At a Time Like This (16 page)

‘I need to tell you something, Frank,’ I said. By that time in our relationship, he had kissed me a few times, but he had never pushed me any further than that. I had known him less
than three months but I trusted him. I had learned by then that how long you knew someone was no measure of how much you could trust them. I thought of my parents, in fact, when I thought about
trust. Earlier that afternoon, Frank and I had kissed and cuddled on his sofa with great tenderness, but I couldn’t relax because my story was sitting there on the cushions between us, taking
up space.

‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve felt something worrying you all day. Whatever it is, you can tell me. You can be sure of me, Nora. Nothing will change the way I feel
about you.’

And so I told him about Eddie. About how we met at a Rugby Club dance the year I’d done my Leaving Cert and about how I’d fallen head over heels for him. I told Frank about how
he’d persuaded me to run away to France with him. I told him everything, including how my parents had had to chase after us from Calais to Paris to Perpignan for more than three months and
how they finally caught up with us at the Spanish border. But by then it was all too late. We’d run out of money – my savings, mostly – and I’d just found out that I was
pregnant and there was no longer any ‘us’. I know, I know, it is such a small story and such an ordinary one but I can’t help that. I’ve always been ordinary and at least
with Frank I was able to stop pretending I would ever be anything else. The end of my story is just as obvious, too. Eddie disappeared into the night once my parents arrived and I never saw him
again. In fact I have never seen him again, not from that day to this. He doesn’t even know he has a daughter out there somewhere and I’d imagine he doesn’t care either. He never
came looking for me again, not even once.

‘My parents sent me to London,’ I said. ‘I have an aunt there – well, she’s not really family, she’s a kind of aunt-in-law, I suppose, but she took me
in.’

Frank’s hand never moved from mine. He was every bit as still as the air in the room around us. ‘Was she kind to you?’

I shrugged. ‘Well, she wasn’t unkind, I suppose. I did all the cooking and minded the children and I got board and lodgings in return. She was out at work during the day so we
didn’t really see much of one another.’

Frank smiled. ‘So that’s how you learned to be such a great cook. That’s the best meal I’ve ever eaten.’

I remember how grateful I was to him for saying that. At least I’d taken something home from London with me, something that would be useful. ‘Thank you.’

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Tell me the rest. If you were working that hard during the day, what did you do for company in the evenings and at weekends?’

Company. If only he knew. I had no use for company. If I’m honest I’d have to say that I was terrified of letting my daughter out of my sight even for an instant. I knew what was
going to happen to her and to me. I already knew that I would lose her to strangers and never see her again and never hold her again. After they took her from me, I slept with one of her baby vests
on my pillow. That way, I could smell her smell and pretend she was still with me. It was a smell made up of milk and talcum powder and baby sweetness. I’ll never forget the panic when that
smell began to fade. That was when I knew that she was gone for good.

I swallowed. I didn’t want to cry, but I wanted to be sure that I told him the truth as I remembered it. ‘I used to go to bed early every night because I was so tired. And at the
weekends I went to the park and the library a lot.’

‘And your baby?’ he said gently.

Then I cried. When he said ‘your baby’ I couldn’t hold it in any longer. ‘She was born in June last year. I tried to keep her, but I couldn’t. I tried living in a
bedsit for a while and getting a job and keeping things going, but I just couldn’t do it.’ I stopped, sobs where the words should be. Frank poured me a glass of water. I sipped for a
bit and then I was able to continue.

‘My parents insisted I had her adopted.’ I remembered that awful day, my parents’ stiff faces and how their disapproval of me was stitched into every inch of their bodies. And
I remembered the way they’d both stayed away from me, at the other end of the room.

‘What was her name?’

I looked at him, surprised that he didn’t know, but of course he didn’t. Nobody did. ‘Megan,’ I said. ‘Her name is Megan and she has fair hair and blue eyes and I
love her to bits.’ I folded my arms on the table, put my head down and wept. I cried with loss and love and relief. Finally, I’d been able to tell someone who wouldn’t look at me
with appalled eyes and lips clamped shut into a tight, closed line. At last, here was someone who wouldn’t look at me while their face filled up with rage and disappointment and
bitterness.

I felt Frank’s hand on my hair. ‘Marry me, Nora,’ he said. His voice was very tender. ‘Marry me and let’s go and find your little girl and make a family’

I looked up at him in astonishment.

‘I mean it,’ he said, his face serious. ‘We can find her and get her back. I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back.’

Then I knew I loved him and that I would always love him for saying that. I sat up and wiped my eyes with the backs of my hands. Frank handed me his napkin and I blew my nose.

‘She’s nearly eighteen months old, Frank, and she’s living with a family somewhere in Wisconsin. The nuns arranged the adoption, but it was a private one without any papers.
They said it was better that way because nobody would be able to interfere.’

I remembered their faces. They weren’t cruel, those women, but watching one of them pick Megan up had made me feel like a wild animal. I wanted to throw myself at them, to scratch at their
eyes and draw blood. ‘We’d never find her, not without documents. And anyway, I couldn’t rip her away from the only family she’s ever known. How could I do that? Think how
unhappy that would make her, even if we could
ever find her.’

And then I started to cry again. Frank just went on stroking my hair. ‘You don’t need to decide tonight,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it again, all of it.
There’s just one thing I would like you to decide, though, no matter what. Just between us. We don’t need to tell anyone just yet, not until we’re ready to. Will you marry
me?’

I didn’t need to think about it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.’

He stood then and pulled me to my feet. ‘I wanted to marry you the first time you walked into my shop. I want to be with you. And we’ll have children, as many as you want.’ He
wound his arms around me and I thought, not for the first time, how solid and substantial he felt to me, despite his lankiness. He kissed me and then he tried a joke. He could see how sorrowful I
was, remembering it all over again. ‘Now for some light relief. Those profiteroles look too good to leave till tomorrow. In fact, I could swear that they’re winking at me.’

I laughed, grateful to him all over again. I remember how light my heart had begun to feel as we walked towards the kitchen. At last I allowed myself to believe that there might be a happy
ending hesitating out there somewhere, waiting for me to come and get it.

After dessert, we sat on the sofa together for hours, Frank’s arm around my shoulders, both of my hands holding on to his. We talked about where we’d live, how many children
we’d have, how he’d always keep his promises.

And he has.

I know the others thought he was too old, too boring, too dull – more or less the same kind of things that they probably thought about me, particularly Georgie. Claire was kind when she
found out we’d got engaged and so was Maggie. I remember being a bit surprised at Maggie. Of course, she always meant to be kind to me, but sometimes she was uneasy about it when Georgie was
around. She thinks that I didn’t notice, I’m sure, but I’ve always known that Maggie needed to be in Georgie’s good books. That morning in the Buttery, I thought that Maggie
was almost tearful when I showed her my ring. Georgie, though, was her usual spiteful self. The only thing she wanted to know was whether Frank and I were sleeping together. They knew nothing about
Megan back then and they still know nothing. I’d promised my parents to tell nobody and I never broke my word, apart from Frank. And that was different because as far as I was concerned, that
wasn’t breaking my word, that was building our trust. Quite another thing altogether.

I’ve decided to tell the girls tonight, at Claire’s party. Our twenty-fifth anniversary as girlfriends. It’s a long time, with a lot of water under the bridge. I’ve
decided to tell them now that Megan has come looking for me.

I think that a lot of secrets will be revealed this evening. I know that Maggie is building up to something, and Georgie was very evasive the last time we all met. As for
Claire, I feel sorry for her sometimes, despite all her talents and her beauty. I think that she would have loved to be a mother. I may be wrong, but I think that’s why she’s had so
many men. Sometimes, I’ve caught something in her eyes when she looks at our children. I don’t mean just my children, I mean all eight of our children, Maggie’s and
Georgie’s and mine. It’s not anything that the others would know to look for, or even recognize if they saw it. It’s the look of loss, the hurtful reminder that other
people’s children can be when you haven’t got any of your own. It’s how I used to look, I know, after I lost Megan. All my boys were wonderful, don’t get me wrong. But there
was still something missing. Even though my three are all grown up now, the sight of a pink dress or a doll, or some lace-edged baby sock still has the power to move me.

I watched a programme on television recently about earthquakes. The scientist described the conditions that forced the earth to violence and upheaval. He described the shock to the earth’s
core as
seismic.
Seismic. The minute I heard the word, I knew that
that was
the one I had been looking for, down all the years. I’d heard it before, of course, and knew what it
meant. But I had only applied it to geological upheavals. Now I knew better. My loss of Megan was seismic. That’s how I can recognize that kind of loss so clearly in Claire’s blue
eyes.

I know that she is going to be the most hurt by what I have to tell her this evening. Her gentleness has made me think about this a lot, but I can’t help it. It’s the others I need
to tell, and she’s part of the others. In fact, even if I don’t tell her, even if I try to keep it from her, one of the others will tell her anyway. And the truth is, part of me wants
to see her realize that all the gorgeousness in the world doesn’t get you what you want. That sometimes just being plain and ordinary is good enough.

I’ve played by the rules all my life. I deserve my sons and now my daughter. Claire broke the rules. She broke all of them, so many times. Take that awful time with Ray. I’ll never
forget the night she told us. Such a terrible evening. Even for Georgie, the soup was foul and the bread stale. Her coq au vin tasted of nothing, nothing at all. Claire was distressed, and smoked
her way through the whole evening. Maggie was harder on her than I’ve ever seen her before. But something about that evening stayed with me, and niggled at me over and over again. Whatever
about Claire, I saw something in Georgie that night that I didn’t realize at the time, but that I now believe was relief.

I wasn’t able to say much back then, on the night of the terrible food and the even more terrible revelations, because Georgie wouldn’t let me. And so I watched the others instead.
That has always been my job in the group. To shut up and observe. Nobody’s ever interested in what I see or what I think. But it’s strange, the way life can sometimes turn things around
to your advantage. I have become a really good observer over the years and that is precisely because no one else could be bothered with my ‘take’ on anything. Nora was always the dull
one. Nora was the silent one. Nora was always the one who didn’t matter. There was this belief that anything I saw, anything my intuition told me or anything I observed in others, was simply
not worth listening to. And so I sat and gathered secrets.

And my secret from that night is, that even while Claire was confessing to her disgraceful affair with Ray, it was Georgie who looked like the guilty one. I saw that expression on her face when
she joined us at the table, once those poor, sad little twins were finally in bed. I don’t believe that Georgie has ever been a good mother, not in the true meaning of the word. She has
always been too selfish.

Now, it has taken several years for this bit of hindsight to take shape. In fact, I’m not sure when it was that I realized what I saw on that difficult evening. It took a while to dawn on
me that what I saw was Georgie’s relief that she wasn’t the one to have been caught. That time. Nothing to do with Ray, of course. That’s not what I mean. But I’m sure there
was someone else around. I’m positive she’d been unfaithful to Pete. The reason I’m so sure is because I saw it happen again, and perhaps even again. I am not so stupid as the
others like to think I am. And this time, I had all the benefits of a ringside seat.

It is no more than three years ago. The reason I can be so certain of the timing is because it was Robbie’s twenty-first birthday that June. I had bought a navy and white dress for the
party and that’s what I was wearing that Sunday a few weeks later when I saw Georgie. Frank and I had gone out to lunch in Castleknock. He had chosen the restaurant, he said, as a kind of
double celebration. It would be our private party to celebrate our eldest son’s coming of age and also to remember the first real date we had ever had. He’d booked us a table at a
sophisticated Chinese restaurant and kept it as a surprise. When we arrived, he turned around to me and grinned.

‘The best in the city, I’m told – and a very long way from the Sunflower in O’Connell Street.’ And it was, oh my goodness, it was. The dim sum was, well, that
doesn’t matter for now. What matters is that I saw her. Georgie. My eyes were drawn to the imposing figure at the kerb, just outside the restaurant window. I saw a tall, fair-haired woman
dressed in a white linen trousersuit. At first, there was just something familiar about the way she stood. Her back was to me, and she was waiting to cross the road. I was admiring her figure and
thinking how good this woman looked in white because it is a very difficult colour to wear, particularly if you are a blonde. Some subtle sequins marked the hem of the jacket and also the cuffs of
the sleeves. I could see them glint in the sunlight from where I sat. That little sprinkling of sequins was Maggie’s and Georgie’s trademark for their summer collection that year.