Moving On

Rage

Rage

‘YOU TRAVEL LIGHT,’ HE SAID.

‘Easier to pack,’ she replied, frowning at the books she’d just placed on his shelves: did they look frivolous next to his, with their more colourful covers? Upstairs, she folded her sweaters into drawers he’d cleared for her, and her underwear (mostly new) into another.

She hung the rest of her clothing in the big old wardrobe, next to his suits. Her shoes and boots she tucked into the gap between the bottom of the wardrobe and the floor.

‘You sure you don’t want to swap?’ His were lined up neatly on a separate unit behind the door.

‘No, they’re fine there.’ Who cared where she kept her shoes? In the bathroom she stuck her toothbrush into his mug, her shampoo and conditioner and soap on the shelf in the shower cubicle. She’d been wondering if his cast-iron bath was big enough for both of them; she would find out, first chance she got.

In his kitchen – rarely used by him – she tucked her folder of recipes in Frances’ scrawled handwriting beneath a bundle of linen napkins in a drawer of his dresser. She loved his house, mainly because it was his, full of things he had chosen – and now she lived there too, and she wanted to dance with happiness. She would miss the fun of sharing with Claire, but this move felt so right.

Claire was also quitting the flat. She’d found the new business premises she was looking for, and would give up her lease on the sandwich bar at the end of the year. ‘A deli,’ she told Ellen, ‘with a seating area.’ It came complete with an upstairs apartment, which she was planning to move into, and which she was already calling her boudoir. Yes, she’d always been destined to have a boudoir.

The morning after she moved in with Leo, Ellen discovered that she could walk to work in just ten minutes. She gave her new address to Bella in reception, and broke the news to Lucinda that she would be looking for maternity leave in a few months.

‘Oh – wonderful!’ Lucinda exclaimed. ‘You’re entitled to sixteen weeks, and don’t you dare do anything foolish like decide to become a stay-at-home mum!’

‘Not a chance,’ Ellen said. ‘I love my job too much.’ She did.

‘You’ll be godmother,’ Ellen told Claire. ‘You’ll need to remember the birthdays – and don’t pass on any bad habits.’ A link with her child would keep them together, prevent them from drifting apart as their lives took different turns.

‘No bad habits? Where’s the fun in that?’ The adventurous spirit was still there, underneath the businesswoman she was becoming.

Leo broke the news to his mother on the phone. ‘She says congratulations,’ he reported to Ellen. ‘She’s looking forward to becoming a grand-mère .’

‘Really? She said that?’

‘Well, not in so many words, but that was the gist.’

It wasn’t the truth. He couldn’t lie to save his life. Ellen was glad he’d spared her a face-to-face encounter with Marguerite, so she hadn’t had to witness his mother’s reaction. What did it matter to her? The woman lived in another country: in two years they’d met exactly once. Ellen could tolerate that much contact.

She told him she’d go to Ireland to break the news in person.

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘It might be best if I went alone,’ she replied. ‘I’m not sure how Mam will take it.’ But she was all too sure how it would go, and she was right.

‘I don’t believe it,’ her mother said. ‘I don’t believe you’re doing this to me too.’

‘Mam, it’s not—’

‘Bad enough to have one daughter making a show of me – I’ll be the laughing stock of the town when this gets out.’

‘I hardly think—’

‘At least Joan had the grace to get married.’

‘Mam, it’s 1987. Nobody cares about that any more.’

A mistake. Her mother’s eyes glittered with anger. ‘Nobody cares, she says – easily known you’re living in London, where people do what they like. I’ll have you know people still care about that sort of thing here, lady. You won’t be around to see the sniggers, to hear everyone talking about poor Patricia Sheehan, whose husband walked out, and now—’

Ellen couldn’t listen to any more. Without thinking, she retorted: ‘All you care about is what people think of you – you don’t give a damn about your own children! No wonder Dad left – I just wish he’d taken me with him!’

Her mother glared at her, white-faced. For a minute, neither spoke. Already regretting her outburst, Ellen searched for something, anything, to defuse the situation – but before she could find it, her mother wheeled abruptly and left the room.

Ellen slumped into a chair, listening to footsteps marching up the stairs. What now? Her back hurt, her legs ached. She regretted the burger she’d eaten in Heathrow that sat like a stone in her stomach.

In less than a minute her mother reappeared, holding a biscuit tin that she thumped onto the table. ‘You might as well have this,’ she said coldly, folding her arms.

The tin had a picture of a fox on it. ‘What’s in it?’

‘Open it.’

Ellen prised off the lid and found a tumble of envelopes. She lifted one out – and with a shock of recognition she saw her father’s handwriting, and her and Joan’s names, and the address of the house he’d left. This house.

She pushed the rest of the envelopes about, and saw that they were all the same. All stamped, all unopened. All addressed to her and Joan.

She looked up. ‘He wrote to us?’

No response. Her mother’s mouth was a grim line.

‘He wrote to us?’ Ellen repeated, trying hard to contain the anger that bubbled up again. ‘He wrote to me and Joan, and you kept them from us?’

‘He left me!’ her mother shouted suddenly, her face blotching. ‘He walked away and left me with two daughters to raise – what did you expect me to do? That’s nice thanks for trying to protect you!’

‘You weren’t protecting us, you were punishing us,’ Ellen said sharply. ‘You punished Joan and me because you couldn’t punish him. You took it out on us.’

‘What are you talking about? I was keeping you safe! I was making sure he couldn’t hurt you any more! How can you not see that?’

Ellen looked down again at the letters. Was that really what she thought she’d been doing, protecting them? Could she seriously have seen nothing wrong with this? She knew, she must have known, that Ellen and Joan had craved a word from him. How could this have felt OK to her?

‘I went out to work!’ her mother insisted. ‘Don’t you remember? I got a job. I paid for everything with no help from him! He sent me cheques, not even the manners of a note in with them – I took great pleasure in tearing them up!’

Ellen regarded her in bewilderment, her anger seeping away in the face of this baffling new information. Cheques. She’d torn up his cheques. They’d scrimped and saved after he’d left, Ellen and Joan taking Saturday jobs to make pocket money, and still their mother had torn up his cheques.

She’d heard enough. She stowed the tin in her rucksack and pulled on her jacket. She left the room without another word as her mother said her name sharply. She closed the front door with a slam, and nobody followed her.

She walked the half mile or so to Joan and Seamus’ house, praying she wouldn’t meet anyone she knew. It had begun to rain; she felt the sting of it on her face as she put up her hood. It was almost December.

She reached the house. She rang the bell and Seamus answered. He took one look at her and stepped back to let her in.

Their father had written every few months. In the letters he hoped they were well. He said he missed them, and they were in his thoughts every day. He told them he was working in a school in Dublin, and gave his address. He said he’d love to hear from them, if they felt like writing back.

He sent separate birthday cards, into which he’d slipped money. Ten pounds until each of them had turned eighteen, twenty pounds after that. They piled up the notes as they opened the cards.

His last letter was dated April 1985, well over two years ago. He must have stopped writing because they’d never written back. He’d kept writing to them for years, hoping one of them at least would respond, but he’d finally given up.

Or died.

The thought was accompanied by a twist of pain, a violent lurch in Ellen’s gut that caused her to draw in her breath with a hiss. Let him not be dead. Whatever hurt he’d caused, let him be alive.

‘This explains the post box,’ Joan said, and only then Ellen remembered her mother having one put up at the gate. Was it after he’d left? It must have been. So she could check the post before her daughters saw it. So she could intercept any letters he might write.

Joan regarded the envelopes, scattered across the kitchen table. Seamus was upstairs, putting Ivan to bed. ‘At least she kept them. At least she didn’t throw them out. I wonder was she ever planning to show them to us?’

‘Joan, how could she have kept them from us? How could she have been so cruel?’

Joan lifted a shoulder. She was taking it so calmly. ‘She must have thought she was doing the right thing. She was doing her best by us.’

The same thing Frances had said. Were they right? Was Ellen judging her too harshly? She couldn’t think straight.

‘I can’t go back to her, Joan. Can I stay here tonight? I’m going to Galway tomorrow.’

‘Of course you can. Will you see her again before you go back to London?’

‘Why? What’s the point? We’ve never got on – not the way you get on with her.’

‘Ellen, she gets on with you as well as she gets on with anyone. She’s not the easiest to live with, but it suited me to stay with her for as long as I did. And she’s actually great with Ivan – better than she was with us, to be honest.’

‘I just can’t get past the fact that she drove Dad away.’

‘I don’t know,’ Joan said. ‘It takes two to tango – maybe the blame wasn’t all on her side. I mean, he could have told us he was leaving. He could at least have done that. She’s not a happy person, Ellen. I wonder if she and Dad were ever happy.’

‘How do you feel about him now?’ Ellen asked. ‘Now that we’ve got the letters, I mean.’

Her sister gave another shrug. ‘I honestly don’t know, Ellen. It’s good that he wrote to us, but I still hate the way he left, with no explanation – and he’s still not told us why. I can’t be sure what I’d say or do if he showed up.’

‘We could make contact,’ Ellen said. ‘We have his address now.’

‘No,’ Joan said quickly. ‘I don’t think I want to do that. He should be the one to come and find us.’

Ellen imagined tracking him down, locating his house. She pictured herself ringing the doorbell and waiting for someone to appear, and she shrank from the prospect. What if that someone was a stranger who had to break the news to her that the previous owner had died? She didn’t know if that would be easier or harder than coming face to face with him again.

She wasn’t brave enough. Maybe some day, but not now.

‘Will you tell Mam I showed you these?’

‘I will. I’d rather be straight with her. I’m sure she’ll guess you did anyway. At least they’re out in the open now.’

Seamus reappeared and looked through the letters, shaking his head. ‘It’s sad,’ he said. ‘It’s a sad state of affairs. Would you like a glass of wine, Ellen?’

She suddenly remembered why she was in Ireland. ‘Actually, I have news,’ she said, relieved to be able to turn the conversation in a different direction. On hearing of the pregnancy Joan hugged her, Seamus put the kettle on, and the evening ended on a more positive note.

‘Congratulations,’ Frances said the following day. ‘I’m guessing you’re both happy about it?’

‘We are. Leo wasn’t sure at the start, but he’s accepted it now. I’ve moved in with him.’ Ellen hesitated. ‘Frances, we’re not getting married – at least, we have no plans right now.’

‘I see.’ Her face gave nothing away, but there was none of her mother’s anger. ‘And you’re alright with that?’

‘I’d prefer to get married,’ Ellen admitted, ‘but if he doesn’t want to, I can’t do anything about it. We’ll still be a family.’

‘That won’t have gone down well with your mother.’

‘No, it didn’t – and there’s more.’ She told her about the letters from her father.

Frances tutted. ‘It was very wrong of her to keep them from you, but it doesn’t surprise me. She’s unhappy, Ellen. I’m not excusing her, I’m just saying.’

Ellen let a beat pass. ‘You wanted to talk about her once. You started to tell me what she was like when she was growing up, and I stopped you. Will you tell me more now?’

She wanted to understand her, to hear something, anything, that might explain her mother’s cruel concealment of their father’s letters. She was so tired of the anger and the bitterness that were still colouring every interaction with her mother. She wanted, she needed, to let them go, and find some kind of peace between them.

Frances folded her hands and was silent for a bit. Eventually she spoke, words emerging slowly and deliberately. ‘It’s my belief that your mother’s mental state was always . . . fragile. I don’t know what name they’d put on it today; depression, I suppose. When we were young, nobody talked about that kind of thing. People were moody, or they weren’t. Anyway, for whatever reason, she could be difficult to live with. I think I touched on that before.’ She looked enquiringly at Ellen.

‘You did.’

‘It wasn’t her fault: I don’t think the poor thing had any control over it. Medication helps now, of course, but she was never prescribed anything, never even brought to a doctor. It just wouldn’t have occurred to our parents.’

She stopped again. ‘Ellen,’ she said earnestly, ‘there’s no badness in her. There never was. Keeping the letters from you was wrong, but I’d bet anything she thought she was doing the right thing. And remember, there were two of them in that marriage, and we just don’t know what happened to cause your father to leave, so I don’t think it’s fair to assign blame.’

She pulled at the red strip to open a packet of custard creams. It was sad she’d stopped baking her crumbly buttery shortbread, and her ginger biscuits with their pleasing snap. ‘I’m guessing,’ she said, ‘that Kevin won’t last. I know they’re not living together, but I suspect he’ll get tired of trying to keep her happy.’

‘I should make my peace with her,’ Ellen said.

‘You should. Be the bigger one, Ellen. Be kind to her. At the end of the day, she’s still your mother, and she’s the one who stayed around.’

So that night Ellen wrote a letter, using Frances’ writing pad:

Dear Mam,

I’m sorry we fought. I stayed with Joan and Seamus, but you probably know that by now. I was angry that you’d kept the letters from us, but I should have talked it through with you instead of walking out.

I know things have been strained between us since Dad left, and that’s my fault. I feel now I was being unfair to you, and I’ll try to make amends.

I hope you’ll accept your grandchild when he or she is born. My due date is May sixteenth.

I’m not sure if I’ll be home between this and then, but I’ll keep in touch.

love Ellen x

And then she wrote another letter.

Dear Danny,

Big news! I’m pregnant, due in May, and I couldn’t be happier, and Leo and I are both looking forward to becoming parents. I’ve moved into his house, which is lovely, even if it has far too many stairs – and the more pregnant I get, the harder the climb will be! It’s a townhouse, narrow and tall, just a couple of rooms on each level. We’re turning a bedroom on the first floor into the nursery, so it’ll be right next to ours, and there are two rooms on the top floor that can serve as bedrooms when we have company.

Work continues to be wonderful.

Hope everything’s OK with you and Bobbi. Write when you get the chance.

E xx

She made no mention of her father’s letters. He didn’t need to know precisely how messed up her family was.