‘Here comes
the bus,’ Martha said, and Sarah got to her feet with relief.
‘S
ix days and five nights,’ Helen said. ‘We’re leaving the day before Christmas Eve and coming home on the twenty-eighth. We’re flying to Glasgow and picking up a car there.’
‘And the house is – where did you say?’
‘Troon, a small town just a few miles away.’
‘And Alice will be there, with her friend.’
Her friend. ‘Yes, they’re getting the train up from Cardiff and meeting us at the airport. So what do you think? Will you join us?’
Their second Christmas without Helen’s father, and Frank adamant that her mother had to accompany them to Scotland, and Helen knowing he was right. But far from being grateful for having been included in their plans, her mother seemed dubious about joining them.
‘You wouldn’t want me along, cramping your style.’
Helen tamped down a flick of irritation. ‘What style?’ she asked. ‘It’s just a few days away, and it happens to be over Christmas, that’s all. You’d be cramping nothing – and you’d be miserable here on your own.’
Her mother ran a finger along a fold line in the immaculate linen tablecloth that was sent to the dry cleaners once a week, whether it needed it or not. Helen felt like shaking her. If she was waiting to be told they really would love if she came, she was in for a long wait.
‘Is there
central heating?’
Helen had no idea. ‘Of course there is. Frank would have checked all that out.’
‘Because I’m sure it would be colder than here.’
‘Don’t worry about that.’
Jesus
, you’d think they were going to Outer Mongolia instead of a few days in bloody Scotland, an hour away on a plane. ‘Frank is booking the flights tomorrow, so you need to make up your mind.’
‘Well … if you’re sure I wouldn’t be in the way.’
Helen got to her feet: duty done. ‘I’m sure,’ she said, pulling on her coat. ‘We’ll book you in so.’
‘Let me know what it costs. I’ll pay my own way.’
‘I know you will.’ She fished her car keys from her bag.
‘And I’d like to take you all out to dinner on Christmas Day. My treat.’
‘Fine. That’d be nice.’ Let her foot the bill for dinner for six if it kept her happy. ‘Well, I’ll be off then.’
Her mother didn’t move. ‘Helen,’ she said, ‘wait for a minute. Can you?’
Helen, surprised, looked back.
Her mother’s face gave nothing away. ‘Are you in a rush?’
‘Not really.’ What now? Helen lowered herself into the seat she’d just vacated. ‘Was there something else?’
Her mother didn’t respond right away. Her hands were clasped loosely on the tablecloth, the nails painted the same shell pink as ever, defying the swollen finger joints, the puckered skin crisscrossed with dark purple veins on the backs of her hands. Eighty-four since May.
‘Can I tell you something?’ she asked finally, her eyes meeting Helen’s across the table. ‘Something I think … needs to be explained.’
She seemed nervous. Nothing overt; a pinching around the mouth, a brittleness to the words. Helen lowered her bag to the floor. ‘What is it?’
Her mother moistened
her lips, the fingers of her topmost hand tapping softly onto the back of the other. ‘Your father and I were married for nine years before you came along,’ she began.
‘I know that.’
She raised a hand slightly, let it drop again. ‘Just let me … we’d given up expecting babies, and then you came along … and when you were born there were complications … I was very sick, I nearly died.’ Tap, tap, tap, went her fingers. ‘The priest anointed me.’
Helen hadn’t known that. She remained silent, waiting for whatever was to come.
Her mother pressed her lips together, her tapping fingers finding and twirling the thin gold bands of her wedding and engagement rings, round and round they went; joints too swollen, surely, for them to come off easily now.
‘And then they told us … that there would be no more children. They … they removed my womb, they said they had to—’
She broke off, mouth squeezed shut again. Helen sat unmoving.
‘And … your father was so disappointed, he always wanted a son, and I’d hoped so much—’ She broke off, drew in a steadying breath, gaze dropping to study her hands.
Helen watched dispassionately. She’d disappointed them by being a girl. Her only crime, something beyond her control.
‘You see,’ her mother went on, raising her eyes again to find Helen’s, ‘there was another baby.’
The words didn’t register right away. Helen looked at her blankly for several seconds.
‘You were a twin. You had a brother, but …’ She trailed off, shook her head slowly, lips trembling. She fished a handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose.
Helen tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Two babies. There had been two babies, and the wrong one had survived – that was what she was being told, wasn’t it? They’d wanted the boy and they’d got the girl.
As if she was reading
her mind, her mother shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that we weren’t grateful to have you – you mustn’t think that. It was just … difficult to bear the other loss … and the thought that our chance was gone to have any more.’
Helen had had a brother who hadn’t lived. Her mother had lost a baby and her womb all at once. No more children, Helen had been their lot. And her father had wanted a boy.
‘I know we were never … demonstrative,’ her mother said, eyes rimmed with red, nose pink-tipped. ‘We were … distant. I know that. It wasn’t deliberate, it was just … we were … you were … a reminder.’
And there it was. Every time her parents had looked at her they’d seen the ghost of her dead twin. There it was, the explanation she’d needed all her life.
And curiously, despite the terrible unfairness of her having been denied their affection, there was a measure of satisfaction in knowing why. There was even, she realised, some sympathy for their plight.
‘Helen, I’m sorry,’ her mother said brokenly. ‘I know it wasn’t easy for you. I wouldn’t blame you if you were angry.’
She wasn’t angry. She could have been: she had every right. But they hadn’t done it deliberately, she recognised the truth of that. They weren’t to blame. Nobody was to blame. She felt no anger.
‘Why did you never tell me this?’
Her mother shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. It wasn’t … the done thing.’
No, not the done thing in the forties, or even the fifties or the sixties. It wasn’t until the nineties, not until she was an old woman, that she’d found a way to talk to her forty-nine-year-old daughter.
It didn’t fix things between them; it was too late for happy-ever-afters in that respect. They’d still been snobs who’d turned their noses up at Helen’s choice of husband. But an explanation had been offered. Knowledge had been shared, and that was something.
She got to her feet for a second time. She looked down at her mother.
‘Thank you
for telling me,’ she said. ‘Don’t get up, I’ll see myself out. I’ll let you know when the flights are booked.’
Her mother nodded. ‘Thank you … for inviting me.’
She looked small, her face pinched and reddened, her foundation blotchy beneath her eyes. The woman who’d given birth to Helen, who’d made sure, despite her torn feelings, that she was fed and warm and healthy. Who’d pulled a fine-tooth comb through her hair.
‘You’re welcome.’ Helen pulled her car keys from her bag and left the room.
A twin brother, she thought, striding down the path, pulling open the wrought-iron gate. Imagine if he’d lived. Imagine how completely different her life might have been.
She walked through the gate, swinging it closed behind her. She turned left and collided with a man walking past. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, stepping sideways out of his path and moving towards her car.
‘Might have known,’ he said.
She stopped, looked back. ‘Bloody hell.’
He looked much the same as the last time they’d met, nine or ten months ago now. She remembered their shaky walk along the hospital corridor, the hyacinths that had been delivered after she’d got home.
‘Thank you for the flowers,’ she said, ‘when I was sick. They were a surprise.’
The blue bowl they’d come in sat now on the kitchen worktop, filled with a clutter of biros, Sellotape, unmarked postage stamps teased from envelopes, rubber bands, paper clips. ‘Keep the bulbs,’ Frank had told her, ‘they’ll come again,’ but she hadn’t had the patience.
‘Keeping well?’ Breen asked. A heavy navy coat, a grey scarf wound around his neck. A couple of books tucked under his arm. ‘No more hospital visits?’
‘No, I’m fine … You? How are things?’
He moved his head in a gesture that could have meant anything.
‘You live around here?’ She’d never seen him in this neighbourhood.
‘Not really, just walking.’
She nodded, turned
her car key in her hand. ‘Well …’
‘You have time for a coffee?’
The invitation was totally unexpected. Her and Breen having coffee. Her and Breen doing anything together that wasn’t work-related.
He fixed her with a look she remembered. ‘O’Dowd,’ he said, ‘it was a cup of coffee I was offering, not a marriage proposal. Don’t worry about it.’ He turned to go.
‘I’d prefer a brandy,’ she said, ‘if it’s all the same.’
Where was the harm? Let him buy her a drink, after all the pieces she’d written for him over the years. She could manage half an hour in his company – and after the conversation she’d just had, she could use a stiff drink.
She opened the car. ‘Hop in, there’s a place around the corner. I’m going that way.’
As long as he was paying, they’d check out the new boutique hotel on the sea front, opened recently enough for Helen never to have been inside. About two minutes’ drive away, which was better than the ten minutes it would have taken them to walk there.
As he sat in beside her, Helen smelt his aftershave, or cologne, or whatever it was. A marine tang about it, not unpleasant. The wife, she supposed, every Christmas.
‘So,’ she said, pulling away, ‘you miss the newspaper?’
‘I do. I enjoyed it.’
She glanced at him, but his expression told her nothing.
‘You were good,’ she told him, ‘much as I hate to admit it. And so was I – so
am
I – much as you never admitted it.’
He smiled then, but made no response. She wondered why he’d asked her to join him; maybe he was already regretting it.
The silence lasted until she parked outside the hotel. ‘This OK?’
‘Fine. You’ve been here before?’
‘No, it’s not been open long … My mother had lunch with a friend. You?’
He shook his
head. She wondered if he ever met a friend for lunch. She knew so little about him. They walked towards the entrance, her heels clacking over the paving stones. What was she doing, having brandy in the middle of the afternoon with Breen, of all people? He held open the door and she walked through, taking in the thick dark green carpets, the cream walls, the pleasant warmth after the outdoor chill.
In the bar she saw a scatter of armchairs and couches in various configurations of burgundy and cream, and heard jazz playing softly through discreet speakers. A fireplace opposite the counter held a little heap of coals that glowed red.
There were just three other occupants. Two foreign-looking men in suits sat side by side on a couch that was set into the wide bay window, both tapping at laptops, teapot and assembled crockery on the low table before them. At the far end of the room a younger man read a newspaper.
‘Have a seat.’ Breen turned towards the counter and Helen chose a pair of armchairs close to the fireplace, slipping out of her coat before sinking down, deciding to enjoy the decadence of brandy and jazz by a fire in the middle of a chilly October afternoon. Not Frank’s scene at all; perfectly willing as he was to spend money on her, this padded luxury would make him uncomfortable.
Breen returned with two balloon glasses. ‘Cheers,’ he said, handing her one. No mixer: he’d taken her, rightly, for someone who drank it neat.
‘
Sláinte
.’
She sipped the brandy, welcoming the golden warmth of it, watching as he set his books on the floor between them before taking off his scarf and coat and laying them over the arm of his chair. He wore a charcoal grey suit with a white shirt beneath. She couldn’t picture him in anything other than a suit. He wore them well.
He sat, cradling the
bowl of his glass. When he made no effort to speak, she cast about for a topic, and found it. ‘I’m off to Scotland for Christmas,’ she told him. ‘Family gathering.’
He tipped his hands, swirling the brandy. ‘You have people over there?’
‘Alice, my daughter. She lives in Cardiff now. We’re meeting up in Scotland.’
‘Alice, yes.’
Silence. She tried again. ‘That was my mother’s house,’ she said, ‘where I met you.’
‘You grew up there?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your father?’
She wondered if he’d recognise the name if she told him. ‘Died last year.’
‘I’m sorry.’
More silence. Helen leant back and looked at the fire, out of inspiration.
‘Nice here,’ he said. ‘The hotel, I mean.’
‘Lovely.’
She drank again, feeling the alcohol burning its way down. He still hadn’t touched his, just held the glass in his cupped hands. At this rate she’d be finished before he started.
‘O’Dowd,’ he said then, ‘can I tell you something?’
For the second time since she’d met him she was thrown. It didn’t sound like he was going to share his plans for Christmas. ‘What kind of something?’
He gave a short puff of laughter, gone as quickly as it had come. ‘My wife—’ He stopped, and raised the glass finally to his lips.
Helen stiffened. His
wife?
Was Breen about to get personal? Was that what they were doing here? Was she about to get the ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’ line? She’d had more than enough revelations for one day. She waited in dread for him to continue, the brandy he’d bought her forcing her to stay and listen.
He lowered his
glass – half-empty suddenly. ‘My wife is bi-polar,’ he said, fixing Helen with a stare so intense she had no choice but to meet it. ‘She was diagnosed nearly thirty years ago, at the age of thirty-three.’