A Sister’s Promise

‘I’m afraid, sir, the accident was a fatal one.’

Stan couldn’t take that in. ‘Fatal?’ he repeated. ‘You mean they are dead?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Both of them?’

‘I am afraid so. They died instantly, so I believe.’

‘But how … ? I mean, what happened?’

‘They were in collision with a van,’ the policeman said. ‘The doctors think the van driver had a heart attack and died at the wheel and the van then crashed into your son’s car.’

‘Dear Almighty Christ!’ Stan cried. Tears started in his eyes and began to trickle down his wrinkled cheeks.

‘Is there anyone I could call for you, sir?’ the policeman said, worried for the man, who had turned a bad shade of grey.

‘There is no one,’ Stan said, realising at that moment how alone he was. There was no one left but him and the children and the burden of responsibility joined that of sorrow and lodged between his shoulder blades weighing him down. But he faced the policeman and said, ‘It’s all right, I will be fine. I shall have to be fine, for my son and his wife were the parents of the wee boy in the room there and I shall have to break the news to him and his sister.’

‘If you are sure, sir?’

‘I’m sure,’ Stan said, but he wiped his face with a handkerchief before he went in to face his grandson, who looked up at him bewildered and a little frightened.

Kevin had wondered who was at the door and normally he would have gone out to see, for in fact few people knocked in that street, but as he neared the door, the serious tone of the conversation unnerved him, though he couldn’t hear what was being said. So, instead of going out to them, he stole up the stairs and into his parents’ bedroom where the window was a bay and, even with the overhang of the door, a person could usually see who was there. Kevin could see the policeman clearly.

In Kevin’s short experience of life, policemen spelled trouble. Even when you had no idea you were doing anything wrong, they could usually find something to tick a boy off for. He didn’t associate them with breaking bad news, so when his grandfather returned he was back in the room and he asked apprehensively, ‘What did the copper want, Granddad?’

Stan looked at the child and he wished with all his heart and soul he could protect him from what he had to say, but he knew he couldn’t. He sat down beside Kevin and put an arm around his shoulders as Molly burst in. She had spotted the policeman leaving their door as she had turned the corner and sped home as fast as she could.

Older and wiser than Kevin, she knew that the police did other things than box the ears of errant and cheeky boys. She cried, What is it? What’s up?’

She saw that tears were spilling from her grandfather’s eyes and her hands were clenched so tightly at her sides that she was crushing the cigarette packet she hadn’t been aware that she was still holding. ‘Please, please,’ she begged, sinking to her knees before her grandfather. ‘Please tell me what’s wrong.’

Stan tried valiantly to stem the tears and he lifted Kevin onto his knee and snuggled Molly beside him, his arm encircling her as he broke the news as gently as a person could, that their parents had been killed in a car accident.

Both children looked at him in shock. Molly thought there must be some mistake, it couldn’t be true, of course it couldn’t.

It was the howl of sheer unadulterated agony, which preceded the paroxysm of grief that Kevin displayed, that started her own tears as she cried out for such terrible loss. The pain of it seemed to be consuming her whole body.

And that is how Hilda found them, as she told her husband later. ‘Sodden with sadness was the only way to describe it and no wonder. Almighty Christ, how will they survive this, the poor wee mites? I feel the grievous loss of one of the best friends I ever had, but Molly and little Kevin. God Almighty! Isn’t life a bugger at times?’

Many thought the same, for Hilda had not been the only one to spot the policeman at the Maguire’s door, especially amongst those neighbours on the look out for the car, ready to welcome Nuala home. Now those same neighbours gathered in the house, feeling helpless at the sight of such heartbreaking grief, but feeling they needed to be there. The party tea all set out seemed such a mockery now.

Most of the rest of that day was a blur for Molly. She remembered people trying to get her to eat something, but she wasn’t hungry. She was filled with sorrow and anguish, but she drank the hot sweet tea that they pressed on her, because it was easier than arguing with them.

Other people came – first the priest, Father Clayton, his own eyes full of sorrow. But he could do nothing for them and when he offered to pray with Molly because it might ease her, she turned her face away. She had no desire to pray to a God that allowed her parents to be killed in such a way. When her mother had been very ill with pneumonia and it was feared that she might die, Molly prayed night and day. She knew of families that said the rosary each night for Nuala’s recovery, there were Masses said, and Molly was not the only one who started a novena. When Nuala passed the crisis and they knew that she would survive, everyone was praising the power of prayer and saying how good God was. Hilda even said, ‘He didn’t want to take your mom, see. He knows she is needed far more here.’

And she was. But now it was as if God had been playing one awful and terrifying joke on them all, letting them think it was going to be all right, that her mother was better and was coming home and then … not content with taking just her mother away, He had taken her father too. He had had the last laugh, after all. She wanted to ask the priest why He had done that, but she couldn’t seem to form the words. All her thoughts were jumbled up in her head and she was also suddenly unaccountably weary and Kevin was shaking from head to foot.

The next thing she remembered was the priest was gone and Dr Brown was there, though Molly had no idea who had sent for him. He gave Kevin an injection and almost immediately he curled on the settee and went to sleep. No one, not even her granddad, suggested that he be put to bed, and a neighbour went upstairs and took a blanket from one of the beds to put over him.

Molly refused the same injection that Kevin had and the doctor left her some tablets. She didn’t want to take those either but her granddad prevailed upon her to try. ‘They may help, Molly.’

Molly just stared at him, for she knew that nothing would help the despair that she was filled with. But afterwards, when the pain became unbearable, she did swallow two of the tablets hoping they would blur the edges of it a bit. Within minutes, she felt as if she were one side of a curtain and everyone else was on the other and she was totally disconnected from all that was happening.

She could see through the curtain, so often knew people were speaking to her, but her mind couldn’t seem to make sense of what was said and she was utterly unable to make any sort of response. So when Paul Simmons called in to express his deepest condolences, that much she knew only by the look on his face. She didn’t understand a word he was saying and that was her last memory of that dreadful, terrible day.

TWO

When Molly awoke next morning, she felt like she was fighting her way through fog. Her eyelids were heavy and her whole body felt sluggish. She wondered for a second or two what was the matter with her. Then suddenly, how she felt was of no account, as the memories of the tragic events of the previous day came flooding back. However, she had no recollection of even mounting the stairs, never mind getting undressed and into bed. Pushing back the bedclothes, she realised that she hadn’t a nightdress on at all, just her slip.

She glanced at the clock and saw with surprise that it was past ten o’clock. As she heaved herself out of bed, she heard Kevin give a sudden, harrowing cry.

Stan had refused medication, feeling he owed it to the children to stay alert and in full charge of himself and his emotions, but that meant he had slept badly and in snatches, and it showed in his drawn face and rheumy bloodshot eyes. He was the only one awake in the house when the policeman had called earlier that morning to ask if he could go down to the hospital to formally identify the bodies, and that he would send a car.

No way did Stan want to look on the dead bodies of his son and Nuala, but he knew there was only him and so he nodded. But the children had not woken and he explained that both of them had been sedated the previous evening. There was no way he would go out without telling them, and so it was arranged for the car to come at half-past eleven when he was sure the two would be up and about.

Before either of the children were astir however, a bevy of neighbours were in the door, including Hilda, asking Stan if they could help in any way. Hilda readily agreed to mind the children while Stan went to the hospital. When Kevin woke up, though, and Stan told him of the arrangements, he had been distraught and it had been his cry of distress that Molly had heard.

‘I don’t want to be left behind,’ Kevin was crying to his granddad as Molly entered the room. ‘What if you don’t come back either?’

Molly quite understood Kevin’s concerns and so did Stan. He knew the time was gone when he could have heartily reassured his grandson that of course he would come back. Instead, he said, ‘You are right, Kevin. We will all go up to the hospital and I will just pop round and tell Hilda that.’ And Molly saw Kevin give a sigh of relief.

With the children deposited in the waiting room, Stan followed the white-coated doctor down the long hospital corridor to the mortuary, his heart hammering in his chest. At the door, the doctor said, ‘Before you see the bodies, I think you ought to know that with the impact of the crash, they were both thrown through the windscreen, so their faces were very badly injured. Your son was not too bad, but your daughter-in-law’s injuries are extensive. We have done our best to clean them up, of course, but there is only so much you can do.’

Stan swallowed deeply and then nodded. ‘I understand.’

‘Are you ready?’

Are you ever ready for such a thing? Stan thought, but he said, ‘Aye, yes.’ He squared his shoulders and again tried to swallow the hard lump lodged in his throat. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

Ted’s face was a mass of small cuts and black-grey bruises, and he had one massive jagged cut that seared the whole length of his forehead and another running diagonally from the corner of his right eye, across the bridge of his nose to the left-hand corner of the mouth. But all the blood had been wiped away and, though it was upsetting, Stan was able to nod at the doctor and say, ‘Yes, that is my son.’

Poor Nuala was a different matter all together. When they removed the sheet covering her face, despite the fact that he had been warned, Stan staggered and it was the doctor’s arm that steadied him. Her face was just a blooded mass of putrefying flesh and he felt the bile rising in him even as he nodded at the doctor.

He barely reached the yard outside before he was as sick as a dog, vomiting over and over into the drain until his stomach ached and his throat was raw. Then he straightened up and wiped his face with his handkerchief, knowing he had to return to the children and pretend everything was all right, or at least as all right as it could be in the circumstances.

However, the policeman assigned to sit with the children, took one look at Stan’s haggard face and said, ‘Sit down for a while. You look all in. I’ll fetch a cup of tea.’

Stan was glad to obey and more than glad of the reviving cups of tea the young policeman brought for all of them. He couldn’t remember when any of them had last eaten, for he had not touched the party food and he knew the children hadn’t either.

Some of it was stored away in the cupboards at home – the women had seen to that. Anything that wouldn’t keep, he insisted the neighbours take, rather than it be thrown away. Although he had been too overwhelmed to do anything himself, he had been pleased that all sign of the welcome home party was gone by the time he had got up that morning. The children had wanted no breakfast and Stan, who hadn’t been able to eat either, had not insisted, and so was gratified to see that at least they were drinking the tea.

It was as Stan was draining the cup that he remembered Nuala’s parents and knew despite anything that had gone before they still needed to be told. Of course they both might be dead and gone now, and Nuala’s brothers off to pastures new, but he had to find out. He hadn’t any idea how to go about this so he mentioned it to the policeman.

‘I know so little about them you see other than their name, which is Sullivan, Thomas John and Bridget Sullivan. They have a farm in a place called Buncrana in Donegal. I’m sorry there’s not any more to go on, but there was a falling-out when their daughter, Nuala, married my son, basically because he was a Protestant and Nuala and her family were all Catholic.’

‘In these country districts it will probably be more than enough,’ the policeman said. ‘And, as they are Catholic, if all else fails the parish priest will know who they are. We’ll see to that and without delay, so you don’t worry about it.’

Later that day, there was a smile on Biddy Sullivan’s face as she shut the door on the young guard who had come to the door to tell her of the untimely death of her daughter and son-in-law. She thought Nuala had at last paid for her father’s death. It had taken some time, but since the day she had held her dying husband in her arms, she had prayed for something bad to happen to her daughter.

Tom, was nervous of his mother’s smile. It wasn’t an expression he saw often and it usually boded ill for someone, so he asked tentatively, ‘What did the garda want?’

‘He came to tell me the thing I have wished for many a year,’ Biddy said. ‘Your sister, Nuala, and her husband have both been killed in a car crash in Birmingham.’

Tom felt a momentary pang of regret and sadness. The eldest boy, he had been twelve when Nuala was born, had left school and was already working in the fields with his father from dawn to dusk. He well remembered the tiny, wee child and how she had grown up so slight and fine-boned she was like a little doll. Biddy had never let the boys play with their little sister, but she hadn’t needed to say that to him, he wouldn’t have dreamed of playing with her, he knew his hands were too big and too rough.

And now she was gone, killed in a car crash, and his mother saying it was what she had wished for years. His mother was a strange one, all right, but what she had said this time was just downright wicked.

Tom seldom argued with his mother, but this time he burst out, ‘Mammy, that’s a dreadful thing to say.’

‘She killed your daddy.’

‘You can’t be certain of that,’ Tom protested. ‘And even if it was her news that hastened Daddy’s death, she didn’t know. It wasn’t her fault.’

‘Well, I think differently and I am glad that she has got her just deserts at last,’ Biddy said with an emphatic nod of her head. ‘And if you have eaten your fill, shouldn’t you be about your duties and not standing arguing the toss with me?’

Tom knew there was no use talking to his mother when she used that tone – he would be wasting time trying – so with a sigh he went back outside. And when a little later, he saw her scurrying away from the house, he didn’t bother calling out to her and ask her where she was bound for because he knew she probably wouldn’t tell him.

And she didn’t tell him until he had finished the evening milking and was sitting at the table eating a bowl of porridge his mother had made for supper and then her words so astounded him his mouth dropped open. ‘You are going to Birmingham tomorrow,’ he repeated.

‘That’s right.’

‘But have you even got the address?’

‘Aye, the guard gave it to me. I suppose I can ask for directions when I am there. I sent a telegram for them to expect me anyway.’

‘But, Mammy, what are you going for?’

‘Why shouldn’t I go?’

‘Because you never did when Nuala was alive,’ Tom said. ‘Why go now when she is dead?’

‘I’m not going for her, numbskull,’ Biddy snapped, ‘but to see the set-up of the place.’

‘Set-up of the place?’ Tom queried. ‘What are you on about?’

‘There are children, more than likely,’ Biddy said. ‘And if there are children they are going to no Protestant to rear. They will come here to me and be raised in the one true faith.’

‘Here, Mammy?’

‘Well, where else?’

‘I know but … well you have never cared for children,’ Tom said, adding bitterly, ‘at least you told me that often enough when I was growing up.’

‘I don’t care for children much,’ Biddy said. ‘But I think I know where my duty lies.’

Tom remembered his life as a child and young boy in that house and the scant attention and even less affection he, his brothers and his elder sister, Aggie, had ever received from their mother. The only one petted and spoiled was Nuala. However, after the letter and his father’s death, bitterness against Nuala seemed to lodge inside his mother, where it grew like a canker, getting deeper with every passing year. Tom had little hope that any children Nuala had would receive any love or understanding from his mother. He could only hope there was no issue from that union.

Stan looked at the telegram in his hand and could scarcely believe that, after all this time, Nuala’s mother was coming here. Like Tom, he thought it a pity she hadn’t ever made the journey when Nuala had been alive.

However, he told himself maybe she was sorry now for the stiff-necked, unforgiving way she had been with her daughter. She must be indeed to want to show her respect by turning up for the funeral, set for Friday. It would be good too for the children to realise that he wasn’t the only living relative that they had. He loved them dearly but he had worried what would happen to them if he was taken ill.

Maybe this woman, their own grandmother, would be a comfort to them, especially to Molly. It was important, he thought, for a girl to have a woman’s influence in her life.

‘Any answer?’ the telegraph boy asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ Stan said, for he would not have the woman arriving without any sort of welcome, so in his reply he said that both he and the children were looking forward to her coming and if she gave him the time of her arrival he would be at New Street Station to meet her.

Molly too was pleased because it would be a link with the mother she still missed so very, very much.

‘D’you think she is sorry now about the quarrel?’

‘Aye,’ Stan said. ‘I’d say so. Why else would she be coming?’

‘Mmm, I suppose …’

‘What are you fretting about now?’

‘What will happen to me and our Kevin, Granddad?’

‘Why, you’ll stay with me of course.’

‘We won’t have to go to no orphanage?’

‘Not a bit of it,’ Stan told her. ‘Why should you do that when you have a fit and active grandfather up the road willing and able to see to the two of you? And now you have other grandparents too and your uncles are probably living there as well don’t forget. Your grandparents live in the country, on the farm your own mother grew up on. Wouldn’t that be a fine place for you to go for a wee holiday?’

‘I suppose,’ Molly said again.

‘There is no suppose about it,’ Stan said firmly. ‘Now you get on your feet and give me a hand cleaning up the house. It would never do for your grandmother to find fault, and anyway that Mr Simmons said he would come to see me this evening.’

Stan was very impressed with Mr Simmons, even though he was slightly awed by such a fine gentleman bothering with the likes of them. He quite understood how it had been between him and Ted, though his son had said it didn’t work with many of the toffs at the front. They might be quite pally while they were in the trenches together, but once out of uniform, all that was forgotten and they’d hardly bid the ordinary soldier the time of day.

Stan knew that full well. That’s how it was with toffs, and he thought that with Ted dead, any debt Paul Simmons thought he had owed to him had been paid and well paid.

However, Paul didn’t see it like that at all. He had been terribly upset when he had heard of the double tragedy, and to honour Ted’s memory he felt he should at least show some care for his children. He knew that the family would now be in dire straits with only Stan’s pension and possibly the pittance given by the government to live on, and he was arranging for an allowance to be paid to the family, rising annually until the children should be twenty-one. That is what he told Stan when he called.

Stan was bowled over by such generosity, but too worried about how they would manage to think of refusing it. Now he knew financially, at least, they would get by and thanked the man gratefully.

Stan knew he had to be strong and practical for the children. There was to be no more crying, at least in front of them. The terrible, dreadful thing that had happened to their parents had to be put behind them because they had their whole lives yet to live and he knew Ted and Nuala would want them to do that. However, even by now, their grief and Kevin’s dependence on him almost overwhelmed him. He looked forward to Biddy Sullivan’s arrival and hoped she might stay on for a little while after the funeral and help him with them.

When he saw the woman alight from the train and stand uncertainly on the platform the following evening, Stan knew he didn’t like the look of her. She was dressed in black from the hat perched upon the grey hair to the old-fashioned button boots on her feet. Stan had expected that the woman would be in mourning, but what he didn’t much care for was the expression on her face.

He castigated himself soundly. Here he was making judgements on this poor woman he had never met, who had travelled over land and sea to see her daughter finally laid to rest. What did he expect, that she would leap from the train with a whoop of joy?

He approached Biddy with his arm outstretched and a smile of welcome on his face. Biddy watched his approach with a cynical smile that twisted her lips into a grimace, but Stan didn’t see that, though he did note that the woman was very tall and very skinny. Everything about her was thin, so that her sallow cheeks, either side of her long, narrow nose, were sunken in. But it was her eyes that shook him, for they were as cold as ice. He plainly saw the malicious intent there and his heart sank. He doubted there would be any help forthcoming from this quarter.

She ignored Stan’s hand and instead, in the sharp, shrill voice that Stan fully expected her to have, snapped out, ‘Are you Stanley Maguire?’

‘I am,’ Stan said, extending his hand to her again. ‘And I am very pleased to meet you at last, though I would have preferred it to have been on a more pleasant occasion.’

Biddy looked at Stan’s hand as if it might be a snake that would leap up and bite her, and Stan let it fall to his side as she said, ‘I have no pleasure in meeting you, Mr Maguire. Indirectly, you were the cause of all this. If you had exercised full control of your son, you would not have let him marry my daughter.’

Stan was irritated and annoyed by Biddy’s inference, but still he excused the woman and bit back the sharp retort that had been on his lips. She was likely tired, he told himself, and suffering still from grief. Certainly the lines running either side of her nose and pulling her mouth down in a sag of disapproval spoke of strain of one kind or another. And, he told himself, when a death occurs of a loved one, especially a death so tragic and unexpected, it is surely natural to want to blame someone. Anyway, it would hardly help things to have a slanging match with Nuala’s mother only minutes after her arrival.

And so instead of the counterattack Biddy might have expected, Stan said gently ‘Come now, this is neither the time nor the place to discuss such matters. Let us get you home, and rested and a cup of tea and a meal inside you, and then I will answer any question you wish to ask.’