Homecoming (32 page)

Rae realised she didn’t mean it. Carla never wanted to see any of them again because they would remind her of Blessed Helena and little Paul, the baby she’d kept with her for only one night before he’d been taken away by another nun, one they’d never seen before.

‘Carla, I wish you were here,’ Rae thought when the contraction passed and she lay panting on the narrow bed.

She staggered out to the top of the stairs to call someone, and within minutes, Sister Martin had installed her in the delivery room on the second floor. ‘Can you call the midwife?’ shrieked Rae as the second contraction ripped through her. ‘Don’t be silly,’ Sister Martin said. ‘You’ve hours to go.’

Six agonising hours passed before the midwife arrived.

Whipping up Rae’s gown, she exclaimed: ‘You’re getting ready to deliver, nearly fully dilated. You should have called me earlier, Sister.’

It was still another half an hour before the baby’s head crowned. Rae had never felt such pain but she knew she had to go through this for her beloved baby. She would, she could.

If only Carla were here, or Shelley…Rae cried through the pain. It was like being torn in half. What she wouldn’t give for a friend beside her, holding her hand, helping her. Or even her mother.

‘One more push, be brave now, Rae. Come on, you can do it!’

With one huge force of effort, Rae pushed and felt the baby’s body slip like a fish out of her body.

‘A little girl!’ said Sister Martin triumphantly. ‘God bless her.’

‘Let me see, let me hold her.’

‘Wait a while, now,’ fussed the midwife. ‘We need to weigh her, check her out.’

Finally, wrapped in an old hospital blanket, the baby was passed to Rae. In wonder, she took in the tiny red face with the screwed-up eyes, the damp black curls clustering her skull, the skin as soft as silk. It was like holding a beautiful little doll, she thought in awe, touching her baby’s face.

Jasmine. That was her name. For months, Rae had held it in her heart if the baby were to be a girl and now, seeing this darling, beautiful baby, she knew it was the right name. Jasmine. Kissing the soft face reverently, she murmured, ‘My baby, I love you.’

The midwife had to go.

‘You did well,’ she said, pleased. ‘She’s a big girl. Nearly eight pounds. I thought we’d have to call the ambulance there for a while, but you got through it all right. I’ll be back later to check you out and I’ll have the tablets to dry up your milk.’

Rae didn’t hear her. Her mind was full of Jasmine. It was as if there was nobody else in the room.

Rae pulled down the top of her nightgown and let Jasmine’s tiny rosebud mouth close around her nipple. Instantly, as if guided by an ancient magic, the baby began to suckle. It felt like the most natural thing Rae had ever done in her life. This body wasn’t for her, it was for her baby. She closed her eyes and let herself sink into the peace of breastfeeding.

‘Rae,’ said Sister Martin sharply. ‘You’re not supposed to do that. We’ll feed the baby formula.’

‘Jasmine,’ said Rae softly. ‘Her name is Jasmine, and I have to feed her. She’s hungry, look.’

She looked at the downy dark head nuzzled close to her and the waves of love washed over her. Jasmine, her baby.

Nobody had mentioned the pure joy of breastfeeding. Rae felt as if some part of her body was dancing on clouds. Carla had said that breastfeeding made your boobs all saggy, that’s what her mother used to say. She hadn’t breastfed her baby.

‘It’s not a good idea,’ Sister Martin insisted. ‘You’ll get too attached.’

Rae jerked in surprise and the baby’s tiny mouth came off her nipple. Jasmine began to cry but Rae didn’t tend to her. Instead, she stared at the nun. ‘She’s my baby, I am attached to her.’

‘Lord help us, Rae, will you be sensible! They’ll never let you keep her,’ Sister Martin said. ‘The authorities don’t want kids having kids. She’ll be taken off you and who knows where she’ll end up while they sort it all out. In a home, perhaps. Wouldn’t it be better to let her have a decent life somewhere, a new start with good parents from the beginning?’

‘Like the people Carla talked about?’ Rae said bitterly. ‘The family with the farm and the little girl? Are they all farm families with little girls or little boys, depending on the story required?

‘It’s for your own good and for the child’s own good,’ insisted the nun.

‘That’s what people say when they want you to do what they want,’ spat Rae. Jasmine began to cry loudly. Rae cradled her close and tried to get her to latch on to the nipple again, but it was no good. Little Jasmine sensed her mother’s distress. Rae tried to calm herself but it was hard, her heart was beating so fast, threatening to leap from her chest. She would keep her baby.

‘You’re making a rod for your own back,’ Sister Martin said. ‘How much harder will it be to let her go now that you’ve bonded with her.’

‘I won’t let her go!’

The nun stared at her pityingly. ‘You will. They all do.’

Eleanor held on to Rae until she stopped crying. It was like holding a husk of a person, someone who’d let all the pain spill away with the life force. Eleanor wanted to cry herself. She’d never felt that way before when a patient cried and perhaps that had been her problem all along. She stood stoic in the face of other people’s pain. When Ralf had died, she had been unable to let go of herself and cry. For the first time since then, she wanted to sob her heart out.

They were both in the depths of grief. Rae had never been allowed to grieve for the baby she’d given up for adoption. Eleanor had been too locked into being the perfect strong woman, the psychoanalyst who knew everything, to grieve.

‘Do you want to stay here?’ Eleanor said. ‘You could come to my apartment.’

Rae nodded. It was bad enough that she’d broken down in Titania’s. At least if she left now, the rest of the staff would be able to concentrate on work and not keep staring at her anxiously. She stood and went to fetch her jacket.

‘Rae, are you all right?’ said Phyllis, who’d worked in Titania’s forever.

‘Fine,’ said Rae, doing her best to look semi-fine. ‘Just had a shock. Eleanor’s so sweet, she’s talked me out of it. I think I’ll go now. Don’t phone me at home, though,’ she added hurriedly. ‘I don’t want to worry Will.’

They crossed the square together, the tall dark-haired woman with the tear-ravaged face arm in arm with the equally tall silver-haired old lady who walked with the cautious steps of a frail person. Rae waited while Eleanor fiddled with her key in the lock and then followed her in. Normally she would have looked at the apartment with great interest, but today she didn’t. She sank on to a couch as if she wanted to hide inside it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what came over me, I’m not that sort of person, I’ve never told anyone, please don’t tell anyone, please.’

‘I won’t, don’t worry, Rae,’ said Eleanor gently. ‘There’s nothing wrong with crying. I am guessing you’ve never had a chance to mourn Jasmine.’

Rae stared at Eleanor.

‘You’re the first person in my life who has ever spoken her name. The nuns didn’t use it, nobody did. It was like pretending she wasn’t real. But she was real, is real.’

‘You might be able to meet her,’ said Eleanor gently.

‘How can she not hate me?’ asked Rae. ‘If I see her, how can Will and Anton not hate me too?’

‘Do you hate yourself for what you did?’

Rae shook her head. ‘I can’t tell them, Eleanor. I can’t even think about it, it’s too painful.’

‘Fine. I will make us tea. Earl Grey or ordinary tea? Everyone here likes their tea.’

For the first time, a hint of a smile hovered over Rae’s lips. ‘It’s one of those clichés that turn out to be true. No matter what happens in Golden Square, someone will suggest putting the kettle on as a solution.’

‘The kind gesture as comfort,’ Eleanor said. ‘It was the same in my mother’s time. Tea and what she called “curranty cake”. There was nothing that couldn’t be soothed with a bit of both.’

Rae followed Eleanor into the kitchen. Watching her make tea was calming and she began to talk again.

‘I think of her every day. What’s she doing, who she’s with. Is her hair dark like mine? Would I recognise her if I saw her? I look for people like her on the street, to see if she could be here. I would know her, wouldn’t I? When Anton was small, he worried he’d get lost and I wouldn’t be able to find him.

‘“I’ll always find you,” I told him. “Mums have this radar in their hearts that takes them to their child. You can never be lost from me.” He was happy with that, but in some ways it was a lie. Children go missing all the time. I had a daughter and the radar didn’t work. I longed to know where she was, and I didn’t. Longing with all my heart didn’t help. She was gone, gone forever.’

In her great pain, the beauty had been leached from Rae’s face. It was like staring at a death mask.

‘Maybe the radar did work,’ Eleanor told her softly. ‘You were always looking for her. You kept the memory of her in your heart, and that’s all you could do.’

Eleanor had rarely felt the pity she felt for Rae now. To give birth to a child and to have someone take that child away because that was the only way they could both survive? How unselfish an act was that? But oh, how painful.

‘I became a mother one day and the next, my child was gone. Tears are hopeless, really. You still have the hole in your heart, a hole nothing can fill.
Nothing.’

Rae got up and looked out of the window. ‘I’ve made a life for myself without Jasmine, but I’ve never forgotten about her or forgiven myself for giving her up.’

‘You were a child,’ insisted Eleanor, ‘and undoubtedly they took advantage of that fact. We all know that the people in charge don’t always tell the truth, Rae. The girls in the Magdalen Laundries weren’t told the truth. They were treated like slaves and had their babies taken away. At least you weren’t kept working as a slave, but they didn’t give you the chance to keep your child.’

‘Times were different then, I know.’ Rae said it like it was a newspaper report recited from memory. ‘I’ve watched TV programmes about teenage pregnancy in the sixties and seventies. No young girl now would believe what it was like then. One teenager gave birth to a baby in a holy grotto and both she, the poor child, and her baby died. That was the fear and the shame involved.’

‘Imagine if you had a friend this had happened to all those years ago,’ Eleanor said. ‘Would you blame her for doing what you did, or would you understand?’

Rae looked at Eleanor sadly. ‘I’d understand totally for her, but for me, I can’t forgive. By not telling Will and Anton, I’ve been lying to them. I try never to lie. I grew up with lies. My father lied to the welfare so he could get dole money. His back, he said, was the problem. He couldn’t work. I vowed not to be that sort of person – and here I am, lying, and I’ve been doing it all these years.’

She sounded so bitter. Eleanor noticed she was unconsciously holding her hands over her belly. The way pregnant women did.

‘The question is, what can you live with? Can you live with not seeing Jasmine, if this turns out to be her? Or can you live with telling your husband the truth? There are no guarantees about how either will turn out. Your daughter may be angry you gave her up. She may not understand what it was like for you, being pregnant and sixteen in 1969. Things are different now. She may want to find her father. Think about all of this.’

Rae nodded, then said: ‘Can I borrow a piece of paper and an envelope? I’m going to write back to the social worker. It’ll mean facing what it does to us all, but I have to meet her. I have to meet Jasmine.’

‘What about telling your husband?’

Rae shook her head. ‘I’ll think about all that later,’ she said.

When Rae had gone, Eleanor looked at the small travel clock that told her what time it was in New York. Noon. Naomi would be in the shop with Marcus probably. Eleanor hadn’t phoned for a week. It was part of the deal she’d made with Naomi that she would check in at least once a week.

‘I don’t understand why you had to go away, Mom,’ Naomi said almost every time.

Hearing her so upset was partly why Eleanor couldn’t bear to talk to her daughter. It was impossible to explain how devastated she felt by Ralf’s death, impossible to explain why coming to Ireland had been a good idea.

‘I needed to be by myself,’ was what she’d said every time. ‘I thought coming home would help.’

‘Ireland isn’t your home, Mom! New York is.’

I don’t know where my home is any more, Eleanor wanted to say. It was with your father and now he’s gone.

But that wouldn’t have helped.

She closed the curtains, switched on all the lamps and heated some soup in the microwave for dinner. She hoped Rae was doing OK. As for herself, Eleanor didn’t know if she’d ever be OK again.

17
Food for the Turfcutters

Your father never carried a spare ounce on his frame, Eleanor, and it was down to the hard labour he did on the farm. The hardest of all was bringing home the turf for the fire. Here in New York, they think it’s idyllic to talk about the old days and the bog. Let me tell you, there was no idyll there. It was back-breaking work.

Every home had their own piece of bog and even though there were no fences making barriers, we all knew which was our land. Bogland was passed down through the generations.

Turf was never cut until after St Patrick’s Day and then, round about April or May, your father and his brothers would head for the bog. Footing the turf is what we called it and they did it with a spade with a horizontal edge to it. The best turf was a few layers down, and by the end of a week, the men would be worn out from standing knee-deep in bog water.

Once the turf had dried out a bit, we’d all get on the back of the cart and head up to the bog to pile it into little reeks so it could dry out enough to be carried home and built into a proper stack to last the winter.