‘Carmel, I don’t want you to be a cuckoo anymore, I want us to have a nest together. I hate the idea that you’re afraid that I’ll change my mind or go off you or something. I love you so much and I want to be your home and for you to be mine. I know you’re not free yet, but when you are, will you marry me?’
He held up a little box containing an exquisite ring, a gold spiral encrusted with diamonds and rubies. It was breathtaking.
‘Sharif, I…I don’t know what to say…’ she could hardly get the words out. She looked down at this gorgeous man, and her heart felt too big for her chest. ‘I would absolutely love to marry you.’
Chapter 9
Two weeks after Brian McDaid was admitted, Sharif beeped her. He was well enough for a short visit. She rushed across the campus from the Kaivalya, where she was welcoming the local Toastmasters group for their monthly debate, to the high dependency wing.
Sharif met her in the corridor.
‘Don’t tire him out now, keep it short, maybe you can see him again tomorrow or the next day, talking will exhaust him.’ He bent his head and kissed her quickly, ‘Good luck.’
Carmel nodded, she was too nervous to speak. Gathering all her resolve, she knocked gently on his door.
‘Come in.’ The voice was strong, and the accent, unmistakably Dublin.
She was relieved to see how well he looked, sitting up in a chair, in his own clothes. He was bald from the chemotherapy. He had no eyebrows or eyelashes either, but his complexion had much more colour than it had the night he was admitted. His shirt was too big, he was fading away in front of her eyes.
‘Hello, Mr McDaid, and thank you so much for seeing me; I know it’s tiring to have visitors so I won’t keep you long, and if you get too tired, please just tell me to go.’ Carmel tried to keep the nervousness from her voice.
‘Not at all, I’ve been waiting to meet you; when Dr Khan told me who you were, well, I couldn’t believe my ears.’ He smiled and Carmel warmed to him instantly.
‘Sit down there on the bed so I can see you. You’re the head cut off your mother, that’s the truth. I’ll tell you what I know, Carmel, but I must warn you, it’s not a happy story.’
He waited for her to respond.
‘Please, whatever it is, I want to know.’
‘Okay, well, your Ma and me were great mates, and we got along so well; I knew her since we were kids, even though there was a long gap in the middle when we didn’t see each other for years, anyway, I’ll get to that. Are you sure you want to hear this? Once you hear it, you can’t ever not know it, y’know?’ His Dublin accent was strong and reminded her of the delivery men who used to come to Trinity House.
She nodded, ‘Please, go on.’
Brian inhaled almost to gather his strength. Sharif was managing his pain but you could see he was bone weary of it all. He began, staring straight ahead of him as he spoke. ‘Dolly, your ma, was going out with my brother Joe since she was sixteen, childhood sweethearts, as they used to say long ago. We all grew up together, on the same road in Kilmainham, Dolly, me, Joe, Kevin and Colm, my sisters Maggie and Orla, and a few other families. When Dolly’s mother died, she was only a kid, and Tom, her father, went to pieces, it was to our house she came. My Ma would feed her, wash her clothes, and all of that. My father never liked her, even as a child, said she was flighty, but we took no notice of him. He could only talk with his fists or his belt, and we all, including my mother, got the wrong end of it often. He was a bad man, evil. He wasn’t a drinker; if he was, you could blame that, but he just was a cruel man. He gave us all a hard time but poor old Joe got the worst of it. I didn’t know why at the time, but later Joe told me he walked in on him attacking our mother. Joe was only twelve, but he was a big strong lad and he hit him a clatter so hard he put the auld fella in hospital for a month. He broke his jaw, and me Da hit his head off the range as he fell. Joe could have killed him, so ferocious the blow was. Guards, social workers the whole lot got involved then and it all came out. You know what Ireland’s like, and on a street like ours, where everyone was stuck in everyone else’s business anyway, well the place was buzzing. To be honest, I think some of the neighbours suspected; we, and Ma, would regularly appear with bruises and sometimes broken bones, but nobody said anything. It was weird, they’d talk about the neighbours all day long, but then when he was clearly battering all of us, people did nothing. Domestic violence was seen as something to be kept within the four walls, I don’t know, it’s a kind of screwed up way of thinking over there sometimes. But my father never turned a hair. He’d walk into Mass, Ma with him, and her with a black eye or her arm in a sling, but he’d look like butter wouldn’t melt. He was the pillar of the community, you see, collecting the money at Mass, singing in the choir and all that. After that though, people knew him for what he really was, a bully and a coward. People didn’t look up to him anymore. He never forgave Joe for that.
Anyway. Dolly and Joe had a special bond or something; when she smiled, his face lit up like Clerys window at Christmas. Since they were kids, you’d never see one without the other. It was almost as if they had a secret language or something, it’s hard to explain, but for Joe, there was never another and I think the same was true for Dolly. Anyway, once she got to sixteen, she was allowed to go out with Joe. Tom wasn’t happy about it; he was very strict even by the standards of those times, but Dolly convinced him, and anyway, he liked Joe. Dolly’s Da had no time for my father either and probably was secretly proud of how Joe handled him.’
Brian stopped and took a sip of water, composing himself once more.
‘Joe was apprenticed to a butcher on Capel Street and Dolly was working in Arnott’s Drapery department; that’s where she learned to sew.
They were stone mad about each other, he walked her to work and collected her every day. They’d walk all over Dublin in the evenings, just talking. Other girls liked Joe too, he was a good-looking lad, but he was oblivious. They were going out for years and they never bored of each other, he would rather be with her than anyone. They had great plans to travel the world once they’d saved up enough money. I remember there was a ferocious fuss made one night when Tom came home early from whatever thing he was at and found Joe and Dolly in bed. He nearly went mental and banned Joe from the house. That sort of thing was unthinkable in those days, even though, by now, they were in their twenties.
Joe begged and pleaded with Tom, trying to convince him that he wasn’t just using his daughter, but that he loved her. Dolly loved her Da and was sorry she disappointed him. But eventually, Tom thawed and, after a few weeks, they were back together again, Tom probably knew that Dolly’d defy him if she had to anyway. Nothing would keep them apart.
We were sure that the ring would be produced for Christmas that year. In fact, I knew Joe had planned to propose because the girl our brother Colm was doing a line with was roped in to check the sizes of the rings in McDowell’s on O’Connell Street.
Christmas Eve came, and both Dolly and Joe were working late. Ma was in the kitchen getting everything ready for Christmas dinner and the girls were up to ninety about Santa coming and all of that. Us older ones chipped in to get their stuff because my father’d have nothing to do with it. Joe was going to bring Dolly home with him after work and was going to propose on the way.
Instead of the big announcement though, Joe appeared at the back door, ashen faced. He said that Dolly was gone; he waited for her at work and they said she’d not turned up. He went to her house and her father was sitting at the table with a note from her saying she was gone. No note for Joe, no explanation, just a two-line thing to her father saying she was sorry but that she was leaving.
Joe nearly went out of his mind, he just couldn’t believe it, that she’d just up and leave him without a word. We shared a room and at night I used to hear him crying over her, she broke his heart so she did. He couldn’t understand it, none of us could. Poor old Tom Mullane lost the will to go on after that. Losing his wife, and the
n Dolly, was too much for him to bear. He used to walk all over Dublin looking for her, he wrote to the police in England, he even contacted some agency in America to see if she could be found, but it was as if she’d vanished into thin air.
She never contacted Joe or her father ever again, never even a letter, nothing. Tom died about four years after she left, a heart attack. Then one day, about six years ago, I saw her. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but it was definitely Dolly; it had been decades but I knew it was her, in a draper’s shop.
I went in and confronted her, she nearly collapsed. I was so angry at what she’d done to poor Joe, I let her have it; I told her about all the misery she caused him. And her poor father, and what she put him through. She closed the shop and told me to sit down, that was when she told me about you.’
He leaned back against the pillow, the effort of so much talking was weakening him, Carmel could see.
‘We can leave it if you want to…’ she offered, though she desperately wanted him to continue. She remembered her promise to Sharif. He sipped some more water and took a deep breath.
‘No, I’m grand, and I haven’t much time left. I want to tell you this if you want to hear it.’
‘I really do.’
‘Okay, so, even then I was mad, I shouted at her, that she could have told Joe and they’d have brought the wedding forward, they wouldn’t have been the first couple to do that, but then she broke down. Just started crying and, well, I was never one for crying females, so I just sat there. Eventually, she told me that the reason she left without a word was that the child, you, might not have been Joe’s.
They were always together, and she never had eyes for anyone else, so I was totally confused until she told me who your father was. Are you sure you want me to go on with this? There are some things people are better off not knowing.’
Carmel just nodded, she couldn’t speak with the lump in her throat. She blinked back the tears; she didn’t want to do anything that would make him stop.
He took a moment to compose his thoughts, whatever he was going to tell her wasn’t coming easily to him.
‘Apparently, my father got wind that Joe was going to propose to Dolly, and decided he’d hurt Joe in the most terrible way. Get his revenge on him for what my father saw as Joe’s ruining of his life. He never took responsibility for anything he did, not to his dying day. As he saw it, Joe had destroyed his reputation and so he would hurt him by taking the thing he loved the most. He waited for Dolly on her way home from work, a few weeks before Christmas. Joe said he was working late that night, so Dolly was to go home without him. It was dark, and my father waited and dragged her into the trees of St Canice’s Park. Well, you can guess what came next.’
Carmel felt sick. A wave of cold washed over her, sure she was going to vomit. She didn’t, and the nausea subsided, but the blood was thundering in her ears. The idea of continuing the conversation terrified and revolted her, but she knew she had to hear it all. Taking a few gulps of air to steady herself, she managed to croak, ‘Go on.’
‘I’m not telling you this to be cruel, but you wanted to know… Dolly told me she wasn’t sure which one of them was your father but she couldn’t take a chance. In a panic, she told my father she was pregnant. To the day she died, she regretted that. If only she’d told Joe or even her own father, but telling Da was the worst mistake she could have made. His plan had been that Dolly would never tell Joe that she’d been raped, she’d be scared what Joe would do. He reminded Dolly that since Joe had attacked his father before, and the guards were involved, if he assaulted him again, he could face charges. My father was happy to know that he’d taken the one person Joe loved more than anyone, and he didn’t care if Joe knew; he knew, and that was what mattered to him. He was a twisted man.
‘A pregnancy was a whole other matter, though. He saw how panicked Dolly was; Ireland was a harsh place for girls who got themselves ‘in trouble’ as they said, even if through no fault of her own. My father threatened her that if she said anything to Joe, then Joe would kill him and go to prison for the murder. He then went on to terrify her about what a public trial like that would do to Dolly’s father, Tom. She told me that day that she just couldn’t do it, be responsible for Joe going to jail, for destroying her father. My father was apparently pleased she was pregnant, delighted he’d caused maximum pain to Joe, and it was he who delivered Dolly to the nuns. She didn’t see Joe’s father again until two days before he died, five years ago. He lived to be ninety-seven. She read a piece about him written in the local paper on line. Apparently, for years, she used to subscribe to the actual paper and had it delivered to her in England, and then it went on line, so she’d read it every week. It’s mostly pictures of kids and football teams, but she said it felt like a small connection with her home. Anyway, because my father used to be still very involved with the church, someone wrote a tribute piece about him, pillar of the community and all the usual rubbish. Anyway, Dolly read it, and whoever wrote it said that the parish sends their best wishes to him in the Mater Hospital and all of that, so she knew where he was.
‘So, Dolly went to see him, in secret, of course, convinced as she was at that stage that he had something to do with her inability to find you. She described going over to Dublin and waiting until late at night when she was sure none of the other family would be there, and she went into the room to him. She saw him lying there, ravaged by time and sickness and demanded to know what had happened to you. He laughed at her misery, can you imagine that? She told him about all the years spent looking for you and he cackled, and then he told her the truth. That after he dropped her at the unmarried mother’s home, he went in to have tea with the reverend mother. Of course, he said nothing to the nun about raping his son’s girlfriend, but just that he’d been indiscreet, that she’d flirted with him and he foolishly succumbed to her wanton ways. The nun readily believed him and almost had sympathy for him when he explained that he was a married man, who didn’t want his wife and children upset by this little mistake. He asked them to take care of things short term, and that he’d be grateful. He paid them, you see. Nuns would turn a blind eye to almost anything for money in those days. He told the nun that he might, in time, convince his wife to take pity on the child and allow it to live with them, so in the meantime, no permission for adoption was to be given under any circumstances.’ Brian stopped and reached out for Carmel’s hand. ‘Is this too hard? I can stop…’
‘No, please go on.’ The words barely audible. ‘My birth certificate. I asked for one when I was applying for my passport and the one they gave me had unknown written under the word Father. My birth mother’s name was written as D Murphy. How could they have done that?’
‘I’ve no idea, but as we now know, babies born in those places were adopted all over the world without proper paperwork, so they were a bit of a law unto themselves, I think.’
Carmel tried to absorb all this information. Brian was exhausted; she should let him rest.
She was about to say as much when he went on, ‘Well, that’s all there is to know really. Except that I tried to convince her to make contact with Joe, that he’d love to hear from her, even after all these years, but no way, that’s why I was angry with her. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t want to see him, to explain, but she was adamant that he was better off not knowing. She said she never wanted to talk about my father ever again, and so many years had passed that it wouldn’t do anyone any good. Nothing I could say would change her mind; Joe was married and happy and had a couple of kids and she said she didn’t want to drop a bomb like that into his happy life. I said I thought he’d see it differently, but she made me swear to never tell him.’
‘And Joe, he’s still alive?’ Carmel wiped her eye with the back of her hand.
‘Oh, yes, in Dublin. His wife died of pancreatic cancer about four years ago, June, she was a lovely lady, but he has a son and a daughter, Jennifer and Luke. They’d be in their thirties now I’d say. I pro
mised I’d never tell Joe, but I never said anything about you because she believed you were lost to her forever. When they told her you’d been adopted, she knew that it was the end of the line; you’d have to try to find her, not the other way round.’
He rested his head back again and she could see the toll talking so long was taking.
‘Thanks, Brian, for telling me. I…I don’t really know what I’m going to do, if anything, but things are making a bit more sense now. Thank you.’ She squeezed his hand and he nodded in return.
Chapter 10
Carmel woke the next morning late, her throat sore and her eyes swollen from the emotion of it all. Sharif was at the clinic, but he’d left a bunch of freesias, her favourite flowers, by the bed. Beside them was a note saying, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here to talk to you about B - text me when you wake, I love you. S. xxx’ He’d been run off his feet the previous days, and she wanted time to tell him her story, not a quick ten minutes between patients.
She lay there, thinking once again how lucky she was to have him. Just as she was psyching herself up to get in the shower, her phone buzzed. It was Marlena on reception. ‘Mr McDaid wants to see you, Carmel, he’s very insistent, says he must see you asap.’
Immediately, she jumped from the bed. ‘I’m on the way,’ she texted and dressed quickly. She looked like a fright, she knew, but she didn’t care. Running through the grounds, she wondered what more Brian could have to tell her. She tapped in using her card to the high dependency unit and knocked gently on Brian’s door.
‘Come in.’ His voice sounded even weaker than yesterday. She felt a pang of guilt. She shouldn’t have allowed him to exert himself so much.
‘Hi, Brian…’ she spoke quietly and sat beside the bed.
The Carmel Sheehan Story Page 13
