The Stone House (7 page)

‘What about the baby?'

‘Maeve, we're not trucking the baby with us. When was the last time you had a day out on your own? Think of yourself, for a change! Frank and the girls will be well able to mind him.'

It was tempting, the thought of a day away, shopping, trying on shoes, getting some new make-up, seeing the latest style.

‘We'll treat ourselves to lunch in Mitchell's. What do you say?'

Maeve could feel the smile spread all over her face as she said, ‘Yes, please.'

Moya looked at the list her mother had left: times for bottles, instructions for changing, teething gel, and what to feed the baby with at lunchtime and at teatime. It looked easy enough. Sean was getting to be such a good baby that he was no bother at all. He had a touch
of a snuffly cold so her mother had expressly forbidden her to take him out for a walk.

‘I'm going out,' called her father, grabbing his car keys. ‘I've got to see Ray O'Carroll about the few outhouses and acres he wants to sell between here and Woodstown.'

‘Daddy, you promised to stay home and help with the baby.'

‘Listen, I won't be too long. I'll have to have coffee and a chat with him. It's a site with good potential and Martin and I feel if we got the right planning permission through we could build about a dozen houses on it.'

‘Can I go with you?' pleaded Romy, getting up to follow him.

‘Not today, pet. You stay home with your sisters and help mind the baby.'

Annoyed, Romy flounced out of the room as Frank Dillon left.

Moya was intent on trying to tidy her bedroom and create a study zone as Sister Breda had advised them, clearing a place for notes and revision and a study planner. Getting rid of the clutter of old shoeboxes and little baskets of old Rimmel and Revlon and 17 make-up, and the collection of stuffed dolls and teddies she had grown out of, would certainly help create a bit more space. Romy could choose from them as she was into that sort of stuff now. First she'd dust them off and clean them up so they'd look more appealing to her younger sister.

Kate interrupted her an hour later, calling her to
come downstairs to the kitchen quick. ‘Wait till you see what Romy's done.'

The two sisters stood in utter disbelief at the kitchen door as they surveyed the mess and the crestfallen expression on their dog Lucky's face.

‘Christ Almighty, what have you done?' roared Moya, taking in the damage, the wet floor, the spilt shampoo and soaked towels and the clumps of wet dog hair scattered everywhere.

‘His hair had got too long!' she argued. ‘Mammy wouldn't bring him to Monica to get cut because she was too tired and too busy so I decided—'

‘To do it yourself,' Kate and Moya said in unison.

‘Yes,' she admitted. ‘But he kept moving and trying to get away from me. He has far too much hair.'

Not any more, thought Moya. The poor dog looked like he'd been attacked by some mad thing, with hair and fur missing all over the place, a large bald patch on one side and one leg almost devoid of hair. His face looked lopsided, which gave him a totally different expression.

‘Poor Lucky,' said Kate, running to hug him and almost slipping on the floor.

‘You have the dog and the place destroyed,' threatened Moya. ‘Just wait till Mammy and Daddy get back and see what you've done. You'll be in right trouble.'

‘I was bored,' she muttered. ‘I had to do something.'

‘Well then, you won't be so bored as you'll have to get the mop and the big brush, and the brush and pan and give us a hand with cleaning this place up, and taking up all the flipping dog hair.'

It took three-quarters of an hour to restore the
kitchen to a reasonable state, Moya hiding away her mother's large kitchen scissors.

‘I'm starving,' murmured an unrepentant Romy, slouching onto a kitchen chair. Moya put on some tinned tomato soup and toast for them, realizing the time and that the baby was due his lunch more than an hour ago. She didn't want him sleeping all afternoon so she decided it was better to wake him.

The moment she reached the top of the stairs, she sensed it. Something was wrong. The fraction of a second it took to cross the doorway and see the small still figure in the cot, she knew. The memory of it would stay with her for ever.

She lifted him up immediately and tried to rouse him, shaking him, listening to his chest but knowing by the cold touch of his skin and the obstinately closed eyes and calm expression on his face that her small brother had stopped breathing.

She screamed and screamed for Kate and her sister galloped up the stairs to help her. All three of them were screaming and shouting at each other, panicked, disbelieving, useless in their attempts to revive him as his heart had stopped beating.

Kate ran and phoned for the ambulance and for Dr Deegan. Moya, shocked, sat holding him in her lap till they came, praying that they could somehow resuscitate him.

The family doctor gently took Sean and laid him on the bed to examine him.

‘It's nobody's fault,' he assured her. ‘It's what we call a cot death. He must have died a few hours ago. There's no explanation or reason for it. Babies sometimes fall
asleep and forget to breathe or wake up. There's nothing you or anyone could have done.'

It didn't matter what the doctor said. Moya had no doubt in her mind that in some way she was partly responsible for what happened. If she hadn't been distracted, tidying her room, dealing with Romy, her little brother might still be alive.

Mrs Costigan came across and brought them over to her house while Uncle Joe and Dr Deegan waited to tell the news to their parents.

Sometimes Moya found it hard to remember the church and the funeral and all the cards and flowers from the people of Rossmore, and their family friends and her father's business acquaintances and all the girls in school, the walking in the gusting wind afterwards to the place where they buried baby Sean aged only nine months and eleven days and the people back in their house afterwards drinking wine and whiskey and saying what a good baby he'd been.

The impact of their small brother's life and death was immeasurable, for none of them could or would ever forget him. Their mother had cried and cried, a torrent of tears, eyes swollen in her puffed face until her eyes were so dry and red and sore, they could produce no more tears. She stayed in bed, lost in her misery, often forgetting to get dressed or to wash her hair. For months she took tablets to make her sleep and then tablets to make her wake up, Aunt Vonnie the only one who could seem to reach her.

Moya still blamed herself. She was seventeen, the eldest, and had been in charge; over and over again she
repeated the pattern of that day once her mother had left the house – her father's going off on business, her attempts to follow what Sister Breda had suggested, and Romy's crazy attempt to cut the dog's hair.

‘I shouldn't have left him,' was her mother's constant refrain as she pretended that Moya had done nothing wrong, saying only, ‘We have to accept it was God's will.'

Maeve Dillon found some consolation in prayer and mass-going and attending novenas and prayer meetings.

Kate said that God was a bastard and were there not enough old people dying in the world and starving children in Ethiopia and round the world to do him without taking little Sean?

At night lying in their beds they couldn't help but overhear their father pleading with their mother to come and lie with him and give him another child, but Maeve Dillon firmly closed the door on him. Months later she moved into Sean's old room, leaving their father to sleep in the big bed on his own.

Their father was lost and lonesome, and soon reverted to his old ways, staying out late, going to meetings arranged in local bars and pubs and hotels and coming home late smelling of drink. Moya hated it when he began to cry and talk of ‘the little fella' and what might have been.

‘You know you still have us, Daddy,' she'd gently try to remind him as she made him tea and scrambled eggs on toast.

‘Moya girl, you'd not understand what it feels like for a man to lose his son,' was all he'd say, staring into the bottom of the blue and white mug. Moya pitied
him. Witnessing his raging grief, she felt that she was partly to blame for what had happened and the awful sadness that Sean's death had caused.

THE SUMMER OF
the wasps was one all of them would remember. Instead of their parents coming together in their grief and sorrow, a gaping void of anger, blame and coldness had grown between them as Maeve and Frank Dillon went through the day-to-day small family rituals unable to comfort or be kind to each other.

Moya distanced herself, as she studied for her Leaving Certificate, closing her bedroom door as she focused on French and English and Art, losing herself in the works of the Renaissance artists, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello. Kate knew that Moya still blamed herself for what had happened, that no matter what anyone had said, she still considered herself a part of the domino-like chain of awful events that resulted in her small brother's death.

Her mother visited Dr Deegan every few weeks and was on small yellow pills that calmed her and helped her to sleep and bury the rage that still engulfed her from time to time. Aunt Vonnie patiently listened to her talk and encouraged her to go for walks and drives
and get some fresh air as she began to take tentative steps back to normal life. Their father, withdrawing from family life, lost himself in projects, developing the Old Mill, putting in a tender to bid for building a new area health clinic, and investing in a raft of businesses, including shares in a racehorse.

‘He's gambling and drinking and never home,' their mother complained. ‘He won't even sit in a room and talk to me.'

Kate sensed her father's fear that, if he did sit down to talk about little Sean and how he felt, like a tall tree he might topple over and end up on the same yellow pills from Dr Deegan that her mother was on.

‘Men always feel they have to be strong, and bottle things up,' Aunt Vonnie said, shaking her head. ‘It does them no bloody good, but they do it anyway. Joe's the exact same!'

July was sweltering hot. Romy, wanting to stay out till midnight and hang around the town like a stray, was packed off to Connemara to Irish college with three friends.

‘It's not fair,' she'd complained. ‘My Irish is crap and I won't be able to speak to anyone for nearly a month.'

‘That's why you're going,' insisted Maeve, as she packed Romy's underwear and spare jeans and a rain jacket into the navy suitcase. ‘Living and talking constantly with the other students and going to the classes is bound to improve it. Besides, you'll enjoy yourself.'

‘You'll have a great time,' promised Kate. ‘I loved the Gaeltacht and the ceilis at night are great crack!'

‘And good kissing practice,' confided Moya. ‘That's where I met my first boyfriend.'

‘I suppose,' agreed Romy. ‘Anyways it'd be good to get away from this morgue of a place.'

‘Don't let Mammy and Daddy hear you say that!'

‘Why not? It's the truth!'

The South-East basked in glorious summer weather. Rossmore's holiday cottages and hotels were packed with visitors, the beach and cove crowded with families in swimsuits and shorts sunbathing and jumping in the sea. Most mornings Maeve Dillon walked down to the church to ten o'clock mass, going into the graveyard to say prayers on her way back. It was the routine of some of the elderly and the widows of the parish. Kate wondered why her mother had opted to join them. At home, she donned a sloppy T-shirt and a pair of beige trousers and spent the day in the garden, weeding, tidying, planting and pruning. The garden was a myriad colours and shapes, climbing full-headed roses tumbling from the walls as delphiniums and lupins burst from the flowerbeds. She broke for lunch, which was salad and brown bread served on the round wrought-iron table on the patio, even for visitors. Kate helped by mowing the lawn and at night hosing the garden and watering the parched plants. Moya refused to get her fingers and nails dirty with garden work.

John Joe, the local handyman had been down to the house removing a wasps' nest from the overhead beam at the corner of the french windows, and had spotted another one hanging from the eaves above Romy's window.

‘'Tis the heat, Mrs Dillon, has brought them all out this year. I've never seen the like of it. McHugh's discovered one in an air vent for the pub and sent one of the young barmen up on the ladder to try to do it. Drove the wasps crazy! And Cyril McHugh had to stand two rounds of free drinks for the customers after the swarm invaded the place. There was even one under the deck in the tennis club. They're bloody everywhere!'

‘Well you just get rid of it safely, John-Joe, before my daughter comes back,' she instructed.

As the heatwave continued Kate swam and played tennis in the evenings with a few school friends. As often as she could she went sailing with Uncle Joe and the boys, who kept a small yacht moored off the pier. Lying in the grass half dozing and reading she watched lazily as her mother set to with the secateurs on an overgrown pyracantha bush in the corner of the garden, clearing away branches, and the undergrowth. Moya, spreadeagled, lay in the full sun in a tiny bikini trying to tan herself.

She remembered the heat and the haze and her mother's sudden ‘
Oh
!' of surprise as the paper-like rugby ball shape tumbled from a spiky overhead branch, floating for a second before splitting and shattering in the air, the wasps flying in every direction, falling on her mother's hair and head and face and covering her bare arms as she frantically tried to brush them off her. Moya jumped up screaming, wrapping the towel she was lying on around herself as Kate flayed uselessly at the wasps with the cushion she'd been sitting on, her mother screaming trying to escape them.