February 21 – Saturday
There was no excuse, no reason to put things off any longer. Tess knew where to find Nancy and Stephen persuaded her to let him drive her on a sunny Saturday afternoon. They arrived in Ballycove, for all the world like two day-trippers.
‘So, this is where it all began…’ Stephen said when they were sitting outside her parents’ house.
‘It’s a little tragic, isn’t it?’ she said and, truly, looking at the house she had grown up in, she felt a pang of something close to loneliness. It was rattled by years of neglect, the roof in need of repair and the windows yellowed and dirty. ‘My fault, of course,’ she said and she dug into her bag; she had brought along the key to the front door, it was her house after all, but she couldn’t bring herself to go inside, not today. ‘I think it was my mother’s way of making things right. They left it to me, since Nancy inherited Aunt Beatrice’s cottage. To tell the truth, it was another thing to make Douglas hate me all the more. He’d have preferred the Master’s two-story village house, to the little farm cottage at the end of a one-track road.’ She smiled now, it was so obvious how very different they’d always been, pity she’d learned that far too late to change things any sooner.
‘So this is yours?’ Stephen lowered his head to look out the passenger door window. ‘Do you want to go inside?’ He smiled at her, but he didn’t ask the questions that she dreaded most. It was too obvious what had happened anyway. She’d just left the house to die of its own accord and it seemed like that was what it was doing, even if it was taking three and a half decades to get on with it.
‘Yes. I didn’t know it straight away. I just turned up at my father’s funeral and left when the clay was scattered on his grave. They sent me a letter, well, the solicitor did at any rate.’ She smiled, could see now it had been Douglas’s hand behind those tense lines on a taciturn page. Nancy’s letters had been different, a flowing deluge of sentiment and sorrow, the first sent when their mother died. It was filled with grief and love and loneliness and it was, in its own way, an attempt at a reunion. They both knew, that behind those words, Douglas would have none of it. Then, a decade later, with the passing of her father, Nancy wrote once more. This time, the sorrow was more demure, time had settled between them and they both knew there was no room for reconsolidation, but still Tess caught something in the flowing hand. ‘My father wouldn’t have wanted a scene, so I just arrived and left. I shook hands as mourning daughters do, but then I travelled back to Dublin on the evening bus and kept my grief my own. This house meant nothing to me and, if I’m honest, maybe I liked the idea of it embarrassing Douglas as it slowly decayed before his eyes every day.’ She was not proud of how she had allowed herself to feel for far too many years.
‘It seems to me that Nancy has been looking to make amends for quite a while so,’ Stephen said. ‘Maybe she didn’t get quite the prize that you thought she had.’
‘Honestly, looking back, I think she married our father and that probably suited her.’
‘You speak about your father as if he was… something terrible… but he left you this house…’
‘No. He wasn’t terrible, he was just so very middle-class. He was like a lot of men back then, so taken up with what the neighbours thought, cripplingly so. I suppose, I just wanted to get away from that, whereas Nancy was like my mother and she needed someone to take care of her and make her safe.’
‘Nothing wrong with that, Tess, if someone loves you,’ Stephen said softly.
‘No, not a thing, so long as they love you as you are and they’re not looking to make you into someone else.’
He squeezed her hand and his eyes said more than his words could. They pulled away from before the Master’s house and Tess directed him towards the little cottage that she’d loved so much. The road seemed to have shrunk, the colours much less vibrant than she remembered, but of course, this was February and all her memories of Ballycove seemed to rest in summer. He pulled in on the grassy verge and said, ‘Take as long as you need, I’ll be here, waiting for you.’
‘You don’t have to; I can take a train back, if it’s…’
‘I want to wait,’ he said gently, ‘God knows I’ve waited long enough for you, I think you might even be worth waiting for a little longer.’ He laughed at her now, but his words warmed her deep inside. ‘Go on with you now, you silly songbird, and take your medicine.’ He touched her face, as though he expected there would be tears. ‘You’re doing the right thing.’
This time, she took in the details of the little cottage on the hill differently. This time, she noticed more, it made sense that Nancy should have lived out her days in this place. It was everything she’d always wanted. Even the door, tastefully faded to just the right hue, it was so Nancy. She rang the bell. She hadn’t a notion what she was going to say to this woman, connected to her on one level and removed on every other.
‘Oh, Tess, you’ve come back,’ Nancy flung back the door and threw her arms around Tess when she saw her. ‘I’ve thought so much about you, come in, please, come in.’ She was walking her into the little sitting room they’d spent many of their childhood afternoons in. Now it opened up into a large reception room that volleyed back into a modern kitchen. ‘I can’t believe you came back, I wanted to call to you, but I was afraid. I didn’t want to intrude, but I wanted to put things right. It’s time.’ Nancy had the flushed look that Tess remembered vividly from youth.
‘I don’t know how to put things right,’ Tess said evenly. ‘I’m not sure how we can do that, Nancy, but I have a feeling we have things to say, things to hear and if…’
‘It doesn’t matter now, none of it matters now, Tess. It was all so long ago, but we’re sisters, we’re linked and we shouldn’t have let…’
‘No, Nancy. I have things to explain, what I did, it was a terrible thing to do to you.’ Tess moved back towards the kitchen, it was bright and new and free of any memories for her.
Nancy followed her automatically. ‘Let’s make some tea, it could be a long afternoon,’ she said and they both knew the making of tea had a lot more to do with settling their nerves than it had with anything else.
Tess was glad of the cup in her hand. It gave her something to hold onto, perhaps something to pull her back from the abyss she’d always feared if she faced up to the past.
‘Of course, it was inevitable that this day would come – where else would we both have ended up if not here.’ The words fell into the chasm between them. ‘Ballycove is probably the last place we were really happy together,’ Tess said.
‘It’s the only place I was really happy at any rate,’ Nancy’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes and Tess wondered how long that had been the case.
‘With Douglas, you had a good life?’ Certainly, that prospect had eaten away at Tess for many years.
‘Douglas never loved me, Tess, not the way you thought he did. I suppose we both made the same classic mistake.’ She smiled sadly now.
‘Oh, what’s that?’ Tess asked, blowing the steam from the top of her tea.
‘We fell for our father. Oh, don’t look at me like that, I knew you were in love with him too, how could I not? Of course I knew how you felt about Douglas,’ Nancy whispered now, then she held her hand up to stop Tess from interrupting her. ‘I know you don’t believe me, but I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. He loved me, of course he did, on one level. He took care of me, long after I should have been taking care of him. He was a good man. He was trying to be the best man he could be, but he couldn’t make himself anything other than what he was.’
‘I’m sorry, Nancy,’ Tess said the words, couldn’t quite believe she was saying them, but then something of her sister struck her that perhaps that fragile look had as much to do with inheriting their mother’s situation as it did with inheriting her looks. There had been very little joy in her life, Tess could see that now.
‘It doesn’t matter now. It was all a long time ago. He never got over the baby.’ Nancy walked over to the old sideboard that had filled the sitting room once, leaving only squirming room behind the sofa. She pulled open a drawer and took out a small old album of photographs, handed it across to Tess. ‘Danial died just weeks after that day. They said it was natural causes, cot death. Nothing to be done about it. But…’ Nancy looked away.
‘I know,’ Tess said and maybe she had known all along, because she’d never searched for him in the sea of faces that she met each day in Dublin. She’d never expected to see him again.
‘Douglas blamed me.’ Nancy shook her head. ‘After that day, with you, he watched me all the time. He thought I wasn’t fit to mind the baby, leaving him in the garden on his own, but he wasn’t an easy child. He cried all night and, that day, when you came here, I was so worn out. I lay on the bed for just a few minutes and when I woke, he was gone. I must have slept for two hours, but…’
‘I’ll never be able to tell you how sorry I was. It wasn’t…’
‘I know. I knew it then, but everything was so bound up. Our father, Douglas, the baby and I knew, of course I knew, you would never have hurt him, you’d have brought him back.’
‘I…’ Tess couldn’t say a word, she’d often wondered if she would have brought him back. When she remembered that time, it was as though she’d been looking on from outside. As though, she’d watched another person take that baby, sing those songs and feel that fleeting happiness that she knew wasn’t hers to feel. ‘I don’t know, I’ve never really known. I was like someone else that day. I suppose, after everything, I just couldn’t handle the reality of it all. Everything was just a little further away from me and I’ve gone through most of life feeling cut off.’
‘In the same way as our mother?’
‘Perhaps, I hadn’t thought of it like that, but…’ Tess realised Nancy was probably right.
‘You never spoke to me at her funeral, you were gone before I had a chance to say that it was all right, that we should try and…’ Nancy said then.
‘I didn’t think you could really forgive me for that day with Danial, maybe I didn’t forgive myself,’ Tess said sadly. It had hurt at the time, not being able to stand at her side by their mother’s grave. ‘And, maybe, I was afraid of being properly cast out, and ashamed too. I’d acted so badly.’ She shook her head.
‘It wasn’t just you. It was everything. We were brought up in a house where we were afraid to let ourselves down. We couldn’t say how we felt or even explain, in case Father found out we’d made a mistake. That’s not normal, Tess. You must realise that.’
‘Of course.’ She sat back now, looking out the slender windows that faced south, catching the final echoes of winter sun on the water beneath the cottage. ‘Maybe, now, I do,’ she said and she felt a lifetime of tears cascade down her cheeks, but it felt good, as though with them she was finally letting go the past.
‘And you never married? You made a life for yourself in that little flat?’
‘I don’t know that I’d have chosen to spend the years as I have… But life is good now.’ Tess said firmly. She wouldn’t talk about the days she regretted throwing away the opportunities she’d once had. She’d spent a lifetime feeling sorry for herself, it was time to start enjoying life now.
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ Nancy said quietly, and Tess knew now that her sister’s life had not been the idyllic fairy tale she’d always imagined either. Maybe, no one could have made Douglas happy, it would be hard to live up to his expectations.
‘You could have told me, I would have…’
‘Ah, don’t be daft. I made my bed. I thought I knew what I was getting into. I really thought, I’d won the jackpot.’
‘I thought you had too,’ Tess said quietly, embarrassed now at her jealousy all these years.
‘No.’ Nancy shook her head with the finality of one who has thought things through many times over the years. ‘No, as it turned out, it soon became apparent that Douglas had very set ideas and very high standards. I spent a lifetime not being quite good enough. And then after Danial… we tried, don’t get me wrong, we made the best of things, but there were no more children. You and I, we both ended up in the same boat, even if it didn’t seem that way to you.’
‘God, it’s a terrible mess, isn’t it?’ Tess looked across at Nancy, she wasn’t sure if she’d said the words or not, but she must have, because Nancy was nodding at her, slowly agreeing with the inevitability of her reaction. ‘I’m sorry, Nancy, I’m so sorry for everything that happened to you, that day and…’ she never thought she’d be the one apologising, but then, she’d never expected this. ‘I’m sorry for all of it.’
‘You didn’t know.’
‘I turned my back on you – on both of you. I assumed that I had come out the worst and you had made the better life at my expense,’ she cast her hand about the cottage. ‘I should have let him go and been happy for you both.’
‘Well, you were right about this place, I shouldn’t have asked for it, we both know, Beatrice wanted you to have it.’
‘God, no. It wouldn’t have suited me at all,’ Tess said and she knew it now in her heart. She couldn’t have lived here, in this lonely spot. Dublin was her home; holding this place in her heart was just another thing to blame them for. ‘But you’re right, I know that Beatrice wanted me here and I’m glad I’ve come back, at last.’ And she was, because apart from putting things right with Nancy, it felt as though Beatrice was here too, silently looking on and approving of her courage in finally facing up to the past.
‘The thing is, Tess, it’s not too late for us. We still have time to make things right.’ Nancy whispered the words and when Tess looked at her now, she saw something she hadn’t seen before. This was her sister, her flesh and blood, holding out all these years for her to come back to her. Tess knew she could walk away now, their war settled. She could go back to Swift Square with a clear conscience and never see Nancy again. She could do that, or they could truly put the past behind them and try to build something for the future. She sat still for a moment; it was hard to change the habit of a lifetime.
*
‘I want to visit Danial’s grave,’ she whispered, it was the right thing to do. She had to go and make peace. That is what she should have done years ago. ‘Will you show me where he’s buried, I need to spend some time with him.’
‘Oh, Tess.’ Nancy began to cry again, only this time the tears were a mixture of relief and joy. She threw her arms around Tess and, somehow, Tess had a feeling that the world was settling to where it should be for her now. It was more poignant to think she’d passed this graveyard when she travelled out to Ballycove. It was a small old gated burial ground that stood mostly neglected because the village nearby was all but derelict and people were being buried in a new graveyard a couple of miles closer to the next town.
They stood now, only metres from the main road, but completely out of sight, thanks to the mounds of earth built up to block off the motorway. Tess could hear the traffic in the distance and it seemed wrong that Danial should be left here. She’d have preferred somewhere with yew trees, where birds could nest and the seasons marked out with the departure of the swallows and the arrival of the butterflies. Nancy had chosen a simple cross with his name and the dates that marked out his coming and going from this life. Next to him, Douglas’s grave was marked with a similar cross and Tess could see Nancy had made sure the plot on the other side of Danial was free – it seemed she had it all planned out. By the time Douglas was buried, he didn’t belong to Tess anymore, not even in her imagination and she’d never truly belonged to him.
‘It had been too easy, in some ways,’ Tess confided in Nancy as they stood at the grave.
‘How’s that?’ Nancy was buttoned tight against the biting cold.
‘Well, I’ve spent all these years blaming you both, when really – it was easy to let Douglas go. I’m not saying I wanted to, but if I had truly wanted to hold onto him, surely I’d have fought harder for him?’
‘I often wondered about that,’ Nancy nodded, but she never took her eyes off the little cross.
‘I never really tried to win Douglas, I just walked away – I could have tried to get him back. If I’d really wanted him, letting him go wasn’t something I would have done.’ The sad thing was, it took her over forty years to realise it was the truth.
‘So, perhaps you can make peace with what has happened?’ There was hope in Nancy’s eyes, just a glimmer but enough to cast off the heavy darkness.
‘I’m saying, I think I already have.’ Tess popped her arm through Nancy’s and linked her to where Stephen parked the car. She would come here again, to spend time with Danial, maybe to make her peace with Douglas too. ‘I think things worked out as they were meant to, in the end.’ Tess sighed as she looked back at the simple crosses where they lay. It was a pity that they didn’t get the chance to put things straight between them, but she had time to put things right with Nancy. She paused, drinking in the stillness of the neglected cemetery. Tess felt the warmth of her sister beside her, it was comforting, it was right. ‘Yes, perhaps things have worked out just as they were meant to.’