All the Days of Our Lives (47 page)

He was bigger than she remembered, more imposing. As soon as he entered the room he was noticeable, hurrying a little, his brown coat swinging open, hat perched slightly at an angle on his head, and a scarf in brown-and-faun checks hanging over his lapels. He saw her and seemed to hesitate for a second, his confidence faltering. He gave a slight smile and came towards her, pulling off his own gloves, large and black, and holding out his hand. Katie stood up, her hammering heart making her breathless, and felt her hand gripped in his.

‘Well, hello again, Katie,’ he said. She could hear the misgiving in his voice. Did he wish now that he hadn’t said he would come, she wondered painfully? But he looked closely at her – hungrily almost, did she imagine that? – as she returned his greeting and they released hands and both sat down.

The waitress whom Katie had waved away before approached immediately and they both ordered coffee.

‘Anything to eat, Katie?’ Michel O’Neill asked. He had a soft, well-spoken voice.

‘No – thank you.’ She felt as if she might never eat again at that minute.

There was a moment of silence, during which they eyed each other and she tried to build up her inner defences against him. He was looking at her, curious, as if trying to work something out, and she was examining him. Moved, she saw hints of her son in the shape of his brows, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners and the curling black hair, even though the hair of the man in front of her was halfway to grey. It was astonishing, his physical reality, here in front of her. And he looked nervous, vulnerable. For a moment a lump came up in her throat, quite unexpectedly. She had wanted somehow to keep the upper hand in any conversation. This wasn’t the moment to start blarting all over the table!

‘You must be angry with me,’ he said finally.

This was even more unexpected. The lump grew and her eyes filled, and in desperation she looked down into her lap. It took her a moment to be able to say in a strangled voice, ‘Yes. I s’pose I am.’

There was another interruption while the coffee cups were arranged on the table and Katie managed to gain control of herself. When they were alone again, she said, in a stronger tone, ‘You’d better explain. Start from the beginning and tell me what happened.’

He nodded. ‘I will. Here, let’s have some coffee.’ He leaned forward and poured for them both. Katie grasped the handle of the cup, grateful for its warm contents and for having something to cling to.

Michael O’Neill looked up at her as he sat back. ‘You’re mine all right. I can still see the little one you were once.’

Oh God
, Katie thought as the tears rose in her eyes again. She gripped the cup until she thought she might smash it and swallowed hard.

Perhaps he could see her distress, but he didn’t invade it. He took a sip of coffee, followed by a deep breath, and let out a long sigh of preparation.

‘The long and short of it was, I couldn’t go on living with the woman. Three years, and she’d almost squeezed the life out of me. Do you have any idea?’ he asked hopefully.

Katie nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I do. But . . . why did you marry her?’

He dragged a hand over his eyes for a second. ‘She was a looker. You’ll know that. A real lady – full of charm and good manners. Genteel family, but my God what a snakepit they turned out to be. And she was besotted with me – I was exotic, I suppose. Irish boy over here, trying to make good. We were in love, to be sure, but I think in some way she wanted to spite her family. That’s a powerful combination, Katie. At the time I’d never met anyone quite like her. I was not long over here, and she seemed to represent part of the whole promise of this country. We made a handsome pair – everyone said so. And she seemed eager to do anything for me: even being received into the Church and ready to bring you up as a Catholic. Of course, that did it with her family – they cut her off. Not one of them even came to the wedding, d’you know that?’

Katie shook her head. But she could have guessed it.

‘Well, there was trouble from the start, as you see, but what I hadn’t reckoned with was her – just her. What she was like! I think the rift with her family turned her head a bit. Then having you. She was . . . How can I say it? She became fixed on things – I suppose you’d say obsessed. She wanted to manage every single aspect of my life. She was jealous – of nothing! Before she had you, she took to following me to work, although she must soon have seen that there was nothing to look at when she got there – well, except life in an engineering works! At the same time, though, she had me on a pedestal. She’d call me her angel, her saviour . . . all sorts. That time I was sick – the time I think you’d be remembering – my chest was bad, I was in a state. And she was sweet as pie to me, nursed me with every care.’ He shook his head, fumbling in his breast pocket and offered her cigarettes. ‘Smoke?’

‘No, thanks,’ Katie said, watching him light up. With a deep pang she found that she knew his hands intimately, the shape of them, the shading of dark hairs on the backs of his fingers, hands that she had once, many years ago, seen close up and been held by. The feeling of longing they gave her was so acute that her chest ached. She distracted herself, watching the way his lips moved round the tip of the cigarette. He blew out a mouthful of smoke and went on.

‘The thing was, then, when I was sick, she had me just where she wanted me: in her power. She was truly happy. I heard her singing round the house. I think it would have suited her if I’d been an invalid and she could have had full control over everything.’ He gave a visible shudder. ‘I don’t know – I’m not sure how I can explain it all. How it all added up, so that I couldn’t stand being anywhere near her. It was as if she had her hands round my throat, day and night. I thought when she’d had you she might be better, have someone else to take her mind off it. And she
was
obsessed with you. Any mother would be, you were beautiful.’

Katie flushed with pleasure, hearing the genuine affection in his voice.

‘I could go on trying to explain. There was something
crazed
about her. It wasn’t that she flew into rages or tantrums all that often – it was that quiet, terrible, stifling atmosphere she created.’ Katie was forced to nod in admission. Oh, she knew that all right. ‘I couldn’t stand it, the look she had in her eyes sometimes.’ He drew on the cigarette. ‘Makes me go cold thinking of it, even now. It wasn’t that I was afraid of her harming me – or you. It was something more . . . More about just
being
with her.’

He shifted in his seat to cross one leg over the other and gave a tut of frustration as he looked across at Katie.

‘How d’you talk about the force of another person, the way they can press on you? Do you know, in any way, what I’m talking about?’

‘I lived with her for twenty-one years,’ Katie said, meeting his gaze.

‘And you left to marry?’

Time for truth, no pretence. ‘No. I left because I was having Michael. She refused to have anything further to do with me – or him, it seems.’

Michael O’Neill’s eyebrows lifted. ‘No? Dear God – just like her own mother. Heaven knows what a nest of miserable puritans they were. And the father?’

‘He never married me. He deserted me – just like you.’

She saw him flinch, but the truth could not be denied.

‘Then why . . .’ he asked hesitantly. ‘Why did you call him Michael: my name?’

That was when she lost control. ‘Because . . .’
Because I remembered you, because I wanted you, wanted you to be a good thing in my life . . .

But instead all she managed was to put her hands over her face as her shoulders began shaking with sobs.

‘I can’t make it up to you, I know that,’ he said later, when she was calmer and they were on their third cup of coffee. ‘I can’t change the past. But we can start with something – can’t we?’

Katie stared at him, then nodded. She sat back, feeling tired from all the emotions inside her.

They had talked for a long time, as others around them came and went. He had told her that he had set up home with another woman soon afterwards, in Coventry, and that he had two more children, a son and a daughter.

‘But, did you marry her?’ Katie asked.

‘No – how could I? At first, I didn’t feel I could tell her what the situation was. And then I saw a long line of twisted lies following me throughout my life, if I didn’t own up early on. By then we were ready to get married, if it had been possible. She took it badly at first – you can understand it. But in the end, when I’d tried to get across what Vera was like –
is
like – we had to find our own way. We set up as Mr and Mrs O’Neill . . . and
are
so, except under the law and in the eyes of the Church. She wore a ring, but we’ve never had a ceremony.’

‘So,’ Katie said brutally, for those children had had their father all this time –
her
father, ‘your children are bastards – like mine.’

Michael O’Neill looked shocked, but had to concede that this was the truth. ‘You’re very straight-talking, aren’t you?’

‘I suppose I’ve learned that I might as well be.’ She leaned towards him. ‘Could you not have come – just once? Or got a message to me, let me know somehow that you were alive? All these years . . . And then you turn up out of the blue.’

He looked away for a moment, then back at her. ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t think of it – to start with. But . . .’ He made a helpless gesture with his hands. ‘At first it was too tricky. You were so young: how could I see you without her being there? And then time passes – there’s a distance. It seems better not to disturb things: you, them . . . There’s shame in it – it’s all difficult. Our situation was already so irregular. A clean break seemed the best. I left you alone. I mean, you might have—’

‘Made trouble for you?’

Again he shrugged, uncomfortable. ‘It was a possibility . . . So you leave it, year after year . . .’ He did not meet her eyes.

‘What’re their names?’

‘My, er, wife’s name is Anne. Our son Thomas is twenty-one now and apprenticed. And our girl is nineteen: her name is Josie. She’s soon to marry. That was part of it, I suppose – seeing her now, wondering about you . . .’

Katie digested this, her emotions a swarm of jealousy, anger and curiosity. So she had a half-brother and sister!

‘Will you tell them about me?’ she asked, jutting her chin at him.

‘I might,’ he said cautiously. ‘Only if you’d be wanting me to.’

‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’ She looked sharply at him. ‘There’s nothing very regular in our family, is there? I was brought up by your brother – and you never even knew.’

Michael O’Neill had been utterly shocked to find out that his brother Patrick had played such a major role in Katie’s life. But it was because of Patrick that he had found her. Michael admitted that he and Anne had moved back to Birmingham a few months ago, when he was offered a good job at Wilmot Breeden in Tyseley. They were living off Shaftmoor Lane.

‘I went to Mass – I don’t go regularly, you know. Not communion, of course – I just slip in the back once in a while, and I went that very first Sunday we were here in Birmingham. And who is the Mass being offered up for, but one Patrick O’Neill? Well, granted, we’re not the only O’Neills in the world, and I assumed Patrick must be still with the Fathers in Uganda. It set me thinking about him, though. He was never quite right, you know, my brother. We weren’t close – he was a good few years older than me, but he was a good man, a gentle soul, you’d say. They thought the missions would sort him out. He was packed off there – it seemed the thing to do. But because of the name, I had a little word with the priest, expecting to be told that Patrick O’Neill had been some old local fellow. But the Father was quite expansive – he’d known Patrick for a short time before he died, said he was a good man and an asset to the parish.

‘So then I asked who had requested the Mass for him. “Oh,” says he, “that’ll have been his niece, little Katie. She’s not living in this parish any more, but I gather she was here as a child. She likes to have a Mass said for him in the parish where he passed away. So far as I know, she’s over in St Francis’s parish now, in Handsworth.” Well, it all came as a shock to me. You – him.’ Michael seemed to run out of words, shaking his head. Again Katie found herself watching his hands, the sprinkling of dark hairs on his fingers. The sight made her ache. Patrick’s had been thinner, the skin papery and dry.

‘He was good to me,’ she said, tears filling her eyes again. ‘As far as he could manage.’

Michael looked searchingly at her. ‘Was he . . . all right? In himself?’

She shook her head. ‘Mom tried to hide it – to hide
him
. He was, well, up and down in himself. I didn’t understand when I was small. Well, I’m not sure I do now, but I can see it differently. It was very bad sometimes, poor man – he used to disappear. He was a bit like a dog, you know? Going off to lick his wounds, then coming back when he could manage. But he was always kind. He was a tormented soul – no one should have to live like he did. There must be an answer to it. I suppose you wouldn’t know . . .’ Somehow this was news she didn’t want to give harshly, and she spoke in a soft voice. ‘That he took his own life?’

‘Dear God. Oh dear God!’ She could see he was truly shocked and grieved. ‘Now you say it, the way that priest talked about him . . . He didn’t mention it, but there was a shadow in the way he spoke of him. Patrick was a sweet lad as a youngster – too sweet for this world.’