The First Time I Said Goodbye (3 page)

The swear word nestled there on the very tip of my tongue, dying to burst forth, but I bit the side of my cheek instead. Sam – the name-stealer – who I had never met. Who I was “friends” with on Facebook but who I was pretty sure had me on a limited profile because all I could see were the occasional life-affirming quotes he posted and none of the good stuff.

“But I don’t know Sam,” I muttered, stepping forward in the queue towards check-in. “Surely Derry has hotels. I don’t mind paying,” I repeated.

My mother shook her head and smiled at me. “You may not mind paying but I mind making a show of myself and refusing to stay with family. I’ve heard Sam is a good boy. His mammy loves the bones of him – said all he needs is a good woman to sort him out. And he lives on his own – swimming in space, he is, so it would do neither of you harm to spend some time together. Sure he must know what all the young ones get up to.”

Sam – who needed a good woman – who was older than me. Oh, sweet Lord above. I had images of being foisted on some late 30s Lothario who knew what the young ones got up to. Worst case, he was a creep. Best case, he was a momma’s boy. Either way I could feel my skin creep and my desire grow for a simple hotel room with a power shower and Egyptian-cotton starched sheets, black-out curtains and lattes on tap with a simple call to room service. The thought of the spare room in the pad of a man with a penchant for life-affirming quotes was almost too much to bear.

I looked at my mother. Her Irish eyes were smiling as she fished in her bag for her passport and travel documents and the silent swear word in the back of my throat became a silent scream as I wondered what I had let myself in for. The thought of turning back home, facing life, reality and Craig, suddenly seemed a lot more appealing.

“I can’t believe it,” I heard my mother’s voice break softly through my reverie. “I’m going home, Annabel. I’m going to see it all again – to breathe that air again. Is it so wrong of me to just want to take my shoes off and dance through the grass again?”

I looked at her and could imagine her, long blonde hair – now grey – dancing through the grass as a young woman, smiling, carefree – and the scream became a smile. I would do this, creepy Sam and all, if it made my mother happy.

* * *

I’m not sure if I was expecting some sort of emotional meltdown as we landed in Dublin. My mother slept through it and I decided to leave her to it – it had been a long day and her giddiness at the airport had given way to a plethora of tears as our plane had taken off out of Florida and headed eastwards over the Atlantic.

“I’ve never flown this way before,” she said softly. “Your dad and I, we travelled – but only in the States. You know he never once left America? He was so proud of that, Belle.” She smiled and I nodded.

Yes, a real Yankee Doodle Dandy – not quite as much as me, obviously, what with my birthday and everything. But he always had a flag flying off the front porch and he smiled every time he came home at the
God Bless America
sign that hung over our front door.

“He just liked his . . .”

“. . . comfort zone,” I finished and we laughed.

Dad certainly liked his creature comforts. We used to joke that we were pretty sure the father character in the sitcom
Frasier
was based on him – down to the ratty old chair he liked to lay back
on each evening and the badge of honour he kept in his top drawer from his days on the force. Comfort and routine. Routine and comfort. You could do no wrong with either, in his book.

“Do you think he would have liked Ireland? Do you think he ever really wanted to go?”

My mother shrugged her shoulders as the plane levelled out and we started to cruise at a comfortable 35,000 feet. “He always said he had enough of Ireland in me – that nothing about Ireland could be better than what he had. Why did he need to see more of it when he had the best all to himself?”

I smiled and squeezed her hand but there was something in her voice that was a little bit too wistful. She took a deep breath with just the slightest of judders which made me realise she was trying to compose herself and she let go of my hand.

“Right, my dear,” she said, “is it okay to drink on the plane? Because I would really like a shot of brandy.”

“I think we have to wait until the lights go off. It shouldn’t be long.”

“Grand so,” she said. “I can do that. I’m very good at waiting.”

* * *

Ireland was as lush as the Maeve Binchy books had promised. Looking down over it, there was a patchwork quilt of greens unfolding below me. I wondered were there actually any cities in this country as field followed field followed mountain followed lake. Of course, as we began our descent little dots of houses appeared out of the greenness, and then more houses, and an industrial estate and lots of cars scurrying like ants along the network of narrow roads. The sky was grey and rained pattered against the side of the plane, trickling horizontally from one side of the window to the other. I guessed it would probably be cold and I was grateful for the sweatshirt I had packed and the sneakers I was wearing. No, they weren’t very glamorous and they no doubt screamed “tourist” but they were comfy and my mother had warned me we had quite a bus-ride from Dublin before we reached the North. I wondered how long it would take and, as my mother slept, I asked the tired-looking cabin assistant who shrugged and said it would only take maybe three or four hours depending on traffic. I felt my heart sink. I was bone tired and desperately in need of a power shower, some decent non-airline food and a warm bed to sleep in.

“The roads aren’t too bad,” the crew member assured me. “Bit bumpy in places but you’ll be grand.”

I nodded my thanks, glanced out the window to where we were coming in faster and faster to the ground and had a momentary fantasy about the whole thing crashing and me getting a decent rest at least before the day was out.

Never mind, I laughed into myself as we bumped onto the tarmac, at least I would have Sam the Singleton’s chintzy house to stay in once we got there.

Chapter 3

They say we have choices – and you may think I made my choices – but I didn’t. It was beyond my control. It’s beyond what I can do. This is not what I would have chosen, my love. It is not what I would have chosen at all.

* * *

Ireland, June 2010

The bus journey was exhausting. Not even the allure of the lush green hills and overgrown hedgerows and the quaintness of the villages we whizzed past could take away from the exhaustion that had crept up on me, sitting on my shoulder, jabbing me square in the neck every three seconds.

“You should sleep,” Mom said. “Did you even close your eyes on the plane?”

I shook my head. I didn’t sleep in public places – not even when I was tired right down to my very bones. I wasn’t a great sleeper anyway – only ever truly drifting into a deep sleep in the calm darkness of my own room, all sounds silenced for the night, all glints of light hidden by an eye mask over my eyes – no one near me, not even Craig. My best nights’ sleep were nights when he was working. I felt guilty for feeling that way, but that was how it was.

“I’ll sleep when we get to Derry,” I offered. “When I can lie down on a proper bed.”

Again the thought of no hotel filled me with dread.

“I’m sure your cousin has a very nice room waiting for you – Auntie Dolores tells me he keeps a nice house,” Mom said and I cringed. “He’s a nice boy, she says.”

I tried to block out my growing sense of unease as we wound through the roads. My iPod pumped tunes into my ears, the quiet melancholy songs of Adam Duritz soothing me.

Any emotions my mother had been keeping in check disappeared as we neared Derry. I saw her sit a little more rigidly as the signs directing us to her native town revealed smaller and smaller numbers. By the time we reached a village – which looked more like a street to me – called Newbuildings, she had her hands tightly clasped and was muttering some sort of prayer under her breath. As we swept through a set of traffic lights and caught a glimpse of the River Foyle weaving its way towards the city ahead her prayer had become a sob. A “Jesus, Mary and Saint Joseph” of emotion accompanied by gentle rocking. I reached for her clasped hands, feeling a tear fall to my hand before she shrugged me away.

“It’s home, Belle,” she said softly before losing herself again to her sobs. “It’s home.”

Sitting back, leaving her to her reverie, I tried to take in the sights around me. This was where my mother grew up – a place she hadn’t seen in a lifetime – a place she had always said she was happy enough to leave behind. I was surprised to find a flurry of emotion rise up in me as we turned and swept onto a blue steel bridge and across a river which seemed to cut the city in two. There was a part of me here – right in this air, in these rain-soaked pavements, in the dull greyness of the sky and in the gentle sobs from my mother.

“It’s so different,” she whispered as we came to a halt at the redbrick bus station, where weather-battered hanging baskets swayed in the breeze. “It’s just the same.”

I nodded, pretending to know what she meant but I knew there was no point in talking to her further. Her eyes were darting around the platform, trying to find the familiar, as I helped her from her seat and lifted her bag from the overhead rack.

I think I saw Dolores before she did – a short stocky woman, whose grey hair was cut short and fixed in a curl but whose facial expressions mirrored my mother’s. Once again my mother called to the Baby Jesus before alighting from the bus with not a care to her age, her slightly arthritic hips or the exhaustion from the long journey. Within seconds she was wrapped in her sister’s arms, the pair crying as I pulled the weekend cases down the stairs of the bus and collected the rest of our luggage from the rear compartment. It didn’t seem like one of those moments where I could just butt in and introduce myself, so I stood there awkwardly, lifting my weight from foot to foot, trying to bring some life back into my limbs after the long journey. Auntie Dolores seemed reluctant to let my mother go – her warm voice, a slightly harsher, deeper version of my mother’s, muttered over and over that it had been a lifetime and that she couldn’t believe it had been so long. She hugged my mother close. “Poor Bob!” she said, or at least I think that is what she said as her thick
accent was muffled in my mother’s hair. I could not hear my mother answer back but I was aware she was crying. A man, in flat cap and slacks with a heavy grey cardigan and obviously with Auntie Dolores, watched us from a distance, looking slightly embarrassed at the show of emotion before him. I nodded in his direction and he tipped his head at me briefly before staring off into the middle distance. I figured there was no point right now in trying to engage him in conversation – I would just have to wait for the reunion to cry itself out – which of course sounds harsher than I meant it to. But I had been travelling for the best part of twenty hours. I needed the bathroom and I could no longer feel my right butt-cheek. I was pretty sure that the slightly dodgy smell which had been lingering in my nostrils for the last hour might have actually been coming from me.

“Poor Bob,” Auntie Dolores said again, stepping back this time and taking my mother in from head to foot before turning her gaze on me, just at the time I was trying to stretch out a kink in my neck.

“You must be so tired,” she said, reaching for me and pulling me into a group hug with my mother. “Dear God, it is just brilliant to see you. Brilliant! Of course so sad . . . poor Bob . .
. may he rest in peace.” She shook her head and made the sign of the cross on her ample bosom. “We should get you home.” She looked towards the flat-capped man. “Shouldn’t we get them home, Hugh? Sure won’t they be wrecked?”

I was foolish to think that home actually meant the place where I would be staying. Although I dreaded being shown to my cousin’s bachelor pad, I had started to crave going anywhere that provided a bed. I didn’t even care if it was a comfortable bed. No, when Auntie Dolores said “home” she of course meant her actual home: a small redbrick house on a terraced street which looked like it would have fitted, in its entirety, into our back yard at home. It was the same redbrick house my own mother had grown up in along with her family, eight of them in total, squeezed in like sardines.

We, the four of us, pushed our way into an impossibly small room where at least eight other people stood, shoulder to shoulder, some of them looking vaguely like my mother. A door to an impossibly small kitchen was open, which at least provided a fresh supply of oxygen to the room. It wasn’t warm outside but the room had a cloying feel as my mother was gathered into a tearful group hug by her long-lost relatives. Occasionally one of the group would look at me and back to my mother and ask if I was “little Annabel” and my mother would nod and I would feel about five years old. I stood, awkwardly once more, hoping they wouldn’t grab me into their scrum. Feeling a little overwhelmed and more than a little overheated I made for the impossibly small kitchen where aluminium foil-covered platters of food sat on every available surface and the biggest kettle I had ever seen bubbled on the stove.

I pushed my way through the open back door into a small concrete yard dotted with plastic planters overgrown with flowers. Seating myself on a plastic garden chair, I put my head in my hands, and tried to take deep breaths to stem the slightly dizzy, overly exhausted feeling that was threatening to overpower me. How my mom was still on her feet, I just didn’t know. I imagine she was fuelled with adrenalin and raw emotion at seeing her long-lost relatives again, and while I was happy for her – and I really was – they were strangers to me. This felt alien and claustrophobic and if one more person said “Poor Bob!” I would scream out loud.