Between The Sheets (23 page)
'I know you will, Dana. I just want to make it as pain free as possible. What can I do to help? Shall I get on to Ian and ask him to find you a new cleaner?'
'I doubt he'll want to help. He's going to be disgusted when he hears I've fired Sylvie.'
'Oh? Is there something going on there?' 'No, but it's obvious he fancies her.' 'Well, no matter. Business is business. He must keep his private life to himself and I shall tell him so.'
'Don't worry, Wally. Ian's the least of my worries.' Dana sniffed. 'I saw Gus last night. He was with that girl — the one he was photographed with. I saw them with my own eyes. They were so obviously together. She's young and pretty—' Dana broke off with a sob.
'My poor, poor darling. I wish I was there to look after you.'
Dana found a tissue and dabbed at her eyes and nose. 'Me too.'
'Forget about him, Dana. You have a new love in your life too, remember.'
'Yes, you're right. And he's a nice man.'
'There you go, then.'
'He's funny, sexy, kind—'
Walter groaned. 'I sense a "but" coming.'
Dana sighed.
'He's not Gus?' Wally suggested.
'No,' Dana agreed, tears welling up again. 'He's not.'
Walter talked to Dana for a little longer. He did his best to bolster the author's mood but he was still worried after he'd hung up. He asked his secretary to get Ian on the phone and he paced his office while he waited.
'Ian Wilson on line two, Walter.'
'Thanks. Ian?'
'Hi, Walter, how are you?'
'I've been better, Ian. I just hung up the phone on Dana. There's a problem.'
'Not another one,' Ian groaned. 'What's she done now?'
'Her housekeeper's walked out and Dana's had to fire her PA.'
'What? Why on earth would she fire Sylvie?'
Walter smiled at the anger in Ian's voice. Dana was right. The man must be in love. 'Never mind, but I assure you, she had good reason. Anyway, I'm more concerned about Dana. She's at a very low ebb and all alone in that house. We need to get someone in there, and fast. I'm afraid she may become reclusive again and that would be a disaster on a professional and personal level.'
'So you want me to hire a cleaner and a PA?'
'Not your job, I know, Ian. But I would appreciate it if you could help.'
'Of course. Leave it with me,' Ian had replied, and hung up.
But Walter still wasn't happy. Even if Ian did find new staff for Dana, it wouldn't be the same as having someone around that she could trust or confide in. He thought for a moment, and after checking his personal diary he picked up the phone again and dialled. It rang only once.
'Walter?'
'Hello, Gus.'
'Is something wrong?'
'I think you know the answer to that. It was a bit of a blow for Dana running into you like that. But there's more.'
'Oh?'
Walter quickly went on to fill Gus in.
'This is awful, Walter, but what can I do about it?'
'I was wondering. Have you found her brother?'
'Yes. We're actually meeting up tomorrow.'
'That's great. Maybe you could fill him in.'
'I can, Walter, but I don't see that it will make any difference. She won't want to see him any more than she'd want to see me. They haven't talked in years.'
'It's worth a try,' Walter said desperately. 'I have to do something.'
'Why not call Judy?'
'I thought about that, but she lives in Wexford and has two kids. She can't do much more than be at the end of a phone.'
'True. Look, I'll talk to Ed,' Gus promised. 'But I can't promise anything.'
'I know that. One more thing?'
'What's that, Walter?'
'Please go and see her.'
'There's no point—'
'There's every point. And you owe it to her.'
Gus was feeling more than a little nervous as he walked into O'Dwyer's pub. It had been Ed's idea to meet here and he'd agreed immediately. It was late afternoon and there weren't many people about. After scanning the room, Gus figured Ed hadn't arrived yet. Going to the bar, he ordered himself a pint of Guinness.
'Make that two.'
Gus swung around. 'Ed?'
The other man smiled and held out his hand. 'Hello, Gus.'
'How did you know me?'
'I've seen your photograph,' Ed said straight-faced.
Gus sighed. 'Of course. Shall we get a table?' He watched Dana's brother as he led the way. He was dark and slim, like Dana, but there the similarity ended. Ed's eyes were greyish blue. His hair was cut tight, his arms were muscled and he was almost as tall as Gus. He had a healthy, outdoors glow about him. He must be forty now but he could easily pass for thirty-five. 'I can't believe I'm sitting here with you after all this time,' he marvelled when they'd found a table.
'I can't quite believe it myself,' Ed replied. 'So how's my sister? Have you seen her?'
'Sadly, yes,' Gus said and explained how he and Terry had bumped into Dana. Then he went on to tell Ed about Walter's phone call. 'She's had a tough time. Walter — that's Dana's agent — thought maybe you could help?'
Ed laughed. 'Me? What could I do?'
'Just be there for her,' Gus suggested.
'She wouldn't want me anywhere near her!'
'Why? What happened between you? I know she had problems with your father and ... other things. But why did you two fall out?'
'I'm not entirely sure,' Ed said sadly. 'She never hung around long enough to tell me.'
'Not very good at talking, your sister, is she?' Gus remarked. 'That's why I left. We were so close — at least I thought we were. And then I discover that I hardly know her at all. Tell me about your nephew.'
'Nephew?' Ed shook his in confusion. 'I don't have a nephew.'
'Look, Ed, I know Dana has a son. I read a letter she wrote to him.'
'No. No, she doesn't.'
'But the letter—'
'I don't know anything about that. What I do know is there is no child.' Ed closed his eyes briefly. 'Dana had an abortion when she was sixteen.'
'What?' Gus stared at him in shock. 'What happened? Was she attacked? God, it wasn't your father—'
'No! Of course not. He wasn't the best father in the world, but he'd never harm a hair on Dana's head.' Ed's smile was sad. 'She was his princess.'
'So, what happened?'
'It was a couple of years after I'd left home and Dana and I have never discussed it, so I can only tell you what I've heard second-hand.'
'Go on.'
'Dana was seeing a boy secretly, a local kid. I don't think it was serious — my mother didn't seem to think so. My father didn't let her go out often, he was very strict. But she'd pretend to be at a friend's studying, and then sneak off to meet him. Then she went on a school trip to London. My father didn't want her to go but my mother begged him to let her. She said it was educational and all the other girls in her class were going. He eventually agreed and off they went. They got a phone call a couple of days later to say that Dana had gone missing. My father immediately made arrangements to go over and look for her. By the time he got there, Dana had turned up. She told him that she'd just had an abortion.'
'What? But how could she have? She was only a child herself and where did she get the money?'
'She was sixteen, so it was completely legal. As for the money — my mother had a "rainy day" fund. Dana helped herself.'
'Your father must have been upset,' Gus said.
'That's putting it mildly. That his princess had got pregnant was bad. But the fact that she had an abortion was ten times worse.'
'Surely he wouldn't have expected her to go through with the pregnancy? She was still so young.'
'You know what it was like back then. No one had abortions or, if they did, they certainly didn't admit it. My father was very proud but he was also a very religious man. He'd have been mortified that Dana got herself into such a predicament. But he'd have expected — no, demanded — that Dana have the child, no matter what. And she knew that.'
Gus looked at him. 'What do you mean?'
'Apparently the main reason Dana had the abortion was to punish him.'
'That's ridiculous!'
'Is it? As far as Dana was concerned, my father was responsible for me leaving and for making our mother's life a misery. But he adored his only daughter. She knew how much this would hurt him.'
'Are you saying that she got pregnant on purpose?'
Ed shook his head. 'She would never have been that calculating. But once she found herself in that situation, why not make the most of it?'
'So, what happened then?'
'Father brought her home, forbade her to talk of it ever again. Then he packed her off to a boarding school for her last year.'
'But that's awful. How did your mother agree to that?'
Ed shook his head. 'My mother didn't have a say about anything in that house. Anyway Dana was probably better off. Life wouldn't have been easy for her if she'd stayed at home.'
'So how do you know so much?' Gus asked, suddenly remembering that Ed had been absent while all of this transpired,
Ed said nothing for a moment and then stood up. 'I pieced it together when my mother died. I'm sorry, would you excuse me for a moment? I just remembered I have to make a phone call. Back in a sec.'
Gus watched him walk away and wondered what he'd said to prompt Ed's sudden discomfort. Today's revelations had been a shock, but Gus knew they were just the tip of the iceberg. He was relieved that Dana hadn't had a baby. Somehow it was easier to accept that she had concealed a teenage pregnancy rather than a child. It made sense too. The O'Carrolls wouldn't be the first Catholic family to cover up a scandal like that, and the fact that Conall was a celebrity of sorts made everything make even more sense. And Dana had kept the secret for so long, he could almost understand why she hadn't thought it necessary to confide in her husband. Almost. But there were more secrets, of that he was sure. He wondered if Ed could or would reveal them. He didn't have to wait long to find out.
Dana's brother returned, brandishing his phone. 'I have to go.'
'Oh! Is there something wrong?' 'No. No, it's just work. I'm sorry about this, truly I am. I'll call you and we'll get together again soon.'
'What about Dana?' Gus raised his voice as Ed turned to go.
The other man hesitated.
'Will you contact her?' Gus urged.
Ed smiled and then nodded. 'Of course. Will you?'
Gus had arranged to meet Terry later, but he sent her a text message saying he had to work. It was the second time he'd avoided her that week. She was a lovely girl and she turned him on too. But since he'd slept with her, it just felt wrong. It didn't help that their first time had been just before they'd bumped into Dana.
His phone beeped and he read Terry's reply.
NO PROB. CALL ME WHEN UR DONE. X
He sighed. He didn't want to call her or see her. He didn't know what he wanted. On impulse he phoned Ashling. 'Any chance I could drop in for a coffee?'
'So?' Ashling settled back in a chair and crossed her arms over her bump.
'I was just passing,' Gus said, staring into his mug.
'Of course you were.'
He sighed. 'It's such a mess.'
'Tell me.'
'I met Dana the other night.'
'Oh, yeah?' Ashling grinned.
'It wasn't planned. I was with Terry.'
'Who?'
Gus looked away. 'The journalist from the photo.'
Her eyes widened. 'But you said that was totally innocent.'
'It was! But she came to see me afterwards to apologize and—' He closed his eyes. 'It's a long story but the fact is that we're together now. Sort of.'
'Sort of?'
He looked at her. 'It just doesn't feel right.'
'You still love Dana.'
'I don't know. I suppose so. You can't just turn it off, you know? No matter how angry or hurt you are.'
'So, you were hurt and angry with Dana. That's why you left.' He said nothing. Ashling sighed. 'I'm delighted you came to talk to me, Gus. Only, I feel a little bit in the dark.'
He nodded. 'Yeah, sorry.' He was silent for a moment. 'I left Dana because I found out that she'd been keeping secrets from me. They didn't concern me or our relationship. But I felt, as her husband, she should have told me. If she trusted me, she'd have told me.' He looked at her, his eyes narrowed. 'Do you have secrets from Tom?'
'Sure,' she said easily. 'I don't tell him when I spend a fortune on a handbag and I never tell him my real weight.'
He shot her a reproachful look. 'Ashling.'
She looked into his eyes and shook her head. 'No, Gus. If there's anything in my past that I haven't told him, it's because it wasn't important enough to mention. Maybe it was the same for Dana.'
He laughed. 'No. No, it doesn't fall into that category at all.'
'You know you're driving me mad with curiosity, don't you?'
'I'm sorry, Ashling.' He stood up. 'Maybe I'll be able to tell you one day, but not today. Thanks for everything.'
'I didn't do anything,' she said, standing up more slowly.
He bent to kiss her cheek. 'Thanks for trying.'
After my brother left, life was indeed quieter. But that wasn't just down to my father's improved temperament. My mother and I distanced ourselves from him and left him to his writing and his books. We lived in the same house but that was all, really. While I missed Ed hugely, I loved having my mother all to myself. We had never been so close. In the evenings, I'd curl up on the sofa beside her and listen to her talk. It was a novel experience. Mother had always been the doer and Father did enough talking for both of them. Now I found, though, that my mother had much to say.
She would regale me with stories of her own childhood and her love for her mother and father. They sounded as gentle and loving as she. She'd tell tales of Ed and me as young babies, with a tenderness in her smile that made me reach out to her. She even talked about Father and their courtship. The man she described bore little resemblance to the one I knew. I wondered whether she was rewriting history or he had just changed. If it was the latter, I wondered why. I did ask but Mother's answers were always vague. She did, however, try to explain my father's erratic behaviour, which she put down to his upbringing.
I was shocked to learn that his father — my grandfather — had been a drunkard and a petty criminal. Now I knew why the man was never mentioned! His wife, my grandmother, had been a weak, frail woman who lived in the shadow of her husband. Between my grandfather's bad example and his wife's lack of control, my father turned into a wayward, troublesome boy. Finally, after some pressure from the local parish priest, he was sent off to a strict boarding school where he learned obedience the hard way. It was drilled into him that he would rot in hell if he followed in his father's footsteps. My father emerged chastened, law-abiding and devout.
'Isn't that even more reason for him to be a better person?' I argued when Mother told me this story. 'After going through so much himself, how could he be so cruel and unkind to his own son?'
'Your father was afraid Ed would inherit his grand-father's bad blood,' she explained. 'That's why he was always so hard on him. He may have been misguided, but he meant well.'
I found this a little hard to swallow. Why was he only tough on Ed? Were bad genes only passed on to male offspring? But my mother either couldn't or wouldn't expand further. It didn't matter anyway. There was nothing she could tell me about my father that would change my feelings for him. He'd driven my brother away and I hated him for that.
It was at the boarding school that my father's love affair with his native language began. It was down to his Irish teacher, who was one of the kinder and gentler priests. He soon spotted Conall's talent and cultivated it. My father took comfort in his writing and the words of praise from his teacher. He went on to become a primary school teacher himself, although in his heart he was always a poet. He was in his late thirties, however, before his talents were recognized. Finally, eight years later, he gave up teaching and devoted himself to his art. I could imagine his students cheering when they heard the news.
Ed leaving had another effect on my life. My parents grew more lenient. My mother, because she was trying to compensate for the loss of my brother; my father, in an effort to ingratiate himself He appeared defeated by my new, hostile attitude and tried everything to win back my love. I revelled in his misery and triumphed in the fact that the shackles were off and I could live and behave like a normal teenager.
As a result, I had a whole new freedom I hadn't enjoyed before. I was allowed to spend more time with Judy, to join the basketball team and even to attend the monthly school disco.
And so began my love life. When my parents thought I was at Judy's studying, or at choir practice, or playing basketball, I was often receiving lessons of a different sort. Liam O'Herlihy had finally succumbed to my charms and I was in seventh heaven. I should have played it cool, of course. I should have kept him at arm's length. I didn't.
When I lost my virginity it was on our fourth date — my father would have been apoplectic. It was not a romantic or memorable experience. I lay on the floor of Liam's father's barn while he fumbled and panted. Predictably, I felt dirty and ashamed afterwards. Not enough, however, to say no the next time, or the time after that.
I realized very quickly that I must be pregnant. As a convent girl, my sex education had been limited to say the least. But I had always suffered badly with heavy, painful periods and when I was pain free for eight weeks, I figured out that I had a problem. Strangely I didn't panic, nor did I go rushing to tell Liam. Instead I bought a couple of magazines and combed the problem pages and the small ads. Once I had a plan, I confided in my best friend, Judy. She was shocked and terrified on my behalf.
'Your dad will kill you,' were her first words.
She was even more aghast when I told her what I was going to do. 'Aren't you scared?' she asked me, wide-eyed.
Of course I was terrified, and racked with guilt. But I had been taken over by a strange compulsion. This was a way of punishing my father on every level and, in a weird way, it felt right. I look back now on these words and feel physically sick. What was I thinking? How did I behave in such a way? Where did I find the strength to do what I did? Even today I don't have the answers.
After much begging on my part, Judy covered for me while I visited a clinic in Wexford and made the necessary arrangements. It was a stroke of luck that the school trip to London was planned for later that month. So I didn't have
to worry about travel or accommodation. All I had to do was finance the procedure. I knew, thanks to my mother's sewing box, that wouldn't be a problem.
It was easy enough to slip away from the group during our visit to the Tower of London. It didn't take me long to find the clinic either. Walking through the door was more difficult. But dealing with the guilt afterwards — that was the really hard part. It was all over so quickly. I was in a daze as a kind woman led me to a small room and fed me tea and biscuits. She gave me a leaflet with a phone number and made me promise to attend the clinic in Wexford the following week for a counselling session. I walked back to the hostel in a state of shock. I had been missing for seven hours and everyone was in a flap. The two teachers had called my father, who was now on his way over. While we waited for him to arrive they quizzed me as to where I'd gone and what I'd been doing. I maintained I'd got separated from the group and then had difficulty finding my way back to the hostel. They didn't swallow that for a minute. Why hadn't I phoned someone? I shrugged and said nothing. They would have their answers soon enough. But if what I had just done was to make any sense, my father had to be the first to know. I needed to see the look of shock register in his eyes. I needed to stick the knife in the wound. And then — well, then I didn't care what happened to me. Before the procedure I had thought I would go back to living a normal life. As I waited for my father to arrive though, I realized that nothing would ever be the same again.
It was late when my father got in. All the other students had been sent to bed and I sat at the kitchen table while the teachers whispered nervously in a corner. There was a look of pure relief on his face when he walked through the door and saw that I was okay. At that moment, I felt a pang of guilt. The teachers started to fill him in. They were at first apologetic and then defensive under his accusing glare. Finally he turned to me and asked me where I'd been. And so I told him. At any other time I'd have fallen about laughing at the shock on my teachers' faces. But I didn't feel much like laughing now. I watched a variety of emotions cross my father's face. Anger, disgust, shock, sorrow and, then, confusion.
'Why?' he cried. 'We would have helped you. We would have taken care of the baby. Why didn't you come to me? Don't you realize you've broken the fifth commandment? You've murdered your baby — your own flesh and blood!' Tears rolled down his cheeks as he held out his hands in supplication. 'For the love of God, why?'
'Because I wanted to hurt you the way you hurt Ed. The way you hurt Mother and the way you've hurt me.'
I
never hurt you,' he protested. 'I loved you!'
'You took my brother away.' And I turned from him to my teachers, tears filling my eyes. 'Can I go to bed now, please?'
With uncharacteristic tenderness, the older woman took me up to her own room and put me to bed. She stroked my hair as I cried, and then sat with me until I fell asleep.
The next morning, my father and I left for the airport.
He didn't talk to me in the taxi, or in the airport. He said nothing on the plane or in the car home. When my mother opened the door, he pushed past her, went into his office and closed the door. She looked at me, her eyes full of pain, but she still held out her arms to me. I fell into them and cried like the child I still was. 'I'm so sorry, Mum. I'm so sorry.' I said it over and over again like a mantra.
'Hush,' she said, holding me tightly to her. 'You're home now. Everything will be okay.'