The First Time I Said Goodbye (23 page)

“I’m tired, Craig,” I said. “I’m just tired.”

I ladled my soup into a bowl and turned to walk through to the den when I felt him stand in front of me. Before I could blink, the bowl was out of my hands, the hot soup splashing on my wrists, forcing me to pull them back into myself.

“
You are always tired!
” he shouted, hurling the soup bowl at the tiled floor.

I watched it smash, as if in slow motion. I watched it splinter and shatter before the pieces settled into the hot, orange soup as it slowly slid and stretched across the floor.

I suppose he was expecting a reaction. He was probably even expecting a fight. But I turned, stepped over the soup and walked out of the house – even though I was in my pyjamas – and went for a drive until the gas-light was blinking on my car and I was getting too tired to see straight.

When I got home, the kitchen was clean – as if
nothing had happened – and when I climbed into bed, wordlessly, I felt Craig, still asleep, slip his arm over me.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered and I lay awake for the rest of the night, listening to him snoring gently while I wondered just when we would admit it was all, irrevocably, broken.

“He’s not a bad person,” I told Sam.

“But . . .”

“Well, I think, if I’m honest, coming here was running away from him a bit. Running away from us.” I don’t know how I expected to feel saying those words out loud. Relieved? Horrified? Instead I felt a certain numbness. As if the last few months, maybe even the last few years, had put an emotional barrier between me and Craig. I felt as if I was simply stating facts, not acknowledging publicly that my relationship was in tatters.

“So has running away helped? Do you want to run back?”

I shook my head. “I’ve tried,” I said. “I’ve tried and tried to rationalise it and make it work but it doesn’t. He was seeing someone else, Sam, and that should have horrified me but it didn’t. It felt as if it was, in some way, expected. I always knew this would happen. Not because I don’t feel worthy or anything but, maybe, because I know that we weren’t ever really meant to be. We just fell into a rut that neither of us knew how to get out of.”

“Do you know how to get out of it now?”

I shrugged my shoulders. Knowing the right thing to do and doing it were often two entirely different things. And I started to understand my mother a little more.

Chapter 20

If I could go back in time, I would undo the mistakes I’ve made. I would do anything for things to be different. But I can’t – so I will carry this with me forever.

* * *

Derry, January 1960

The paperwork was underway. Stella had applied for her passport. Moves were in place to arrange her visa. There was talk of a wedding – a simple ceremony in a local church. She would borrow her friend’s good suit and have a bouquet of silk flowers made. She still had the shoes she had worn to the night at the City Hotel, which she would wear again. And she would maybe splash out on a new haircut. Kathleen and Ernest said they would put on a small spread in the house – sandwiches and cake – and invite the neighbours round.

Sitting together in the flat, with Ray’s arms around her, she felt blissfully happy. She felt so safe there, so sure of herself.

“I’ll get you a proper ring when we’re settled,” he whispered. “And we’ll do it again, you know, the wedding – some day – with a white lace gown and everything you have ever dreamed of – just for you.”

He kissed the top of her head and revelled in the feeling of his lips brushing against her hair. She cuddled in closer to him, feeling his arms draw her closer still. If it could be like this forever she was sure she could never be happier.

“I know this is more rushed than you hoped, or you wanted,” he said, “but if I could do it differently . . .”

“Stop apologising for things you can’t change,” she chastised him, looking into his eyes. “Things happen for a reason – life happens for a reason – and this is just the way it is going to be for us.”

“I’ll get you a good house. We’ll be happy,” he said.

“We already are.”

* * *

January bit cold. Stella consoled herself as she walked to work through the snow that soon she would be in America. Ray promised her it would be different there. She wouldn’t have to work. The spring and summers were warmer and by the time they reached the suburbs of Boston the worst of the winter would have gone.

She pulled her coat tight around her, wrapping her bright red scarf as high as she could around her face to keep off the biting wind. Her feet were already wet and frozen and she knew that she faced eight hours standing on the factory floor – although the heat of the irons would keep her warm – she was at least grateful for that.

In her highly emotional, newly engaged state, she even started to feel a certain fondness for the machines that left her so weary at the end of the day. She had started to count down her work in terms of weeks and days, and she started to try and cram as many memories in as she could.

“Once you’re gone, you’re gone,” one of the supervisors on the factory floor had said. “You won’t see Derry again. You young ones think you know it all and won’t miss a bar of Derry – but when you are far from home you might think differently. Take it in, my girl – home will always be home.”

Stella blew her hair from her face, wiped her hand across her forehead and smiled sweetly at her supervisor. “Home is where the heart is,” she said, “And don’t we all make tough decisions for love?”

The older woman sniffed, crossed her arms across her ample bosom and went about her work while Stella continued with pressing the shirts ready for folding. She wasn’t the first girl to leave the factory to set off for a new life, and she was sure she wouldn’t be the last. She wasn’t aware of the others having been given a hard time. Then again the only girl she had been very close to was Molly Davidson and nothing could have burst her bubble. She had practically floated out of the factory on her leaving day, singing “From the Candy Store on the Corner to the Chapel on the Top of the Hill” as the girls joined in loudly, her laughter filling the factory floor.

She didn’t imagine she would float out singing – it wasn’t her style – but she would smile as she left, knowing that while she was sad that a chapter of her life was ending, a whole new chapter was beginning. Any doubts she had were gone when she was with Ray – and while she wasn’t naïve and knew that it would feel like her heart was being ripped from her body when she left her family behind – she knew it was time she made a new family and she knew Ray would make her a perfect husband and that their life would be happy. She just felt it with every breath she took. They were meant to be together.

So as she watched her supervisor’s back as she walked away she vowed to just get on with her work and count down the days until the factory would become a distant memory.

When it was clocking-off time, she grabbed her coat, wrapped her scarf tight around her again and made for the door before the girls could stop her. They would want her to go for a cup of tea and a gossip, but she couldn’t – not tonight. Not that she would tell her mother and father that. She was due to meet Ray in the flat and hoped to sneak in an hour together before going home. She would, of course, tell her parents she had gone for tea with the girls, but she had better plans in mind.

Smiling, she ran through the door and up the hill where she
let herself into the dark flat, switched on the lights and quickly set to work, keeping her coat on to try and keep warm. Setting a small fire in the hearth, she lit a few candles and made a pot of tea before nipping to the small bathroom with the very small mirror to try and make herself look presentable. She had brought the bare essentials with her: some pan stick, a small brush to smooth her hair and a bottle of scent. She washed her face in the icy water and shivered as she redid her make-up and brushed her hair. He would be here any minute and she was almost giddy at the thought of seeing him even though it had only been twenty-four hours since she had last felt his lips brush against her. She gently touched the brooch which she had pinned to her dress. It might have seemed a
little ostentatious with her factory clothes but she didn’t care: it symbolised all he meant to her and she had vowed she would wear it every day, no matter what the occasion.

This little hour they would have together now would be precious: a chance to get intimate. She felt a little guilty even to think this way but with every day they were together she wanted to be closer and closer to him. She longed to feel him touch her, to caress her. She felt a little dizzy at the thought. She could feel herself blush. She wasn’t a bad girl, she knew that. She had friends who had slept with their boyfriends before they were married. Rumour was that Margaret from down the street had slept with her man before he had even asked her to marry him. Rumour was that Margaret had to get married – not that anyone in her family would ever admit it. But Stella was able to work the dates out and that baby was very big for one who was supposed to be born so early.

She didn’t judge, not really. But now, well, she knew it was only a matter of weeks before she would be Ray’s wife and, while she was nervous as hell about what to expect, she found herself longing to be intimate with him, to feel him kiss her skin. Sometimes when they were alone they would find it hard to control themselves. When he kissed the nape of her neck, she
would almost lose the run of herself. She couldn’t quite understand how something which felt so right, which was such a part of their love for each other, could ever be considered wrong.

She blushed again as she brushed down her dress and waited for the sound of his key turning in the door. The fire had caught and the candles were casting soft shadows on the wall. She planned to hold him close to her as soon as he walked in, to kiss him softly in the way she knew made him groan which in turn made her insides turn to jelly. As she heard the turn of the key and listened to his footsteps climb the stairs she thought of what her life would be – how she would wait for his returning from work each day. How he would always come home to her. She closed her eyes and imagined the life that awaited her and felt a slow smile spread across her face.

Standing up, she turned to watch him walk through the door, her breath catching as she saw him, and the sadness in his eyes, and she felt her world slip out from under her feet.

* * *

Ray was aware of the hissing of the kettle on the stove and the crackle of the fire. He tried to focus on them to escape, just for a moment, the sound of Stella crying. He had tried to reassure her but he knew that this was not what they had planned. When the announcement had been made at the Base he had felt his heart sink. He had gone directly to his superiors to plead his case but there was no leeway. The decision had been made. Ray and his men were to be shipped out in less than forty-eight hours. The increasing tensions with Russia meant that they were to be relocated back home as soon as possible to await further orders. There was no room for manoeuvre, even though some of the marines would remain stationed in Derry. There were no plans to close the NAVCOM Base but, as they were next to return to America anyway, the decision had simply been made to move their date forward.

“But you are demobbing anyway,” Stella had said. “Can you not just demob now?”

“In June. And no, they won’t let me. I’ve asked, Stella. I’ve asked every question I could think of. I’ve near enough begged.”

“But there is no way the paperwork would be in place by then . . . my passport . . .”

Ray shook his head, his heart hurting at the pain in Stella’s eyes. This was not a time of war. There would be no fast-tracking of their wedding. The reality was that he would travel on ahead of her and she would have to follow him and they would marry in Boston.

He knew he was asking a lot – he was asking her to give up having her father walk her down the aisle – to give up the small wedding which wasn’t even half of what he wanted to give her anyway. And he was asking her to travel on her own – that horrible journey – Ireland to America – with not a friend to her name. All he had ever wanted to do was to protect her and now he was letting her down and there was nothing he could say which could make it any better.

If anything he was only going to make it worse. “I’m not sure I will get away from the Base tomorrow,” he said, looking at the floor. “I was pushing my luck to get a pass tonight but I told them I needed to see you.”

Stella looked up, her blue eyes red-rimmed from crying. Tears fell freely and as quickly as he could wipe them away more would fall. He didn’t care that he was crying himself now – that his heart was breaking.

“This is goodbye?” she said, her voice stilted.

He nodded, simply because he could not bring himself to say the words.

“Oh God,” she muttered, and he closed his eyes as he felt her hand on his cheek.

“You will come to me, Stella,” he said, kissing her hand. “I’ll have it all arranged and you will come to me and we will get married and I promise I will make it better.”

“But you’re leaving . . .” she said as if she were trying to make sense of what he was saying. “I won’t see you, for . . . how long?”

“You’ll come as quickly as we can get it organised. I promise, as quickly as we can get everything in order, you will come to me. I have money, Stella. Everything will be paid for – your transport, your paperwork. I’ll be there to meet you as soon as you step off that boat. I promise. I’ll be there and I’ll never let you go. I promise.”