What She Never Told Me (11 page)

I said nothing at first, appalled that she had shown so little regard for my need to have some element of privacy.

Eventually, I said, ‘You read my diary. You shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I’m your mother. Now, you’re going to sit down and you’re going to tell me everything.’

In writing my diary, I had been caught up in the romance of creating a child. It was the mid-1980s. Even Ireland was becoming more flexible, a little more liberal. But as I listened to my mother, I realised that having a baby wouldn’t be as I had imagined. I had yet to start having singing lessons, but had long since passed my grade eight piano exam with distinction and was already thinking that I might concentrate on becoming a pianist.

But my mother had no idea at this stage that I was dreaming of a career in music. If I had a baby, she told me, I wouldn’t be able to go to university and would end up in some unfulfilling job, dependent on her and Dermot for support. What kind of life was that for a young woman? What kind of legacy was that for a baby? She didn’t even mention Declan.

‘Are you telling me that you regret having me, that I was a mistake?’ I asked.

‘No, not at all,’ she said. ‘Look, Louise, times were different when I was young. There wasn’t a great deal available to girls, even clever ones, in terms of a career. I could have been a teacher, or a nurse. I could have worked in a bank. Or I could have become a secretary, which is what I did. Times are different now. There’s so much open to you. I won’t let you tie yourself down with a baby.’

I began to cry. Everything she said made sense, but my heart was breaking. She sat beside me on the edge of my bed and put her arms around me, and for a few minutes it was as if we were back in the little flat in Drumcondra.

My mother arranged everything. She told the school we were going to a family funeral in England and that I would be away for a week. I presume she told Dermot the whole story, but he said nothing to me that indicated he knew what was going on. He was just his usual kind self.

My mother told me not to tell anyone, certainly not Declan, and not even Ursula. ‘The fewer people who know, the better,’ she said. ‘Then we can forget all about it.’ But I couldn’t keep something like that from Ursula, the nearest thing to that sister I had always wished for.

‘Your mother’s right. You can’t have a baby, Lou. It would be a disaster,’ she said. ‘But you’re looking a bit . . . as if you’re unsure?’

‘No. No, I’m sure.’

And at that moment I was. Or at least I thought I was.

My mother and I flew to London. I don’t remember much about the clinic, but I do remember feeling sad and empty when the procedure was over and I was allowed to leave. We were staying in a good hotel and she did everything she could to make me feel cosseted and cared for. She even took me shopping to buy the kind of clothes that I loved and she hated. I knew she was right about everything. But I knew, too, that things had changed between us and I grieved for our relationship just as much as for the baby she had forced me to abort.

I saw Declan once after that. I was distant, offhand. He was hurt and puzzled. I maintained the lie of the family funeral. Then I came up with one excuse after another to avoid seeing him. And eventually he stopped calling me. He never knew about the baby. How could I have told him what I had done?

Chapter Thirteen

Northamptonshire is prettier than I expected it to be, and Friars Ashby is like a picture-postcard village, with houses made of golden-yellowish stone and a single pub looking out over the village green. ‘Our villages are what you might call hidden gems,’ Jill Tomlinson told me as we sat in her office earlier that morning in Northampton. I park the car outside the pub and go inside. I’m torn between the urge to go straight to David Prescott’s house and the need to calm myself down before I knock on his door.

I look at the beer taps and see several marked Tennyson’s.

‘I’ll have a half of that, please,’ I tell the barman. ‘It’s local, isn’t it?’

‘Couldn’t be more local if it tried,’ he says, taking a glass and filling it. ‘Are you passing through or stopping in the village?’

‘I’m here to see someone, actually,’ I say, pulling out the piece of paper on which I’ve written the address. ‘Maybe you can tell me where Nene Cottage is.’

‘Just over there; the other side of the green. Looking for David Prescott, then?’

‘That’s right. Do you know him well?’

‘One of the regulars. Used to work for Tennyson’s. You a relative?’

I’m tempted to say I am, but I shake my head.

‘He was a friend of my family when he worked in Ireland, years ago. They asked me to look him up,’ I lie.

‘That’ll be a treat for him. He’s been a bit lonely since the wife died a few years ago. Lovely lady, she was. They never had any kids. Pity. He’d have someone to take care of him now.’

I finish my beer quickly. I want to hear more about David Prescott, drink in every detail of his life that the barman can give me. But he’s so close now, just a few hundred yards away, and the need to meet him is becoming overwhelming.

‘I’d better get going,’ I tell the barman. ‘Maybe see you later.’

David Prescott’s house is hung with wisteria, his front garden filled with old-fashioned flowers like lupins and peonies. My heart is beating so fast that I fear I am going to faint.

The elderly man who opens the door is much more sprightly than the barman had led me to expect. His face is attractive, despite the deep wrinkles engraved into it. He must have been handsome once.

‘Mr Prescott? I’m Sandra Munro. Jill Tomlinson phoned ahead . . .’

‘Ah, Miss Munro. Come in. You found your way here easily?’

‘I did, yes. It’s very good of you to see me at such short notice.’

‘It’s no trouble at all, Miss Munro. I have plenty of time.’

He leads me into a room with French doors giving on to another garden at the back of the house.

‘It’s such a pleasure to be asked to talk about Dublin. They were good years,’ he says. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I see a momentary look of sadness come into his eyes.

‘Have you spoken to any other Tennyson’s people for your research?’ he asks.

I’ve rehearsed my spiel.

‘Not yet. Apart from Mrs Tomlinson at the brewery. I spent the morning there. She suggested I see you first, because you live so close to Northampton. The other people whose names I’ve been given are rather spread out, in Leicestershire and Cambridgeshire. I’ll have to visit them another time. I’m interested in the particular years you were in Dublin.’

‘Yes, they were interesting years. They were certainly years of great change in this country. But in Ireland? Were the 1960s vastly different from the 1950s? I’m not so sure.’

As we talk, I search for something, some expression in his face that will make me recognise something of myself. But I look nothing like him.

He leaves me alone for a couple of minutes and I have a chance to look around the room, at the framed photographs of himself and a woman I presume to be his wife. They span several decades. His hair is white now, but I can see that it was dark when he was younger. And while he’s thin now, he was slightly stockier then.

Returning with a tray laden with teapot, cups and saucers, and a plate of biscuits, he notices my interest in the photographs, but says nothing about them.

‘Now, tell me more about this project of yours. Jill said you were writing a book.’

I talk about my fictitious project, telling him I’m particularly interested in talking to him because of the number of years he spent in Dublin, where the brewery had made such a positive impact on the lives of the people who worked for it. He nods enthusiastically.

‘Yes, yes, I was proud to work for a company that looked after its workers so well,’ he says. ‘And the houses we built in Dublin were shining examples of the kind of things we did for our workers. Have you seen any of them?’

I tell him I’ve been to the old brewery in Crumlin and to Walter Square, but that I haven’t been inside any of the houses.

‘They were excellent houses. They were a good size and very pleasant and very functional. Designed by quite an eminent architect, whose name doesn’t immediately spring to mind. I suspect they must be worth rather a lot, these days.’

As he continues to talk about his time in Dublin, I think about him and my mother together. They would have been an attractive couple. He’s cultured; I can see that from his bookshelves. And several books of poetry are piled on a table. My mother would have liked that. She was happy with Dermot, but perhaps this man really was the love of her life.

He’s talking away happily when I stop him in mid-flow. I like him. I don’t want to deceive him for a moment longer.

‘I haven’t been entirely truthful about why I’m here,’ I say, and I have to pause for a few seconds because my voice is shaking as much as my body. He looks at me, puzzled.

‘My name isn’t Sandra Munro. It’s Louise Redmond. Marjorie Redmond was my mother.’

There’s no reaction at first and I start to wonder whether I’ve managed to get everything wrong. It’s as if his face has frozen. And then it comes – an explosion of anger that I’m not prepared for.

‘How dare you! Why have you come here? What do you want? This is monstrous! Monstrous!’

I beg him to let me explain why I’ve sought him out. But he won’t listen. Every time I try to speak, he holds up his hands and stops me.

‘Stay where you are. I’m going to show you something,’ he says, turning his back on me and walking out of the room.

So I wait, bewildered and frightened by his initial rage, yet still daring to hope that what he’s going to show me will somehow prove the link between us.

When he comes back, he’s carrying a document of some sort.

‘I don’t know who you are, but I know that you’re not my daughter. Yes, I did have a daughter, and her mother was Marjorie Redmond. But my daughter is dead.’

He hands me the document. It’s a death certificate, and it’s for Louise Redmond, born on 11 December 1969, died on 30 April 1973. I feel my vision blurring and my head spinning, and then I feel myself falling, falling.

*

I open my eyes and for a moment I’m confused by the elderly face I see peering anxiously at me. And then I remember what has happened and I hear myself emit a sound somewhere between a sob and groan, a sound that I’ve never made before, even during those first days without Sandy, even when I lay curled up and howling on a Dublin street. It’s the kind of sound a wounded animal might make.

‘You fainted,’ David Prescott says. ‘Just for a few seconds. Are you all right now?’

I ask to see the death certificate again and pore over its details. Louise Redmond died of meningitis at Northampton General Hospital. Marjorie Redmond registered the death.

‘That’s my date of birth, the eleventh of December, 1969,’ I tell him. ‘And I have a birth certificate. I don’t have it with me, but I do have one and your name is on it. I
am
Louise Redmond. I’m your daughter!’

David Prescott lowers his head, shakes it, and when he looks at me again, his old eyes are glistening.

‘You’re not. You can’t be,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘I was with her. I was at the hospital when she died. It broke my heart. She was the most beautiful child, with the sweetest nature. No, my dear, I don’t know who you are, but you’re not Louise.’

Through my tears, I listen to him tell his story – how he had fallen in love with the young woman who had worked as his secretary, how they had maintained a secret affair for several years, how she had fallen pregnant.

‘Marjorie was very beautiful, very vibrant. And so intelligent. We never meant it to happen,’ he says. ‘My wife and I had no children. Celia couldn’t have them. It was a great sadness for both of us. You can imagine how overjoyed I was when I saw our daughter for the first time.’

‘Why didn’t you leave your wife?’

‘Oh, I would have. There was nothing I wanted more than to be with Marjorie, to be open about our relationship and to marry her. But it was Marjorie who wanted to keep things as they were and it was Marjorie who ended our long affair.’

‘But Northampton? Did my mother live here?’

‘For a while. I was transferred back here and, after a few months, Marjorie came with Louise. I couldn’t imagine not having them near. I found a house for them in Northampton. I saw them every day. And then Louise contracted meningitis and died. I was there, at the hospital, with her and Marjorie. All night. We waited all those hours, watching her slip away, praying there would be a miracle. Parents are supposed to be able to protect their children. But there was nothing we could do. It was the worst time of our lives. And Marjorie was broken. I was afraid of what might happen, that she might kill herself. We comforted each other, but everything had changed and, a few months later, she went back to Dublin. She asked me not to contact her and I never heard from her again.’

Every mention of Louise has made me wince, as if she is someone else and not me. But, of course, this dead Louise is not me. I am alive. But if I’m not Louise, who am I? I am my mother’s daughter, and I tell this to David Prescott again and again. I show him photographs of the two of us together over the years.

‘Yes, this is Marjorie,’ he says. ‘But you’re not Louise. You can’t be. It’s impossible.’

‘I just don’t understand this,’ I say, and I hear how weak and uncertain my voice sounds.

‘I’m feeling rather shaken by all this, too, and I can’t think very clearly, but I have a question for you. Did Marjorie tell you that I was your father?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘She told me my father’s name was David Prescott and that he was English. She said she’d lost contact with you and that she didn’t know where you lived. But I never really believed that, not when I was older, anyway.’

He closes his eyes for several seconds.

He loved my mother – still does, I think to myself – and I find myself empathising with him, imagining how he must have suffered when she left him. But it’s harder to think about my mother’s grief over this child called Louise, who is not me. Until Dermot’s death, I had never been aware of any great loss in her life. Surely the death of a child would have left its mark on her? Wouldn’t she have held on to photographs of such a child? Wouldn’t she have told me about her?

His voice breaks into my thoughts.

‘I’m sorry, my dear, but I’ve told you the truth. I wish with all my heart that your mother were alive and here now. I wish it for many reasons, but most of all so that she could tell you in my presence that our daughter died. But I have something else to show you and I hope it will convince you.’

He hands me a box in which there are several photographs. I recognise my mother and I recognise him. I think I can also see something of my mother and of him in the child she holds on her knee – a little girl with dark blonde curls. I’m on the edge of nausea. I push the photographs away.

‘I don’t understand it, any of it,’ I say, rising to my feet, desperate to get away from this waking nightmare.

‘There’s one more thing,’ he says, and I sink back into the sofa.

This time, he takes something from a sideboard and holds it out in front of him. He doesn’t need to tell me what’s inside the small white casket.

‘Marjorie left Louise’s ashes with me. Said she didn’t need them to remember her. I must be made of weaker stuff.’

I can’t stand any more of this. I have to get out of this house, get back to London and put distance between myself and the grotesque nightmare that my dream has become.

As I leave, David Prescott takes both of my hands in his and squeezes them.

‘This has been as upsetting for me as it has been for you,’ he says. ‘But come and see me again when you’ve had some time to think about it. We will have to help each other.’