Mealtimes were a torment. I was like the earthing wire in an electric plug, quietly diffusing the enormous tensions around me.
I was never sure what the ultimate quarrel was that made Millie and Dad stop speaking to one another. Since I was about eight years old, I found myself placed between them at meals, my two brothers opposite. They spoke to us, we kids spoke to one another but not a word passed between my parents. I was their mouthpiece.
‘Ask your father if he wants any more potatoes.’
‘Bridie, tell your mother, I’ve got more than enough.’
‘Kindly ask your father to pass the gravy boat this way. He’s had it next to his plate for long enough.’
‘Inform your mother that it can hardly be called gravy. More like the remnants of the dishwater.’
‘Bridie, tell that man beside you that he has never seen a bowl of dishwater in his life as he never stoops so low as to wash dishes.’
At first it was amusing to pretend to pass on these ridiculous messages but as I grew older it began to seem more and more childish. I simply sat in silence between them, a mere physical barrier. Sometimes I wondered if they would hit one another in their exasperation and whether one day I might be the recipient of their pent-up rage, killed by mistake, an unlucky punch bag.
Millie was jealous of my love for Dad. This had always created a wall between us. I called her Mother to her face though in my head she was always Her or Mean Millie. But Dad was Dad Joe and I adored him. Like a dog, I could almost smell him coming home on leave. I knew it with a deep instinct. Dad was in the Navy and often away at sea, yet I always sensed when he was coming back. Mean Millie would never tell me anything, but whenever I saw his familiar sprawling handwriting on a letter, I watched out of the corner of my eye to see her reaction. If he was about to come ashore, she would look up and stare out of the window with an exasperated little sigh. My heart leapt with joy when she did this. I knew then that he was on the way back and she was anything but pleased about it. I’d given up asking her when Dad would return. When I did she would get angry.
‘What’s it to you, Little Miss Nobody! It’s no business of yours.’
But it was my business – Dad had taken me in as a baby and brought me up. As my real father lay dying, Dad Joe, who was his best friend, promised he would care for me and rescued me from being sent to unknown relations or, worse still, to a children’s home. He was the most wonderful dear man in the world.
Millie never accepted me. She was the evil stepmother straight from any fairytale.
Even as a tiny baby, I knew I didn’t belong to this family. I was the odd one out. Millie made it plain she had no love for me. What little she had was for her two boys. I was Little Miss Nobody in her eyes. I felt as if she watched me all the time with an expression of contempt and dislike, treating all my efforts to please with derision. It made no difference how hard I tried, nothing was ever good enough or properly done.
‘You’re such a sloppy, stupid child!’ she shouted at me one day.
She had sent me straight into the kitchen when I got home from school and told me to make her a cup of tea. It had been a long, hot day. I was tired and longed to go up to my room and read a book, longed for a few moments peace away from her and those pitiless, inquisitorial eyes. But it was not to be. Anger bubbled up in me and made me clumsy. I mumbled to myself under my breath as I banged the kettle on the stove and grabbed a dishtowel from the oven rail. Set to work the moment I got home; set to work all weekend while she sat and read a magazine and polished her bright red nails! In my haste to get upstairs to my room for a precious five minutes, I dropped a cup on the kitchen floor while drying it.
‘You’re just as stupid as your mother! She had no sense at all. And you’re the image of her.’ Millie stood in the doorway, arms folded, towering above me.
She’d been in a bad mood since that morning. I suspect it was more to do with the fact that Mrs Hillman had called round at breakfast to cancel their Tuesday lunchtime outing, yet I always felt guilty as if in some peculiar way it was my fault. Feelings of guilt meant that I wasn’t as sharp as usual that morning and spilt the cornflakes packet all over the breakfast table and floor. Well, that wasn’t my fault. It was that idiot Andy, that hateful son of hers. He pushed my arm hard as I was pouring them into his bowl and grinned with malicious joy when Millie made me pick up every one.
‘I don’t want them in my plate, dirty things … put them in yours,’ he yelled, ‘Mum, she’s putting the ones off the floor in my plate … tell her!’
And as always, she did so, giving me a slap for my pains.
‘Oh, Mum, that’s not fair. Andy pushed her,’ Jim said in his laconic way but his effort to be reasonable made no difference. Andy was her baby, her little darling. She spoilt Jim, her eldest, but not in the same way.
So now, hearing the cup smash to the floor and my gasp of dismay as I hastily tried to pick up the pieces, she came over and stood there staring at me in her usual malevolent fashion.
‘Stupid. Irish and stupid,’ she repeated. ‘That’s the third thing you’ve broken this week. Thank God, you’re not mine. Yes, it’s time you knew it. I’d have been ashamed to claim you.’
She said all this while I was throwing the broken pieces of the cup in the bin. A shard of pottery had made a slit that poured blood and threatened to drip onto my white school blouse. I began to suck my finger but, at these words, took my finger out of my mouth and stared at her. It was the first time she had ever spoken of this.
‘But … then who is my mother?’
I asked almost pleadingly. It didn’t surprise me to hear that Millie wasn’t my real mother. Heavens above, I knew it instinctively and it made my heart glad to know for sure. But then – who was I? Why was I here if I had another family?
Millie made no reply to my question, just sniffed and tossed her permed head. It pleased her to think she’d broken my heart telling me she was not my real mother. The fact is I was jubilant about it. It meant I owed her nothing at all. However, there were now a hundred questions to answer and Millie was never going to oblige by saying more than she had already. She merely said, ‘Hurry up and make that cup of tea and get upstairs and change before you ruin that blouse. School uniforms cost money. You cost money. I could have done without a burden like you in the middle of the war as well as trying to keep my boys. And now you cost more than ever to keep. Joe just doesn’t understand, he never has understood.’
I ran upstairs once the tea was safely made and delivered. Flinging myself on the bed, I lay there, my heart pounding with shock and a peculiar joy. Over and over I asked myself, ‘Who am I? Why am I here in this house?’
There was no way I could ask Dad Joe, as he was still away at sea. But I would ask him next time. Knowing I was fostered or adopted explained a lot and made the burden lighter, in a funny way. I could now dream of parents who were special and fabulous. Millie had hinted that my mother was Irish. That explained my deep chestnut-coloured hair and grass-green eyes. Not that I knew it at the time. I was far too young to know what any of it meant except that Millie wasn’t my real mother, and that was the biggest relief of all.
The next time Dad Joe came home on shore leave, I asked him about it.
‘Dad,’ I whispered when we were alone for a brief moment, ‘Dad, who is my real mother?’
He looked at me with his usual kindly expression, so different to Millie’s hateful glare.
‘What makes you ask that, Bridie?’
‘Mother told me … I mean Millie Mother. She told me my real mother was stupid and Irish.’
He looked away and stared out of the window for a long while, various expressions passing over his craggy face.
‘Oh, she would say that, she would malign the dead, the bitch. I knew she’d throw it at you some day. I suppose it’s time, then,’ he added, as if to himself.
‘Time for what?’
‘Come for a walk with me, Bridie.’
He had a serious look on his face and I wondered what he was thinking. I sensed he had something momentous to tell me. Taking his hand, I set off with him along the road until we came down to the quayside.
‘Can we go down to the shore?’ I asked. Whenever I saw the sea, I had to go close to it. It lured me with its sounds, the tumbling, rushing waves, the roar of its incessant motion. Frightening, majestic, terrible, it never stopped, it was never still, yet looking out over its vastness, I felt stillness in my soul. It was a paradox I would never understand. We shared this love of the sea, Dad and me, and would often come down here together – I sitting on the low stone parapet, Dad leaning against it, one arm about me, the other holding his pipe which he puffed with deep enjoyment. The smell of the strong, dark tobacco wafted about me and I snuffed at it with pleasure.
‘Yes, let’s go down,’ he said and I stopped to take off my socks and shoes and follow him down the stone steps to the beach. My toes sank deliciously into the yielding, shifting sands. I ran as well as I could, stumbling and sinking in the softness until at last, I reached the flat, hard edges of the shore where the retreating waves had left a large margin of packed wet walkway.
Joyfully, I shouted and sang to the waves. Dad stood and watched me with amusement.
After a while, I ran back and we walked along the shoreline, stopping to greet familiar dogs.
‘I wish we had a dog, Dad.’
‘I’d get you one, Bridie, but Mother would never have an animal in the house. You know what she’s like.’
‘Doesn’t Jim want one, or Andy?’
‘Apparently not.’
Subdued, I looked out again at the sea.
We walked back to the steps. I put on my shoes and socks then Dad said, ‘Let’s sit down here for a bit, Bridie. There’s something special I want to tell you, sweetheart.’
Climbing up after him to the bit of parkland at the top, I sat beside him on the wrought iron seat with its green-painted wooden slats, a present from John Barley to his dear, departed wife, Mary. I traced the letters of their names with my finger.
Dad knocked out the ashes from his pipe and put it in his jacket pocket. I felt a sudden feeling of dread, though I had no idea why. He seemed so solemn.
‘You’re not a baby any more,’ he mused. ‘You’re almost a teenager now, and I feel it’s time to tell you things you ought to know about, things about yourself, where you come from. So … now you know, don’t you, Bridie, you know you’re not my real daughter and Millie’s not your mother.’
‘Whose daughter am I, then?’ I asked and began to bite the skin round my fingers, a nervous habit of mine when troubled.
He took my hands away and smacked them gently. I folded them in my lap and stared out to sea.
‘Your father was called Bill O’ Neill. He was my best friend; we both served on board HMS Winchester in the war. He was a great fellow, Bridie, always ready for a laugh. But when you were born, your mother died having you. She had some sort of rare blood condition and it proved fatal.’
I looked up at him and he took my hand in his, squeezing it affectionately.
‘Was she pretty?’
‘She was beautiful, Bridie. You’re already getting to look like her, got her lovely chestnut hair and soft green eyes. Even her little freckles on your nose. Yes, you’re like her a lot. But she died and your dad couldn’t live without her. Just the week before when I was with him in Dublin he said, “Take care of Bridie if anything happens to me, Joe, promise.” I can hear his voice even now. I wondered at the time what made him say that.’
‘But how did he die, Dad?’
Dad Joe hesitated and looked at me for a long while as if pondering what to say.
‘Well, let’s say … he died of grief.’ He looked a bit worried at saying that as if he thought I might bawl or scream or something, but I didn’t. I just sat and thought about it for a long time. His words were like a romantic story. It seemed to have little to do with me or my life. These unknown parents meant nothing to me. I felt no emotion at all. All the same, I wondered what they had looked like.
‘Have you any photos?’
Dad looked relieved by my calm acceptance. He smiled and patted my hand again.
‘One or two. I’ll show them to you sometime. But don’t tell Mother. She never liked your mum and dad, especially your mum.’
I wondered why, but had a feeling it was jealousy. Millie was always jealous of any woman Dad spoke to; jealous of all his friends come to that. She was a woman who demanded to be the centre of attention, no matter what it took.
‘But you love me, don’t you Dad?’
He looked down at me, his kindly face full of tenderness. He patted my cheek and pulled my ear gently.
‘I love you like you were my own, Bridie. Millie refused to let me formally adopt you but it makes no difference. I’m your Dad now. I promised Bill. And I promise you.’
Dad later told me that both my parents came from Dublin. My mother’s name was Maureen. He showed me the photos of them hidden in his wallet – the wallet he always kept on his person for Millie was a snoop who rifled through all his letters and possessions when he went away. Dad knew this and made sure anything he wanted to keep to himself went with him on his travels. Not that he was a man of secrets. He was an open, trustworthy person, his face craggy, warm and cheerful. His eyes were a bright blue in that tanned face. They were clear, sincere and honest, just as he was; not a handsome man but his face was strong and interesting. I could never understand why he had married Millie. He told me she’d been a beauty back then. The old wedding photo on the sideboard showed him smart in his naval uniform with Millie at his side, clutching his arm with one hand and a trailing spray of maidenhair ferns and roses in the other. I had to grudgingly admit she was pretty, in a 1940s sort of way. Her hair in the photo was longer and darker, permed into tight curls. She looked attractive and smiling, so different to the bitter, angry, middle-aged woman she had now become.
My real mother had an attractive rather than pretty face. It had character and strength about it. The nose was straight from brow to tip and the mouth quite full. Her hair looked lovely, thick and falling in natural waves to her shoulders. My father was the opposite, his hair dark, flopping across the brow and he was very handsome. I often asked to look at this photo when Dad and I were on our own and it was safe. When I was older, Dad gave me these photos and they remain my treasured possessions. I thought – I could have fallen in love with my real father if I’d met him in different circumstances. He was so beautiful.
So when Bill O’Neill appeared to me in later life in a different form, I fell in love with him all over again.