Divided Loyalties (3 page)

She was dreading her sister’s departure to the Emirates. Their father was getting more demanding and they’d always shared the responsibility of him since their mother had died three
years ago. Now, with another baby on the way, and Shauna leaving for God knows how long, Carrie couldn’t help feeling more than a little daunted.

Shauna led such a charmed life, she always had. Sometimes Carrie couldn’t help feeling the tiniest bit envious. Wouldn’t it be lovely to go to an exotic country and have maids and
nannies to help you manage? It would be fabulous to spend your time partying and socializing. Even though Whiteshells Bay was a picturesque little seaside village, and Carrie liked living in it,
exotic was hardly the adjective to describe it.

She sighed, and then smiled as Dan gave a low rumbling snore. She might live in a sleepy seaside village, and she might be pregnant and have an ageing, demanding father to take care of, but she
had a kind, witty, supportive, sexy husband and two good little children. She wasn’t doing too badly at all.

The phone rang, jerking her into wakefulness tinged with dread. Phone calls at this hour of the night weren’t good news.

‘Hello, Carrie, it’s Dad. I think I need a doctor. The pain’s gone into my chest. I think I’m having a heart attack.’ She could hear the panic in her father’s
voice.

‘You’re not having a heart attack. Stop getting yourself into a tizzy. I’ll be there in a minute,’ she assured him.

‘I didn’t like to bother Shauna. I know the baby’s teething,’ her father said feebly. ‘And besides, you’re nearer.’

‘That’s OK. I’ll be over as soon as I get dressed.’ Carrie tried not to feel resentful. It wouldn’t have mattered if Shauna lived next door to him; their father
would always call Carrie in an emergency. He and his younger daughter didn’t get on too well. Their personalities had always clashed, but since his wife’s death the hostility between
them had deepened. And as for Bobby, the youngest in their family, he had washed his hands of his father just as Noel had washed his hands of him. Carrie would be wasting her time expecting any
help from him. Not that he could help anyway right this minute, seeing as he lived in London, she thought glumly. She yawned as she pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She couldn’t
honestly blame Bobby after the way their father had treated him. Her only brother was gay and that was anathema to their father, an affront to his religious beliefs. Once their mother had died,
Bobby had gone to London, unable to deal with his father’s hostility. Understandable, but it didn’t change the fact that she was the one getting up in the middle of the night to go and
look after Noel. She was the eldest; she was the responsible one. And she was getting fed up of it.

‘Why didn’t you ring me earlier? I’d have come up.’ Shauna frowned as she untangled the phone cord that Chloe had twisted into a knot.

‘What was the point in the two of us being up all night hanging around a hospital?’ Carrie said tiredly.

‘I was up anyway with Chloe. She’s got a big bruiser of a back tooth coming,’ Shauna responded glumly.

‘So Dad told me,’ Carrie said dryly. ‘He said that was why he didn’t want to ring you.’

‘That’s not very fair on you, though.’

Shauna knew she should feel guilty, but part of her was mightily relieved that her father hadn’t phoned. Greg would have been far from pleased if she’d woken him up to tell him to
take care of Chloe because she had to drive up to Whiteshells Bay in the middle of the night.

‘What did the doctors say?’

‘They’re keeping him in; they’re hoping to have a bed for him later on today. He’s on a trolley in A and E.’

‘Look, why don’t you go to bed for a couple of hours? I’ll come over later and we can go and visit him this afternoon,’ Shauna suggested, anxious to offer some
support.

‘Would you, Shauna? I’m whacked. I could do with a few hours’ shut-eye.’

‘Take the phone off the hook and I’ll be over in time to pick up Olivia from school,’ her sister instructed briskly.

‘She’ll be thrilled to see Chloe.’ Carrie sounded more cheerful. ‘See you later . . . and thanks.’

‘No problem,’ Shauna assured her, twirling her finger in one of Chloe’s soft corkscrew curls. She had planned to spend a few hours working on a wedding dress she was making to
order. She had to hand-sew dozens of sequins and beading onto an ornate fur-trimmed jacket that was being worn over a very simple, elegant, satin sheath dress. Chloe’s nap time would have
allowed her a few precious uninterrupted hours to get on with the job. It was the last dress she had been commissioned to make before she left for the Emirates and she was anxious to get it
finished on time.

Typical of her father to muck up her plans. Shauna’s lips tightened in annoyance. She didn’t know how Carrie could keep her patience with their dad; she certainly didn’t have
the tolerance for him that her older sister had. She was far more likely to argue the toss with him about his deeply conservative beliefs than Carrie was.

She had railed at their restrictive upbringing and there had been many rows in their teenage years as their father issued edicts about where they could go and whom they could socialize with.
Boys were definitely off limits! Noel McCarthy was a street angel and a house devil as far as his younger daughter was concerned. Well respected in the community, he was a pillar of the Church,
involved in all its fundraising and parish activities. Many times she’d been roped in to deliver the parish dues envelopes or the Easter and Christmas information cards, and she’d had
to do the church collection every week.

She had argued bitterly that it was her father who had offered to do such work, so why should she have to do it? It was no joke trudging round all the houses in the large village on a wet, windy
evening with an easterly gale blowing in off the sea. Her friends would be snug and warm in their houses, watching TV, while she’d be standing, resentfully, on doorsteps waiting for people to
put their few coins into the collection envelope.

Carrie had just got on with it. She did the houses north of the church, Shauna the ones south of it. Bobby had managed to get out of all parish duties by once stuffing his ration of parish dues
envelopes into the bin outside the chipper. Unfortunately he didn’t stuff them in far enough and a gust of wind had whipped a few of them out onto the street later that evening and
they’d been discovered by Mrs Foley, one of the ladies of the parish committee of which Noel was chairman. There’d been consternation as Noel was informed of this outrage.

The three of them had been summoned to the small room off the garage that Noel used as an office and interrogations had begun. Bobby had confessed to his crime after Noel had accused Shauna of
the transgression, knowing of her oft-stated objections to delivering the envelopes.

Bobby was good like that; he couldn’t let his sister take the blame for something that he’d done. Their father, red with fury, had banned Bobby from watching TV for a year and had
assured him that such a crime against God’s good work would require much repentance and good deeds.

Bobby had later whispered to Shauna that it was worth it not to have to deliver those hated envelopes. But as the days turned into weeks, and he was ordered from the sitting room when the TV was
turned on, his bravado slipped and he confessed that he really missed
Star Trek
and
Top of the Pops
.

Their mother, Anna, who had a soft, kind heart, had allowed him to turn on the TV as soon as he had finished his homework, but it was switched off at five thirty before their father arrived home
from work. Noel worked as a bank clerk in the town of Swords, just north of Dublin, and Bobby prayed that he would never get moved to a bank nearer home.

Shauna shook her head impatiently as she lifted her tired little daughter in her arms, revelling in the way she snuggled in close against her neck. Why was she swamped with all these unhappy
memories? She wanted to forget those times. She was grown up now, an independent woman, free of Noel and his authority; she shouldn’t hark back to the past.

She was determined that Chloe would never grow up with the hang-ups that were a legacy of her own childhood even to this day. A lack of self-esteem, a lack of self-worth, would not be traits
that her daughter would grow up with. Noel might see himself as a good-living, God-fearing, upright member of the community, but Shauna knew otherwise, and she had the emotional scars to prove it.
If it weren’t for Carrie she’d let him fend for himself. He was a small-minded bully who used emotional blackmail on his daughters and son with varying degrees of success.

Well, no success, it seemed, in Bobby’s case, Shauna acknowledged, smiling as she remembered her brother’s last phone call to her.

‘How’s the old buzzard doing? Still saying decades of the rosary in the hope that I’ll discover that I’m not gay after all and it was only a temporary aberration? And my
immortal soul isn’t damned for eternity?’ Although the words were joky and light-hearted, Shauna knew that behind them lay a deep, wounding hurt that might never be healed.

Bobby was the baby of the family. Four years older, she felt fiercely protective of him. When their mother had died suddenly of a heart attack, they’d all been devastated. But Shauna would
never forget her father saying, in his deceptively mild-mannered voice, ‘You know, Bobby, all the worry about you and this attention-seeking of yours worried your mother dreadfully. It must
have put a terrible strain on her heart. Your greatest gift to her now would be for you to sort yourself out and find a nice girl and go and get married like a normal young man.’

Shauna would never forget how her brother had paled at his father’s cruel, damaging words, turned on his heel and walked out of the house.

‘That was a terrible thing to say, Dad. How dare you call yourself a Christian,’ she’d exploded, hating him. ‘Bobby was born the way he is. God doesn’t judge him.
God made him, God knows him. He is as beloved of God as any other soul of His creation. What sort of warped belief have you got? Where is God’s compassion and mercy in your religion? Your God
is horrible. I’m glad I don’t believe in
Him
.’

Noel had risen to his feet, ashen-faced at this unbelievable attack on his authority and beliefs. ‘That’s enough from you, miss, you who ignore the Church’s rulings in spite of
our best efforts. God weeps to hear your ignorance of His teachings, and if you don’t like what I have to say, the door is—’

‘Stop it! Mam’s not cold in the grave and look at the pair of you!’ Carrie’s disgust had silenced them, and they had argued no more, but that was the day when her father
had sundered the very tenuous tie of love or loyalty that had existed between him and his youngest children. It was only out of a sense of obligation and guilt and not wanting to let Carrie have to
carry the burden alone that Shauna mucked in and did as much as she felt she had to.

One of the big pluses of going back out to the Gulf would be the distance it would put between her and her father. It would be a relief not to have to listen to his moaning, self-pitying whinges
and his opinionated dictates. Carrie really should put her foot down and tell him to get on with it. Dan was very patient with Noel; Greg wasn’t half as accommodating and rarely visited with
Shauna. On the rare occasions that Noel called to their house, her husband would have a short conversation with him and then disappear up to his office. When she was younger, years ago during their
engagement, she’d always been on edge that Greg would blow his top about her father’s pointed jibes about ‘living in sin’ and tell him to get lost. Noel had never forgiven
her for refusing to even consider letting Greg ask him for his permission to marry her.

‘I’m not your chattel, Dad. You don’t own me,’ she informed him tartly, much to his disgust.

‘Couldn’t you just do it to keep the peace?’ her mother urged, to no avail. It was only for her mother’s sake that she had allowed him to walk her up the aisle. And that
too had been a source of conflict, because of her father’s insistence that she go to confession to make sure she had no stain of mortal sin on her soul as a result of living with Greg before
marriage.

He really had so much to answer for, she thought bitterly, remembering the rows and trauma that her father’s beliefs had inflicted on the family. How her mother had lived with him and put
up with him she would never fathom, because if he had been her husband she would have surely murdered him.

That conflict would not happen in her little family, she vowed as she laid her sleepy toddler in her car seat and covered her with a soft, woolly blanket. She raced back into the house, grabbed
one of her daughter’s bottles from the fridge, shrugged into her own coat and was about to set the alarm when the phone rang. She was tempted not to answer it but was afraid it might be her
client checking on the progress of her wedding dress.

‘Hi,’ she answered crisply, standing at the door so she could keep an eye on Chloe.

‘Shauna, how’s it going? You haven’t been in touch lately so I said I’d better give you a ring. We don’t want you disappearing out of the country without getting a
chance to say goodbye.’ The breezy tones of her sister-in-law, Della, floated down the line. Shauna’s heart sank.
She
was definitely the last person Shauna needed to hear from
today.

‘Della, I can’t stop to talk. Chloe’s in the car, Dad’s in hospital, and I’ve got to rush and pick up Olivia, so I’ll give you a buzz later in the week,
OK?’

‘But—’

‘Della, I really have to go. Greg’s at work if you want a chat with him,’ she said hastily. ‘Talk to you soon, ’bye.’ Without even giving her sister-in-law a
chance to respond she hung up, set the alarm and locked the door behind her.

‘And how
are
the freeloaders?’ Carrie enquired acidly as they walked along the beach a couple of hours later.

Shauna giggled. Carrie was not one to mince her words. ‘Don’t even go there,’ she groaned. ‘I didn’t engage in any conversation. I used Dad shamelessly, said he was
in hospital and that I had to go, and hung up.’