Chapter Forty
Mary stared at Nick and let out a small moan.
‘Grainne, you look just like my Aunt Grainne. Holy Mary. I prayed that one day I might find Michael and now his daughter’s found me.’
At this point Mary started to weep. Feeling awkward, Nick ushered her into her house and made her way to the back kitchen where she put the kettle on.
‘You are Michael’s girl, aren’t you? You have such a look of the family? Does he know you’re here?’
Nick searched for a tea caddy. In her desire to track her grandmother down she had completely failed to consider that she would have to tell her her son was dead. But she had abandoned him as a child, what did she care? Although looking at her now, sobbing and clutching a handkerchief to herself, Nick realised she was going to care a great deal. Mary had pulled a rosary out of her pocket and was moving the string of beads through her fingers. Nick felt a prickly wave of resentment, what right did this woman have to make her feel bad about what she was about to do? Waiting for the woman to stop crying, Nick poured out two teas and put a bowl of water on the floor for Ohana.
‘Does he want to see me? Does he forgive me?’
Nick winced, this had to end now.
‘I’m terribly sorry, Mrs O’Callaghan. He’s dead, he died over ten years ago. ’
Mary’s head hung forward and she made the sign of the cross. Nick watched in silence as Mary began to pray quietly under her breath.
Finally, she looked up, her eyes red and glistening but she had stopped crying.
‘So. That was God’s final punishment for letting him out of my sight. Very well.’
Her stillness was so profound that Nick wanted to somehow reassure her that her son was still alive and well, that the past twelve years of Nick’s life had not been shrouded by grief. Instead, Mary sat in mute sorrow, visibly shrunken by the crushing weight of her new knowledge. Her head dropped and her shoulders slumped, her whole body appeared to have sagged in on itself. Thirty years of hope had kept her inflated and now with that loss, she was a deflating shell. If Nick could not share the load, maybe she could lighten it. She began to explain what her father had meant to her and what her childhood had been like. As she described her sisters and their children, Mary’s face lit up.
‘I have great-grandchildren?’
‘You have three and another two are on the way. Paddy and Ari are on a race to start a dynasty, I think.’
When she had explained how it had been when her parents died Mary started apologising and twisting her rosary again.
‘I should have been there for you. Your mother’s parents sound wicked but why didn’t Michael’s adoptive parents help you?’
Nick looked at Mary in confusion.
‘He wasn’t adopted. ’
‘He was. He was adopted straight away by a couple of vets that had a practice in England. He was taken away almost as soon as my parents took Michael from me.’
‘They took him from you?’
‘Yes, Callum had got engaged to a new girl – one who presumably had learnt to keep her knees together – and her folks insisted that Callum had no more to do with any previous indiscretions. That’s what Michael and I were. Indiscretions.’
Mary stirred her spoon in her cup as she cast her mind back forty years. ‘So Callum’s parents told mine that they would no longer send my folks any money for Michael’s upkeep. Mammy and Daddy decided I would do better at finding a husband if I didn’t have Michael and so they took him to an orphanage. Callum’s parents had paid them a lump sum of hush money and they donated that to the convent.’
Nick sat and just stared at the woman sitting in front of her. How could her parents have been so cruel?
‘When I found out that they had taken him, instead of going to school I hitched half the way across Ireland visiting every orphanage I could. Finally, my folks told me that he had already been adopted and had moved to England.’
‘But he hadn’t!’ said Nick, shocked. ‘I’ve seen his records. Why would your folks lie?’
‘Ireland was a difficult place then, maybe they thought the nuns could offer my son a better future than I could? All I know was that I went upstairs, packed a suitcase and left home for England. And I’ve spent the last forty-odd years looking for him. ’
Nick stared at the old woman in horror. She hadn’t run away to England to get a job, or follow her boyfriend, she was desperately searching for her son. Who all that time had been standing on the causeway waiting for her to come and take him home.
‘So who did adopt him? Why didn’t they step in and help you when he died?’
‘No one adopted him, Mary.’ Nick leant across the table and held Mary’s hand. ‘He played up at every foster placement and adoption family. He kept returning to the island. He already had a mother that he loved, he didn’t want another.’
Nick wished she had found different words. The grief on Mary’s face as she castigated herself was too painful to look at.
‘Did he hate me?’
Nick was still holding her grandmother’s hand and she squeezed it again now, desperate to console the distressed older lady.
‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘he said you were the prettiest woman in the world, but some fairies kidnapped him and took him to their fairy island where he grew up as a changeling and sailed the seven seas, riding whales and dolphins and generally having the time of his life. He never once said a bad word about his childhood other than it was better than many and he had all the family he needed now.’
Mary wiped at her eyes. ‘I used to tell him fairy stories. Stories of the giant Finn McCool.’
‘And the first salmon!’ laughed Nick. ‘He used to tell that to us as well. He clearly never forgot you. And you never gave up on him. Like you said, you spent all that time looking for him.’
‘Mother of God, I made a nuisance of myself. I don’t think there was a single vet that I didn’t phone up and ask if they had adopted a little boy. At the end of a week I’d take all the money I had saved that week and would spend it making phone calls in the local area. When I had exhausted all the vets in the area, I would move towns. Find another set of lodgings and another job and start the hunt again.’
Nick drank her tea and wondered about a twenty-one-year-old girl in a foreign country trying to find her child.
‘Did you ever go home?’
‘How could I? I swore to my parents that if I ever saw them again, I’d kill them. And I meant it. No, England was good enough for me. God knows it has its faults, but hypocrisy and secrecy aren’t amongst them. The English have never had any shame to begin with. Taking whatever they fancy and only handing it back when it’s broken. The upper classes and the bankers eat the poor over here but at least they don’t steal their babies.’
She took a sip of tea and getting up flicked the switch on the kettle.
‘Right, tell me about yourself. What is it that you do?’
Nick looked at her grandmother’s T-shirt and at some of the posters on the wall. Che Guevara’s fist raised in salute. The suffragettes marching into battle. She took a deep sigh; she didn’t steal babies but apart from that Nick didn’t think Mary was about to look favourably on her granddaughter’s life. She sighed: in for a penny, in for a pound .
‘Well, the thing is, Mary, I work as a stockbroker and I actually have a title. I’m Lady Nicolette de Foix.’
Mary looked up from her teacup and tried to see if Nick was joking. When she saw she wasn’t, she slammed her hand on the table and roared with laughter.
‘All these years! All these years I’ve hoped for a family reunion and when I finally get it, I discover I’m surrounded by sharks and aristos!’
She pushed her chair back and grabbed a set of keys leaving Nick confused at the change of tone.
‘Come on then, girl. It’s a lovely day and the park is nearby. Let’s go and walk your funny little dog and you can tell me more about your life.’ Rubbing Ohana’s ears she gave her a little bit of cheese and stood up again. ‘So what do I call you. Am I supposed to curtsy?’
Nick’s eyebrows shot up in alarm.
‘Absolutely not. Not even to Ari and she’s the countess. As for what to call me, how about Letta? I’m trying out something new at the moment.’
‘Not Nick then?’
‘No, I’m having some trouble at work at the moment. Actually, it’s a lot worse than that, I’m under investigation and I wanted to hide for a bit. I’m finding I quite like Letta, it was my mother’s name for me.’
‘That’s as good a reason as any. So tell me more about being on the run from the law. Maybe you’re my kind of girl after all. A modern-day Robin Hood?’
As they headed out of the house Nick wondered exactly what sort of woman her grandmother was. Passing Gabe’s car Nick looked concerned .
‘Do I need a parking permit?’
‘Theoretically. The council just imposed it one day. Without so much as a do-you-mind. I rallied a petition and we fought them to a standstill in the courts. Now only new residents have to apply, but the wardens don’t come down here anyway. I saw to that as well.’
Nick dreaded to think. ‘So which is your car?’
Mary laughed. ‘As if I could afford to run a car, girl. The buses are good enough.’
Nick was confused. ‘So why did you lead the action?’
‘There’s always someone trying to put the working classes in their place. A worker’s toil is what makes this country grow and what thanks do they get? Resident permit parking, planning rejections and school holiday fines.’
‘So I won’t get a fine for parking there?’
‘Stick with me and you’ll never get a fine again. Now tell me all about your current investigation.’
As they walked around the park, Nick found herself relaxing. She explained her situation and Mary admitted that it was well out of her league, but she was impressed that Nick was so powerful as to be so pursued. Nick didn’t see it in quite the same light but kept her opinions to herself. Mary also seemed prepared to accept that Ariana was doing a good job with her title and she approved of the charitable foundation the sisters had set up.
‘You seem like a fine family. Michael would have been so proud of you all, I’m sure. I just wish he was around to see it.’
There was nothing to say to that and they walked for a bit in silence. Mary suggested the path leading down to the pond had some lovely views but Ohana went ballistic when she saw the ducks crossing in front of her and in the end Nick had to pick her up and distract her.
A woman with a pushchair tutted at them and Mary stopped and looked her up and down.
‘My granddaughter, Lady de Foix, is simply training her dog. Maybe you need to mind your own business. I also note you have bread in your hands. This is contrary to the bylaws of Birmingham City Council; waterfowl are not to be fed bread in the council-run parks as it is bad for their digestions and encourages rats. Would you like me to call the park warden over?’
The woman huffed and muttered something to her toddler but put the bread away and quickly pushed the stroller back up the path.
‘I think she’ll have trouble when her little one starts calling people silly old cows, don’t you?’ said Mary to Nick with a huge grin on her face. ‘Still, maybe if we walk over to the bandstand? Less to distract Ohana there.’
‘Was that true about the bread?’
‘Absolutely. The only way to beat people at their own game is to know their rules better than they do. There isn’t a council by-law that I haven’t studied and there’s a fair few I’ve changed as well.’
At the top of a hill they sat down and looked out over the city.
‘So, Letta, now what? Do you drive home? Do we exchange Christmas cards?’
Her voice sounded breezy, but Nick thought she heard a tremor. Over the past hour she had become rather attached to this woman. She had heard the phrase ‘blood is thicker than water’ but she had never experienced it with an apparent stranger. However, every now and then – from the way Mary spoke, to the turn of her head – Nick was reminded of her father or one of her sisters – it was there in the line of her jaw, a fleeting smile that made her think of Clem, a way of walking that brought Ari to mind.
‘If you want? But I think my sisters would very much like to meet you. There’s a lot of us, though, it could be overwhelming. Maybe you’d like to come and stay with me for a few days? Get to know us in stages? Plus I’ve got Da’s things from the orphanage back where I’m staying, you might like to look at those. And we’ve Mum’s diaries of when they met, so you get to hear about him through her eyes. I don’t know, it really is up to you. I’ve rather intruded on your life…’
Nick trailed off; she was rushing but she suddenly wanted to fill in the gaps in Mary’s life.
‘And you think I want to waste another second of it? Ignore a family I’ve just discovered?’
‘Well—’ Nick took a deep breath, this was so out of character for her, she wondered if she was making a mistake. ‘Why not drive back with me and stay for a few days and look through Da’s stuff? We can then work out from there how to meet the others.’ As soon as she said the words out loud, she knew it was going to be okay, there was no sense of dread as the words were vocalised, no regret, just a small kernel of hope.
Mary looked at her and nodded. ‘You know, you really do look like Grainne when you ask a question you’re not sure of the answer. So let me speak plainly. Nothing would give me greater pleasure, but just for a few days. I don’t want to outstay my welcome.’
It hadn’t taken Mary long to pack a suitcase and then they were back on the road. They stopped for a quick break on the motorway and whilst Mary went to the loos, Nick called Ari and told her what was happening.
‘Okay. Who are you? And what have you down with my cautious level-headed sister?’
Nick winced, Ari wasn’t wrong. Nick prided herself on being predictable and well-planned. This felt insane.
‘I know, but I spoke to Clem and she thought it was a good idea.’
‘You’re taking Clem’s advice? Dear God, have I woken up and it’s opposites day?’
‘No,’ grinned Nick.
‘No what?’
‘You said it was opposites day, so I was making a joke, sorry. And yes, the world has gone mad. I woke up and decided to bag myself a grandmother.’
Nick wondered at the silence on the other end of the line. Ari must have a thousand questions. Probably the most pressing being if her sister had lost her mind?
‘What’s she like?’
‘She seems lovely, but Christ, she’s had a brutal life. Look, she’s coming back now…’
‘Okay, take care and let her know I can’t wait to meet her.’
Nick hung up and saw Mary smiling at her.
‘One of your sisters?’
‘That was Ari, and she’s dying to meet you. ’
Mary smiled nervously. Suddenly everything was beginning to feel surreal, and she felt her life was about to take a massive change in direction.