The First Time I Said Goodbye (30 page)

“Jesus,” she heard Peter say as he stepped out of bed and buried his head in his hands. “My da.”

She willed herself to stay calm. “We need to hold it together, boys. For now. We need to hold it together. Can you do that for me? Please. Can you? For Daddy. For Mammy.”

She looked at her brothers, looking at each other like lost children, and she thought of how she had been scared to hold her daddy’s hand and she felt something buckle inside her so that she slumped to the floor.

“Stella!” James called, leaping up to help her back on her feet.

No, she would be fine. No, she wouldn’t be fine, but she wouldn’t let her daddy down. She wouldn’t show herself up, nor him.

“I’m grand,” she said, pushing the boys away. “Now do as I say and I’ll go and tell Mrs Murphy. She’ll know what to do. She’ll help.”

Stella dressed quickly, pulling on the skirt and blouse she had left at the bottom of the bed the night before. She slipped her stockings on, followed by her shoes in an almost robotic fashion. She dragged the brush from the dresser through her hair, but only enough to make herself vaguely presentable. There would be time to fix herself properly later. Then she hurried down the stairs, grabbed her coat and walked out into the cold morning.

It was bright and fresh – the sun was shining, reflecting off the polished cobbles. A hint of frost made the ground slippery but Stella walked on, crossing the street, trying to ground herself in some way. Was she really on the way to tell Mrs Murphy to call the doctor and the undertakers? Was her daddy really dead? How could he be? He had been fine last night – tired-looking maybe, but who wouldn’t be tired after a day at the docks lugging around whatever cargo had come in? But he had laughed and joked with them last night – drank tea, kissed her mother. He couldn’t be dead. People didn’t just cease to exist for no reason, did they?

She pulled her coat around her, hugging her arms to herself before she knocked on Mrs Murphy’s door and settled herself to say the words she didn’t want to.

Mrs Murphy opened the door with her usual cheery nosiness. She looked at Stella quizzically – no doubt aware that the Hegarty girl should be at work and not standing at her front door at this time on a weekday morning.

“Whatever is it, Stella?” she asked.

“M-Mrs Murphy,” Stella stammered. “C-could you be s-so good as to call the doctor for us? It’s Daddy. He’s gone, Mrs Murphy. He went in the night.”

Mrs Murphy’s eyes widened, her hand flew to her chest. “Sweet merciful Jesus, child! I’m so sorry.”

Stella took a deep breath. She would hold herself together. She would not let herself go. Not when there were things to be done – the boys to be told, the house to be readied, the funeral to be arranged. No, she would do her daddy proud. It was the least she could do for him.

“I know,” she replied solemnly to her neighbour. “And then, if you would be so good, could you mind the young ones here for me? Just for a bit? Just till we get the house sorted. I don’t want them upset more than they need to be – and there’ll be all that to-ing and fro-ing.”

“Of course I will! I’ll be over for them now. And I’ll phone the chapel, child. Don’t you worry.”

“I should have thought of that. The priest. Can they still give the Sacrament of the Sick if he is gone? Oh, Daddy would have wanted that.”

“I’m sure the priest will do what he can, pet. You head back. I’ll make the phone calls and I’ll be over as soon as I can. Anything you need, you ask. We’ll sort it between us.”

“I need to tell Daddy’s family,” Stella said, her mind filling with the things she needed to do – which she had no experience of before. She had seen death before, but not this close. Not on her own doorstep. Not her own family. She had always just been a mourner, calling by to pay her respects – to say a decade of the Rosary at an open coffin and tell the grieving family she was sorry for their troubles. She didn’t know where to start. Daddy would know, she thought, before quickly realising
that while her daddy would know he was no good to her now. The thought winded her momentarily.

“You look after your own family first, pet. News travels fast in Derry and the people who need to know will know soon enough. For now you have your sister and brothers to be worried about. And your poor mother. How is she?”

Stella shook her head. It was a simple enough gesture but one which conveyed what words could not. How could you adequately describe the hurt and heartache that was tearing through her mother at the moment? How could she ever tell anyone of the look of loss, of desperation, she had seen on her mother’s face as she had cradled her dead husband and willed warmth back into his body?

Mrs Murphy started to cry, and blessed herself, muttering a prayer Stella could not hear as she turned and walked back to the house to break the news to her baby brothers and Dolores.

Walking in the door, she could hear the younger boys fighting and Peter letting a roar at them to calm down and have some respect while Dolores was demanding to know exactly what was going on and demanding to be let upstairs to her parents. “Something’s wrong,” she muttered, over and over. “Tell me, Peter, tell me.”

Stella slipped off her coat and walked towards the kitchen, only to see her mother, who had taken on the appearance of a ghost, walking down the stairs in her cardigan and slippers.

“Did you phone the doctor?” she asked.

Stella nodded. “Mrs Murphy is doing it now. And she’s going to phone the chapel to get the priest down and she said she will come to take Seán and Michael out from under our feet while the undertakers do what they need to.”

Kathleen nodded. “You’re a good girl, Stella. Now, could you do me one more favour?”

“I was just going to tell Dolores and the boys . . .”

“That’s not a job for you, pet. You leave that to me. But I don’t want your daddy up there on his own. Can you go and sit with him for me, pet? Don’t leave him on his own. And keep the curtains drawn, would you?”

Stella nodded, the fear of seeing her father’s lifeless body creeping in again, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t say no. No one had an easy task. Nothing about today would be easy. Or the next days and weeks and months. “I’ll not leave him.”

“And, pet, I know, it’s silly. But don’t let him get too cold. Keep the blanket round him.”

“I promise, Mammy.”

“You’re a good girl,” Kathleen said before taking a deep breath and walking towards the kitchen.

Slowly, her heart thudding, Stella made her way back up the stairs and into her parents’ bedroom. The sight of him was not as shocking this time – he had more of a look of himself about him. Or maybe it was just that, in some way, she had started to process the fact he was gone. Still, as she saw him, she expected to hear him snore. Or sit up, open his eyes and wonder where his cup of tea was. She expected him to do anything rather than just lie there. Stella sat on the edge of the bed, still determined not to let her tears fall, and then she looked around her. The doctor would be here soon, and the priest. She stood up and started to tidy, fixing the blankets on the bed, pulling them tenderly up around her daddy and smoothing them down on the side where her mother had been lying. She gently arranged the items on the dresser – not that they were untidy or that there were that many of them – but it gave her something to do. Then she turned and lined her mother’s shoes against the wall and folded the dress her mother had been wearing the previous day and slipped it into a drawer. She turned to see her daddy’s work clothes hanging over the chair, ready for him to wear. And his boots, lying on the carpet where he had kicked them off. Kathleen always hated him bringing his work boots upstairs. She was forever telling him to kick them off at the door. Stella bent down to pick them up – boots that seemed so big, so heavy, so strong – and at that moment she heard a wail from downstairs as Dolores took in the news her mother had just delivered. She heard the thump of her sister’s feet on the stairs, the sobs as she rounded onto the landing and pushed into the bedroom, throwing herself at her father and crying as if her heart had broken into a thousand pieces. The younger boys followed, clinging onto Kathleen’s cardigan as if for dear life and Stella watched them walk gingerly in, their eyes wide with fear, sadness and curiosity. She watched them approach the bed, Seán asking was Daddy really never waking up and Michael begging him to play one more game of football with him.

And she sat there, with that work boot in her hand, and felt the life she had planned slip through her fingers.

Chapter 26

I feel better now – not all better though. I still miss you with every breath.

* * *

Derry, June 2010

“He was a great man. Hardworking. Funny. Loving. It’s true what they say that a daddy is a girl’s first true love,” my mother said, her fingers tracing a picture of my grandfather in an old photo album she had taken down from a shelf in Dolores’ good room.

I had seen pictures of my grandfather before. My mother said there hadn’t been many around so she had brought just two with her when she came to America. One was a family shot – all eight of them smiling at the camera at a park. And the second was one of my grandfather looking quite stern in his work clothes and flat cap. If I’m being completely honest I always thought that picture was a little creepy – that he looked like he would shout at you quick as look at you – but looking at each of the pictures before me now, he seemed to be smiling in all of them. And the smile transformed his face. I was sad, in that moment, for the grandfather I never got to know, who died thirteen years before I was even born. It struck me that he never got to know any of his grandchildren – none of Dolores’ six children was born before he died. She wasn’t even married to Uncle Hugh then. He never got to walk his daughters down the aisle and give them away. It made me feel inexplicably sad and not only for him but for my mother. I knew the pain of losing a parent. I felt it every day and she, so much younger than I was, she had felt it too. Only losing her father had caused her to lose so much more. Then again, if Ernest had not died she would have gone to America and married Ray and, well, where would that have left me and my father?

“He really looked after us,” my mother continued. “You wouldn’t really understand it, nor should you, pet. But the life I lived growing up was a far cry from the life you led. Your father and I, well, it wasn’t necessarily our choice, but when we had you we were in a much more secure position. There was work at home that your grandfather never could rely on here. That’s not to say we were in want – not really – well, we never felt different from anyone else – maybe that was the difference. I had a happy childhood and that was down to him. And your granny. How I wish, pet, they could have met you. They would have been so proud. Your granny, you know, carried your baby picture in her handbag until she died. Dolores told me that – said the rest of them felt their noses were out of joint because there they were with as many babies as she could want to bounce on her knee and she talked of you as if you were sent down from heaven itself.” Her face was wistful, her eyes watery.

“Do you regret going to America?” I asked and she shook her head, brushing away a tear.

“Oh no, pet. I had to try, you see. I had to try and make it work – to find him again. And your granny, well, she near put me on the boat herself. But I do regret not coming back before. I do regret not seeing her again. Letters weren’t the same and phone calls, as occasional as they were, didn’t allow you a hug.”

She turned the page of the photo album to a picture of my grandparents, smiling together on their wedding day. My grandmother was wearing a simple gown – one which would no doubt be considered the very height of fashion these days, with a bouquet of trailing ivy falling to the ground. My grandfather, his hair sheared into a short back and sides, looked little over the age of eighteen or nineteen and grinned from his starched suit, his head bent towards my grandmother’s as they smiled for the camera. There was an innocence in that picture – a purity. No messing about wondering if it was true love. No to-ing and fro-ing over the years deciding whether or not it was a good idea to get married. No silent dinners wondering what to say to each other. It was love. It was two people in it together – in it for everything. For better and worse. Raising a family filled with love, keeping food on the table and keeping things going. I don’t imagine there was much time for navel-gazing when there were eight mouths to be fed. I felt jealous of them in a way – and I wondered, looking at the picture, would I ever find a love like that? One that was simple – that had that purity?

“Craig and I have broken up,” I blurted out.

My mother raised her eyes from the picture and looked at me, her face giving nothing away.

“What happened?” she asked softly.

I looked her square in the eyes. “It wasn’t right, was it, Mom?” She looked unsure of what to say so I continued. “I don’t want to make do. We weren’t making each other happy. Not for a long time. I didn’t like the person I was when I was with him and I didn’t like the person he had become either. I think we were just clinging on to each other out of habit, or boredom or, I don’t know, a sense of it being the right thing to do – of not wanting to admit we had got it so wrong. But, Mom, these last few days, the letters, being away from home, having the space to think it made me realise some stuff . . . I deserve more, don’t I? I deserve to be loved the way you and Daddy were loved. I deserve to be loved the way Ray loved you and you loved him. I was angry for a while, or confused, or something . . . I didn’t get it. But I think I do now. You didn’t and don’t love Daddy any less because of Ray, do you?”