A Daughter's Secret (26 page)

‘He will recover from this,’ he said, ‘but he will never be the man he was once. He is not fit for any but the lightest duties on the farm and he must be untroubled in all other ways. I will be brutally honest with you: a sudden shock could kill him.’

‘Then,’ said Biddy, ‘I will see that he shall have no shocks and my sons can take on the duties on the farm.’

Later, when the doctor had gone, Tom said, ‘Shall we write and tell Nuala?’

Biddy thought about it. If they did so, Nuala would come home. To have her in Ireland at that time would be a further worry for Thomas John, and the doctor had said he wasn’t to be troubled
in any way. If anything should happen to Nuala he would never forgive himself, and it could so easily happen, for violence was everywhere. Anyway, the doctor said he would recover from this and then, provided he took life easy and had nothing to upset him, he could live for years. So Biddy said, ‘I don’t think Nuala should be told anything just yet. It will worry her and for no purpose.’

Tom thought she ought to be told, prepared almost, but he never defied his mother, so Nuala never knew how seriously ill her father was.

In the summer of 1921, Nuala wrote and told her parents about meeting a man she liked called Ted Maguire, who, she said, was an Irishman originally from Fermanagh though he now lived in Birmingham. She also said he was decent, honest and respectable. He had asked her employers’ permission to walk out with her, and she would like her parents’ blessing as well.

Biddy was incensed. Wasn’t this what she had feared from the first? That her daughter would fall for some smooth-talking Englishman, and an Irishman living in England was just as bad. If she married this man, she would be living apart from them for ever.

‘Write and tell her to come home immediately,’ she told Thomas John.

‘I can’t do that,’ Thomas John said. ‘For one thing, Ireland is no safer now than it was when she left – worse, if anything.’

‘And there is the small matter that the girl is over twenty-one,’ Joe put in.

Biddy ignored Joe and went on, ‘And what gives them Carringtons the right to give their permission for this man that we have never clapped eyes on to walk out with our daughter?’

Joe was astounded. ‘Listen, Mammy,’ he said. ‘Nuala is twenty-one years old and therefore an adult. Any decisions she makes are hers to make, surely. In asking permission to walk out with her, this Ted Maguire was showing Nuala’s employers respect. They have obviously met the man and approve of him so why shouldn’t they give their permission for them to see each other? What do you say, Daddy?’

‘I say that you are right, son,’ Thomas John said. ‘And I will go one step further. We will not alienate our daughter by being awkward about this. We will give this liaison our blessing and ask her to come home for a few days with this Ted Maguire so that we may meet him too.’

It wasn’t what Biddy wanted to hear, but Thomas John was the one man that she respected and so she said nothing further and wrote the letter as he had directed her to.

Nuala’s answer was swift and in it she said how pleased she was that they had raised no objections to her relationship with Ted Maguire. She said she loved him a great deal and he was a fine man who had a grand job too in a country where many
hadn’t. However, she also said that neither of them could come to Ireland just then because the family were going away to the seaside for a month and she was going too, but she would be over as soon as she could manage it.

Just over a month later she wrote that Ted had asked her to marry him and she had accepted. Thomas John read that bit of the letter out to them as they were all around the table having breakfast after the milking, and he felt a momentary pang that his Nuala would soon belong to another. The girl that left Ireland’s shores was no more and he longed to see the woman she had become and the man she had chosen to spend her life with.

But, the letter went on:

The words blurred on the page as the tears sprang to Thomas John’s eyes. Nuala couldn’t do this disgraceful thing: shame them all by marrying a Protestant. Before his eyes was the image of the Black and Tans, now roaming the country, shooting innocent men in reprisal attacks, or razing whole villages to the ground and laughing while they did so. And his Nuala wanted to marry one who would approve of such things. It wasn’t to be
borne and he didn’t care how old she was. There was a sudden tight band around his chest and a worse pain than he had ever had before. He opened his mouth to cry out against it, but he made no sound. He toppled forward from the chair and was dead before he hit the stone floor with the crumpled letter still in his hand.

Biddy, with a shriek at the sight of her beloved husband now lying so still on the floor was beside him in seconds. ‘Do something,’ she cried to Tom and Joe. ‘Fetch the doctor.’

Joe put his hand on his father’s neck to feel for a pulse, and when he found none he gave a small shake of his head to Tom. Tom had known his father was dead – he had seen the death mask on his face before he reached the floor – and he turned to his mother and lifted her up.

‘He’s gone, Mammy,’ he said, gently. ‘We must go for the priest as well as the doctor.’

Biddy’s pain-filled eyes met his. ‘He can’t be dead,’ she said. ‘He was alive and well just a moment ago. The doctor said some shock…’ She sprang forward suddenly and snatched up the letter. When she read it she knew what had killed her husband. ‘Nuala killed your daddy,’ she told the two men before her. ‘That fine man that she has become engaged to is a Proddy. There, what do you think of your fine sister now?’

Tom was shocked, there was no denying it, for it was the very worst thing a Catholic could do, especially with the state Ireland was in at that time.
He took the letter from his mother and scanned it quickly.

Poor Nuala, Tom thought. She would be devastated by the news of their father’s death, and if she thought her letter had hastened it in some way she would always feel guilty.

‘I am going for the priest,’ Joe said, making for the door, ‘and then I will go on to Buncrana for the doctor and to send a telegram to Nuala.’

‘Saying what, pray?’ Biddy asked, her voice so cold that the words fell from her mouth like shards of ice. ‘Are you going to tell her that she has killed your father stone dead?’

‘Mammy, she didn’t know about Daddy’s bad heart,’ Tom put in.

‘No matter,’ Biddy snapped. ‘News such as that would be enough to stop the heart of the healthiest person.’ She shook her head almost in disbelief. ‘And for it to be Nuala to do this. Almighty Christ, your daddy thought the sun shone out of her backside. No wonder the shock killed him. Well, now Nuala will be told nothing, not now, not ever. From this day forward, she ceases to be part of this family, to be my daughter and your sister.’

‘Mammy, you can’t do this.’

‘Oh yes I can,’ Biddy almost screamed. ‘I have given birth to two daughters. One ran away and one is marrying a Proddy, so by their actions they have cut themselves off from their family and that is that.’

Tom knew his mother was building up for a fine rage, the sort that had terrified him from when he was small.

Joe knew it too and also knew there was no reasoning with her in that sort of mood and so, feeling sure she would come round in the end, he shrugged and said, ‘I’ll just go for the priest and doctor then, shall I?’

The doctor, who came after the priest, was surprised that Biddy wasn’t almost prostrate with grief. Her eyes were ravaged with raw pain, but they were dry. There were no tear trails on her face and her eyes were not glittering with unshed tears, which worried him.

He had come in his trap. He asked Tom to guide the horse up to the head of the lane for him and Tom knew the doctor wanted a quiet word. Barely had they started up the lane when the doctor said, ‘Tom, has your mother cried at all?’

‘No,’ Tom said. ‘None of us has and that is strange, for I thought a great deal of my father and I know Joe did too. It’s as if dying the way he has left us all in a state of shock. I know you warned us about his heart and all – not that he took a blind bit of notice of you telling him to take things easy – and I know too that sudden death is the nature of a heart attack, but I don’t think I have really got to grips with the fact he has gone yet.’

‘Do you think that your mother feels the same way?’

Tom smiled ruefully. ‘I gave up trying to work out how my mother’s mind works a long time ago. But I think this time she is so eaten up with resentment against Nuala, who she blames totally for Daddy’s death, that there is no room in her head for anything else.’

‘Yes, she told me that,’ the doctor said. ‘Showed me the letter too. The point is, though, your father’s death might not have had anything to do with that letter and I told your mother this. Your father’s heart was in such bad shape, it was like living with a ticking time bomb. I told your mother this when your father had that collapse and I reminded her just now, but she is adamant that it is all Nuala’s fault.’

‘Mammy wouldn’t let us tell Nuala how bad Daddy’s heart was,’ Tom said, ‘and now she won’t let us tell her that he is dead.’

‘Said in the heat of the moment,’ the doctor assured him. ‘She will come round when she is thinking more clearly.’

They had reached the head of the lane and Tom bid goodbye to the doctor and turned towards the house. He didn’t bother contradicting the man but he knew his mother a sight better than the doctor did, and he knew that she would never change her mind over this.

Tom was right. Biddy did not change her mind. In fact, as each day passed, she became more and more entrenched in her resentment against Nuala.
She railed against her almost constantly in the house until Tom and Joe were sick hearing about it, and she was the same at the funeral a few days later.

Nearly the entire town turned out for the funeral of Thomas John Sullivan, for the man was well known and very well liked. Many said this as they passed their condolences to the family. Tom was glad of the turnout – he felt it gave his father proper respect – but he was bitterly ashamed that his mother had forbidden him to contact Nuala, especially when another letter had come from her the day before. He didn’t know what was in it – no one did – for Biddy had thrust it into the fire.

Biddy lost no time in telling everyone what Nuala had done to hasten her own father’s death. Even when the people blatantly didn’t want to listen, or were embarrassed, she went on and on about it anyway. No one who was at Thomas John’s funeral could be in any doubt that he was laid in the ground because of his daughter Nuala.

The days slid into weeks, and Tom and Joe were still trying to come to terms with the loss of a man they were beginning to realise had been the unassuming helmsman for them both. Tom missed him more with each passing day and there was an almost constant ache in his heart.

He thought he could possibly have coped with it better if he didn’t have to listen to his mother’s carping voice and vitriolic tongue constantly berating
the person she had once held up as perfect. He was often relieved to escape to the byre and Joe felt the same.

‘Phew, dear Mama is on her high horse right and proper tonight,’ Joe said one night as he and Tom began the milking.

‘Not half,’ Tom said with a heart-felt sigh. ‘And I wouldn’t be surprised if the shrieks and screeches of her were heard in Buncrana. God, she gets worse instead of better. I mean, it’s over two months since the funeral.’

‘I think Daddy used to curb Mammy’s excesses,’ Joe said. ‘She has probably always been this way and Daddy stopped her going too far. You know how she always listened to him?’

Tom nodded. ‘Aye she did. I think you are right. Now there is no steadying influence, and Nuala has slipped off her pedestal, and so is fair game for her bones to be picked clean.’

‘That is about it,’ Joe said. ‘And Nuala won’t know any of this, or why she gets no replies to the letters she writes every few days.’

‘How d’you know she writes every few days?’ Tom asked. ‘We are always in the byre when the postman comes.’

‘Aye, but I met the man himself in Buncrana last Saturday,’ Joe said. ‘He said my wee sister was a fine one for writing the letters and seemingly she had something to say every few days because he had the lane to the farmhouse worn down he had to deliver so many.’

‘Ah, d’you know I can’t help but feel sorry for her.’

‘I feel very sorry for her,’ Joe said. ‘Why don’t we defy Mammy and write and tell her about Daddy anyway? She has a right to know.’

‘Can you imagine Mammy’s reaction if we did that?’ Tom said.

Joe laughed. ‘Honest to God, Tom, you shouldn’t let yourself be so scared of Mammy.’

‘I know I shouldn’t,’ Tom said. ‘But she has me that way since I was a boy. Anyway, this isn’t just about me, but about Nuala. I couldn’t guarantee her safety if she was to come here, and that is the first thing she would do if we wrote.’

‘You think that Mammy would actually hurt her?’

‘I am certain sure she would,’ Tom said, ‘and then there’s Mammy’s mental state.’

‘What about it?’

‘I think it is precarious.’

Joe grinned. ‘What a nice way of putting it, Tom. The woman is clean bloody barmy.’

‘All right then, however you want to put it. But can we risk making her worse?’

‘All right, yes, I can see all you say,’ Joe agreed. ‘But all this might happen anyway. I mean, Nuala might take it upon herself to come over to see what’s what. After all, she’s a free agent.’

Tom shrugged. ‘If she does, she does,’ he said. ‘And we will have to deal with it the best way we can. But we won’t have instigated it.’

Joe sighed. ‘So I suppose Nuala will be another one whose name we are not allowed to mention?’

Tom nodded. ‘Aye, Mammy said that this evening before I left the house.’

‘Like Aggie, who people say ran away with the gypsies,’ Joe said. ‘Rum do, that, altogether. I mean, running away with bloody gypsies.’

Tom looked at his brother and said quietly, ‘Aggie ran away with no gypsies. What happened to Aggie was unbelievably tragic.’

‘And what do you know about it?’

‘Everything before she left here, and after that nothing at all, but I know where she was making for and it wasn’t the gypsy encampment. This isn’t up for general release, Joe. I don’t know why I am telling you all this now, except that with Nuala estranged from the family I think you need to know what happened to Aggie. After all, there are only the two of us left.’

‘I won’t tell a soul, Tom,’ Joe said. ‘You have my word.’

And so Joe listened to the fantastic tale of the dreadful things that had happened to his sister when she had been just fifteen years old.

‘And you have no idea what happened to her since?’

‘No,’ Tom said. ‘How could I know? I was even more worried about her when Philomena – you may not remember her, but she was McAllister’s wife – when she tried to contact his sister in Birmingham after he died, and the letter was
returned. They said she was not known at that address. I am pretty certain that that was where McAllister was sending Aggie, but if the woman wasn’t there, what happened to Aggie? What did she do? What could she do?’