The First Time I Said Goodbye (14 page)

“You’re a sight for sore eyes yourself,” she smiled. “I’ve missed you.”

“It’s only been two days,” he said with a smile, even though the two days had felt like a lifetime to him.

“Two days is a long time,” she said, her voice soft and her eyes looking directly into his. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too, sweetheart,” he said, rubbing his thumb along the inside of her palm, revelling in this most innocent of contact. Her smile spoke a thousand words and he felt himself relax a little.

He poured their tea and they chatted. He told her of the last few days, she told him about work – how they had been singing their hearts out just that morning and gossiping before the supervisor had told them they needed to get on with their work and they had spent the rest of the day with their heads down, afraid to so much as talk about their weekend plans or discuss their work with each other. She was tired, she said, but glad to see him – but she couldn’t stay too long. Her mother wanted her home to help with cleaning the house – they were having a family party that weekend and her mother wanted to make sure every inch of the house was gleaming.

“The good delph she keeps in the cabinet in the parlour, that needs to be cleaned and everything, even though no one will see it anyway.” Stella laughed, rolling her eyes. “When mother gets a notion in her head, it’s hard to shift.”

“You shouldn’t have to work like that, not after a long day in the factory,” he said, feeling protective of her. She did look tired and she had to stifle a yawn as she sipped at her tea.

“Sure we all have to work hard – and it’s the least my mother deserves. It’s not easy, raising the six of us. A bit of hard work won’t kill me.”

He nodded and noticed her shift a little in her seat.

“Ray,” she started, “look, I don’t want to push you but Mother wants to know if you want to join us for the get-together. I know it’s a lot to ask – meeting all the Hegarty clan together and they do like a good interrogation – but we’ve been walking out for a while and I suppose they want to know if your intentions are honourable.”

He noted she had been talking to the table rather than to him and he blushed at the word ‘honourable’, especially given the proposition he had been planning to make to her. Feeling the blush rise from the back of his neck to his face, he forced a smile on his face. “If it means so much to you, of course I will go and meet your family. As long as they won’t try and run me out of town with pitchforks for being an out-of-towner!”

“They may try and kill you with tea and kindness, but I’m assured they’ll be leaving their pitchforks at the door.”

She smiled again and he thought of how he always wanted to see her smile – how he couldn’t imagine ever tiring of seeing how that smile crinkled her nose – how her head tilted a little to the side, how her blue eyes would flash at him beneath the longest eyelashes he had ever seen. He wanted to reach across the table and pull her into his arms there and then and kiss that smile, to feel those soft hands at the nape of his neck, to feel her body against his. It almost killed him not to do it and he knew he had to put his proposal to her, honourable or not.

“
Stella,” he said, thinking it was now or never, “I can’t bear to be away from you. I need to see you more, while I am here. I need to see you more. Dusty, well, he and a few of the guys, are just renting a small flat – a bedsit really – and they want to know if we want a share. I’ll cover the costs. Don’t worry. It’s just somewhere we can use to be together. Just somewhere warm, away from the world. No pressure . . .” He looked at her face for any sign of her reaction but she just blinked across the table at him. “Nothing dishonourable – just our own space away from the crowds. Just a
place where no one else needs to know we are there.”

He finished and looked at the table, his heart thumping against his chest. Mentally he prepared himself for a slap across the face. Would she think he was just like the other ‘Yanks’, only after one thing?

In a small voice she answered him, “I’d like that,” and he felt her hand reach for his across the table. “I’d like that very much.”

* * *

It wasn’t much. Little more than a room really – a cold room, with a little damp in the corners when they first viewed it. It could do with a good clean so he and the boys had rolled up their sleeves. They couldn’t bring the girls back to the place as it stood – so they had spent a precious afternoon’s leave up to their elbows in soapy water, cleaning every surface.

“Are we going soft?” Dusty had asked, a soapy sponge in one hand, while Ray set about stocking the small kitchen area with teacups, plates and a brand new teapot.

The place was already looking spruced up and, once Ray had a fire burning, he could see how it could even be seen as quite cosy. Still he’d better hurry up and get changed if he was to get to the Hegartys’ in time for the big family gathering. He couldn’t believe how nervous it made him feel – then again the butterflies in the very pit of his stomach could have been down to his excitement at transforming this little flat into somewhere he could be well and truly alone with Stella.

She had warned him all about her family – how her father was a great big bear of a man who would either take to him or against him, with no grey areas. Her granny, she said, would quite possibly have a Babycham and perhaps start singing. Her mother would have an air of calm about her but would go into a flap when she was in the kitchen – if he wanted to get on her good side he should offer to help even though she would refuse his offer. There would be little in the way of drinking, but he should take a stout to be sociable even though he didn’t really enjoy stout.

Normally Ray was quite a confident man. Not arrogant – he had never been accused of that – but he could hold himself in a room of people. But he knew that this was a very different room of people – people he needed to impress. He didn’t want to make a show of himself in front of Stella – to embarrass her – and he knew he would have to work extra hard to try and take in the accents around him. Derry people, they sure spoke fast. And there was to be a whole room of them who apparently saw him as the guest of honour. He had gathered what he could at the Base – a tin of biscuits, some chocolate, even a bottle of whiskey for Stella’s father – determined to make a good impression.

Stella was nervous too, she had confided. He supposed she knew that, if her family didn’t take to him, his time with her would be even more limited than it already was set to be. That was not something he wanted to contemplate. If things went well – well, if the bottle of Scotch went down well with her father – he had started to contemplate chancing his arm and asking her the big question. The thought of it made his hands clammy and his heart beat a little faster – but, he realised with a bit of a smile, in a good way. Just as the thought of spending time with her in the flat made him feel almost delirious with happiness.

He brushed his hair, slicked on some Brylcreem and glanced in the mirror. That night, in Derry, there was everything to play for.

* * *

It was Dolores who answered the door. Ray sometimes wondered how they were sisters – they didn’t resemble each other at all, apart from perhaps having the same wide blue eyes. Dolores was shorter, a little plumper, and definitely more confident than her sister. He had seen how she would spend her nights at the Corinthian dancing – the two sisters laughing together but Dolores leading the charge when it came to starting the obligatory sing-song as the lights went up.

She greeted him at the door with a huge smile before pulling him into a hug. “Good man yourself!” she cheered, eyeing the bottle of Scotch he had brought with him. “That will go down well with the relatives. You know how to get your feet under the table. Stella will be down in a minute – putting a few finishing touches to her make-up. She never bothered much before she met you.”

Dolores winked, and turned to lead him into the front room, which Stella had informed him before was the ‘good room’. Yes, she had given him a crash course in Derry etiquette – telling him the good room was reserved for special occasions such as the visit of the priest, a family gathering or indeed a wake. He had shuddered at the thought of a wake – that was an Irish tradition he couldn’t quite understand, but Stella had assured him that a wake was actually quite healing. Still, as he walked into the room he couldn’t get the notion out of his head that her grandmother had been laid out there just a few months before – a corpse among the good china and with a semi-gruesome picture of the Sacred Heart staring down at her.

There was a buzz in the room – the chatter of friends and family, laughing and joking, smoke thick in the air and the clatter of teacups and stout glasses. He wished Stella was by his side – it felt strange, alien even – to be led into this room when she was still upstairs. That’s not to mention the fact that he longed to see her – to tell her, when he could, when no one else was listening – how the flat was ready. The clatter of noise quietened as he walked in – all eyes were on him and he felt horribly self-conscious. Conscious of his height, his uniform, his accent. Conscious of the fact that when he thought about it he didn’t really fit in here at all and, if he had his way, he would take away one of their own – one who did fit in.

“Well, well, if it’s not Yankee Doodle Dandy,” a gruff man in a flat cap and a tweed suit said, standing up and straightening himself before he walked across the room. “Here, everyone, here is the man who has been courting our wee Stella. Well, sure doesn’t he look smart?” Without introducing himself the man thrust a large, meaty hand in Ray’s direction, grabbing hold of his hand and shaking hard, his grip firm.

Ray smiled back, feeling his bones crush. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, still unsure of who he was talking to.

“Daddy, leave him down!” Dolores laughed.

Ray realised he was face to face with Ernest Hegarty – the man who he most needed to impress in that room. Suddenly it was as if the cat had got his tongue and he could not find the right words to speak – so he stayed dumb, thinking it was better, perhaps, to have people think you an idiot than to open your mouth and confirm it.

“Ray here has brought you something, Daddy,” Dolores smiled, while a small woman, in a floral dress with her hair just a little out of place, stepped forward to stand beside Ernest.

“Dolores, that’s lovely of him,” she said, “but would you ever go and tell your sister her gentleman friend is here. I’m sure he feels as if he has been dropped in the middle of a war zone with not a friendly face to look at.” The woman smiled – and just like Stella that smile of hers crinkled her nose and extended to her eyes.

“You must be Kathleen?” he said, offering his hand and not sure at all if he should be calling her ‘Kathleen’ or ‘Mrs Hegarty’. Immediately he cursed himself for being so informal. What a first impression he was making – standing gawping like some idiot and being over-familiar. His palms were sweating now more than they should and everyone in the room, although they were all pretending to have their own conversations in hushed tones, was clearly looking to see what faux pas he would make next.

“Yes, I am indeed Kathleen,” the woman replied, putting her hand to her head to push back the loose curl which had fallen forward. “And it’s lovely to have you in our home. Stella has spoken very highly of you – she’s walking around with her head in the clouds these last few weeks. You’ve made your mark – she doesn’t give away her affection easily.”

Kathleen’s words were warm and her tone soft. The smile remained on her face but he wasn’t blind to the implications of what she was saying. Treat Stella nice – she’s a gentle soul. He wished he could tell her there and then that the last thing he ever wanted to do, ever, was to hurt this girl who had stolen his heart. Instead, blushing and self-conscious, he replied simply that he knew and that Stella was a credit to both her and her husband.

It was then he felt the gentle touch of her hand on his elbow and he turned around to see her before him – looking equally nervous. Should he kiss her? Shake her hand? Say hello? The eyes of everyone in the room were boring into them and he didn’t know what to do and breathed a sigh of relief when she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him softly on the cheek.

“You came,” she said, as if she had doubted that he would.

He looked at her, confused. Did she really not know by now that he would be there for her? That she was so quickly becoming his everything?

“Of course,” he responded. “And I’ve been made very welcome.”

“Not that welcome,” Stella smiled. “Sure you don’t even have a drink in your hand.” She turned and called to her brother, a tall man two years her senior in a heavy jumper who looked him up and down suspiciously. “Peter, would you ever get Ray here a stout?”

“Just the one,” Ray said, as Peter gruffly made his way out of the good room towards the kitchen.
Ray made a mental note to keep his distance from him.

“Now, take your coat off, pull up a seat and try not to look so terrified,” Stella smiled, taking the coat off him to put upstairs and directing him to one of the rickety-looking wooden chairs which had obviously been brought in from the kitchen for the occasion.

He was introduced one by one to the remainder of her family – her eldest brother James and her two young siblings, Michael, just nine and the baby of the family, six-year-old Seán.

The evening was fairly reserved. Stella sat beside him, drinking tea while he slowly made his way down his one stout. The room was warm with chatter and song, the tin of biscuits passed around with great glee. He offered to help when he deemed it appropriate – another shovel of coal on the fire perhaps or to carry the tray of teacups out to the kitchen, but he was told time and time again he was a guest and he was to take it easy. He guessed from conversation he had with Stella before it was more likely to be a case that outside of the good room, the Hegarty family didn’t have much to show off and didn’t want the Yank seeing that.