My Mother's Secret (17 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I really—’

‘Jen, sweetheart,’ Pascal whispered. ‘Not now.’

‘Oh Pascal, I have to … I mean – I can’t not … Everyone’s gone to so much trouble and …’

‘Mum?’ Steffie looked at her apprehensively. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing’s the matter. Not really. Everyone is right. We’ve been very lucky.’

A relieved smile spread among the guests.

‘But you’ve got it wrong too,’ she said. ‘It’s all about love but not all about marriage.’

Beside her, Pascal took a deep breath.

‘We’ve put it off for so long and I can’t let everybody think … We’re not exactly the role models you imagine.’ She turned to look at him and then at everyone else. ‘The thing is, yes, we’ve been together for forty years, and to be honest, most of that is because Pascal is the best man any woman could have in her life. No question. His love for me has been steadfast and true and I really don’t deserve him.’

There was a round of applause and Steffie said that Jenny absolutely did deserve her father, just as Pascal deserved Jenny.

‘But,’ said Jenny, as though her daughter hadn’t spoken, ‘we have to be honest with you all. We should have been before.’

‘Honest about what?’ asked Roisin.

‘Honest about … well …’ Jenny paused.

The guests looked expectantly at her.

‘Well, the thing is,’ she said, ‘Pascal and I – we’re not actually married at all.’

The Storm

Chapter 15

When the pregnancy test proved positive, the first thing Pascal did was ask Jenny to marry him. She immediately forgot all of the other dreams she’d had, of travelling the world, of moving to Rome, of becoming a painter. She’d known then that all she wanted was to be married to Pascal and have his baby and be a good wife and mother. She couldn’t imagine another man in the world who would’ve reacted as brilliantly as he’d done to the news. She’d kissed him hard on the lips and said that she’d be honoured to be Mrs Sheehan. And she meant it.

Because the first thing she’d thought of when she saw the blue line on the test was that her parents would kill her when they found out. Times might have moved on since Kay and Terry had started going out together, but they certainly hadn’t embraced a more permissive outlook on life. She’d had an immense row with them over coming to Rome with Pascal in the first place – Kay had warned her that under no circumstances was she to share a bed with him. Jenny wondered if her mum was really in the dark about the fact that she’d slept with Pascal already. It was the 1970s after all, what did she expect? But still … arriving home as a pregnant unmarried woman was a horrific prospect. Returning as an engaged pregnant woman would surely temper their fury.

‘I’ve a better idea,’ said Pascal.

She looked at him questioningly. Her boyfriend – now her fiancé – had been brilliant so far, but there was no way they could pretend that she wasn’t pregnant.

‘Of course not, you idiot,’ he said when she asked him if that was what he had in mind. ‘I meant that we could get married before we go home. Kill two birds with one stone so to speak.’

‘Married? Where?’

‘Here in Rome,’ he said. ‘It would be a sort of appropriate thing to do, wouldn’t it?’

It would be more than appropriate, she thought. It would be perfect. If she went home a married woman, nobody could say a word. Other than to congratulate her.

‘Is it possible?’ she asked.

‘Why not?’ Pascal grinned. ‘It’s the wedding capital of the world! C’mon. Let’s see what can be done. Always provided …’ he looked at her with a sudden flash of doubt, ‘always provided that you really do want to get married.’

‘Of course I do.’ Jenny threw her arms around him.

Jenny Sheehan. It sounded good. It sounded safe. It sounded like the right thing to do.

But of course it wasn’t possible to get married in Rome at short notice. Couples needed all sorts of things – letters of release from their parish priests, birth and baptismal certificates and other legal papers that neither Pascal nor Jenny had with them and that they certainly wouldn’t have been able to have sent to them in the time they had left, even if they knew how to go about getting them in the first place.

‘I don’t see why it has to be so complicated,’ she said crossly as they sat on a stone seat opposite the Trevi Fountain. ‘You’d think the Church would
want
people to get married.’

Pascal agreed. They’d spent the morning realising that there was simply no hope of getting married in Rome – or anywhere else in Italy for that matter – within a few days. They’d seen newly married couples having their photos taken at the Forum or the Spanish Steps or other iconic places, but they knew they wouldn’t be one of them.

‘Maybe I’ll tell my mother we’re married anyhow. After all, how would she know otherwise?’ Jenny said the words more as a joke than anything else but Pascal’s eyes narrowed as she spoke.

‘It’s not an impossible idea,’ he said slowly. ‘After all, people come here and how would you know if they’re actually married or not? You could go home with a piece of paper that says you are and no one would be any the wiser.’

Jenny laughed. ‘They’d guess.’

‘How?’ asked Pascal.

She looked at him thoughtfully. But she couldn’t think of an answer.

‘What we could do,’ said Pascal, ‘is pretend we’d always planned to get married here and that’s why we came, then get married on the quiet when we get home. Nobody will know the difference.’

‘We couldn’t!’

‘Of course we could. Why not?’

‘What about the certificate of marriage and everything? My parents would want to see something, to have proof. I know them.’

‘
You
could do it,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen you do your fancy writing. We could buy paper and ink and do one up.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Why would I be joking?’

‘And why would you even consider this?’ she asked. ‘You don’t have to marry me at all.’

‘I want to,’ said Pascal. ‘I love you. And you’re going to have my baby.’

Jenny still couldn’t get her head around that part of it. Having a baby was something that had been in her very distant future. But now it was part of her present. She had to think of what was best for her child.

‘We could take photos.’ Pascal was getting excited by the idea now. ‘You could buy a white dress and put flowers in your hair and we could go around loads of places and everyone would assume they were proper wedding photos.’

‘But we wouldn’t have any of us signing the register or anything.’

‘So what?’ He shrugged. ‘We could say those ones didn’t come out. Or that we lost the film. Or something.’

‘Oh man …’ Jenny was beginning to smile. ‘But we’d have to buy special paper and pens to fake any kind of legal document. And we’re on a budget.’

‘I brought some extra traveller’s cheques,’ said Pascal. ‘For emergencies.’

‘I don’t think this is the kind of emergency you had in mind.’

‘Unforeseen circumstances are always emergencies.’

It didn’t really feel like an emergency, even though Jenny knew that being pregnant was a life-altering experience. But truthfully, right then, it simply felt like a big adventure.

They found a higgledy-piggledy stationery shop near the Pantheon that had everything they needed. Jenny felt as if she was in Aladdin’s cave as she browsed the shelves stocked with every kind of paper, pen and ink. In addition to a small sketch pad, pencils and an eraser, she bought parchment and ink, a calligraphy pen and some seals. She also bought a postcard that showed a copy of an Italian marriage certificate issued in the 1940s. According to the shop owner, it belonged to two famous Italian opera singers, neither of whom Jenny had heard of. However it was the perfect template to design one of her own. The proprietor of the hotel, who was enchanted by the lovely Irish couple, told her she was welcome to use the old Remington typewriter in the office when Jenny asked if she could possibly type a letter, and so she sat at the rosewood desk and typed the words she didn’t understand on to the parchment. Then, in her best formal script, she inscribed in the spaces she’d left for that purpose the information that Jenny Marshall and Pascal Sheehan had been married in the Basilica de San Giovanni on 22 August 1975. She also copied an apostolic benediction from the Pope himself, carefully adding a photo of him at the top of it so that it looked like the one in her parents’ house.

The framed certificate and benediction still hung in the hallway of their Dublin home, in full view of anyone who came to visit. They were on the same wall as the photo that a passing tourist had taken of them in their ‘wedding’ finery beside the Trevi Fountain. Jenny had become so used to seeing them that she’d forgotten they were even there.

When she finished telling the story, there was a stunned silence and then Charlie guffawed.

‘Good on yeh, Jen,’ he said. ‘You know how to pull a fast one all right.’

There was a chorus of doubtful laughter from the others.

‘Jeez, Jen, you had me going there for a moment,’ said Sarah.

‘My God,’ said Paul. ‘You can spin a yarn, Jenny.’

‘Mum!’ cried Roisin. ‘This isn’t the time for silly jokes. It’s a momentous occasion.’

‘It’s not a joke.’ Jenny looked at them all. ‘I’m serious.’

‘That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard,’ said Summer. ‘You’re amazing, Jenny. You’re like that master forger guy in the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio! I so want to be like you when I’m your age.’

Carl gave her a dig in the side.

‘What?’ she said. ‘She’s old but she’s brilliant.’

Alivia stifled a grin although she was as shocked as everyone else by Jenny’s revelation, while Steffie looked at each of her parents in turn.

‘Mum? Dad? It’s not true, is it?’

‘Your mum is right,’ said Pascal. ‘We didn’t get married in Rome.’

‘But … but … you must have!’ exclaimed Sarah. ‘You came home with a wedding ring. You told Mum and Dad. You can’t have … you can’t have lied about it.’

‘I’m afraid we did,’ said Jenny.

‘Those photos,’ said Davey. ‘Of you in your wedding dress. You
faked
them?’

‘They’re real photos,’ Jenny said. ‘I mean, I’m in a white dress and everything, but it’s not a wedding dress.’

‘But your honeymoon in Sorrento!’ Lucinda stared at her. ‘You told me all about it. About going to Capri. About Pascal giving you a flower. Jeepers, Jenny, you even
showed
me the damn flower!’

‘We did all those things,’ said Jenny. ‘We just weren’t married when we did them.’

‘I can’t believe you didn’t run into all sorts of problems at home,’ said Sarah. ‘Surely someone must have realised your certificate was a fake?’

‘I was very shocked they didn’t,’ admitted Jenny. ‘But back then things were a lot less complicated. We never had to produce it for anything important. Let’s face it, most of the legal and financial stuff was done by men, in their names. My name wasn’t on the mortgage for the house or on our car loan or anything. When the children were born, the hospital registered the births and they simply assumed we were married. After all, I’d been attending as Mrs Sheehan all the time. I suppose it would be a lot harder to do now, with computerised records and everything, but back then it was easy.’

‘But why would you pretend?’ asked Steffie. ‘What was the point in that?’

‘I was pregnant,’ said Jenny. ‘In the seventies. In Ireland. Wasn’t that enough reason?’

‘I can understand why you wouldn’t want to be an unmarried mother,’ agreed Sarah. ‘But why didn’t you get married later on, like you said?’

‘You let me think I was the only one,’ Lucinda said before Jenny had the opportunity to reply. ‘You let me think I was the stupid daughter who’d made a big mistake. You didn’t speak out even then!’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ muttered Alivia. ‘Thanks for calling me a mistake.’

‘You know what I mean!’ Lucinda cried. ‘So does she.’

‘OK,’ said Roisin. ‘Are you seriously telling me, Mum, that I went to the trouble of organising a party that’s actually celebrating a forty-year-old lie?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jenny. ‘I—’

‘This is a family matter,’ Lillian Kinsella broke in. ‘And given that it’s obviously something you need to talk about, you won’t want lots of people around while you’re doing that. Besides, it’s still raining out there and the flooding must be getting worse. So, thank you for a wonderful day, Jenny and Pascal. We’ll see you again soon, I hope.’

There was a general murmur of assent from the non-family guests that leaving was a good idea despite the fact that most of them would have loved to be part of the unfolding drama. Nevertheless, they moved as a group to depart from the house.

‘We’ll go too.’ Seamus clapped Pascal on the back. ‘You don’t need our lot here either. But give me a call.’

Pascal nodded as other family members also said goodbye, although Charlie suggested that maybe he should stay and give Pascal some moral support.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said his sister-in-law. ‘You came with us, you can leave with us. Besides, Pascal’s grand, aren’t you, pet?’ She looked at him and he nodded again.

‘I’ll see you at the next community meeting, Jenny,’ said Breege. ‘Thank you for your hospitality today.’

‘Thanks for coming.’ Jenny couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Pulling the cloak of good manners around her, Roisin saw everyone to the door and watched as the majority of the guests hurried down the driveway. Nobody bothered waiting for their other halves to bring cars from the car park across the road. It was clear that most of them wanted to get away from Aranbeg as quickly as possible. Even when Steffie said that she’d root out some umbrellas from under the stairs to protect them, they all shook their heads and said it didn’t matter.

‘Do we have to go as well?’ asked Daisy, who’d followed her. ‘’Cos we’re supposed to be staying here tonight, aren’t we? I have my PJs and everything.’

‘I know.’ Roisin was reeling from the abrupt end to the party. ‘We have to talk to Granny and Grandad first.’

‘It doesn’t matter that they’re not married, does it?’ Daisy frowned. ‘Loads of people aren’t married. Tansy Miller’s mum and dad aren’t.’