The Carmel Sheehan Story

by Jean Grainger

  Tim, sitting on her right, was just observing the whole family, the pain of loss and grief hidden behind his eyes and his smile.

  ‘How are you bearing up?’ Aisling had popped to the bathroom so Carmel had a chance to speak to him quietly.

  ‘Okay. You know…they loved him, of course they did, but in an old uncle over in England kind of way, not…’

  ‘Not the way you did.’ She placed her hand on his. ‘I know. It must be so hard behaving like an outsider when you’re, in fact, the chief mourner.’

  Tim nodded, his mouth set in a hard line, trying to hold it together. ‘I think I’ll go, actually. Thanks for today.’ He pushed his chair back and without a word to anyone, he was gone.

  Sharif caught her eye. He read her glance correctly, that she too, had had enough and she wanted to go. He made his farewells and helped Carmel into her coat.

  ‘Thanks for having us, it was so lovely to meet you all. And I’m sure wherever Brian is now, he’s looking down and smiling,’ Carmel managed to say and with waves and warm handshakes, she took her leave of the McDaids. She hadn’t spoken to Joe at all, deliberately placing herself at the other end of the table.

  As they made their way across the car park, they spotted Tim waiting on a cab. They’d forgotten he had come to the hotel with them, his car was back at the crematorium.

  ‘Tim,’ Carmel called, ‘come with us, we’ll take you back to your car.’

  He didn’t answer, just raised his hand, suggesting he was fine. Carmel and Sharif walked over to him. He looked as if he was just about holding it together, but when Carmel linked his arm, suddenly, tears were pouring down his lined and age-spotted face. Without a word, they led him to the car and Carmel got in the back with him. She held his hand as he wept, ‘He was my world.’ She sat beside him as Sharif drove home. ‘What am I supposed to do now? Everyone else will be a bit sad, but they’ll go back to their lives but…Brian was my life. Without him, I just don’t know how to be, what to do.’ Carmel held his hand and said nothing. He just needed to talk, to articulate the pain. She wished she could ease it for him, but there was no way around grief, just through it. The familiar streets passed by in a blur.

  ‘Would you like to go for a cup of tea? Or something stronger?’ Once they were back at the crematorium, it didn’t feel right just to let him go off, back to the home he’d shared with Brian for so many years on his own.

  ‘Thanks, and you’ve both been so kind, I really appreciate it, but no, I think I’ll just go home. It’s been a long day and I just want to get into bed and be alone with my thoughts. I hope you understand?’

  ‘Of course, we do. It has been a really hard day for you, made harder by the fact that you couldn’t grieve properly. But, Tim, celebrating a life, remembering, having those precious memories, they don’t mean much today, but they will in time become important, and all of this today, irrelevant.’

  Sharif had a way of speaking to the bereaved that constantly impressed Carmel. It was if he knew what to say. He wasn’t at all morose or dreary, quite the opposite actually, he was full of fun, but he had a deep compassion and understanding of the human condition.

  They saw Tim to his car, waved him off, and headed home to Aashna. Carmel longed for a soak in the bath, a gin and tonic, and an early night. It had been a grueling day, and even though the McDaid family had no idea who she really was, she still felt the burden of the knowledge she had, thanks to Brian, weighing heavily on her. Maybe she should have said something, but it wasn’t the right time. She sat heavily on the couch, kicking off her shoes and examining a blister on the sole of her foot, caused by the new shoes she’d bought for the occasion. Maybe there would never be a right time; she was too tired and wrung out to even think about it anymore. Sharif had some calls to make and needed to do his evening rounds, but before he left, he ran her a bath, lit a candle for her in the bathroom, and made her a drink.

  ‘Now, you relax there, listen to some music, and try to let the strain of the day melt away. I’ll be about an hour. Will I bring you something from the kitchen? Are you hungry?’ He was in front of her, gin and tonic in hand.

  ‘How on earth did I get you?’ she took the drink and put her hand on the side of his face. He turned his face and kissed her palm. ‘Seriously, Sharif, I don’t know how I’d have got through today without you. Thank you.’

  ‘We’re a team now, Carmel. Together, there is nothing we can’t do. Now, relax, have a soak, and I’ll be back soon.’

  She watched his departing back as he left the apartment, his mind now on those people who needed him and she laid her head back against the sofa. She tried to imagine Bill ever doing anything thoughtful for anyone.

  So many times, she’d started a letter to him, but it always sounded crazy. She and Bill never talked, they had no relationship, and to try to talk to him as her husband, as someone she should be close to felt so uncomfortable she ended up throwing all her efforts in the bin.

  In the end, their break up had many of the characteristics of their marriage. A cold empty nothingness, with no explanation or attempt to soothe from either side.

  She went into the bedroom to undress when there was a knock on the door. Her heart sank. It was probably Nadia, calling to see how she’d got on, or Zane with some Grinder crisis that could only be solved by Chardonnay and lots of analysis. Normally, she would have been thrilled to see either of them, but she was so drained she couldn’t face company. She just stood in the bedroom and hoped the person would go away. They might assume she was in bed already if she drew the curtains.

  The knocking was insistent, however, and she knew she’d have to go out and answer the door. She threw her pajamas and dressing gown on and stuck her feet in her furry mule slippers and went out, determined to make her excuses.

  The bubble glass meant she couldn’t make out who was there, but it certainly wasn’t ebony skinned Zane nor the tiny Nadia. She opened the door.

  ‘Joe.’ His name almost caught in her throat.

  ‘I’m sorry for calling unannounced, but…can I come in?’ he looked shaken and drawn.

  ‘Er…yes…of course…come in. Sharif isn’t here if it’s him you want to see, he’s doing his rounds over at the main building…’ she knew she was babbling, but this was just too close for comfort.

  ‘It was you I wanted to see, Carmel.’ His strong Dublin accent took her back to her days in Trinity House.

  ‘Oh…oh right, em…sure…em…what can I do for you?’

  ‘You can tell me how someone the living spit of Dolly Mullane ended up at my brother’s funeral for a start.’

  Carmel felt the colour drain from her face, her insides turned to ice water, and a cold sweat prickled her skin.

  ‘There’s no point in denying it. The minute I saw you, I knew. Don’t ask me how it happened, but you’re something to Dolly Mullane, I’d put my life on it. Am I right? Brian had something to do with it…I know that much. Something he said a few months ago, about Dolly, I don’t know…he never let on, but I had a feeling always that he knew something about what became of her. And then you show up…’

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ Her voice sounded stronger than she felt. She needed to play for time, to think how she was going to handle this.

  ‘By the look on your face, I think I’m going to need one.’ He tried to crack a small smile.

  She made herself another gin and tonic and made one for Joe as well.

  ‘So, am I right? Are you related to Dolly?’ he asked as she handed him the drink.

  There was no point in lying, but Carmel had no idea where to begin. She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. Eventually, she spoke.

  ‘Yes, Dolly was my birth mother.’

  ‘What do you mean birth mother?’

  ‘Well, I never met her, she died before Sharif found me.’

  Seeing his confusion, she knew she had to tell him the story from the beginning, leaving nothing out. There had been enough secrets and lies, now was
the time for truth. Filling in the blanks in the story between Brian’s, Nadia’s, and Sharif’s recollections of Dolly’s life, she told Joe everything she knew. His face when she told him about his father’s attack, and Dolly’s subsequent pregnancy almost broke her heart. The raw agony, it was as if it had happened yesterday.

  He allowed her to tell her story, everything about his father and the ban on her adoption, and when she was finished, they sat in silence.

  ‘So, my father is your father?’ He could barely get the words out.

  This was it, the moment when she told him that he might be her father. Suddenly, it all felt like too much. What if he rejected it? Told her she was lying? Could she cope with him refusing to accept responsibility for her? She wished Sharif was there. Taking a deep breath, she blurted it out.

  ‘Possibly, or it might be you. Dolly didn’t know, it could have been either of you, but your father threatened her, and so she left. She couldn’t tell you because if she did, your father said that you’d try to kill him and that you’d end up in prison, and her father would have the scandal of that to add to his pregnant daughter…she did the only thing she could. Your father put her in the home for unmarried mothers run by the nuns.’

  ‘And you?’ He could barely bring himself to ask. ‘Did they hurt you?’

  ‘No. Not like abuse or anything, it was okay.’ Then she told him all about Bill and his proposal and his jaw tightened.

  They sat in silence for a long minute, Joe trying to absorb what he’d heard, Carmel trying to see his reaction. Rage, upset, sorrow, pity, it was all there on his face.

  ‘I can’t believe that he wouldn’t let you be adopted. He was an evil man, I always knew that, he was horrible to us as kids and to our Ma, and he couldn’t bear us challenging him. He drove Brian away because he tried to defend me. For a year after, he’d goad me about Dolly, saying she must have left me for a real man all that sort of stuff, and my heart was broken, it hurt so much. Brian told him to shut up one night, to leave me alone, and he made his life hell after that. If only she’d told me, or written even…even if she did it after he died…’

  ‘But you were married then, had children of your own; she didn’t want to upset your life, I suppose, thought she’d done enough damage.’

  ‘But, June, that was my late wife,’ he added. ‘She knew all about Dolly, sure we all grew up together. I remember one night, after our son Luke was born, thirty-two years ago now, and Jennifer was a toddler, she says to me, ‘I know you’ll never love me the way you loved Dolly, but is this enough? Is what we have enough for you?’

  His voice betrayed the emotions going on inside.

  ‘I told her that it was, that I loved her and the kids so much, and I was telling the truth, I really did and we had a great marriage, but she knew…’

  They sat and talked for over an hour, Carmel filling in what she knew about her mother’s life in England, most of which she’d learned from Nadia and Sharif, and Joe told Carmel all about growing up in Kilmainham, and what Dolly was like as a child.

  ‘So, now what do we do?’ Joe looked uncertain.

  ‘About what?’ Carmel knew exactly what he meant, but she needed to hear him say it.

  ‘About you and me, and us figuring out if we are father and daughter, or brother and sister.’ The words fell between them like lead weights.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Carmel heard herself swallow.

  Joe turned on the couch to face her and took her hand in his. He sighed deeply, the weight of all he’d discovered bearing down on him.

  ‘What I want, can’t happen. I want to turn the clock back to the day before he attacked her. I want Dolly to have come to me forty years ago, telling me that she’s expecting and that we have to get married. I’d have married her in a heartbeat. I want to have raised you as my daughter with Dolly as your mother and my wife, and maybe a few more along with you to keep you company. I want none of this to have happened. For that pathetic excuse for a man to have never laid a hand on my lovely Dolly, for you not to have had a lonely childhood with nobody to love you, for you to have never married that culchie who couldn’t be a proper husband to you, I wish lots of things, but wishing won’t change the past. All we have is now.’

  So many thoughts and questions were rushing through Carmel’s head. Did this man want her to be his daughter? Did he want to find out? Did he wish he’d never uncovered this awful secret? Was he still in love with Dolly? Did his children know that he loved Dolly before their mother?

  It was too overwhelming; she needed a minute to process her thoughts.

  ‘I want to show you something.’ She got up and went to the bedroom where she kept the letters and the photos Dolly had left for her. She still looked at them every day. As she rooted in the box, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror, she looked haggard and drawn. Then she stopped and really looked into her own eyes. Others saw her mother there, perhaps she could too.

  She spoke silently to her. ‘Mam, Dolly, please help us all here, I don’t know what to do, what to say. You seem to be guiding me, and so far, it’s been for the best, bringing me here, to Sharif, and Nadia, I finally have a life of my own, but this, with Joe, I’m lost. Please, help me.’

  She found the photo she was looking for and brought it to Joe. She handed it to him and instantly she saw the flood of recognition in his eyes.

  ‘Where did this come from? God, we look so young, we must only have been twenty or twenty-one then. I remember the day it was taken, out on Dollymount. We’d both been paid, so we went to the seaside on the bus and had chips and ice-creams and swam in the freezing cold sea. That night, we came home and Dolly’s father, Tom, was out. We made love for the first time then, a first for both of us. If we were caught, he’d have strung me up, but Dolly was sure he was out for the night. He did catch us another night, and threw me out and was raging with Dolly, but he softened in the end. He knew I was stone mad about her, and she wasn’t the kind of girl that went off with this fella and that fella, she wasn’t like that at all. But, she and me, we had a bond, since we were kids. We loved each other.’ Tears welled up in his eyes, and he wiped them impatiently with the back of his hand.

  ‘It was in a box, with some letters and photos she gave to Sharif to give to me if he ever found me. Apart from one of me as a baby, it’s the only picture from her life before she came over here.’

  Suddenly, she needed Joe to know how hard Brian had fought for him to know the truth.

  ‘Brian and Dolly fell out, you know, though she looked after him and visited him and all of that, but he was so angry with her. He wanted to tell you as soon as he stumbled across her that she was alive and about me and everything, but she wouldn’t let him. She made him swear to keep it all to himself.’

  ‘But I don’t understand why. I mean, she knew I loved her and that even after all these years, I’d want to know.’ Joe was so sad, it hurt Carmel to hear the pain in his voice.

  ‘She just felt that she’d hurt you enough, I think, that you were happy with a family of your own and that anything she said at that stage would just upset that. She just didn’t ever want you to know what your father did to her, and to me, it wouldn’t have helped.I’m only basing this on what Brian told me; I never met her and I so wish that I had, even for one day.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a word with her myself, now that I know what I know. It’s so strange for me, to be here, looking at you. I can’t tell you how much you look like her. I never knew Dolly when she was your age, she was gone from me a long time by then, but I can see her in you, clear as day. Your eyes are different though, hers were dark, and yours are blue, like mine.’

  ‘I know.’

  She wanted to ask what colour his father’s eyes were, but she couldn’t.

  ‘Everyone says that I look like her. I never looked like anyone, so it’s strange for me too, I can assure you. She and I are different in personality, though, she was much more outgoing than I am, much braver too probably.�
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  ‘You’re remarkable. You don’t seem to be angry, I’m bloody furious, and yet it was to you all of this happened and you seem okay with it.’

  Carmel didn’t know how to take that, perhaps it was a criticism but she couldn’t be sure.

  ‘There’s no point in harbouring anger, it would only hurt me, and those people who didn’t behave as they should have, well my being a mess wouldn’t impact on them in any way, would it?’

  Joe smiled, ‘You’re right, of course you are, but still. You say you’re not like your mother in personality, but I think you are in some ways. She was kind of pragmatic as well. When her mother died, and her father was hard to deal with, she just accepted it and tried to make the best of it. Even her life over here, she was obviously torn apart after losing you, but she tried to make the best life for herself that she could.’

  They chatted away easily, there was no awkwardness or wondering what to say next, and Carmel stopped fretting about his reaction to the news. As usual, Sharif was gone much longer than he’d anticipated, but Carmel was used to it and she knew he’d be back when he’d got everyone settled for the night.

  Sharif’s key was in the door and his face registered surprise to see Joe sitting there.

  ‘Don’t worry, Sharif, I’m not in here trying to charm your fiancée.’ He smiled and stood up to shake Sharif’s hand.

  ‘I should hope not.’ Sharif chuckled and kissed Carmel on the cheek. ‘I take it you two have been chatting?’ The enquiring look he gave Carmel meant he was checking who knew what before he continued with any conversation.

  ‘Yes, Joe knew who I was right away; apparently, I couldn’t be anyone else, only Dolly Mullane’s daughter. I’ve told him the whole story, or as much as I know anyway, everything Brian told me and also about her life here, from your Mum and you.’