Chapter 48
Constance
‘Will you sit with me for a while, I need to talk to you,’ she asked Heather when she arrived into the room with a fresh glass of water and news that Jake had delivered a copy of her will earlier; it was propped up on the table next to her bed.
Constance had smiled at the news and sighed: it was another thing done.
‘There’s something I need to tell you. It’s something that we’ve kept a secret for nearly seventy years.’
‘We?’ Heather looked at her now, smiling, perhaps unsure what to expect next.
‘Your mother and I… you know, we had a very special bond?’
‘I know, when I was little I was rather jealous. She seemed to love you so much more than me but then when we came here, I could see why and sometimes…’ she traced her finger along the back of Constance’s hand, ‘sometimes, I wished you were my mother instead. Isn’t that a terrible thing to say?
’ It had been a harmless childhood thought; there was no malice in it.
‘Dotty found it hard to show her feelings for anyone, Heather, that’s the truth of it and there was a good reason for it.’
‘Oh?’ Heather said. She was humouring Constance, because Heather had always believed her mother was an alcoholic, pure and simple, and maybe she’d never wondered what it was that all the drinking was trying to cover over.
‘It’s a long story and I hope I have the energy to get to the end of it…’ Constance took a deep breath. She was so tired, so very tired.
‘Please, don’t wear yourself out, not for me, keep your energy, just rest for now…’
‘I need to tell you this.’ Constance tried her best to smile, but it was hardly a flicker on her lips. ‘Heather, your grandfather was a bad man. A very bad man, do you know what I mean?’
‘I… I suppose so, my mother never mentioned him, so I never really knew about him.’
‘He did things to her or at least he tried to do things, terrible things. Things that we never knew grown-ups would want to do with children. I don’t know how long it went on for, but I know it went on for a while, until one day he came after her, blind with rage, and I was there…’
‘Oh my God, my mother, that’s why she was always… I never knew, I never even thought it could be something like… Oh, you poor things.’
‘No, no, I was okay, I mean, I wasn’t… At the time, I was beside myself, I didn’t know what to do, but… you see, I thought he would do something terrible to her.’ Constance closed her eyes; she could see it as clearly as if it had happened just hours ago.
‘Don’t upset yourself, not with something that happened so long ago, you really don’t have to.’
‘But I do, I want you to see…’ She hadn’t the energy to add that she wanted Heather to see that Dotty might have loved her, if she’d ever had the chance to love herself properly first.
‘Well, at least have some water.’ Heather held the glass to her lips, but Constance could hardly taste it.
‘He came after us. He came after me, in the garden. He was going to…’ She shuddered, even now to think of it made her feel sick.
‘I don’t know what he’d have done, but Dotty knew and she tried to save me.
We tried to save each other.’ She closed her eyes to gather all her strength.
‘There was one terrible moment. That was all it took and that changed everything.’ She shivered, remembering Mr Wren in her mind’s eye, his expression – complete and utter disbelief.
‘He fell into the well, at the end of a garden that no-one ever really went near.’
‘Accidents happen, Constance. Don’t upset yourself now, it’s a long time ago.’ But in spite of her words, Heather’s expression had changed. She knew this was serious.
‘He didn’t fall exactly, there was a skirmish, he would have… I don’t know, it felt as if it was either him or us and…’
‘Ah Constance, stop it, you were only kids. You can’t blame yourself if you were trying to…’
‘Listen to me, Heather.’ She tried to catch her breath, but it was wispy now, as if it floated just ahead of her and the effect made her light-headed.
‘We didn’t run for help. Afterwards.’ With her words, it felt as if a silence so heavy fell on the room that it blocked out the whole world from them.
‘We covered over where he went in.’ She closed her eyes, remembering it all so clearly now.
‘We threw his bag in after him, I mean, we really set out to make him disappear, Heather, we didn’t want to save him. ’
‘Constance, listen to me, you were children , children in a terrible situation, no-one can judge you for that.’
‘You don’t just forget something like this. Heather, your mother saved me that day, but it changed her. Inside, I mean, you couldn’t see any difference, not on the outside, but it does something to you. It did something to your mother. She spent her whole life wanting to run away…’
‘Away? But she did run away, didn’t she?’
‘She wanted to run away from life, to escape the memory of it, Heather. She wanted to run away from the truth of what we did; maybe more than that she wanted to run away from the truth of what he had done to her before that.’
‘Oh.’ Heather let out a huge breath and, with it, she became in an instant a smaller version of herself, right before Constance’s eyes. A tear raced down her cheek.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘No, no, don’t be sorry. I get it now, the drinking, the distance, the whole bloody thing…’ Heather was crying now, crying as if her heart might break, crying far more than she had after they buried Dot. ‘Thank you, Constance, for telling me, you didn’t have to…’
‘I did.’ Constance was crying too. ‘I felt she wanted you to know, for so long, and then last night, she was here, Heather, and she’s so happy, but she needs you to forgive her, you know, just to understand what it was like, why she…
’ That final time, their final argument, she had tried to convince Dotty to get help, to stop drinking, to wake up to what she had in life, but it had ended up with falling out so badly there had been no going back.
Constance closed her eyes, it was emptying her out, just remembering that final time.
‘Rest, Constance, you can rest now. I know, you don’t have to worry now, all we have to do is get you strong again and then…’ But maybe Heather already knew what Constance had known for almost two days.
‘There’s something else I need to tell you,’ Constance said and she smiled, because probably it seemed as if things couldn’t get much worse.
‘We were very young, we thought that we might be sent away or worse for what we’d done.
We were so scared, when they thought of looking in the well… ’ She sighed.
‘Oh, Constance, don’t; it doesn’t matter now.’
‘It really does.’ Constance looked at her, tried to squeeze her hand but she hadn’t the strength to pull her fingers closer. ‘I offered to go down and check if he was there. They trusted me, lowered me into the well…’
‘The same well that my mother rescued you from?’ Heather shook her head, fresh tears filled her eyes. ‘Oh, Constance, you were such a brave little thing.’
‘I was tiny, the lightest of all of us to lower down there safely anyway… But that’s not why I went, I went down to save our skins, it’s very simple, nothing to be proud of. Not brave at all, as it turns out.’
‘Constance Macken, you went down to save my mother’s skin as well as your own. You were brave and fearless and, maybe, my grandfather deserved what he got.’ Heather’s voice was strong enough for two.
‘It was so dark. He was under the water, just, there had been floods, such heavy floods so the water had risen a few days earlier. I saw his hand, reaching up the side of the well, as if trying to pull himself out of the water…’ She began to shiver now and cry as if her heart might break.
‘He was there, dead and buried in the dirty flood water, and I called back up to tell them that there was no sign of him. I looked down, tried to see his face beneath me as they pulled me up, but the water was too black. He’s still down there, Heather, in Mr Morrison’s back yard, rotting all these years without so much as a headstone. ’
‘Oh, Constance, it’s all so long ago.’ Heather reached across and placed her head on the pillow next to Constance’s. ‘Constance?’
‘Yes?’
‘I think my mother would have come back and put things right with you…’
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure she could have forgiven me, I said some terrible things.’
‘No. She changed, at the end. She almost made it too, I think. She sent us both letters. Here…’ Heather held out the most beautiful envelope that Constance had ever seen. It was like looking at the ocean and the sky, like drifting off to heaven.
‘From Dotty?’ she breathed. With some difficulty, Constance managed to angle herself on the pillows; Heather perched her reading glasses on her nose and held the sheet of paper so she could read it privately.
A trace of a smile played at the corners of her lips, it was as if Dot was right there next to her, come alive in those precious words that had been kept until this late hour.
Constance’s eyes swam with tears for the most part as she read the letter silently, once and then a second time, holding it to her chest because it felt as if it was the most precious thing in the world to her now.
It was a beautiful letter, perfect, love palpable in every simple stroke of Dotty’s pen; heartbreaking.
Even if Dotty’s timing had been terrible on the one hand, by some miracle it had arrived just in time for Constance.
‘I’ll read it to you, tomorrow,’ she promised Heather just as sleep encroached upon her.
‘Let’s close our eyes for a while, all that matters now is that you get a little rest,’ Heather said eventually.
‘It’s not really all that matters though,’ Constance murmured, but she felt content in a way she’d never felt before.
‘It is to me, Constance, it is to me,’ Heather said and Constance sighed. She felt so much better, so much lighter and happy to be here with Heather, knowing that the others were not far away now any more.
When Constance opened her eyes again, the room was at that half-light, just as dawn was breaking. She imagined the sun, creaking over the mainland in the distance, its fingers stretching across the fields, wakening cattle from their night’s slumber. The crows outside began to stir from the trees.
Constance smiled. She felt no pain, only a lightness of spirit that might carry her across the room, as if she was a slip of girl, dancing about with Dotty, pretending to be dolls , with invisible guys on the sidelines.
And then, Dotty was standing there, her hand outstretched.
She was young and pretty and happy. She was so happy it was contagious.
Constance couldn’t stay there any longer.
Suddenly she was drifting from the bed, following Dotty, towards the open French doors, leading to the garden.
The early light was flooding across the grass now; the blooming scents of summer roses filled the air, the dew on the grass was soft and comforting.
She hadn’t walked barefoot out here in years.
A light breeze seemed to carry her along to the bench where her mother, smiling, and Oisin, his hand outstretched, were waiting for her.
And she was happy, so happy to leave Ocean’s End at last.