Left Unsaid

by Joan B. Flood

  “Adele was afraid of a man she’d been going out with in Ireland before. He was a violent and terrible man who stalked her. She wanted to be sure he would never find her and especially that he should know nothing about her child. She wanted to protect herself and her child. Her sister put her in touch with a friend, Margaret Butler, who was about to immigrate to Australia. Peg Butler had no intention of coming back to Ireland, so we got her UK identification, including her National Insurance Number, and when Peg left, Adele became Maggie Butler and moved away with her baby. She told nobody where she went.”

  “Your friend Adele is my mother?”

  “I believe so. You have similar eyes to hers.”

  Iris took a few deep breaths. A pair of mallards skimmed the treetops, and blackbirds’ yellow beaks glinted from the bushes as we passed.

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “I’m not certain sure. It’s likely. We agreed that if anything happened to her while you were small she would send me word. She wanted me to look out for you, keep you safe if she couldn’t. I never expected you to turn up a grown woman.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why?”

  Shame made me cringe. All Adele and I went through filled me with sadness. We lived in an unfortunate time and did the best we could within it. Twenty-two years later the world had changed, and our choices might seem quaint and shameful. Mam was right. We were indeed second-class citizens with a list of rules that allowed no error if we were to keep our good name, and our good name meant more than behaving decently.

  “It was complicated for me, Iris. That’s all I can say. And I did want to keep my promise to your mother to keep you safe.”

  “Safe? How was I not safe?”

  The house came into view atop the hill. A figure in a bright blue coat paced the courtyard dwarfed by the edifice. I steered us in that direction.

  “Adele believed the man she ran from would harm her and possibly you. She wanted to keep him well away from you. Iris, I’m taking you to meet someone. If Adele is your mother, Leigh is your aunt.” I gestured toward the figure on the steps.

  “My aunt? I can’t take this in.”

  She grabbed her head, her eyes wide, and exhaled a long, loud breath. We approached the base of the steps. I waved at Leigh, who waved back, then began to descend the steps.

  “I think I’m angry,” Iris said.

  She stopped walking. I thought she was going to run away, so I took her arm and moved her forward. Leigh met us halfway down the steps.

  “Iris, this is Leigh, Adele’s sister. Leigh, I do believe this is Adele’s daughter.”

  They hesitated as they took each other in. Their curiosity made them reserved. After they said their hellos we walked back up and sat on the low wall. When I phoned Leigh after my evening on the hill I had told her the gist of things and arranged this meeting.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” Leigh said.

  After some awkward chat she took out the photos she’d brought of Adele.

  “Look at these, pet. Is this your mam?” Leigh offered the photos.

  Iris reached out to take them, then put her hands back on her lap, knotting her fingers.

  “Iris?” I said.

  “I’m afraid it won’t be her,” she said quietly.

  Leigh took Iris’s hand and put the photos in them.

  “Only one way to know, pet,” she said. “Isn’t knowing better than not knowing?”

  Iris held the photos a moment, then turned over first one, then the next, until she’d seen all three. She nodded without raising her head.

  “Yes. It’s her. It’s my mum.”

  They talked until the evening chill set in, Leigh naming aunties and uncles, cousins, grandmothers and grandfathers alive and dead. Iris told stories of growing up and her life with Adele. Tears were shed at the loss of Adele and the lost years that lay between them. By the time their talk ran down I was chilled practically to the bone. There was one more thing I had to do before we turned for home.

  “Iris, I have something else for you here, now I know for sure it’s you.”

  Having no idea what I would say to her if she asked about her father, yet determined I would tell no more lies, I handed her a folded paper. I waited as she unfolded the copy of her long-form birth certificate. The real one that registered her actual birth in Cardiff, showing her name as Iris Sweeney.

  “But, I have a short-form birth certificate in my name. I mean Iris Butler. How can there be two?” Iris was even more confused that she had been earlier.

  “That’s a fake. I have no idea how Adele pulled that off, but it is a fake. We had someone make it so Jimmy couldn’t trace Adele at all. If anyone official examined it closely, you’d be done for.”

  “God, so much trouble you all went to. Is Jimmy that bad?”

  “Oh, he is and worse,” Leigh said. “But we’ll just have to deal with that if he comes back and makes trouble.”

  Iris took that in silence. If we didn’t move soon I’d lose the use of my legs. Finally, she asked the question she had to ask and I had been dreading.

  “It says here ‘father unknown.’ Is this Jimmy my father?”

  “Probably,” Leigh said. “Maybe,” I said. We spoke at the same time.

  Iris looked from one of us to the other, and Leigh said, “What do you mean, maybe? Do you know something I don’t?”

  “It was between Jimmy and another man. Adele told me she didn’t which one was the father. So...” I shrugged.

  “I just don’t know what to believe anymore,” Iris said.

  Tense and teary, she turned her back on Leigh and me and hunched into her jacket. Leigh looked at me, eyebrows raised. I shrugged again.

  Before I came out here to introduce Iris to Leigh and tell her all I knew, I had made up my mind not to tell her about Daniel unless she asked specifically for names of men who might be her father. She would ask sooner or later, that I knew, yet in my heart I hoped she wouldn’t. Pride, I suppose. I didn’t want to admit just how gullible and deceived I’d been by Daniel. The truth was, in spite of my feelings for Daniel being as dead as it was possible for them to be, it still hurt that he’d thought so little of me back then. It was a marvel that Adele and I had developed a friendship, but that was a tribute to Adele. When it became clear that Maggie would not be able to take care of my child, Adele persuaded me to keep him, that together we could support each other and our babies. I was to abscond with her, get a job as a nurse wherever we settled, and we would share responsibilities for our children. The thought of never going back to Kiltilly to live, of deceiving my parents forever, galled me, but the chance of keeping Michael was too good to pass up. When Michael died, Adele let me out of the promise. Instead she asked that if anything happened to her I would make sure that Iris stayed out of the clutches of Jimmy McCann. I had promised. It was not only self-interest that stopped me telling what I knew before this.

  Iris broke into my thoughts. “Who were they, these men my mother thought might be my father?”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Jimmy McCann was one,” I said. “The other was Daniel Wolfe.”

  “Daniel Wolfe,” she and Leigh said together.

  Heat of humiliation rose in my face. I held my voice steady as I answered, “Yes.”

  “Jesus, who would’ve guessed that,” Leigh said.

  A desperate need to move came over me, and it was not just the cold creeping from the broken cement through my thin leather-soled shoes. If I was supposed to feel better after telling the truth, I was failing miserably. And after this I’d have to find a way to talk to Mam. And soon.

  “You mean, I am a half-sister to Jude?”

  “Possibly.”

  “And, if your son had lived, I’d be a half-sister to him too, right?”

  I nodded again.

&
nbsp; “Oh my God. I can’t get my head around this. I just can’t.”

  Iris began to pace back and forth, her hands buried deep in her pockets. The piercing cry of a sparrow hawk sounded from overhead.

  “Does Jude know any of this?” she asked as she swished by me, turned and took off again without waiting for a reply. When she came back round I told her no.

  “Well, what will we say to her?” Iris asked.

  “Right now I’ve no idea,” I said. “But your father could be Jimmy and not Daniel at all. And I’m frozen. Let’s go into Adare and have something to heat us up. We’ll figure it out then.”

  31

  Iris was quiet on the drive back, which suited me just fine, as I was preoccupied with the prospect of meeting Jude. In my heart I hoped that news that Iris might be her half-sister would dilute the impact of my affair with Daniel. I wasn’t at all sure it would. We dropped off my car at the farm but didn’t have time to stay for tea, as I was due back on duty in about an hour.

  The sky was darkening to dusk as we walked towards Daniel’s. I listened to the tap of my heels and the scuffle of Iris’s boots as I searched for any remnant of the peace and joy I used to experience on this road not so long ago. Life, it seemed, had narrowed down to memories of the past and tensions of the present.

  “Do you think Daniel is my father?” Iris asked.

  “I don’t know. Adele told me she didn’t know.”

  “But what do you think?”

  How many times had I asked myself that question since Iris showed up on Daniel’s doorstep? Twenty-two years ago I had persuaded myself that Adele’s child was not Daniel’s. Wishful thinking, perhaps. Or maybe Adele’s insouciance about it rubbed off on me. At any rate, I’d held on to that belief all through the years, only to have the whole question reopened these last months.

  “I really don’t know,” I told Iris.

  Iris sighed. We stepped to the side of the road out of the wash of wet leaves and puddle spray as a van passed us, then we continued on, each lost in our own thoughts. At the village edge Iris stopped. I stood with her as the streetlights came on, soft yellow halos in the dusk.

  “I hope Jude won’t be angry with me,” Iris said.

  “Why on earth would she be angry with you?” I was genuinely surprised.

  She shrugged and turned away. We stood together at the village crossroads. I ached to hold her; perhaps she ached to be held; yet paralyzed and undone by the tenderness I felt towards her, I couldn’t do it.

  “Oh, just because. You know, I may be proof her father is not who she thinks he is.”

  I did put my arm around her then. She rested her head against me.

  “That’s not your fault, pet. You are innocent in that. Jude will understand that. She will.”

  The relief nurse reported that Daniel had stayed in bed all day and Jude hadn’t returned home. When I looked in on him, Daniel was propped up on pillows sleeping. I withdrew and shut the door as gently as I could. Iris was still in the hallway where I had left her.

  “Well, I guess we have to wait,” I said to her.

  “I’ll die of nerves, I really will.”

  “It’s not so easy to die.”

  No sooner were the words out of my mouth than we heard a key turning in the front-door lock. We stood together, rooted to the spot, as the door swung open. Jude came in. None of the three of us moved for a moment; then Iris said, “Jude, I’m so glad you’re back.”

  Jude turned from us and shut the door without answering. Iris raised her eyebrows at me. It seemed to me then that I should speak to Jude privately before breaking the news to her; try to get back on some less awkward footing than the cool avoidance we’d been engaged in and which was now open hostility.

  “Jude, can we talk?” I said.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” Jude answered without looking at me.

  “We, Iris and I, have some things to say to you and Daniel together. But I would like a word with you first, if you are willing.”

  Jude slowly shrugged off her coat and hung it on the coat tree with exaggerated care, smoothing her scarf over the collar of it before she turned to face us again. She looked tired and pale.

  “I want to speak to my father alone,” she said.

  I told her he was sleeping.

  “What? You can’t stop me speaking to my own father.”

  “Jude, that’s unfair,” Iris said.

  We still stood outside Daniel’s door. I started for the kitchen at the same time Jude began to walk towards us. Not wanting to pass close to her, I changed my mind and went into the parlour, desperate to sit down because my legs had begun to shake. Through the open door I heard Iris say, “Are you okay, Jude? We’ve all been worried about you.”

  Jude didn’t answer. A nearby door opened, then closed again almost immediately. Her voice came to me from the hallway. Presumably she had discovered that Daniel was indeed sleeping.

  “What is that you and Delia want to talk about?”

  “It’s... We should wait. We want to talk to both you and Daniel together. It’s better that way.”

  “So you and Delia have something to say about my father, is that it?”

  The sneer in her voice was ugly. I went back out to protest the way she spoke to Iris, but just then Daniel’s bell rang. Jude stopped me outside his door.

  “Leave him alone. I’ll go see what he wants.”

  She flounced into Daniel’s room, leaving Iris and me in the hallway. Moments later she was back.

  “Daniel wants to see you, Delia,” she said. She avoided looking at me and simply brushed by me and went upstairs.

  “Don’t worry, pet, we’ll work it out,” I said to Iris, though I was not at all sure how.

  “Thank God you’re back,” Daniel said when I entered. “And Jude, too. We have to face her together, Delia. I let you down once, and I’ll not do it again.”

  I hadn’t the heart to tell him he couldn’t let me down anymore. Not in any way.

  “Daniel, Iris and I want to talk to you and Jude together. When you’re up for it. Maybe we can sort it all out then, maybe we can’t. In any event, none of us can change the past.”

  “Help me up, help me up now, we’ll get this done tonight. I need it done, Delia. I don’t think I’ve got a lot left in me. Certainly not for all this fighting with Jude. I just don’t have the heart for it. Why you and Iris? What does Iris have to do with it?”

  “Let’s wait till we talk. Are you sure you’re able to get up?”

  “Yes, yes. Hurry, before Jude disappears again. She’s none too pleased with any of us. Let’s get it sorted out now before it goes any further.”

  Daniel and Jude listened in silence while I told them about Adele. When I’d finished, the silence dragged on for what seemed like hours. Iris shifted in her chair, leaned forward as if about to speak, then sat back again. Jude kept her eyes fixed on the wall in front of her. Daniel cleared his throat twice then spoke.

  “Adele? I don’t remember an Adele.”

  Iris held out the photo Leigh had given her. Daniel took it and examined it a moment. Then he smiled.

  “Ah, Addie. Addie worked in my bank. I met her there. But I never made her pregnant. I’d stake my life on that. I couldn’t have.”

  Jude snorted and jerked as if she’d been burned.

  “So you got two women pregnant at the same time. How many brothers and sisters do I actually have, potentially?”

  “It’s not like that, Jude. I was no saint, but I didn’t just go around making women pregnant. I’m sure I never made Addie pregnant. I knew her from the bank. We had tea a few times, that’s all.”

  Iris’s eyes caught mine. I shrugged.

  “Did Fran know about your affair with Delia? Did she know you were out on the town with everyone and anyone while Mother was here looking
after the house, and us, and the whole bloody estate? Did she?”

  “Not as far as I know. And I wasn’t running around with everyone and anyone. I didn’t have an affair with Addie. I was involved with Delia then.”

  Daniel’s voice was barely above a whisper. It should have pleased me to see him made to answer for himself, but it didn’t.

  “And what about Delia? Did Mother know about her? About the two of you?”

  “Your mother did. I spoke to her when Delia became pregnant. Fran knew nothing, as far as I know.”

  Jude snorted again. Before she could say anything else, Iris spoke up. “My mother told Delia you could be my father.”

  Daniel threw up his hands, then began to cough. I got him a glass of water. A light sheen of sweat emphasized the grey colour of his face.

  “I knew your mother,” Daniel said to Iris when he got his breath back. “I liked her. She was a lovely girl. I did give her money to get away from some gurrier. I did do that. In fact, I drove her to the ferry when she left. It was only luck we didn’t run into each other on the dock, Delia.”

  “How can you remember all that and not know if you had sex with her?” Jude asked.

  “I do know. There was nothing like that between us at all. Not at all.”

  Conversations with Adele flashed through my mind. Distinctly she’d said that Daniel could be her child’s father. Maybe it was not simply my not wanting it to be true; maybe Adele was not being honest.

  “Tell me again, Delia. Adele said that Daniel could be the father, right?” Jude asked.

  “She said that, yes. But she was desperate to protect herself and her baby from Jimmy McCann. She might have just said it. Maybe it wasn’t true. I don’t know.”

  Jude got up and stood by the window, her back to us. Daniel coughed again, just once, the sound harsh in the silence.

  “It’s just all too much. Mother died that year and Fran vanished. It must have something to do with all this.”