What She Never Told Me (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

I’m having one last check through the pile of papers that I’ve designated as rubbish before I throw them into the recycling box. I’ve seen the big brown Manila envelope before. It contains about a dozen greeting cards and envelopes, all the same, with a bland landscape on the front and the inside left blank. She must have had a stock of them for use when a thank-you note was called for, although they don’t strike me as her style. When she bought Christmas cards, she ignored the robins and reindeer and snow scenes, and went straight for medieval and renaissance paintings of Madonna and child, because, despite her lack of religiosity, she saw Christmas as a religious festival that had at the very least inspired great art.

I aim the Manila envelope at the recycling box, but, as it sails through the air, the cards start to fall out.

‘Bugger,’ I mutter, annoyed at having to get up from the floor, where I’ve managed to find a relatively comfortable position, to pick them up.

I’m gathering up the cards and envelopes when I notice that one of the envelopes has an address scrawled on it in block capitals. I recognise them as my mother’s block capitals because of the squiggly
D
in
Dublin
.

MRS MARY O’CONNOR

10 WALTER SQUARE

CRUMLIN

DUBLIN

I stay calm. I’ve developed a technique to try to hold panic at bay when I think about the Crumlin episode. I press my tongue against the roof of my mouth, just above my teeth, clench my fists and tense every muscle and sinew in my body. It works most of the time, and it does now. I look at the envelope again, but there’s nothing inside it, nothing else written on it. Perhaps she has written on one of the cards. But, when I check, I find that each one is blank, pristine.

Sandy had wanted me to stay away from Walter Square. But Sandy’s advice doesn’t count for anything now, so I walk down to the railway station. I have no particular plan sketched out in my mind beyond getting myself to Crumlin, to number ten, Walter Square. I have no idea what I will do when I get there.

On the train, I stare out of the window, but take nothing in. I have no idea how many or which stations we have passed. Why was my mother writing to someone who lived in the square? Was it someone she worked with? There are too many questions piling up in my head, crowding my brain. I try to make myself stop thinking about them, but I can’t, and I become more and more confused.

When I reach the square, I avoid looking at the green postbox, but I know exactly where it is. It’s almost too hot and sultry to be out of doors. There are a few children playing in the garden in the middle of the square, under the watchful gaze of their parents, and one or two people are sunbathing. But otherwise it’s quiet, except for the summer buzz of insects and the chirruping of birds.

I ring the doorbell at number ten and wait for what seems a very long time before I hear footsteps coming towards the door. The woman who appears in the doorway is young, probably in her late twenties, with long blonde hair and a honey-gold bloom to her skin that can only have come from a sunbed.

‘Hello,’ I say. ‘Is Mrs O’Connor in?’

‘Mrs O’Connor?’ she asks in one of those strange modern Dublin accents that didn’t exist in my day. ‘I’m sorry, there’s no Mrs O’Connor here,’ she says.

‘Oh,’ is the only response I can come up with. I hadn’t really expected to find Mary O’Connor, but I’m bitterly disappointed that I’ve come all the way back here only to hit a dead end. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you.’

But as I turn away to walk back down the little pathway to the gate, the young woman calls after me.

‘Are you all right? You look a bit knackered. Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?’

She takes me inside and I have a strange feeling as I walk through the door that I should know this house, but there’s nothing I can put my finger on. As in most of the older inner-city houses bought by the young and upwardly mobile, walls have been knocked through to create one big room, which in turn leads through to an extension that opens on to a garden at the back. Floors that would once have been covered by old dark-patterned carpet or linoleum are now covered by expensive-looking wood.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you too much,’ I say.

‘Oh, you’re not disturbing me at all,’ she says, pointing towards a rectangular exercise mat and the paused video on an enormous television screen. ‘I was just finishing my Pilates exercises when you rang the doorbell.’

The tea is lapsang souchong and we drink it without milk; another far cry from the Lyons or Barry’s tea with full-cream milk that would have been drunk in these houses in the old days.

‘My boyfriend and I have lived here for a couple of years. We know a few of the neighbours, but they’re mostly like us. I mean, they haven’t been in the square that long either. I don’t think there’s anyone called O’Connor. Do you know how long ago she might have lived here?’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t know very much about her at all,’ I say, and I find myself telling her a little bit of my story, about my mother having died and my need to find anyone who can help me trace my father. I don’t tell her more than that. I don’t mention the death certificate.

‘My mother once worked at the brewery and, when I saw the envelope addressed to someone in this square, I thought there might just be a tiny chance the woman was still here and might be able to tell me something,’ I say.

She gives me a long look. I can tell that she wants to help me. It’s written all over her face. For all the signs of upward mobility and pampered lifestyle, she’s just a nice girl, and a nice girl with a lot of time on her hands.

‘Look, I’ll ask around and see if anyone knows anything. Do you want to give me your phone number? My boyfriend’s an estate agent. I’ll ask him. He might be able to do a bit of digging.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’ I pull out a piece of paper from my bag and write down my mobile phone number and my email address.

‘My name’s Joannie, by the way. And here’s my phone number and email.’

I had forgotten how kind strangers can be.

*

Richard shows no surprise when I arrive, unannounced, at his door. He’s too much the gentleman for that.

‘Am I disturbing you? I’m sorry to turn up out of the blue. It’s just that I was in Dublin and I felt I wanted to see you. If it’s not convenient, I can come back another time.’

‘No need whatsoever to apologise, Louise. You’re welcome here whenever you want. I hope you’ll remember that. Now, what can I offer you?’

‘I think I need a drink,’ I say. ‘I mean, a proper drink.’

‘A gin and tonic?’

‘That was my mother’s drink. Yes, a gin and tonic would be perfect.’

We sit outside. It’s the middle of August, still summer, but the sun has lost much of its earlier heat and intensity. Already, in the late afternoon, there are hints of an autumn chill.

Richard makes small talk, about the garden, the books he’s reading and his grandson’s decision not to go to university straight away, but to go travelling for a while.

‘Did you go off like that, Louise? Travelling?’ he asks.

‘No, the gap year wasn’t really a thing in my day,’ I say. ‘Not in my circle, anyway. I went straight off to music college, in London.’

‘Ah, you didn’t study here in Dublin? I had taken it for granted that you did. We have a perfectly good academy in Westland Row, you know.’

‘Oh, I do know. And other places, too. But Mamma encouraged me to go to London. She thought I’d have a better chance of a career there, better connections.’

‘And has your career worked out well?’

‘It has certainly been different from what I’d imagined. I started off as a singer, but it didn’t work out for all sorts of reasons. To be honest, I knew a long time ago that I was never going to be a Marilyn Horne or a Janet Baker. I think I even knew it all along. But Mamma convinced me that I was going to have a big career. Anyway, I developed serious vocal problems, lost my voice and had to find it again. So now I teach singing. But it’s not a substitute – I love it.’

‘So you don’t sing at all now?’

‘No. Apart from when I want to demonstrate something to a student.’

‘And do you miss it?’

‘Not in the slightest. When I think back now, it’s pretty clear to me that I never really enjoyed it as much as I thought I would. I loved learning the stuff, and I really enjoyed the rehearsals. But the rest of it was very stressful. Going to auditions and not being offered roles. Getting a gig and then going down with a heavy cold. And whenever I did get a gig, it was always a bit of an anticlimax. I don’t think I had the right temperament, anyway. I prefer to take a back seat, be the support rather than the main act.’

‘Very unlike Marjorie,’ Richard says, smiling. ‘She rarely took a back seat.’

I’ve been struggling to find a way of telling him about the death certificate, but now he has provided an opening in the conversation by mentioning my mother.

‘There are things I have to tell you, Richard,’ I say. ‘About Mamma and about me. Things I don’t understand.’

He sits back and listens as I tell him about how I tracked down David Prescott, about my shock and distress at being presented with the death certificate, about the photographs of my mother holding the small blonde child.

His frown deepens as I relay each detail. He remains calm, but when he speaks there’s a slight tremor in his voice. I know he’s shocked. How could he not be?

‘I don’t know what to make of all this, where it leaves you. That Marjorie had a copy of this death certificate is . . . well, disturbing, to say the least. I was very worried when you rang off the other day. You said, “when I was very small”, and then you said, “when someone was very small”. Now I understand what you meant.’

He reminds me that I told him during that call that my mother had lived in England for a while.

‘What have you discovered about the time she spent there?’ he asks.

‘Well, David Prescott was transferred back to Northampton and she eventually joined him. He lived with his wife in a village outside the town and my mother lived in a house he found for her in Northampton itself. I suppose it explains why she left Rathmines, but it doesn’t explain an awful lot else. Anyway, according to David Prescott, the child died and my mother came back to Dublin.’

‘And that’s it? That’s all you know?’

‘It’s a lot more than I knew the last time I saw you.’

‘Sorry. Yes, it’s quite a development. I don’t know what to say. There are only two possible explanations I can come up with. One is that David Prescott is a fantasist and has invented this other child . . .’

‘No, he’s not a fantasist. The death certificate is real and that child, whoever she was, was real. Sandy wrote off for a copy of the death certificate and we also found one in the house. It was in a box that had been hidden away in the attic, and there was a photograph of that child with it. I haven’t got them with me because I wasn’t planning to come out here, but I’ll bring them the next time I come up.’

‘Maybe I can help. I’ll try to see what I can find upstairs. There are still a lot of things, old things, stored up in the attic here. But it may take rather a long time. You can imagine how big the space is.’

‘That would be great. I’d much rather sort all this out without having to go to the police or whichever authorities would be relevant.’

‘Oh, is that what you’re thinking of doing? I would have thought it a little premature to be involving the Gardaí at this stage.’

‘It’s what Angela thinks I should do. But I’m inclined to agree with you. There are still loads of papers in the house, all jumbled up. For someone so neat and elegant, she left things in an awful mess.’

Richard laughs. ‘Oh, yes, that was very typical of her. When she lived here, her room veered between calm and chaos, but she never walked out of the house without looking absolutely perfect.’

He looks at his watch and insists I stay for supper and spend the night in Dalkey. ‘We can get to know each other a bit more,’ he says. ‘But I think we have time for a walk before we think about food. It will do us both good.’

As we walk companionably down to the harbour, I find myself telling him more than I had intended. I tell him about Sandy, about his leaving me and coming back, and about his second betrayal.

He doesn’t say anything, just listens. And then, after a long silence, he tells me he has never been entirely sure whether infidelity matters a great deal, if at all, in the longer term.

‘We all betray each other, in so many ways,’ he says. ‘It’s just a question of degree. And as time passes, we begin to wonder why we have wasted so much of it on something that will inevitably lose its importance. That’s the way I see it, at least.’

‘Are you suggesting that what Sandy has done won’t matter to me at some point? It wasn’t just a one-off thing. When he first left, last year, he told me we both needed a break from each other, but all the time he was having an affair. And he was still having the affair when he came back. And now she’s pregnant, and she was the one who told me – he didn’t have the guts. Maybe he thought he could have the two of us.’

‘But you don’t know what he thought because you wouldn’t listen to him when he tried to talk to you. You don’t even know that the baby is real.’

‘Oh, it’s real, all right. Why wouldn’t it be? You wouldn’t make something like that up. And I didn’t need to hear what he had to say. I didn’t want to hear more lies. Anyway, whose side are you on? You haven’t even met Sandy, but you seem to be taking his part.’

‘I’m not trying to make excuses for him, Louise. But are you really ready to walk away from your marriage? How will you feel about it in, say, ten years’ time? Will you regret not giving it another chance? And if you do take Sandy back, isn’t it possible that ten years, even five years down the line, the pain of this will just be a memory?’

As I think about this, Richard starts speaking again.

‘I’m going to tell you something, something that will shock you.’

We’re still walking, but now Richard slows down the pace, though he avoids looking at me.