Читать книгу Secret Child - Andrew Crofts - Страница 8

Bill was the second youngest in a family of four boys and four girls. Their father had set up a business delivering wood to factories in Dublin, using a horse and cart. He was proud of being his own boss and had done well enough to buy a house in the south side of Dublin. They had become close to being a middle-class family and aspired to continue their social rise, particularly the girls.

Bill had started out wanting to be a surgeon, but his father’s finances did not stretch quite far enough to provide the sort of education needed for such a career and an alternative had to be found. Bill’s father knew that his son was good with his hands and gifted at making things. During his rounds delivering wood to local factories he got to know many of the joinery companies. Eventually he recommended Bill to a well-known company as an apprentice joiner, and after five years of training and hard work Bill became a master-craftsman.

Although Cathleen and Bill’s families were very different, there were similarities in the situations they eventually found themselves in. Bill was not entrepreneurial, and when his father died he felt he had a duty to stay at home with his mother and four sisters since his brothers had all joined the British Army to fight in the war and later stayed in England in search of work. Bill had wanted to join the air force but his mother, frightened that she might lose all her sons in battle, asked him to remain behind and he lacked the ambition to argue about it.

The two elder sisters, Susie and Annie, were more business-minded and assertive than their peaceful brother, and looked after the family business, believing Bill to be too young for such responsibilities. The two younger sisters, Jenny and Sara, also had considerable influence over Bill, insisting that he stay at his job and concentrate on his career as a joiner. Being the sort of man who liked a quiet and comfortable life, he had until then gone along with whatever they told him, allowing them to cater for all his everyday needs in return for bringing in good wages and living at home. Jenny was a seamstress and Sara worked in a doctor’s surgery.

When Bill met Cathleen, however, at the age of forty-five, his sisters noticed that their brother had changed, although they had no idea why that might be. He went out more often and spent more time in front of the mirror checking his appearance. There seemed to be a new spring in his step. Cathleen had also encouraged him to set up his own business, something he had never got round to doing before. The workshop was an instant success but no one in his family realised that the idea had come from someone else.

‘You got yourself a girlfriend, Bill?’ they joked, but he just grinned and shook his head. He was not yet ready to face the anger that would inevitably erupt once they found out the truth.

Visitors to Ireland were often fooled by the apparent friendliness and hospitality of the people they met. They were lulled into an impression that it was a romantic land filled with a mellow people who knew how to enjoy themselves in the pub and how to tell a good story. What they didn’t always see was the darker side, where religion played a crucial role in both uniting and dividing communities. Virtually everyone went to church, whether they personally believed in God or not, and most people still clung to a certainty that whatever they had been told when they were young by priests and teachers and parents was the absolute truth. The vast majority of the population in Southern Ireland were Catholic, making a minority like the Protestants all the more defensive of their faith. We lived alongside each other. We spoke the same language, but a surname could instantly reveal that someone came from the other side of the chasm formed by hundreds of years of hatred and suspicion.

Neither Cathleen nor Bill felt comfortable with the religions they had been born into. Cathleen went to church once a week because that was what she had always done, but she found Catholicism oppressive and riddled with rules about how to avoid going to hell. Everyone seemed obsessed with sin and guilt. Bill was from a Protestant family but had even less time for his Church, while Catholicism seemed ridiculous to him. Neither of them allowed their religions to stop them going away for romantic weekends together in the Wicklow Mountains. It was inevitable that such out-of-character behaviour would arouse Bill’s sisters’ suspicions.

‘Where do you keep disappearing off to then?’ they wanted to know.

‘Just travelling around on the bike,’ he lied.

‘With who?’

‘Other bikers, friends.’

Nothing the sisters could say would persuade him to give even the slightest clue as to what he got up to when he was outside the house.

There was no question in either Bill or Cathleen’s minds when they were together that their relationship was serious, but they also both knew that it could not progress any further until they confessed to their respective families. For two years they managed to convince themselves that it was ‘too early’ to take such a drastic and potentially painful step and they continued their relationship in secret, meeting in pubs, going to the picture house and taking the bike up into the mountains for the occasional nights away.

The first person Bill confided in was his brother Eddie, who had moved to England and was working as a joiner on the film sets. ‘I’ve met a wonderful woman,’ Bill wrote, ‘and she has encouraged me to set up my own workshop, which has turned out to be very successful. The problem is that she is from a Catholic family and I’m not sure how to break the news to our mother and sisters.’

Eddie wrote back immediately, delighted to hear that his brother had finally met someone but sharing his concerns. ‘I can hardly imagine them welcoming a Catholic into the family with open arms. I fear that Susie and Annie may be particularly venomous when they find out. If I were you I would break the news to our mother first and the sisters later. Take it in stages to ease the pain. If you want a future with this lady then there is no escaping what you have to do.’

Bill knew that Eddie was right and he sat his mother down at her kitchen table the next day. She was a tiny slip of a woman who had lived all her life in Dublin and went on to reach the great age of ninety-five despite endless health scares. He started by opening up his heart to her.

‘I’ve met the most wonderful woman,’ he said and she clapped her labour-reddened hands together in excitement at the news.

‘Oh, Bill, that is the best news possible. What is she like, this wonderful woman?’

‘She is very beautiful, with blonde hair and blue eyes. We get on so well. We never argue. She’s a hard worker. She has a job in a hotel. Her brother is a good friend of mine.’

‘How long has this been going on?’

‘Two years.’

‘Two years, Bill? Why on earth have you kept her a secret all this time?’

‘Well, you know me, Mammy,’ he grinned. ‘I didn’t want everyone making a fuss.’

‘I know you like your privacy, son, but two years is a little extreme, don’t you think? Even for you.’

‘Perhaps. But now I’ve gone and told you.’

‘Ah, we all knew something was going on. We guessed it was a woman. I am so happy for your, darling Bill.’ She placed her hands around his face and pulled him towards her, kissing him on the forehead. ‘So, when can I meet this lovely woman?’

‘Soon,’ he said, ‘but it has to be the right time …’

At that moment Susie and Annie entered the room and immediately saw from the expression on their mother’s face that something momentous was going on.

‘Bill has met a woman,’ their mother blurted out, ‘just as we suspected. They’ve been going out for two years.’

‘Two years?’ Susie said. ‘She must be a very special girl for you to have wanted to keep her to yourself for so long.’

‘She is very special,’ Bill smiled shyly, ‘that’s for sure.’

‘Who’s the lucky lady?’ Annie asked. ‘Why haven’t we met her before?’

Bill could see that as the news sunk in their suspicions were rising to the surface. He lowered his eyes to the table and wished he hadn’t let the cat out of the bag. Things were now running out of control. This was not how he had planned it. All he wanted now was to escape to the pub where no one would ever ask you awkward personal questions.

‘So,’ Annie insisted, ‘what’s her name?’

Bill remained silent for a few moments and the tension in the room rose. ‘Cathleen,’ he mumbled eventually.

‘Cathleen?’ Susie said. ‘Cathleen who? For goodness sake stop being so coy, Bill!’

‘Cathleen Crae,’ Bill growled, still not taking his eyes off the table.

It was like a bomb had gone off in the room. Everyone there knew that Crae could only be a Catholic name. No one spoke as they took in the enormity of what they were being told. Bill waited without raising his eyes, not wanting to see the expressions on their faces.

Annie eventually broke the silence. ‘Surely you’re not serious about a Catholic, Bill?’

Bill said nothing. He had known that they would disapprove, but deep inside he had allowed himself to hope that they would be pleased for him all the same, that they would wish him luck despite their reservations. From the continuing silence he knew that they were never going to come round to approving of a mixed relationship. They were making it perfectly clear that it was a matter of principle and once they had taken that stand there would be no going back. He dreaded having to go to Cathleen and confess that he was never going to be able to get his family to accept her. He knew she would be devastated by the news and the implications it carried for their future life together.

Without saying another word he stood up and left the house, walking to the pub to drown his sorrows among his male friends. As the Guinness started to give him renewed strength he felt his spirits rise. Maybe it was just a knee-jerk reaction. Maybe once they had thought about it his sisters would realise that Cathleen made him happy and that that was more important than the religion that she happened to be born into. He went on drinking until late; wanting to be sure everyone would be asleep by the time he got home.

The moment he woke up sober the next morning he knew that they had been false hopes. The atmosphere in the house was tense and heavy, as if there was an impending storm. His sisters kept on niggling at him in the following days, refusing to allow him to escape from the drama that he had created at the heart of the family. He ignored them for as long as he could, but eventually the storm broke and the shouting started in earnest. Things were said that could never be taken back and Bill was terrified that it would all lead to him losing Cathleen, the only person he now wanted in his life. If he had to choose between her and his family he had no doubt what his choice would be, but would Cathleen be willing to attach herself to a man who had alienated his whole family, including his mother? Would she be willing to spend her life with a man knowing that his family despised her and would never allow her over the threshold of their home?

The easiest way for him to avoid the pain and worry was to go to the pub and stand at a bar with his friends, buying round after round and allowing the difficulties of the world outside to drift on without him. He found visiting Cathleen at the hotel increasingly hard, because he could see that she wanted to talk about their future and about their family problems and he just didn’t want to have to break the news that he was never going to win his mother and sisters over. He knew he should grasp the nettle and be honest and open with her, but he couldn’t bear the thought of her telling him that there was no future for them. Instead he told Cathleen that the reason he wasn’t getting to see her so much was because of pressures of work, but she wasn’t fooled by such a transparent lie. When he hadn’t shown up for a week she went out looking for him. It wasn’t hard to find him, propping up the bar in O’Brien’s.

‘Hello, Bill,’ she said, trying to pretend that it was the most natural thing in the world for a young woman to walk into a bar like this on her own. ‘I was worried about you. You haven’t been around for a while.’

Recovering from the shock of seeing her, Bill tried to straighten up but was unable to stop himself from swaying. Cathleen pretended not to notice.

‘Cathleen, my dear,’ he said, her name slurring on his tongue, ‘let me get you a drink.’

‘I’ll have a gin and tonic, Bill,’ she said. ‘Can we sit down?’

Once they were sitting at a table she stayed quiet and waited for him to start talking. Her patience paid off and bit by bit he told her what had happened when he had broken the news of the relationship at home. The more he talked about his sisters, the angrier and the more frustrated he became, banging his glass down on the table after every sip.

‘Bill,’ Cathleen said eventually, putting a cool hand on top of his and looking deep into his troubled eyes, ‘do you truly want us to be together?’

‘Yes, I do, Cathleen,’ he said and she knew he was speaking from the heart.

‘If you do, then we can make this work,’ she went on, calmly, like a mother calming a fretful child. ‘We’ll work on them.’

Bill stared at her but said nothing. He knew that someone as sweet and reasonable as Cathleen would never be able to understand the depth of his sisters’ prejudices and the strength of their bitterness. They could ‘work on them’ for a hundred years and they would never change their minds. Of that he was quite certain.

‘And I have some good news,’ she continued. ‘My mammy has invited you over for lunch. She wants to meet this man that I speak so highly of.’

‘Have you told her that I’m not a Catholic?’ he asked.

‘She guessed when I told her your surname was Lewis.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She thought from the name you must be Jewish.’ They both laughed.

‘So how did she react when she found out the truth?’ he asked.

‘She was shocked, I’m not going to lie to you, and she certainly didn’t approve, but I told her she had to meet you. I told her you are an incredibly fine and good man. I told her how much she would like you. “I didn’t set out to meet a Protestant.” I told her. “It just happened that way.” So, she said she would be willing to meet you, to give you a chance.’

Even through the haze of alcohol Bill was touched by Cathleen’s words and by the fact that she had been willing to stand up for him and for their relationship. It seemed that there might be hope for them as a couple after all.

Even though he arrived in Lucan a little late, Bill’s charm worked its magic on Cathleen’s mother and her brother, Mike. The two men instantly fell to talking about motorbikes, while the lunch of bacon and cabbage was being prepared. Cathleen sat back and watched in wonder as Bill chatted and joked with her mother over the meal as if he had known her all his life, loving him all the more for his ability to make the old woman laugh out loud. After lunch the two of them continued to talk while they enjoyed a cigarette, sending Mike and Cathleen out for a walk in the garden.

‘I like your Bill very much,’ her mother whispered as they prepared to take their leave and Bill was revving up the bike, ‘but there’s still the problem of him not being a Catholic.’

Cathleen kissed her mother goodbye and ran to jump on the back of the motorbike without saying anything else. At least they had made some progress and she didn’t want to say anything on the spur of the moment which might jeopardise the feeling of goodwill that enveloped them all as they waved and sped off down the road.

Bill came out to Lucan to visit a couple more times. Encouraged by the reception he received from all Cathleen’s family members, he steeled himself to face his own family once and for all and formally announce that he intended to marry Cathleen and to ask them to give their blessing. He asked his brothers for advice, and all of them agreed that the women needed to meet Cathleen before things got completely out of hand and relationships broke down irrevocably. Both Susie and Annie had become preoccupied with their own wedding plans and Bill hoped that they would have mellowed since the first shock of the news. Once they were married they would both be moving out of the family home anyway and would be less affected by anything he might choose to do with his life. It did not take long for him to realise he had completely misjudged the situation.

‘You mean you are still going out with this woman?’ Annie demanded, obviously horrified.

‘Yes, of course. We intend to marry.’

‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ Susie said. ‘We assumed you had seen the error of your ways and it had all cooled down.’

‘No, no,’ he assured them, ‘quite the opposite. We intend to marry.’

‘She’ll only be after your money,’ Annie said. ‘That’s all she’ll be wanting.’

‘I would like to bring Cathleen to meet you. I am sure that if you got to know her you would like her and it would put your mind at rest about her motives.’

‘We don’t want any Catholics in this house,’ the sisters said, almost in unison. ‘We have absolutely no intention of meeting this woman.’

Although Cathleen’s family liked Bill immensely, they didn’t want the couple to marry either.

They could see no way out of their predicament. Neither of them felt able to convert to the other’s religion, knowing it would alienate them for ever from their families, and so they remained trapped in a sort of limbo, wanting to be together but not quite able to abandon their families completely. The strain inevitably took its toll on their relationship, making them argue even though both of them wanted the same things. Bill believed he had no future in Ireland without Cathleen at his side and began to lose interest in his business. It was as if he was deliberately cutting all his ties to his homeland. When, on top of all the ill-feeling with his sisters, his beloved dog, Trigger, died of old age, he couldn’t see any point in staying.

Both aware that they had reached a point where a decision had to be made they took the bike for one last trip out into the Wicklow Mountains. Stopping at a favourite spot they sat in silence for a while, just staring at the view and listening to the birdsong, neither of them wanting to say the things that they both knew needed to be said. Eventually Bill broke the silence.

‘It’s not working, Cathleen,’ he said. ‘We’re not working. The fighting and shouting – everything’s going wrong.’

‘I’m sorry, Bill,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I don’t know how it’s got so bad. I just don’t seem to be able to help it.’

He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him, holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe.

‘We have to leave Ireland, Cathleen,’ he said. ‘We have to leave now if we want to make this work.’

She buried her face in his chest, not wanting to look at him and not wanting to speak, torn in half by her desire to be with him and her fear of cutting herself off from her family and heading into the unknown. Moving fifteen kilometres from Lucan to Dublin had been a big enough step; she wasn’t sure how her mother would cope if she announced she was planning to leave the country altogether, and with a Protestant.

Taking her silence to be agreement, Bill wrote to his brother Eddie about finding work in London. Eddie wrote back to tell him that he knew of a job as a joiner in the film company where he worked.

‘It can be yours if you want it,’ he wrote.

Bill felt a new surge of optimism about the future. He was happy to put all the feuding and arguing behind him. He was so angry with his sisters that he didn’t care if he never saw them again. As long as he had Cathleen by his side he knew he would be happy. He would also have Eddie in London to help him get settled. He immediately wrote back, accepting the job, committing himself to making the break from Ireland, and went to see Cathleen to tell her what he had decided.

‘Come to England with me,’ he said, ‘and then we can live together.’

‘You mean live in sin?’ she said, feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of defying everything she had ever been taught to believe in.

‘We can get married,’ he said, ‘once we’re settled.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Bill,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I could just up and leave my family. Mammy is getting old now and frail. I don’t think she will be with us that much longer.’

‘Just forget about families,’ Bill urged her, terrified that she was slipping away from him, ‘let’s just focus on ourselves for once. We’ve both waited long enough for this chance. The film company pays good money. We can make a new life in London. Please come with me.’

‘I need time to think. You can’t just spring this on me and expect me to decide there and then.’

‘OK.’ He held up his hands in surrender. ‘Take as much time as you need. I’m not leaving for several days.’

Taking her in his arms he kissed her and held her tightly. There was a rumble of thunder and rain started to fall on them as they clung together, neither wanting to be the first to let go.

As Cathleen lay in bed that night she couldn’t sleep. Bill’s words kept going round and round in her head. She wanted so much to find the courage to just throw up everything and board the boat to England with him, but her mother’s sad face kept haunting her. Would her mother ever forgive her if she did such a thing? The idea of embarking on an adventure into the unknown had seemed exciting when Bill first suggested it, but in the chilly small hours of the morning it felt different. Not knowing where they would live, how she would find a job and whether Bill would be able to support her all seemed like insurmountable potential problems.

After several days with virtually no sleep the time had come to make the final decision. Bill came to see her.

‘I’ve thought about it a lot,’ she said. ‘It isn’t a decision I would ever take lightly because there are too many people involved, my family as well as you and me.’

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘So, what have you decided?’

‘I think you should travel to England first. It will be easier for you to get settled if you are on your own, not having to worry about me and whether I am happy.’ He opened his mouth to protest but she placed her finger on his lips to stop him. ‘Then, when you are settled and established I can follow.’

He looked stunned. She could see that he had been expecting her to say yes and his disappointment was obvious.

‘We can write to one another every day,’ she said.

‘I think you’re making a mistake,’ he said once she had eventually fallen silent. ‘I’ve got a job to go to. I will be perfectly able to support you. We can stay with my brother, Eddie, and his wife until we find a place of our own …’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just can’t leave without my mother’s approval. I know the guilt would eat away at me and I would start to resent you for it. And I am not as brave as you; I need the security of a job and knowing where I am going to be sleeping at night.’

Bill opened his mouth to protest again.

‘I’ve decided, Bill. I’ll not be changing my mind.’

On the day that the boat departed Cathleen went down to the port to see him off. Bill looked as smart as he always did in his suit and tie, carrying two suitcases, one containing the tools of his trade and the other all his clothes and possessions. She clung on to him, unable to speak for the sobs that wracked her whole body. ‘I’ll write every day,’ he promised. ‘I love you.’

Finally she was forced to let him go. As he joined the back of the crowd walking up the ramp he turned to wave. ‘See you in London,’ he called back before disappearing into the boat.