All That I Leave Behind (31 page)

That’s what had given him the confidence to ask Daphne to that reading at the literary festival in Monasterard House, and what’s more, not to be daunted when she said no. To understand that she was right. ‘Look, don’t take this the wrong way, you’re nice,’ she’d said. ‘It’s just … I want a man who’s active, you know what I mean?’ Pius hadn’t known what she’d meant, at least, not initially. ‘I want a man who’s going places. Who has plans for life. I can’t afford timewasters because of Dara. I don’t want to make the same mistake again.’

She was right. That’s what he’d been doing his entire life. Wasting time. Sitting in his living room, knee-deep in old newspapers, or making bloody coffee, or wandering around the little grow-house he’d rigged up in Daddy’s old shed, stripped down to his underpants because of the heat, the lamps dyeing him a nice shade of blue. When you looked at it that way, it didn’t add up to much of a CV. So instead of sulking, he’d taken a deep breath. ‘Daphne, I know you think I’m not exactly a catch, but I’ll prove you wrong. I have plans, believe it or not,’ he’d said, thinking of his garden, ‘and when I put them in place, I’ll ask you again and hope you’ll say yes. Will you give me that chance?’

She’d looked at him for a long time, then nodded. ‘OK.’

‘Good. Great,’ he’d said. ‘That’s just … great.’ And then, because he couldn’t think of another word to say, he’d bolted back into the safety of the kitchen, leaving her and Dara to see themselves out. He hadn’t been feeling that brave.

His phone buzzed again and he tutted in irritation as he pressed the button, while trying to keep an eye on the road, and looked at the text. ‘We’re all waiting. Get a bloody move on.’ Mary-Pat – she’d kill him if he was late.

When he turned into Mary-Pat’s cul-de-sac, he had to manoeuvre around June’s huge Jeep, parking the Beetle as close as he could to her back bumper, hemming her in, because he knew it would annoy her later on. Serve her right if she was going to drive one of those eco-disaster tanks.

He stepped over the huddle of garden gnomes beside the gate and walked up to the front door and was about to knock, but the door opened to his touch. Pius didn’t know why, but his heart sank. Either Mary-Pat had been burgled or they were all waiting for him, and he didn’t know which was worse.

When he stuck his head around the kitchen door, three heads turned to look at him. Mary-Pat, arms folded grimly in her electric blue fleece, June, a vision in cream silk and Rosie, in a pair of jeans and a Boston College sweatshirt, her hair piled on top of her head in a topknot. Christ, who died? A picture of Daddy in his wheelchair flashed into his mind, and before he could dismiss it, he felt it, that surge of relief. A feeling of lightness that both embarrassed and excited him at the same time. But no, it couldn’t be Daddy. They’d have told him straight out.

‘Sit down, Pi,’ Mary-Pat ordered and shoved a mug across to him, filling it with a stream of dark brown tea. Pius felt his stomach flip. Strong tea always made him feel faintly sick.

‘Thanks,’ he muttered, pulling off his jacket and folding it over the top of the chair. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

June sighed. ‘Well, you’re here now, so we can get started.’

Get started with what? Pius looked at Mary-Pat and then at June, faces set, mouths in a straight line, and then at Rosie, who was examining the bottom of her teacup, red head bent over it, worrying away at the enamel with a fingernail. It was always like this, the two of them, Mary-Pat and June, ambushing with their plans and orders. He felt a flicker of resentment and reached out and patted Rosie on the shoulder. We’re in it together, the gesture said. Two of us against two of them.

June cleared her throat and, as he looked at her, Pius realised that she looked awful – big, dark shadows under her eyes, mouth pulled down. ‘I have some news that I want to share with you all.’ He looked at Mary-Pat in surprise, because she was normally in charge of these things. June’s hands were shaking as she reached for the envelope which had been sitting in front of her, a pale blue flimsy thing with a foreign-looking stamp on it. She opened it and said, ‘This is very difficult,’ and then her eyes filled with tears. ‘Sorry.’

Mary-Pat reached a hand out and squeezed June’s. ‘It’s all right, love. Whatever you have to say, just say it.’ June nodded and sniffed and accepted the tissue offered to her by her older sister. She tried to compose herself, fanning herself with her hand and taking in a deep breath, before exhaling again. ‘OK, it’s OK,’ she said to no one in particular. Then she straightened her shoulders and shuffled in her chair until she’d regained her composure. ‘Sorry, everyone, it’s all been a bit overwhelming.’

What was overwhelming? Pius had that all-too-familiar feeling of having come in halfway through a conversation and having to work out what subject was being discussed. He shot Mary-Pat a look but was surprised to see that she didn’t have her usual know-all expression on her face. Instead, she looked worried, and Pius felt a jolt of panic. If Mary-Pat didn’t know anything, it must be bad.

‘It’s, well, it’s about what Daddy said at Rosie’s wedding …’ June blushed a deep red, glancing briefly at Rosie, who gave no indication that she was actually listening. ‘Mammy had an old friend, Maeve. She lives in Bray and they went to college together. I … ehm, thought she might know something about what Daddy said, so I asked her. And, well, it’s difficult because it involves something I haven’t told you all.’

At this, Mary-Pat removed her hand from June’s and sat back in her chair, before rummaging around in her handbag, producing a cigarette which she lit, inhaling deeply and blowing smoke up to the ceiling. The smell filled the air, as usual – they were all used to it at this stage – but Rosie looked up and said, ‘Mary-Pat, could you just put it out? It’s making me feel really sick.’

‘Oh. All right.’ Mary-Pat took one last drag then ground the cigarette out on a saucer, which already had a little pile of butts on it.

‘Rosie, do you want to go outside for a bit?’ Pius said, eyeing the kitchen door, an escape for both of them.

She shook her head. ‘It’s OK.’

Mary-Pat tutted impatiently. ‘Go on, June.’

For a moment, June’s face crumpled and Pius felt sure she was about to cry again and he wished she’d stop and just spit it out. ‘I’m sorry, Rosie, I really am. I didn’t know, I really didn’t.’

Rosie was sitting up now, her tiny face like granite, jaw set, eyes pale. Pius noticed that she’d let go of the mug and instead she’d gripped the edge of the tablecloth which she’d twisted into a tight knot.

June dropped her head and looked at the letter again. ‘Years after Mammy … went away, Maeve called me. I had no idea who she was and when she told me she was a friend of Mammy’s, I honestly didn’t want to know. I was living in Dublin and it was ten years then, and I’d forgotten …’ Her voice wobbled again. ‘Anyway, she asked if I’d meet her and I did and she gave me a letter. A letter from Mammy.’ June’s voice was barely a whisper, but it sounded like an explosion in Pius’s ears, as if she’d lobbed a grenade right there into the kitchen. She ploughed on. ‘I didn’t read it for ages. I tried to forget about it, to get on with the life I’d been leading, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t seem to get it started again, knowing what I did. It just seemed so pointless, just a big lie. So I read the letter.’

When no one responded, June continued. ‘I just needed to know … she seemed to vanish in a puff of smoke. I mean, we knew that she’d gone to England somewhere, because Daddy found out, but nothing after. And then I got this letter and it was as if she was there with me again, do you know? In the room, telling me one of her stories. She asked how you all were and what you were doing and she told me she’d gone far away to a place where people needed her more than we did.’ At this, her voice broke.

Pius didn’t move to help her, to offer her a tissue or to put a consoling arm around her shoulder, because he felt so angry. He felt that he was looking at a woman he didn’t recognise, who would keep something to herself that could have helped them all. All the years of wondering why she’d left. Wondering where out there in the world she might be, wandering. Wondering if she was happier now without them all and trying to build a life without her. And June knew. She knew and yet she kept it to herself. How selfish, because she wanted to be the important one, the one with the secret. She was sick, Pius thought, just sick.

Mary-Pat spoke the words that were on his mind. ‘Why the hell did you never tell us? Why did you let us go on wondering, when all along you knew?’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, what’s wrong with you?’

‘Mammy made me promise not to tell. She said that if I let you all know, she’d stop writing, because she couldn’t be responsible for the way you’d all feel when you found out.’

The three of them all looked at her in baffled silence, a silence which June mistook for permission to continue. ‘When Daddy said what he said about Rosie, you see, I worked it out. Maeve wouldn’t tell me the truth, but I remember now what happened that summer.’ June’s voice tailed away into a whisper. ‘You see, when Daddy said that Rosie wasn’t his, he didn’t mean it that way. He didn’t mean that he wasn’t her father. He meant that …’ June shook her head.

Mary-Pat rolled her eyes to heaven. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, June, now is not the time to be coy. Spit it out, seeing as you know it all. What did Daddy mean? Put Rosie out of her misery once and for all. C’mon, you started this, so you can finish it.’

June said quietly, ‘You know what he meant, Mary-Pat.’

Mary-Pat opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again, her pale blue eyes alive with rage. ‘I do not.’ She spat the words out, like bullets.

‘I don’t mean it like that. I know you didn’t know about the letters. But you do know why Daddy denied Rosie. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. We all know that she was his favourite, which is ironic really, given that she came from, ehm, another relationship. That’s it.’ June looked satisfied that she’d found the right words to describe it. ‘We all know that Rosie is Daddy’s. We know that. But
you
also know who Rosie’s real mother is. You know you know, so don’t deny it,’ June said, trying to look dignified, dabbing at her nose with a folded tissue.

Mary-Pat sat back in her chair. ‘You absolute bitch. You keep this from us for nearly thirty years’– she pointed to the letter – ‘and you have the nerve to pin it all on me?’

Pius expected June to crumble then, to fall apart. She always did when Mary-Pat got bolshie. She wilted under the stream of her sister’s sarcasm, but to his surprise, she refused to budge now, her jaw set. ‘I don’t think you have the right to throw stones, Mary-Pat. Face it, I’m not the only one who kept a secret now, am I?’

‘I did it for the right reasons,’ Mary-Pat muttered. She seemed to be scrabbling for the right words. ‘I did it because I knew the woman was no good, that she was just bad news and Rosie needed to know that she had a family. That we were her family.’ As she said the word ‘family’, she slapped her hand on the table, her face creased into a tight scowl.

‘And what gives you the right to decide that?’ June spluttered. ‘I mean, you always were a bossy cow, but who do you think you are to play God like that, not to tell Rosie the truth about where she came from?’

‘Oh, so we’re talking about playing God now, are we? Well, that’s rich, coming from you, Junie. You always did suck up to Mammy, so I suppose you’re delighted with yourself, aren’t you? June O’Connor, the Chosen One.’ The pair of them were facing each other now, like fighting dogs, eyes bright, teeth bared in rage.

Pius watched himself do it in slow motion, his fist coming through the air and connecting with the pine surface of the kitchen table with a loud thud. Did I just do that? he wondered, even as his sisters jumped back in fright.

‘June, I’ve had enough of this. I don’t care what you do or don’t know, and I don’t know what the hell difference it makes now anyway, or who you think you’re helping, but this isn’t the way to do it, dragging Rosie in here when it concerns her and then talking about her as if she isn’t in the room. It’s not right.’ And he turned to take Rosie by the arm, pulling her half out of the chair. She didn’t resist but instead went limp in his arms.

June blustered, ‘I thought I was doing the right thing.’

‘The right fucking thing?’ Pius roared, turning on his sister, Rosie hanging out of his left arm, which was killing him. ‘Do you know what, June, you’re thicker than I thought you were. I can’t see what any one of us is going to get from this … this mess.’ He pointed to the letter. ‘And you of all people, Mary-Pat, should be ashamed of yourself. I know you resented having to look after Rosie and the rest of us and it wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry about it, but this is low, it really is. You had a responsibility to tell her the truth, and you shirked it.’

The anger had taken him now, a rage so vast he couldn’t contain it. It felt like electricity surging through his body, but he knew he couldn’t let rip any more. That would only be to dignify this charade, this travesty. Instead, he lowered his voice deliberately: ‘I suppose it felt good, Junie, to be the only one Mammy could trust and I hope you enjoyed the feeling. I hope it gave you something the rest of us didn’t get. Some hope, at least. Lucky you, June. I hope you think it was worth it.’

If he’d thought his sister would dissolve in tears the way she normally did, to get her own way, so that they’d all gather round and tell her how sorry they were for having upset her, he was mistaken. ‘Well, Pi,’ June said quietly. ‘You know, it’s a bit rich coming from you. You’re in no position to lecture any of us on doing the right thing. You who’ve buried your head in the sand your whole life. Look at you. All you can do is grow those drugs of yours and mope around the place, feeling sorry for yourself that life hasn’t given you what you wanted on a silver platter. Well, it doesn’t work like that, Pi. You’re a coward, do you know that? No wonder Daddy couldn’t stand –’ Her face was white with anger, her lips a thin line, eyes glittering.

‘Couldn’t stand what, Junie?’ Pius said. ‘Couldn’t stand me? That’s not exactly news to me, you know.’ But did you have to say it, Junie, he thought. Did you have to make it real like that? That’s cruel.