The Lost Bookshop

Chapter 47

Chapter Forty-Seven

MARTHA

‘Y ou came!’ I rushed into her arms. My mother never left her house, not even to go to the shops, so I never expected to see her on the doorstep of Ha'penny Lane. ‘How did you? What happened?’ I had so many questions.

‘I found my voice.’ The words came out slow but strong.

‘Happy tears,’ I said, as she wiped them away with her fingertips.

‘I should have spoken up a long time ago, Martha. My precious girl.’

‘I’m okay, Mom, really.’

‘I know you are. You are such a capable young woman. I’m so very proud of you. I wanted to come here and tell you that, even if it’s a little late in the day.’

‘It’s never too late,’ came Madame Bowden’s voice from behind me. She had a knack for just appearing in the middle of other people’s conversations. ‘Won’t you come inside?’

It felt like a novelty having tea with my mother in the back kitchen of this grand old house. Madame Bowden suggested it as it was roomier than my flat and left us to it, thankfully. I thought she would poke her nose in, but she did have some sense of tact when it suited her. I talked cheerfully about my course in Trinity, the friends I’d made, my new-found interest in literature.

‘You’ve made a lovely life for yourself here,’ she said, placing her hand on mine.

‘I’m happy, Mom. Even living here with Madame Bowden – it’s not what I would have envisioned for myself as a young woman, but it kind of works. I think we’re good for each other.’

‘She sounds like a guardian angel.’

I wasn’t sure if that’s how I’d describe her. I poured some more tea from the pot. All my years at home, my father and my brothers took up all of the oxygen, but here, it was like we could finally breathe deeply. It’s only in something’s absence that you realise how much space it takes up.

‘There’s something I want to tell you, Martha.’

‘You’re leaving Dad?’

She gave me a double take.

‘I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it, but no. Your father is … well, he’s not perfect. But he’s dependable, and even though sometimes I wish I could change so many things about him, he has given me a home where I feel safe.’

I had never heard her speak about my father that way. Despite the fact that I still had a different opinion, I understood and respected hers.

‘What is it then?’

‘It’s not something serious … what I mean is, it won’t change anything, for you at least. But it might help you to understand the past. My past.’

She turned the teacup on the saucer, slowly choosing her words. It was strange for both of us to hear her voice like this, when we’d always communicated in silence.

‘After Shane, I began to realise that the past isn’t something we leave behind. It is living with us, every day. It isn’t simply DNA that we inherit. I think there are other things passed down through the generations. Memories, perhaps.’

She was speaking from a place of deep pain, I could see that. I moved my chair closer to hers. The atmosphere in the kitchen took on an air of intense stillness, as though it too was waiting for her story.

‘My mother was adopted as a baby.’

Of all of the things she could have said, I never would have anticipated that. Our family history was something I had seen as set in stone. How could I have been missing such a huge chunk of information?

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘I suppose I didn’t think it affected you … and besides, mothers want to protect their daughters. My mother protected me, as much as she could, but my grandparents were not kind people. How they were ever allowed to adopt is something I’ll never understand. You know that your grandmother died from pneumonia when I was three years old?’

I nodded.

‘That’s the story we told everyone. The truth is that she set off to Dublin to find her mother. I don’t know all of the details; my father only told me from his hospital bed before he died. It was the sixties and she told him that having her own daughter made her desperate to find her real mother. I don’t know why she thought she’d find her in Dublin, but either way, she never did find her. There was an accident and she slipped from the platform. The train hit her.’

‘Jesus Christ, Mom, I’m so sorry.’

She kept her head down, as though she just wanted to get the story out.

‘Well, my grandparents, the Clohessys, raised me after that. Reluctantly. My father had a job and men weren’t expected to stay home back then. So they took me in and spent every day reminding me of their sacrifice. That was when I lost my voice.’

I grabbed her hand.

‘It doesn’t change anything, but it changes everything, doesn’t it?’ she asked.

I nodded, wiping her tears this time.

‘Did you ever try to find them? Her biological parents?’

‘No, but I thought about it. Many times. My grandparents wouldn’t talk about it. They did not say it outright, but I got the impression that the adoption might not have been very official.’

‘We could try now?’

She shook her head.

‘It’s too late. But I wanted you to know because it’s your story, as well as mine.’

We sat there for hours talking, drinking more pots of tea and raiding the biscuit tin. It was only when it grew dark that I realised I should have been getting dinner ready.

‘Will you stay?’ I asked.

‘No, I’d best be off now so I can catch the last train.’

As she put on her coat and we walked out to the hallway, she turned to look at me again.

‘I should have told you every day what a wonderful young woman you were. I sometimes feel like I wasn’t fully present, you know? Just going through the motions. That’s what happens when you keep a part of yourself hidden. Anyway, I wanted you to tell you now so you’d know, you were always enough, Martha. It’s just the people around you were too wrapped up in their own pain to see it.’

We hugged tightly, right by the bannister where Shane had fallen. I began to cry. I didn’t just cry, I sobbed in her arms. She held me and shushed away the bad memories, rocking me from side to side. The wooden staircase creaked like the bough of a tree beside us and I could hear a soft rustling.

‘It sounds like this old house is trying to tell us something,’ she said in a playful voice, as though she were telling a fairy tale to a child.

‘It does, doesn’t it?’ I smiled, wiping my eyes with my sleeves. ‘I think that too sometimes. Maybe next time you can stay for longer?’

‘I’d like that,’ she said, then turned to step down on to the pavement. She turned and waved again and called up to me. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting Madame Bowden too!’

I waved and then registered the strangeness of what she had just said. She had already met Madame Bowden.