Whitethorn Woods

by Maeve Binchy

  I burned the false stomach and the wig and the cheap raincoat in their incinerator when nobody was looking. They called James to tell him he had a daughter, and he called Natasha to tell her she had a granddaughter. They even registered the birth. James cried on the telephone. He told me that he loved me more than ever and he would look after us both for the rest of his life. And Grace slept on, delighted with herself and everyone, and never caused anyone any trouble for twenty-three years.

  She is so like me, not physically, I know, but the way she behaves. You’ve seen that for yourself. She is my daughter in every sense of the word.

  She is a strong girl with a forceful character. She is just like her mother.

  Just like me.

  No, Mercedes, I did not enquire about the family who lost her in Ireland. You see, they have different newspapers and everything over there, so I didn’t have to read about it.

  They all have so many children over there anyway. I don’t think about that side of things at all.

  No, of course I would never tell Grace, never in a million years.

  She’s got a boyfriend now, David, of course you know. James isn’t crazy about the boy, he doesn’t say it but I know. I don’t like him very much but he’s Grace’s choice and so I say nothing, I just smile.

  David is Irish as it happens. Extraordinary, isn’t it! And Grace has never been over there. Since. Not yet anyway. But I had a real scare yesterday when suddenly out of the blue David started saying that there is this big drama going on in Ireland about a roadway that’s going to bypass Rossmore. Huge protests about it, apparently.

  ‘Rossmore?’ I said with my blood turning into ice.

  ‘Yeah, a one-horse town back of beyond. Much better bypassed. No one would have any call to go there.’ He dismissed the place.

  I raked his face in case he knew. Suppose he was actually from Rossmore? Suppose for one terrible moment that it was his sister who had disappeared from her pram? Could it have happened that he and Grace were brother and sister?

  I felt very faint. Remember, you were there for me as always.

  I didn’t pass out as I thought I was going to. I could feel myself coming back to reality. I asked myself, why would he mention that town of all towns unless there was some connection? Perhaps he had been tracking me down for years. I had to know.

  ‘Have you ever been there yourself, David?’ I asked, hardly daring to think what he might say.

  But no, he said he probably passed through it on the way to the West of Ireland but he had never stopped. He and Grace had been talking about it, because of something there that might be of interest or might not. His voice trailed away. He had only been trying to make conversation.

  Grace looked at him adoringly.

  ‘I’ll tell you what we were talking about, Mother – David was telling me that there’s a sort of shrine there, a wishing well or something. And, you know, people get cured there …’ She looked at me hopefully.

  ‘No, Grace, and David, thank you, but really I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just fine. Those places don’t really work, you know.’

  ‘But they say that they work in some fashion, Mother, you know, people get strength, confidence, they feel better. People who go there take what they can from them.’

  ‘I took what I could …’ I began and then I saw all of them looking at me. ‘I took what I could from everything and it made me very strong. I feel absolutely fine,’ I said firmly.

  And Grace lifted my thin hand and kissed it.

  Her grandmother is settling all this money on her in two years’ time when she’s twenty-five. She will have the whole Harris estate. What would she have had if I had left her in that pram with the dog tied to the handle? I won’t be here then of course to see her inherit everything, but that doesn’t matter. I gave her a very good start in life. I did everything for her: everything a mother could do. For her, for her father, for her grandmother.

  I have nothing to blame myself for. I never told James a lie in my life except this one, and I did it from love. We have had such a wonderful marriage, I know in my heart that he has never told me a lie. Not ever. But as I say, I have nothing to blame myself for.

  Stop crying, Mercedes, please stop. You’re meant to be helping us to feel strong, not the other way around. Things are hard enough without having the nurses getting all weepy on us.

  That’s better.

  That’s the smile I like.

  And maybe if there’s a little more tea, do you think?

  Part 2 – James

  Mummy always telephones me at 9 a.m. A lot of people think that’s rather odd but I find it quite reassuring. It means that I don’t have to remember to phone her and that I am kept up to date with all that’s happening in her world, which is always interesting. Full of writers and lawyers, bankers and politicians.

  We have always lived a very quiet life, Helen and I, so it’s entertaining to hear first-hand about the kind of people you might read about in the newspapers. Helen never answers the phone at that time because we both know it’s Mummy. Not that Helen doesn’t like talking to Mummy or anything, they get on very well and Helen is utterly charming to her. From the beginning she was the one who decided that we must make Mummy part of our lives, invite her to lunch or dinner with us once a week. Then of course she has always known exactly how to handle her. If Mummy has a fault it is that she’s slightly snobby but Lord, does Helen cut straight through that!

  She looks at Mummy with big china-blue eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Harris, but you’re going to have to help me here. We didn’t ever eat oysters at the orphanage,’… or we didn’t have fingerbowls or amuse-bouches or whatever nonsense Mummy was indulging in at the time. It was completely disarming, Mummy came round to her very quickly – after some initial doubts, shall we say. She was genuinely admiring of someone so direct and unaffected as Helen.

  She also knew that I had never loved anyone before and would never love anyone again. I had made it very clear that Helen would be my wife very soon after I met her first, wearing a dress exactly the same colour as her blue eyes. She wears that colour a lot, in silky scarves, in tunics. And also in robes and negligees. Which is all that anyone sees her wear nowadays.

  The family, all my uncles and cousins, had always wanted me to work in the City like Father had. But I hadn’t the stomach for it. I hated the whole idea. Instead I insisted on serving my time with an antiques dealer. I did the history of art courses and shortly after I married Helen it all took off like a rocket. Helen taught me to dress smartly, rather than in the slightly fuddy-duddy clothes I used to wear, to present myself more forcefully. To give little talks on eighteenth-century furniture. She encouraged me to let the press know when I had something interesting to sell. And the rest, as they say, is history.

  My antique shops are all over the country and I am regularly on television, consulted as an expert.

  I made my own way and I was very proud of that. As I was proud of marrying Helen. We had our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary a few days ago. Helen even pretended to drink a little champagne tonight in the hospital. We brought in some crystal champagne glasses. She looked quite as beautiful as the day we were married.

  And then after that we went to dinner: Mummy, Grace and I. Fortunately Grace didn’t insist that the loutish David come with us. We went to a small French restaurant that Helen and I used to go to a lot before she became ill.

  Mummy proposed a toast: ‘To one of the happiest marriages I have ever known,’ she said in one of her tinkly voices. I smiled a gentle, knowing smile.

  This was the same woman who had railed and wept at me over a quarter of a century ago, begging me not to marry a girl of whom we knew nothing, a woman with no history, no past, except that she had been given away to an orphanage.

  Grace agreed about our marriage. She said her dream was to have a marriage even half as good with David. She said that all her friends reported that their parents were constantly bickering and scori
ng points. This had never been a part of her life. She never remembered there being any arguments at all.

  ‘Nor do I,’ I said simply.

  I didn’t taste the food, it could have been chopped-up cardboard. The sense of unfairness welled up in me again. Why was this marriage drawing to a close? Next year we would be talking about my late wife, next month even. What reason could there be that Helen who had never hurt a fly was dying, and others whose lives had been full of malevolence and greed were allowed to live on? Why was I here at this table mouthing clichés to my mother and daughter, when I wanted to be by Helen’s bed holding her hand, telling her that it had been a magical time and that I could remember no past before her and contemplate no future after she has gone?

  And we would talk about inconsequential things, like planting geraniums near each other in clusters, and I was to send my jackets to be dry-cleaned every week and my shirts to be done at the Chinese laundry, and how I was to wear expensive cufflinks even if it did take three minutes to put them in. I loved her so much and I had never thought of being with anyone else. That’s true – I never even thought of it.

  But that Filipino woman, Mercedes, the one with the big, sad eyes, kept assuring me that Helen was happy tonight. She had talked about her family a lot apparently and took out pictures of our wedding day, and snaps of Grace when she was a little girl. Helen wanted me to try and live what she called a normal life. To go out and have a happy dinner with my mother and my daughter. As if that were remotely possible. I saw them looking at me, sideways glances, Mummy and Grace, it was a warning sign. I must be more cheerful. I’m tired of being cheerful for other people.

  Yet that’s what Helen wanted most. She had said it was the one thing I could do to help her, I must keep the show on the road. I must remember to invite my mother around regularly, I must be polite to David, Grace’s irritating boyfriend, and not say that she could do better for herself even if I thought it. So with an effort I put my shoulders back, forced myself to identify what I was eating and started to keep the show on the road again.

  They were both such handsome women. My mother did not look her seventy-something years, even I didn’t know exactly how many. Yes, my mother Natasha Harris was a credit to her hairdresser, her beauty salon and her own good taste in clothes. She wore a lilac dress and jacket, something that had been designed for someone forty years younger, yet suited her perfectly.

  Grace with her blonde hair and dark eyes was always striking. But tonight in a scarlet dress with those little straps she looked dazzling. Much too good for that David fellow, too beautiful and too bright, but I was not to go down that road.

  She was still talking about David. When was she not? He worked in the City too.

  People said he was bright. Bright in the sense of having native cunning. Like a bookie at a race track, not like the accountants, bankers and financial experts with whom Grace moved with such ease.

  No, indeed, young David was a different breed.

  But there was no doubt that Grace loved him. She had never brought anyone home before this and now it had to be this young lout.

  ‘David was in to see Mother today.’ Grace rolled his name around as if she loved saying it. ‘He said, wasn’t it extraordinary that I looked so different from both of you, that I couldn’t sit out in the sun for two minutes without getting burned and yet you both could sit out for a month and just turn golden brown. He’s the image of his father, of course, they are like twins, same nose and mouth, same way of pushing his hair out of his eyes.’

  I restrained myself from saying that this must be unfortunate for both of them. I managed a weak little sign of interest to encourage Grace to go on speaking about the love object.

  ‘Yes, he was asking Mother, didn’t she think it was strange that I was so unlike either of you.’

  ‘And what did your mother say?’ I asked, trying to put some warmth and interest into the question. I was barely able to speak. How dare this punk interrogate a dying woman? How dare he confuse her last weeks, days even, with his inane questions?

  ‘Oh, you know Mother, she said she agreed with him, then she wasn’t feeling so well so she called for Mercedes.’

  ‘It wasn’t the boy’s fault, the pain comes and goes for Helen, we were told that,’ my mother said. Astoundingly Natasha has always stood up for the young pup.

  ‘And she was fine later, Dad, for the little anniversary ceremony, wasn’t she?’ Grace’s big, beautiful, dark eyes looked at me questioningly.

  ‘Yes, she was fine,’ I managed to say.

  I managed a lot of things in the next hour. Like smiling at my mother and my daughter, and telling them little stories about happier times. I managed to look as if I cared whether we had an Armagnac or a Cognac as a treat after dinner. And then finally my mother was back in her tall town house, and my daughter back in her flat where undoubtedly that David who looked so like his father would come and sleep in her bed.

  And I was free.

  Free at last to go and see Helen.

  They let you in at any time.

  That was the great thing about having enough money for private medicine. I could just push through those big quiet doors into the lobby which looked more like a grand hotel than a hospital. The night receptionist greeted me pleasantly.

  ‘If she’s asleep I promise you that I won’t disturb her,’ I said with my practised and barely sincere smile.

  Helen and I had often talked about how life was basically an act. How we have to pretend a lot of the time in life. We sighed over it and told each other that at least we never pretended with each other. But we did. Of course we did. The biggest pretence of all was between the two of us.

  She never told me about Grace and I never told her that I knew. That I had always known.

  I had known since the day I went into her room that time during the so-called pregnancy when she said she preferred to sleep alone. She was tossing in her sleep in the middle of yet another bad dream, I put my hand on her forehead to reassure her and I saw it, the white garment she was wearing under her nightdress. I lifted up the sheet and saw the beautiful cream and gold negligee pulled to the side and the foam artificial belly attached to it.

  The shock was overwhelming. Helen, my wife, lying to me. But it was followed by an aftershock of sympathy and love. The poor, poor girl, how terrified she must be of my mother and, indeed, of me that she would go to such extremes. And what was she going to do when the time came, or rather when she told us that her time had come?

  Possibly she had arranged to buy a child from somewhere. But why hadn’t she told me? I would have shared anything, everything with her. Why could she not have told me?

  I went back to my room that night full of alarm. What did she intend to do without me by her side? I knew that she wouldn’t be able to manage it without me, bring to term whatever half-crazed plan she had dreamed up.

  But I also knew I had to wait. I had to let her go ahead. Nothing could be worse than the humiliation of letting her know I had discovered her deception.

  The time went on; Helen looked pale and anxious, Mummy put it down to her pregnancy. Only I knew that there was a greater reason. I was very relieved in the end when she said that she wanted to go back to visit her old orphanage, the place where she had been brought up. That was where she would find a baby and pretend that it was ours.

  It surprised me, even shocked me, that a place like that, a really respectable institution, would go along with her in such a subterfuge. It was against the law, it was against everything they stood for. They had always been meticulous about the children in their care. Surely they would have found a legal way for Helen to adopt a child rather than be a party to all this deception? But I knew they would always look out for Helen.

  There were still women there who had been on the staff when she was a baby herself.

  They would have nothing but compassion and pity for her.

  So when I heard the news that our baby had been born suddenly, a lit
tle girl, strong and lovely, and that everyone was being so helpful, I started to breathe again. I glossed over the whole birth registration business, easily filling in documents here and signing my name there, asking no questions, raising no issues.

  I held someone else’s little girl in my arms, and even I, a mere man as people would say, realised that Grace was older than the tender age that Helen claimed her to be. I helped to keep people away from the mother and child until it was too blurred and late to know the difference. I reminded everyone that I too had been a very big child at birth and, amazingly, my mother – who is inclined to fight with me on issues like this – agreed and said that I was quite mountainous.

  Helen gave no descriptions of the delivery, not even to people like my mother and her close friends who begged her for details. It had all passed in a blur, she said, but now that she held her little Grace to her it didn’t seem important, and wasn’t she lucky that she had been with people who knew how to help her. Nobody thought it was unusual.

  Nobody.

  Well, why would they?

  They had seen Helen over the last six months swelling gently, planning the birth of her child. Only I knew and I would never tell.

  I walked along the carpeted corridors to Helen’s room. I had only one more thing to tell her, which was that her secret would be safe with me for the rest of her life. That it didn’t matter one damn what that foolish, insensitive boyfriend David said, no one would ever know that Grace wasn’t our daughter. But I couldn’t tell her straight out. That would be letting her know that I knew.

  I would sit and look at her and it would come to me.

  I would know what to say.

  The room was dark, just a small light and the big shape of the Filipino woman, Mercedes, sitting beside her. Mercedes was holding Helen’s hand. Helen’s eyes were closed.

  ‘Mr Harris!’ Mercedes was surprised to see me.

  ‘Is she awake?’ I asked.

  She was asleep apparently; she had just had her cocktail of drugs. The palliative care nurse had been half an hour ago.