Moving On

Frances

Frances

‘IT’S MARIA,’ SAID THE VOICE.

Maria. Did Ellen know a Maria?

‘I’m renting with Miss O’Shaughnessy in Galway.’

Miss O’Shaughnessy. It took a second to realise that she was talking about Frances. Ellen felt a sudden swoop of fear. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘I didn’t know who else to call. Your name and number were by the phone.’

‘She’s my aunt. What’s happened? Is she OK?’

‘She – I’m sorry, she had a – I heard a noise, in her room, I was downstairs, and I heard – and I found her on the floor. She must have fallen, getting out of bed—’

Ellen wanted to scream with impatience. ‘Is she OK? Where is she?’

‘I called an ambulance, I couldn’t lift her, they took her to the hospital. They said – they said it looked like a stroke.’

Ellen closed her eyes. ‘Which hospital?’

‘I’ll drive you,’ her father said when she told him. ‘I’ll run next door and get Jesse to bring the girls home from school.’ Jesse was one of the bakers, with a daughter in Grace’s class. ‘She’ll hang on to them till we get back’ – but Ellen was throwing things into a bag.

‘I’ll get the train. I’ll stay the night, and maybe longer. It’s better if you’re here – Grace could kick up with Jesse. You can drop me to the station.’

On the train she told herself there was nothing to worry about. People had strokes every day; they were commonplace. If they were caught on time, people got over them. Life went on. Frances had years ahead of her, at least ten. People lived well into their nineties now if they were healthy – and Frances had hardly ever been sick. You couldn’t count arthritis; that wasn’t life-threatening in the least. She’d be fine. She’d be sitting up in bed when Ellen arrived, complaining that everyone was making far too much fuss.

The train pulled into Galway in the middle of the rush hour. It was the first week in January, and a sleety rain was falling as Ellen searched for a taxi. She’d forgotten her gloves; her hands were quickly frozen.

The journey to the hospital took an eternity, her taxi crawling through the streets as she sat hunched over her bag, the knot in her stomach tightening with every minute that passed, wanting to scream at the driver to go faster, even though she knew he couldn’t.

When the bulk of the hospital came into view she couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘This will do,’ she told the driver. ‘I’ll get out here.’ She paid him and ran, bag thumping against her, dodging people, splashing through puddles, the rows of lighted windows beckoning her on. I’m coming , she told Frances. I’m nearly there.

She was too late.

‘A massive stroke,’ a doctor told her. ‘There was never a hope of recovery. She slipped away quietly about an hour ago. She wouldn’t have known anything. I’m very sorry. I can take you to her.’

She sat by the bed, too numb to cry. Someone had placed a wooden crucifix on the sheet over Frances’ chest. Ellen pressed the hand that was still warm. She bent to kiss the pale forehead and whisper her goodbye, and her thanks.

She rang the house and passed the news on to Maria. ‘I’m on the way,’ she said, ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’ She couldn’t leave the girl on her own in the house that night.

Maria was tall and thin, a heavy fringe of chestnut hair stopping just short of large grey eyes that were now rimmed with red. ‘You’re welcome to stay for the rest of the academic year if you want to,’ Ellen told her. ‘The house will only lie empty otherwise.’

‘Would it be OK if a friend moved in?’ she asked in a tremulous voice. ‘I’d be nervous on my own.’

‘Yes, of course, if they don’t mind using the little bedroom.’ Better to have the place occupied – and Frances’ will wouldn’t be read until the summer, if then.

She knew her aunt had made a will, because it was one of the things she’d advised Ellen to do. Always best to have one made , she’d said. You can change it as often as you want, but if you die with no will, you’ll have no control over who gets what – and it could cause all sorts of rows and delays.

She spent the night in Frances’ room, surrounded by all her aunt’s things, remembering the happy times they’d shared, the cooking, the gardening, the crosswords. When she was leaving in the morning she locked the bedroom door and pocketed the key. She would return after Maria had left, and do whatever needed to be done then.

Frances was buried four days later, on a bitterly cold morning. Ellen’s father drove them from Dublin, leaving the girls in the care of Iris, who’d come home specially. Seamus appeared too, in place of Joan who’d stayed in Cork with their latest child Gary, just two weeks old.

Frances’ brothers flew in from Australia, uncles Ellen hadn’t seen since her mother’s funeral. They told her that Frances had always been full of praise for her in her letters. ‘She called you the daughter she never had,’ one of them said – Ellen kept forgetting which was Patrick and which Peter.

She wept her way through the mass, her arm tucked into her father’s. She stood shivering by the open grave in the cemetery where her grandparents were buried, and watched as Frances was lowered in to join them.

On her return to Dublin a letter waited for her in Leo’s handwriting. She opened it and read that his mother, Marguerite, had died peacefully in a French hospital. Another death. She wrote him a formal reply, expressing condolence, and wrote a second longer letter of sympathy to Henri and Louis. The girls and I would love to see you in Ireland , she wrote, if you ever feel like visiting . She gave them her phone number and said to ring anytime. She wondered if they would, or if they’d fade away, never to be seen again by her.

In March she called into the local library and found a list of Irish-based literary agents. Not that many, so she emailed each one and asked if they’d care to read part or all of the novel she’d written.

In April she got two polite refusals, each citing too many clients to consider taking on another.

In May, a third refusal.

At the end of the month Maria rang from Galway to say she’d be moving out of Frances’ house after her summer exams. On the appointed day Ellen took the train to Galway to say goodbye and to reclaim the keys, and she stayed two nights after Maria’s departure, putting the house in order for whoever would take possession of it.

It was horribly empty without Frances in it. She stripped beds and washed linens and towels. She swept and mopped floors. She polished mirrors and cleaned windows. In Frances’ room she perched on the edge of the bed, lonely and sad. The drawer of the bedside locker was half-open – she went to push it closed and saw a photograph, sepia with age, lying inside. She took it out.

A young man was dressed all in white, trousers, shirt, apron, his clothing in stark contrast to the darkness of his skin, even with the faded colouring of the photograph. His hair was cut close to his scalp. His smile was wide.

She recalled Frances speaking of a man who’d worked in the hotel kitchen with her for a few years. He’d had a bibilical name – Abraham? Jacob? – and an Irish missionary mother and an African father. A heart of gold , Frances had said, or words to that effect. Was this him? Ellen thought it might be.

And years later, on the night of Joan’s wedding, she and Frances had sat at the kitchen table, and she’d asked Frances if she’d ever met anyone, and the answer coming, truthful as ever: she had, but it wasn’t to be. Too much went against it, she’d said, something like that, and Ellen remembered wondering what that meant, and thought she understood it now.

Too much went against a white woman and an African-Irish man in the Ireland of fifty years ago. Too much went against love between people of different skin colours in the Ireland that had yet to realise that love knew no boundaries.

But she’d kept his photograph. All her life she’d kept him close to her.

Ellen sat on as a soft drizzle fell outside, and she thought about how much she’d miss Frances. She remembered her arrival there, finding her aunt on her knees by the rockery, digging out the weeds. She smiled as she remembered how sharply Frances had spoken that first day, how taken aback Ellen had been to be attacked, it had felt like, when she’d done nothing wrong.

A shaky start – but what a firm foundation they’d eventually dug.