After the War is Over (32 page)

‘I hadn’t thought about it, but I suppose it would be best if they didn’t.’ She rubbed her forehead tiredly. ‘It’s as if everything is collapsing around me,’ she muttered.

Maggie had wanted to ask more questions. Why had Iris and Nell fallen out? They’d been such good friends, but Iris hadn’t been invited to Nell’s wedding. She positively refused to think that it was Nell’s fault. Iris must have done something wrong – or Tom had.

She was so upset that she couldn’t remember the rest of the conversation all that clearly, but at some point she had walked out of the house. It would be a long time before she spoke to Iris Grant again, she thought as she sat in the back of the Mini, listening to Grace and Iris’s daughter chattering inanely. It felt like an entire lifetime ago since she’d felt that carefree.

Iris was writing a note to her daughters to leave on the kitchen table. Dorothy and Clare were due home at around five, and she was telling them that there was ham salad in the fridge. She had nearly addressed it to Louise too, but remembered just in time that she had gone with Grace Kaminski to London. The note was to tell them that their mum and dad were going to London too.

Something really important has come up
, she wrote, thinking how formal that sounded.
We might not be back until the early hours
.

Tom came into the room; he had been to fill the car with petrol. ‘Are you ready?’ He looked terribly cross, not just with her, but with the entire world, furious to learn of Maggie’s visit and of Nell having revealed the truth about William’s birth after all this time. He slammed the petrol receipt on the table and his cross face crumpled. ‘He
is
our son, isn’t he, Iris? No parents could love him more than we do.’

‘Of course he is, darling.’ Iris put her arms around him for the first time in many years. William might not have come from her womb, but he would always be their dearest, darling son.

Chapter 14

William felt as if he was suspended in mid-air. There was nothing holding him up and any minute he might fall to the ground with an almighty crash. It made him feel very tense, yet he was floating. It was an altogether horrible sensation, his body all crunched up, yet unsupported.

The front doorbell rang. He jumped and discovered he was lying on the bed in his room in London.

His parents had not long gone, leaving a piece of paper with the name and address of his real mother on. Her name was Nell, and she lived in Waterloo in Liverpool. It would seem his parents were no longer his parents, just two people who had no real claim on him other than having brought him up.

‘Perhaps you’d like to write to her,’ one of the people had said, ‘your real mother, that is.’ William didn’t think he’d manage to come to terms with it for as long as he lived. His sisters weren’t his sisters, either!

‘You should have told me before,’ he’d said – or wailed or cried or something terribly dramatic and tearful, because the bottom had quite literally dropped out of his world, which was the reason he’d been floating. ‘You should have told me before.’

They’d only told him the truth now because they’d heard he’d fallen in love with Holly Kaminski and she and he were related, not through his mother, but through his father. It was vital the relationship be stopped before it went any further.

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ his fake mother wept – she had cried non-stop the entire time they’d been there. ‘Nell, your mother, wouldn’t tell us who your father was, but apparently it’s Paddy O’Neill, Maggie Kaminski’s father.’

‘Then he must be really old!’ Old enough to be his grandfather. Oh my God, this was so
awful
. And what made them think he was in love with Holly Kaminski? Last night they had gone to the disco in Covent Garden and she had driven him insane with her silly chatter. At least this terrible, horrible, unbelievable thing that had happened meant he didn’t have to take her to Hampstead Heath tomorrow. Hopefully he would never see her again.

His mother – the woman who had been pretending to be his mother for the past twenty-one years – wanted to stay, but his father – Tom, Mr Grant, his pretend mother’s husband – thought they should go back to Liverpool. ‘Let William get used to the new, er, conditions,’ he said.

Conditions! William turned over and buried his face in the pillow, just as someone knocked on the door, then opened it.

‘Fancy going for a drink, Will?’ a voice asked.

‘Sod off,’ William snarled.

‘Are you all right, old man?’

‘Sod
off
,’ William shouted.

‘Oh, all right.’ The voice was hurt. ‘There’s no need to take that tone.’

The door closed. William staggered over and locked it. He couldn’t imagine talking to another human being again.

Holly fucking Kaminski! If it hadn’t been for her, he might never have been told that his parents weren’t his parents, that instead they were a woman called Nell and a really old man called Paddy O’Neill who probably had grey hair and walked with a stick.

He tried to calm his thoughts. He would have
had
to know sometime. It wouldn’t have been right to go through his entire life without knowing who his real mother and father were. In fact, his pretend parents really, really should have told him years ago, right from the start, not sprung it on him when he was a grown man and it would come as an appalling shock. He couldn’t visualise ever getting used to it, he thought fretfully.

He beat the pillow with his fist. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

Sunday afternoon. Nell had been to midday Mass, having slept in for a change. The bells were still ringing; she loved the sound of church bells.

Red was still in bed fast asleep, having travelled back from Ireland on the overnight boat. He and Eamon had entertained the passengers. Eamon hadn’t a piano, but he could get really haunting music that brought tears to the eyes out of a simple hornpipe. ‘Danny Boy’ sounded totally heart-rending.

Yesterday, Quinn and Kev had gone to London in Red’s van. They were meeting up with Grace Kaminski and Louise Grant, Iris’s eldest girl, spending the weekend together, the lads sleeping in the van.

Nell hoped there’d be no hanky-panky, or at least only mild hanky-panky, nothing serious. After all, Kev was only seventeen.

Bits of yesterday kept flashing through her mind: Maggie’s anger, her own refusal to be bullied, relief that the truth was at last coming out. She wondered when William would be told that Iris and Tom weren’t his parents.

She washed a few clothes and hung them on the line – not all that long ago, Sunday had been regarded as a day of rest, and it was frowned on for Catholic women to do housework, but fortunately those days had passed.

When she came in, she switched the radio on, turning the dial until she found music, any music, she didn’t care what sort. Since marrying Red, she couldn’t stand a silent house. It was a lovely sunny day – though one degree more and it would be too hot for comfort.

The kitchen clean and tidy, she put the kettle on for tea, wondering how many pots of tea most women made throughout a lifetime. Thousands and thousands, she reckoned.

There was a knock on the door and she went to answer it. A young man was standing outside and she knew who it was straight away. Ever since Maggie’s visit it had been on the cards that this might happen. Iris and Tom had told him that he wasn’t their child.

‘William,’ she whispered shakily. Poor lad, he looked at the end of his tether: red-eyed, white-faced, so obviously tired. She reached for his hand and pulled him inside. ‘Come on in, luv.’

The door closed, they stood staring at each other, Nell marvelling at how tall he was, how handsome, despite his drawn features, how desperately unhappy.

‘Didn’t you know?’ she asked, and he shook his head miserably. ‘It must have come as a terrible shock.’

‘It did,’ he mumbled. ‘Are you Nell?’

‘Yes, luv.’ There were pains in her stomach, contractions, the sort she’d had in Caerdovey the day he was born. But they were satisfying pains, pleasurable almost. ‘Let’s sit down,’ she said.

They sat on the lumpy settee – she kept meaning to suggest to Red that they bought a new one. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea in a minute,’ she promised. The kettle was already on.

‘Thank you.’

‘I don’t suppose you know what to do with yourself. How did you get here?’

‘I caught the first Liverpool train from Euston.’ He sighed. ‘I didn’t sleep a wink last night.’ He closed his eyes, and she thought he was about to drop off there and then.

‘Perhaps you’d like to have forty winks later. We have a spare room.’

‘I think I might,’ he muttered.

The estate agent had referred to it as a box room. Eamon slept there from time to time. There were hooks behind the door to hang clothes. She’d change the bedding later.

‘Did Iris and Tom tell you who your father is?’ she asked.

He sighed. ‘Yes, someone called Paddy O’Neill.’

She patted his arm. ‘It’s not fair, is it? People get up to all sorts, and years later other people have to put up with the consequences. Anyroad, luv, Paddy O’Neill is a really lovely man. And what happened was more or less a case of mistaken identity. I won’t go into more detail, if you don’t mind.’

‘I don’t mind,’ he said weakly.

‘Yesterday, Maggie and me, we agreed only to tell our immediate families, otherwise you’d have dozens of half-brothers and sisters wanting to get to know you.’

‘I see.’ He sighed deeply.

She got the impression it was a load off his mind, but realised if him and her lads came face to face she would feel obliged to tell them he was their half-brother. She hadn’t imagined him turning up here and all three were entitled to know the truth.

When she told him about Quinn and Kev he just looked resigned, as if by now everything was quite beyond him. ‘Is Paddy O’Neill Kathleen Curran’s agent?’ he asked tiredly.

‘Yes, you’ll probably meet him one of these days. And Kath is Paddy’s sister-in-law. It’s all desperately complicated.’ Nell rose to her feet. ‘I’ll go and make that tea now. Would you like something to eat?’

‘I wouldn’t mind a sandwich.’

‘Won’t be a mo. I’ve got a tin of corned beef open.’

It was all terribly surreal. Not only had he been starving hungry when he’d thought he’d never eat again, but now William felt quite calm as he waited for the tea and a corned-beef sandwich, as if somewhere deep down inside he knew that everything was going to be all right. He liked his real mother. He liked the way she didn’t fuss or cry or drool over him, just accepted that fact that he was there. He liked the way she’d sat beside him and held his hand, patting it gently from time to time. And perhaps he was being prejudiced, but he thought her truly beautiful, with her gentle brown eyes and smooth forehead. He also liked her plain clothes and unaffected manner. And he liked her house, which was tidy but full of books, pictures and photographs. It was also very colourful, and there was an old piano against the wall with sheet music on the stand.

There were footsteps on the stairs and a man came into the room. He was as thin as a stick, fortyish, not very tall, and his hair was the reddest William had ever seen.

‘Hello, there,’ the man said. ‘Are you the one that knocked?’

‘Yes,’ William conceded. ‘I hope I didn’t disturb you.’

‘No, I was already awake. I’m Red Finnegan, Nell’s husband.’ The man approached and shook his hand. He had a strong grip and a marked Irish accent.

William, who’d never had anything to do with Ireland in his life before, suddenly found himself with Paddy O’Neill for a father and Red Finnegan as a stepfather of sorts, probably both Catholics, while he had never been near a Catholic church in his life. ‘I’m William Grant,’ he said. He wondered, panic-stricken, if Nell had told this man that she’d had a child – long before they were married, he assumed.

‘Aha!’ Red’s green eyes lit up. ‘
That
William!’

‘I hope you don’t mind my coming.’

Red Finnegan spread his arms in a generous gesture. ‘Glory be to God, no. I couldn’t be more pleased that you’re here.’

All the bits of William’s body that had fallen awkwardly out of place slowly began to settle back to where they should be, and he found himself breathing evenly again.

William slept for hours in the little narrow bed in his mother’s spare room. He still felt strange, would do for a long time, but yesterday had had a bad side and today a good side, and he couldn’t help but feel grateful that things had turned out the way they had.

He woke up from time to time and could hear noises downstairs, people talking, the piano being played, a violin – a
violin
! He was tempted to go downstairs and investigate, but felt too sleepy, though he did venture down later when a car drew up outside and several people came in, amongst them a girl who sounded very much like his sister Louise, though it couldn’t possibly be.

It turned out that it
was
Louise, who was even more surprised to see him than he was her.

‘
William!
’ she cried when he appeared. ‘What on earth are you doing here? I didn’t know you knew the Finnegans.’

‘I’ve only known them for a little while,’ he said.

It was Maggie who summed up the various events later in the week.

‘In a matter of days, so many lives have changed,’ she said to Jack one night after they’d had dinner. She was no longer speaking to Iris or Tom Grant, who she was convinced had tricked poor Nell out of her baby. She would have liked to fall out with Nell, too, for keeping the baby secret, but she didn’t want to cut off too many ties. ‘Our Holly’s got a broken heart, claiming that she was madly in love with William; William’s left London and gone to live with Nell in Liverpool; and Louise has left Liverpool and taken over William’s bedsit in London.’ She put her finger to her lips and glanced at her husband. ‘Is that everything?’

Jack smiled. ‘Not quite everything. This morning Grace gave in her notice at the bank. It appears she’s going to live in the bedsit with Louise.’

Maggie’s face turned beetroot red. ‘Over my dead body,’ she said threateningly.