The Hidden Years (40 page)

The next morning for the first time his mother didn't come
in to wake him for school, and when he got up he discovered that she
was still in bed, lying motionless in the small stuffy room, her face
turned into the shadows.

'No, don't open the curtains,' she told him. Her voice had
lost its lilt. It sounded heavy and sore somehow and suddenly Daniel
was frightened without knowing why. There was no sign of his father and
his mother was still in bed when he left for school. She had a bit of a
headache, she told him, but she would be fine by and by.

When he got home- from school the house was empty. There
was a note from his mother to say she would be late getting home but he
wasn't to worry.

After six when his father came in, early for once, she
still wasn't back. Watching the way his face glowered at him as he
demanded to know where she was, Daniel felt a strong current of
antipathy and fear run through him.

'Still thinks she's going to persuade me to let you go to
that fancy school, is that it? Well, you can tell her that she can
think again. No money of mine's going to be wasted on posh
schooling—uniforms, expensive books…'

'Where are you going?' Daniel asked his father nervously
as he opened the back door.

'Nowhere that's any of your business. God knows a man's
entitled to a bit of comfort, even the priest says that.'

It was seven o'clock before his mother returned. She
looked both elated and frightened.

'Sorry I'm so late, but I missed the bus and then it was
busy.'

'Did you have to work late?' Daniel asked her.

'What? Oh, yes… yes, I did…'

There was a livid bruise along her cheekbone and she was
moving very stiffly as though her body hurt. When Daniel asked if she
had had a fall, she turned her back on him and started cleaning the
already clean sink.

'Yes… yes, I slipped on the stairs this morning
after you'd gone to school. Must have been half asleep still, I
suppose. I've got a nice bit of haddock for your tea. Mrs Silverstone
gave it to me… Seems she bought it for her husband and he
was eating out somewhere and she doesn't like it.'

Beneath his mother's bright chatter, Daniel could sense
her tension. He gave her his father's message and watched her anxiously.

'It's all right,' she told him softly. 'You'll be taking
up that scholarship, my lad—but not a word to your dad, mind.'

'But what about money?'

'Don't you worry your head about all that. It's all
arranged. Your Nan's going to help out, and with what I earn—'

'Nan?' Daniel blinked at her. 'Nan's going to help? But
she doesn't like me, not as much as she does the others. On
Sundays—'

He saw his mother bite her lip. 'No, not your Nan Ryan,
Danny. I was speaking of your Nana Rees. I… I telephoned her
today from Mrs Silverstone's. It was all right. She had given me
permission but I wanted to wait until the cheap rate after six o'clock.'

'Nana Rees…' Daniel stared wonderingly at his
mother. 'But—'

'No, no questions, Danny… and remember, nothing
to your dad, not a word.'

Daniel had been almost sixteen when his father had been
killed on a building site. He couldn't mourn him. He hated him too much
by then. He might not have been able to stop his son taking up his
scholarship, but he had certainly made his mother pay for it, and not
just with periodic beatings Daniel was sure he gave her, even though
his mother herself always denied it, always claimed stoically that she
had had a fall, that she had been clumsy.

So often Daniel had ached to ask her why she stayed, why
she didn't leave. He knew she couldn't love him. How could any woman
love a man who treated her the way his father treated his mother? It
wasn't just the beatings, it was his whole attitude towards her. Daniel
knew enough about his father's religion now to know that there could be
no divorce. No Ryan ever divorced— and he also knew from
listening to the conversations of his cousins and his uncles that his
father had another woman whom he visited regularly, sometimes staying
overnight with her.

'Course, it's her who I blame,' he had heard Liam's wife,
Sheila, saying. 'If she'd been a proper wife to him, she'd have kept
him at home. I mean, it's obvious they're not sleeping
together… they've only got Danny.'

The thought of his mother having to endure the sexual
attentions of his father was something that revolted Daniel. He could
hardly bear to comprehend that his very life force had come from that
coupling, that he owed his entire existence to his rough, brutish
father's coupling with his mother.

He still did not know if his father knew where the money
came from that kept him at school. He knew, though, and he was
determined that as soon as he was able he was going to repay his mother
for all the sacrifices she had made on his behalf—and not
just his mother, there was his unknown grandmother to thank as well.

Many times he asked his mother why they never went to
Wales, why they never saw her family. He knew now that both her parents
were alive, that she had a married brother, that he had Welsh cousins.

The cousins didn't concern him. There was no love lost
between his Irish cousins and himself. They considered him to be an
outsider, different, set apart from them by virtue of his Welsh blood.
The Welsh bastard, they called him, and he stoically endured it because
he had told himself that never, ever would he do to a human being with
his fists, in violence and out of a desire to damage and inflict pain,
what his father had done to his mother. That he would never, ever in
his life raise his hand to a fellow human being. He stuck to that
decision all through the early painful years at school when he had been
very much an outsider among the other pupils from their privileged,
comfortable homes…

The scholarship brat was what
they
called him, but eventually had come at least some acceptance, and now
with his father's death had also come a lifting of the joint burden of
fear and anger he carried with his mother—her fear, his anger.

At his funeral, watching his grandmother sob noisily for
the loss of her precious son, he wondered why it was that he could feel
nothing, no emotion—that he could find no memories of past
tendernesses to hold on to in this the moment of committal of his
father's body to its grave.

When at last the coffin was covered, and her sons were
leading away the grieving mother, she turned to Daniel's mother and
said savagely, 'You were responsible for this. You killed him with your
stuck-up ways. You… He should never have married
you—aye, and never would have done so if you hadn't tricked
him…'

His mother, trick his father… It must surely
have been the other way round? He couldn't understand why any woman
would want to marry a man like his father, and yet still he felt guilt
and shame that he was unable to feel any grief, any sadness, any loss.

For a while after his father's death their lives continued
much as they had done before, only now they were free of the burden of
his father's presence. They were poor, but now his mother had started
singing again… She smiled and she laughed too, and on
Saturdays and Sundays, when she wasn't working and Daniel wasn't at
school, they would visit the city's museums and galleries, or sometimes
take the train to somewhere like Lytham St Anne's where he could gaze
in awe at the posh houses and smile while his mother told him that if
he did well at school one day he would own a house such as these.

If he did, she would be living in it with him, Daniel
promised himself. He wanted to give her all the things his father had
not. He wanted to see her wearing pretty clothes. He wanted to stop her
from working so hard and looking so tired.

And then, at the beginning of the summer holidays, three
months after his father's death, there was another death, and one which
changed his life completely.

The
letter arrived first thing on Monday morning, the handwriting
unfamiliar and male.

It was from her brother, Daniel's mother told him, opening
it, her face suddenly paling.

'It's your grandfather… He's
dead…they buried him last week, and now Gareth, your uncle,
wants us to go home, just for a visit… Mam needs me.'

No other explanations, and something in her voice told him
not to ask for any.

They travelled by train to Aberystwyth, and from there by
bus to the small village overlooking Cardigan bay.

To Daniel, whose only experience of the coast was
Liverpool with its docks and the flat wasteland of Lytham St Anne's,
the beauty of the rolling Pembroke coastline was breathtakingly
wonderful. Even when the bus stopped in the small dusty square and his
mother got up, he followed her, but kept his eyes on the view first
seen through the bus window.

The square was empty and silent; alien after the bustle of
Liverpool and the choking petrol-laden air of the street where they
lived.

In the square the bus moved off, continuing its journey
along the coast road; another road plunged downhill towards the sea
itself, and from its crest where he stood with his mother Daniel could
see the harbour and the fishing boats.

'This way,' she told him, touching his hand lightly. On
the bus he had been fascinated by the accents of the other passengers,
and now suddenly his mother's speech was like theirs, more lilting,
more… more Welsh, he recognised as he turned to walk with
her.

The narrow road was empty, but here and there Daniel
noticed the discreet twitching of a lace curtain, and then, just as his
mother was directing him off the road and into the lane that ran
between two of the houses, a car came racing towards them, stopping
abruptly.

The man who climbed out was a little over medium height,
with sharp brown eyes and curly hair—there was something
oddly familiar about him, although Daniel didn't realise what it was
until later.

At his side his mother made an odd sound in her throat,
and then the man was coming towards them, arms open wide as he smiled
at them.

'Gareth…' his mother breathed tearfully. 'It's
been so long. I never expected you to meet us…'

'I would have been here sooner, only Becky Saunders
started with her fifth… You remember Becky, she was at
school with us. She married Simon Carruthers. His father farms over
near Haverfordwest… and this must be young
Daniel… Well, my boys are going to have their eyes put out
when they see him. Barely sixteen, isn't he, and mine now seventeen and
at least a head shorter than him. Anyway, come on inside the car with,
the both of you. Mam's waiting in a fret of worry that you weren't
going to turn up.'

'How is she, Gareth?' Daniel heard his mother asking.

'Bearing up well. You know Mam, and as we both know he
wasn't always an easy man to live with.'

'Daniel, you get in the front with your uncle,' his mother
instructed.

His uncle… so this Gareth was his mother's
brother. Daniel inspected him thoughtfully as he got into the car,
trying not to be overawed by its luxury. No one in the Ryan family
owned a car, although Daniel was used to the sight of his schoolfriends
being dropped off outside the school gates in a variety of expensive
models.

This one was a large Volvo estate car with new
registration plates.

'I wanted to let you know before the funeral, but Mam said
not, said that it wouldn't have been what Dad wanted.'

Daniel heard the note of apology in his voice and wondered
why her father would not have wanted his mother at his funeral. He had
already realised that for some reason his mother was estranged from her
family, and, without knowing the cause, or feeling able to discuss it
with her, since she had never voluntarily raised the subject, had
assumed that it was perhaps something to do with his parents' marriage
and that her family had disapproved of the union as much as he now
realised the Ryans did.

'Well, now, we hear it's a clever lad you've got yourself
here, our Megan… a good scholarship, and good reports from
his school, so Mam tells us… Been boasting about him all
over town, she has.'

It was said with such affection and such a lack of
resentment or contempt, the smile his uncle gave him so very different
from the bitterness he was used to seeing in his father's eyes, that
Daniel stared at him, unaware of the thoughts running through Gareth
Rees's head.

Poor little sod, he was thinking. Just as well that father
of his went and got himself killed. And that Pa's gone too. He should
never have treated Megan the way he did… If he himself
hadn't been working away in America at the time… Well, it
was all in the past now. John Ryan was dead, and their father as well,
and as for the lad, well, although he had what he knew to be the Ryan
looks with his dark hair, it seemed that there was blessedly little
else of his father in him.

'You know that Sarah and I moved into the house when Dad
retired. He and Mam bought a bungalow on a new development.'

'Yes. Mam wrote me about it. Said that the stairs at the
house had been getting too much for Dad anyway.'

'Yes. His heart had been weak for years, and that temper
of his didn't help.

'Well, here we are,' he announced, bringing the car to a
halt, slowing down and then turning into a drive thickly edged with
rhododendron bushes. The house at the end of the drive was stone and
solid-looking, with large windows either side of the front door.

Daniel stared at it in amazement. Was this where his
mother had grown up? He thought of their home, the small terraced house
with its stained bath and sink, its cracked linoleum floors, its front
door that opened straight out on to the street and the back one which
opened into a minute back yard.

This house had what seemed to be an enormous
garden—he could even see what looked like a tennis court.