Chapter 36
36
‘Growing up, my mam and dad, your uncle Tiernan and I would pile in the Hillman Hunter – orange it was; my dad’s pride and joy – and drive down to see Mam’s folks on the coast on the first Sunday of the month.’ Nora’s eyes misted as she drifted back to her childhood. ‘Tiernan and I looked forward to it because we’d always stop at a tea room near Salthill and pick up six cream horns for afternoon tea. Oh, but they were gorgeous. And the cream would squish out the bottom when you bit into them.’
Hannah pictured her mam as a little girl enjoying her treat.
‘It was like stepping back in time visiting our grandparents. They lived a simple life in a limewashed cottage overlooking the estuary. My mam’s father was a fisherman like his father before him. It was always dim inside their cottage but welcoming, with the peat fire smouldering away. The hearth was deep, and the fire burning away in it was the soul of that cottage. Gran cooked over it; she dried their clothes above it, too, and we’d gather around it when we visited. She was a house-proud woman even though they had no mod cons. Not even a telephone. And they didn’t get electricity until the early seventies. Can you imagine?’
No, Hannah couldn’t. As a child, she’d thought the world had ended any time a power cut meant she missed the end of the television programme she’d been watching. They were made of hardy stuff, those of past generations. She’d swallowed down what she suspected where Judy Carter was concerned. Her mam had had enough of a shock and needed to talk. It would keep.
‘My grandmother reminded me of a bird. She was such a tiny woman who flitted about fussing over us, never settling in her seat for long. As for Granddad, Tiernan and I called him daideo.’ Nora pronounced it dadj-yoh .
‘Irish for grandfather,’ Kitty supplied for Judy’s benefit.
‘Mm.’ Nora tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘They always seemed old to me. That way anyone over thirty seems ancient when you’re small, and the last time I saw Daideo, I was eight. But they weren’t old, not at all. Sure, Daideo was younger than I am now when he was declared missing at sea. He was only fifty-four, and I don’t think he was a man who was happy with his lot. From what I could glean, his brother had sailed to America when he was still a teenager, and I think he’d regretted not going with him when he had the chance. He’d met our gran by then, though, and they were to be married. She was never interested in emigrating. Ireland was her home, and she was fond of saying she’d not be leaving its shores no matter if the streets in America were paved with gold! Or so Daideo would have us all believe. He could be quite poetic when he wanted to be.
‘I’ve never forgotten the book he had. It was filled with photographs of America, and Tiernan and I were allowed to look through it after we’d finished our tea, but we had to wash and dry our hands first. We’d lie on our stomachs on the rug by the fire in awe of the national parks and city skylines we’d never seen the likes of in our village of Ballyclegg. Those afternoons spent poring over that book planted the seed for Tiernan to emigrate as soon as he was old enough.’
Nora went quiet, and Hannah hoped she wouldn’t clam up and dismiss her memories because Nora Kelly was apt to say, ‘Sure, it’s been and gone. What’s there to know?’ if the topic of her childhood was ever raised. It wasn’t her way to harp on about the past, but all three of them seated at the table wanted to hear her side of the story.
‘The day he vanished, there was a storm. It was early evening when word came that Daideo had been out at sea when it hit, and his boat hadn’t returned. We had to wait until the morning to drive to the cottage.’
Liam squeezed his wife’s shoulder, but she didn’t appear to notice, lost in time as she was.
‘We huddled down at the harbour with Gran, waiting for news. The sea was still churning, and I remember being frightened of the waves because I’d never seen them crashing in like so. There was this sense of foreboding, too. I think we all felt it.’ Nora shuddered. ‘I’ve thought about that over the years, and I think it was knowing things would never be the same again. And they weren’t.’ Her voice broke.
‘Oh, Mam.’ Hannah’s throat was tight.
‘It’s all a long time ago now, Hannah, but Gran stopped flitting about after that. She’d sit in her chair, staring into that peat fire as though it held the answers as to why, as an experienced fisherman, he’d taken the boat out, aware of the weather bomb that was coming. It didn’t make sense. She couldn’t grieve. Gran was in limbo, and the whispered word going about was William Kedder had wanted to take his own life.’ Nora hesitated. ‘But then there was a sighting of him in Dublin.’
Hannah was struggling to comprehend what she was hearing. It was like listening to an audiobook, only it wasn’t fiction.
‘A local family was returning from visiting family in England, and they swore they saw Daideo in the melee at Dún Laoghaire, but he’d disappeared into the crowd before they could approach him. I always chose to believe he died because I couldn’t equate the grandfather I’d known with a man who’d leave his wife, daughter and grandchildren behind.’
For once in her life, Hannah was lost for words.
‘But you suspected?’ Judy asked gently.
‘There was always a longing in his voice when he’d read us the letters his brother sent him. And then there was the book Tiernan and I used to pore over. I found the America book – or what was left of it – after Gran died and I was helping to clear the cottage. All the pages had been ripped out. I put it in the rubbish bag before Mam could see because the thought of Gran sitting in her chair by the fire tearing them out in anger and burning them was so sad. My mam changed too. There was a hardness to her that wasn’t there before.’
‘When I found out what my father had done, I struggled to reconcile the dad I knew with a man that could do what he did.’ Judy spoke so quietly they had to strain to hear her.
Kitty spoke up. ‘Perhaps he had a breakdown. You’ve both said he wasn’t a bad man.’
‘No, he wasn’t. But he was a coward, and that’s hard to come to terms with,’ Judy replied.
Hannah watched as a solitary tear tracked down Judy’s cheek. Nora’s hand reached across the table toward this woman whose life was connected to hers.
‘They were his mistakes,’ Nora said as Judy clasped her hand. ‘Not ours.’
It was only then Hannah realised she was crying, too.