Cathy Kelly 3-book Bundle (122 page)

Wheat and oats were the crops of my childhood, and our staple diet had plenty of bread, oatcakes and porridge. My mother could never understand how my father’s people made their porridge with sugar or honey when, in her house, they boiled it up with salt.

Salt was the way it went all my life, and winter mornings started with me putting my stockings on by the fire and then stirring the porridge – it wasn’t called stirabout for nothing.

Many emigrants to America went off with oatcakes in their luggage, for properly made oatcakes can last a few months. In our house, we mixed the fine oatmeal, salt, butter and a dram of hot water to make them. Work the butter and salt into the oatmeal until you have a fine crumb, add the water to make the mixture sticky, then work it with flour into a cake of bread or into smaller chunks for biscuits.

Fresh out of the oven, we’d spread them with blackberry jam or just plenty of butter.

When we were first in Brooklyn, I couldn’t eat oatcakes without crying because they reminded me of home so much. Nothing else was as bad, not bacon
and cabbage, not soda bread, not even potato cakes the way Agnes used to make them. Oatcakes made me think of sitting on the dry-stone wall with your father, eating and talking. We’d left him behind in the graveyard with the wind whistling fit to skin you. But in time, I got used to them again. My mother was a great one for saying that time heals, and she’s right. It does. But slowly, mind.

Will Kerrigan sat in his garden office, his face turned to his computer screen. But he wasn’t seeing the list of emails he was working on. His mind was focused on one subject: Rae.

In all their married life, he’d never known her like this. His Rae had a warm smile for everyone, her dark eyes would light up when he made a joke, and at night, they’d lie companionably in bed and talk about their days.

But since his mother had moved in to recuperate, his Rae had vanished to be replaced by a sad-eyed woman he barely recognised.

At first, he’d thought it was his mother’s presence in the house.

Rae thought he didn’t notice the way his mother went on: ‘This isn’t the way
I’d
do it, Rae,’ or ‘Why don’t you cut down the wisteria/change those curtains/paint the cupboards…’

But he did notice. And he tried to stop it.

‘Mother, you’re used to being mistress of your own place, so think how hard it would be for you if someone came in and criticised you.’

‘What do you mean
“
think how hard it would be if someone criticised me”?’ His mother had kicked into outrage instantly. ‘I would never do such a thing.’

‘But you do, you know,’ Will went on stoically.

‘Says who?’

‘Says nobody,’ Will said with a sigh. It was hard to remain patient. He’d promised his dying father he’d look after his mother. That meant not hurting her feelings if he could help it, but her feelings were unusual creatures. Sensitive as a coral reef to any personal criticism, but entirely oblivious to any hurt she inflicted on anyone else.

‘You’re imagining it, Will. Rae and I get on marvellously. I wish I’d had a mother-in-law to help me out when I was younger.’

‘We’re not younger, Mother,’ Will insisted. ‘Rae and I are nearly sixty. We don’t need anyone to tell us that the kitchen would look nicer in taupe.’

‘I’m shocked that Rae said anything –’ Geraldine began, both feet on the ladder to high dudgeon by now.

‘Rae said nothing. I overheard.’

‘Oh, pish! Men never understand things like that. We were just talking. That’s all.’

It was a lost cause.

He phoned Leonora to ask if she’d have Mother to stay for a while.

‘Have you lost all your marbles?’ shrieked Leonora. ‘I’m not having the old dear in my house. We’d kill each other within twenty-four hours. Unless you want to be standing in court defending me for murder, don’t even think about it.’

Will hung up.

To give her her due, his mother tried to be a teeny bit nicer. But it didn’t help. Rae was like a wraith in the house. She got up, cooked, cleaned, went to work, and went to bed at night, all in a haze of sadness that he couldn’t penetrate.

‘What’s wrong, love?’ he’d ask, and Rae would turn those sad eyes to him and say ‘Nothing, I’m just tired.’ Was she ill?

He waited till she was at work one day, then phoned Dulcie in Community Cares.

‘Please don’t tell Rae I phoned, but, Dulcie, I’m so worried about her.’

‘That’s uncanny,’ said Dulcie. ‘I was just about to phone you to say the same thing.’

Will exhaled slowly. There was to be no joy here, either.

‘Could she be sick?’ Dulcie asked. ‘I thought perhaps it was that, and I asked her. Well, you know me, no holding me back, but she said no, she was fit as a fiddle. Not that she looks it. She’s definitely lost weight.’

‘She has?’

‘Lord, yes – at least half a stone. There isn’t a pick on her.’

Fear gripped Will now. He hadn’t really noticed the weight in the same way that he didn’t really notice what Rae wore. She was simply his darling Rae and she could be fat or thin, dressed in rags or in designer clothes, and it was all immaterial.
She
was what mattered to him.

In desperation, he phoned his mother’s friend, Carmel De Vere, and lied that his mother was a bit down and perhaps Carmel might take her out to see a film or a play and perhaps have a spot of supper.

‘My treat,’ said Will.

Geraldine wrapped her mink stole over her shoulders and admired herself in the hall mirror as she waited for Carmel to pick her up. It was a quarter to six and Will wanted her gone so he could talk to Rae as soon as she came home from Titania’s. They never had a moment to themselves these days: perhaps that was part of the problem. At least, he hoped that’s all it was. Despite what Rae had said to Dulcie, it was never off his mind now that Rae might be ill and simply didn’t know how to break it to him.

‘There’s nothing to beat a bit of mink,’ his mother said, twirling the stole.

‘Your hip seems to have healed so well,’ remarked Will as she twirled.

‘Ah no, not really.’ Geraldine reached for the injured hip
instantly and sank on to the hall chair as if she’d just performed a pas de deux and was now shattered. ‘I’m still weak, you know. I shouldn’t stand too much.’

Carmel had to come in, kiss Will, admire the mink, and visit the cloakroom before the pair could get on their way.

‘Finally,’ Will said as he shut the door behind them.

He picked the post up from the wire basket hanging on the front door and walked into the kitchen with it, sorting through the envelopes. There was one for Rae with a Limerick postmark. Curious, he thought. Who did they know in Limerick?

It was nearly half past six when Rae came home.

‘Where’s your mother?’ she asked when she saw the kitchen table set for two.

‘Gone out with Carmel. I bribed them.’

‘Oh, I see.’

Once, Rae would have made a funny comment, Will thought sadly. This lack of humour was just another sign everything was wrong.

‘Sit,’ he said, taking her coat. ‘I’m going to give you a nice dinner and we’re going to talk.’

Rae sat obediently. Will had put the post beside her side plate. He was just placing a glass of wine in front of her when he saw her face go white.

‘What is it?’

She let him take the unopened letter from her hand. It was the one with the Limerick postmark.

‘What it is? Is something wrong?’

Rae stared at him with her sad brown eyes, then she seemed to make a decision, because her chin came up and she looked like the old Rae again.

‘There’s no nice way to tell you this. It’s a letter about my first child, a little girl I gave up for adoption when I was sixteen.’

The evening Jasmine was born, Sister Veronica brought Rae a tray of tea and toast, and a bottle of formula. They’d moved her into a single room so as not to upset the other girls.

‘I’ll take her away and feed her while you eat,’ the nun said firmly.

‘She’s perfectly happy in the bassinet,’ Rae insisted. She may have felt weak, but there was no way she was letting Jasmine out of her sight. ‘I’ve just fed her.’

‘Sister Martin is right, Rae. You’re just making it harder for yourself.’

‘I’m keeping her!’ cried Rae.

‘Can I tell you what happens to the girls who keep their babies? They come back eventually, because they have nothing and they’re living in a cramped damp bedsit and the child is sick, but they’ve no money for the doctor and no food, and they know the baby has no future. That’s what happens to them.’

‘She’s my child, that must count for something?’

‘What counts is that you do what is right for her. Do it for her,’ Sister Veronica said, her voice low and powerful. ‘Do this generous thing for her. It’s the most unselfish thing you’ll ever do. You want to keep her for yourself, but you can’t be selfish. Is that the life you want for this little scrap of a child?’

‘No, but I’m her mother, I can look after her.’ Rae was crying now and little Jasmine was too, soft baby moans of distress.

‘You can’t look after her. How can you earn money? Your family aren’t there for you, you told me that. Yes, Rae, some girls do keep their babies,’ Sister Veronica went on, ‘but they are going home to their families. Nobody can rear a child on their own, Rae. You need some support.’

‘And I have none,’ said Rae bitterly.

‘How would you cope? You’re a beautiful girl, Rae, you’d be at the mercy of every scoundrel out there. You and that little baby of yours.’

‘I can’t do it.’

‘You can.’

The nun sat on the bed for what felt like hours. She had stories of babies who became ill living in terrible conditions, women who went crazy with nobody to help them. Babies who grew into angry children without the love of two parents. That was God’s will, Sister Veronica went on. Two parents to raise a child.

Rae hadn’t told her much about her own parents, but somehow Veronica knew. Of the hopeless couple who lived in poverty and bitterness, who’d never come to look for their daughter.

‘Suppose you kept her and something happened to you,’ Sister Veronica said meaningfully. ‘Your little baby would go to them to raise.’

It was the one argument for which there was no answer.

‘How can I let her go?’ Rae asked. Her tears were flowing like a river now and dripping on to her nightgown in spite of her efforts to stem them with a tissue. She had to stay in control, had to for Jasmine’s sake.

‘It’s what a mother’s love is about,’ Sister Veronica said. ‘Giving her up to bring her a chance in life. You never had a chance, but she will. The other girls who’ve done it are happy because they knew it was the right thing to do.’

‘They’re happy? They’re OK? How do you know?’ Rae couldn’t believe it. How could a person be happy if they gave up their baby?

‘They’re happy,’ insisted the nun. ‘You wouldn’t believe how happy they are when they come back to see me and talk about it all. They’re content, knowing they made the right choice. It’s hard to see it now, but you will.’

Sister Veronica reached into the bassinet where Jasmine was lying, staring up with her great violet eyes, and picked her up. It was the first time Rae had let anyone else hold her. She looked on jealously as the nun gentled the baby,
years of experience with babies showing in her movements.

‘You rest and I’ll get someone to bring us up some fresh tea and toast,’ Sister Veronica said calmly. ‘You haven’t touched that.’

Rae watched her leave the room with Jasmine in her arms, knowing that the nun was showing her that Jasmine could be cared for by other people. She would not fall apart in the room on her own, as she wouldn’t fall apart in another room on another day if they took Jasmine to a better future.

When the tea and toast came, Rae drank and ate. Later Sister Veronica returned with Jasmine, who was now sleeping peacefully.

‘It’s the best thing for her and for you,’ the nun said when she left the room. ‘I’ll be back in the morning and we can sort it all out. Your baby’s future.’

She’d never called her Jasmine, Rae noticed. Not once. As if the baby had no name, not one that Rae would give her, anyway.

That night, Rae only dozed intermittently. Each time she’d sleep, she’d wake up with a start, as if someone was already there, taking Jasmine. When she lay awake, she thought about what Veronica had said. It was all true, wasn’t it? Why else would she say it? Jasmine had such a limited future with Rae. She deserved better. And there was nobody else to take care of her if something happened to Rae. She could not go to Paudge and Glory Hennessey.

Sister Veronica was back in the morning with a lady from an adoption agency.

The woman was short, kind-faced and armed with a clipboard and papers.

‘What you’re doing is the best thing for your child,’ she said in a voice like a headmistress’s. ‘Your baby will be happy and loved. You are a wonderful person to do this.’

She had some papers for Rae to sign and there would be more later. ‘Just a formality,’ she said briskly. She also had a woollen blanket and a baby basket.

‘Now?’ said Rae, horrified. ‘I thought we’d have longer together.’

Jasmine lay content in her arms after her second feed of the morning.

‘Some homes try that, but it’s harder for mother and baby,’ the woman said knowledgeably. ‘Quicker is better. Why doesn’t Sister Veronica take her while you sign the forms?’

Rae’s hands shook. Carla had told her it would be quick, and she’d thought Carla wanted it that way, but perhaps they always did it like that.

‘You’ll want to be getting back to your old life,’ the woman said when the forms were signed. ‘Kiss her now. We’re off. You need to rest.’

The nun held Jasmine out to Rae, Sister Martin appeared from nowhere, along with another strange woman.

Rae tried to take Jasmine but Sister Veronica held the baby tightly. ‘Just a quick kiss.’

‘No!’ cried Rae, in wild panic at what she’d just done.

The other woman, the one she’d never met, held on to her tightly.

‘No, no.’