My Mother's Secret (8 page)

‘All very well for you to say,’ said Charlie, Pascal’s brother. ‘I had beans for dinner.’

‘Charlie!’ His sister-in-law, Moya, glared at him.

‘It’s a joke,’ the older man grumbled.

‘Please be quiet,’ begged Roisin. ‘We don’t want to spoil anything.’

Everyone held their breath. Then they heard the key in the front door and got ready to surprise the anniversary couple.

Chapter 7

Jenny’s thoughts on her way from Dublin to Wexford were almost entirely about her children and what sort of mother she’d been to them. She frequently asked herself that question and just as frequently feared that she’d been wanting in a lot of respects. And yet, she thought, she’d raised them to be independent people, able to cope with life on their own. Even Steffie was managing to keep her head above water with that company of hers despite being the child most like Jenny herself – dreamy and not entirely practical. Admittedly she and Pascal had helped her out in ways they hadn’t had to with Roisin or Davey, but it had been worth it to see their younger daughter finally finding her place. Davey, her easy-going son, seemed to have found his place too, although she wished it wasn’t in another country. But he was happy with his latest girlfriend. Davey didn’t do love and girlfriends very well, so despite the fact that – like all Irish mothers – she would have liked him to settle down at home with someone suitable, she was pleased he’d found someone he was happy with, at least for now. Roisin, of course, had never really been a worry because practically from the moment she’d been born she had been quietly determined about what she wanted from life. And so far, she’d got it.

Which meant, Jenny thought, she’d done a reasonably good job. And that would surely have to stand her in good stead when she ended up talking to them about things she’d rather not have to talk to them about. When she eventually told them about the mistakes she’d made when she was as young as – and younger than – they were now. It wasn’t as if they weren’t aware of some of them. Roisin knew that she’d been an unplanned pregnancy when Jenny was only twenty-one. Jenny had told her that she had made them into a family, and she occasionally thought that Roisin’s habit of organising everyone and everything stemmed from the fact that she’d been the cause of her parents staying together in the first place. Or maybe it was simply because she had a bossy eldest child!

She knew that Roisin would have views on everything she needed to talk to them about too. She’d been putting it off, telling Pascal that it would be best to get them all together. Pascal had raised his eyebrows at that and Jenny knew the argument wasn’t exactly a good one. There had been plenty of time to talk to the three of them together years ago. But they were both to blame for not saying anything before now. There was a comfort in the status quo, in not dragging up things from the past. Except that everyone had a right to know.

Or did they? It was a valid question. These days everyone thought they should know everything about everybody. And with Facebook and Twitter and all sorts of other social media sites, they also seemed to feel obliged to tell everybody everything. That wasn’t how Jenny had been brought up. Her parents, Kay and Terry, had believed in keeping your private life private and never washing your dirty laundry in public. There was none of this ‘talking things through’ that was so popular nowadays. You did something, you kept it to yourself. That was the way back then. It might not always have been right, Jenny conceded, but it still had a lot to recommend it.

That was then. This was now. Times had changed. And the trouble with that, Jenny thought, was that things you hadn’t talked about became secrets. And secrets took on a life of their own. Which meant that when they finally came into the light, people could misjudge your motives for keeping them in the first place.

She sighed.

‘Everything OK?’ Pascal glanced at her.

‘Don’t mind me,’ she said. ‘Just thinking.’

‘Hard work?’ He smiled and so did she, but she couldn’t help the nagging worry that she hadn’t done as good a job as she’d hoped as a mother. And when she eventually got around to talking to them and explaining … She shook her head. Maybe she’d leave them a bundles of neuroses that would come back to haunt her in the future. She hoped not. She’d done her best. She’d learned from her mistakes. Although it hadn’t stopped her making them.

‘By the way,’ said Pascal when they arrived at the house and he slid the key into the lock. ‘I meant to mention it earlier.’

‘What?’

‘That I love you.’

At his words, her worries faded into insignificance. ‘I love you too.’

He didn’t open the door but instead pulled her close to him and kissed her.

‘Why, Mr Sheehan!’ She giggled. ‘Is that a gun in your pocket?’

‘Let’s go inside and check it out,’ he said.

When Jenny thought about it afterwards, the one positive thing she took out of it all was that at least they didn’t race up the stairs to the bedroom and tear the clothes off each other. There had been a time when they might have, but they were both hot and thirsty after the drive and so they headed for the kitchen instead. That was when Jenny realised the patio doors leading to the veranda were open. And when Pascal noticed the big banner saying ‘Happy Ruby Anniversary’. And when all of their invited guests shouted ‘Surprise!’ as Roisin appeared at the doorway.

‘Mum, Dad!’ she cried. ‘Welcome home. Happy anniversary!’

Poppy, who was in charge of the music mix, hit play on the iPod and Frank Sinatra singing ‘It Had to Be You’ filled the room.

Jenny and Pascal were in shock as Roisin took them by the hand and dragged them to the veranda.

‘My God,’ said Jenny when she saw how many people were there. And then, when Davey came forward and hugged her, she felt tears prickle at her eyes. Even Davey, she thought. That’s nice. Isn’t it?

‘Well done, Pascal!’ His older brother Charlie thumped him gently on the back. ‘Fair play to yeh! Forty years with the same woman. Couldn’t manage it meself, although maybe if it had been the beautiful Jenny I might have!’

Charlie had been divorced from Peggy for the past fifteen years. He turned up at every family occasion although most of the women in the family wished he wouldn’t – he had a habit of patting them on the behind and calling them ‘darling’ or ‘sweetheart’, which drove them mad.

‘Congrats, Mum.’ Steffie edged out of Charlie’s reach.

‘Yay, Grandma. Yay, Grandpa!’ Daisy pushed her way forward to hug them.

‘Jenny. Pascal. It’s such an honour to be here.’ Breege Behan, who was chairwoman of the local community centre, added her words. ‘Such a wonderful occasion. Many congratulations. You’re an example to us all.’

Jenny’s head and heart were pounding as she smiled blankly at her.

‘Forty years,’ said Roisin. ‘It’s so lovely to know that people can stay together. Breege is right, you’re an example to all of us – but I guess most especially to me and Paul. We’re hoping that we can match you sometime in the future.’ She glanced at Paul, who was busy uncorking the bottles of sparkling rosé wine that had been on special in Tesco the week before. Meanwhile Poppy and Daisy were handing glasses to all the guests.

‘A toast,’ said Paul when all of them had been filled. ‘To Jenny and Pascal. Marriage sometimes gets a bad press, but they’ve shown us how good it can be.’

‘Jenny and Pascal!’ cried the guests.

‘Speech,’ said Davey.

‘Um, well …’ Jenny looked at Pascal, a slightly hunted expression in her blue eyes.

‘This is a surprise,’ he said. ‘Well, of course it is, it was meant to be! So thank you for being so thorough about it.’

There was a murmur of laughter.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ continued Pascal. ‘Other than that the first thirty-nine years are the hardest.’

Everyone laughed. Jenny’s hand tightened around the stem of her glass.

‘So happy for you,’ murmured Sarah. ‘So happy it all worked out for you. That you’ve managed it when so many of us didn’t.’

‘Thanks. Thanks.’ Jenny was too shocked to care that Sarah seemed to be getting a dig in at her. She looked around at all of them, uncertain if she was supposed to say anything herself and feeling that she should, that perhaps this was the exact right time. But suddenly everyone was laughing and talking and knocking back the sparkling rosé, and she realised that her own throat was dry and that she couldn’t speak at all. She swallowed a large mouthful of wine.

‘I know you were meant to be going to Cody’s tonight,’ Roisin told her. ‘But we’ve rebooked it for next week.’

‘Oh. OK.’ Jenny nodded.

‘And if you’d like to nip up and change, you’ll find your dress and jewellery laid out.’

‘Oh,’ said Jenny again. ‘Thank you, darling.’

‘No problem.’ Roisin kissed her. ‘Was it really a surprise?’

‘Totally.’

‘Good.’ Roisin looked pleased. ‘You deserve it.’

No I don’t, thought Jenny. It’s lovely to think that you believe I do, but … She tried to gather her thoughts. Pascal deserves it, she said to herself. He deserves to be acknowledged. As for me … She released her breath slowly. It didn’t matter, she told herself. It was a shock because she hadn’t expected it; hadn’t even dreamed that they’d do anything like this. But she wasn’t going to get into a flap about it. She’d never been someone who flapped. She always believed everything worked out for the best, and usually, in the end, it did. But she wished they hadn’t done it. She really did.

She looked in Pascal’s direction. Her husband was laughing with his brothers, his champagne glass already empty. He glanced up and caught her eye. And winked at her.

He’s a good man, she thought. I’m lucky to have him in my life. Luckier than anyone here will ever know.

Chapter 8

The words that were used to describe Jenny Marshall in her school reports were usually ‘daydreamer’ and ‘flighty’. According to her teachers, she could be a really good student if she put her mind to it. Unfortunately, most of them said, she preferred doodling in the margins of her copybooks to dealing with the assignments she’d been given. The one class in which she excelled was art, where her paintings were energetic and colourful. Her other skill was calligraphy. Whenever posters were being done for the classroom, it was Jenny who would be entrusted with whatever script went with them, and she always did a great job. It was a pity, her form mistress said, that she didn’t apply herself with as much enthusiasm to subjects like maths and history. Her parents weren’t too perturbed about her reports. After all, they reckoned, Jenny was a pretty girl and they were certain she’d get married and have a family of her own. Education, Kay said, was important. But only up to a point.

In her third year in secondary school, Jenny had to do a project on a European capital city. Back then, without the internet and Google, gathering information meant a hard slog of trawling through the library, buying magazines and – because she’d chosen Rome as her city – writing to the Italian embassy and the tourist board for information. At first she’d been less than enthusiastic, but by the time she’d completed her project, she’d fallen in love with Rome and its history, and had stuck a poster of the Colosseum that had been sent as part of the tourist board’s information pack on her bedroom wall. She loved looking at the vibrant blue sky and the ancient stone construction as she pictured herself walking around it. The tourist board had also included a picture of a crowded square with attractive women and handsome men drinking coffee at tables beneath parasols. Every time she looked at it, Jenny wanted to be with them. In fact, she wanted to
be
them. Life in Italy looked a damn sight more colourful and exciting than life in Ireland, which from Jenny’s perspective seemed unbearably drab by comparison.

Shortly afterwards, to celebrate Ireland’s accession to the European Economic Community, her school organised a trip to Rome. It was a sign, she told herself. A sign that she would go there and meet Italian people and make new friends and live a different life, even if it was only for a few days. She brought the information sheet home to show her parents and told them that she’d love to go. That she’d get a Saturday job and pay them back. After all, she reminded them, the trip was educational, and she’d received her first ever A grade for her project. She stood in front of them with her fingers crossed as they read through it, but when they got to the end and saw that the five-day stay cost a whopping £75, Jenny knew there was no chance.

‘We can’t afford it,’ Kay said as she folded the information sheet in half. ‘We can’t spend that much money on you and not your sisters and you’ll never get a job that will pay us back.’

‘I might,’ protested Jenny. ‘Mrs Murtagh in the newsagent’s is looking for part-time staff.’

‘We can’t afford it and that’s that.’ Terry picked up the newspaper he’d put down to glance at the information sheet.

Jenny had known all along that they’d say no, although she’d longed for them to surprise her by saying yes. She’d hoped that telling them she’d try to find a job would swing it. But Terry and Kay weren’t going to change their minds. They didn’t care how educational the trip might be, although they didn’t see any educational value in it at all. There was no reason for her to go to Rome, Kay said. There was nothing there for her.

‘When you’re working and earning your own money you can go wherever you like,’ Terry told her over the top of the paper when she said there were plenty of reasons to go to Rome, that it was a major cultural city. ‘Although why anyone would want to go to a foreign place like that where you can’t drink the water or eat the food, I don’t know.’

‘The Italians drink the water and eat the food,’ Jenny murmured, but Terry had already turned his attention back to the paper. And Jenny made up her mind that as soon as she was in a position to travel abroad, Rome would be the first place she visited.

When she left school and got a job in the Civil Service, she began to put a little money away every week for her travel fund, although it grew so slowly she couldn’t help wondering if she’d be a pensioner before she ever left the country. Kay insisted that she hand over a large chunk of her wages to help with household expenses every week, which put a big dent in her ability to save. Jenny didn’t begrudge her parents the money, but she sometimes wondered if it would be cheaper to live in a flat with one of the other girls in the office. People would think she was weird, though. It was the country girls who lived in flats. No Dubliner wasted money on rent when they could be at home, even if they were contributing to living expenses. But those country girls always seemed to have more money than her!