Christmas Wish (39 page)

She had to brave it out. He couldn’t hurt her. Not here with people around.

She adopted an air of aloof disdain, strong enough to send the pennies in her eyelids packing.

‘Yes. Can I help you?’

‘You’re Magda Brodie?’ He said it in a hushed voice, as if overwhelmed by the very sound of her name and certainly by the look of her. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you in there.’ He jerked his thumb towards the hospital. ‘You look just like your mother.’

‘My mother?’

‘Magda. Are you all right?’

Unable to hear what she was hearing, Daniel came striding to her side, intent on protecting her.

Taller and stronger than the older man and determined to defend her, he grabbed the collar of the scruffy, greasy seaman’s coat with both hands. ‘Who are you? What do you want with her?’

Magda stepped back.

Presuming the man did work for Fitts, Daniel snarled a warning into the haggard face.

‘Take a message back to your boss, Fitts, that if he continues to harass Magdalena Brodie, he’ll have me to deal with.’

‘Fitts has been threatening you?’ The man didn’t sound afraid and his gaze never shifted from Magda’s face. ‘When I saw you, I checked your name. I couldn’t believe it. You’re going to be a doctor? My, but I’m proud of you.’

Magda felt a strange churning in her stomach and in her mind a memory surfaced from childhood.

‘I came looking for you, Magda. I came to ask you to forgive me for leaving you with your Aunt Bridget. I did wrong. I did very wrong.’

Magda gasped. ‘Daniel. It’s my father.’

Daniel shook his head, his hands only barely loosening his grip on Joseph Brodie’s collar.

Joseph Brodie seemed unaware of the hands crunching his coat lapels, his eyes still fixed on his daughter.

‘Will you forgive me?’

Although the look in his eyes was pleading, Magda couldn’t answer. Not just because her throat had gone dry, but because she wasn’t sure of the answer to that. There were too many things she wanted to say, too many nights spent under the roof of a woman who hated her.

‘You must have known what Aunt Bridget was like, and yet you left me there. Not only was she a cruel, selfish woman, but I came into contact with people even worse than her; including Bradley Fitts, a man who won’t take no for an answer.’

She saw him wince as though surprised at how bitter she sounded. But she couldn’t help it. Forgiveness was impossible – at least for now.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.

Daniel loosened his grip and looked to Magda for confirmation.

‘My father,’ she said. ‘The one who ripped apart his own family!’

‘Magda, what can I do to make it up to you?’ Her father looked helpless and sounded as though he was about to sob or even fall to his knees in an effort to acquire forgiveness.

Magda was too angry. Too hurt.

Her eyes, her blood, her face – everything seemed as though it were on fire with anger.

‘Nothing. You can do nothing to make it up to me. The family seems to be scattered to the winds. I don’t know where any of them are.’

‘I do!’

She’d half turned away meaning to leave him behind, just as he’d left her. There were no words to describe how much she despised him for what he’d done.

‘Where are they?’ she asked, her voice sounding small and fragile.

‘Your sisters are in Ireland. I left them with my parents, and Michael …’ He stopped and looked down. ‘Michael is all set up where he is. There’s no need to interfere with his life. He’s no need of any of us … or, at least, of me.’

Magda took a deep breath. ‘Can you give me their last known address?’

He nodded. ‘Sure. Wasn’t it the place I grew up in? My parents are dead, but I think the twins are there – one of them at least.’

There were no words. She couldn’t speak any words at all. They
were
in Ireland. She only nodded.

Her father began rummaging in his pockets, those outside and those on the inside too.

‘I’ve got this letter …’

Finally he handed her the only letter that had ever caught him up on his far-ranging travels. It was crumpled and obviously many years old, but to Magda’s eyes it was more precious than gold.

She took it but didn’t thank him.

For what seemed like minutes but must only have been seconds, all three of them stood there, waiting for whoever was going to make the first move. It turned out to be Joseph Brodie.

‘Then I’ll be leaving, Magda my darlin’. Our time is done. All I can wish is that you have a good life.’

Joseph Brodie didn’t seem so tall or as broad in the shoulders as he’d once done. It was as though living life to the full had worn him down.

‘Where will you go?’

He shrugged, his fists clenching and unclenching as though they needed to do something physical.

‘Oh, don’t you worry about me, my girl. Back to sea. The only home I’ve ever loved.’

Magda felt the warmth of Daniel’s body close behind her. Together they watched Joseph Brodie’s shadow falling up a wall, then over a road before disappearing altogether.

‘So do you think you’ll ever forgive him?’

She shook her head. ‘I feel that I should, but I can’t. I just can’t. It’s been too long.’

Joseph Brodie strode as upright as he could, willing his shoulders not to shake and his eyes not to cry, but they did so anyway.

Her words had wounded him deeply, not that he blamed her for uttering them. He’d done her wrong. He’d done his whole family wrong including his beautiful wife, Isabella. Magda looked like her mother when he’d first seen her in Italy; his lovely Isabella.

Never had his heart ached so much as it did now, and yet he couldn’t blame Magda for her bitterness, even her hatred of him. He deserved it but there had to be some way of making things up to her. First as last he had to keep her safe from Bradley Fitts. He’d seen what Fitts and his bully boys got up to on the docks. He had to save her from him – whatever it took.

Anna Marie breathed a deep sigh, closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders.

‘I won’t leave here, Patrick. I love the farm. I’ve always loved it.’

She was finding it hard to understand why Patrick, who had resisted her sister’s urgings to sail to America, was now all in favour of leaving Ireland to fight in a war.

‘You have to see it my way, Anna, it’s my last chance to get a bit of adventure. It makes sense for us to sell up and buy something in England. Bombs are dropping there, and sure it won’t be long before they’re dropping here too. I want to put up a fight and think it’s as much Ireland’s battle as it is England’s.’

‘Ireland is …’

‘Neutral. But I’m not. People are saying Hitler won’t be satisfied until he’s got a bigger chunk of Europe and that’s my opinion too. He took plenty up till now, but there’s more that he’s wanting. Before we’re halfway through this year he’ll have taken more – so I’m hearing. By the end
of this year I need to be in England if I’m not to miss the action.’

She shook her head in disbelief. ‘But you’re Irish. Ireland is a republic. You’d be fighting for England.’

He grinned in the mischievous way he used to when he was a boy.

‘That doesn’t mean I should miss the chance to go abroad to France or suchlike and have a pop with a rifle at those German blokes. Have you seen the way they strut about? They deserve to be shot at.’

‘What am I going to do if you’re away fighting?’

Patrick bowed his head, bit his lip and looked up at her from behind a tawny red fringe.

‘You could try finding your sister.’

Anna Marie turned her eyes from her husband and fixed them on the view beyond the window. She reckoned she’d done a good job since her grandparents had died. In fact the old place looked better cared for than it ever had. This was in part due to her taking on the right people at the right price. Patrick, whose own father had departed for pastures new having met a widow woman from Sligo and moved in with her, had taken over his father’s business. His first move, thanks to Anna Marie’s urging, had been to decorate the inside of the house, fix the roof and install a proper bathroom in the smallest bedroom.

The bathroom had been a famous success, neighbours and folk from the town making sounds of approval at the modern bath, the WC and even a washbasin with hot and cold water.

‘The hot water is heated by a boiler,’ he’d boasted to everyone that would listen.

Some people who could afford such a luxury were so impressed they engaged him to do the same for them.

Working purely for reward had never much suited Patrick;
he’d never shirked hard work, but inside he sometimes wished he had gone to America with Venetia. How would it have been, he wondered, and where was she now?

They’d heard nothing from Anna Marie’s twin since she’d been put into St Bernadette’s, and perhaps that was what was making him restless. Yes, they were comfortably off, but being comfortable, he’d chided Anna Marie, was not what living was all about.

‘You have to
feel
alive, not just
be
alive. Besides, what is there to keep us here – just the farm? We’ve no kin here about now.’

The last comment was the one that hit Anna Marie the hardest. No matter how much they truckled together in that big bed upstairs, the patter of tiny feet had never occurred. There were no children, though it certainly wasn’t for the want of trying.

Feeling Anna Marie’s big sad eyes on him and guessing she was brooding on the same old problem, he sat up straight and gave her a direct look.

‘You’ve always said you’d like to look up your sister, Magda. So how about it? Isn’t now as good a time as any? I mean, you’ve still got that letter from her. Nice paper. Nicely written. She can’t be a whore like ’twas told to you. She just can’t be.’

Anna Marie placed the butter dish on the table next to the slices of bread she’d just cut from the loaf. The letter had been a complete surprise. Magda had not mentioned anything about her life except that she wanted to get in touch, but only if she was in agreement. After all, their lives had separated when they were children.

Her grandfather had forbidden contact before, and she certainly didn’t want to meet her if indeed she was a common prostitute.

She tried another tack to dissuade him.

‘What if Venetia comes back and finds us gone?’

He barely paused in the act of buttering the thick doorstep of bread he’d placed on his plate.

‘She won’t be back. She didn’t come back for the funeral of your grandparents, so why should she come back now?’ he said, his mouth full of bread and butter.

Anna Marie pulled out a chair and sat on the opposite side of the table to her husband. As her eyes passed over the gingham curtains, the enamel stove, the deep sink and the painted dresser that Patrick had built himself, she asked herself whether she could willingly leave all this behind her. It all seemed such a waste of effort. She put her thoughts into words.

‘All this work you put in, Patrick. I’m thinking you did all this for nothing.’

He swallowed the mouthful of bread and butter, his eyes shifting to hers then shifting away again. She’d often wondered why she’d never noticed his shiftiness before, the fact that he would wangle his own way at any price, initially without her noticing. Like his constantly moving eyes, Patrick Casey was restless. He couldn’t settle. He would never settle – not really.

She’d also heard rumours about him and a woman in Dunavon but had decided to ignore them. It will pass, she’d told herself.

They’d been married a few years now so she noticed more, but accepted her lot. After all, hadn’t Patrick been Venetia’s man in the first place? There were times she felt guilty about marrying Patrick, but there, Venetia had not been around to protest. They’d heard nothing from her except that she’d run away from St Bernadette’s.

It was from her grandmother’s diary after her death that Anna Marie had learned that Venetia had given birth to a stillborn daughter. Patrick’s daughter. The shock couldn’t have been worse and the pain still gnawed deep inside. She had told Patrick about a letter she’d found in her grandmother’s things
from the aunt where Magda had lodged. She had not told him about the diary; in fact she’d thrown it on the fire, her blood freezing as she watched it burn.

Share of her sister’s shame had nothing to do with why she’d burned it. The diary would have laid bare the fact that it was her fault that they’d not had children, that he had already fathered a child on her sister. As yet she’d heard no rumours of him having fathered a child with anyone else. She wondered about the woman in Dunavon. Perhaps it might not be such a bad idea if they did sell up and leave.

Patrick was not giving up. ‘Look. I don’t mean to rub it in or anything, but ’twas me who purchased the freehold of this place. Your family only rented so although it was your family’s place, they never owned it. And I do.’

She put down her cup and played with the piece of bread on her plate; she didn’t feel like eating.

‘If you want to sell it, there’s nothing I can do. It’s in your name.’

‘Aye,’ he said, shoving more bread into his mouth as he nodded. ‘It’s my name on the deeds, not yours. I’m your husband and what I say goes.’

Never in her wildest dreams had Venetia Brodie ever expected to end up spending weekends in a lovely house with a wrought iron balcony overlooking the promenade at Clevedon, a West Country coastal town. Her plan had always been to get enough money together for the trip to America. Keen to leave Ireland but not having enough money for the passage to America, she had settled for going to England.

The boat from Cork had taken her to Bristol, a city she knew nothing about except that a direct service ran between it and southern Ireland.

The first thing she did on alighting from the boat was to seek cheap overnight accommodation before looking for a job. The only job she was really qualified for was as a domestic servant thanks to the solicitous endeavours of the nuns at St Bernadette’s.

Thanks to her London origins and Italian mother, her accent was not as thick and broad as some Irish who came over seeking work. She’d heard there were landladies who refused to let rooms to Irish people, so she made a
point of refining her speech even more. In order to aid her quest, firstly for accommodation and then a job, she also adopted a version of her mother’s name, calling herself Miss Venetia Bella. Venetia decided it sounded quite exotic and the landlady who rented her a room seemed to think so too.