any way serious about.”

  “Oh, Oliver, don’t. You don’t have to pretend. I don’t think he was serious about me at all. He’d never have left Ellen, would he?”

  “Probably not.”

  We sipped our wine and a tomcat’s yowl carried to us from outside the wall. It was, in a way, a relief to hear Oliver say out loud what I’d known and kept inside all along.

  “And Iris? Where does she come in?”

  I’d been over and over the conversations Adele and I had in Cardiff, searching for clues, for those little ways that we betray what we know.

  “I can’t say,” I replied.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “What were you, brought up by the Jesuits? It may be possible she’s Daniel’s daughter.”

  Oliver whistled. Then grew serious again.

  “Daniel is in a terrible state, isn’t he?”

  There was no point in denying it, so I didn’t. Oliver sighed. He poured us each more wine and we sipped in silence.

  “Well, I don’t suppose he’ll make the book launch. It makes me sad, Delia. I’ve known him a long, long time. If she is his daughter, he ought to know.”

  A protest rose to my lips, but I squashed it down.

  “It’s only a possibility. Jude thinks she’s Fran’s daughter,” I said.

  “Oh my, now there’s a twist. I never thought of that. I do think I see some light family resemblance, but it’s not strong. We’ve all met people who look like people they are not related to. Could she be Fran’s?”

  This was the easiest question anyone had asked me in weeks.

  “No. I’m certain she’s not. Fran would never stay away all these years on purpose. Jude wants it to be so, that’s all.”

  “Well, you sound sure of that at least.”

  “Oh, I am. Whether or not she’s Daniel’s child I don’t know, but I’d bet the farm on the fact that she’s not Fran’s.”

  29

  Oliver, Lil and I met in the kitchen for breakfast the next morning, Oliver and I somewhat the worse for wear. Lil bounced in, her energy making us wince as we sat over our plates of bacon and eggs.

  “Well, that was an interesting evening,” she said as she pulled an extra chair to the table.

  Nobody answered. She tucked into her bacon and eggs with gusto.

  “Anyone seen Jude today?” I asked.

  Nobody had, but she must have been here to lay out the breakfast things. Or perhaps Iris had. I wondered whether or not Mike had stayed upstairs with her. I was glad when it was time to sort Daniel out for the day. On the way to his room I ran into Iris coming down the stairs.

  “Have you seen Jude?”

  “No, not yet,” she said. “I knocked on her door but got no answer. I think she went away with Mike late last night. I’m not sure, but I think so. I was pretty drunk going to bed. I’ve a head on me today, I can tell you. That Lil talked my ear off and to save my hearing I had a few extra glasses of wine.”

  She hesitated, made to speak. Stopped herself.

  Before she could say anything about last night, I said: “Look, I’ve got a trip out to Curraghchase planned for tomorrow. It’s beautiful there, a lovely forest park, quite unspoiled. I’d like you to come. There’s someone I’d like you to meet. I remember how much you liked being out in the wilds after your mother died.”

  She looked astounded, and I suppose I couldn’t blame her. I had thought about how to extend the invitation, and blurting it out that morning was not what I had intended.

  “Sure. Yeah. Let’s do that. I’ve nothing on anyway and I’ve not been out there. I thought you’d be away to see Maggie on your day off.”

  “Ah, the Cork-Kilkenny hurling final is on at Croke Park. Dublin will be mental. A day in the country is exactly what I need. Clear my head after all this revelry.”

  “Is Jude up?” Daniel asked as soon I poked my nose into his room. I told him she was out, likely with Mike.

  “Well, I need to get up now anyway. I want to see Oliver and Lil before they go.”

  Despite the effort it was for him to get out of bed, he wouldn’t entertain at all the idea of visitors coming to his room. He leaned heavily on me as we made our way to the parlour.

  Lil and Oliver were there already. Lil was examining the photos on the mantel. Oliver put down the paper and took Daniel’s other arm, so I handed Daniel off to him and went to the kitchen. My head was still aching from too much wine, and my stomach was in knots at the idea of facing Jude whenever she turned up. I left them to it and went to get another cup of tea.

  Iris was in the kitchen clearing up after breakfast.

  “Any word from Jude yet?” I asked.

  “No. I guess she needs some time to absorb what she heard last night. I had no idea you and Daniel saw each other at one time. And I’m sorry you lost your son. I really am. I guess we should have minded our own business. It’s just that you were always so mysterious. Anyway, I had kind of hoped you were related to me, you know.”

  “Why, thank you, Iris.”

  God knows I’d given her no reason to hope that. I was so touched and surprised I almost forgot my worry about Jude and talking to Mam before she heard any gossip. Not that I thought anyone would deliberately spread the word, but in a small place like Kiltilly the very walls have ears.

  “Well, I suppose we should show our faces in the parlour to be polite,” Iris said.

  By noon Lil had left for Dublin and neither Jude nor Mike had shown up. Oliver kept Daniel engaged in conversation while Iris and I scoured the kitchen for the makings of lunch. We were all wilted and keyed up at the same time. It crossed my mind that unburdening myself of my own secrets hadn’t helped anything at all. I said as much to Iris.

  “Ah, it will. Jude will come around. She’s probably as desperately hungover as the rest of us, that’s all.”

  Daniel ate nothing. He sat like a rag in his chair and let us talk around him. He dropped off to sleep at one point, then woke after a few minutes with a start.

  “Is she back?” he asked.

  She wasn’t. I insisted he go to bed.

  “Wearing yourself out won’t make her come sooner than she’s ready,” I told him.

  She still wasn’t home when the relief nurse came. My nerves were jumping as I handed over to the nurse, said goodbye to Oliver, and left for my day off.

  30

  It was a lovely time of year to visit Curraghchase. The
trees were decked out in yellow, brown and orange and the paths echoed them, though a little soggy from recent rains. Iris was enchanted by the pair of swans that paddled up to the edge of the pond, wings up, eyes alert.

  “Iris, I haven’t been entirely truthful with you about your mother, or who I believe is your mother.”

  Iris wheeled around to face me and almost lost her footing and fell into the pond. I grabbed her arm to steady her. Bramblings and chaffinches tweeted and twittered nearby.

  “My mother?” she said finally.

  “Yes.”

  She looked out over the lake, then walked away a few steps, turned around and came back at me so fast I had to step aside so we didn’t collide.

  “You knew about my mother all along? And you said nothing?”

  “Let’s walk. There’s someone I want you to meet and we’ll be late. I’ll tell you what I can as we go.”

  Originally owned by the poet Sir Aubrey de Vere, Curraghchase was a calm and lovely place of forest, lakes, meadows. De Vere’s old mansion still stood and the steps up to it were a fine place to sit and talk privately. I had no illusions that this could turn out to be a very uncalm talk, and as nature always calms me, as it seemed to Iris, this place had come to mind. It was also almost certain that we could talk in complete privacy. We walked down a path patchworked with fallen leaves, the scent of damp decay in our noses, and a wonder of birdsong in our ears. I may as well have been on the moon for all the notice I took of it.

  Iris listened as I described meeting Adele on the ferry to Cardiff, how we forged our friendship out of loneliness and similar situations. I told her nothing of Daniel or Jimmy McCann. Yet.

  “Maggie was supposed to take my child and raise it as her own, but she got sick. Adele was such a great support to me then. We were still working out what to do when I had to be induced and my child, Michael, died. I’d never have got through it without Adele. And I was there for her when her child was born.”

  I’ve never been a smoker, yet for some reason I wished I had the excuse of lighting up just then. I could have done with the break, because the hard part of the story was coming.