The Carmel Sheehan Story

by Jean Grainger

  They were standing outside a busy pub, and judging by the singing coming from inside, there was a party in full swing.

  Carmel looked up into the face of the man she had met eight and a half hours previously. Nothing about any of her life made sense until this moment. She was always the outsider, someone to be endured because there was nowhere else for her to go. With Sharif she felt like she had come home at last.

  ‘Are you sure? I mean you don’t have to…just because you promised Dolly….’ Carmel wanted to be clear.

  ‘I know I don’t have to. I want to. I want to have you in my life Carmel. It seems rushed, I know that. And if you knew me better you’d realise how out of character this is for me, but something is telling me to hold on to you and never let you go.’

  Someone emerged from the pub, talking on his phone. As he opened the door, they heard the crowd singing…

  ‘Qué será será, whatever will be will be. The future’s not ours to see, Qué será será.’

  The End

  The Future’s Not Ours To See

  THE CARMEL SHEEHAN STORY – BOOK 2

  The Future’s Not Ours to See

  Copyright © 2017 by Jean Grainger

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, or events used in this book are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, alive or deceased, events or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book design by Maureen Cutajar

  www.gopublished.com

  Print ISBN: 978-1543175240

  Chapter 1

  Carmel switched on the small, battery-powered transistor to the tinny sound of the news jingle. Bill was gone into town, and any sound was better than her own thoughts racing around in pointless circles. She could settle to nothing. Yesterday, she cleared out the hot press, discarding ancient pillowcases and frayed sheets, and this morning she was determined to give the cupboards in the sitting room a good going over, but nothing could take her mind off what had happened in Dublin.

  She could have done it, gone off with Sharif when he asked her, made the new, amazing life he talked about. When he suggested it over a delicious dinner and wine, it all seemed so possible, so enticing. But the cold reality of the morning after, as she lay awake, alone in the hotel room he’d booked for her, was that, of course, she couldn’t just up and leave. That was fine on TV shows or in romantic novels but for ordinary women, living ordinary lives, running away with handsome strangers was just not an option, no matter how tempting the offer. She left Sharif a note, thanking him for such a lovely night, for the photos and letters from her birth mother, for finding her, but explaining she had to go back to Bill.

  On the bus back to Birr, she’d googled Aashna House about fifty times; it looked every bit as beautiful and peaceful as he said it was. Sharif was there as well, on the staff page in his suit and white coat, a gentle smile playing around his lips. She gazed at him, with his caramel-coloured skin, brown eyes, and silver hair.

  As she washed up the breakfast dishes in the sink, the details of their day together, what it felt like to be with him, crowded into her mind. Did she dream it? Did this man really find her on Facebook? Offer her a better life, with him, and all the memories of the mother she never knew? And, if this magical thing really happened, what on earth was she doing back in the kitchen of Bill Sheehan’s farmhouse in County Offaly?

  She cursed her cowardice and her sense of duty. She just couldn’t do it when push came to shove, as Sr Dympna was fond of saying. The nuns who reared her would have been so disappointed if she had chosen to leave her marriage, to run away with another man to England. The fact that the stranger was the most attractive man she’d ever seen would surely only compound what would have been already a mortal sin. Bill had no idea of the life-altering events of recent weeks. She told him that she’d gone to Dublin to visit an old nun who was dying in Trinity House; he always almost winced when she mentioned the orphanage where she was brought up as if he didn’t want reminding of his wife’s humble beginnings.

  He accepted the story unquestioningly, in fact, he’d not even asked about her overnight disappearing act, she had to volunteer an excuse. Julia, of course, on the other hand, was all questions. Which Nun? Surely, they were all dead now, the ones that were there when Carmel was a child, she’d been gone from Trinity House for seventeen years? How come this was the first they’d heard of it? On and on she went, like an old terrier at a bone, determined to extract every little last scrap of information. Trying to catch her out. Julia had a nose for lies, all her years as a teacher and then principal of the local primary school made her super sensitive to untruths.

  If she ever wanted to scream the truth, it was during these grillings by her sister-in-law. Julia always struck when Bill was out farming, but Carmel kept her opinions to herself like she always did. If she ever did get the nerve to answer Julia back, she would be reminded sharply that she was little Carmel Murphy from a home for fallen women, and in no way the equal of the Sheehans with their big farm going back generations.

  ‘No,’ she thought as she wiped down the countertops for the fifth time, ‘she’d stay no matter how awful it was. To do anything else would be sheer madness, and on top of it all, she was married in a Catholic Church, in the eyes of God, where she promised to love Bill for better or worse. Well, she mused, she didn’t know about better, there were few if any, of those days in all the years, but there were certainly worse days.

  She thought all the time about her mother Dolly and the letters she left with Sharif. The idea that her mother spent a lifetime searching for her, to no avail, both cheered and saddened her. So, her birth mother had not, in fact, dumped her in an orphanage and forgotten about her. The letters she wrote and entrusted to her doctor and friend Sharif were secreted away in a small biscuit tin at the back of Carmel’s underwear drawer where neither Bill nor Julia would ever find them. Bill couldn’t care less, she was sure, but Carmel knew Julia regularly let herself in when there was nobody at home for a good poke around, though she had no idea what the other woman was trying to find.

  All these new feelings flooded her mind. Carmel never had anyone to love her, even all these years with Bill were totally devoid of emotion and yet, Sharif told her that Dolly tried everything to find the baby girl she had been forced to leave in the care of the state but met blank walls of opposition from the church authorities each time. It was so much to take in. She replayed the impending conversation in her mind once more. She was going to have it out with Bill. Never once in all these years did she question him, ask him why they were here together, living out this charade of a life. Sharif had asked her why and she couldn’t answer him. Maybe it was because she thought she didn’t deserve any better or something, but she owed it to herself to at least have one proper conversation, even if the thought of it made her nauseous with nerves.

  The crunch of tyres on the gravel outside brought her back to reality; Bill was home early for lunch. She swallowed down the panic; she could do this. He’d been visiting his solicitor in town. She only knew that because she’d overheard him on the phone to one of the twins; apparently, he was giving each of them a site on which to build a house. He imagined, in his foolishness, they’d come back and live in Birr, but Carmel thought they would do no such thing. The girls hated Birr and its provincial ways; they were city slickers through and through. They would build the huge fancy mansions alright, but as soon as they were ready, the girls would say they couldn’t move jobs or whatever, and they’d sell the houses and buy even grander places for themselves in Dublin, miles away from County Offaly. Julia had dropped several heavy hints about how a few sites for herself would be ideal as well, but Bill either didn’t hear it or was choosing to ignore it.

  Bill, being the only boy of the Sheehan family, got th
e farm, and his sister Julia got the college education. That was how it was back in the day. But even though she draws a fine salary from the Department of Education, has a nice house of her own in the village, and will get a big fat pension when she retires, Julia wanted more. Carmel never understood it, she never went anywhere, she had been wearing the same clothes for years, just greed she supposed. She felt very put out that Bill got the farm in the first place and always acted as if they owned it together. Bill, she knew, felt no such thing.

  The back door opened and in he came. Dressed in his good suit, he looked so uncomfortable.

  He said nothing, no greeting, but went to the bedroom to change into his working clothes.

  Emerging a few moments later, she thought his face registered a bit of surprise that his lunch wasn’t on the table.

  She snapped off the radio, and the silence in the big old-fashioned kitchen was deafening.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you, Bill.’ She heard herself say, her voice sounding strangely formal to her own ears.

  ‘I’m late with the milking…’ he began but she interrupted him.

  ‘I’m sorry but this is important.’ Her voice was stronger than she ever imagined it could be.

  ‘What is it?’ he sighed, as if she bored him with demands every day of the week when quite the opposite was the case.

  ‘Why did you marry me?’ There. It was out. The question that had plagued her for seventeen years.

  ‘What?’ Bill’s face wrinkled into confused distaste and he went to the back of the door for his jacket, he clearly wasn’t staying around for this.

  Carmel knew she’d never get the guts to do this again, so she ran to the door, barring his exit.

  ‘Please, Bill, I really want to know. Why? You came to Dublin, looking for a wife, and someone to be a mother to your two daughters and I agreed, but from that day to this, we’ve hardly spoken to each other. We don’t have a…’ she felt her face redden, ‘normal marriage, in any sense. You don’t seem to need or want me for anything but cooking and cleaning, so what did you do it for?’

  Her voice was raised now, and she felt less in control but she needed to say it. She was blushing furiously and she could feel her cheeks burning with the shame of it, but she had to plough on. It was now or never.

  Bill stood in front of her, his eyes downcast, and it was impossible to know what he was thinking.

  Long seconds passed.

  ‘Please, Bill, I just don’t understand…’ she knew she sounded pathetic but maybe pity for her would make him speak.

  He sighed. ‘For God’s sake, Carmel, I’ve work to do, I don’t have time for this…’ He made to pass her.

  ‘No!’ she almost shouted. ‘I’ve done everything you asked of me for seventeen years but we’ve never had a proper conversation, not once in all that time, and I just don’t even know what I’m doing here.’

  He looked at her as if she had taken leave of her senses. This was not the Carmel he was used to. He realized there was no getting away from her, so he blurted, ‘Right. Fine. Gretta was gone, and I thought it would be a good idea. It turns out it wasn’t. The girls didn’t take to you, and I don’t need another wife. I had one and she died.’

  Each cruel and heartless word fell like a rock on her head. He didn’t mean to be horrible, it was just how he saw things.

  ‘I tried with the girls, but Julia…’ she began.

  ‘I know, she took over. Look, ‘twas either marry someone and have them in here, or have Julia, and I didn’t want that. She was angling for it the minute Gretta died, but it’s more the land she’s after and she can go and whistle for it, this is my farm, not hers, no matter what she may think.’

  She heard that hard determination in his voice. Being reared with nothing meant this deep feeling Bill and Julia had about land and ownership was lost on her, but Carmel had lived in rural Ireland long enough to know that people would do anything, literally anything, to protect their land.

  ‘So, I was brought in just to stop your sister moving in here and taking control of the farm?’ She tried to keep the raw pain out of her voice; she needed to be as matter of fact as Bill was.

  ‘Well, I didn’t consider how Julia would turn the girls against you; she never thought I should have taken someone out of a place for unmarried mothers.’ He shrugged.

  The term unmarried mothers jarred with her, it was such a judgmental name, and yet it was what places like Trinity House were called for a long time. And anyway, she wasn’t any kind of a mother, married or otherwise. She was just the child of one of these unfortunate women, who fell afoul of the Irish church and state in less enlightened times.

  ‘And you? What did you think? That someone like me would do?’ Carmel fixed him with a stare despite trembling inside.

  He thought again before he spoke. Each word delivered with painful slowness.

  ‘Well, not that. If I thought like that I wouldn’t have married you, ’t’wasn’t your fault. You can’t be blamed for, well, whatever your mother was. But you’re right. It was a mistake, but here we are, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it now.’

  Carmel tried to ignore the slight against her mother, as if becoming pregnant was some kind of awful sign of her character.

  ‘But if you saw Julia trying to undermine me with the girls, why didn’t you say something?’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s women’s business, rearing kids, girls especially. I just thought ye’d work it out.’ He shrugged on his working jacket. ‘I’ve got to go milking.’

  Before she had time to react, to say anything, he was gone out the door. She stood in the kitchen, trying not to cry.

  She went upstairs, took her biscuit tin of letters and locked herself in the bathroom, put the lid down and sat on the toilet.

  One by one, she re-read her mother’s letters, taking comfort from them. Somebody loved her. Someone she hadn’t seen since she was a baby, someone she couldn’t remember, someone who spent her life searching for her daughter.

  As she was reading, she heard the back door open once more. Like a thief caught in the act, her heart thumped wildly as she stuffed the letters back into the tin and buried it under the newly organised blankets and sheets in the hot press. She stood up and examined her tear-stained face in the mirror.

  ‘Carmel? Carmel!’ Julia’s sharp voice rang out in the empty house.

  Carmel splashed water on her face but she knew it wasn’t going to help to disguise the fact that she’d been crying.

  She tried calling, ‘I’m in the bathroom.’

  No response.

  Eventually, she had to come out. Julia was on the landing.

  ‘What were you and Bill talking about?’ she barked.

  ‘What? …nothing…I…’ Carmel knew she must look like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

  ‘Don’t lie to me. Bill was parked up outside his solicitor’s office this morning, then, as I was coming in, he nearly blew me off the road. So, something is going on and I want you to tell me.’

  Carmel hated it when Julia spoke to her as if she was one of the misfortunate kids under her command in the primary school. Julia resented her, she never wanted Bill to marry again and she used every opportunity to run his wife down. Carmel thought in the early days it was because she was twenty-eight years younger than him but she was wrong. Bill’s admission only confirmed what she always suspected. Julia had it all worked out when Gretta died, she’d move in, take over the girls and the running of the house and when Bill died she’d get everything. The girls had no interest in the farm, a financial settlement would do them fine, but Julia would own the land. Bill’s marriage to Carmel ruined all her plans.

  Carmel thought about her mother, imagining her as Sharif described her. Brave, and impossible to intimidate. She tried to channel Dolly’s strength and tenacity. Julia was livid, her dark hair scraped back off her head, her pointy features and rake-thin body almost quivering with temper. She was only in her mid-forties but looked muc
h older.

  ‘If you have a question for your brother, you should ask him, not me.’ She spoke quietly.

  ‘What? Don’t you tell me what to do,’ Julia sneered. ‘He’s up to something, and by the way, lady, so are you. I don’t believe that fairy story about the dead nun above in Dublin for a moment. If something is happening with this land then I have a right to know.’

  Julia moved closer, her face only inches from Carmel’s.

  Sounding much more confident than she felt, Carmel responded.

  ‘No, you don’t. This land is not yours, it is Bill’s and mine, and one day it will belong to Niamh and Sinead. You don’t feature anywhere.’ She had no idea where all this strength was coming from, first challenging Bill, and now Julia. It had taken seventeen years but it felt good. She had hit a nerve with her sister-in-law.

  ‘You! You don’t own anything!’ Julia’s cheeks reddened and her eyes flashed with fury at Carmel’s audacity. ‘You’re forgetting something, I know full well what you are. A nobody, whose dirty tramp of a mother, off, no doubt with every Tom, Dick or Harry that wanted her, dumped her child to be a burden on the Irish taxpayer. How dare you place yourself above me.’

  Carmel could feel the spittle from Julia’s lips on her face.

  Carmel wiped her face and took a step back. All the insults, slights, and cruel remarks made by her sister-in-law over almost two decades crowded her mind. Carmel had never in her whole life spoken out, she was a background person, but Dolly was not a tramp, and her daughter was not worthless.

  She smiled serenely, knowing it would drive Julia mad. ‘Why does anyone have to be above or below anyone else? You decide who goes where in your stupid, mad, bigoted head, why? What does that do for you? Does it make you feel superior or something? Because if you need to run others down in order to think well of yourself then you have a serious problem. Why does the farm matter so much to you, Julia? You have a fine house, and all the money you could want and yet you drive yourself crazy about this bit of land? Bill won’t leave it to you, he’ll leave it to me and his daughters, legally he has to, and even if he didn’t, he’d rather leave it to the Dog’s Home than leave it to you. You constantly sniffing around, looking to see what you can get, it’s pathetic. He can’t stand you, by the way, he only married me to make sure you didn’t move in. Why do you think that was, Julia?’ Carmel was enjoying herself.