Hide Her Name (42 page)

Alice laughed out loud. What would it matter?

‘Oh, please let him win,’ she whispered to herself, noticing her frozen breath hanging in the air and wondering at how dramatically the temperature had dropped in the past hour.

The wide cobbled road had been built to accommodate shire horses and carriages, pulling flat-bed loads from the docks to the processors. It was quiet and eerie now. Nothing had passed by for the past ten minutes.

From the shadows cast by the wall, Alice had silently observed the sisters as they crossed the road from the convent to the school, excitedly chattering to each other as they bustled in to see the nativity play, a highlight in their calendar year.

The biting cold now cut through to the bone as Alice pulled her coat tighter. Her eyes began to water as, full in the face of the icy northerly that lifted up from the river, she stared down the hill, willing him to come quickly.

Flinching from the rising wind, she turned towards the classroom windows.

Inside would be the desk and chair where one day soon Joseph would sit. She conjured up an image of his dark hair and his freckled face as he looked at a blackboard and then wrote earnestly in his notebook. Alice knew, she could tell already, Joseph would be bright. He was as inquisitive as he was funny. Joseph, the little man she had come to love.

She imagined his short legs dashing down the steps with his brown leather satchel flying in the air behind him and his face beaming as he ran to someone. Who is it? Alice thought, looking eagerly at the gate, now shrouded in darkness, where during the day the mothers stood waiting and chatting. Many arrived early to engage in the school-gate gossip. Whom will he run to? Who will it be? There was someone at the gate, she thought, moving back into the deeper darkness – but she couldn’t make out who it was, waiting to greet the excited, laughing Joseph.

The icy wind slapped her across the face and made her eyes sting. She closed them for a second.

In her own darkness, she saw herself in Joseph’s bedroom. He was fast asleep, his little head lay on the pillow, Nellie’s old and threadbare teddy tucked under his arm. One thumb, half in his mouth, having slipped out as he had fallen into a deep sleep. His soft, flannelette, blue-and-white striped pyjamas kept him warm. As always, he had kicked off the pale blue cot-blanket that Kathleen had knitted and the beautiful, hand-made, white lace cover his Auntie Maeve had sent across from Ireland.

She could smell his powdery, sleep-filled room.

Her heart felt as though it were in a vice as in her mind’s eye his angelic face softened with the laughter of a dream.

She saw her boy, waking up on Christmas morning, every room in the house smelling of the turkey Kathleen had slowly roasted in the range overnight.

She saw Joseph running into the bedroom to wake everyone, in his haste to open the presents under the tree.

The previous Christmas, Jerry had made Nellie wait on the stairs as he held the door to the kitchen closed, pretending that Father Christmas had forgotten her.

‘Has he been?’ said Jerry, peeping through the door, opening it just a crack, pretending he could see the tree. ‘Oh, no, I don’t think he has, Nana Kathleen. I think Miss Nellie can’t have been a very good girl this year.’

They drove her crazy as she playfully pummelled Jerry’s back with her fists, in an effort to push past.

Alice replayed the scene in her mind. She had stood at the top of the stairs, watching, smiling, not really a part of what was happening. Observing in her usual way, from the edge.

Will he think of me? she asked herself. Will he remember who I am? Will he run home from school with the others and wonder where his mammy is?

She began to shiver with the cold and then she felt it on her skin, the first snowflake of Christmas. She looked up into the wind. It was as if the angels had opened a trapdoor. The snow fell heavy and fast. In less than a minute, the pavement on which she stood was white, her shoulders were heavily dusted and, despite the swirling wind, it began to settle.

Once more, she glanced directly down the road, into the wind and through the snow. Still no sign.

When she had explained her plan to him, he hadn’t wanted her to wait at the school.

‘Don’t go out, Alice,’ he had said. ‘Just say you’re unwell and stay at home. I will come straight there.’

But she couldn’t. She was compelled to leave. She hadn’t wanted to see them getting ready. She couldn’t bear to kiss Joseph goodbye. He would have been full of excitement at being taken to the big school for the play. Joseph was always beside himself with delight when in the company of other children.

Alice had made an excuse about having dreadful toothache and said that she would take herself off to the dentist in town.

‘Oh, that’s just desperate now, ye poor thing.’ Kathleen’s face had instantly become a picture of love and concern.

‘I will be fine, Kathleen. It’s happened before. I may be a while, though, and I won’t feel like going to the school afterwards. I will just come home and go straight to bed.’

‘Best thing, queen,’ Kathleen had said as she busied about making an early tea before they left.

Alice had hidden in the shadows and watched them all arrive. Nellie had pushed the pram up the hill and Kathleen had held onto Nellie’s arm.

‘Ooh, I’m blowing for tugs,’ she had heard Kathleen gasp.

Alice had felt like a ghost. She could see and hear all but she was invisible.

She had seen Peggy, smoking as she walked, with a gaggle of children round her, nervously squealing and jumping up and down, running ahead of Peggy, up the steps to the entrance. It seemed as if every young woman from the four streets had filed into the hall, chatting in that companionable way that had always eluded Alice.

She knew that Joseph was now inside the school hall, happy and warm, sitting on Nellie’s or Kathleen’s knee, and here she was, back where she had begun, on the outside looking in.

She had tried to explain her feelings to Sean.

‘My marriage to Jerry was a symptom of my illness and of the person I had once been. I want to leave that person behind. I am whole now. I have fallen in love all by myself, without manipulation or deceit and it feels the most amazing thing. I cannot stay and live a lie and nor can you, but what is worse is that if we do, we have to carry on with our old lives and see each other every day. I could not bear that.’

Alice looked down at her shoes. They were buried in snow. The school door and the windows of the classroom opposite had taken the full force of the wind and both were plastered in the white powder.

On each pane of the sash windows, a hand-made paper Christmas decoration peeped through the snow. Soon, one of them would have ‘Joseph Deane, Class 1’ written on the back.

But Alice would never see it.

She felt her insides crunch. The school gate was still shrouded in darkness and yet the feeling that she wasn’t alone was stronger than before.

Applause suddenly reverberated through the school doors and then, after a short time, she heard voices. Children were singing the beautiful haunting first notes of a carol she recognized from her own unhappy school days. ‘Silent Night’. And it was. A very silent night.

She doubted now if she could do it. Maybe Sean was right. Maybe meeting him at the school had been the wrong thing to do.

Already the pain of missing Joseph was intense. She would never hear or see him sing ‘Silent Night’ with his school friends.

The strains of ‘Little Donkey’ followed, pouring out into the snow-filled air. Was Joseph trying to sing? He would be looking up at his Nellie and trying his best to join in. A child in a hurry to grow up. His world was perfect, his routine stable. He was surrounded by people who loved and adored him, but she wasn’t there. She knew he would be looking for her. He would turn his little head to the door when he saw a fleeting shadow pass. He would look seriously at Nellie when she said to him, ‘Mammy may be here soon, if she’s feeling better.’

Pain and doubt ripped through her heart.

She turned and saw his figure emerge over the brow of the hill, walking slowly towards her, his head bent against the driving snow. His hands were thrust deeply into his pockets and his long overcoat kicked out before him.

When he reached her, she saw his face in the lamplight. One eye was closed and filled with blood. She had never seen him look so bad.

‘Sean,’ she whispered, ‘oh my God, are you all right?’

Sean looked at her frozen face. Her hat was covered in snow and if he hadn’t been in so much pain, he would have laughed. ‘I’m fine,’ he replied. ‘You won’t even know I’ve been in a fight a week from now.’

‘Did you win?’

Alice almost didn’t want to know. If he hadn’t won, nothing would have altered. Half of her felt a sense of relief at that prospect, the half that wanted to stay with her son and to watch him grow into manhood. The other half, that loved Sean to the point of pain, willed him to have won his fight. If he had, they would take the morning passage to New York.

‘I won,’ he said, placing his hand on her elbow and looking around. ‘I have put an envelope with money on the mantel for Brigid and I have already left both our bags at the hotel. We can do it, Alice. We can sail to America in the morning.’

Conflicting emotions tore through Alice. She wanted to shriek with excitement at the prospect of realizing her dream and also to cry with grief at all she was leaving behind.

Tears poured down her cheeks.

‘Have ye changed your mind?’ asked Sean.

Their future hung on her answer.

They had agreed that if they didn’t take passage to America together, then their illicit affair must stop and they would both spend the rest of their lives in agony, each knowing the other was only yards away, under a different roof, married to someone else.

Neither of them could bear that thought. It would be impossible. Alice thought she would rather die than have to live through that kind of misery.

Sean put his arm round her shoulder and turned her towards the brow of the hill. ‘Come on, Alice,’ he said, kissing her on the temple. ‘We have to, before anyone leaves and sees us.’

They both turned and walked into the wind and drifting snow. Alice was now sobbing quietly. Sean understood. The pain he felt at leaving his daughters was intense, but he thought that Alice’s heartache as a mother must surely be worse.

‘As soon as we are settled, we will send for them to visit us, or we will sail back and see them. We aren’t leaving them for ever, Alice.’

She turned her head to look back at the school.

‘Little Donkey’ was reaching an end. She could hear applause yet again and laughter, and then she saw a movement at the gate. Someone else had been there all along. Who could it be?

The snow was driving into her eyes and forcing herself to blink, but she saw her. It was definitely her.

Against the frosty whiteness, Alice could not doubt the wild red hair swirling in the midst of what had become a blizzard. Bernadette. The dead wife and mother whose place Alice had stolen, with deceit and lies. Bernadette looked at Alice and her gaze was one of deep sadness, deeper than anything Alice had ever known.

She stood rigid in shock.

‘Alice, come on, we have to hurry,’ said Sean urgently. ‘Come on, queen, what’s up? Ye look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

The moment the the singing stopped and the clapping began, Peggy took herself to the front of the school and tried to push back the bolts on the wooden door.

Little Paddy had done his job of turning up the lights and everyone was gathered round the school hatch for their mince pie and cup of tea.

One of the classrooms had been opened up and orange squash and mince pies were being served to the children. For some of them, those whose parents often skipped mass and spent their wages in the pub, it was the only treat they would enjoy all Christmas.

Once Little Paddy had finished his chore, he ran to help Peggy open the door. Sliding back the bolt, they both gave a gasp of shock as they saw the snow, already over an inch deep.

Little Paddy grabbed the sleeve of his mother’s coat. ‘Do ye see that?’ he yelled in surprise. ‘It’s snowing!’

‘Merciful God, we could do without that, all right,’ said Peggy, grudgingly putting her foot onto the first step. ‘Here, Paddy, give me yer hand.’

Little Paddy put out his arm to help his mother down the steps.

Peggy was wearing her usual old slippers with no stockings. She had neither the time nor the money to be fussing with stockings and suspender belts.

‘Just another thing to wash,’ she would say to anyone who troubled to ask.

Within seconds, the cold had made the varicose veins around her ankles protrude like bunches of black grapes.

‘Holy Mary, it’s fecking cold out here, Paddy,’ she muttered, as they negotiated the steps. ‘I’ll stand here, lad,’ she said, once they got to the second step. ‘It’s far enough away from precious Mrs Sykes.’

Little Paddy left his mother as quickly as he could and ran into the classroom, yelling, ‘It’s snowing outside!’ Within seconds, Peggy was engulfed as children flew down the steps on either side of her.

‘Oh, would ye look at that,’ said Nellie, running to Peggy’s side. Peggy smiled. The front yard was full of children shouting and throwing snow into the air.

Nellie crouched down beside Peggy to make a snowball, but the snow just crumbled into powder in her hands. Peggy looked up and down the road to see if there were any buses running.

It took her a minute to make out what she had seen, but once she was sure, she knew.

As Nellie stood up, Peggy spoke to her. ‘Nellie, would ye run back inside, queen, and ask Nana Kathleen to come outside to me.’

‘Now?’ said Nellie.

‘Yes please, queen,’ said Peggy, ‘now.’

Peggy knew they would be over the brow by the time Kathleen reached the front door, but she wanted to protect Nellie. Fetching Kathleen had been a ruse.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Peggy, out loud. ‘My lad’s not a liar, after all.’

Peggy pondered as she watched Alice and Sean disappear into the town; what should she say and to whom.