No One Wants You (33 page)

Thelma had phoned me at work soon afterwards and I
said
to her, ‘Anna told me you are having Avril as matron of honour and Rosaleen as a bridesmaid.’

She said, ‘That’s right, they are my sisters. I grew up with them.’

It was just as if she had stabbed me. It wasn’t because she had not chosen me as a bridesmaid, it was purely the fact that she regarded them as her sisters and did not see me as an equal sister. I was really hurt but I never showed my feelings. I suppressed my pain and my anger and continued to play their game. That is what it was for me at this stage – mind games.

We arrived at the Woodlands Hotel for the reception. My mother and father were lined up in the foyer greeting all the arrivals.

Except me! Neither shook hands with me. Neither said any words to me. I didn’t know why.

I attempted to greet my mother with a kiss, but she averted her head and instead gave me one of her cutting stares. While standing in the foyer I asked Harry to get some drinks and to include my mother in the round. She declined his offer, in a sharp voice. As Harry headed for the bar, he shot me a glance which said, ‘Don’t ever ask me to speak to that woman again.’

I tried everything to talk and be friendly with her that afternoon. But it didn’t work. I thought she looked miserable that day. She looks miserable in all the photographs. I followed my mother around if I thought that she was going to be in a photograph. If she posed for a photo, I would stand behind her.

I was not going to let her forget me and she was not a bit pleased.

But bad and all as I felt, I acted my way through the day, as if I had not a care in the world. I socialised with my siblings. I had in-depth conversations about trivialities
with
aunts on my father’s side. I spoke more to the groom’s family whom I had known for quite a long time, from my Northern Ireland days. His mother was lovely and was happy to see her son married.

After the reception and the dancing was over, when the bride and groom were leaving the hotel to go on their honeymoon, I found myself standing beside my mother, I remarked to her, ‘You have lost a lot of weight.’

‘Yes I have,’ she answered.

The tone of her reply was not as sharp as previously, so I felt she had mellowed or thawed out a little. I felt it was progress, no matter how small, as we hadn’t spoken to each other since the night of Thelma’s 21st birthday. I felt to some degree that I was to blame for the lack of communication. After Ronan’s death, I was back in survival mode, and contact with my parents or the fact of their existence in my life, became merely incidental. That short verbal exchange was the sum total of my conversation with my mother during the entire wedding. But I was pleased and prepared to accept any tolerance, however small.

We were both, to some degree, to blame for the great breach that now existed between us.

Next morning, as I was packing to leave the hotel, I had a phone call from my father.

He asked me if I would go down to their house, or ‘call up home’ as he put it.

I said, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think that is a good idea, do you? My mother didn’t want to speak to me yesterday; why would she want to speak to me today? I am not going over there to be abused and shouted at.’

He persuaded, ‘Oh forget about yesterday, your mother does want you to come and visit.’

So I agreed to go. I had nagging doubts about going there and I was really nervous.

As I think about it now, I ask myself, ‘How many people feel nervous about visiting their parents in their own house?’

I eventually arrived at the house and my father told me to hug my mother. As I approached her, she recoiled as if something horrible was about to touch her.

I pulled back.

Her eyes were looking daggers at my father. He threw his arms up in the air, turned on his heel and walked away. Then she looked at me and in the blink of an eye, we agreed a silent truce. I understood, in a strange way, how she felt because I knew how it felt to touch someone, when you did not want to be touched.

Tea and sandwiches were laid out in the front sitting room. That had never happened before. The atmosphere was formal, yet quite civil and almost friendly. We even discussed my birth and my mother described how she got rheumatic fever after I was born. This was when she was living with her Uncle Jack, who took pity on her plight. He must have been the person who paid the £100 for her release from the home for unmarried mothers. She could not have stayed with Uncle Jack if she had an illegitimate baby hanging out of her. She was not allowed to return to her mother’s house at Clarina. She was good enough to stay at Uncle Jack’s house as long as she pretended that she did not have an illegitimate baby. But me, the illegitimate baby, regarded by the family as the dregs of the earth was not eligible for such careful consideration.

My father said that he used to go up there and take her for slow careful walks, until she regained her full health. I wanted to ask her what she had told my father about her six-month absence. Where did he think she had been for six months? He must have asked her.

Did she tell him a lie or the truth?

If she told him a lie about where she had been for six months, did he believe her?

Did he have his suspicions about why she had to leave for six months?

Did it suit him, not to know where she was for six months?

If she told him a lie, and he believed her, it may have suited them both not to pursue the matter any further. But if she told him the truth, then he knew about me. He would have known about me all along. Of course, I have no answer to these questions, as I never asked them.

I did ask her about her time in the home for unmarried mothers, in Bessboro, where I was born, but she dismissed my question with a wave of her hand and a look of annoyance. She would not give me any glimpse into her life while she was pregnant with me. She would rather talk about when my father was young. I feel there was a great sexual attraction between them.

Her health problems were a large topic of conversation and she would expand on them at length. By this stage, it was too late. I could not feel any empathy for her problems because she had been the cause of all of mine. Also, my mother, while mellowing, remained detached.

After the tea and sandwiches, I accompanied my father to the local shop for the daily paper. He brought up the subject of finance once again. I steeled myself for another touch for a loan of some kind. He asked me if I had sorted out my finances. He said that he was aware of the problems I had regarding all the money that I had spent on them.

As usual, I said that I had the problem sorted. What I did not tell him was that I was heavily in debt to the bank and would be paying off loans for many years. Thanks to
my
considerate bank manager, he had tidied up all my financial affairs neatly and spread my repayments over a long-term loan. This took the worry and stress off my shoulders.

After making me feel secure about my finances, my father then told me that he himself was having further financial problems. He told me that he had taken out a large loan and was unable to finance the repayments.

I volunteered to help. He didn’t even have to ask if I would help. I said that I would help him with his monthly repayment and so I took on an extra financial burden that I could not afford. I realised that with all the expensive clothes that I had for the wedding, I must have been setting myself up for such a request. I sent him a cheque by post every month.

We were based in Buttevant for the rest of the week of the wedding. I felt back in
my
family fold, but it was not the same without Kit. Yet I was happy there. There was no rancour or bitterness. No arguments.

I did see my parents once more during the week. I took them out to eat at The Texas Steakhouse in Limerick.

The entire meal was very civilised. I had changed.

I was not going to let my parents play such an important role anymore.

The death of my son had shattered my life.

We returned to Buttevant where Tony had packaged the top tier of the wedding cake for the return trip to London.

Back in London, I found it difficult to cope with everything and anything. I couldn’t function properly and things didn’t get better. One day, when Harry’s brother was in the house, I announced in all seriousness that I was unable to cope. I said that I was going to seek help through the aid of a counsellor.

With equal solemnity and in a low voice, in case anyone
might
hear him, Paddy Roberts said, ‘Ohhhhh, you don’t want to be goin’ an tellin’ your business to those kind of people.’

But this time I was determined to do what was right for me.

TWENTY-TWO

His Departure

FROM THE TIME
of the wedding, an arid period developed between my parents and myself. I had found a counsellor and possibly our sessions affected my relationship with them, but there were no more long conversations over the phone, on either side.

I was still helping my father out. We kept this secret between ourselves. But, little by little, I began to realise that my father seemed to be spending the money. I was upset about the fact that he had tapped me for financial help, for a loan that I had no evidence that he was in fact repaying. I stopped buying things for them that I thought they might like.

I next saw them in August of that year, when Harry’s brother Michael died in an industrial accident at his workplace. He was buried in Ireland and we went there for the funeral.

My parents also came to the funeral. We took them out to dinner one night. Everything went smoothly, Mother was calm and Father seemed happy enough. We did not have a lot of time with them and we politely said our goodbyes. No hugs or touching this time.

I didn’t know that this was the last time that I would see my father alive.

If I had known, I certainly would have been more tactile. We spoke by phone infrequently after that.

A few months later, on a Sunday evening, November 3, 1991, after I returned from church, Harry said that Marion, Tommy Junior’s wife, had phoned. I thought that it was strange, because Marion never called me. I called her back and she said, ‘Your father got bad at mass this evening.’

I knew from her voice that she was really upset. She said that he was in hospital and she gave me the telephone number. I rang it immediately. I got through to accident and emergency and they asked me to hold on. I had to listen to upbeat rock music, while I tried to stay calm.

The sister eventually came on the phone. I could tell from her responses that it was serious.

‘Did he have a cardiac arrest?’

‘Yes.’

I posed a negative question, ‘He didn’t make it then, did he?’

‘No.’

I was so shocked and upset, I just felt the phone slide out of my hand.

Anthony was in the hall beside me, deciphering my one-sided phone call. He realised what had happened. He hit the wall so hard in anger that he broke a bone in his hand. The sister put me on to my mother.

She said to me, ‘Oh, my darling has gone.’

She was very upset.

I felt sad for her and for myself.

I felt that there was so much unfinished business between my father and me.

I felt cheated. I had never got any answers. I had never found out things that I wanted to find out. I wanted to talk to them both about how it all went disastrously wrong for us.

I wanted to talk about the euphoria of meeting them and the breakdown of our relationship. I wanted to explain my
feelings
of inadequacy, of being unacceptable and of not fitting into their family. I would never get to say those words now.

I rang Thelma and told her. I expected her to be hysterical at the news because she was the ‘apple of his eye’. I was surprised at her reaction, but then I realised she must have been in shock.

Anthony and I flew to Ireland as soon as we could. Tommy Junior met us at Shannon. It transpired that my father was at evening mass when he had a heart attack. He was dead on admission to hospital.

Tommy Junior and Avril went to the undertaker to make all the arrangements for his burial. I went to a florist to order wreaths. I wrote, ‘Sadly missed by your eldest daughter, Celine.’ But in my heart I wanted to say that I felt cheated, that our time together was so short and because my mother was so bitter. I felt she had not allowed us to develop a proper father-daughter relationship and now that could never be.

Each grandchild threw a yellow rose into his grave, including Anthony. Anthony adored his grandfather. They often used to talk about maths and numbers together. He really looked up to him. All those kids loved my father.

As the days passed, I realised that his death was not as earth-shattering as I would have expected. It did not impact on my life to any great extent. What was going around my head were the unanswerable questions, the nagging doubts. I wanted to take a lock of his hair, but the opportunity did not present itself, so I don’t have a personal memento.

On the day he died, I was not the same person that tracked him down and found him. When I first laid eyes on him, for the first time in my life, as he walked towards me at the airport, he looked like a god to me. He was so special. Although his death would be an enormous loss in my life, there was no loss that could compare to the death of my son. At the same time, my father’s death did feel very final. This
was
the end. I could not question it any more. If any more questions did arise, my opportunity or window in time was gone.

In the cemetery he was buried next to his younger brother, Frank. He once told me that they had been great pals and had done everything together, up until the time they got married.

I didn’t cry that day, not even as the grave was being filled in. As we walked away, I looked back at the grave and thought that I should be crying but I couldn’t. No tears would come.

All the mourners went to Cloughaun Football Club where refreshments were available and everyone who knew him spoke well of him. To the large crowd, even in death, I was not introduced to anyone as his daughter. It was as if I was still to be hidden.