What She Never Told Me
Read What She Never Told Me Online
Authors: Kate McQuaile
About the Author
Kate McQuaile
is a graduate of Faber Academy’s ‘Writing a Novel’ course. She lives in London and works as a journalist, but is originally from Drogheda in Ireland.
Title
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Quercus Editions Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © 2016 Kate McQuaile
The moral right of Kate McQuaile to be
identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
TPB ISBN 978 1 78429 671 1
EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78429 757 2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, organisations, places and events are
either the product of the author’s imagination
or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or
locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by CC Book Production
Dedication
In memory of my aunt, Frances Purcell
Contents
Prologue
The little girl is underdressed for the cold night. No coat, just a jumper and pleated skirt, and knee socks that struggle to stay up as she canters along the pavement towards the green postbox, clutching the letter she has written to an old man with a white beard in a snowy, distant land without borders.
Around the square, curtains are closed against the cold and the dark. The street lights cast their beams as far as they can, but between each wooden pole there is a dark space that momentarily eclipses the child, causing your heart to miss a beat each time she disappears from view.
She’s at the postbox now, looking up at the slot that she can only reach by standing on tiptoe. She stretches and strains to push the envelope towards the oblong mouth of the box. You watch. And wait.
Chapter One
Outside, the light is fading across the stretch of the extended town, past the estates towards the farmland and low hills beyond. My mother, no longer conscious, is also fading. The nurses haven’t spelled it out in so many words, but everything they say makes me think she is close to the end.
‘Talk to her,’ the nurses say. ‘She’ll hear you. The hearing is the last thing to go.’
So I talk to her in a low voice, mostly about long ago when I was a child because that was the time we were closest. I talk about our outings to the sea, the two of us walking down to Amiens Street Station and taking the train to Skerries, where we would change into our bathing costumes and run as fast as we could into the waves so that there was no time to change our minds. Sometimes we went further, taking the train all the way to Drogheda and then a bus to Clogherhead.
I remind her of how hungry we used to be after our dips in the cold water, so hungry that it didn’t matter that somehow the sand always found its way into the sandwiches she had packed. She would point into the distance at the Mourne Mountains, miles away to the north. And always, before we went back home, we would walk to the harbour to watch the seals that followed the fishing boats in from the sea.
Those memories are real, as real as everything I see before me now, except that the colours are muted, old-fashioned. They almost have a smell to them, the way the dark green of the old double-decker buses that carried us about seemed to have a smell to it.
I talk on, hoping she can still hear, losing myself in those memories as I recall them, so that the sound my mother makes – a
ssshhh
sound, repeated over and over – comes as a shock. At first, I think she’s saying, ‘Shush,’ telling me to be quiet. But there’s distress in the sound, as if there’s something more she’s trying to get out but can’t.
‘What is it, Mamma? What are you trying to say?’ I ask her gently, but there’s no answer, only the
ssshhh
, again and again. Eventually, the effort of it is too great for her and she sighs and lapses back into silence. I watch and wait. She is so calm now that I don’t even notice the point at which she finally stops breathing.
*
Hours later, morning is creeping through a gap in the curtains into the dark bedroom where I’ve lain awake through what was left of the night. I’m frantic, physically and mentally, my body trying to find a place in the bed that will bring some rest, my head trying to keep track of the thoughts that dart like arrows through it.
And, as if from a shell picked up on the beach and held to the ear, I keep hearing that sound she made before she died, the
ssshhh
sound. I hear it over and over again, ebbing and flowing, relentless in its rhythm, haunting and tormenting.
I can’t bear to think that something I said might have penetrated her unconscious state to hurt her. We had our moments, my mother and I, but even at those times when I thought I had come close to hating her I knew that there was no escaping the bond we had.
I talked to her about memories last night. I don’t know whether she heard me or not. But there’s another memory that I didn’t bring up because it hurt her once, a memory that has punctuated most of my life and that I have never understood.
It surfaces now, unbidden, and I see a green postbox and a small hand stretching upwards to push an envelope into its oblong mouth. The edges of the image are blurred. It’s as if someone has opened an old tarnished locket to reveal a silent film playing in slow motion inside. It’s always the same. It plays over and over, the little hand never in any position but extending upwards, the envelope always held in those childish fingers, the mouth of the green postbox almost within reach.
And then, as strangely as it has appeared, the grainy image fades, leaving me puzzled and slightly disturbed, even a little afraid.
I am never sure whether that small hand is mine. But if not mine, whose?
*
My mother’s coffin stands in front of the altar. It felt strange to leave her there through the night, alone in the locked church. The last time she was here was for Dermot’s funeral. She wasn’t religious. ‘You don’t need religion to be a good person,’ she used to say. She didn’t leave any instructions for her own funeral and probably wouldn’t have been too bothered if we had told her we were going to put her body into a cardboard box and tip it from a boat into the sea. The funeral is for me, because I need something beautiful and soft and hopeful to take away the memory of that terrible last night in the hospital. So the choir sings Fauré’s Requiem, because, with no
Dies Irae
, no day of judgement, it’s the sweetest, gentlest requiem of all, and as we all shuffle to the altar for Communion the choir sings Duruflé’s ‘Ubi Caritas et Amor’.
We leave the church for the graveyard. It’s cold and wet, a typical November day in Ireland, but when the undertaker indicates one of the funeral cars I shake my head. I want to walk behind my mother on her final journey. Ursula, my friend since childhood, walks beside me.
A couple of relatives have turned up: my mother’s older brother and his middle-aged son. We haven’t spoken yet. They weren’t part of my life when I was growing up, though I had known of their existence. Now, I have only the mildest curiosity about them.
It’s the Keaveneys, Dermot’s people, I think of as my family, even though I’m not related to them, and they’re out in force—Angela and her husband, Joe, and their daughters and grandchildren. I’ve kept my eyes on the coffin all through the prayers at the graveside, but when it’s finally lowered I can barely see anything because rain and tears are blurring my sight.
Ronan, Angela’s grandson, tugs at my sleeve and puts his little hand into mine.
‘Don’t cry, Auntie Lou,’ he says, his big eyes looking up at me from a face filled with a kindness you don’t expect from a five-year-old boy.
This makes me cry even more and his mother, Lizzie, squeezes my shoulder and tries to move Ronan away, but he keeps his grip of my hand and refuses to let it go.
‘He’s fine,’ I tell Lizzie.
After the burial, there’s a reception at one of the local hotels and, with the worst of the funeral over and having downed a large glass of wine, I begin to emerge from the fog that has enveloped me over the past few days, the fog that has softened the longing to call Sandy. Now, my mind clear but filled with pain and loss, I am desperate to hear his voice. I slip outside to a courtyard and dial his number.
‘Louise.’
The lack of expression in his voice hurts me almost as much as the loss of my mother does. The end of a marriage is another kind of bereavement and I’m still in mourning for it.
‘Sandy, I . . . my . . .’ I start choking. I can’t finish what I’m trying to say.
‘Louise, what’s wrong?’
‘My mother died.’
‘When? What happened?’
‘A few days ago. It was lung cancer but it was very fast. We had no idea anything was wrong. I should have told you. I’m sorry – I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.’
‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. I wish I’d known. Where are you now?’
‘In Ireland. We buried her today.’
‘Would you like me to come over? Is there anything I can do?’
‘It’s all right . . . it’s over now. There’s not a lot else to be done at the moment. I’m not going to stay much longer. I can come back another time to sort her stuff out.’
‘Are you staying with Angela?’
‘Yes. She’s been great.’
‘Will you let me know when you’re back?’
‘Okay. I think I’d better go now. There are lots of people . . . I have to talk to them.’
‘Call me when you’re back. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
There’s a faint thudding going on in my heart as I end the call. Talking to Sandy has brought no comfort. It has just reinforced my sense of having been cast adrift. I sit on one of the metal garden chairs and, to take my mind away from the nothingness of my marriage, I think about all the things I have to do.
My mother told me during her final days in the hospital that she was leaving everything to me, everything being the small house she moved into after Dermot died and whatever money she had in the bank. I’ll have to go through her things and decide whether or not to sell the house. But these are tasks I can put off for a while. I can go back to London in the next few days and, after a month or two, return to Ireland to sort everything out.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting there when Ursula appears.
‘Oh, Lou, what are you doing out here? You’ll freeze to death without a coat.’
‘I called Sandy.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing, really. He says to call him when I’m back in London.’
‘Good. Now, let’s get you inside and warmed up.’
My mother’s brother, Richard, comes over to talk to me with his son, Peter, who has driven him down from Dublin. I have no recollection of ever having met either of them, but Richard tells me he remembers me as a very small child.
I’m not surprised when he tells me that he found out about my mother’s death when he read the notice Angela placed in the paper; people of a certain age in Ireland tend to go straight to the death notices before they read the news. But I am surprised when he tells me they had been in occasional contact over the years. She had never mentioned it. His name rarely came up.
‘The last time we talked was during the summer. I had no idea she was so ill,’ he says.
‘None of us did. She probably didn’t, either, until it was too late.’
‘Still, I wish I had known. I might have been able to help.’
Richard speaks in the light, refined tones of Dublin’s more affluent southern suburbs, as my mother did. I see the physical resemblance between them, too. Like my mother, he’s tall and, despite his age, moves lightly, fluidly. He’s a handsome man.
‘I’m very sorry you had to deal with Marjorie’s death by yourself,’ he says.
‘I had Angela. Dermot’s daughter. She was very good to my mother,’ I say, making the point that the person I have leaned on most is not a blood relative.
He looks slightly uncomfortable, but I may be reading into his expression what I want to see. A quick calculation tells me that he must be close to eighty, but he wears his age well. Peter is a different type, shorter than his father and stockier. Probably a rugby player at whichever top boarding school he will have attended. His slightly florid complexion, bordered by dark hair that is flecked with grey, hints at future health issues. He won’t age as gracefully as his father. I almost feel sorry for him; clearly, neither of us has inherited the Redmond genes.
As Richard and I talk, Peter smiles occasionally, his small and silent contribution to the short and difficult conversation. Perhaps he senses some hostility from me, or maybe he feels he has given enough of his time to the funeral of an aunt he didn’t know, because before very long he looks at his watch and apologises, saying they have to leave.
Richard, looking somewhat relieved, says goodbye to me. But just as he starts to walk towards the door, he turns around and takes my hand.
‘Will you come and see me in Dalkey, Louise?’ he says. ‘I have some photographs you might like to see.’
I make a vague promise to visit him, but I have no intention of keeping it. He has never been part of my life. Why should I invite him into it now?