With All My Love (29 page)

How could Terence be so unaffected by the knowledge that his only child now had a child of her own? His own flesh and blood? How could he turn his back on them so easily? If he saw the baby, would it make any difference to him? Perhaps when he saw Briony his heart would soften. When Valerie was up to it, Carmel would try to get her to come home for a few days, she decided as she sat down to eat her dinner. Once her husband laid eyes on his new grandchild he would fall in love with her, just as she had, and all the resentment and bad feeling would be a thing of the past.

‘How did you sleep?’

‘Not great, how did you sleep?’

‘Not great either.’

Jeff and Valerie smiled at each other as she breast-fed Briony. The curtains were pulled around her bed and they felt cocooned in a little pink bubble despite the hustle and bustle of the ward.

‘She’s guzzling away, isn’t she?’ Jeff studied his daughter in fascination.

‘Yeah, at last. It took us a while to get the hang of it. I thought I was going to have to bottle-feed. The nurses were very kind, though, and very patient, and I’m glad now that we’ve cracked it. But I can express milk too, and you’ll get the chance to give her a bottle so you won’t lose out,’ Valerie said happily. She was feeling better and very relieved to have her baby contentedly suckling at her breast. Although she would only admit it to Lizzie, it wasn’t that she would have felt a failure as a mother if Briony hadn’t latched on, she would have been more disappointed about not being able to breast-feed because it was so
handy.
It made life much easier than fussing about with bottles, and there was the added bonus of losing weight quicker. She wouldn’t be able to drink, but that wouldn’t kill her.

‘Ma and Da are dying to see her,’ Jeff interrupted her musings.

Valerie’s heart sank. In the excitement of giving birth and Carmel’s earlier visit she had forgotten that her daughter had two other grandparents. She was going to have to engage with Tessa and Lorcan a lot more. She liked Lorcan – he was a kind man; she had no problem with him – but Tessa was another kettle of fish. It was because of Tessa and her interference that she and Jeff weren’t yet married. She blamed her much more than her own mother. Carmel would have backed down on the marriage issue if push came to shove; Tessa never would.

Valerie looked at her boyfriend, eyes fixed intently on their now sleeping daughter, his index finger gripped tightly by her tiny fingers. Of course he would want his parents to see his daughter, just as she had been so eager for Carmel’s visit. It behoved her to behave well, unfortunately.

Valerie plastered a smile on her face and said with as much sincerity as she could muster, ‘It will be lovely for them to see their first grandchild. I’ll try and have her fed before visiting hours. I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it in front of them.’

‘Oh, yeah, right,’ he agreed, taking the sleeping baby from Valerie. ‘Mam wants to talk about the christening. She’d like to have a little family party at home for us afterwards. Isn’t that nice?’ He gave a boyish grin.

‘Oh!’ Valerie was dismayed. She hadn’t given Briony’s christening ceremony any thought. Trust Tessa to start interfering already. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to go back to Rockland’s with her baby and face the neighbours.

And what about Carmel? Would she be invited? Terence definitely wouldn’t set foot in the Egans’ house again, Valerie could guarantee that. Why couldn’t Tessa just let things be? She fretted as all these new complications took shape.

‘Look, let’s not make any decisions yet. Let me get the baby home to the flat and settled in. If we’re going to be living in Dublin maybe we should have her christened up here. We’ll talk about it when I’m out of hospital.’ She fastened the buttons on her nightdress and didn’t see the look of disappointment that flashed across Jeff’s face.

‘Oh, OK,’ he agreed, sighing.

The visitors’ bell rang. ‘Go home and do some studying. I don’t want your mother thinking we’re distracting you too much,’ Valerie urged. After hearing the news about the proposed christening party
chez
Tessa, she was very put out. Clearly she was going to have to keep a tight rein on Tessa Egan to keep her from sticking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted. She’d have to nip her interference in the bud from the very beginning and make sure that Jeff’s mother never got the chance to meddle in her life again. Valerie watched Jeff tenderly lay the baby in the small cot at her bedside and felt sick at the thought of his parents’ impending visit.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-E
IGHT

Oh Lord, Tessa thought, her heart sinking as she saw Terence coming out of Mrs Breen’s front garden with his lawnmower. She took a deep breath and fixed a smile on her face. She hadn’t seen him to talk to since that fraught meeting in her sitting room the previous year.

‘Terence, how are you?’ she greeted him politely. ‘Isn’t it great news about Valerie and the baby? Thank God it all went well for her. We’re going up to see them tomorrow. We’re hoping to have a christening party for the baby, and you and Carmel will be most welcome to come,’ she added magnanimously. She felt she had to invite him. It would be incredibly rude not to.

‘Hello, Tessa,’ Terence said coldly.

‘Have you gone up to see them yet? Jeff said Carmel had been up earlier today.’ Tessa knew she was prattling.

‘No, I haven’t,’ he said stiffly.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Well, of course, you were at work.’

‘Nor do I plan to,’ he added dourly. ‘When I said I was washing my hands of the whole affair, I meant it. And I won’t be coming to any party, thank you.’

‘Oh, Terence!’ Tessa exclaimed, dismayed. ‘What a shame to feel like that. You have a beautiful little grandchild.’

‘I’d far prefer to have a beautiful little grandchild in
wedlock
, but thanks to you, that didn’t happen.’ He thrust his jaw out aggressively and his eyes sparked with antagonism.

‘Carmel backed me up on that, Terence,’ Tessa said heatedly.

‘Well, the pair of you were very misguided, if you ask me,’ he said shortly, his anger evident in the thinning of his mouth and the hard glare he gave her.

‘But, Terence, there’s plenty of time for them to marry. They’re so young. Isn’t it better for them to be sure of their feelings for each other?’ she protested.

‘Better for him, you mean.’

‘Look, Terence, I stood up for my son. I’m a mother – that’s what a mother does. I didn’t want to see him adding one mistake to another,’ Tessa said crossly.

‘And I tried to stand up for my daughter, for all the good it did me. Do none of you see that?’ he said indignantly. ‘How would you feel if it was
your
daughter, Tessa? In that situation you’d do the same. You’d want to see her married. Wouldn’t you? Or if
you
were in Valerie’s position? Ask yourself, Tessa, how would you feel if it was
you
?’

It was me!
She screamed silently.
It was me!

For one awful moment she was sure she’d spoken the words aloud.

‘Ye see, you’ve no answer to that,’ he said triumphantly.

‘I’m sorry you feel like that,’ she said stiffly, and walked away. She struggled to compose herself but it was no use. Tears smarted her eyes and she hurried to the safety of her car, hoping that she would get to it before she was accosted by Nellie Andrews, a sharp-eyed, nosy busybody who ran the church committee. Nellie was bearing down fast but Tessa made it to the car and had the engine started with seconds to spare, giving the woman a wave as she drove off at speed.

Her composure faltered and a cry that came from the depths of her erupted in an animal-like howl. She drove out of the village, desperate to get away so she could be alone with her sorrow as the grief she had struggled to keep a lid on since Jeff had told her of Valerie’s pregnancy would no longer be denied.

‘
How would you feel if it was you?
’ Terence had tormented her. Well, she knew more than anyone what it was like to be pregnant outside of marriage at a time when girls who were unfortunate enough to get into the situation were treated like the lowest of the low. She had endured that particular anguish, she thought bitterly, as she spun the wheel of the car to drive down a narrow lane that led to a small, secluded beach known only to the locals.

Valerie thought she was a bitch. Tessa knew that. She’d seen the look of horror and dismay on her face when Tessa had put her spoke in about them waiting to marry. Valerie had been gutted. She’d thought Tessa was acting out of spite. Nothing could have been further from the truth. If only the young woman could have realized that Tessa was trying to save her from an agony that she herself had endured for the whole of her marriage. The misery of not knowing if Lorcan
truly
loved her had blighted her life and her relationship with her husband as she tormented herself with wondering if things had been different would he have asked her to marry him because he
wanted
to, not because he
had
to.

Lorcan was a good man. The best. He had been a loyal, supportive husband. But she knew him, knew the cut of him. When Lorcan put his mind to something he gave it his best shot and followed it through to the best of his ability. He had iron discipline and strength of will. Once he had asked her to marry him when she’d discovered that she was pregnant with their daughter he had put his shoulder to the wheel and made the best of it. But after her encounter with Lorna Burton, his ex, she could never get over the notion that he loved her because he had to make the best of things and not because it was how he really felt.

Even though Lorcan assured her to the contrary many times, it was like a horrible black malignancy of doubt deep inside that she could never escape from. She had thought she had put it behind her and dealt with it, especially in the latter years of her marriage, which she had to admit had been a very happy one for the most part. But when Jeff had come home and told her about Valerie it had all come surging back, and the malignancy had grown and grown again until sometimes it was all she could think of.

Valerie thought it was malice that had made her act as she had, but it wasn’t. It was hard, bitter experience, she thought as she pulled on her parka and got out of the car to walk along the windy beach. The sun had set and the dusk was deepening the sky, but there was another half-hour of light so she made for the shoreline where it was easier to walk.

She hadn’t particularly taken to Valerie when Jeff had first brought her home, Tessa acknowledged as she made her way across the dunes and slithered down onto the beach. She’d seen a young girl with the world at her doorstep. Her own car. Money to spend on fashion and make-up. A life in the city. All the things Tessa would have loved to have experienced when she was young and beautiful herself, and eager to escape the confines of village life. All of that had passed her by, as had her youth. She was now a middle-aged woman with no opportunity to spread her wings. That was very difficult to accept. The dreaded menopause was wrapping its tentacles around her. Her body was changing, losing its elasticity, aching, reminding her that she was no longer young. Grey hair was invading what had once been her crowning glory. The lines around her mouth and eyes were deepening, so yes, she was jealous of Valerie, Tessa conceded. Not admirable. Not nice. Irrational, she knew, but honest.

Valerie had seemed so confident, so sophisticated, with her stylish clothes and her own car. She’d had a bockety old bicycle when she was young, Tessa remembered with a pang.

Oh yes, she had been horribly jealous of Jeff’s girlfriend at first. Envious that Valerie would have all the things that Tessa had longed for and would have treasured. The declaration of love. The romantic proposal. The engagement and all the excitement that went with it. The white wedding and the romantic honeymoon. And eventually, a baby when the time was right.

It hadn’t worked out at all like she’d dreamed of. She and Lorcan had been dating for a year and she loved him with all her heart. He was in ag college up in Dublin and she was always afraid some sophisticated city slicker would get her claws into him. They had gone to a dance one hot summer’s night, and drank too much. They’d gone courting in a barn, full of sweet-smelling hay, on her father’s farm on the way home, and it had been so wonderful having him in her arms, desiring her as much as she desired him, that all their hitherto caution and restrained behaviour was swept away in a tide of wanting, and she’d lost her virginity eagerly and paid the price for her recklessness for the rest of her life.

She’d fallen pregnant, been proposed to, married – in a pale blue suit – with only her parents and Lorcan’s, and her sister as bridesmaid and his brother as best man, at the wedding, all within the space of three months. Her parents had been horrified, as well as furious at the shame she had brought on the family and had wanted her away from the village as soon as she could get going. The wedding had been a grim affair. They had been married at eight o’clock in the morning, the priest radiating disapproval, her mother sobbing into her handkerchief, her father stern and unyielding. There had been no wedding breakfast. No speeches and throwing of bouquets. She and Lorcan had got into his car immediately after the ceremony and driven straight to Dublin.

The honeymoon had been a weekend in Dublin in Wynn’s Hotel. She had left her village, where she had been the subject of much whispered gossip, to live in Lorcan’s village, Rockland’s, in his elderly aunt’s rambling home, until they had enough money to buy a place of their own. He had given up college to work on his father’s fishing boat there and so Tessa carried the added guilt of knowing he had ended up working in the very job he had wanted to escape from.

Her husband had borne his new circumstances stoically, but she had been riven with grief and regret and an unquenchable fear that he had only married her out of duty and not love. The day she’d met Lorcan’s ex, Lorna Burton, had reinforced that belief beyond a doubt.