Friday reading
And so we come to the end of Family Lines and Lucy gets the final word . . .
XI
LUCY
Lost in Space
23 July 1996
Hi !
I’m taking deep breaths here. According to my mad friend, Eithne, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth is supposed to calm you down but it’s having the opposite effect on me. It feels like my breath gets lost in my chest and can’t find its way out, as if there’s a big fecking pigeon trapped in there, flapping up down and sideways to get out. Slowly does it. I’m trying, really I am.
The lads are in bed and Shay is stretched on the sofa watching the Olympics. He stays up half the night to watch them even though he’s to work in the morning.
My head is all over the place. Only it’s not just my head. It’s every bit of me. Fireworks were exploding in my tummy for about a week after Marge showed me your letter. And Ellen’s letters. And started going over all the stuff she wrote in her letter to you. I had to tell her to slow down, and say whoa, easy on. I couldn’t make head nor tail of what I was reading or what she was explaining about what you told her and what Ellen told you and what nobody never ever never not once not for one iota of an iota considered telling me even though I was supposed to be your sister.
Probably what I’m feeling now is like what you were feeling then. All turned upside down and inside out. A lot of inside out in fact. I swear I must have lost a stone in a week. Shay had to take a few days off work to help mind me and the kids. I couldn’t let him out of my sight. Maybe I was afraid he’d feck off too. The mad part of it is if he ever would have felt like fecking off it would have been that week when I was like a madwoman. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking, Lucy was always mad anyway. Ha effing ha.
To be honest I realise I hadn’t a clue what way you were thinking today or yesterday or last year or all those years ago. I’m looking in the rear view mirror at a figure walking towards me but never catching up. When I stop to wait for you or look around you disappear again. Who was the other person sleeping in the bed next to mine for all those years - the girl who accused me of stealing her socks and hair ties - the girl who drew a line in the carpet and up the walls one day with a marker to divide the room into her side and my side making Mam have a seizure because the more she scrubbed at the line the worse it got until Dad had to repaint the room - the same girl who asked then for her half to be painted black so that I asked for my half to be painted red for the crack and who was just as surprised as me when Dad obliged? Should we have taken that as a sign of you having an inkling of the fact you weren’t actually who they said you were or who I thought you were or even who you thought you were which is maybe worse?
Have you become someone else since reading Ellen’s letter? Should I be feeling like I’m someone else now? If yes whoooom (as Miss Brady used to say sounding like an imitation of an owl)? Thing is I don’t want to become someone else. I was quite happy being me or being who I thought was me even when that me was missing her sister or who she thought was her sister and waiting for her to come home or to the place we all thought of as her home. I miss the person I was when I was missing you.
Good job Shay has a bit of cop on (bad joke I know but what do you expect from a mind in the state of mine?). After a week of me being upside down and my insides all over the place he made me go to the doctor who gave me some pills to keep my insides in. Shay went back to work but he made sure his mam and my friends knew what was going on so each day one or another came over to listen to me ranting, to hold my hand and to help with the lads. Eithne was one of them. God bless her. She’d rub oil into my temples and mutter little chants to balance my shakkers or something. One by one they’d exclaim and ooooh and aaaaah at my story of your story and say it was sad and weird and a couple of them came back with matching stories about their families and secrets locked away in attics and boxes and albums and drawers waiting for someone to die before they came tumbling out. What’s really weird to me is how all those people carried on with a kind of pretend life hiding the real life from view out of fear of what other people might be thinking when most of us wouldn’t be thinking anything at all about them.
The more I told your story my story our story the less real it seemed like something you’d read in a book or on the telly. Suddenly I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I wanted it to stay in my heart not as a secret more as a way for us to still be connected. Most of all I was sad. I cried a lot as if you’d gone away all over again. And I asked myself will this never end will there be another twist will it turn out that Mam wasn’t my mam and Dad wasn’t my dad and who else isn’t who they say they are until my head was spinning round like a whirling teacup.
Marge insisted that I was truly their child. She had seen Mam get bigger and bigger with me on board and she saw me in the hospital the day after I was born and she saw Dad grinning like he’d won the Sweeps while he was looking at me in the cot and saying I can’t believe it isn’t she beautiful I can’t believe it look at her little feet and her hair and her eyes I can’t believe it and all the time he was afraid to hold me for fear he’d drop me. In the end I had to believe her although I couldn’t help wondering had I maybe been swapped in the hospital.
Next I had to think about Dad and whether or not to tell him I knew everything. Marge said I should. She said it would be an ease to his mind to know there were no more secrets anymore. She offered to do the telling if I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I said no I’d talk to him. And you know what, it was the best thing I ever did. At first when I started talking he looked a bit worried but eventually his face relaxed and he smiled. I’m glad, he said. I’m glad you know the truth now.
Suddenly he looked sad again and his head drooped and he said I should have told you. When your mam died. That would have been the time he said only I didn’t want to dishonour her memory. She was adamant about not telling you. She said it would break your heart and it was already broke enough. It’s okay Dad I told him. It’s not your fault. None of it. As for Mam it’s too late now to be regretting what was said or not said or should have been said or could have been said.
All the same I said the one lesson I’ve learnt out of all this is to never have secrets. You’re right he said. The worry of them being discovered eats away at you and when they do come out the way they always do in the end they seem ten times worse than if they’d never been secrets at all. I hope you understand he said and lifted his hand and let it fall again. It was to protect your mam and Deb. The way things were back then some people could have made life difficult for them. It’s okay Dad I said. I understand. Will she ever want to see us again he asked in a hopeless way. I said yes although I didn’t know for sure at the time whether you were coming. He smiled a real smile and said good that’s good news. I never stopped loving her as my daughter.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him the whole horrible story about Mr. Johnston. There was no need and it would have been too much for him. Besides as Shay says it’s not for me to be telling him about the things you went through. He says he’s sorry you didn’t feel able to report the bastard, but he knows the old school guards would have believed Johnston before they’d believe you. (He’s not just thinking of Mim and if it might have helped her which I don’t think it would – and yes she’s doing better now living at home with their mam). The one question he had in all this mystery is why Mam didn’t tell those guards at the time about Jim especially if she was afraid you’d have gone looking for him. I never thought of that but of course it would’ve made sense for her to’ve said something about him.
Shay went on a solo run then. I knew nothing about it until a couple of weeks later. He’d contacted a mate who contacted a mate and so on you know the way it goes six degrees of mateship until someone dug out the old file for him. And guess what? Mam did tell them about Jim but said he wasn’t to be trusted. And they found him. He was in Liverpool at the time. Isn’t that where you were living with those religious loonies or Moonies? Imagine! You might have walked past each other in the street without knowing you were related at all. Wouldn’t that have been creepy as hell?
It turns out the English coppers called at his house and asked had he seen you etc. etc. He said he’d never heard of you much less laid eyes on you and he told them to go to hell and leave him alone shouting there’s no justice for an Irishman in Britain. The report said he was under the influence and they never bothered going back. Can’t say I blame them and so in a way I’m sorry to have to tell you Mam was right about him all along.
I can’t help thinking about Betty’s part in this too. Like what did she feel or think when she came to visit us? She never seemed to make a special case of you sure she didn’t? She gave us the same gifts and took us out together to films. We both worshipped her because she was exotic in her fashionable clothes and she’d teach us big long German words. She could never sit still. I do remember that.
She was always jumping out of the chair to walk around waving her hands or doing little dance steps trailing smoke from her foreign smelling cigarette and next thing hugging herself and telling wild stories about life in Berlin saying we’d have to visit her someday and she’d bring us to see the Wall and we could write our names on it and she’d take us shopping in the big fancy store and she’d buy us anything that took our fancy. Marge says it was fantasy land she was talking about. She was never convinced Betty lived in Berlin. Who knows? Maybe she was putting on an act for us but that didn’t stop us loving her. Mam went along with the fantasy because it suited her too. Poor Betty. Poor you.
I’ve given up on the breathing exercises. The coffee is helping me to see straight again. Or maybe it’s the writing I’m doing here as if I’m talking to you. This is what I have to tell you after all the confusion and heartache: I don’t care that you’re not my birth sister or that in fact you’re my cousin. It doesn’t make any difference to anything. You’re the only sister I have and as long as you want to be sisters with me I want to be your sister. We all want you and Pearl and Rose to come and stay with us next month to be family with us.
Me and Shay have decided instead of going to Silver Strand like you and me and Mam and Dad did when we were little or to Ballybunion where his family used to go we’ll go somewhere new for all of us. We’re going to go to Barley Cove. A mate of his has a mobile there and we can all squeeze into it and we’ll have a ball. No matter the weather. To hell with what anyone else says or thinks we’re going to be a family. And by Christmas there’s going to be a new member of the family. A new brother or sister for the lads a new cousin for Pearl a new niece or nephew for you and Rose a new grandchild for Dad and a lot more sleepless nights for me!
Your loving sister
Lucy
Thank you for following the adventures of Lucy and Deb. Let me know what you think now that it’s all over.
Thank you very much for that warm praise. I'm delighted you enjoyed reading Family Lines. I loved writing the novel and feedback from readers was a great encouragement.
I hope to start something new before the end of the year.
Once again, thank you Noirin for being such a faithful and insightful reader of Family Lines. You never know I might return to some of the characters at a future date but right now I have other ideas simmering in the background. I might begin posting something new towards the end of the year.
Meanwhile I have a lot of reading to do for my forthcoming Masters in Literature, Romanticism and the English Lake District. That may generate some Tuesday newsletters when I get stuck in! So keep watching this space.