Cathy Kelly 3-book Bundle (126 page)

They were at the house now.

Megan saw a ruined stone cottage with an assortment of small outhouses all in states of disrepair.

Eleanor saw what had been the home she loved. She touched the remains of the lintel of the doorway, closed her eyes and said a small prayer.

‘Keep them all safe, Our Lady,’ she whispered.

The rooms seemed so small now.

‘This was the kitchen,’ she told Megan animatedly. ‘The range was here. A big black thing, it ate turf like a monster, but the heat out of it was amazing. We had to blacken it every week because the top went white from the heat. It killed my mother to leave it when we went to America. She loved that range, it was so much easier to cook on than the fire. Her chair was here and she’d sit and sew at night, by lamplight. My grandmother, my father’s mother, would sit on the other side of the range and make knitted lace.’

She pointed out the bedrooms, and the outhouse they used as the dairy. ‘I’ll let you borrow my mother’s book, Brigid’s Recipe Book,’ she told Megan joyfully. ‘Wait till you read all about making butter. It was such hard work. I can barely remember a lot of that stuff, but it’s all in the book.’

‘I’m sorry your husband’s not here to share this with you,’ Megan said. ‘Nora has great faith. She believes the dead are with us, watching over us. Maybe your husband’s here with all the rest of your family, smiling at us standing here.’

Eleanor stared at her in astonishment. ‘That’s exactly what I was just thinking. This great sense of peace has just come over me. I haven’t felt like that in a long time, not since Ralf died.’

‘Tell me about him. Did you have children?’ Megan linked arms with Eleanor again.

‘He was an optician. Levine and Sons, established 1925 by his father,’ Eleanor said, eyes shining. ‘Except that, from us, there were no sons. We have a daughter, Naomi, and she married a wonderful man named Marcus Filan. They have a daughter, my grand-daughter Gillian, who’s nineteen – well, twenty now. She’s wonderful.’ Eleanor’s face softened with pride.’

‘What do they think about you being away from New York for so long?’

Eleanor sat down on a bit of broken wall.

‘They hate it. I needed to get away from everything. I couldn’t stand being in my apartment without Ralf. He had a mild stroke and then, a month later, a massive, fatal one. We thought he was fine, he was on all the meds, but it still hit him. I thought –’ Eleanor broke off and looked at the ruined house all around her. ‘I thought that coming to Ireland might ground me, remind me of something precious. I was feeling so lost and alone and I didn’t want to be a burden on Naomi or Gillian. I ran away.’

‘Sounds like the sort of thing I might do myself,’ said Megan
softly, crouching down at Eleanor’s feet. She laid her hands on the older woman’s arm, comforting.

‘The problem with running away is that the problem runs with you,’ Eleanor sighed. She kept looking round the room, as if scared that the sense of peace would vanish when her eyes stopped brimming over. But no, it was still there.

The second stroke had happened so quickly, in spite of all the drugs Ralf was on. She’d been there this time, sitting beside him with the television on. That’s what they did now: sat in front of the television watching documentaries on subjects that might have once interested him. War ones, science ones, archaeology ones that Eleanor might have watched too. Anything. She didn’t see the screen really, and she was quite sure he didn’t either. His eyes, dark eyes that had loved her with fierce passion, gazed blankly at the television, no longer burning with that inner fire.

Ralf was gone. She could feel him slipping away from her with each passing day, no matter that she clung to his frail body and wished him better. His speech seemed to be worse. He could barely move his left hand at all, and when she spoke to him, she could see a total lack of comprehension in his eyes. He should have stayed longer in the nursing home, but she’d insisted he come home. She could pay a nurse to come in. She needed him here. Except, he wasn’t really here.

Eleanor had often thought she’d die before him and she hadn’t wanted to. Men withered and died when their wives died, she knew that. Women were stronger. Hadn’t her mother survived all those years in New York without her father?

But the reality was crushing and different. Eleanor watched Ralf disappear and she wanted to go with him too.

When the second stroke had come, there had been one moment when she’d held him tightly and thought – hoped – the old Ralf had been there for one second. Then he’d gone for good.

‘Mr Levine,’ said the nurse, coming back from the kitchen where she’d been getting Ralf’s lunch.

‘He’s gone,’ Eleanor sobbed. It was over, she was over.

Naomi and Gillian insisted she stay with them for the week after the memorial service. Years earlier, Ralf had made it clear that he wanted cremation.

‘More ecologically sound,’ he’d said.

If he’d wanted a rocket to the moon, Eleanor would have done her best to organise it. But now that he was gone, there was nothing for her to organise.

Naomi had taken time off from the business to care for her mother.

‘Mom, you must eat. A little chicken soup, something?’

‘Thanks, honey, I’m not hungry.’

‘Just sit with us for lunch?’ Naomi had begged.

Eleanor shook her head. She was too broken to sit with Gillian and Naomi and attempt to chat. It was beyond her, even though it would have comforted them to know she was recovering in some way. For the first time ever, she couldn’t comfort them. It was as if her transformation from nurturing mother person to old woman was complete. Everything had been leached from her with Ralf’s death. Her very being had changed.

Eleanor felt stiff and old. In December it was chilly in New York, even in Naomi and Marcus’s warm apartment with its views of the river. Eleanor sat on the white ottoman and looked out at the Hudson and the grey skies.

Gillian wanted to remember her grandfather. Rejoice in his life.

‘Gran, can I put on Gramp’s favourite CD, the Chet Baker one?’

Ralf had gifted his love of music to his grand-daughter and her iPod boasted an eclectic mix of old and new.

Eleanor nodded. She didn’t really care. Nothing touched her.

But when the mellow strains of Chet Baker reached her, she gasped. The music speared into her. It was unbearable.

‘Naomi, I need to go home,’ Eleanor said. ‘I’ll be better there, honestly.’

She’d let Gillian pack for her, while Naomi fussed and said why didn’t she stay.

‘I’ll be better at home,’ Eleanor insisted. She didn’t know why, but she needed to be away from people.

In the apartment, she knew that she couldn’t stay there either. Every shred of furniture reminded her of Ralf and the life they’d had. Every cup was one he’d drunk from, every painting one he’d bought or hung on the wall.

There was no peace in either home.

And it was then the thought came to her: her true home, where she’d been happy when she was young. She and Ralf had talked of going there so often. She might find some peace in a place where he’d never been. And if she didn’t find peace, she had options.

It had taken only days to arrange.

Naomi had been horrified.

‘Mom, don’t do this, please,’ she’d said, sitting on the bed in her parents’ apartment while Eleanor slowly packed things in her two suitcases. ‘You’re too upset to go alone. Wait, and I’ll come with you after Christmas.’

‘No.’ Eleanor knew how to be firm and to sound as if she was coping, even when she wasn’t. Even if it meant lying to get away, she would do it. ‘You stay here. I need to be on my own, Naomi. I’m not senile or stupid. Being eighty-four doesn’t make a person incapable of travelling on their own.’

In the end, there had been nothing Naomi could do about it. Eleanor had promised to phone every week.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t need to be taken care of, Naomi. I’m not at that stage yet.’ And never would be, she added in her mind.

Sitting in the remains of her old home in Kilmoney, she felt that sense of peace flooding through her. It was like drinking
cool water after being parched. The relief flooded through her again. The burden in her chest seemed to be genuinely lifting. Something or someone was taking the pain away.

Ralf, are you here?
she asked silently.

She hoped he was. If only she had the gift of faith and could believe in the hereafter. She’d never longed for faith until Ralf had died, and then she’d lain awake at night, praying to the God she’d learned about in school for help. ‘Please help me to believe.’

But here, in this wild spot with wind and rocks all around her, there was something else, something spiritual and deeply healing.

What if it didn’t last, though? What if she left this place and the pain was back?

I’ll come to you, she told Ralf. I’m ready. I’m not much good to anyone here, am I?

It was the final terrible thought she’d carried round with her: that she could save up her pills – the doctor had given her plenty of sleeping tablets, assuming that the very old wouldn’t dream of hastening their end – and take them all at once. She didn’t know if that was a good way to die or not, but with luck, she’d be so deeply drugged she wouldn’t feel the pain. It had seemed like the only way. A crazy, unhinged way, she knew. But the only way that made sense.

Here, she asked whatever spirits or memories were in this place if she should do it.

‘They must miss you so much,’ Megan said suddenly. ‘If you were my mother or grandmother, I’d miss you. Will you go home once you’ve seen all of this?’

Eleanor felt a little more of the pain lift. If there were such things as signs, surely that was a sign?

She moved further out of the mental fog and into the now. Megan was staring up at her and again, Megan’s face reminded her of Gillian.

What would it do to Gillian if she killed herself? It would be the most destructive thing ever. Eleanor thought of all the lessons she’d learned from her mother and grandmother, via the little recipe book. Imagine if that book had been ripped in two by suicide.

Was that what Ralf would have wanted, or her mother, or even Aunt Agnes?

She could feel them all with her. Their wisdom communicating itself to her now. Or was it her wisdom, learned from all of them, reflecting back into her heart?

No, she couldn’t do that to Gillian or her darling Naomi. She would go back to them. She could. Back home.

‘Thank you.’ Her fingers found Megan’s. ‘You’re right. I should go home.’

‘I’m so glad,’ Megan said. ‘That just seems like the right thing to do, doesn’t it? Do you know, I was just thinking the weirdest things – that I suddenly feel better about Rob.’ A month ago, Megan might have burst into tears at the mere thought of his name. Not any more.

She felt stronger now. He was a stupid, vain man and she’d been silly not to have seen through him. She hadn’t been bad or deliberately cruel. Just stupid and innocent.

‘The person I hated most in all of this was me,’ she went on. ‘But I don’t hate me any more. Is that odd?’

‘Not odd at all.’

Eleanor could barely speak. She felt so weak, but it was a lovely weakness. The weakness of being happy.

‘It’s this place,’ Megan added, looking around. ‘All those beautiful trees. What are they?’

‘Mainly ash,’ said Eleanor, closing her eyes and sighing. The peace, it was wonderful.

‘And that little one beside us, the silvery one?’

Eleanor opened her eyes and looked at the small silver birch.

She recalled an old silver birch beside the door when she
was a child. Her mother had told her that it was one of the most important trees in Celtic mythology.

‘It’s about birth and new beginnings,’ Brigid had said.

But birch trees didn’t live for that long, perhaps eighty years. There were no other birches around, just this one. Somehow, it had grown out of the remains of the old one. Rebirth.

Eleanor smiled at the small tree with its heart-shaped leaves and the silvery bark.

‘Cattle won’t eat young birch trees,’ she said to Megan. ‘They let it grow. It’s about new beginnings and rebirth.’

‘How fascinating,’ said Megan. ‘And just right. I’m starting again.’

‘Me too,’ said Eleanor.

‘Ladies, how are the pair of you getting on?’ called Phil from the car.

‘I think we might repair to The Sheep’s Head for some tea,’ said Eleanor brightly. ‘We deserve it.’

That night in her big bed in the B&B overlooking the bay, Eleanor took out her mother’s recipe book. Tucked away at the back in a small folder were some of the final pages of the book. She’d read them when she was much younger, after her mother had died.

These weren’t recipes for life but a letter written to Eleanor about her father’s death. He’d died when she had just turned eleven. Three months later, Brigid, Agnes and Eleanor had taken the boat to New York. It was in the tenement house in the Bronx that Brigid had written this letter.

For Death
was written on the outside of the little folder. Eleanor had thought it might be her mother’s will, so she’d opened it. The letter made her cry so much, she had to stop. Her mother’s body was barely cold, and Eleanor was reading of the pain Brigid went through when her husband, Joe, had died.

If only I’d known how hard his death was for you,
Eleanor had thought. But it was too late.

Like all children, she’d assumed nobody but she understood love. Here was proof of that true love and the pain that came when it was gone.

Over fifty years had gone by since she’d read the letter. Brigid hadn’t had long enough to enjoy the new life in New York.

She and Agnes had worked so hard to make a new life for them all. Uncle Dennis had married and their families had grown up together, but Brigid had died of pneumonia in 1967, robbing her of the chance to retire and properly enjoy life. Her chest had never quite recovered from the illnesses of her youth.

Even at the end, she’d been brave.

‘I love you, remember that. Knowing you’re happy is what lets me leave you, Eleanor.’

Eleanor rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her nightdress and read: