Homecoming (38 page)

‘I can’t do it.’

‘You can.’

The nun sat on the bed for what felt like hours. She had stories of babies who became ill living in terrible conditions, women who went crazy with nobody to help them. Babies who grew into angry children without the love of two parents. That was God’s will, Sister Veronica went on. Two parents to raise a child.

Rae hadn’t told her much about her own parents, but somehow Veronica knew. Of the hopeless couple who lived in poverty and bitterness, who’d never come to look for their daughter.

‘Suppose you kept her and something happened to you,’ Sister Veronica said meaningfully. ‘Your little baby would go to them to raise.’

It was the one argument for which there was no answer.

‘How can I let her go?’ Rae asked. Her tears were flowing like a river now and dripping on to her nightgown in spite of her efforts to stem them with a tissue. She had to stay in control, had to for Jasmine’s sake.

‘It’s what a mother’s love is about,’ Sister Veronica said. ‘Giving her up to bring her a chance in life. You never had a chance, but she will. The other girls who’ve done it are happy because they knew it was the right thing to do.’

‘They’re happy? They’re OK? How do you know?’ Rae couldn’t believe it. How could a person be happy if they gave up their baby?

‘They’re happy,’ insisted the nun. ‘You wouldn’t believe how happy they are when they come back to see me and talk about it all. They’re content, knowing they made the right choice. It’s hard to see it now, but you will.’

Sister Veronica reached into the bassinet where Jasmine was lying, staring up with her great violet eyes, and picked her up. It was the first time Rae had let anyone else hold her. She looked on jealously as the nun gentled the baby, years of experience with babies showing in her movements.

‘You rest and I’ll get someone to bring us up some fresh tea and toast,’ Sister Veronica said calmly. ‘You haven’t touched that.’

Rae watched her leave the room with Jasmine in her arms, knowing that the nun was showing her that Jasmine could be cared for by other people. She would not fall apart in the room on her own, as she wouldn’t fall apart in another room on another day if they took Jasmine to a better future.

When the tea and toast came, Rae drank and ate. Later Sister Veronica returned with Jasmine, who was now sleeping peacefully.

‘It’s the best thing for her and for you,’ the nun said when she left the room. ‘I’ll be back in the morning and we can sort it all out. Your baby’s future.’

She’d never called her Jasmine, Rae noticed. Not once. As if the baby had no name, not one that Rae would give her, anyway.

That night, Rae only dozed intermittently. Each time she’d sleep, she’d wake up with a start, as if someone was already there, taking Jasmine. When she lay awake, she thought about what Veronica had said. It was all true, wasn’t it? Why else would she say it? Jasmine had such a limited future with Rae. She deserved better. And there was nobody else to take care of her if something happened to Rae. She could not go to Paudge and Glory Hennessey.

Sister Veronica was back in the morning with a lady from an adoption agency.

The woman was short, kind-faced and armed with a clipboard and papers.

‘What you’re doing is the best thing for your child,’ she said in a voice like a headmistress’s. ‘Your baby will be happy and loved. You are a wonderful person to do this.’

She had some papers for Rae to sign and there would be more later. ‘Just a formality,’ she said briskly. She also had a woollen blanket and a baby basket.

‘Now?’ said Rae, horrified. ‘I thought we’d have longer together.’

Jasmine lay content in her arms after her second feed of the morning.

‘Some homes try that, but it’s harder for mother and baby,’ the woman said knowledgeably. ‘Quicker is better. Why doesn’t Sister Veronica take her while you sign the forms?’

Rae’s hands shook. Carla had told her it would be quick, and she’d thought Carla wanted it that way, but perhaps they always did it like that.

‘You’ll want to be getting back to your old life,’ the woman said when the forms were signed. ‘Kiss her now. We’re off. You need to rest.’

The nun held Jasmine out to Rae, Sister Martin appeared from nowhere, along with another strange woman.

Rae tried to take Jasmine but Sister Veronica held the baby tightly. ‘Just a quick kiss.’

‘No!’ cried Rae, in wild panic at what she’d just done.

The other woman, the one she’d never met, held on to her tightly.

‘No, no.’

Veronica lowered Jasmine and Rae managed to brush her lips against Jasmine’s cheek but there was no real kiss.

Instantly, the nun whisked her away.

‘No!’ shrieked Rae.

But the door slammed and Jasmine was gone. Rae was left in the bed with a strange woman holding her down.

Jasmine had been taken away. It hurt, it hurt somewhere so deep in Rae that she couldn’t find words for it.

When Sister Martin came in with a small yellow tablet and a glass of water, Rae took it numbly.

She didn’t want to even look at Sister Veronica when she came in the next day. Rae was crying silently on the chair beside the bed, holding the little stained vest Jasmine had worn that first, that only, night.

‘It’s the best way, Rae my love.’

‘Don’t call me
love
,’ hissed Rae. ‘You let us all think you’re caring for us and you’re not. We’re a baby factory.’

‘Giving your baby up was for her own good, Rae. It’s for your own good too.’

‘Don’t talk about her,’ said Rae. She couldn’t bear to think about Jasmine. About the softness of her skin, the baby scent of her, how her little face instinctively turned to the sound of Rae’s voice. And she’d never see her again. She’d given her up for the right reasons, all the reasons Sister Veronica said now, but oh God it hurt, it hurt so much.

She fell to the floor from the chair and held on to her belly. The pain was there; where Jasmine had lain for nine long months. If only she hadn’t griped about the difficult bits of pregnancy and had rejoiced in them, because then Jasmine was a part of her, nobody could take her then. They were together. What she wouldn’t give to have that time back.

Sister Veronica tried to help her to her feet but Rae pushed her away.

‘No,’ she cried, ‘don’t touch me.’

All she wanted was to lie in her bed with Jasmine wrapped close to her, but she’d given up on that forever. It was the right thing, wasn’t it? All these people said it was the right thing for Jasmine and they must know, mustn’t they?

Sister Veronica left her alone in the lonely single room. Too late Rae understood why she’d been moved there. She’d heard crying coming from there when she’d first arrived, but she hadn’t thought about what it meant. She’d thought it was one of the nuns perhaps. Why hadn’t she asked? If so, she might have run away from this place where they pretended to help when really they were just preaching doctrinaire Catholicism and separating single women from their babies. It messed with their morality, their sense of the world. But they were wrong with their rules and their notions of morality. Her parents had been allowed to raise her because they were married and yet they shouldn’t have been allowed to raise so much as a scaldy hen. Marriage meant nothing, just that you’d followed their stupid rules. What was wrong with a woman raising a child on her own?

Rae would never play by their rules again. They’d made her lose everything.

She packed her stuff up. She was never coming back here again, never to see her family again. If they’d been any sort of family, she might have been able to keep Jasmine.

After she’d finished telling Will, he sat in silence for a long while.

‘Do you hate me now?’ Rae looked at her husband intently. She was afraid of his answer, afraid he’d say ‘Yes.’

Eventually he turned to look at her and she saw the pain and shock in his eyes. Rae didn’t think she’d ever seen Will look like that and she wished with all her heart that it had been different all those years ago, that she’d told him.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I really am, my love. Please believe me.’

He studied her for a moment, then he reached out his hand and took hers. ‘How could I ever hate you?’ he said softly. ‘I love you. I’ll always love you.’

‘Oh, Will,’ Rae said with a sob.

She leaned against him, feeling the solidity of his body with great relief. She was almost afraid to breathe in case she upset this moment.
Keep loving me
, she willed him.
Keep forgiving me. I love you.
His hands stroked her back as she leaned against him, and she closed her eyes at the gesture. Let him not change his mind.

‘Remember when Anton was sixteen,’ he continued, ‘and he went camping with his friends, and it rained – they got waterlogged, and they phoned us in the middle of the night to get them.’

Rae nodded.

‘They were kids, weren’t they, him and all his friends. They all thought they were big men, but when it rained, they got scared and they wanted their parents.’ Will put his arms around her. ‘You were the same age as Anton when you had a baby. I don’t care how grown up you felt, you were a child.’

Rae didn’t dare think he might forgive her. How could he? But he was holding her closely, he still loved her. She hugged him back.

‘I should have kept her,’ she breathed. ‘I should have told you about her. All these years, I felt as if I was denying her by not telling you, but when I didn’t tell you in the beginning, how could I tell you then? When could I do it? On our wedding day, when Anton was born – when?’ She was hoarse from talking, hoarse from the emotion.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ Will soothed.

For the first time, she pulled away from him and looked into his eyes. There was hurt there and pain, but still love.

‘It does matter,’ she said. ‘It reached a point where I didn’t know how to tell you. I loved you and I was afraid you’d stop loving me if I told you. I didn’t trust your love enough, I didn’t know enough about love to trust it. I am so sorry for that, Will.’

His reply was one hand stroking her face and she leaned her cheek down to his cradling hand.

‘It’s all right, Rae,’ he said. ‘Go on, open the letter.’

Her hands were shaking so much that Will had to slit the envelope with a knife and then he handed it back to Rae.

My name is Tricia O’Reilly and I think I am your daughter. I am forty-one years old, am married to a good man and am expecting my first child. I was born in the Blessed Helena Home in Limerick on 27 August
1969. I do not know what time I was born.

I am not sure what to write. I have wanted to write to you for so long and now I am doing it, I do not know what to say.

I have been trying to find you for many years to understand why. It took me a long time to find you and I have put off doing this. I can’t put it off any longer.

I don’t want to frighten you and I know that nobody in your life now might know about me. It’s a puzzle and I need to understand it all.

Please, please answer my letter. You do not know what it would mean to me.

Tricia O’Reilly.

Rae’s hands covered her mouth.

‘I have a daughter named Tricia,’ she said to Will, her eyes shining. ‘And a grandchild coming. Oh, Will, we have to tell Anton.’

21
Herbs

Herb lore was an important part of our family for many years, but it was lost by the time I was born, Eleanor. My great-grandmother was said to have the Sight, and she spent her whole life working as a midwife. My mother told me her grandmother, Morrigan, knew which herbs would help a woman with a difficult labour, how to help a woman who could not bear children, how to ease the pain of people dying and how to tame a dangerous fever.

It was a combination of old magic and a woman’s wisdom with God’s herbs, and most of it is lost. People then didn’t write their wisdom down. They relied on the seanachai to tell the story aloud, and Morrigan’s knowledge wasn’t the sort a storyteller should know.

But I remember that my mother used to draw a circle round our house with a hazel twig once a year, and I overheard her once whisper that if a woman has difficulty carrying a child to full term, then she should eat a whole lobster, wash the shell, crush it, and wear it next to her in a small muslin bag as protection for her baby.

When I was a child, our herbs were thyme, lavender and great stalks of rosemary that grew in woody bushes outside the house. Lavender like fat lilac pillows covered the old stone wall on one side of the house. There was French lavender that Agnes had brought from the big house, and a tiny but sweeter lavender that the bees loved.

The scent of lavender and a tang of lemon thyme will always take me home.

Connie was exasperated because the fifth years had lost the will to work. Even grave discussions on the forthcoming exams couldn’t dent their sheer joy at the long summer holidays awaiting them in two months’ time.

‘My cousin lives in Wales and she only gets six weeks off in the summer. Six weeks!’ announced one girl.

‘Cruelty to teenagers,’ murmured everyone.

‘About the exams…’ said Connie, who stood at the top of the class and wondered if it was a waste of her time, or indeed a strain on her adrenal glands, to bother attempting to teach today.

‘Miss O’Callaghan, the exams don’t matter for us,’ said one girl kindly. ‘Now for the sixth years, it’s different –’

Everyone sighed sympathetically. The sixth years were on the run up to the most important thing in their young lives: the Leaving Certificate. State exams on a par with the G20 Summit at least.

Connie had often wondered if the educational system was right to gear itself so totally towards one set of exams. For the girls of St Matilda’s, it was as if their whole lives depended on those three weeks at the start of June. Everything was predicated towards it.