by Carol Coffey
“Will they let me eat whatever I want?”
“Yes, Tess.”
“Will they let me have my lunch at my usual time?”
“I don’t know, Tess. There may be different rules there. You’ll get used to them,” was all Kate could reply.
By Monday, Kate was exhausted. Seán had called her twice during the night, claiming that his skin was itchy. He seemed a little confused, muttering that Tess had been in his room tormenting him again, which worried Kate until she found an empty bottle of whiskey under his bed. She put calamine lotion on his skin even though she told him that he had no rash and to go to sleep. When she returned to her room she wondered what had become of her brother. Scratch marks were appearing on his face and hands and he sat in his room all day, never venturing out to see if Dermot needed a hand. She wondered how on earth she would cope without Dermot’s help. Her cheeks reddened as she thought of the silly girlish dream she had about Dermot the previous night in which he rode an old, tired horse in the dark and as he passed her he saluted and offered her his hand, lifting her clean off the ground and riding off with her into the night. By morning, the dream made no sense to her.
She decided to ask Dermot to drive Seán to see the doctor and was tempted to get him to drop Tess off at her training centre, especially as this was her first day, but she resisted. Deirdre had put a lot of work into training Tess to go Knockbeg on the bus independently so Kate wouldn’t interfere now, no matter how frightened she was for her younger sister. Besides, Deirdre had promised to phone her after she met Tess off the bus and had walked her to the centre.
By eleven Kate and Seán were sitting in Doctor Doyle’s office with Seán constantly grumbling about how there was nothing wrong with him. Kate went into the doctor’s room with him, knowing that Seán would not mention the drinking or the itchy skin, or most worrying of all, his claim that Tess was tormenting him in private, something Kate was sure was untrue.
Doyle had been their doctor when their mother was ill and seemed concerned.
“Seán, how much would you drink a day?” he asked.
“About five pints,” Seán replied
“About ten,” Kate corrected him, “if not more.”
“What about spirits, Seán?”
“No, don’t touch them,” Seán lied.
“At least a bottle a day,” Kate corrected.
“Seán, have you noticed your skin colour?” Doyle asked.
“No,” Seán replied.
Kate knew he was telling the truth. She had noticed his yellow complexion for weeks now but she knew her brother never bothered to look at himself in the mirror, his unshaved face and growing hair evidence of this.
Kate watched the doctor examine Seán and knew from his demeanour that there was something wrong.
“I’m going to send you to Dublin for tests, Seán. I don’t want you to worry but I do want you to lay off the drink completely. That means no pints, no whiskey, nothing but tea, understand?”
“Why, what’s wrong?” Seán asked, suddenly becoming aware that the doctor was concerned.
“I can’t say without blood tests but I think your liver is in trouble – so no drink, okay?”
“Okay.”
Doctor Doyle looked sympathetically at Kate. “How have you been, Kate?”
“I’m all right, doctor. Tess started a training programme today.”
“That’s great. Your mother would be proud. But I asked how you were?”
“I manage.” Kate looked at the floor.
“You seem to have your hands full,” the doctor stated simply as he placed his hand on her arm. “Call me if I can help in any way. The hospital will post out the test date. When I get the results I’ll phone you.”
Kate walked back to the truck where Dermot was parked and waiting. He looked at her and nodded. A look that said “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.” She nodded back.
In Knockbeg, Tess sat nervously on a bench in the reception area of her training centre. It was noisy with lots of people, all women, who were talking too loudly. They seemed confused, which made Tess even more anxious than she had been when Deirdre left her inside the building twenty minutes ago.
A large, red-faced woman was watching Tess and approached her.
“Hello. I noticed you look a bit nervous. I am too. Mind if I sit beside you?”
Tess looked cautiously at the woman and tried to remember what Deirdre had told her but couldn’t.
“Okay,” was all she could say. She knew she wasn’t to say anything about not talking to strangers while inside the building.
“Thanks,” the woman said and heaved her large body onto the seat, touching Tess’s leg.
Tess pulled away.
“I’m sorry!” said the woman, smiling. “I’m a large girl!”
“You’re very fat and you don’t fit into the seat. You should ask for a larger seat.”
The woman was stunned into silence. She looked closely at the young girl and couldn’t see any malice in her face.
“I know, love, but they don’t make seats any larger than this,” she replied generously.
“Well, they should. That isn’t fair,” Tess said poker-faced.
The woman smiled at Tess. There was something honest about this girl that she liked, despite the insult about her weight.
“What’s your name?”
“Teresa, but I’m called Tess.”
“Oh, well, I’m Margaret, but they call me Peggy.”
“Why? Peggy sounds nothing like Margaret. It doesn’t even begin with the same letter,” Tess said, slightly annoyed at this. “It doesn’t make any sense.” She turned slightly away from Peggy.
“Well, Tess, sometimes we just have to accept things as they are,” Peggy said calmly, realising that Tess was a little “different”.
Tess turned and looked at her cautiously. “My friend Dermot said that too. Do you know him?”
“No, but it sounds like good advice, doesn’t it? Doesn’t do you any good to always expect to understand everything. Does it?”
Tess simply nodded. She knew this. She knew she didn’t have to understand everything but was always upset when she didn’t. Tess wondered would she ever get to be like Dermot and Peggy.
Chapter 22
1961
By the time Maura Byrne realised she was pregnant again, she had come to accept each assault Michael Byrne inflicted upon her as a normal part of life. She did not think about the new life growing inside her and moved about her world like a ghost, a shadow of the woman she had once been. She did not even believe that she felt any real emotion any more and managed to move through each day surviving, unthinking, unfocused on anything except watching her two beloved children live as safely as they could in such an environment. She rarely went into town now but not because she was embarrassed about her bruised face as she no longer cared how she looked. She seldom attended Mass. Michael was not particularly religious and did not insist on her going, usually rising too late for Mass himself on Sunday morning due to his usual hangover. Maura’s life revolved around the quiet, detached Seán and pretty Kate whose hair had since turned as black as her own and was showing signs of the fierce independent streak Maura had been known for as a girl.
Maura also lived for sleep, which had evaded her in recent years, only recently returning when her doctor had prescribed tablets so strong that some mornings she awoke with a foggy memory that Michael had returned home drunk and had inflicted his usual reign of terror on her. Her days involved dragging herself through household chores when she had a mind to do them, often relying on Kate to cook dinner for the family as she returned to bed, permanently exhausted. No one mentioned her burgeoning stomach or the fact that there would be a new baby in the house soon, least of all Michael. Maura, in her more lucid moments, thought how sad it was for this child inside her that no one, not even she, would celebrate his or her arrival. When Maura gave birth to her second daughter in the early morning some weeks later, Mich
ael looked fleetingly at the sleeping child and went into the fields to work. The only words he uttered were that she should be called Teresa, after his mother.
Chapter 23
1971
Seán hadn’t given up on finding out who the stranger at his mother’s funeral was. As the woman had no family in the area, his guess was that she stayed in the small hotel in Knockbeg, probably taking a taxi to Árd Glen on the morning of the funeral. The manager of the small, somewhat rundown hotel was a man Seán had known at school even though Gerry Dunne was a few years older than him. It was a believable story that Kate had sent him asking after the woman’s last name and address to send a memoriam card of their mother to. Gerry was only too happy to oblige but informed Seán that, while he remembered the woman, she had not left an address. He remarked on how quiet she was and how, on her first night at the hotel, she seemed irritated when he asked her about the purpose of her visit to Knockbeg. Dunne went on to tell Seán that he only found out that she was going to the Byrne funeral when her hackney failed to turn up and he had to drive her there himself. She had signed the guest book as Mrs Brigid Daly, Dublin, and had stayed two nights.
Seán wondered if his mother had kept in touch with this friend over the years but felt that she had probably not had any contact with her and that it was more likely that this woman found out about his mother’s death in the newspaper death notices. What Gerry Dunne did remember was that, at breakfast the following morning, he heard her telling another guest from Dublin that she lived beside Croke Park but never bothered with sport and was sick of the noisy crowds of people who passed by her door whenever there was a big match on. Gerry suggested Seán try the phone book for Dalys in that area of Dublin. Instead of driving back home with this information for Kate, who seemed less than interested in his quest, Seán drove straight to Dublin, determined to find out who this woman was and how much she knew about his mother’s secret life.
Before turning left towards Dublin, Seán dropped an envelope into Ciaran Brown’s office, signed documents from the local doctor stating Tess was unfit to run the farm and nominating Seán as legal guardian of the sister he thought less and less about each day.
Seán sat in his truck in a side street outside of Croke Park. He had phoned directory enquiries from a telephone box who gave him addresses for two B Dalys on Cross Street which was a small, narrow street of old redbricked houses in the shadow of Croke Park Stadium. Now that he was here, he felt a little foolish. What would he say? “Do you happen to know who my father was?” “Do you know who my mother was carrying on with?” He didn’t know which of the two Daly houses this woman lived in. Were they related? How much of the story should he tell the first house before deciding if it was the wrong one? He decided to knock and ask for Brigid Daly and hope both houses didn’t have a Brigid Daly inside. He could see one or two twitching net curtains of old biddies desperate to know who he was and he could feel his face redden at the thought of knocking, cold-call, at the small, rundown house directly in front of him.
Seán recognised the woman who opened the door immediately as the person who had attended his mother’s funeral and was relieved that he might only have to make a fool of himself once. Brigid Daly was very short and despite being slightly overweight, she had an almost frail appearance. Seán immediately launched into an explanation for his visit, explaining that he was looking for information about his mother’s life when she was younger.
Brigid Daly tried not to show how shocked she was to find Seán Byrne on her doorstep. Her heart pounded and she could feel her face flush as she listened to the tall, agitated man, her own nephew. She quickly ascertained that he did not know this as she stood nodding her head at him on her doorstep.
Before Seán finished ranting, Brigid asked him inside, out of sight of her nosy neighbours. She went into the kitchen, leaving Seán alone in the sitting room and made adequate noise to pretend she was busy making tea as the kettle hissed. She needed time to think, to work out how he had found her.
The screeching kettle broke her thoughts. After she carried the tea into the sitting room, she sat facing Seán in the somewhat old-fashioned room. An old china cabinet stood behind the door and was packed with ceramic dogs and tiny teacups full of dust. Inside the fireplace sat a small electric fire which clicked occasionally and lit up the worn red-patterned carpet. A large green-patterned sofa lined the opposite wall with a matching armchair placed directly under the window beside the PYE television. Seán could imagine her sitting there, watching passers-by, and wondered if she had seen him approaching. She could feel her heart racing and miss occasional beats. As Seán looked about the room, drinking his tea, he felt that there was something familiar about the place. He thought he had seen a photo of this room before but couldn’t remember where. He was about to say this when Brigid, anxious to have this visit over, interrupted his thoughts.
“I was a friend of your mother’s when we were young. But you probably know that?”
“Yes, like I said, I saw you at the funeral and the hotel in Knockbeg gave me your name. I had to do a bit of detective work to find your house though. Do you know there are two Daly houses on this street?” He smiled nervously at the stranger facing him.
Brigid’s heart hurt. Seán was the image of Éamonn at that age and the resemblance was almost painful. She remained silent.
“I wanted to find out who you were,” he said.
“Oh, why was that, love?”
The woman’s strong Dublin accent grated on Seán but she seemed pleasant enough.
“Well, it just seemed that there was a lot that my sister and I didn’t know about our mother. We – em – well – I thought you might be able to help.”
Brigid coughed hard, pretending a half-eaten biscuit had caught in her throat.
“Well . . . we knew each other such a long time ago. She was a beauty, that much I remember, had all the boys after her. Myself, I was an awful tomboy.”
Brigid wished she hadn’t mentioned the bit about the boys but it was too late now and she could see she had got her nephew’s attention. At the funeral she had wanted to hug him but instead had watched him from afar, her heart breaking with her longing to touch him, her own flesh and blood. She had been very fond of him as a baby and had not had any children of her own.
“Oh, was there any boy in particular?” Seán asked hopefully.
“Oh God no, love. Her father, your grandfather, was much too strict for that. No, just kid’s stuff. You know how it is with teenagers.”
Seán didn’t know how it was; he was too shy to approach girls at school and any girl who spoke to him soon got fed up with his awkward, introverted ways.
“How come you used to be in Árd Glen?”
Brigid dreaded this question. She wasn’t a good liar and was afraid that she would trip herself up.
“I had family there but they’re all gone now.”
“What was their name?” It was a small place and Seán knew that he would know them or at least know of them.
“My grandparents? Oh, love, you wouldn’t have known them – before your time.”
Although Seán knew he wasn’t the brightest spark, he was smart enough to know when he was being fobbed off.
“Did you have any brothers or sisters?” Seán wasn’t sure why he had asked this question.
“No, just me, lonely child as they say,” she lied. “What about you? Did Maura have many more?”
Seán looked squarely at her, not knowing if she knew the answer but suspecting she did. He didn’t answer.
“Did you keep in contact with my mother over the years?” he said instead.
“No, you know how it is, marriage, work, it all keeps you busy.” Her voice was beginning to shake and she wondered if her nephew had noticed how nervous she was.
He stood up and looked about the room. He looked at the large photo of Brigid and her husband on their wedding day that hung over the fireplace. He lifted a small black and white photo that sat o
n top of the television. It was an old photo of a small boy and girl sitting in a field with a collie dog.
“Is this you?”
“Yes,” Brigid replied nervously.
“In Árd Glen?”
“Oh, God knows, it’s such a long time ago. I look like I’m only three or so,” she gulped.
“Who is the little boy” Seán asked, acutely aware that he was having to drag every ounce of information from this woman and not knowing why.
“Oh, a cousin, I think. Haven’t seen him for years.”
Seán replaced the photo and walked around the room, unaware of how strangely he was behaving. He was searching for something but he didn’t know what.
“Have you any pictures of my mother?”
“No, love, sorry,” she replied, her head slightly bowed as she sat with her hands clasped tightly together, as though she were praying.
“Have you always lived here?”
“A long time, yes, about, oh, well over twenty years now.”
Seán was trying to think. He knew this visit was coming to an end and that he would have to make the most of it. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that this house was somehow familiar to him.
“Did she ever visit here? With me?”
“What?” she asked, wondering if Seán knew more than he pretended.
“Was I here before? This place seems familiar to me. I think I’ve seen a photo of it somewhere.”
“God, no, love, your mother wasn’t one for Dublin. She hated it really,” she replied nervously, feeling that she was digging a big hole for herself.
If it weren’t for her brother and her need to protect him, Brigid would have loved nothing better than to throw her arms around her nephew and welcome him. Now this was never going to happen and they would have to remain strangers for life.
