What She Never Told Me (7 page)

Chapter Nine

Angela is in the kitchen preparing lunch when I wander in from my long sleep, wrapped in one of her dressing gowns and feeling like death warmed up.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asks, putting down the vegetables she’s chopping and wiping her hands on a piece of kitchen paper.

‘Never felt better. Can’t you tell?’ I joke. But even as I laugh, the thought of what happened the previous day grips my mind and chills me. I’ve never felt as fragile and helpless as I do now and, before I even realise it, I’m shedding big wet tears and gasping between sobs.

Angela is beside me in a second, holding me tightly and telling me, ‘There, there, just go with it, let it all out.’ And I do. I cry and cry until I have no more tears, and then Angela loosens her grip on me and guides me to the big, comfortable sofa that has been relegated to the kitchen because it’s so old and scruffy.

‘Maybe it’ll do you good to talk,’ she says.

So I tell her everything in the order it all happened, about my visit to Dalkey, about the photographs, about Richard being unable to tell me anything about my father and advising me to put any thoughts of finding him out of my mind. I tell her about my trip to the library and discovering that the brewery still exists in England. She nods a lot, taking it all in but saying nothing.

And then I get to my trip to Crumlin and what happened there and I feel myself shaking again.

‘I can’t explain it, Angela. It was . . . terrifying. I’ve never been so afraid of anything in my life. Do you think I’m going mad?’

‘Ah, no, not at all. You’ve had a desperate time of it these past few months, what with your mother and with Sandy. I wonder whether that’s churning up an awful lot of things you’ve stayed away from before.’

‘You mean you think I’ve been avoiding stuff?’

‘Not intentionally, no. What I’m saying is . . . well, take your mother. I’m not surprised that you’re feeling annoyed about the way her family treated her and you. Rejection is an awful thing and it doesn’t matter how much you rationalise it. It’s hurtful and damaging. I don’t know what to make of what happened to you today in Crumlin, but there must be an explanation for it somewhere. Do you want to tell me about it again? Maybe we can try to make some sense of it.’

So I go back over it again, and the dread is still there, but it’s manageable this time. I tell her about the memory that may not be a memory. But if it’s not, what is it? I tell her about my initially pleasant walk around the square, the ordinary-looking but nicely built houses, the garden in the middle, and then the sight of the green postbox in front of me and the way the old memory suddenly came back, and how it was as if the two were the same, the real and the unreal merged together.

‘Did you ever talk to your mother about that memory that kept coming up?’

‘Not really . . . no. There didn’t seem to be much point. It was too indistinct. It used to be just something vague and a bit puzzling. Now, since my mother died, it’s doing my head in. And what happened in Walter Square . . . Jesus! What was all that about?’

‘There’ll be an explanation somewhere. There always is. But it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that Marjorie took you there, is it? Maybe something happened that frightened you. I don’t know what – maybe something as simple as a dog that you thought was going to bite you.’

‘But wouldn’t she have told me about something like that?’

‘She mightn’t have, especially if she didn’t know how frightened you were at the time and had forgotten about it. Or she might even have told you and you forgot.’

‘She didn’t tell me very much about anything, really,’ I say. ‘And it’s only now she’s dead that I realise how little I know about everything. I didn’t ask her too much, either. I don’t know why I wasn’t a bit more insistent. Well, I do know – she’d have gone into a mood and there would have been no point. And maybe I thought she’d be around forever and that there was plenty of time. I did ask about my father, but I knew she wasn’t going to tell me any more than she was willing to.’

And then Angela tells me that she has a confession to make, that, because I was in such a state yesterday, she decided to call Sandy.

‘Oh. What . . . what did he say?’

‘He’s on his way.’

‘Here? Oh! And he . . . he’s not pissed off?’

‘Why would he be pissed off?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that so much has gone wrong between us. I’m not sure you should have called him. It’s not as if we’re together any more.’

‘You’re not divorced, Louise. He’s still your husband. And when I told him what had happened, he didn’t think twice about coming over. Now, why don’t you go back upstairs and jump into the shower. He’ll be here in a while, in time for lunch.’

I throw my arms around her. I can’t speak because of the lump in my throat that threatens to make me burst into tears.

I hurry upstairs and, as I stand in the shower, all I can think about is the fact that Sandy has responded to my distress by jumping on to a plane. He cares, after all.

*

If I hadn’t lost my voice, I wouldn’t have taken up teaching, and I wouldn’t have met Sandy. I still don’t know what went wrong, whether I missed the warning signals – perhaps a break that happened once too often for comfort, tightness in my throat from lack of breath support. But I was never aware of any vocal problems. It was as if I had gone to sleep one night with a healthy voice and woken up the next morning unable to sing a note.

Shortly before it happened, I had a bout of flu that had kept me in bed for more than a week. Maybe the virus had stayed in my system, preventing me from getting my voice back.

Now, though, I have a vague memory of things not being quite right long before my voice stopped working. I would turn on the radio and become quite disturbed for the first few seconds because the music always sounded out of tune. Sometimes, the tunelessness extended beyond music. I often had to walk out of rooms because the light bulb or the fridge seemed out of tune with the other sounds in my head and in my ears.

It was one of the worst times of my life. I had come to define myself as a singer, and now I was a singer who couldn’t sing. I kept up the old routines, opening the lid of the piano, pressing my fingers on to the keys, standing straight, breathing in, taking the air down as deep and low into my body as it would go. I was always hoping for the miracle, that when I began to sing there would be something of the old voice, but what came out was just a dull, closed sound that was more or less in tune, but not tuneful. I tried one well-known teacher after another, convinced that one of them would have the magic formula that would restore my voice. None of them did.

Eventually, I did get my voice back by dogged exploration of voice and body and with the help of a good teacher, and the work started to come back. But I was already moving in the direction of teaching. Giving up on my singing career wasn’t a difficult decision. It wasn’t just a question of knowing that I was never going to set the world on fire as a singer, that I was never going to be one of those globe-trotting divas with a diary bursting at the seams for years into the future. It was also the realisation that I had never really enjoyed performing. I could sing Carmen and Dalila – I could even look like a Carmen or a Dalila – but I lacked the confidence to be a seductress on stage. I was a very small fish in a big pond, and I think I had known that from my first weeks at the college, when I heard voices that were far better than mine.

I often think singing is a disease, an affliction rather than a gift. You start off having lessons, just for fun, and you enjoy them. They’re something to look forward to. And then, one day, something happens. You produce a phrase, or just a single note that’s better, richer than anything you’ve thought yourself capable of. After that, you’re hooked. You’re an addict and singing is the narcotic for which you’re willing to give up everything, including even the milk you used to put in your tea and coffee, because dairy has bad press in the world of singing.

It took a while, but I kicked my addiction. Over time, I sang less and taught more, and I discovered that I was happier teaching. I loved working with young singers who were hoping for a career on the opera stage. I loved helping people with ordinary jobs and no ambitions for a singing career to discover what they were capable of. And then one day a big Scotsman walked into my studio.

*

I wait at the door, watching Sandy get out of the big car that looks too small for him. I’m nervous about what we will say to each other, worried about whether he’s going to be distant, even though he has been concerned enough to dash over to Ireland. But there’s no awkwardness. He comes towards me, arms outstretched, as if we haven’t been apart, as if he hasn’t walked out of our ten-year marriage.

‘What have you been up to, you daft hen?’ he says, exaggerating his Scottish accent and wrapping me in one of his old bear hugs.

I want to collude with him in this cheerfulness that he has probably decided is the best approach. If it will help to bring him back to me, I’ll be as bright and cheerful as I need to be.

‘I’ll tell you later. Angela’s anxious that you should be fed. She’s worried that you might be fading away,’ I say, and I’m pleased when he laughs and pats his slightly expanding girth. Maybe there’s hope for us after all, I think, crossing the first and middle fingers of both hands behind my back.

‘Sandy,’ Angela says. ‘It’s lovely to see you. We’ve missed you.’

Lunch is simple – fresh vegetable soup, bread and cheese – and as we sit and eat and talk, the three of us, it’s as if we were all meant to be around the table, as if I didn’t have a breakdown yesterday and as if Sandy is here not because he has been summoned, but because he wants to be.

‘How long are you staying, Sandy?’ Angela wants to know.

‘A couple of days.’ He looks at me. ‘Is that all right, Louise?’

Is it all right? It’s the best thing that has happened to me in months. I nod my head, almost unable to speak because my heart is bursting with a feeling I can’t quite put a name to. I feel like a small child who has been rescued from some terrible misfortune by kind grown-ups. But I feel anxious and afraid, too, because I’m not sure what Sandy’s arrival means. Is he just being caring or is he ready to come back? I don’t think I can bear it if he lets me down.

‘It’s fine,’ I manage to mumble, torn between these conflicting feelings, but desperately wanting to believe that, finally, I will get my husband back.

We decide that Sandy and I will stay at my mother’s house, and when we get there I tell him about my plans to renovate before making a decision on selling or keeping it. He nods his approval, even making suggestions as he reacquaints himself with its boxy rooms and layout.

I can hardly believe the change in him. If his upbeat mood is a pretence, he’s making a good job of it. There’s none of the moroseness that hung over every conversation we had leading up to and after his departure from our flat. The more recent, careful tone has also gone. I want to know what has brought about this change, and I speculate that, despite his previous denials, he had, after all, been having an affair that has now ended. But now is not the time to ask him about this. I’m too happy that he’s here. I can try to put aside for now all the questions that have been plaguing me.

I know Sandy will want to talk about what happened in Dublin, but I know his way of doing things. He will leave it for a few hours, maybe even until tomorrow. He will let me get used to him being here first, won’t start to push for information, won’t force me to reveal what I can’t or won’t.

It’s a long time since he’s been here, so I suggest that he might like to go for a walk while there’s still light in the sky.

‘We could go to Bettystown, walk along the strand,’ he says.

When he says
Bettystown
, Declan darts into my head. What if we bump into him? Will it be awkward? Maybe we should—

‘Louise?’

‘Oh, sorry! I was miles away for a second. I just remembered something. Yeah, Bettystown will be great.’

And it is.

What is it about walking that opens up the mind and calms it? Can it be something as simple as the rhythm of putting one foot in front of another, over and over again? That’s what I do in London when I have something to sort out in my head. I put on a pair of trainers and walk fast for an hour or two and somehow – I don’t know how, because I don’t even try to think about anything but the business of walking – by the time I get back home, I have a solution of sorts.

Now, Sandy and I stride along the damp sand, the wind blowing in our faces and our hair, and, at one point, when I trip over a piece of driftwood that I’ve failed to see, he takes my hand and keeps hold of it. We don’t talk much over the noise of the waves and the wind.

I sneak shy looks at him, at his thatch of hair that was once a reddish blonde, but is now, I see to my surprise, mostly grey. How did that happen without my noticing it?

He looks at me, too, and I wonder what he’s thinking. Maybe he’s also seeing things he hasn’t noticed before, things that surprise him. Or maybe he’s just wondering about how to deal with the consequences of my episode yesterday in Dublin, how to talk to me about it. But he’s holding my hand and I feel the safest and happiest I’ve felt in a long time.

We talk about music in the way we used to, about the pieces that lift our hearts or crush them, Sandy intermittently booming out phrases that we love or hate.

I could have walked for hours like that, but there’s rain on the wind and we dash back to the car, reaching it just as the skies open.

‘Fucking Ireland!’ Sandy gasps, collapsing into the car. ‘You can’t go five yards down the road in the sunshine before it starts pissing rain!’

‘Yeah, yeah, and the sun never stops shining over Scotland. And, of course, it never, ever rains there.’

We stop at a supermarket and stock up on food, and, when we get back to the house, I light the fire while Sandy cooks – two sirloin steaks with big floury potatoes and salad. He loves cooking. No nouvelle stuff, though. He’s a heart-attack-on-a-plate kind of cook. He opens a bottle of red wine and, as he hands me a glass, I ask him whether it’s all right for me to drink. ‘Of course, it’s all right,’ he says, and I’m relieved because it means he doesn’t think I’m losing my sanity.