The Stone House (21 page)

Relieved, she had believed him, deciding they loved each other too much to be unfaithful. However, she wasn't stupid and now began to join him for dinners with clients, attend functions with the senior partners and their wives, and host drinks and small dinner parties in their home.

She missed working, and once Fiona started school and Gavin was able to go to playgroup was thrilled to get a part-time job in a small local gallery, the Martello. They specialized in limited edition prints and etchings and two or three times a year held an exhibition. Moya took on the task of organizing these events and built up a collectors list to target for future sales.

Sylvia Toner, the owner, had a good eye and instinct
for what would work or not work, and the two of them worked well together, with Sylvia saying little if Moya had to make the odd dash to the school or the doctor.

‘Kids are kids,' she'd sigh, looking at a photo of her own brood of four when they were younger.

Fiona was making her first Holy Communion the year Patrick told her of the job offer in the London office.

‘It's too good an opportunity to refuse.'

‘But what about the kids, and school?'

‘Moya, they've got great schools over there. Fiona and Gavin will love it. We'll be able to get a big house, make money, invest! It's just the opportunity that I've been waiting for.'

She could see the excitement in his face, the challenge, the hope of better times. Putting aside her own reservations she flung her arms around his neck, congratulating him, breaking open the bottle of champagne she stored in the fridge for such an occasion.

‘London's a big city, way bigger than Dublin,' cautioned Sylvia. ‘Are you sure it's the right move?'

‘It's the right move for Patrick.'

‘But all your family are in Ireland.'

‘Except for Romy, and God knows where she is!'

‘That's what I mean.'

‘Friends and family can visit. It's not the end of the world! We'll be back and forth the whole time and we've decided to rent out the house for a year at least to see how things go.'

‘What about work?'

She shrugged. ‘I haven't thought that far ahead, Sylvia, to be honest.'

‘Well I have,' Sylvia said, opening the drawer in her desk, ‘and I've prepared a reference for you, a recommendation as such. You know I worked in London for ten years. Maybe it will count for something.'

Looking at Sylvia with her blond hair trailing all over the place, her plump wrists and fingers covered in silver jewellery commissioned from impoverished art students and the striking array of canvases and work around the small gallery, Moya knew she would really miss the place.

The company had paid their relocation costs, removals, air fares, and first three months' rent as they packed up and moved across the water to a new life in London. The children had acted up terribly, from the minute they arrived in St Albans. They missed going out to play and Moya found the neighbours, although welcoming, more reserved than she'd expected. Fiona and Gavin watched out of the huge living-room window at the empty green and open space devoid of children.

‘I want to go back home and play with Aoife and Rachel and Lucy,' sobbed Fiona, missing her best friends from St Brigid's School. Moya patiently tried to explain to her that in the new school in St Albans she would soon make new friends.

‘You'll still see Aoife and Rachel and Lu when we go home on holidays.'

‘But I want to see them now!' her eight-year-old had bawled, inconsolable.

Gavin's teacher had called her in to say she was worried about him and that he was withdrawn and somewhat hostile to the other children in his class.

‘Hostile?' she'd screamed at Patrick when he'd come home on the train from work. She was exhausted trying to unpack and sort out the red-bricked four-bedroomed house they'd rented, with an option to buy, trying to make it homely and put away the chintz and swagged curtains from the previous owners and paint the walls in colours to her taste.

Living far from the city centre, she rarely went into London to join Patrick and his new colleagues after work, for the kids were too unsettled to be left with a variety of strange babysitters.

Her mother and father made the effort to come over to London for a long weekend, Patrick putting on the charm and booking theatre tickets for the four of them to go to
The Phantom of the Opera
one night, and dinner in the Savoy another. Fiona and Gavin were so overjoyed to see their grandparents, they made no fuss about being left with Amy, one of their neighbour's eighteen-year-old daughters.

‘Granny, promise you'll wake us up and tell us all about it the minute you come in,' insisted Fiona, sitting on the couch in her pink kitten pyjamas and slippers.

‘I promise, pet,' said Maeve Dillon, wishing the children had more friends to play with like at home.

Moya wept the day she drove them back to Heathrow.

‘Are you sure you're all right, Moya girl?' her father asked concerned, his face close to her, anxious as he hugged her goodbye.

Moya blinked back the tears, homesick as the shamrock-painted plane took them away from her.

Six weeks later she discovered she was pregnant again. Disbelieving, she asked the doctor in the clinic to recheck the results. Patrick was so delighted with the news he'd taken her to the Ivy to celebrate.

This time she was tired, irritable, not able to sleep. Her pleas to return to Dublin for the birth were ignored.

‘Are you mad? I can't take time off work,' argued Patrick. ‘And how would I get to Dublin in time if I was stuck in the London office? It makes no sense, Moya!'

She knew it made absolutely no sense but it was just pure animal instinct that made her want to be home.

Liz and Ruth, two English friends, reassured her that her English hospital care would be second to none and she had nothing to worry about. Her obstetrician, a serious fifty-year-old, also did his best to allay her worries.

‘Mrs Redmond, you have had two previous deliveries that were perfectly normal, and there is nothing to indicate any difference this time. Relax and enjoy the next few weeks,' he advised, patting her bump.

She had tried to relax, buying a pile of Jilly Cooper and Maeve Binchy books to read, and a tape of soothing sea sounds to listen to at night. When she was shopping in her local Sainsbury's, much to her embarrassment her waters had burst: the baby was not due for another four weeks.

Patrick had come immediately from the office and held her hand as their second son was delivered: Daniel Patrick, a small four-pound-two-ounce baby with a pinched face, who was whisked off to the confines of an incubator on the fourth floor.

‘He's so small,' she kept saying, beside herself with worry.

‘He'll grow,' promised Patrick, massaging her shoulders as she sat in the high hospital bed. ‘You'll see he'll be taller than me, yet.'

Late at night, alone in the fluorescent-lit nursery staring into the Perspex glass cot, Moya, afraid, knew who he reminded her of. It was Sean, her little brother.

COMING HOME FROM
St Thomas's Hospital without her baby felt strange and unnatural, for Daniel was still in an incubator in unit 5, the premature baby unit. Moya went back and forth to the hospital twice a day to feed him, her tiny son reminding her of a small battered bird in the glass cage, eyes shut firmly against the world. Patrick had to return to the office and she was hugely relieved when her mother arrived over from Ireland immediately to help with the children.

‘Mammy, I don't know what I'll do if anything happens to him.' Her mother held her as Moya broke down and wept for her newborn son.

‘Hush, pet, the doctor says he's a strong little fellow.'

If standing in the special care baby unit Maeve Dillon noticed any familiarity between her grandson and her own deceased child she made absolutely no mention of it.

Fiona and Gavin were thrilled to have their granny in residence and pestered her to tell them stories and do things with them. She brought them to Randall's
Lane to collect conkers and to the park to feed the ducks and play on the swings, making Rice Krispie buns and teacakes with them when they got home. Covered in chocolate and cake mix they declared her ‘the best granny in the world'.

In between hospital visits her mother made Moya rest and sleep and try and get her energy back.

‘Danny will be home any day now, Moya,' she reminded her. ‘And if you don't rest and sleep you'll be too exhausted to cope with him.'

After an almost endless three weeks, baby Danny was declared fit enough to be brought home, Moya almost collapsing with relief as they got into Patrick's new silver Mercedes and drove home to the house in Randall Crescent.

The children had done drawings and put up balloons to welcome their new brother home, and Patrick insisted on opening some champagne.

‘We did it for the other two, and God knows this little guy deserves it just as much!'

Sipping the sparkling champagne, Moya tried to banish her concerns for her new son as she held him in her arms.

Danny was a tetchy baby and a poor feeder. Moya had to devote hours every day to looking after him, not sure what she'd have done if her mother hadn't insisted on staying on for a few more weeks to help out.

‘Mammy, are you sure you don't mind staying on?'

Maeve Dillon looked at Moya's exhausted face and scrawny shoulders, and her two grandchildren who
were acting up and a bit jealous now that their little brother had finally appeared home, and knew exactly where she was needed.

‘Your father will manage fine on his own,' she laughed. ‘You know how he likes any excuse to go and have a pint and eat in McHugh's or the Harbour Inn, and Vonnie and Joe will invite him over on Sunday for lunch and keep an eye on him.'

Patrick, once the baby was home, seemed to be able to magically forget that their second son was smaller and weaker than their other two had been.

‘For God's sake, Moya, leave him be. He'll be fine.'

Moya understood her mother's fierce devotion and care of Sean for those nine months of his life, now that her own instincts were driving her to protect and constantly watch her own small son.

Maeve Dillon bit her tongue and held her peace as her son-in-law ignored the family crisis and refused to even do so much as lift a cup, prepare a meal or bath one of the children, complaining only of himself and how much work he had to do.

‘Moya, you must say it to him,' she urged, aware of the cracks in her daughter's marriage. ‘You are a family and these are his children.'

‘Leave it, Mammy. Patrick works very hard to support us all. The house and the children are my responsibility.'

Call her old-fashioned, but Maeve Dillon didn't agree. She and Frank may have had their fair share of ups and downs over the years but she had always felt that somehow they were a team. She stayed on one more week and then, looking at her small grandson fed
and content dozing in his cot, she realized that the time had come for her to go home.

‘Danny will be fine,' she assured Moya, as she packed her bags. ‘He's starting to thrive, you can see it in his face, and didn't the nurse tell you he's put on almost half a pound since her last visit.'

‘I know, Mammy. I know but I can't help myself.'

Maeve Dillon suspected that her daughter had a picture in her head from years ago that would not be shaken, a picture that she herself still replayed again and again. ‘Moya,' she said gently. ‘Remember, he's not Sean!'

Moya watched Danny all the time, when he was awake, when he slept. A baby alarm was fitted beside his cot, even though he slept in the room with Patrick and herself. ‘Christ, how am I meant to get a good night's sleep and do a day's work!' he complained, eventually moving into the spare room.

Fiona and Gavin were confused that she was so devoted to their small brother and so reluctant to leave him.

‘Mum, you promised you'd come and watch me swimming!' complained Fiona. ‘Why can't Daddy mind Danny for the afternoon?'

‘Listen, pet, Daddy will go with you today and I'll see you the next time, I promise.'

As the time went on she couldn't bring herself to do anything, her life revolving solely around the baby and his needs.

‘One of my clients is sponsoring a big horse race in Paris,' Patrick announced, flinging his briefcase on the
couch and hugging her. ‘All expenses paid by the company. Junior partners and their wives invited along for a luxury weekend.'

Moya could sense the panicky feeling deep in her stomach.

‘You'll have to tell them I can't go,' she said simply.

‘Why? We can get someone to mind the kids. It's only a bloody weekend, Moya. Just think – all those designer shops and you with a Visa card to hand, not to mention rambling around the Louvre.'

‘Patrick, I'm sorry. I can't leave Danny, you know that!'

‘He's a baby, he'll be fine at home with his sister and brother. I'm sure we can get a babysitter. The kids like Amy, or even if you feel she can't manage, we'll get one of those nanny services. Tony and Beth use them all the time for the twins.'

‘Patrick, I'm not going!' she insisted. ‘You go and enjoy yourself. I'll stay home with the kids.'

‘I don't fucking want you to stay home,' he shouted, like an irate schoolboy. ‘I want you to fucking come with me!'

‘I can't,' she said, closing the conversation, sending her handsome charming husband to Paris, on his own.

When he returned from Longchamps, Moya knew something between them had changed. Patrick was different. It was barely perceptible, for her husband was as charming and witty and generous as usual, and his bad mood lifted as he presented her with Yves Saint-Laurent perfume, a gold bangle, and a book about Monet's garden. There was a cute ‘Hello Kitty' backpack
for Fiona, as well as a GI Joe and a rugby shirt for Gavin and an expensive Baby Mini outfit for Danny and a complete set of Babar the elephant books for the family. Gifts that proclaimed what a wonderful husband and father he was, and helped disguise the guilt she saw reflected in his eyes.