The Honey Queen (12 page)

It was hard to believe that this loving woman had given up her first child and then carried that huge secret locked inside her the rest of her life. Of course, she’d given birth to Lillie a long time ago, a time when the past wasn’t just another country, it was more in the line of another planet altogether. A planet where women did not give birth to children outside marriage and keep them. Such babies were symbols of shame to be bundled off as quickly as possible, regardless of the mother’s feelings in the matter.

He’d often wondered how the young Jennifer McCabe had summoned up the courage to marry Daniel Green – a Jew, though admittedly non-religious, when her family were Catholic. That, too, must have been scandalous at the time. Perhaps in light of the ‘sins’ she’d committed according to the tenets of her own unforgiving Church and society, Jennifer had simply resolved to defy convention and marry the man she loved, irrespective of religion.

Seth pulled up at a set of traffic lights and checked the clock on the dashboard. He still had plenty of time.

The secrecy of it all was what had shocked him the most. He couldn’t imagine his mother as a scared teenager because the woman he’d known had always been so strong. She’d dealt with many things through the years, even taking in his father’s elderly aunt Ruth, a woman who’d never recovered from her years in a concentration camp. Ruth had somehow survived but a huge part of her spirit had been crushed. When she’d become old and frail, it had been Seth’s mother who’d taken such care of her, understanding the nightmares and the fear that never left. Jennifer was the one who’d go in to comfort Ruth in the middle of the night, changing her nightgown, being gentle and kind, sitting with her until Ruth drifted into sleep.

His mother had also been a very honest, straight person: ‘Be truthful, Seth,’ she would tell him. ‘Whatever it is you’ve done, always tell the truth.’

Yet she hadn’t told him the truth – or rather, she’d avoided telling him the whole truth – about herself.

When the email arrived from Lillie’s son, carefully worded, trying to find out information about his mother, Seth had been astonished. Frankie, of course, had been thrilled, fascinated and full of enthusiasm. It was the way his wife was.

‘You’ve a long-lost half sister!’ she’d said delightedly. ‘How wonderful! Do you suppose your father knew? I doubt there was any way of knowing where the baby went or if there were any records linking her to your mother. It’s an amazing thing to happen now though, isn’t it, finding out?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said, although, as with so many things involving his wife, it was taking a little longer for the information to sink into his head than into hers.

Frankie responded to everything so readily, her quicksilver brain processing facts at high speed. His no longer seemed to work so fast – something that he suspected irritated her these days. Seth felt that these days, his very existence irritated his wife.

He knew their marriage was going through a bad stage – something that they’d never encountered before – but he felt too broken to attempt to fix it. All he could do was to let things take their course and hope that he and Frankie would come through it all.

And then the email had come with news of Lillie’s existence.

Frankie had been so … well, Frankie-like about it.

‘Lillie must come to stay. I know this place isn’t great for guests, but we can fix up a room for her somewhere,’ she’d said firmly.

It was only when Frankie began searching for the phone book, saying, ‘What’s the dialling code for Melbourne? We must ring this Martin now, and then get Lillie’s number and phone her,’ that Seth found his voice and said
Stop.

He had a sister – ‘half’ didn’t matter: she was his sister – and she’d been out there in the world all along when he thought he was an only child. He
thought
he was pleased, although it was all still being processed in his head, but he wanted to do things slowly, all the same. He needed time to get used to the idea.

‘Her son emailed. He might get a shock if we just ring,’ he said to Frankie. ‘Plus, there’s the time difference. We can’t ring now. Let’s email back.’

‘Well, she obviously wants to get in touch or she wouldn’t have agreed to her son doing this. It’s only natural that she should want to meet you, that must be the whole point of it, that’s what people do,’ said Frankie eagerly. ‘Who better to tell her about your mother? She’s sure to have lots of questions. And aren’t you curious to see her – find out what she’s like, what she looks like? I can’t wait to tell Emer and Alexei. They’re going to be so excited – just think, a whole new branch of the family they never knew existed. I’ll send them an email right away.’

‘We should probably take it slowly,’ Seth counselled. He worked out the dates. ‘Lillie’s sixty-four, ten years older than me.’

Frankie frowned slightly. He’d noticed that she didn’t like hearing how old he was. She’d suddenly become touchy about anything to do with age. When her driving licence had come up for renewal the previous month she’d been tight-lipped as she filled in the form, attaching an admittedly not very flattering photo of herself.

‘Bloody photo machines,’ she’d said, staring at it crossly. ‘Makes me look as if I’m about ninety and sitting on a stool of nails.’

‘You’re a mere sprite of forty-nine,’ Seth had said, trying to cheer her up. ‘Talking of which, we should organize something for your fiftieth next—’

‘No!’ Her shout startled them both. Recovering, she said lamely: ‘Sorry. I just meant that we don’t have the money, that’s all. It’s a lovely thought and all, darling. But no.’

So Seth added age to the list of things he and Frankie didn’t discuss any more.

Age, the house, the state of the garden, and how it was no use him even trying to get a job, because who would want to employ him?
That
in particular drove her insane. She refused to accept that losing his job had transformed him from a man with a career to a man with nothing.

It was so enormous, so emasculating. Frankie simply didn’t understand. The discovery of Lillie’s existence was all the more wonderful, because at last they had something they could talk about.

When Lillie’s son responded to their email by saying that his mother didn’t do emails, and that a letter would be the best way to talk to her, Frankie had flung her hands up in despair.

‘A letter,’ she groaned. ‘Nobody writes letters any more.’

‘Lillie probably does,’ said Seth, smiling. He wondered whether his sister’s handwriting would resemble the curling, light hand of their mother, as though an angel had danced across the page. And then he realized that, without his mother to teach her, Lillie probably wouldn’t write like that. Wasn’t handwriting a product of environment?

‘We’ll ask her to stay,’ Frankie went on. ‘He doesn’t mention whether other members of the family would be interested, but we should invite them too. We’ll have them all,’ said Frankie, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

‘Let’s start with Lillie,’ Seth said firmly.

His wife had always been generous and enthusiastic. Frankie’s glass wasn’t just half-full, it was brimming – and she wanted to share it with everyone. It was what made her so good with people and so good at her job. Nobody could resist an HR boss like Frankie.

It didn’t make her so easy to live with when you didn’t have a job, though.

He knew she couldn’t help contrasting his handling of the situation with the way she’d behave if her job was suddenly snatched out from under her. Frankie would go at it like a whirling dervish, turning everything upside down, tossing aside any obstacles that planted themselves in her path.

Her enthusiasm for Lillie’s visit had swept aside Seth’s reservations. But now that the time had arrived, they were starting to creep back into his mind. After all, this wasn’t a long-lost relative returning after a time away. This woman had never known her birth father and mother. She had been cast out of her homeland and sent to the other side of the world for adoption. What was she going to make of Seth, the child her mother had kept close?

Seth drove slowly into the airport car park, took the ticket from the machine and circled the floors of the multi-storey until he found a parking spot. He did everything slowly now. It was as if life itself had wound down. During the day, he watched TV and there’d been a programme on redundancy and its effect on people. He had all the worst symptoms and then some. With nothing being built because of the recession, nobody had any use for an architect, especially a fifty-four-year-old one. Even if a job did appear on the horizon, he was far too old and too qualified to start somewhere new and was, therefore, unemployable.

Slipping the parking ticket into the pocket of his navy corduroys, he walked towards arrivals. He was early enough to get a coffee and a paper, to sit and wait. Lillie’s son had emailed him a photograph so he would know what she looked like. It had been taken at a family gathering. Two strong Celtic-looking men – his nephews, he realized with a jolt – were standing beside their parents. Lillie appeared to be as tall as Jennifer had been and with similar colouring; she was standing beside a man who must have once been tall but looked to have shrunken, turned in on himself. He was smiling though.

Dad’s only been dead six months
, Martin had said in his email.
We think this is wonderful for Mum – finding you and going to stay with you. It’s really generous of you. Obviously, it’s been painful for everyone since Dad died, but particularly for Mum. They were married over forty years. I hope it all works out. Just email or phone if there’s any problem or if Mum gets upset. We’ll fly her home in an instant. I know you said she can stay indefinitely, and thank you for that. Mum wants to recompense you both for her visit.

Don’t worry,
Seth had replied,
we’ll take care of her, I promise. She can stay as long as she likes and I won’t hear of her paying anything. She’s family.

He hoped they’d be able to fulfil the promise of taking care of Lillie. Now that she was nearly here, he hoped he’d be able to love her. But it would be strange.

He’d read his paper from cover to cover and the coffee cup had been dispatched into a litter bin by the time people started trailing through the arrivals gate. Seth scanned the faces, wondering if he’d recognize her from the picture. He had made a sign with
Lillie Maguire
written on it, just in case, but he felt self-conscious standing there holding it. When he saw her, approaching slowly as if walking was hard for her, he knew her instantly. This woman pushing the trolley with two mismatched suitcases could only be his sister. She wasn’t as tall as he’d thought, but he was struck at once by the resemblance to his mother. It hadn’t been so noticeable in the picture but now, seeing her in the flesh, freckled from the Australian sun and wearing a bright coral top, it was as if he was looking at Jennifer. She, too, had worn her hair tied up in a bun with bits trailing around her face. Lillie’s eyes were the same as his mother’s. Even her mouth was the same, soft and curving in a sweet expression.

At that moment, a huge surge of emotion shot through Seth. It was almost as if his mother had come back to life, as if some part of her had been preserved in this woman. He had a sister.

He moved towards her, trying to smile but wondering whether he might start to cry, overwhelmed by the feeling that another chance had been given to him; another chance to be with his mother through Lillie.

For a moment, Lillie kept pushing her trolley. Once the plane had landed and it sank in that she was really here and it was time to meet her brother, her nerves had got the better of her.

Sam, help me
, she begged silently
. I don’t want to feel bitter. I had such amazing parents. It’s not as if I ever lost out by being adopted. Nobody could have loved me more than they did. I don’t know what it was like for my birth mother all those years ago. Just help me remember that.

Seeing her name on a piece of card, and then looking at the dark-eyed man nervously holding it, she came to a complete halt. This was a meeting for which there were no rules, she had no framework, nothing in her wealth of experience to draw on. This was the great unknown. It could turn out to be fantastic … or it could go horribly wrong.

No
, a voice inside her said. Her own voice. It would not go wrong. As he stepped hesitantly towards her, she gazed at him, eyes wide as if she might cry.

‘Lillie,’ Seth said. ‘Welcome home.’

Lillie held on to Seth’s hand for quite a while after they left the airport. It was lucky the car was an automatic, she thought, with a little hiccup between tears. She wasn’t sure why she was crying. Tears of joy? Just pure emotion leaking out of her, grief over Sam combined with trepidation at meeting her brother, an actual brother after all these years. She felt as if something had reached into her very soul and squeezed it in a tight embrace. From the look of him, Seth was equally choked.

‘I meant to show you all the sights of Cork,’ he said as they drove along, ‘but I’m not able to find the words. I think we should just go home. You need to sleep, anyway, after that trip. Three flights. You must be shatterered.’

She nodded. ‘I can’t talk much either – and that’s a miracle, if you listen to my sons on the matter,’ she said. ‘Here, take your hand back, dry your eyes.’

‘You sound just like my …’ Seth paused. Out of the corner of her eye, Lillie could see him grin. ‘
Our
mother,’ he corrected. ‘Yes, you do sound like her. It’s uncanny. Even though the accent is different.’

For a moment, neither of them spoke, the huge chasm of Lillie’s adoption gaping between them.

It was Lillie who broke the silence.

‘I was very worried on the plane journey,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought you might resent me because I was a secret. You told Martin that you never knew of my existence. It must have come as a huge shock. And I was terrified that I’d feel bitter when I saw you – which is stupid, because I couldn’t have had a better childhood. But …’