The Stone House (6 page)

‘God, well you have totally changed, Romy. For the better! I can't wait till Mammy sees you!'

Kate didn't know what to say. She was still angry, remembering their phone call, and wondered what had made her sister change her mind. It didn't matter really. The most important thing was that she had got on a plane and come home. This was no time for recriminations or rows. For once they had to try and pull together for their mother's sake.

‘I'm glad you're home,' she said.

‘You were right, Kate. I had to come,' admitted Romy. ‘Had to see her.'

The three sisters stood around their mother's bed, for the first time in a very long time together, united.

Mammy would be pleased to see us like this, thought Kate, wondering how it was that the three of them had grown up in the Stone House, shared the same childhood memories of Rossmore and yet somehow had let the relationship between them sour; the bond of sisterhood had managed to be stretched so tight that it was almost broken.

Romy held her mother's hand, overwhelmed as she remembered the times before everything changed and, wild and troubled, she had run away.

ROMY RAN AND
ran, racing all the way to the Strand ahead of her mother and sisters, who were a right crowd of slowcoaches carrying the rug and towels and the big yellow and white beach bag. She had only her bucket and spade as she flew across the grassy sandbank towards the sea.

Impatient she threw off her T-shirt and shorts and knickers and chased to the water, feeling the sand and stones run through her toes and the water lap against her skin. Her mother beckoned frantically for her to come back and get changed into her togs like her sisters. But impatient and excited she ignored her, jumping in just the way she was.

‘Why don't you ever do what Mammy tells you?' Moya gave out, swimming out near her in her pink and white striped swimsuit.

‘She's so stupid!' jeered Kate. ‘Naked, skinny dipping!'

She had filled her mouth with sea water and spurted it at her sisters, splashing them by kicking her legs till they left her to duck and dive and swim on her own. Drying off later by lying on the sand in the sun and pretending she was a mermaid.

They were lucky, that's what her daddy always said, living in the big old house overlooking the secluded Strand, while all the summer visitors to Rossmore had to drive their cars or cycle for miles or get the train from Dublin to get to the beach. They fought for space for their deckchairs and rugs and towels on the crowded cove beach, skin turning pink, queuing for the public toilet while her family practically had the Strand to themselves.

Hungry, she trailed back to sit with them when her mother produced tomato sandwiches and a packet of Goldgrain biscuits for lunch. She poured herself a cup of warm Mi-Wadi orange squash from the bottle in her mother's bag.

After lunch her mother dozed, lying on one side while Moya studiously ignored her and perfected her tan and Kate lay on her stomach reading a book. Bored ten-year-old Romy grabbed her bucket and spade and began to dig. Brian O'Grady had told her if you dug deep enough you would find treasure or eventually get to Australia.

Her father surprised them at three o'clock, arriving down, white shirt sleeves rolled up, sporting his grey summer trousers. He bent down and admired her handiwork.

‘Romy, that's some hole you're digging. Foundations, is it?'

‘I'm digging to Australia,' she retorted, ‘to see the kangaroos and the koala bears.'

‘Well you'll have to dig a bit deeper then,' he joked, not offering to help as he walked over to join their mother on the rug. He wasn't much of a one for the beach and although he sometimes wore a pair of big wine-coloured swimming togs, Romy had never seen him swim.

‘Anyone for ice-cream?' he'd offered half an hour later.

Hot and sweaty from digging Romy had jumped up and volunteered to go with him as the others gave their orders, slipping her hand into his as they went back across the beach. He jingled the coins in his pocket as they walked along the roadway to Sissy Sullivan's, the neighbour who lived closest to the Strand and sold ice-pops and choc-ices and Golly Bars from a big fridge in her porch. An ice-cream banner and an Irish flag hung over her front door.

‘Four choc-ices, one Golly Bar and a bottle of red lemonade,' said her father. ‘Did I ever tell you I was standing in line to buy ice-cream and a red lemonade at the Palace Dance Hall in Tramore when I first met your mother?'

‘What kind of ice-cream?' she asked, curious.

‘Choc-ice. I got talking to two lovely girls, sisters, and ended up buying them a choc-ice each. Afterwards I asked the small pretty one, Maeve, up to dance with me. And as they say, the rest is history.'

Romy liked the way he told stories and explained things and let her ride in the car with him when he
was working. She loved her mammy and sisters but sometimes maybe she loved her daddy more.

‘Race you back!' she dared him, grabbing two ices and her own creamy Golly Bar, screaming with excitement as he pretended to chase her back.

The week before Christmas their mother told them she was expecting a baby. ‘Isn't it lovely news for the Christmas?' she smiled, her face pale and strained.

‘Everything's going to change,' Romy blurted out, flinging herself in her mother's lap and burrowing into her.

‘Well, naturally it will a bit,' laughed their mother. ‘I'm sure things were different for Moya and Kate when I first brought you home from the hospital! But having another little person in the house to love is going to be wonderful.'

Moya had sat in the middle of Christmas lights, tinsel and ornaments, not believing. How could it be that her middle-aged mother was announcing she was pregnant? It was the most mortifying, disgusting thing she'd ever heard of. What would Cora and Niamh and all her friends think when this news got out? God, how had she not noticed the swollen stomach, the full breasts, and her mother's recent constant complaints about being tired? She had just presumed her mother was getting fat, or getting the change like their neighbour Mrs Costigan, who kept forgetting things and had locked herself out of the house only a week ago.

‘Are you sure?' was about all she could manage.

‘Of course,' laughed her mother, patting her stomach.

Moya couldn't believe her youngest sister's instant and honest assessment of the appalling situation they were in.

‘I know I'm no young chick but you're all getting so big that I know I'll have loads of helpers this time with the nappies and the bottles and changing and bathing the baby.'

‘Mammy, I think it's wonderful news!' said Kate firmly.

Moya had to at least pretend to be happy for their mother's sake. ‘It's great, honest. You and Daddy must be thrilled,' she said.

‘Your father is over the moon about it.'

‘If it's a girl can I name her?' begged Romy.

‘It's not a kitten or a doll,' Kate said protectively.

‘We'll just have to wait and see what your little brother or sister is like.'

Frank Dillon told everyone who came to the Stone House over the Christmas the good news about the expected arrival of another young Dillon.

‘There's still lead in the pencil,' he'd joke as he offered glasses of whiskey and gin and beer to everyone who crossed the threshold.

Moya tried to banish the cringe-making thought of her mother and father doing it in the big bed upstairs.

‘Don't mind your dad, Moya pet,' Aunt Vonnie consoled, seeing her embarrassment. ‘Frank's just so excited about another baby, that's all.'

‘There'll be another Dillon to carry on the family name,' he boasted.

‘He thinks it's going to be a boy,' she confessed
worriedly to her aunt. ‘What will he do if it's another girl?'

‘He'll thank God for another beautiful daughter who is almost as nice as her three sisters.'

Moya blushed. How could she be so insensitive? Aunt Vonnie and Uncle Joe had four boys – Neil, Conor, Fergus and Liam. Maybe they had wanted a girl.

‘Naturally Joe and I would have loved to have had a little girl but to tell the truth I don't know how one would have survived in our household with all the men talk and sport and football and old GAA guff that goes on! That's why I love coming over here to you lot for all the tears and tantrums and stories. Why do men never know any good stories or gossip?' she pondered.

Moya laughed.

‘Anyways I wouldn't be without my boys for the world.'

‘I'd better help passing round the smoked salmon and brown bread,' Moya said as her aunt and mother sat down together chatting, heads together.

A month before the baby was due Maeve Dillon was brought into hospital as her blood pressure had gone through the roof and she needed total bed rest. Their father arranged for a local woman, Mary Dwyer, to come in and give a hand with the housework and ironing and to cook their dinner when they came in from school. Wearing a selection of ancient Aran cardigans and a brown tweed skirt she'd sit for hours watching the TV or doing the crossword in the daily paper, her huge body wedged in the armchair as one of her meat and potato concoctions bubbled on the cooker.

‘She smells of BO,' complained Romy who was collected from school by her.

‘Shush,' hissed Kate, who hated the disruption and the boiled potatoes and was trying to work on her science project, disappearing to her room as soon as she'd eaten.

Moya took it on herself to scrub and clean the kitchen with Jif every night.

‘You're cracked,' jeered Romy.

Two and a half weeks later all the worry and waiting was ended when Sean Francis Dillon was born, weighing in at five pounds and seven ounces.

Looking at their new brother in the little crib beside their mother's bed in the maternity ward, they all agreed he looked tiny, with his baldy head and snub nose and wizened expression. Five days later their mother brought him home.

Sean was small, but his crying was loud enough to be heard all over the house, their mother dropping whatever she was doing to attend to him.

He was a poor feeder and after two weeks of his fussing and crying and not gaining any weight their mother had reverted to using a bottle and formula to feed him.

And as Romy had predicted everything did change. Her position as the baby, the youngest in the house, was usurped as she became ‘Sean's sister'. The house was organized around the tiny person who slept in the small bedroom beside their parents' room. Maeve Dillon, unwilling to leave him till he got a bit bigger and put on weight, contented herself with staying home. Their father deserted his usual after-work pints
and dinners and late-night meetings, coming home to join them for tea, checking on his son and lifting him up in his arms and parading him around the house.

The girls were bewildered by his intense affection for Sean and the havoc created by such a tiny mite. However, over the weeks they each grew to love their small brother with a similar intensity.

‘SMILE, GIRLS!' COAXED
their mother, looking through the camera lens as they stood at the front door step in their school uniforms. The morning sun glimmered over Rossmore's village and harbour, making them squint and fidget as the light flashed through the trees in the driveway.

‘Try to look happy. It's a big occasion, Romy starting secondary school.'

‘We'll be late on our very first day back,' worried Kate, glancing at her wrist-watch. ‘Romy, for heaven's sake put your chin up and stop messing.'

Moya tilted her head in the bright September sunlight, pulling in her stomach and putting a wide smile on her face. She couldn't wait to be finished with this awful uniform, her last year in school over, adulthood beckoning. Poor old Romy, only starting in the convent and having Mrs Cusack as her First Year head!

‘Come on, smile! You look lovely!'

Moya didn't think anyone would ever believe they were sisters, they all were so different except up close
around their full lower lips and the wide spacing of their varied coloured eyes. She hoped to God Romy wouldn't be depending on her to mind her as she wasn't having a first-year trailing around the school corridors after her.

‘That's it!' Maeve smiled, putting down the camera. ‘A perfect photo of my three beautiful daughters.'

Romy looked all wired up, pale under her freckles and nervous. Her uniform skirt was too big and too long, right down to her knees as her mother had insisted on allowing space for growing. She had Kate's outgrown jumper and a crisp new white shirt and an impressively huge new schoolbag, which weighed a ton.

Cora and Ciara had been standing patiently at the gate waiting for them during their mother's shenanigans with the camera.

‘Morning, girls,' yoohooed Maeve, waving to them. Cora felt relieved that their mother never bothered taking the family camera from out of the kitchen cabinet where it had been thrown a few years ago. ‘Doesn't Romy look wonderful – a real St Dominic's girl!'

Moya wished her mother wouldn't make such a big thing over an everyday occurrence. She grabbed Romy, pushing her towards the gate.

‘Now you two remember to look out for your sister and help her if she needs it and Romy, I'll be waiting to hear how you got on.'

As the autumn days got shorter Maeve Dillon pushed the buggy through the falling leaves and around Rossmore, baby Sean, snug in a cosy zip-up pram suit, complimented and admired by all who knew her. He
had lost the delicate look and was becoming a smaller sturdy version of his father. She was still tired with the lack of sleep and night feeding but at long last felt she had turned the corner and despite her age was enjoying motherhood again. Her sister Vonnie had been on to her about going to Dublin to do a bit of shopping.

‘Come on, Maeve, you haven't a stitch of clothes for the winter! You know Brendan Butler will invite you and Frank to the Fianna Fail fundraiser, and then you've got the Council's dinner dance. What are you going to wear to them? Buying a few new things will give you a boost and besides, I want to go to Dublin to get a new coat and a pair of winter boots for myself.'