Page 117 of The Missing Sister

‘You should have heard your mother when she was a little girl, Jack. She had as broad a West Cork accent as it was possible to get. I, of course, drummed it out of her when she came to Dublin.’

‘Where is West Cork?’

‘Another county in Ireland, down in the south-west.’

‘So you didn’t grow up in Dublin, Mum?’ said Jack.

‘Oh no.’ I shook my head. ‘I grew up in the countryside... We didn’t even have electricity until I was six!’

‘But you’re not that old, Mum. You were born in the late forties, weren’t you?’

‘West Cork was quite behind the times then,’ Ambrose put in.

‘So, did you know Mum’s family well?’

‘In a way,’ said Ambrose, casting me a glance. ‘You have never told your son about your childhood?’

‘No. Nor my husband or Mary-Kate,’ I admitted.

‘May I ask why not?’ said Ambrose.

‘Because... as I’ve said, I wanted to leave the past behind and start afresh.’

‘I’d love to know more, Mum, I really would,’ Jack encouraged me.

‘Well, perhaps now might be the time to tell young Jack a bit about his heritage?’ Ambrose suggested gently. ‘I’m here to expand on any details you don’t quite remember, Mary – I’m sure my mind will just about stretch back to my long-lost youth.’

I turned to my son, who was looking at me imploringly. Reading Nuala’s diary had certainly reminded me of the familiar spaces of my childhood. Closing my eyes, a wave of emotions and memories came over me, ones I had tried so hard to forget for well over half my life.

But you can’t forget, Merry, it’s who you are...

So, I let the wave engulf me without fighting it off, and realised for the first time that here, with my son and my beloved godfather, I could safely swim in the waters of the past without drowning in them.

I took a deep breath and began...

October 1955

Merry started as an arm swung onto her chest. Katie, her big sister, who was only two years older than her, was dreaming again. Merry removed the arm and placed it back where it belonged on Katie’s side of the bed. Her sister rolled over and curled herself into a little ball, her red curls splayed on her pillow. Merry too turned over so their bottoms were touching on the narrow mattress, and looked out of the tiny windowpane to check how high the sun was and whether Daddy would be out in the milking shed yet. The sky was as it usually was: full of big pieces of grey cloud that looked fit to burst with raindrops. She reckoned she still had an hour to stay warm under the blankets before she’d need to be up and dressed to feed the chickens.

Opposite her, Nora, who shared a mattress with their oldest sister Ellen, was snoring gently. As her brain woke up, Merry felt excitement in her tummy and she remembered why it was.

Today was the day the electricity thing was to be switched on and they were to move across the yard to the New House. She’d watched Daddy and her older brother John, and sometimes their neighbours if they could be spared from their own farms, build it ever since she could remember. If Daddy wasn’t in the shed with the cows, or out in the barley fields, he was across the yard, making the New House go upwards.

Merry looked up at the ceiling, which was very low and made a triangle shape (she’d learnt about triangles at her new school) with a beam through it at the top to hold it up. Merry didn’t like that beam because it was dark and big spiders liked to make their homes right above her. One time, she’d woken up and seen the biggest in the world hovering just above her on its silver thread. She’d screamed and Mammy had rushed in and caught it, telling her not to be a ‘silly little eejit’, and that spiders were good because they caught flies, but Merry didn’t think they were good at all, whatever Mammy said.

In the new bedroom, there was a flat ceiling that was painted white, which meant it would be much easier to see any webs and take them away before the spiders could build their homes any bigger. Merry knew she’d sleep much better in the New House.

There were also four whole bedrooms upstairs, which meant Ellen and Nora would have a room to themselves, so just she and Katie would share theirs. The boys – John and little Bill – would have another room, and Mammy and Daddy the biggest room. There was a new baby in Mammy’s tummy and Merry had prayed to Jesus that it would be a boy too, so she and Katie could keep their new room just to themselves for always. Even though she knew she had to love her brothers and sisters, it didn’t say in the Bible she had tolikethem.

And Merry and Katie didn’t like Nora. She was very bossy and gave them both jobs to do that Ellen, their older sister, had given toher.

Mammy and Daddy were hoping for a boy too – another big strong lad to help on the farm. Merry and Katie’s hands were still too small to do the milking and Ellen was only interested in kissing her boyfriend, which Merry and Katie had seen her do behind the milking shed and thought was disgusting. There were lots of other chores on the farm and Daddy often said that John was the only useful one around, which Merry thought was very unfair because she looked after baby Bill the most. And besides, it wasn’t her fault she’d been born a girl, was it?

Aside from Katie, Merry’s favourite person to speak to was the man called Ambrose, who was sometimes up at Father O’Brien’s house where Mammy cleaned on a Monday. Ambrose had begun teaching her letters even before she had started school last month. She wasn’t sure why it had always been her who was chosen to go up to the priest’s house to clean with Mammy, but she didn’t mind a bit. It was better than not minding actually, because shelovedit! Some of her best memories were sitting in front of a warm fire eating a little round cake hot from the oven, filled with strawberry jam and something that was creamy white, which tasted sweet and delicious. Now she was bigger, she knew the ‘cakes’ were called scones. While she was eating, Ambrose would talk to her, which made it quite difficult to answer as her mouth was so full of cake, and he didn’t approve of talking while you were chewing. Other times, he’d read to her from a storybook about a princess who was put to sleep for one hundred years and only woken by a kiss from a prince.

Ambrose was very kind to her, but she didn’t know why. When she’d asked Father O’Brien what he was to her, and why she was allowed to call him by his first name, rather than ‘Mr Lister’ like Mammy did, she watched him as he thought about it for quite a long time.

‘Perhaps one could say that he is your godfather, Mary.’