He stopped and put the fork down.
‘It must be hard alone,’ I said.
He looked away, putting his hand to his forehead to disguise his distress.
‘I don’t know what you must think of me, Tracey,’ he confessed. ‘Yesterday was a nightmare. But for months that business was like a madness gnawing away …’
‘Stop,’ I said, ‘please.’ I couldn’t bear to see his head bowed. ‘It’s over, Grandad.’
‘I know. Your friend burst all our bubbles.’ Grandad sat back and I thought of all the evenings he must have spent here alone. He tried to smile. ‘I would be lost without that woman.’
‘You would, Grandad.’
‘I never thought you’d offer to get a gun. What I really wanted was for you or someone else to talk me out of it. But when you offered, I thought it must be the right thing to do if Tracey isn’t shocked.’
‘I was shocked,’ I said. ‘I just didn’t want to let you down again.’
‘We’re a pair of fools, girl,’ Grandad said. ‘But an old fool is always worse.’
‘I was never much use to you, was I?’
‘You lit up this house as a child.’ He began to eat again, as if cloaking his emotions, then looked up. ‘They’re flexible about visiting time, but I try not to be in the way. She’s much the same today as she’ll be until she dies.’ He took a sip of beer. ‘I might have imagined it though, but she seems more content.’ Grandad looked towards the drinks cabinet, as if used to having something stronger when he was alone. ‘I talk to her a lot. It’s the first time in decades I’ve really been able to talk to her.’ He took another swig, then stared at the can. ‘Lily wouldn’t like us drinking from a can.’
‘It’s nicer from a glass,’ I agreed and he looked relieved. He had spent his life caught in cross-fire.
‘You don’t mind if I use one?’
‘I’d like one too. But there’s tea made as well, don’t forget.’
I could see he enjoyed being scolded. He came back in and poured our beers into glasses. He leaned slightly forward, then stopped. I suspected he had been about to lift his glass in a toast of ‘Welcome home’. We were wary again, neither of us on firm ground.
‘Will you go and see her again?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’ I searched for a softer way to phrase it. ‘It’s not because we never got on, I just don’t know if I can bear seeing her again. I’m such a coward, but it scares me to death thinking about her.’
‘Don’t be ashamed,’ Grandad said quietly. ‘She is frightening, with that stare and the way she can’t talk back. I see her every day and part of me still wants to run away.’
We ate in silence for a while. I poured him tea and he reached for a piece of Swiss roll.
‘Why all the long faces?’ he said, trying to cheer me up. ‘Lily wouldn’t want us gloomy. I always say you can’t go wrong with a Swiss roll.’
‘Remember you used to tell me that rabbits rolled them in their burrows up in the Alps.’
‘I did not,’ he said, but I saw his delight that I remembered.
‘You did too. And the burrows were so high up that there were no roads and so storks had to carry sackfuls of cakes down in their beaks. You were an awful liar, do you know that?’
‘I still am.’ He was smiling and then he stopped to stare at me. I realised he was watching me smile. How long was it since he’d seen me smile? Certainly not during that final year when my mother was in and out of hospital and I fell back into missing lectures and drifting through college, hiding the fact that the supervisor had informed me I was on my last chance. I never discovered just how long they had known she was terminally ill before they told me. I could remember Gran’s words: ‘You seemed to be doing so well that we wanted to wait until you’d finished your exams’. My smile vanished. I saw Grandad glance at my clothes which were clean but faded.
‘What are you doing with your life, Tracey?’ he asked, more bemused than prying.
‘I’m trying to live it.’ The old defensiveness crept into my voice.
‘Are you studying or working somewhere?’ He knew the answer by looking at me. ‘It seems a waste. You always had brains to burn. Are you okay for money?’
‘I can look after myself.’
He wanted to say something, but stopped. He was an old hand at recognising the buffers I could draw down in front of myself. I glanced at the unfaded squares of wallpaper.
‘It didn’t take you long to forget me.’ I was sniping from instinct, knowing that Gran would have launched a counter attack. But he followed my gaze and shook his head.
‘It wasn’t meant that way,’ he replied. ‘Things happen in life and we cope by pretending that time will sort everything out in the end. It never works like that. We weren’t forgetting you, we were trying to let you go. I said to your Gran; “Those photographs aren’t Tracey any more. We must stop thinking of her as a little girl or we’ll fall into the same trap if she ever comes home.” They’re not thrown out, they’re in your old room. Have you been up there?’
‘No.’
‘Everything is still there. You’ve got good clothes in the wardrobe that you could …’ Grandad stopped. He didn’t want me to take them away. He wanted me to stay but didn’t know how to ask. ‘Do you live with your Irish friend?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘He’s married. I could tell. Are you his mistress?’
‘That’s my business!’
Grandad said nothing. He hadn’t been judging me, he was just concerned. But nothing in this house had taught me how to be open. It wasn’t easy now.
‘I was his mistress,’ I said. ‘I don’t know any more.’
‘He’s a shrewd man but cold inside. He brought me to my senses yesterday, but I can’t say I liked him.’
‘I pick my own friends.’
‘You’re a big girl,’ Grandad replied. ‘Nobody can pick them for you. But some people know too much for their own good.’
‘About what?’
‘Everything. I should never have dragged you into this business, but it’s hard not to be bitter. You see, Tracey, I’m just no good on my own. I can put up with anything except loneliness. I stay up half the night because there’s no one telling me to go to bed. I do stupid things, I’ve got into fights in pubs. I lie awake with crazy thoughts and they take hold because there’s no one to banish them.’ He stopped, flustered and repeated the phrase, like he’d said it to himself a thousand times in empty rooms; ‘I’m just no good on my own.’
I understood that loneliness, its ache had consumed me on dozens of sleepless nights in my flat. With someone to talk to I wondered if my obsession with Luke would have grown. At some level at first I’d been screwing him for companionship.
‘I have my own life now, Grandad,’ I said quietly.
‘I know.’ This conversation was embarrassing him. ‘I didn’t mean that I wanted you … I just meant if you ever felt like calling.’
‘I will,’ I promised, ‘often.’
‘Harrow is out of the way.’ He was anxious to let me off the hook. ‘It’s awkward for any young person to get to.’
‘I’m going to Donegal tomorrow,’ I said. ‘My father is still alive. I want to find him.’
‘Is your friend bringing you?’
‘You don’t approve.’
‘What difference would it make?’ He shrugged, with self-deprecation. ‘I knew from the day you were born that you were stuck with your mother’s looks and your Granny’s bull-headed stubbornness. That was the problem between you both, although neither of you could see it. You were two sides of the one coin.’
The idea sounded so daft that I laughed. ‘Me and Gran, are you joking?’
‘Once either of you got a notion nobody could never tell you anything.’
‘Mammy must have taken after you then.’
I wanted to make him smile, but instead he reached across to open the drinks cabinet and produced a bottle of Scotch.
‘That would have been hard.’ Grandad poured himself a measure, then poured another on top of it. ‘There’s something you should know,’ he said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I was always proud to call her my daughter, but I couldn’t have a child of my own, though it wasn’t from lack of trying.’
He took a long sip of Scotch. The glass rattled against the side of the plate as he put it down. He watched me, unsure of how I would take this news.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said.
‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be asked to. I’ve never known if secrets are better left unsaid. I think it was you that your Gran would have told eventually. Your mother wouldn’t have been able for it. Obviously I knew she was someone else’s child, I didn’t mind that so much, but it was years before Lily told me. It was on a train, a funny place to tell anyone anything. There was one other passenger in the carriage. He got off at Gerrards Cross. We were alone. Your mother was two years old, playing with a doll beside us. Lily told me everything. Then two women got in at Beaconsfield and we couldn’t talk any more. We never mentioned it again.’
He took another sip of whisky. His hand was trembling. This man isn’t actually my grandfather, I thought, Evans isn’t my real name. I remembered how proud he always was of me on those trips in Wandsworth. He started speaking again, but it was hard to focus on what he was saying. It sounded like even he was still struggling to comprehend the words.
‘The bastard’s brain must have rotted with drink,’ Grandad said. ‘The thing is, he was old but still strong as an ox. Lily was the only one who bothered with him. She was already a grown woman, even past her prime. For years I’d been hanging on, wanting to marry, telling her to leave her father. She’d the right to a life of her own. She had ambition, brains, she could have …’
Grandad took another drink. I didn’t want to hear any more but there was no way to stop him.
‘She’d hide her wages, but he’d find them, no matter where. He’d sell anything she brought into the house, even her new clothes so that half the time she’d only old dresses to wear. Neighbours would scold her, saying “Your father called. He says you won’t feed him. I gave him rashers and sausages to cook myself.” Lily would have to show them the uncooked rashers and sausages in the bin and explain that he had been trying to cadge money off them. The bastard stripped away every scrap of pride she had, any chance to hold up her head. I hated him, but I haven’t got it in me to believe that he knew it was his own daughter he was attacking. I mean, sometimes he’d be raving like he didn’t know if he was in England or Ireland. But even if he’s drunk paint stripper, no man deliberately rapes his own daughter. Not when they’ve given their life to minding him.’
‘I don’t believe this,’ I said, ‘I can’t believe it.’
Grandad poured himself another Scotch and looked at me with the bottle raised. I could have used a drink badly but, until I had the pregnancy test done, I wasn’t sure if I should be drinking.
‘Is it any wonder your poor mother was for the birds,’ Grandad said. ‘I’m not knocking her, I loved the child. It wasn’t her fault. But I think that every time your Gran looked at her … well, you’d see him come out in little things, the shape of your mother’s nose and the way she smiled sometimes. She could have had an abortion, even then they weren’t hard to come by. But that was the thing with your Gran, she saw things through. She believed you worked hard, you rose from what you were and you never looked back. If you didn’t get the things you deserved, then your children did or their children after them. The way she kept this house, the way she pushed both of you, it seemed like snobbery but it wasn’t, or at least it wasn’t just that. She was naive. She’d never set foot outside England in her life, but he’d bred it into her, so that at heart she was always still an emigrant with emigrant dreams.’
Grandad stopped talking. The curtains weren’t pulled and I could guess at the outline of the garden beyond the window. But it was Gran I saw as I looked into that darkness. I saw the way her eyes had stared at me, strapped into that hospital chair, with her secrets locked away behind her garbled tongue. I’d never seen her cry, even at the height of my illness or when her daughter died. I’d never known her to admit she was tired or betray the slightest sign of self-pity. There were days when I don’t think I ever saw her sit down. She had been too busy trying to move us up a social class, towards her promised land of mock Tudor houses in Northwood and white wedding albums.
Behind her steely resolve she had kept her secrets well. But, when I thought about it, the cracks started coming back. At nine I had gone through a phase of questioning her about my father. I never got much information, just innuendo and a sense of what could never be spoken about. I had formed a picture of him as shabby, callous and malevolent. I remembered puzzling over her mumbled phrase, ‘bad blood’. But it had been the man who was both her father and my mother’s father whom she was hinting about. He was the spur inside her for what I had mistaken for snobbery but was really pain; for that almost despairing pressure on me to succeed. Gran’s dreams had come to nothing. I had never seen a wedding photograph in our house, not even her own. Grandad shrugged when I asked if there had been a photographer in the church.
‘What church?’ he said. ‘It was a register office. The woman was six months pregnant. After all the things her father had done, she still refused to marry until he coughed himself to death.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘That’s history now.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you really have to go to Donegal?’
‘She was still his wife, even if he left her. Somebody has to tell him she’s dead. I want it finished, Grandad. I can’t blame him in some ways for running away. The man can hardly have understood what he walked into. Luke says all we have are our families, and I don’t have much family left, do I?’
Even as I spoke I knew I had phrased it badly. Grandad looked hurt and old. I took his hand. I saw how much telling me all this had taken out of him.
‘I have you still,’ I said, ‘You’re still my grandfather.’
‘You’re all I have,’ he replied.
‘There’s no one in the world I’d sooner make baked beans on toast for.’
I smiled until eventually he had to smile back. ‘You mind yourself flying there,’ he said. ‘Send him my regards, the daft old bugger playing his fiddle in the back bedroom. Bring him a video of Norman Wisdom from me.’ His smile faded. ‘Things were handled badly when he left and afterwards. It’s easy to look back and see it, but I did what I thought was right at the time, like your Gran told me. You were so tiny I had to protect you.’ He stopped, reluctant to say more. He seemed frightened of losing me again. ‘I hope you find him. We parted badly but I’d like to buy the daft bugger a drink one day. He had a lovely voice.’ Grandad closed his eyes and sang;
‘Why come you here so late, said the knight on the road,
I go to meet my God said the child as he stood.’
‘I never understood that song, Grandad.’
‘Your father sang it once and he said – and he was dead serious – that if you met the Devil on a lonely road and you stood totally still, the Devil couldn’t harm you. He said it like he meant it.’ Grandad looked at me. ‘Go alone.’
‘You think I’m making the same mistake as my mother.’
‘There’s no comparison,’ Grandad said. ‘Your father was far older. He was like your mother, for the birds. And besides, he was a gentleman.’
V
DONEGAL
TWENTY
THE SMALL PLANE flew low over mountains. There was puffy cloud which we passed through but generally I could distinguish every road and crag between the small hillside lakes and the untamed slopes in the cold winter light. Luke pointed out in the far distance a steep mountain of rock which he claimed pilgrims climbed every year before dawn in their bare feet. I imagined a flock of old women cresting the sharp stones in rags like Bosnian refugees but, according to Luke, hundreds of smartly dressed young
girls came from all over Ireland to climb it too.
The plane wheeled and I saw Knock airport below, a line of tarmac carved into a mountain side. The passengers on the far aisle switched seats so that all seven of us stared down at the terminal which seemed to have been dropped from outer space. Luke said that a local monsignor had bullied the Irish Government into building it in this village, whose previous claim to fame has been an apparition by the Blessed Virgin, prophesying about the upcoming evils of French kissing and the Wonderbra. Pilgrims had flocked to this wind-swept mountain ever since. In Lourdes you got cured, Luke said, in Knock you got cured and pneumonia.
The plane began its descent and I saw, to the side, a huge basilica with souvenir shops and flags clustered around it. Before the monsignor had built his airport so that multinationals could fly in with suitcases of jobs, Luke said that the only industries had been making rosary beads and ham sandwiches for local sale and raising intervention cattle and children for export. The monsignor was determined to change that, despite open hostility from Dublin. Even Christy’s cronies were incensed at the prospect of ordinary, decent tax-payers funding a remote airport – although they didn’t pay tax and went to work with their wives’ stockings over their heads.
The plane landed smoothly while hillside sheep grazed in the distance. We disembarked, but I could see no sign of customs or security. It seemed like a ghost airport until we left the tarmac and entered the terminal building which was absolutely packed. I had the sensation of walking into a wall of grief. At first I thought a funeral was taking place, as families embraced each other and wept. I asked Luke what was happening.
‘It’s the third of January,’ he said, with stoic anger. ‘I would have thought people had gone back by now, but obviously some stayed on for a few extra days’ holidays at home.’
A girl my age untangled herself from her parents’ arms and walked towards the departure gates. Her baby sister ran crying after her. The girl picked the child up and carried her back to their father who took the child in silence, unable to bring himself to kiss his elder daughter goodbye again. A boarding call for London was being announced. There seemed to be no one present between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight who wasn’t returning to jobs and new lives in Britain. These people were strangers, but I felt close to tears for them.
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