Another Kind of Life Page 35
Where would it all end? Wasn’t half a loaf better than no bread? What was to become of her, of all these children, if Charles put himself into foolish danger, becoming sucked up into a cause whose consequences he did not truly understand?
Hannah handed Richard his tea. Mary reappeared with more lemonade and ices for the children. Silence descended again, broken only by the chinking of spoon against china. Hannah wanted to stay where she was for ever, in the tranquil shade of the laurel trees, with the bright promise of water beyond the sloping lawns.
She sipped, wondering what was coming next.
I am sometimes impatient with my eldest sister. I know that I am more fortunate than either Hannah or May, that while I feel my world expanding with work and with loving you, they each seem to inhabit a relentlessly shrinking universe. Hannah really has no understanding of what exists outside the four walls of her terraced garden, her comfortable, fortunate existence. I can sense her growing exasperation with her children: such lovely children, too, each of them a living arrow fired into May’s poor, sore heart. I find myself becoming more and more angry with Hannah – she has no right to be discontented, no right to be ungrateful. The world has been nothing if not kind to her. But poor May – it is as though grief has shrivelled her world, making a prison of even the broad expanse of land and water which had once given her the freedom to breathe.
Last week, when I was sent to Abbey Street, that wretched place just off Peter’s Hill, I had to tend to a Mrs Brent, a woman already in labour. She was giving birth to her seventh child. The filth was indescribable. She could have been no older than Hannah, yet she had already lost two children to typhus. The others stood around, barefoot, faces streaked with grime and tears. They were like steps of stairs – the oldest being no more than six. They were frightened by their mother’s wailing.
Foul-smelling straw served as Mrs Brent’s birthing place. I knelt beside her, my stomach revolting against the stench despite my best efforts. I tried to keep my manner cheerful, encouraging. She looked at me. Her eyes were huge, full of pleading. I listened for the baby.
‘A good, strong heartbeat,’ I told her, making my mouth smile. She turned her eyes away from me then and faced the wall. I have seen so many other women look like this. They are filled with an appalled hope which they cannot voice. And now, another mouth to feed. The world is a badly, cruelly divided place. In due course, her baby was born, a little boy. Small and puny, but healthy enough. I had wild notions about snatching him away from her, bringing him to May. But I could not; I cannot. I wish I could feel differently. It would not be the first time a midwife had found such a solution. Perhaps the mother, like many others before her, may well find her own way out. Suffocation is swift and painless.
And my sister suffers because her children spill lemonade.
Mary carried the tea things back into the bright kitchen at Abbotsford. Hannah had told her to take some time, have her tea in peace. She sat gratefully, suddenly tired by the heat, the quarrelling of the children, the strangeness of the atmosphere in this new place. She sighed. She wanted to be gone, well away from here; something was making her uncomfortable and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. The divil ye know, she thought, is better than the divil ye don’t. And she was getting along quite happily in Holywood. She couldn’t ask for more, really. She had kindness, food, shelter, something approaching love from the four children. It was what she’d chosen, after all, what she’d hoped for some ten years back. It didn’t make up for the loss of Cecilia; but then, nothing could do that.
As she waited for the water to boil, Mary heard a strange ticking sound behind her. She turned, and saw the orange and brown-streaked wings of a butterfly flapping wildly against the dusty windowpane. Time and again, it dashed its frail, shell-like body against the glass, searching for air and freedom.
She stood up.
‘C’mere,’ she said softly, scooping its papery lightness into her cupped hands. ‘Ye’ll knock yerself senseless doin’ that.’
She walked to the back door and opened her hands. The butterfly seemed to stagger in flight for a moment, unsure of itself and the sudden sunlight. Then it disappeared into the dense foliage of the laurel trees. Mary watched it go. Her eyes were drawn back downwards again, to the picnic scene on the lawn. Hannah was watching the children, minding them in her absence, as she had promised. Miss May was still unmoving, her body looking even more tense and delicate from this distance. She looked as though she was carved out of something brittle. Poor woman, Mary thought; her fragility had reminded her more than once of Cecilia during her last days. And there was Miss Eleanor, scribbling away as usual. A kind woman, Mary thought, but almost too efficient, too virtuous in her caring. One with a secret, though. Of that she was sure.
The kettle suddenly whistled in the background and Mary turned to go back inside. Two more days of this, and then back to Holywood.
She’d be glad to be home.
Richard had had enough of everyone. He knew he’d been unwise to bow to May’s insistence that her sisters come and visit, but she had given him no peace. Her normally gentle nature had changed recently: she seemed to become pettish, almost childlike, if she thought he was about to deny her anything. He knew she was conscious of him watching her. He couldn’t help it. Her absences from him, from their life together, were becoming more and more frequent. Every time it happened, she seemed to move further away from him: it was as though something was drawing her away from all that was solid and earthy, and both of them were powerless to stop it.
He had thought she would come back to him, after the day he’d found her standing in her nightgown, among the laurel trees. He had been joyful then, filled with hope that he could give her another child, that he could put back together the pieces of her life which had shattered that afternoon beside the lake-boat. It had not happened. He felt suddenly old, too old.
He counted the minutes until everyone would be gone. He wanted his wife and his home back to himself, so that he could watch her, cherish her, protect her.
I must finish for now. I shall be home to you soon. I have had much time for reflection here, despite the activities of my nieces and nephews, and my growing concern for May.
My thoughts keep going back to the first day we met, almost five years ago now. I can still see the hard, narrow beds in the nurses’ home right next to each other. I remember that I recognized your accent at once, caught the fleeting shadow of something familiar.
‘Are you from Belfast?’
I spoke very softly, already intimidated by the authoritarian frostiness of our recent welcome. Sister had just left us in no doubt as to the standards of cleanliness, neatness and godliness that were expected from all of us as a matter of course. We were surrounded by rows and rows of grey-blanketed beds, the white walls bare and cheerless. Some forty girls were already unpacking bags and trunks in a silence which had quickly become uneasy. Do you remember, Stella? Do you remember how you looked across at me and smiled broadly?
‘Bangor,’ you said. ‘And you?’
‘Dublin, and Belfast too.’
We quickly shared all we had in common, words tumbling over each other in their eagerness to get said, to establish a connection, to claim each as the other’s friend at once before anyone else could take either of us away. I felt that I had discovered a small piece of home; your presence was like having a smooth stone or shell in my pocket as a talisman – something which I could touch and hold whenever comfort was needed.
And I remember how much I needed comfort. Each night, before we slept, your warm hand would seek out mine across the divide between our beds. Saying nothing, you would hold my hand in yours until you judged that my nightly storm of silent weeping was abating.
I do not think that I would have survived that first year without you. And I should never wish to have survived the subsequent years without you.
I feel fortunate; more fortunate than either of my sisters. Your heart is mine, mine yours.
Keep it safe, and know that I could never bear to see you suffer.
Acknowledgement
THE AUTHOR GRATEFULLY acknowledges the patience and professionalism of the staff of the Linenhall Library, Belfast, who responded to all requests for information – no matter how complex – with good humour, courtesy and perseverance.
Bibliography
The description of Cecilia McCurry’s attack in the chapter entitled ‘Mary and Cecilia: Spring 1893’ is taken from ‘Belfast Riots 1893: The Catholic Reply’, Linenhall Library, Belfast.
Holywood Chronicles: Volume I and Volume II, Linenhall Library, Belfast
A Record Year in My Existence as Lord Mayor of Belfast, 1898, James Henderson, Belfast, 1899
A Shorter Illustrated History of Ulster, Jonathan Bardon, The Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1996
A History of Ulster, Jonathan Bardon, The Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1992
Belfast: A Century, Jonathan Bardon, The Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1996
Liquorice Allsorts, Muriel Breen, Moytura Press, Dublin, 1993
In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland, Fionnuala O’Connor, The Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1993
The Making of Modern Ireland, 1603–1923, J. C. Beckett, Faber and Faber, London, 1966
Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People, Susan McKay, The Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 2000
The Belfast Anthology, ed. Patricia Craig, The Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1999
The Catholics of Ulster, a History, Marianne Elliott, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, London, 2000
Images of Ireland: South Belfast, George E. Templeton and Norman Weatherall, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1998
Picking Up the Linen Threads: A Study in Industrial Folklore, Betty Messenger, The Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1980 (First published by University of Texas Press, 1978, with the assistance of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation)
Ripples of Dissent: Women’s Stories of Marriage from the 1890s ed. Bridget Bennett, J. M. Dent, London, 1966
Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle, Elaine Showalter, Bloomsbury, London, 1991
A New Day Dawning: A Portrait of Ireland in 1900, Daniel Mulhall, The Collins Press, Cork, 1999
Ulster Since 1800, ed. T. W. Moody and J. C. Beckett, BBC, London, 1957
A Century of Northern Life: The ‘Irish News’ and 100 Years of Ulster History 1890s–1990s, ed. Eamon Phoenix, Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, 1995
The Blessings of a Good Thick Skirt: Women Travellers and Their World, Mary Russell, Collins, London, 1988
Female Activists: Irish Women and Change 1900–1960, ed. Mary Cullen and Mary Luddy, The Woodfield Press, Dublin, 2001
ANOTHER KIND OF LIFE
Catherine Dunne was born in Dublin. Her first novel, In the Beginning, was published in 1997. It became an international bestseller and was shortlisted for the Bancarella, the Italian Booksellers’ Prize. A Name for Himself, which followed in 1998, was shortlisted for the Kerry Ingredients Book of the Year Award. The Walled Garden was published in 2000, to critical and popular acclaim. It was translated into several languages and broadcast on RTE Radio.
She lives in Dublin with her husband and son.
By the same author
IN THE BEGINNING
A NAME FOR HIMSELF
THE WALLED GARDEN
First published 2003 by Picador
First published in paperback 2004 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2012 by Picador
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ISBN 978-1-447-21173-0 EPUB
Copyright © Catherine Dunne 2003
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