A Week in Winter(5)

Soon she was part of the scenery.

She would meet her friend Peggy, who told her of all the dramas in the knitting factory. Nuala had long ago left to live in Dublin and they never heard from her any more.

‘We always know it’s July when we see Chicky back walking the beaches,’ the three Sheedy sisters would say to her.

And Chicky’s face would open up into a big smile embracing them all in its warmth and telling them and anyone else who would listen that there was nowhere on earth as special as Stoneybridge, no matter how many wonderful things she saw in foreign parts.

This pleased people.

It was good to be praised for having the wisdom to stay where you were in Stoneybridge, for having made the right choice.

The family asked about Walter, and seemed pleased to hear of his success and popularity. If they felt ashamed that they had wronged him so much they never said it in so many words.

But then it all changed.

The eldest of her nieces, Orla, was now a teenager. Next year she hoped to go to America with Brigid, one of the tribe of red-haired O’Haras. Could she stay for a little bit with Aunty Chicky and Uncle Walter, she wondered? They would be no trouble at all.

Chicky didn’t miss a beat.

Of course Orla and Brigid would come to visit; she was enthusiastic about it. Eager for them to come. There would be no problem, she assured them. Inside she was churning, but no one would have known. She must be calm now. She would work it out later. Now was the time to welcome and anticipate the visit and get excited about it.

Orla wondered what would they do when they got to New York.

‘Your uncle Walter will have you met at Kennedy, you’ll come home and freshen up and straight away I’ll take you on a Circle Line Tour around Manhattan on a boat so that you’ll get your bearings. Then another day we’ll go to Ellis Island and to Chinatown. We’ll have a great time.’

And as Chicky clapped her hands and enthused about it all she could actually imagine the visit happening. And she could see the kind, avuncular figure of Uncle Walter laughing ruefully and regretfully over the daughters that they never had as he spoiled them rotten. The same Walter who had left her after their short months in New York and headed west across the huge continent of America.

The shock had long gone now, and the real memory of her life with him was becoming vague. She very rarely went back there in her mind anyway. Yet the false life, the fantasy existence was crystal sharp and clear.

It had been what had made her survive. The knowledge that everyone in Stoneybridge had been proved wrong and she, Chicky, at the age of twenty, had known better than any of them. That she had a happy marriage and a busy, successful life in New York. It would be meaningless if they knew he had left her and that she had scrubbed floors, cleaned bathrooms and served meals for Mrs Cassidy, that she had scrimped and saved and taken no holiday except for the week back in Ireland every year.

This made-up life had been her reward.

How was she to recreate it for Orla and her friend Brigid? Would it all be unmasked after years of careful construction? But she would not worry about it now, and let it disturb her holiday. She would think about it later.

No satisfactory thoughts came to her when she was back in her New York life. It was a life nobody in Stoneybridge had dreamed of. Chicky could see no solution to the problem of Orla and her friend Brigid O’Hara. It was too aggravating. Why couldn’t the girl have chosen Australia, like so many other young Irish kids? Why did it have to be New York?

Back at Mrs Cassidy’s Select Accommodation, Chicky broke the code that had existed between them for so long.

‘I have a problem,’ she said simply.

‘We will talk problems after supper,’ Mrs Cassidy said.

Mrs Cassidy poured them a glass of what she called port wine and Chicky told the story she had never told before. She told it from the very beginning. Whole layers and onion skins of deception were peeled back as she explained that now the game was up: her family who believed in Uncle Walter wanted to come and meet him.

‘I think Walter was killed,’ Mrs Cassidy said slowly.

‘What?’

‘I think he was killed on the Long Island highway, in a multiple car wreck, bodies barely identified.’

‘It wouldn’t work.’

‘It happens every day, Chicky.’

And as usual, Mrs Cassidy was right.

It worked.

A terrible tragedy, motorway madness, a life snuffed out. They were so upset for her, back in Stoneybridge. They wanted to come to New York for the funeral but she told them it would be very private. That’s the way Walter would have wanted it.

Her mother cried down the phone.

‘Chicky, we were so harsh about him. May God forgive us.’

‘I’m sure He has, long ago.’ Chicky was calm.

‘We tried to do what was best,’ her father said. ‘We thought we were good judges of character, and now it’s too late to tell him we were wrong.’

‘Believe me, he understood.’

‘But can we write to his family?’

‘I’ve already sent your sympathies, Dad.’

‘Poor people. They must be heartbroken.’

‘They are very positive. He had a good life, that’s what they say.’

They wanted to know should they put a notice in the paper. But no. She said her way of coping with grief was to close down her life here as she had known it. The kindest thing they could do for her was to remember Walter with affection and to leave her alone until the wounds healed. She would come home next summer as usual.