Homecoming (43 page)

She hoped he was. If only she had the gift of faith and could believe in the hereafter. She’d never longed for faith until Ralf had died, and then she’d lain awake at night, praying to the God she’d learned about in school for help. ‘Please help me to believe.’

But here, in this wild spot with wind and rocks all around her, there was something else, something spiritual and deeply healing.

What if it didn’t last, though? What if she left this place and the pain was back?

I’ll come to you, she told Ralf. I’m ready. I’m not much good to anyone here, am I?

It was the final terrible thought she’d carried round with her: that she could save up her pills – the doctor had given her plenty of sleeping tablets, assuming that the very old wouldn’t dream of hastening their end – and take them all at once. She didn’t know if that was a good way to die or not, but with luck, she’d be so deeply drugged she wouldn’t feel the pain. It had seemed like the only way. A crazy, unhinged way, she knew. But the only way that made sense.

Here, she asked whatever spirits or memories were in this place if she should do it.

‘They must miss you so much,’ Megan said suddenly. ‘If you were my mother or grandmother, I’d miss you. Will you go home once you’ve seen all of this?’

Eleanor felt a little more of the pain lift. If there were such things as signs, surely that was a sign?

She moved further out of the mental fog and into the now. Megan was staring up at her and again, Megan’s face reminded her of Gillian.

What would it do to Gillian if she killed herself? It would be the most destructive thing ever. Eleanor thought of all the lessons she’d learned from her mother and grandmother, via the little recipe book. Imagine if that book had been ripped in two by suicide.

Was that what Ralf would have wanted, or her mother, or even Aunt Agnes?

She could feel them all with her. Their wisdom communicating itself to her now. Or was it her wisdom, learned from all of them, reflecting back into her heart?

No, she couldn’t do that to Gillian or her darling Naomi. She would go back to them. She could. Back home.

‘Thank you.’ Her fingers found Megan’s. ‘You’re right. I should go home.’

‘I’m so glad,’ Megan said. ‘That just seems like the right thing to do, doesn’t it? Do you know, I was just thinking the weirdest things – that I suddenly feel better about Rob.’ A month ago, Megan might have burst into tears at the mere thought of his name. Not any more.

She felt stronger now. He was a stupid, vain man and she’d been silly not to have seen through him. She hadn’t been bad or deliberately cruel. Just stupid and innocent.

‘The person I hated most in all of this was me,’ she went on. ‘But I don’t hate me any more. Is that odd?’

‘Not odd at all.’

Eleanor could barely speak. She felt so weak, but it was a lovely weakness. The weakness of being happy.

‘It’s this place,’ Megan added, looking around. ‘All those beautiful trees. What are they?’

‘Mainly ash,’ said Eleanor, closing her eyes and sighing. The peace, it was wonderful.

‘And that little one beside us, the silvery one?’

Eleanor opened her eyes and looked at the small silver birch.

She recalled an old silver birch beside the door when she was a child. Her mother had told her that it was one of the most important trees in Celtic mythology.

‘It’s about birth and new beginnings,’ Brigid had said.

But birch trees didn’t live for that long, perhaps eighty years. There were no other birches around, just this one. Somehow, it had grown out of the remains of the old one. Rebirth.

Eleanor smiled at the small tree with its heart-shaped leaves and the silvery bark.

‘Cattle won’t eat young birch trees,’ she said to Megan. ‘They let it grow. It’s about new beginnings and rebirth.’

‘How fascinating,’ said Megan. ‘And just right. I’m starting again.’

‘Me too,’ said Eleanor.

‘Ladies, how are the pair of you getting on?’ called Phil from the car.

‘I think we might repair to The Sheep’s Head for some tea,’ said Eleanor brightly. ‘We deserve it.’

That night in her big bed in the B&B overlooking the bay, Eleanor took out her mother’s recipe book. Tucked away at the back in a small folder were some of the final pages of the book. She’d read them when she was much younger, after her mother had died.

These weren’t recipes for life but a letter written to Eleanor about her father’s death. He’d died when she had just turned eleven. Three months later, Brigid, Agnes and Eleanor had taken the boat to New York. It was in the tenement house in the Bronx that Brigid had written this letter.

For Death
was written on the outside of the little folder. Eleanor had thought it might be her mother’s will, so she’d opened it. The letter made her cry so much, she had to stop. Her mother’s body was barely cold, and Eleanor was reading of the pain Brigid went through when her husband, Joe, had died.

If only I’d known how hard his death was for you,
Eleanor had thought. But it was too late.

Like all children, she’d assumed nobody but she understood love. Here was proof of that true love and the pain that came when it was gone.

Over fifty years had gone by since she’d read the letter. Brigid hadn’t had long enough to enjoy the new life in New York.

She and Agnes had worked so hard to make a new life for them all. Uncle Dennis had married and their families had grown up together, but Brigid had died of pneumonia in 1967, robbing her of the chance to retire and properly enjoy life. Her chest had never quite recovered from the illnesses of her youth.

Even at the end, she’d been brave.

‘I love you, remember that. Knowing you’re happy is what lets me leave you, Eleanor.’

Eleanor rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her nightdress and read:

My dearest Eleanor, I thought of not writing this. I thought I’d cheat death by not telling you about it. A mother’s foolishness, is all you could call it. I’ve told you about food and life. Part of the circle of life is death. You were too young when your father died. Thank the Lord you were spared the pain of it. We fought the pain, Agnes and I. We pushed it away from you and took it ourselves. You’ll know what I mean when you have a child of your own. You will fight to spare them pain.

I’d lie in bed at night and cry, but only when you slept. Daddy was happy, we told you. He’s with God and the angels, and his own Mammy and Daddy, and the baby his mammy had that died.

But I missed him, Eleanor. Without Joe, there was no sunlight in my day.

I would remember all his kindnesses, how he used to
make me laugh, the breadth of his shoulders beside me in the bed. When he was gone, nobody would ever do any of that for me again.

But I survived. I survived, you survived and Agnes survived. We made it across the Atlantic on the boat, we got through Ellis Island, we survived a first year with your Uncle Dennis when I was sure we’d starve or freeze or both. Life will find a way, as your grandfather used to say. Don’t forget that. Life will find a way.

Eleanor laid down the book calmly. In the morning, she’d lend it to Megan. She’d read enough herself for the moment. Tomorrow, she’d phone New York to speak to Naomi. It was time she went home.

23
Family reunions

In Kilmoney, the only reunions we were used to were ones in the big house, when the Captain and Mrs Fitzmaurice had guests to stay from the Captain’s time in India. Agnes would be plain exhausted from the preparations and she said Mrs Fitzmaurice wasn’t much better.

There were many servants in India, it seemed, and no matter how many there were in the house in Kilmoney, it wouldn’t impress the old India hands who weren’t used to so much as moving an inch to pick up their own teacup.

The weather was a problem too. The house was always too cold for those used to the Indian sun, and Agnes would have to air every blanket in the premises to keep them all warm at night.

In New York, we had reunions too but they were different, I can tell you. After the first year we spent in the boarding house on Lennox Avenue, we’d made good friends of the O’Dohertys, the Koufonicolas and the McCloskeys. When we moved down the street to the apartment with the fire escape above Dimarco’s Restaurant, we kept in touch with the other families.
Every year, we’d meet up on Easter Sunday for a party and in the early years, oh my, did we party.

Mr Dimarco would say it was like St Patrick’s Day all over again, but there was no drunkenness at our reunions.

‘My sister and I keep a sober house, Mr Dimarco,’ Agnes would tell him primly.

We’d laugh when she got upstairs because Agnes liked the odd tipple herself, but just the one. We didn’t need whiskey to celebrate. I’d cook something Greek with Vania Koufonicola, like Avgolemono. It’s a chicken soup with lemon and eggs. You make a stock from poaching a whole chicken with onion, celery, carrots, parsley and peppercorns. When the meat is falling off the bones, remove the chicken, strain the poaching liquid and cook this with several cups of rice. At the end, whisk up the eggs, add the juice of one or two lemons, and slowly add your poaching liquid so the eggs don’t scramble. Finally heat it all up, add some shredded chicken and eat. Anna McCloskey would bring proper shortbread biscuits, the way her mother used to make them.

By the end of the day, we’d sit on the fire escape and drink to our homelands. There might be a few tears, but not many. We were happy in those years.

Geraldine’s moving back home was on a par with a European principality moving court.

It all had to be done on a certain day, in a certain way, and the furniture in Geraldine’s bedroom in her house in Howth had to be rearranged to her satisfaction.

Rae thought that if only there were ladies in waiting and a few minstrels in the wings, it would be perfect.

‘I like having the bed with the sunlight coming in from the side,’ Geraldine told Will with a certain petulance. ‘It’s so gorgeous in your house in Golden Square, the sun coming in on top of you in the morning, I’d like it like that all the time.’

It was five in the afternoon when the move finally took place, and Will shifted the furniture while Geraldine sat on a chair in duchess mode and directed operations. Downstairs, Rae organised flowers: ‘I must have flowers,’ Geraldine insisted. ‘The house will seem so lonely now I’m back on my own.’

Rae had dutifully bought armfuls of flowers that morning at the Smithfield market and was now shoving them pell-mell into Geraldine’s precious Waterford crystal vases. She simply wanted to be out of there because Anton was coming home for the weekend.

‘We have to tell him,’ Will had said, and Rae loved the way he said ‘
we
’. It was no longer her secret: it was his too.

‘He’ll be fine with it,’ he said reassuringly. ‘You know Anton. He takes everything in his stride, love.’

Still, Rae worried. Taking everything in his stride was one thing when it came to dodgy apartments, difficult college assignments, or low pay in his first job. It was another thing entirely when it came to the words: ‘You have a sister – well, a half-sister, if you want to be pedantic. I had a baby when I was sixteen and I gave her up for adoption.’

All through his childhood, Will and Rae had drummed into their son the concept that telling the truth was important, even if it meant you got into trouble.

What she had to tell him would negate the effect of all of that. Would he hate her for it?

Upstairs, Geraldine wasn’t happy with the arrangement of her bedroom.

‘Rae, can you look at this and tell me what you think?’ she roared.

Rae stomped upstairs. She wanted to get home quickly and tell Anton. She didn’t want to be here. But when she saw Geraldine sitting on her chair, looking strangely frail and lonely in the room, Rae felt a pang of pity. There was pain in all lives. Geraldine had lived her glory days in her youth when she was the daughter of the big house, with plenty of suitors and lots of hunt balls to go to. That life had vanished long ago and then she’d lost her husband. With both her children grown up, she’d been lost. Plus, her daughter Leonora was hardly a model daughter, given as she was to her own tantrums.

It was a small price for Rae to pay to listen to Geraldine’s talk of the past and her mild delusions of grandeur.

‘Hold on a minute, Geraldine,’ she called and ran back downstairs. She found the vase with the long-stemmed cream roses. They’d have cost several body parts in a florists but in the market, she’d got twenty blooms for half the price. Quickly arranging them more elegantly, she added some greenery, then brought the vase upstairs along with a candle from the hallway.

Will had his long-suffering face on when she arrived, so Rae showed the flowers to her mother-in-law. ‘These will add the final touch,’ she said. ‘You can light the candle tonight to get you settled. It’s lavender.’

‘Thank you, Rae.’ Geraldine’s stern features softened. ‘You’re very kind to me.’

Rae smiled back. No, it wouldn’t cost her anything to be kind to Geraldine.

With the flowers installed on the dressing table and the candle lit, Geraldine liked the arrangement more.

When Rae and Will left, Geraldine did something she’d never done before: she hugged her daughter-in-law. It was a formal hug, but it was more than the cool cheek that Geraldine had offered for kissing for all the years Rae had known her.

‘You’ve been so kind to me,’ Geraldine said shortly, ‘better than my own daughter. Thank you, Rae.’

‘We’ll pick you up tomorrow for dinner with Anton,’ Rae reminded her. ‘He says it’s his treat because work is going so well.’