Homecoming (31 page)

She unzipped it and groped through the old sweaters and thermal underwear she’d stored there. None of it would ever be worn again, but it was a hiding place for something precious. Anton’s baby clothes were in another suitcase. Rae had donated much of what he’d worn to Community Cares, but she’d kept a few things in memory of that time. Her groping fingers closed around a small, hard-framed handbag.

Rae’s hands shook as she opened it and took out a baby’s small pink vest. It had been old and second-hand forty-two years ago. Now, it was rough with age but her fingers stroked it as it if were the finest silk. She hadn’t kept this vest in with Anton’s baby clothes. Keeping it separate was deliberate. Her two children were from two different lives.

She would not betray Jasmine’s memory by keeping her tiny vest with her brother’s things. And Anton might have thought it odd, too, to find an old woollen vest amongst his babygros. Here alone, she could do the right thing.

After all the weeks of having Geraldine, Rae was relieved to sit here on the attic floor alone and hold the worn old fabric to her face, trying to breathe in some scent from it. There was nothing but the musty odour of damp and age. And yet, as she held it, Rae felt the tears fall.

The door of the Blessed Helena Nursing Home was a sunshine yellow, as bright as a sunflower even on a misty day in May. The hostel occupied part of an old grain warehouse in Limerick and the only neighbours were a small garage and a feeding supply business. Across the road was a pub and then nothing but bare plots of land. Rae knew the existence of the hostel purely because their Civics teacher, the devout Mrs Flaherty, had dedicated many classes to explaining to the fourth years that young girls wouldn’t get pregnant if there weren’t spots like the hostel in the first place.

‘It’s calling to these unfortunate young girls, telling them that sex before marriage is allowed, when we all know that it’s not!’

Shelley and Rae never paid much attention to Mrs Flaherty in Civics. It wasn’t an exam subject and they were pretty sure that, even if it was, hostels for unmarried mothers was surely not on the curriculum.

‘She’s crazy,’ said Shelley. ‘Is it true the fifth years tried to get her to teach them the rhythm method of contraception and she went red in the face and screamed for the headmistress?’

Rae giggled. ‘I’d love to have seen that.’

In the back of the taxi that had cruised to a halt in front of the yellow door with Blessed Helena Nursing Home written on it, Rae remembered that conversation. It seemed a million years ago, when she and Shelley were friends, when she’d had a different life mapped out for herself.

‘This all right for you?’ the taxi driver said gruffly. He hadn’t said a word during the trip. Rae almost didn’t want to get out of the car, despite the nauseating air freshener. It was safe somehow, a link between the past and the future.

But there was no turning back. Whatever the baby inside her deserved, it wasn’t the Hennessey household. It was enough that one of them had been destroyed by Paudge and Glory. Rae’s child wouldn’t be.

‘This is fine,’ she said in a clear strong voice. Be brave, she told herself.

She paid and began to take her bags out. Again, he let her move it all herself.

‘Thanks,’ Rae said, but there was no reply. He sped off and she was left with her bags outside the yellow door.

She wondered would her father be home from the pub yet. Had they noticed she’d gone?

Then she stepped forward and rang the bell.

An elderly woman with the very short hair and unmadeup face of a plainclothes nun opened it and Rae felt her blood still. The nuns of her experience had little kindness for unmarried mothers. Several girls had left the school after becoming pregnant. None had ever returned and there was no mention of them in the way the previous year’s sixth years were mentioned at assembly prayers.

The woman’s shrewd eyes travelled down Rae’s body in her baggy school jumper and the jeans she’d pulled on before she left. The top button was undone but with the jumper over it, nobody noticed until now. Inside, Rae braced herself for the inevitable anger and disgust. If this was what she had to endure to stay here, she would, because she had nowhere else to go.

And then an astonishing thing happened. ‘You’re welcome, my child,’ said the nun, holding out her hands and taking Rae’s. ‘I’m Sister Veronica.’

‘I’m Rae Hennessey,’ Rae said, her chin held high.

‘Come in, Rae,’ said Sister Veronica. ‘I’ll give you a hand with your things. Is there anybody with you?’

‘No,’ said Rae. ‘I’m alone.’

‘You’re never alone, God is always with you,’ Sister Veronica replied gently.

Rae stared at her. What a comforting thought. She hoped it was true, but she hadn’t had much reason to believe in the kindness of God thus far.

Whatever the nuns in school thought about unmarried mothers, the nuns and the women who ran the Blessed Helena Nursing Home had different views. Sister Veronica was kindness itself and while she took notes of all Rae’s details, there was no mention of shame or sin the way there would have been in school.

In her
old
school, Rae thought with a shock. She’d never be going back there now.

The hostel was simple yet homely. There was a large kitchen-cum-sitting room where the girls spent their time, two offices, a room where family members could come to visit, and upstairs there were two dormitory rooms along with several single rooms. There were no frills, the seats in the kitchen were old church pews covered with the multi-coloured crochet cushion covers Sister Veronica liked to make in the evening, and the single beds were made up with plain blankets and old white sheets. Despite the bareness of the place, everything was spotlessly clean.

But it was the flowers that Rae would always remember: Sister Veronica loved flowers and grew wallflowers in the tiny scrap of a garden behind the hostel. Old jam jars groaned with the weight of lilac-and-white wallflowers dotted with greenfly. Their heady garden scent filled the air better than any perfume.

There were six girls in Blessed Helena, including Rae, and she was given a bed in the second dormitory alongside Carla, a tiny red-haired girl who was near her time, and Sive, who didn’t look pregnant at all and who stared silently at Rae when Sister Veronica showed her the room.

‘She doesn’t say anything,’ Carla informed Rae. She was resting on her bed and she patted the side of it for Rae to sit with her. ‘Come and visit with me and we’ll talk.’

‘I’ll leave you to get settled,’ Sister Veronica said. ‘Dinner’s at seven. Carla will tell you everything, won’t you, Carla?’

‘Can’t tell her everything, Sister, or she’d walk out!’

Sister Veronica just laughed. Rae had never witnessed a nun in school behaving in such a free manner. She put her things on the floor beside her bed and went to sit on Carla’s.

‘Yes, I
am
huge,’ Carla said as Rae stared at her belly. She wore a grey tunic that was stretched to ripping point across her swollen midriff. ‘I’ve still got three weeks to go. The midwife says it’s going to be a huge baby. Sister Fran says it’s a boy because I’m carrying low. Ashling – you’ll meet her later – says it can only be an elephant ‘cos I’m so big. It might be two, who knows.’ She gave her belly an affectionate pat. ‘He’s certainly wriggling around enough for two.’

Rae laughed and it was such a relief to share a joke that she couldn’t stop laughing.

‘It’s not that funny,’ Carla said with amusement.

‘It is,’ Rae replied. ‘I haven’t laughed in months.’

‘How many months?’ asked Carla.

‘Five and a half.’

‘You’re small for five months,’ Carla commented.

‘I’m tall.’ Rae shrugged. ‘Made it easier to hide it. And how far along is she?’ Rae didn’t want to say Sive’s name out loud for fear of offending her. ‘She has no bump. Has she had a baby?’

‘She’s pregnant all right and everybody in her family knows ‘cos it’s her daddy’s.’

Rae inhaled sharply.

‘She’s not eating properly. If I were her, I probably wouldn’t eat either. You’d never get over that.’

Rae shook her head. She resolved not to feel so sorry for herself any more. Whatever had happened to her, at least it wasn’t that.

For the next two weeks, Rae felt at peace for the first time in ages. There was no tension in the hostel and most of the girls shared a real sense of camaraderie. This was a safe place where nobody shouted at them for being pregnant.

Rae loved spending time with Carla. The little redhead was feisty and funny. She was seventeen and had been in the house the longest.

Sometimes they talked about boys, clothes and films, as if they hadn’t bellies swollen with pregnancy. Carla loved the Beatles. She didn’t like John Lennon at all.

‘Hate those glasses.’

But Paul, he was gorgeous.

What nobody talked about was afterwards.

One night in bed, Rae couldn’t sleep and she lay in the darkness, thinking of how she’d love to turn a light on so she could read, but she wouldn’t want to wake the other girls. She shifted in her bed and then Carla whispered:

‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes,’ Rae whispered back. ‘You OK?’

‘No.’

For the first time ever, Rae could hear fear in her friend’s voice.

‘I’m thinking about afterwards. You know, when the baby comes. What then?’

‘We can worry about that later,’ said Rae, which was what Sister Veronica had said to her that first day.

‘That’s the line Veronica uses,’ Carla said, with a hint of bitterness. ‘They don’t want you to think too much about it because they’ve plans for the babies.’

‘What do you mean, “plans”?’

‘Adoption,’ Carla said. ‘We can hardly look after our kids, can we?’

‘I’m going to,’ said Rae with determination.

‘And you’re going to use what exactly as money? Wake up, Rae. We’ll have to give our babies away. It’s the best for them.’

‘Says who?’ Rae was shocked.

‘Veronica. I went into her this afternoon and she said she’s got this great family in Donegal who’ve already adopted one baby and they’d love another. They’ve got a farm, the first baby is a little girl and she’s nearly two. Another one, a little boy, would finish it off nicely. I wonder if it is a boy? I said, “I’m not sure about the farm, thing, Veronica.” I came from a farm, and much good it did me. Getting away from it with a boy from the town is what got me in here.’

Rae got out of her own bed and crept along to Carla’s. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she sat on Carla’s bed, shifting until she got comfortable. She was six months pregnant now. Sister Veronica had a midwife who came weekly to check the girls.

‘You’re coming along well,’ the midwife said that week. ‘Into the final trimester.’

‘What’s that?’ Rae had asked.

‘Medical language,’ the midwife said dismissively. ‘No need to worry about it. You stay healthy, that’s all, and it’ll soon be over.’

Now she sat on Carla’s bed, feeling the baby move inside her. He or she was always more alert at night, she didn’t know why. Nobody ever talked about the actual pregnancy in the home, so her knowledge was a bit sketchy.

She reached for Carla’s small hand and held it.

‘I’m scared about having him,’ Carla said quietly. ‘It’s going to hurt. I hate pain and Joely – she was gone before you came – she said the midwives here can’t give us pain relief. That’s only in hospital.’

‘We’re not having the baby in hospital?’

‘Having a baby is the most natural thing in the world and you don’t need to do it in hospital,’ said Carla, parrot-fashion. ‘Except giving it up isn’t. Do you think that afterwards we’ll go back to the way we were before?’

Rae bit her lip. ‘How can we? It’s all different now. We can’t become people who haven’t had babies.’

‘We won’t have the babies, though. Nobody will know.’

‘I’ll have my baby,’ Rae said simply. ‘And
you’ll
know. You’ll know you’ve had a baby. You’re not going to forget that.’

Rae put away Jasmine’s little vest, climbed out of the attic and slid down on to the staircase with a resounding thud.

In her bathroom, she peered at her red face and splashed water on it. She couldn’t go to work looking like this. Hands shaking, she applied a layer of foundation to hide the blotchiness. That done, she went downstairs, blindly grabbed her jacket and keys, and left the house.

In Titania’s, she spoke to no one, put her jacket away, and went out to work the till.

The elderly American lady was choosing a bran muffin. What her name was, Rae couldn’t remember for the life of her.

‘Can I get you something to drink? asked Rae, and the effort of talking made her cry again. It was as though touching Jasmine’s little vest had opened the floodgates and now they couldn’t be shut.

‘Rae,’ said a voice.

Through her tears, Rae could see the American lady’s concerned face.

‘You need to sit down for a minute,’ the woman said in a calming voice.

‘OK.’ Eleanor caught the eye of one of the other members of staff who was watching Rae in shock, and she came to take Rae’s place at the till.

Eleanor led Rae to a quiet booth near the back. She took Rae’s hand in hers and rubbed it. Normally, she wouldn’t touch a patient. But Rae wasn’t a patient and this wasn’t normal.

‘You can talk to me,’ she said softly.

Rae looked into Eleanor’s warm eyes and knew that she could. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said, and began to cry again.

There was nobody close by when Rae went into labour. She was lying on her bed in the small dormitory, trying to ease the pain in her back, when it came on. A searing pain that started in her pelvis and ripped up through her whole body.

‘Carla!’ she called out in her confusion, but Carla wasn’t there. Her baby, a little scrap of a thing that Carla had called Paul after Paul McCartney, had gone to the sweet farming couple in Donegal. Carla had painted on make-up like war paint the day she left, although the eyeliner kept sliding down her face with the tears. ‘See, I can fit into my old clothes,’ she said, half crying, half smiling. She wore a leather jacket that Rae had never seen before and jeans that hugged her body. ‘Back to what I was before. Stay in touch.’