Twenty-One

Debbie was early, so she sat where she could watch the door for Assumpta. Outside, a woman called to her young daughter to follow and the little girl tumbled after her mother, her little face anxious lest she lose her in this strange place.

Debbie remembered she had liked to swing on the gate as a young girl. The kitchen clock ticked out Mommy’s name; the fridge gurgled in the kitchen; the oven stayed cold. In the sitting room, Agnes’s sewing machine was covered, as if she were away on holiday. The sunshine streamed through in the same spots, but lacked warmth. Sometimes Debbie wet her pants because she could not hold any longer and she could not face struggling up the stairs, waiting for her heart to tighten as she passed the second landing. Sometimes she peed at the back of the potting shed, but she was always afraid Helena Long, the nosey next-door neighbour on the right, might spy her.

Sometimes she wished she had been knocked down by a car on the run home from school that day or that Gainsborough’s wicked dog had got over the fence and savaged her. Then she would not know her mother had come back not to be with her family but to die.

Mommy was back two full days. She slept a lot and the doctor came. Debbie did not get to talk to her; every time she lingered at the bedroom door, she was ushered away. But that morning, Agnes got up. It was almost a normal morning. Debbie only wanted to remember that morning, when she had left for school with a warm, fuzzy feeling, that maybe Agnes loved her.

When she got downstairs, Agnes had a stack of blueberry pancakes and maple syrup ready.

‘Eat up, darling; you don’t want to be late,’ she said, and kissed her daughter on the top of her head.

As she stuffed her mouth, she saw her mother watch her and she grinned a happy grin. Agnes sat down opposite with her muffin and tea.

‘We never go to the playground any more,’ Agnes said, pushing her fingers into the muffin on her plate.

In her eagerness to please, Debbie did not think to wonder why Agnes was mashing the muffin with her fingers, flickers of agitation crossing her eyes.

‘Maybe we can go after school?’

Agnes guffawed loudly. ‘Not today,’ she said, getting up to get the lunch bag ready. ‘You make sure you do well in your spelling test, sweetheart. We can’t be the only people on the street who don’t have a 100 percent score on the refrigerator door.’

They did not say much more to each other, until it was time for Debbie to leave.

‘Bring home a gold star, darling. Make me proud,’ Agnes said, kneeling down beside her daughter to fix her cardigan and straighten her skirt. When Debbie gave her a hug, Agnes laughed.

Debbie could still feel the warmth that rippled through her, when she heard her mother laugh and Agnes told her she loved her.

‘I promise I will get a gold star and run all the way home with it to you.’

Agnes hugged her tight. ‘Do that, darling. Have a good day.’

Her mother did not step out on to the veranda to wave, but Debbie did not mind and walked down the street, practising her ten spellings over and over in her head, to make sure she would bring a gold star home to Mommy.

She recited the ten spellings now, one after another, swinging the gate in rhythm with the rhyme so that the old hinges squeaked loudly.

*

Debbie, fiddling with the fronds of her silk scarf, saw Mother Assumpta glide towards her, and she stood up, not sure if she should extend her hand in greeting.

‘Miss Kading, I hope you are well today. I am sorry about the secrecy. I wanted this to be a private meeting between the two of us. Off the record, so to speak.’

‘Is there something further you can tell me?’

Mother Assumpta eased herself in to a velvet armchair and arranged her skirt carefully around her knees. ‘I hope you do not think any the less of us, as a result of your experiences in trying to track down your birth mother.’

Debbie did not answer.

‘I may have been a bit harsh previously, but you have to understand I was going on what I saw in the record book. I had no idea of and do not condone the practices of the past.’

She paused, hoping the other woman would talk, but was forced to continue as Debbie stayed silent.

‘I have spoken to Consuelo and she has given me your file.’

Debbie edged out on her seat. ‘Can I see it?’

‘I can’t of course show it to you, but if I were to read parts of it aloud, it would not be my fault if you were to hear the information you are looking for.’

Solemnly, she opened the file and read out the names and addresses and income of Rob and Agnes Kading. When she came to the details for the birth mother, she read the name slowly and deliberately: ‘Mary Murtagh, with an address at Bridge Street, Rathsorney, Co. Wicklow. Aged nineteen.’

Debbie’s head began to whirl; she could only see a wave of colour swirling in front of her. The back of her neck hurt like hell and her brain felt like it was swelling.

‘That is her name?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Why was it not in the book when I inspected it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘When can I meet her?’

‘What I am about to tell you may be difficult to hear, but your mother has not made contact and I understand the Murtaghs moved from the area soon after the birth.’

Debbie pushed her head into her hands and attempted to breathe deeply. Pain shot through her and she felt suddenly weary. ‘Why couldn’t you have told me this before?’

‘I did not know any of it.’ Assumpta reached to take Debbie’s hand, but was forced to retract when Debbie shrank back, the tears spilling down her face.

‘How do you know all this now?’

‘I have spoken to Sister Consuelo.’

‘Could I talk to her?

‘She is not well. It is not possible.’

Debbie swiped her hand across her cheeks.

They sat, neither knowing what to say next, until Assumpta pulled herself out of the armchair. ‘My car has arrived. Can I offer you a lift anywhere?’

Debbie shook her head.

‘Goodbye, Miss Kading. We will pray for you.’

Debbie nodded, not bothering to stand up.

She wanted to throw up. Her mouth watered and she cupped her hands in case she had to vomit. She saw Assumpta chatting lightly to a woman on the front steps, laughing heartily, before she made her way to the taxi.

Mary Murtagh: it was a simple name.

Her head was heavy with pain, so she closed her eyes. She should be rushing off, trying to trace the Murtaghs, but she felt exhausted. There was only one certainty: she would never know Mary Murtagh as a young woman or Agnes as an older woman.

Agnes floated by. It was Friday: the day to test drive her latest outfit. At the start of each week, Agnes set herself a challenge. Chairs were pushed back in the sitting room, a Butterick tissue pattern pinned down on fabric and a shape cut out with thick, heavy shears. Agnes would hide herself away, pumping the foot pedal of the machine and stitching into the night. By Friday she was usually finished, so she paraded around the garden and sat on the porch, to break the dress in, she said, before she wrapped it in plastic and placed it in the wardrobe with all the other dresses, stitched in a desperate attempt to keep busy.

Debbie loved to be among the outfits her mother had carefully created. Often, when Rob was asleep on the rocking chair, she stole to the spare room and rummaged through the plastic covers, breathing in the sweet smell and style of Agnes and marvelling at the frills, flounces, satin and silk details that her mother had laboured over. If she had a bad day, she would disappear for hours, wedging herself into the wardrobe so that Agnes enveloped her, the soft caresses of the flouncy summer dresses like comforting kisses on her cheeks, the heavy brocade jackets holding and supporting her.

She never tried on the dresses, never wanting to upset the careful arrangement and symmetry of a dead woman’s wardrobe. As she got older, she did not need the comfort of visits to the wardrobe so much, until one day when she was somewhere around fifteen years old and Johnny Thompson had been a nasty bully to her. When she got home she bolted upstairs, but when she pulled open the wardrobe doors, it was empty.

‘Daddy, where are all of Mommy’s dresses?’

‘What dresses?’

‘In the spare-room wardrobe.’

‘Oh, that old stuff, I threw that out ages ago. No point giving it to a thrift store; nobody would wear it,’ Rob said.

He did not even take his eyes from the newspaper he was reading.

*

Iris moved out late in the evening and within hours of securing her house keys.

‘I am going to take a few days, Ella, to straighten the place out,’ she said, as she piled the last of her stuff into a taxi.

‘What about the café? Debbie is leaving, you know.’

Iris swung around. ‘I will be back before she goes, just a few days. I need to do this, Ella.’

Debbie came out on the front steps to wave goodbye to Iris.

‘You are all leaving me.’

‘At least Iris got what she wanted.’

‘Stay longer, Debbie? We will look after you here.’

‘All the arrangements are made, Ella.’

‘Is there any way of persuading you?’

Debbie put her arm around Ella. ‘Do you fancy a Baileys?’

Ella smiled and they linked arms as they walked to the drawing room together. She took down her mother’s Waterford Crystal glasses, while Debbie nipped upstairs for the bottle; she wiped the insides of the rims lightly with her skirt.

‘You should start serving lunches as well as tea and cakes,’ Debbie said, skipping back into the room.

‘Well, if you stick around I might have a stab at it. Iris’s heavy hands are only good for gardening.’

‘I have to go, Ella.’

‘I know. I just wish it were different.’

‘Don’t you think I wish that too? That I was not going to die, that Agnes and Rob were not dead, that somebody knew where my mother Mary Murtagh moved? For all we know, she was in the States all along.’

‘Mary Murtagh?’

‘That was my mother’s name; the family moved away soon after she had me. Assumpta finally told me.’

‘Mother Assumpta? When did this happen? Were you ever going to tell me?’

‘I was waiting for the right moment, I suppose. She only told me yesterday.’

‘At least I know before Muriel Hearty,’ Ella sighed.

‘Ella, you’ve been so good to me; of course I was going to tell you, but I’m still trying to take it all in myself.’

Ella put down her glass and walked over to put her arm on Debbie’s shoulder. ‘Don’t mind me; I am a selfish, jealous old cow.’

‘There is not much to tell, Ella.’

‘Did they live in Rathsorney itself?’

‘Bridge Street.’

‘There was a lot of chopping and changing in those houses over the years.’

‘It’s not the ending I hoped for,’ Debbie said quietly.

‘I know,’ Ella replied.

They sat in the big fireside chairs sipping their drinks, not needing to say more. Ella refused a top-up.

‘I am up extra early on account of Iris being away.’

Ella pulled herself out of the chair; Debbie followed her up the stairs, afraid to be left on the dark staircase on her own.