The First Time I Said Goodbye (7 page)

* * *

Slowly, as it happened, was no exaggeration. We walked the City Walls – a mile-long trail around the very centre of the city – steeped in history. My mother talked – of course she did – but it was of the famine graves, the workhouse, the history of the cathedrals, the Siege of Derry and the Burning of Lundy. I was almost tempted to ask her if she had eaten a tourist guide earlier in the day but I decided to say no more.

“You know a lot about this place,” I commented as we climbed down the steep stairs of the walls and crossed to a pub called Badger’s, where my mother ordered two glasses of wine and looked at the lunch menu even though I was still full from the scones an hour before.

Taking our seats in a quiet corner, my mother sat back and sipped from her glass. “You don’t get a place like Derry out of your mind,” she said. “It’s changed so much, sweetheart. So much of it looks so different to the place I remember, but it feels the same. It feels so safe and sound – it feels like home.”

“Meadow Falls is home, Mom,” I said softly.

“A part of me will always consider this home,” she said. “And I suppose a part of me will always wonder why I left.”

“You left because you fell in love with Dad,” I said. “Remember?”

She sipped from her glass again, just as she had sipped from her teacup earlier, as if she was thinking very carefully about what to say next.

“I’m not sure . . . I don’t think . . . there was more to it than that.”

Chapter 7

Of course I miss you. Of course I love you. I can’t imagine ever not loving you.

* * *

By the time I got back to Sam’s my head was spinning, and not just from the mid-afternoon glass of wine and the slight tinge of a hangover from the night before. I had two hours to get ready for that night’s entertainment – and two hours to try and process what my mother had told me. I doubted, as I turned on the strong streams of the power shower, that even the most invigorating of showers would clear the weird thoughts from my head. But I knew it had taken a lot for my mom to start talking to me – and that I would be expected to be the belle of the ball at the family dinner Auntie Dolores had arranged for us.

Sam had called me earlier to warn me what was planned – and warn me of the family traditions I needed to be aware of – such as the after-dinner drinking, singing and storytelling. “Pick your party piece,” he said.

“My party piece?”

“The song you will sing.”

“I don’t sing.”

“Yes, you do,” he said confidently.

“No. I really don’t. I was the only girl in High School asked to mime during our graduation ceremony.”

“You’re a Hegarty,” he said. “You sing. Whether you like it or not. Inability to hit notes does not exclude you from the after-dinner joy that is performing your party piece. You will sing or you will be tortured until you do. Have you ever seen
Father Ted
? The character Mrs Doyle with her tea? Well, the Hegartys are all like that about the singing. It will be all ‘ya will, go on’ until you blast a wee something out. So believe me, cousin, you are best to just choose something – a short something – and get it over and done with. They will not allow you to rest until you get it out of the way.”

I contemplated this as I stood under the shower, and thought of my mother and the day that had passed.

“I didn’t know your father when I moved to the States,” she had said.

“Of course you didn’t, not really. You don’t really know someone until you live with them. And I’m sure in those days you didn’t live with someone before you were married.”

“No, pet, you didn’t. But when I say I didn’t know your father, I mean that we met after I moved over. Some years after, if the truth be told.”

I looked at her, struggling to process things. “You didn’t meet him until then? You left Ireland, without anyone to go to? I thought
it was because you were chasing your big romantic dream?”

She gulped her drink. I don’t think I had ever seen my mother gulp an alcoholic drink in her life.

“I was chasing something,” she said. “It was such a long time ago. It seems silly now, to be honest. But I was chasing a romance – a romance that didn’t work out.”

“But which you thought so much of at the time that you gave up everything you knew to move to the other side of the world for?” I struggled to keep the incredulity from my voice.

“I thought it was worth it at the time,” she said. “But it didn’t work out – and then I met your dad. And I don’t regret that for a second. He gave me you . . . but . . .”

“But?” There were no buts. I didn’t want to hear any buts. So before she could speak I silenced her with a quick “Never mind!” as I gathered my belongings into my purse, telling her there was a lovely little gift shop I had spotted from the walls that I really wanted to visit and perhaps we should make a move.

“Annabel, you wanted to know more.”

“I thought I did,” I said, plastering a too-bright smile on my face, “but I was wrong and I’m not ready – so if you don’t mind, I’d love to visit that little gift shop and see if they have anything which I could take back home to the States with me. I want to get something extra special for Elise – she’s done a lot keeping the business on track. That shop looks just the ticket.” I was speaking fast and I know I was rambling but I didn’t want any awkward silences, so I chatted on, nineteen to the dozen as my mother would say, until she realised that the conversation we had been having would go no further that day.

She followed me, meekly, into the shop, where I cooed over an Orla Kiely bag and started a conversation on what my party piece would be.

* * *

I must have packed while on drugs – even though the only drugs I took were some Advil – because as I sorted through the suitcase I had brought with me, the suitcase I thought was too heavy and contained way too much, I found that I had nothing which really suited an impromptu welcome-home party. I’d been told it was taking place in a local restaurant, in a special function room, and that the entire Hegarty clan would be there en masse. So I sorted through my clothes – pulling out jeans and sweatpants and T’s and three crisp white shirts when I’d thought I owned only two of them. I had packed sneakers, Havaianas and a pair of boots. No sandals or strappy shoes. I did find the black dress I had worn to Dad’s funeral but even looking at it made me feel sick, especially in light of my mother’s comments earlier – so I rolled it into as small a ball as I could and shoved it to the bottom of the bin in Sam’s kitchen.

This, however, did not solve my problems about what to wear. I feared I would look pathetically underdressed as I selected a pair of my best-looking jeans, a loose-fitting white blouse and a new pair of canvas sneakers. I pulled my hair back, clipping a flower on the side, and brushed on some bronzer and blush. I slipped a simple silver bangle on my wrist, one that Craig had bought me for my last birthday, and I spritzed some scent on my neck – perfume that Craig had also bought me. It felt a little cloying but I figured that was because I was still tired from the journey, even though it had been three days since I’d left home and landed on Irish soil.

I poured myself a glass of water and sipped it while I waited for Sam to transport us to the party, hoping that would bring me round just that little bit. I figured I would need all the strength I could muster to make it through the evening.

Sam had done little to calm my fears about the party piece. “Don’t think you can get away with it because you’re not from round these parts. It’s not all Irish laments and rebel songs, if you think that is your get-out clause. My mammy does a mean ‘Lipstick on Your Collar’, and I guarantee you will hear at least two versions of ‘Sweet Caroline’ so you better start thinking and thinking fast. It’s like the Rose of Tralee, only with alcohol. You’ll be lucky not to be interviewed in front of the masses.”

I pulled a face which expressed just how completely terrified I was and he laughed wickedly. “I’m only teasing, but just a little bit. Don’t think me mean – I just like it when the focus is not on me for a change. You know, the only single in the village. They would have an arranged marriage in place for me if they could.”

“I’m single,” I muttered and he looked at me quizzically.

“Do you not have a man, back home in the US of A?”

I blushed. Of course I had a man. But we weren’t married. Technically I was single but I didn’t know why I had said it and I wasn’t quite sure how to unsay it.

“Oh yes,” I muttered, mortified. “But we’re not married or anything. So . . .”

“On a technicality?” Sam finished my sentence. “Okay, fair enough.”

But I knew he thought I was a bit odd. Christ alone knew I felt a bit odd myself – about to go to a big party dressed in jeans, sipping wine and telling my cousin I was single when I had been living with Craig for the last three years. I didn’t even know why it had slipped out. So I took perhaps too large a gulp of wine, put my glass down on the granite counter and asked Sam if it was time we should be leaving.

* * *

My mother was wearing make-up. Her hair was curled and set and she was wearing a pale blue dress which showed off her slim figure. She was even wearing a pair of modest heels – two inches at most – but I did a double take when I saw her all the same. She looked younger – it seemed with every day she was back on home soil a year or two of worry melted away from her. I was almost envious of how well she looked when I was hopelessly underdressed and feeling a bit like a butch lesbian in my fairly utilitarian jeans and blouse, while my mother glided up the stairs into the function room like a woman half her age who was a perfect advertisement for ageing gracefully.

When we reached the room itself Sam whispered in my ear that I should brace myself, but even his warning could not have prepared me for the blast of noise, colour and cheering which greeted us. I was vaguely aware of ‘Welcome Home’ blasting over the sound system and a gaudy arrangement of balloons and banners marking both our American and Irish heritage. Several trestle tables in a corner were heaving with yet another Hegarty special buffet, I assumed.

Crowds of cheery-faced people waved at us, some with glasses sloshing overfilled drinks in our direction, and let out a chorus of cheers, shouts, exclamations of great joy and the odd stifled sob. Some of it I understood – some of it, well, I wasn’t even sure it was being said in English.

My mother was enveloped into the crowd so that I could just about see her hair bobbing in and out of great big hugs every now and again. I half-expected them to lift her above their heads and encourage her in a bit of crowd-surfing.

A glass of wine was thrust into my hand by a gruff-looking man in a starched white shirt, which groaned at the buttons. His head was bowed and he was grimacing as if he was trying to force a smile on his face when, clearly, smiling was alien was to him. “Cheers!” he barked and turned to return to the mêlée.

“You should consider yourself honoured,” Sam whispered in my ear. “That’s Uncle Peter. Never known to have bought a drink for anyone in his entire life. This may go down in the family legend book.” He was smiling and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Let’s get a seat before this crowd are finished with their grand big welcome and there isn’t a seat to be had.”

I followed him across the room, largely ignored by the crowd around me – word clearly not having got out there beyond Peter that I was the prodigal daughter’s daughter. I was glad of the vague anonymity and was only too happy to slip behind a table and sip at my drink while Sam sauntered off to the bar to buy his own.

Such a family gathering was, it has to be said, a little overwhelming. We never had anything like it back home. I’d been to parties of course, but nothing as raucous as this (well, there had been a few sorority parties when I was at college, but even those were wildly different in their own way and I’d known more than two or three people at them – and of course, everyone spoke with the same accent as me and used words I understood).

Sam returned with two glasses and a bottle of wine. “Saves us fighting through the masses to get to the bar every time we want a top-up,” he said, pouring his own glass and topping up the glass Peter had given to me. “I’d say, dear cousin, if we have to be here then we get sloshed.”

“I don’t really drink that much,” I said, knowing that I sounded like a party pooper. But then again I was on my holidays and Sam seemed as if he would be a decent enough partner in crime. I saw my mother walking towards us, a host of grinning women looking at me as if I was a newborn they were setting their eyes on for the first time, and slugged at my drink. “Then again,” I said, “when in Rome and all that.”

“Good woman yourself!” Sam said cheerfully, slugging from his own glass.

As it turned out Sam proved to be a very effective deflector-shield. He was able to manage the hordes of aunties and cousins and family friends effectively – telling them about my business at the bakery and steering them away from too many questions about Craig. I guess the single comment had stuck with him. He was also able to steer the conversation away from my father when it started to get a little maudlin, and all the while he managed to make sure my drink was well topped up, which I was grateful for. Soon I found myself relaxing in his company and that of the family around me, allowing their warmth and friendliness to wash over and comfort me. It felt nice to be part of something bigger – to think that we were all tied in some way together. I liked it. It made me feel fuzzy and warm. I felt comforted in a way I hadn’t in a long time – comforted and cushioned by the warm way they welcomed me into the fold. They didn’t have to. I knew that. I was just a distant relative – someone they had never met before. I was a name on Christmas cards. A profile on Facebook. An entry on the family tree – somewhere off at the side on a very small branch. I wasn’t someone they had sat round the Christmas table with or whose First Communion they had attended en masse. And yet there they were, buying me drinks, offering me hugs and, in Sam’s case, treating me like a little sister who needed gentle care.