Dead Secret (5 page)

The truth about Sarah. Sarah is my sister and I should tell you that I love her. And I do. But it is not quite that simple. The complications of our relationship drove what happened after Da died, affected how I reacted to events. I was never sure if that was because I wanted to protect her or destroy her. Even now, years later, there is a doubt in my mind.

The fact is that back then, I loved Sarah and I hated her,
sometimes
at the same time. I always felt hemmed in by her, maybe because I had to look after her when we were small. The thing about death is that it strips away veneers, makes you get right down to the base coat. But that summer, we hadn’t removed all our layers of varnish yet, me and Sarah. It was too early to know the colour of the bottom layer.

We’re not the first, of course. Not the first siblings to feel icy shards of resentment swirling round the warm blood of love in our veins. I suppose if we’re being honest, I’d have to say that I’m more to blame than Sarah. When she was small, she was like one of those devoted little puppies, but I kicked her often enough for her to learn how to nip.

Da insisted we stick together. Everywhere I went, Sarah went. There was no escape. Sometimes after tea, I’d sneak to the door and open it, then shout quickly, “I’m just off to the park.” I’d try and belt out the door, slamming it behind me
before he could answer. Most times it didn’t work.

“Take Sarah with you,” he’d shout, and Sarah would come running to the hall, cheeks bulging with the last of her dinner.

“Hurry up and get your shoes on, stupid, or I’ll belt you one,” I’d hiss venomously.

She’d sit down on the bottom step in the hall and buckle her shoes silently, glancing up at me watchfully through a curtain of straw-coloured hair. She knew that I would walk far too quickly for her, that she would be hauled roughly all the way to the park, but it was enough to be with me.

Past Mohammed’s Asian grocery shop on the corner of Rosebank Street, the stacks of wooden fruit boxes piled
higgledy
-piggledy on the pavement outside: a pile of speckled bananas; some loose mushrooms, dark earth still clinging to the milky stalks; a few wizened red peppers. Past the glossy
black-painted
exterior of the Blacksmith’s Arms. “Come
on
, Sarah,” and I’d yank her hand to pass the pub quickly, the whiff of stale beer lurching through the swing doors as customers walked in, or staggered out. Sarah would say nothing but her hair would fall over her face and her legs would work overtime to keep up. As the years went on, I think Sarah took a quiet satisfaction in being an ever-present thorn in my side. Sarah has always done everything, even vengeance, quietly.

The only time I was nice to her was when someone else wasn’t. She was a pain in the butt but she was
my
pain in the butt. In the park once, Davie Richardson from number 42 was tormenting her. He had her pinned against the green iron railings of the swing-park and was getting his dog to jump up on her. It was a vicious looking Alsatian called Satan, which tells you everything you need to know about Davie. Sarah squealed with fear and
Satan got more and more overexcited. Every time Sarah tried to move from the railings, Davie would move forward and give the dog a bit more leash so that she had to jump back. She ended up screaming at the top of her voice, drumming her feet on the ground in a frantic dance of terror.

I could hear her screams from the other side of the park and came running. Davie and his pals were doubled up with laughter.

“Up!” shouted Davie, and the dog leapt.

I didn’t bother warning Davie. I just drew back my foot and kicked him in the backside as hard as I could.

“Oi!” he shouted, dropping Satan’s lead and pivoting round to grab my wrists. “Get your ugly mutt off her,” I yelled.

A low growl rumbled from deep inside Satan and he crouched low, preparing to leap. One of Davie’s friends grabbed the lead. Davie’s hold was tightening round my arms as I struggled against him. I lifted my heel and stamped it so hard on his foot he howled. His pals jeered, a mixture of laughter and derision.

“Come on, Davie boy, for God’s sake!”

“She’s only a bloody girl!”

But Davie had dropped my arms with the pain and I followed through, elbowing him right in the stomach. I wasn’t one for the Queensberry rules. As he doubled up, I grabbed Sarah’s hand. Satan was growling, straining at the leash. “Mad bitch,” Davie yelled as we walked away. “Bloody
lesbian
!” I didn’t look back but stuck my two fingers up in the air above my head and walked on. Sarah caught the gesture and gasped.

“You tell Da and I’ll batter you too,” I warned.

She said nothing, but gripped my hand tight and wouldn’t let go all the way home. For once I let her. Back past Blacksmith’s, past Mohammed’s, her small hand warm and sticky in mine.

“Want a couple of apples, Becca?” Mohammed shouted as we went past. He came and leant on the doorway.

“This year’s or last’s?” I shouted over my shoulder.

“Last’s!”

“No ta.”

But most of the time, it was like Sarah and I were fighting on opposite sides. If I had to single out the biggest sign that on some level Sarah and I missed having a mother, it was in the way we competed with each other for Da’s love. A few weeks before my tenth birthday, Da told me he was making me a surprise present. He was always so clever with his hands. Our house was small, but he would take his tools into his bedroom and locked himself away for hours at a time. I stood outside and listened to the banging of hammers and nails, and the rhythmic grating of the saw, and the high-pitched screech of his electric drill, until I was feverish with the excitement of it all.

“What is it, Da?” I yelled, jumping furiously outside the door of his room. I had my outdoor shoes on and the floor vibrated ominously. “What is it, Da?”

He laughed then. I heard him behind the door and he shouted, “Wait and see! You’ll know soon enough…”

But oh I was sick with the wait and the excitement. He would come home with mysterious packages and go straight to his room with them. And then the day itself came. I’ll never forget it. He told me to wait outside his bedroom until he got it all ready, but Peggy had to keep stopping me trying to push the door open.

“Wait until he says, Becca,” she laughed, hugging me while I waited.

“Okay,” Da shouted, and I pushed the door open and gasped. A doll’s house. A doll’s house with a roof that lifted right up and
a front that opened out to reveal two storeys with a long attic room on top. It had metal doors and windows with the tiniest of fragile handles. I thought it was the poshest house in the world, a film star’s house, because it had a balcony for sunbathing and a garage with a little car beneath the house.

“Happy birthday, Becca,” Da said.

He couldn’t afford much in the way of furniture because that was shop-bought, but it had a little miniature plastic table, a few chairs. It looked a bit empty, but God, I didn’t care.

“We’ll add to it,” he said gruffly, motioning at the furniture, and I jumped on the spot and clapped my hands. He smiled then.

“Like it, Becca? Do you like it?” he said eagerly, and I didn’t answer. I just ran to him and threw my arms round his waist. It was the best birthday of my life. There have been men who have given me expensive presents since, but no present has ever come close to that doll’s house. Except maybe a little bracelet of cheap beads Tariq gave me when I was sixteen.

We bent down, the two of us, and Da pointed out the little flight of stairs I hadn’t noticed, and I kept spotting other things I hadn’t seen.

“Ooh look, Auntie Peggy,” I shouted, and she came over while I pointed out the black-and-white diamond-patterned paper that Da had bought in the model shop in town and pasted to the bathroom floor.

“Your Da’s clever, Becca, isn’t he?” Peggy said.

It was then Da suddenly straightened up and said, “Where’s Sarah?”

None of us had noticed in the excitement that she had left the room. She was in our bedroom lying face down on the bed, and Da went in and sat beside her and stroked her back.

“What’s the matter with you, misery guts?” I shouted, secure in the knowledge that it was my birthday and I was the day’s VIP.

Sarah sat up furiously at the contempt in my tone, and I saw her cheeks were red with temper.

“I hate you, Becca!” she yelled.

I just laughed. It was mine. The doll’s house was mine. And there was a certain triumph in seeing perfect, composed little Sarah lose her cool.

“Now, now, now,” Da said gently and lifted Sarah onto his knee. “What’s the matter?”

“You never made anything for me when it was my birthday,” whispered Sarah, trying not to let me hear as she put her arms round his neck.

“I know, but you haven’t seen the other surprise,” Da said. “I was looking for you to give you
your
surprise.

Sarah stilled, looked up hopefully at him and sniffed. I frowned. He took her hand, led her back through next door. I hadn’t noticed it in all the excitement of the doll’s house. But on the bedside table there was a little tiny wooden house, a money box with a slot in the roof for the pennies to drop. It was roughly made compared to the doll’s house, but it was bright and
attractive
, a little pixie house that had a wooden toadstool on its path, painted red with white spots.

Sarah didn’t swoop on it as I had swooped on mine. Her eyes just brightened and she fingered it gently and then she looked at him and smiled.

“Here,” Da said, handing her a coin, “put the penny in.”

There was a tune when the penny dropped. We thought it was magic but Da opened it up and showed us it was just a little
musical
device with a small lever.

When the penny dropped on the lever, the music played. He said the model shop had imported them from Switzerland, which we knew was a long way from Glasgow. Of course, there wasn’t nearly the craftsmanship in the little money box that there was in the doll’s house, but I was still a bit mad with Da.

“It’s not her birthday,” I complained. “Why is she getting that when it’s not even her birthday!?”

But Da said it was a
late
birthday present for Sarah because hers had been shop bought and he wanted to make her
something
too. It is only now, as an adult, that I recognise what that says about him, how hard he worked to treat us equally.

He was so proud when Sarah graduated from her law degree. To tell the truth, it gave me a pang that I had never made him that proud, that all these years I’d bummed around from job to job. And yet, I always sensed that what he felt for me was
something
slightly different from what he felt for Sarah. But people say that, don’t they, that parents love their children in different, special ways. He was soft around Sarah, gentle. But he laughed more around me. Sometimes I thought Sarah was his pride and I was his joy.

Father Riley is out when we phone. His housekeeper says he’s away visiting family but he’ll be back for this evening’s vigil mass at 6pm if we want to come to that and catch him after the
service
. I don’t, frankly. I don’t want to go to mass. I arrange to meet Sarah there but I’ll probably be accidentally-on-purpose late so that I can skulk outside like I always did. I have plans for this afternoon.

Da’s bureau is made of dark mahogany, rich and brown and shiny as a conker. A lid that lifts down to make a writing desk. Three drawers. Stumpy little feet. A lovely thing in its way, though I would never have chosen it for myself. It is from a bygone age, just like Da really. Sarah and I were always aware that Da was older than everyone else’s dad. I used to complain that the house was too dark and heavy and old-fashioned with its solid old wardrobes and bookcases and autumnal patterned carpets. Da just said you didn’t get craftsmanship like the old days and he was probably right. He loved that bureau. He never locked it but there was an unspoken rule that Sarah and I didn’t go into it, and we never did. It would have been like reading Da’s diary.

But it is time now. I run my hand over the lid of it. It is
polished
, smooth as a mirror, but the surface has tiny, fine-line scratches that show its age. Scratches that tell of its history and give it character, like laughter lines around the eyes. The hinges
squeak as it opens and small packages and envelopes tumble from the inner shelves as the lid swings down. Whenever Da had opened it, things had fallen out. I used to tease him and say him I was going to sort it out one of these days, and he would tell me with mock sternness to keep my nose out.

Boxes of screws, silver new and shiny. Twists of paper with old rusty nails, pulled from God knows what and kept for a good thing. Just in case. The inner working of a broken radio. A burned-out television valve. God, he was eccentric. A broken handle from the old electric cooker. A length of electric cable. And paper clips and pencils tied with string, and multi-coloured elastic bands, and pencil sharpeners with shavings still attached, and bottled ink, and string and staples and tacks.

In the middle drawer there are some photographs, a couple of formal ones in cardboard frames and a few more recent
instamatics
in a plastic wallet. The framed one has a cover and inside, a leaf of thin, rustling paper that covers the photograph. I have seen this photograph before. It is of Da’s parents. Grandma
Connaghan
is small and neat with dark dreamy eyes and the vaguest smile but Grandpa gazes suspiciously, almost belligerently, into the camera lens. He is small and squat like Da, his shirt sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows to reveal powerful, muscular
forearms
. Forearms carved from years of outside work on the tiny strip of land they called a farm.

Da told me Grandpa had used those muscles to cut the turf of his own wife’s grave and I thought it was the saddest thing I’d ever heard. Da was only ten when his mother died but he talked so vividly about those days after she’d gone, about the house
being
full and the kettle always on, the sound of cups chinking in saucers, and the chatter of the mourners in the front room, and
the procession in to see his mammy where she lay. There was wailing then, and tears, and the chant of prayers; decades of the rosary being said over the body. And then there was nothing. Just nothing.

Da had an older brother, John, who was fifteen. He was
supposed
to inherit the farm but he said sure, he wasn’t wasting his whole life in Donegal. He was off to America for a better life. So he sailed off and none of them saw him again. His better life was dying of TB out there.

Grandpa said everyone was getting on with their lives now and they had better all get on with theirs. He packed up a small case for all of them and set out for the Derry boat that came to Scotland. We never compared notes on what it was like growing up without a mother, Da and I, but I do remember that he once said Grandpa was a good man, a good, good man but hard, and losing his mammy had been a bit like losing the feathers in his pillow and sleeping with a pillowcase of stones under his head instead. I never felt that. Da was the feathers in my pillow.

I place the crinkled paper back over the photo and empty out the snapshots from the plastic wallet. Most of them are of me and Sarah. First Communion, and Christmas, and some from the year we went on the family holiday to Ireland. That was the year Da kept going on about our roots, and how important it was that we knew where we came from. He said that he would take us on holiday to show us our family history.

Sarah and I were ecstatic about that holiday. We didn’t ask why it was that if family was so important, he never told us about Mother. We didn’t give a brass monkey where our family came from but we did want to be able to say in school that the
Connaghan girls were going on holiday, same as everyone else. It wasn’t Majorca, but still. It was a holiday.

Da took us back to the little patch of barren land, a
bracken-strewn
stretch of rocky turf and hillside where they kept a few sheep. We walked the field and he showed us the stone outline of the croft where they lived. And there, in the field, with the silence broken only by the wind, he cried at the smallness of it, and the way his parents tried to hew a life out of granite for all of them. It was so much smaller, so much more barren, than he remembered. He walked away then, so we wouldn’t see his tears, and Sarah and I hung around at a loss, shivering, and not just with the cold, knowing neither what to say nor what to do.

After a minute I ran across the field to him and slipped my hand in his and he smiled at me as we walked in silence together, while Sarah hung back across the other side. He tucked my hand into his coat pocket. “Ah, Rebecca,” he said, “What would I do without you?” He always made me feel important. He told me about John and America then. And about him and Peggy, and then about the baby girl who died and took Grandma with her. Sian, he said Grandpa called her, though she was born dead.

He said nothing then for a minute. He was lost in thought and I shivered a little in the wind.

“Are you sad, Da?” I asked him.

“A little bit, darlin’.”

I was worried then. I thought maybe he wanted to come back here to live, but he shook his head and said no, there was no living to be had in Donegal. There was only beauty here, he said, and you couldn’t eat beauty. That’s why they had all come away in the first place. I think they also came because Grandpa was running away from the ghosts, though Da never put it quite like that.

He was ten when they left and Peggy was five. It was nearly Liverpool they went to, but then a letter arrived from an old neighbour in Donegal who had come to Glasgow and he said there was work to be had in Scotland on the roads. I’d get him to tell me over and over the story of Grandpa docking in Glasgow with four pounds in his pocket and two addresses, one for digs and one for work. It was my favourite bedtime story and I would bury my head in the pillow as he told it.

“Are you cryin’, darlin’?” he’d ask.

“Naw!” I’d spit scornfully. “I’m sleepin’!”

But I wouldn’t pull my head from the damp pillow and Da would sit for a minute, stroking my hair until I really did fall asleep.

It is a full hour before I find it, in an old tattered envelope in the bottom drawer. I have gone through all the loose papers, the old school reports, and a parchment, yellow and withering with age, that turns out to be a report of Da’s days in National Service. “Character: excellent,” it says, as if character can be examined and diagnosed like flat feet. I am putting it back when I see the large brown envelope right on the bottom. It is falling apart; the flap is no longer there and the sides are beginning to separate.

I pull out the sheets of paper inside and a number of
photographs
fall out. Da leaning on a gate in his naval uniform, his foot resting on the top bar, hands clasped in front of him. And Da again, with a young woman looking laughingly into his eyes. Jesus. I stare at her, those teasing, haunting eyes. She… can it be…? Mother?