The Christie Affair(35)

He wrote, I thought I’d grown dead inside till I saw you standing there in the square.

He wrote, It wasn’t just Armistice that swept me away.

He wrote, We should have waited for our wedding night, it’s true, but I know in my heart there never will be a more perfect moment. And our wedding night will come, Nan, never you doubt it.

And then his second letter arrived, empty of money. It only said, I love you and I’m afraid I’ve come down with a fever.



I didn’t feel too well myself.

My father received word from Ireland. Uncle Jack survived the war – remaining unscathed in battle. But he came home from the front with influenza and gave it to his wife and child. Aunt Rosie recovered. Uncle Jack did not. Nor did Seamus. It had seemed such a mercy that my sweet cousin was too young to fight in the war. And now he was dead all the same. It seemed the tides of this war would never stop lapping our shores. I wept for my lost second family, my beloved farm standing empty. My mother comforted me, not able to stop herself from pressing her palm against my forehead.

When Emily Hastings got sick, Megs, Louisa and I were forbidden to visit her. ‘It’ll be a miracle if it passes you girls by,’ my mother said at dinner, wiping tears away. ‘Did you know Andrew Pennington died just yesterday? All these young people. Boys who came home safe from the war, only to be killed by the flu.’

The giant and kindly crowd that swept Finbarr and me together had been teeming with invisible sickness. My mother gave up her job at Buttons and Bits and insisted I do the same.

‘No you don’t,’ my father said, when he caught me trying to leave our flat. ‘It’s not safe to be out and about just now.’

‘Megs thinks we already had it last spring,’ I said. All three of us girls had come down with mild fevers and recovered quickly.

‘Thinking is different to knowing,’ he snapped. ‘And knowing’s what I’d need before letting you into danger.’

For years there had been little warmth between us. But in that moment I could see in his face the loss of his eldest child, and his brother, and the nephew he’d scarcely known. Da had aged a hundred years since I’d last allowed myself to really look at him. So I hugged him tightly. I thought of Finbarr’s letter. Would there be anyone left in Ballycotton who’d know to write to me if he died? We didn’t have a telephone. Certainly the Mahoneys didn’t, there was hardly even electricity in Ballycotton.

‘You look green around the gills, Nan,’ my mother said that evening. She checked my temperature again. She couldn’t keep her hands away from our faces. ‘You’d better rest. I’ll bring you a plate.’

I sequestered myself in my room, both hands spread across my belly. I didn’t have the flu. I had something else. My mother’s fear of influenza had replaced, at least temporarily, her fear of pregnancy. It made her blind to what really ailed me. She couldn’t know that for this brief span of time, whenever she touched me or held me, she touched and held her grandchild, too.

Colleen had been my age, almost to the day, when she tossed herself into the Thames. I wouldn’t ever let that happen to my mother again. I didn’t tell Megs and Louisa I was pregnant because I didn’t want them fearing what would become of me. And I wouldn’t give my father a chance to thunder me away. I’d get myself across the Irish Sea and marry Finbarr. Even if he were dying, it was better to be a soldier’s widow than a soldier’s fool. The small detail of ‘I do’s’ and a priest’s blessing would render the difference between heroine and pariah. All I had to do was get myself from my island to Finbarr’s.

The only place my mother went these days was the grocer’s. As soon as she was out of the door, I went to her room and pulled out the tea tin she’d shown us. Between the money she’d secreted away and the pound note Finbarr had sent me, I’d have just enough to get to Ballycotton. I shook my grandmother’s ring into my hands and considered slipping it onto my finger. Instead, I put it back in the tin. I didn’t need to disguise myself as a married woman. I’d be the real thing soon enough.



The last of my money went to the fisherman who carried me in his mule-pulled cart from the train station to the Mahoneys’ white clay cottage in the village. Masts from the harbour dinged and gulls swooped and sang. I knew Alby was not allowed inside but slept underneath the house, and was disappointed he didn’t bound out to greet me. But perhaps that meant Finbarr had recovered and was off making a good wage herding.

Mrs Mahoney opened the door. I’d met her before, at Sunday church services. But then she’d been smiling. She was a tiny woman, with shoulders so bony I could see the sharp ‘V’ of them through her cardigan.

‘You can’t see him,’ she said, before I could even remind her who I was. ‘It’s not safe for you.’ Still, she stepped aside to let me in, then lit the stove to make a cup of tea. It was cold in the house and I wanted to pull my chair closer to the fire, but I didn’t want to insult her. The floor beneath my feet was dirt. At another time the sight of boats through the window might have been cheerful but just then they looked to me like everything in the world Finbarr didn’t want. Noticing my gaze, Mrs Mahoney stood up, went to the window and drew the shutters closed.

‘I’m Jack O’Dea’s niece,’ I said.