In Too Deep (12 page)

Stefania watches Michael as he sleeps. Three years old now, he looks more and more like her father with every passing day. Already, he has the same strong chin and the same way of wrinkling up his nose to laugh. There are times when she struggles to bring her mother's face to mind, but one glance at Michael and her father, Jozef, might just as well be standing there before her, large as life.

Tonight is Christmas Eve. Back in Tarnów this is the most precious night of the year, a night for family and all that family means, all the laughter, tears, tales and longings; but Ireland isn't Poland and tonight, sitting here in a bed-sit and watching her son as he sleeps, home has never seemed further away.

She sighs, a long tired breath that spins gossamer curls from her thin mouth. The cold has crept in only this week, turning everything ideally seasonal. For the past few days now, there has been a rawness to the air that makes smiling easier than usual. At the beginning she gave herself willingly to the spirit of things, braving the hectic streets, spending money she didn't really have on things that neither she nor Michael really needed. But that's Christmas.

Once the night-time has fully settled, she gives in and switches on one bar of the electric fire. An hour of that heat will make all the difference; if she is still feeling the cold after that then at least it will be late enough to go to bed. The apartment feels more bearable in the darkness. She draws her chair in close to the fire and sits forward all the way to the edge so that she is perched to savour the fullest throw of heat.

She has lived in this city for almost six years now, and Cork isn't so bad. Like a lot of her friends, she had listened to the stories of money to be made, of life to be lived and great adventure to be had. What she has isn't squalor, though it's a long way from the lavish world she'd been led to believe. But that's the way of the world. As it turned out, hers was the old story, that of tumbling headlong into love with a man who knew exactly the right way to flatter and coerce. For the better part of two years, his word was gospel and she feasted on the very sight of him, adoring everything from the premature salt-and-pepper sprinkle of his crew-cut all the way down to the caked mud of his steel-toed work boots. And when that bubble burst, her life had been changed forever. Well, she wasn't the first …

At home, they'd have the table laid for the Wigilia, the Christmas Eve dinner. Days would have been spent in decorating the house and preparing the many traditional meatless courses. Her father would lead the family in prayer, a place would be set in memory of their wayward daughter, and after the meal had been eaten, carols would be sung.

Tears form at a surge of childhood memories, and her throat tightens with a dehydrated ache. But instead of giving in, Stefania rubs her hands together, drawing in the yellow nourishment of the fire's heat, then stands and drifts around the bed-sit apartment, tending to small details by touch in the darkness. Christmas in Ireland is different than in Tarnów. If there is one lesson she has learned through all her mistakes, it is that regret is a useless emotion.

Michael is Irish. This, really, is the first year that he under-stands anything of the season. Tomorrow morning he will wake to a Christmas morning of presents carefully wrapped and placed underneath the small, decorated tree. His eyes will light up as she tells him that, because he had been such a good boy for his mummy this year, Santa Claus visited during the night and delivered very special gifts. They'll drink cocoa for breakfast as a special treat, then walk hand in hand to mass, smiling widely and wildly through the cold. And afterwards, he will play with his new toys while she cooks a dinner of roast chicken, sprouts and potatoes. This can be the start of a new tradition for them; their Christmas will be special because they have one another. Two is more than enough to make a family.

Stefania pulls her cardigan closed across her narrow chest, strikes a match and lights the candle that she has placed in the window. This is one of the traditions that Ireland and Poland share, and maybe the best one. A small, flickering glow, giving hope to wanderers everywhere.

In our village, it was always Nonie Reardon who announced the coming of Christmas. As soon as the weather turned the right sort of cold, there she'd be, settling in for a fortnight's vigil, her wizened frame stooped in her doorway, her squinted gaze fixed up along the village as she waited for a certain good word. And that was the signal to everyone, not just the children, to begin the preparations in earnest.

Nonie was at the door and that meant Christmas was on its way.

When I knew her, she was a woman already well into her seventies, a lonely soul who lived mostly in her mind. Her home, the home of her mother's people, was a little two-roomed hovel of a cottage set beside the towering gates of the woollen mills. There had been a husband once, but briefly. They said he was a man from West Cork, Mick, and that he was tied up in that business with the crowd from the North. Nonie, the poor creature, had hardly been married when she found herself widowed; Mick had passed through in a hurry, though he'd paused long enough to leave her with his surname as well as the more lasting reminder of a kicking, screaming, bouncing baby boy. And what followed was the usual inevitable hardship, the struggle to survive, stretching the ends almost to snapping point in order to make them meet. It couldn't have been easy, but then, nothing was easy back in those days.

Anyway, all of that was before my time. When I first took notice of her, she was already old and had long since been left alone. All her relations were dead, and the boy, Michael, had taken off for England as soon as he was of an age. He had never returned.

Christmas moved something in old Nonie. The entire year seemed like a countdown to that one special day, and as soon as the first hard frosts stiffened the ground she'd emerge from her cocoon to take up her place in the doorway. We'd wave at her as we passed on our way to school, and sometimes, if she was not too distracted by her own rambling thoughts, she'd smile and wave back. Seeing her there, all frail corners and wispy hair, all bony hands tugging at the lapels of a threadbare cardigan, caused our world to shift, and we'd run off towards our classroom shouting as loud as our voices would go that, at long last, Christmas was coming.

She was waiting for a letter, of course. During the first few years after Michael's departure, he had been regular in writing home, and she would stop neighbours in the street to inform them of how he was getting along, what a success he was making of his life. As the letters arrived, the whole village followed his progress, and even felt some pride in his triumphs: the job he scored as a driver on the London buses; the small but notable promotion to inspector that followed within a few years; even his marriage to a girl from Mayo and the family that they set about building with all immediacy. Nonie lived for the arrival of those letters, and for the opportunity to share her son's latest news with anyone who cared to listen.

But while these brief updates were undoubtedly precious, they paled in comparison to the letters that arrived at Christmas. At the beginning the envelopes carried the splendid gift of money, rarely very much, just whatever he could spare, but to her it may as well have been a fortune in silver and gold. Then, after he was married, parcels began to arrive, maybe packing a new cardigan or headscarf, a box of chocolates, even a small ornament to be placed on the mantelpiece above the fire. Picking open the wrapping paper and folding it neatly away, Nonie became a child again. Her wide eyes glinted with the very essence of Christmas spirit set loose, and all the years of hardship fell from her in ropes.

After a few years, the flow of letters began to slow, running a month overdue at first, then longer. And finally a Christmas came and went without a parcel arriving. Morning after morning, Nonie filled her doorway and watched for the postman, but to no avail. At first mass on that Christmas morning, she knelt and prayed, and afterwards nodded and tried to smile as she passed out her season's greetings to everyone she met. Something had changed though. The glint in her eye was gone.

Throughout the years that followed there was never another mention of Michael. The proud boasts fell away and other things were discussed instead: the weather, the war, the price of potatoes. The neighbours, not wanting to embarrass her or open old wounds, took care that their words would not disturb the buried memory of her prodigal son. Such was life. And yet, when the next Christmas of loneliness rolled around, and all the Christmases after that, Nonie would again be seen filling her doorway, watching the road for the first sign of the postman, waiting, always waiting, for that letter. Every morning during that fortnight or so leading up to the big day, it was as if the clock had been turned back. She glowed again. Not with the brilliance of before, I suspect, but enough so that anyone who saw her had to feel at least a little of that magic for themselves.

As soon as I was old enough to notice this minor phenomenon, I asked my father about it. I could see neither sense nor reason as to why the old woman should build up her hopes in the face of almost certain disappointment. Perhaps keeping a vigil for the first few years was understandable enough, a lonely old soul so desperate for a friendly word that she was willing to close her eyes to her own obvious abandonment, but surely a time came when facts had to be acknowledged. Michael, her only son, was gone, and years had passed since the last attempt at contact.

My father gave a few moments of consideration to my question, then shrugged his big shoulders.

‘Who knows, boy?' he said. ‘While there's life, there's hope. Isn't that what they say? Maybe there's a grain of truth in that.'

I was disappointed with his answer, having been hoping for something a touch more substantial than such a throwaway platitude, but even at my youthful age I was beginning to understand that not everything could be easily explained.

My interest in Nonie refused to wane, even when other seasonal details started to vie for my attention, and I took to watching her at every opportunity. At the beginning, when she first took up her place in her doorway, the excitement stretched across that sunken face was clear to see. The harrowed eyes watched and waited, her bony arms crossing her chest, and I just had to believe her certainty was well-founded. This year, surely, the letter would come. But that day drew a blank, as did the next, and by the fourth or fifth day of waiting, the certainty began to waver. She shifted from foot to foot, licked her lips, crossed and re-crossed her arms, and it was actually possible to see her enthusiasm for Christmas slipping away. By the time we drew to within touching distance of the big day, I could see that she'd become a shell of her former self. Walking to school that morning, I decided that seeing her like this was quite possibly the saddest thing that I had ever witnessed.

An hour later, daydreaming my way through catechism lessons, a solution broke in my mind with such force that I almost tumbled from my tilted chair. As with all such answers this one seemed so simple: Why didn't I just write the letter myself and sign it from Michael?

There were flaws in the plan, and at ten years of age I was a long way shy of showing the least tendency towards genius, but I thought it would work. I knew she was anxious for a letter, and as long as I kept the details vague she probably wouldn't question too closely the disparity in handwriting. So, that night, drawing on what little information I knew as well as what I could glean from a few casual questions put to my mother, I carefully tore a sheet of paper from my jotter and began to compose Michael Reardon's first letter home in many years.

It was no masterpiece. There was little I could say for fear of giving myself away, but somehow I managed to fill a page of joined-up writing with assurances that everything was just fine over here in England, that the wife and children sent their best wishes and that I was heartily sorry for letting so much time slip by without writing home. Trying to lend an authentic feel to the whole thing, I used ‘Mam' whenever the opportunity presented itself, and I signed off with ‘your loving son, Michael', hoping that I wasn't overdoing it. I folded the paper with great care, found an envelope in the chest of drawers in my mother's bedroom, and scrawled an address on the back.

I couldn't post the letter, of course. A letter sent from Ireland carried an Irish stamp, and that mistake would be instantly noticeable. But almost immediately I hit upon a solution. My mother had a brother who some years ago had emigrated to Birmingham, and under the pretence that I wanted to read his old letters, I pestered my mother into digging them out. Finally she did; anything for a quiet life, she said. She studied my face for the key to my lies, then sighed and warned me with the wave of a threatening hand to be careful with them. There were about twenty letters in all, some still in their torn envelopes. With the greatest of care, I picked off a withered stamp and glued it into place on Nonie's letter. It was smudged, and more than a little wrinkled, but I knew that it would do its job just fine.

The following morning was the day before Christmas Eve. A dusting of snow had fallen during the night, and all the children were out on the street, trying to scrape up enough of the stuff to make a snowman. I wanted more than anything to join them, but I forced myself to wait inside until the post had arrived. From our front window, I could see Nonie in her doorway, a rumpled, anxious shape with her hawkish face watching for the postman. I couldn't help smiling; this morning her long-awaited letter would finally arrive.

The eventual knock on the door brought nothing much, probably a few bills. I grabbed the letters with a muttering of thanks, fumbled through them and ran outside to watch who else might be receiving something in this morning's post. As usual, Nonie stood in her doorway before slipping inside when the postman approached to within a few houses. And as usual, the postman passed her on without so much as a glance.

I allowed ten minutes or so to pass, then made my move. At a determined pace, I marched up the road, conscious that the entire village was probably watching me and wondering what I was doing. Then I knocked on the door and stepped back to wait. From inside, I caught the small noise of movement, and eventually the door opened, Nonie's head and narrow shoulders emerging cautiously from the darkness. For a few seconds she stared at me, giving me the sense that she didn't know who I was, but then that blindfold cleared and she bent her mouth into a weary smile.

‘Hello, boy,' she croaked, a question large across her face.

‘Hi, Mrs Reardon,
'
I said. ‘The postman just dropped off some letters to us, and I think we got one of yours by mistake.
'
I wanted to say more, but suddenly I was fully aware of my lies. Maybe, far from helping her by my deception, I was only torturing her. But I'd come too far to turn back. With a hand that had the cold as an excuse for its trembling, I held out the envelope.

Her eyes stared at the letter and her lips muttered something that didn't quite make it into actual words. Then, with a trembling hand of her own, she took it from me.

I cleared my throat. ‘Well,' I said, wanting to add something. But there was nothing more to be said. ‘Happy Christmas, Mrs Reardon,' I added as I turned away, but I'm not sure she even heard. She stood there for a few minutes more, utterly transfixed by the letter. Then she went back inside.

All that day, I was restless, wondering whether or not I had done the right thing. But the following day, Christmas Eve, I heard my mother telling Mrs Lenihan from next door that old Nonie Reardon finally got a letter from her son. Imagine, after all these years.

At mass on Christmas morning, everyone knew about the letter. Nonie could recite it by heart and did so at every opportunity. During the service, even Fr Murray took the time to give special thanks to the Lord for the mending of long-broken connections. In God's eyes there is no gulf too great to cross, he said, gazing down at where Nonie sat in one of the front pews, no separation that cannot be brought together again. I left the church with the feeling that I had been absolved of my sins.

Snow was falling again. The air was bitterly cold but everyone was smiling. Good wishes were passed around, and while the adults strolled back towards the village in little groups, chatting and swapping stories of years gone by, the children ran ahead, laughing and trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues. It was Christmas, and one that I'd always remember.