Читать книгу Secrets Between Sisters: The perfect heart-warming holiday read of 2018 - Kate Thompson - Страница 11

In the kitchen, Dervla handed Río her cuddly toy elephant. ‘Here’s something for comfort,’ she said, ‘until the anaesthetising effect of the alcohol kicks in.’ She refilled their glasses and set them on the table, where Río had upended the vanity case. Letters littered the pockmarked tabletop. There were about thirty of them. ‘We should maybe try to sort them into chronological order,’ Dervla added, really just for something to say to fill the dreadful silence that had reigned in the house since Río had made the discovery that Frank was not her natural father.

Río shrugged, then selected a letter at random. ‘Let’s get our priorities right,’ she said, unfolding the pages and turning to the last one. ‘We should first try to find out who wrote them.’

Another silence fell. Then: ‘Well?’ said Dervla.

‘Patrick. His name is Patrick.’ Río leaned back in her chair. ‘Wow. That’s helpful. My father happens to have one of the commonest names in all of Ireland.’ Picking up her wineglass, she drained it in one sustained gulp. ‘Yeuch,’ she said, and belched.

‘We don’t know he’s your father,’ Dervla pointed out, without much conviction.

‘Dervla–think about it. This Patrick geezer clearly swept Mama off her feet. It’s like we said earlier: maybe putting up with Dad was just too much for her. If you were married to a man like him, could you have kept faithful?’ Río picked up another letter. ‘Look, here’s a love poem.

‘Give me a thousand kisses, then another hundred, Then another thousand, then a second hundred, Then yet another thousand more, then another hundred.

‘Sheesh. I wonder, did he write that?’

‘It’s Catullus,’ said Dervla.

‘What?’

‘Catullus. He was one of the greatest Roman love poets.’

‘You’re kidding! Finn could write better poetry than that.’ Río looked glumly at her empty glass. ‘Dervla. Could you be a sweetheart and nip out to the shop for another bottle? I feel like getting very, very drunk.’

‘Who could blame you?’ Dervla reached for her bag. ‘I’ll be back in five.’

As she made for the front door, WB. stuck his furry face out between the top banisters, looking like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. Curiouser and curiouser, thought Dervla, shutting the door behind her.

Could it be true? she wondered, as she made her way along the main street of the village, which was still decked out in festive Christmas lights. Could it really be true that she and Río were half-sisters? She’d always been aware that they were quite different types–not just temperamentally, but physically too. Río had an unruly mass of red-gold hair, while Dervla wore hers in a sleek dark bob. Río had an unashamedly voluptuous figure, while Dervla’s was lean and androgynous. Río’s eyes were green, Dervla’s conker brown. Río took after their mother, while Dervla favoured their father. Her father…

Who would know? Who in the village might possibly know the identity of Rosaleen’s secret lover? For lovers they certainly had been–a cursory glance at a single sentence in one of the letters had told her that: ‘My darling, my darling–I worship the place between your legs, and your buttocks, and your beautiful, beautiful breasts…’ Dervla hadn’t wanted to read on.

She thought of their poor mother, trapped in a wretched marriage, tied to a man who–while never physically abusive to her, as far as Dervla knew–had certainly inflicted massive emotional damage on Rosaleen. Dervla had sometimes wondered if the stress of being married to Frank had contributed to the cancer that had killed her. Perhaps the only joy she’d had in her life had been those snatched meetings with a man called Patrick. Where had they consummated their passion? In his house? Or in theirs, while Frank was comatose or ensconced in the pub? She pictured the couple exchanging covert glances, touching hands surreptitiously, stealing kisses. She imagined their mother making excuses to go to the beach, where the secret place was that Patrick left the letters that meant so much to her. You tell me my letters help ease the pain of your joyless marriage…

Why–why– if the marriage had been so joyless, had Rosaleen stuck it out? But even as she asked herself the question, Dervla knew the answer. She’d said it herself, earlier, when they’d cracked open the wine in Frank’s kitchen. Rosaleen had done it for her daughters. Had she kept the letters for her daughters too? Had she held on to them so that some day in the future Río might know the truth of her paternity? It wasn’t the kind of thing a mother could easily admit to; had this been Rosaleen’s way of communicating with her daughter from ‘beyond the grave’, as Río had put it? Or had she held on to the letters simply because they were the most precious things she owned? Proof that she had been adored?

It did not cross Dervla’s mind to be censorious. On the contrary, she was glad, so glad for her mother! Rosaleen deserved to have had some romance in her life, even if it had been clandestine. Dervla remembered the rare occasions on which her mother had laughed, and wondered had she laughed that way with Patrick, too. She hoped so.

Questions came crowding into her mind now. Had Frank guessed that Rosaleen had been having an affair? Or had he only learned about it after her death, through her written testimony? Where had Rosaleen kept the letters hidden? When had he found them? Dervla pictured her father hunched on the bockety sofa in the attic, reading the fulsome expressions of love for his wife that were written in another man’s hand. How had he felt when he discovered that Río was not his daughter? Or had he always suspected it? How was Río feeling now? To find out on the day of your father’s death that he was, in fact, not your real father must be some kick to the head. No wonder her sister craved alcohol.

In Ryan’s, the local shop, Dervla responded to the expressions of sympathy that came her way, the offers of help, the solicitous enquiries. Everybody wanted to reminisce about Frank, and tell her what a ‘character’ he was. ‘Character’ was a very useful word to use about a deceased person, Dervla decided. A bit like the obituaries that referred to a stonking misanthropist as someone who ‘didn’t suffer fools gladly’ or a roaring alcoholic as a ‘bon vivant’.

She selected a pricy bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape for her and Río to share, then waited for ages at the cash register while Mr Ryan regaled the queue with a lengthy anecdote about Frank Kinsella’s wit and wisdom. By the time Dervla left the shop, a glance at her watch told her that she had been gone fifteen minutes longer than the five she’d promised Río.

She hurried back down the main street, keeping her head low in the hope that her demeanour might discourage people from engaging her in conversation. But Tommy Maguire was at the door of his pub, and she couldn’t pass by without acknowledging him. He spent five minutes offering his condolences, and ended by telling Dervla how much he would miss her father’s custom.

You betcha, thought Dervla darkly, as she finally disengaged and hotfooted it back to the Kinsella family home. As she let herself in, she waved at Mrs Murphy, who was gazing through the window next door with her phone clamped to her ear, probably trying to get through to the radio programme to complain about the cost of funerals.

In the kitchen, Río was sitting at the table, perusing a document. Dervla saw at once that the stapled A4 typescript was their father’s will.

Río looked up as Dervla came through the door, and gave her a mirthless smile. ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ she said.

‘Oh! I hate that question,’ said Dervla, reaching for the corkscrew. ‘Just bring it all bloody on.’

‘Brace yourself. Frank divided his estate into separate entities–dwelling and land.’

‘Well, that’s probably fair enough,’ said Dervla cautiously. ‘With planning permission, the land could be worth almost as much as the house.’

‘In that case, you’ll be glad to know that you’ve inherited the lion’s share.’

Dervla bit her lip. That clearly meant that Frank had bequeathed the house to her. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘So you’ve inherited the garden.’

‘No.’

‘Oh. Did he…could he have left it to Finn, then?’

Río shook her head.

‘So who did he leave it to?’

Río gave Dervla a mirthless smile. ‘He left it to Mrs Murphy,’ she said.

‘The ironic thing,’ Río said to Finn a couple of hours later, after she’d dried the copious tears she’d wept upon returning home, ‘is that we’d thought it would be a nice gesture to let Mrs Murphy have a memento of Dad. Some memento, eh?’

‘Maybe she’ll do the decent thing and refuse to accept it.’

‘Refuse to accept a prime wedge of real estate with development potential? Are you out of your mind, Finn? And even if she declined, her sons would be in like the clappers to claim it on her behalf.’

Frank had known full well the passion Río had felt for that garden. She had tended it for years, growing the kind of plants that her mother had told her would thrive beside the sea, in the inhospitable soil of Coolnamara. She had brought in topsoil and compost and mulch to nurture her plantlings; she had even gathered donkey dung, which was the best fertiliser she knew of, and seaweed to wrap around the roots of saplings to keep them cosy in winter. She’d kept the pond clean–even though the koi no longer swam there–and she’d pruned and weeded and mowed and strimmed.

She had done it because she knew Rosaleen would have wanted her to do it, and any time she spent in that garden, she felt as if her mother were smiling down at her beneficently from the blue-and-white-washed Coolnamara heaven.

And then one day around two years ago her father had told her that he’d lost the key to the back door.

‘That’s all right,’ Río had reassured him, ‘I’ll get a locksmith in.’

‘No,’ Frank had said mulishly. ‘I don’t want to set foot in that garden ever again, and I don’t want you going out there either.’

‘But Mama would want me to take care of her garden for her,’ Río had protested.

‘What she wanted doesn’t matter any more. She’s dead, and her garden should be allowed to die with her. It’s morbid, so it is, to keep it alive when she’s not here to enjoy it.’

‘But don’t you want to be able to enjoy it, Daddy?’

‘I never enjoyed it. I hated it, and I resented the time your mother spent looking after it. She took better care of that effing garden than she did of me.’

Can you blame her? Río thought, but didn’t say. What she did say, with a stroppy toss of the head, was: ‘Well, you’ve only yourself to blame if the place gets so overgrown you lose all your light.’ Which was exactly what had happened.

And now Río wondered if perhaps it had been around that time that Frank had discovered the letters written to his wife by the man called Patrick. Had that been why he’d denied Río access to the thing he knew she loved best, and allowed the garden to become a wasteland? And had that been when he’d tampered with her kimono and drawn up his will so that she, the bastard offspring of his wife’s lover, would not profit from his death?

She had never loved Frank. Now Río hated him. She had done her filial duty by him and looked after him without ever having received a word of thanks, and now she felt as though he’d shown her two fingers and slammed a door in her face as he’d made his final undignified exit from this life.

What was she to do now? What would become of her? She knew it was venal, but she’d always expected to inherit half of Frank’s property, and hoped she might one day have enough capital to put a down payment on a place of her own. A place of her own! That dream was now as vestigial as the dream she had once woven around Coral Cottage and her orchard and her marmalade cat.

Money was at the root of her problems–of course it was. Money–or the lack of same–was always a worry for Río, and money was especially tight off-season when there were no tourists around to be ferried to and from the airport. There were fewer people too, clamouring for pints of the black stuff in O’Toole’s bar where she worked so hard at charming them. And once Finn was off travelling she’d be hard-pressed to pay the rent on her house without his weekly contribution. Her landlord had hinted that a hike was due.

She shook the thoughts away. She wouldn’t think about that stuff now; she’d think about it once the funeral was over and Finn was gone. In the meantime, she would have to put a brave face on things. She would have to play-act very hard indeed, because she knew that if she wept and wailed as she had done earlier in the evening, Finn would not leave Lissamore and set off on the adventure that was his life–he would stay here for her.

‘Ma?’ he said to her now. ‘I’ve been having second thoughts about going away. I mean now that Grandpa’s dead and–and all this stuff has happened, it wouldn’t be fair on you if I upped and left. I think it’s best if I hang around for a while.’

Oh God. He was thinking about staying for her! No, no–she refused to allow him even to consider that option. She would not become one of those needy mothers who clung on to their children and ruined their lives.

‘Don’t be daft,’ she said smartly. ‘You know me, Finn. I’m resilient. I bounce back–always have. I won’t allow the bastard to get me down. I just won’t.’ She reached for the phone. ‘Now that I’m all cried out, I’d better phone your father. Tell him about Frank.’

‘I already did,’ said Finn. ‘He said he’d phone you later, and he said he was mightily sorry for your trouble.’

Río smiled. ‘Begorrah, and did he now?’

‘He did. It seems you can take the man out of the bog, but you can’t take the bog out of the man, even after twenty years in Lala Land.’

‘How is the fecker?’

‘He seemed grand. He’s working.’

‘Let me guess. In McDonald’s? Or Burger King?’ joked Río, stapling on a grin. She’d smile and smile and joke and joke, and she’d get through the next couple of weeks somehow until Finn was gone from her, and then she’d launch herself into the fray again, because Río was resilient. She’d gone through tough times–name her one single parent who hadn’t–but she’d always somehow emerged on the other side battle-scarred and weary, but otherwise intact.

‘No, he’s not waiting table this time,’ responded Finn. ‘He’s got acting work.’

‘He has?’ Río was genuinely astonished. Shane had done nothing but wait on tables for at least two years now.

‘Yeah. He’s got a part in a pilot for a new TV series.’

‘Oh. The title of which is presumably The Series That Will Never Be Made.’

Shane had appeared in numerous pilots for projects that had never got off the ground. He had played a cowboy in something called Clone Rangers, and a vampire in something called Blood Brothers and an alien commander in something called Ace of Space, which Río had renamed Waste of Space. She and Finn had dutifully watched the DVD he’d sent them and tried not to laugh, but after a couple of glasses of wine not laughing had proved impossible, and Río had guffawed so hard that wine had come spurting out of her nose. The pair of them had gone round quoting from Ace of Space for weeks afterwards, intoning such gems as ‘Instruct the hyperdrive to convey us to Twelfth Warp!’ and ‘Planet Quatatanga is ours!’

‘Well, you know what Dad’s like,’ said Finn. ‘He’s always convinced that whatever he’s in will be the next Lost. He said to tell you how sorry he is that he won’t be able to make it to the funeral. He’s shooting all this week and next.’

‘That’s sweet of him to even think about coming over, but I wouldn’t have expected him to travel all that way for Frank.’

‘Sure, it’d be no problem for him with the auld Hyperdrive. That conveyed him to the Twelfth Warp in no time at all’

‘But the Hyperdrive exploded on Planet Quatatanga, taking Captain Ross and his crew members with it. And that was the end of that pay cheque. I got my winter coat and my Doc Martens out of that pilot.’

‘And I got my Xbox.’

‘I wonder what we’ll get out of this one?’

‘I know what I want.’

‘What?’

‘My scuba-dive instructorship.’

‘Oh, Finn! It breaks my heart to think that if Frank hadn’t left me out of his will—’

‘Ma, Ma! Please don’t beat yourself up over it! I’ll find a way to get my certification, I promise I will’

‘But it’s so expensive—’

‘Please, please don’t worry about me, Ma. That’s the last thing I want you to do. You’ve enough on your plate.’

Río made a face. ‘I just wish it was scallops and lobster.’

‘I’ll fetch you scallops on my next dive. I know where there’s a big bed off Inishclare. Hey! Let’s check the EuroMillions results.’ Finn reached for the mouse and set sail on Internet Explorer. ‘Maybe we’ll be lucky tonight.’

There was a pause, then Río stapled on that grin again. ‘Knowing our luck,’ she said, ‘Dervla’s probably already won it.’

That night–after she’d said goodbye to Río, and driven the forty kilometres back to her penthouse in the Sugar Stack in Galway, and sipped a glass of chilled Sancerre, and performed her Eve Lom routine, and slid between her Egyptian cotton sheets–Dervla did something she often did after she’d recced a property. As she lay in bed, she walked through it in her head, retracing her steps in a kind of virtual tour.

The front of Frank’s house would clean up well. White-washed walls, a new front door painted a tasteful shade of duck-egg blue, window boxes. Inside, the porch would have to be retained. Porches were important on this stretch of the Atlantic coast, not just as storage space for fuel and wellie boots and umbrellas, but because they acted as buffers against the wind that beat up against the fronts of the houses in wintertime. Beyond the porch, the hallway, the sitting room and the kitchen could be knocked through into one vast, L-shaped living space, with the kitchen housed in the extended foot of the ‘L’, and with the old scullery beyond serving as a utility room. The study could be converted into a spare bedroom.

Downstairs and up, huge, double-glazed picture windows could be installed to frame that panoramic vista of sea and sky and mountains. The front bedroom was sizeable enough to accommodate an en suite shower room if a section of the landing was annexed. The bathroom would have to be ripped out, and all fittings replaced with state-of-the-art sanitary ware. A home office could be fitted under the stairs, library shelves in the stairwell, and the spare room overhauled and fitted with storage units. A deck could be constructed on the roof of the downstairs extension that housed the kitchen and utility room, with double doors opening onto it from the landing.

The only conundrum was–what to do about the attic?

That night, after saying good night to Finn, Río poured herself a glass of rough red wine and took it into the bathroom to sip while she cleaned her face. Studying herself in the mirror, she searched for some physical manifestation of her paternal genes. Her nose? No, it was definitely her mother’s retroussè. Her hair? That red-gold mass was her mother’s legacy too. Her eyes held her mother’s faraway gaze, and when she smiled, her mouth–with its slightly too-short upper lip–curved into something that men seemed to find a lot more lethal than a cupid’s bow. Had Rosaleen smiled that way at her father? Oh, how Río hoped she had! She deserved to have had some fun in her life, and some romance too, even if it had been clandestine.

What she had learned today explained the dearth of family resemblance between her and Frank, and between her and Dervla. But while Dervla had inherited the dark Kinsella colouring, in effect, Frank had been no more father to Dervla than he had to Río. He’d neglected them both equally. Did she feel any less connected to Dervla now that she knew they had been fathered by different men? No. If anything, today’s revelations could only have brought them closer. Having a half-sister certainly felt a whole lot better than having a sister from whom you were estranged. Any kind of sister was far, far better, Río decided, snapping the top back on her Simple night cream, than having no sister at all.