Читать книгу The Mighty Quinns: Logan - Kate Hoffmann - Страница 8

DROPLETS OF RAIN spattered against the wavy glass in the manor-house windows. Aileen Quinn stared out into the lush green of her garden, her gaze fixed on a niche in the tall stone wall. A small statue of an angel was nestled into the ivy, the rain dripping off the outspread wings as if it wept.

“Are you certain?” she asked.

“I know this is a lot to handle, Miss Quinn. Perhaps we should continue later?”

She gripped the head of her cane and turned back to the genealogist. “No,” she said. “I’m ninety-six years old. There will be no more secrets in my life. That’s why I chose to write my autobiography. I want it all out there so I can leave this world in peace.”

“You realize the chances that your older siblings are still alive are virtually zero.”

Aileen moved to a wing chair near the fireplace and sat down, turning toward the warmth. “Of course. But I would like to know if they had children and grandchildren. I have a family and I’d like to know at least a little bit about them before I die.”

She stared into the flickering flames, her thoughts carrying her back to her childhood. She only had the thinnest of details, facts that the nuns at the orphanage had relinquished after years of persistent questions. Her father had died in the Easter Rising of 1916, shot through the heart by a British soldier. Her mother, left pregnant and desperate to provide for her newborn daughter, grew sick with consumption and brought Aileen to the orphanage a few weeks before she died.

The story had been told so many times in the media, the rags-to-riches tale of an Irish orphan girl who became one of the world’s most popular novelists. Aileen’s stories had been a reflection of her life, tales of struggle and triumph, of heartache and great happiness, and all set in the land of her birth, her beautiful Ireland.

“Tell me again,” she said. “Their names. What were my brothers’ names?”

“The eldest was Diarmuid. He was twelve when he was sent off to work as an apprentice to a shipbuilder in Belfast in 1917. Then there was Conal. He was nine and Lochlan was six when you were born. And Tomas was five. There were three other children who didn’t survive. A baby girl between Diarmuid and Conal who died at birth. And a daughter named Mary and a son named Orin between Tomas and you. They both died of scarlet fever the year before you were born.”

“So there were seven, not four.”

The young man nodded. “Yes.”

“I need to know where they went,” Aileen said, leaning forward in her chair. “How they lived. You need to find everything you can about them.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He riffled through his papers. “I was able to learn that the youngest, Tomas, was sent to Australia. He traveled with a missionary and his wife on a ship called the Cambria, which sailed from Cork and landed in Sydney in December of 1916.”

“Then that’s where you’ll begin,” Aileen said. “In Australia. I don’t care how many people you need to hire to help you or how much it costs. I’m giving you unlimited funds to do whatever is needed, Mr. Stephens. And I want a weekly report of any progress you’ve made, no matter how inconsequential.”

“Yes, Miss Quinn.”

“That’s all for now,” she said.

He nodded and walked out of the solarium, his research tucked under his arm. Aileen watched him leave, then drew a deep breath. She’d spent her whole life believing she was alone in the world, a victim of circumstances beyond her control. But now, in a single instant, she had a family, siblings who had once held her and kissed her…and loved her.

The housekeeper walked into the room, her footsteps silent on the ornate rug. Sally set the tray down on the tea table. “I’ve baked some lovely scones,” she said. “Will you not have one?”

Aileen shook her head. “Just the tea, Sally.”

“Did your Mr. Stephens have anything interesting to share?”

“Not at the present,” she replied. The news about her family was so startling that she wanted to keep it a secret just a bit longer. It wasn’t a good thing to hope. She’d learned that as a child, every Sunday, when visiting day at Our Lady of Mercy orphanage arrived. Just over a hundred girls, dressed in their very best, would stand in proper rows, hoping that someone would come, would choose to take one of them home.

But she’d been a sickly child, smaller than the others and plagued with respiratory infections, and often pushed into the background. After a time, she’d decided to stop trying. She was safe with the nuns and had dreams of joining the Sisters of St. Clare herself.

The orphanage provided a harsh type of life. Punishments were meted out regularly for the girls who refused to conform. Those that were considered chronically impure—the illegitimate, the criminal, the intractable—bore the brunt of the nuns’ disdain. But Aileen was pious and penitent for even the slightest sin.

When Sister Mary gave her a coveted job in the school library, shelving books and reading to the younger girls, she’d quietly been marked as a favorite and was spared the worst of chores.

By the time she was eleven, she’d run out of books to read in the school library and was allowed to accompany the lively young teacher, Sister Bernadette, to the Kinsale library, where she’d been handed a copy of Jane Eyre and told to hide it from the older nuns.

The book had opened a whole new world for her. The story of the plain orphan girl, snatched from her cruel fate and whisked into a life as a governess, had been a revelation. How was it possible to put words in such an order that they could create a truth in her mind?

From that moment on, Aileen had begun to write her own stories, at first just weak copies of what she read. But as her methodical march through the town library shelves continued, she learned more about how to craft a plot and develop a character.

In the evenings, she’d offered to empty the rubbish bins at school, just for the chance to gather spare paper for her work. And then, when she was in the seventh form, Sister Bernadette became her teacher. The sweet-tempered nun recognized Aileen’s talent for writing. From that moment on, Aileen always had pencils and tablets to spare, and someone to read her stories.

Though the girls at the orphanage were trained toward industrial employment, Aileen had been encouraged in her plans to devote her life to God and join the order as a novitiate. But the closer she got to the decision, the more Aileen knew that the life she wanted, and the stories swimming around in her head, couldn’t be contained within the walls of the convent. She’d have to go out in the world and make her own way, to live the life that she so desperately wanted to write about.

And so she did what Jane Eyre had done. She became a governess for a wealthy family in Dublin, moving from the orphanage into a grand home situated on a posh street. She cared for three boys by the name of Riley while their father ran a bank and their mother busied herself with charitable works.

And at night, after the boys had been tucked into bed, she wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote. She saved her meager salary and bought a secondhand typewriter for her twenty-first birthday, then spent what she had left on paper and inked ribbon.

At night, she’d sneak up to a far corner of the attic, lantern in hand, so that the family wouldn’t hear the tap-tap-tap of the keys. She sold her first novel five years later, the story of an orphaned Irish girl who falls in love with the son of her employer, only to be cast aside and left to rebuild a life for herself. Set between the two world wars, the novel sold well enough for her to leave the Rileys and rent a tiny flat in a run-down section of Dublin.

Now, seventy years later, Aileen Quinn had become the grande dame of Irish women writers, the one they all referenced when they talked of their greatest influences. She’d won every award and accolade available to her and had enjoyed her life and her success.

Her only regret had been that the love her characters always struggled to find had never found her. She’d always thought there would be time for a husband and a family. But the years between thirty and fifty had seemed to fly by in a blur. Then, she’d still hoped a man might come into her life. And then another blur between fifty and seventy. By then it was too late for hope. Too late to have a family of her own.

But all that had changed now. She did have a family, people who were related to her by blood. And she was going to find every last one of them.