The Stone House Read online

  ‘Romy, that’s some hole you’re digging. Foundations, is it?’

  ‘I’m digging to Australia,’ she retorted, ‘to see the kangaroos and the koala bears.’

  ‘Well you’ll have to dig a bit deeper then,’ he joked, not offering to help as he walked over to join their mother on the rug. He wasn’t much of a one for the beach and although he sometimes wore a pair of big wine-coloured swimming togs, Romy had never seen him swim.

  ‘Anyone for ice-cream?’ he’d offered half an hour later.

  Hot and sweaty from digging Romy had jumped up and volunteered to go with him as the others gave their orders, slipping her hand into his as they went back across the beach. He jingled the coins in his pocket as they walked along the roadway to Sissy Sullivan’s, the neighbour who lived closest to the Strand and sold ice-pops and choc-ices and Golly Bars from a big fridge in her porch. An ice-cream banner and an Irish flag hung over her front door.

  ‘Four choc-ices, one Golly Bar and a bottle of red lemonade,’ said her father. ‘Did I ever tell you I was standing in line to buy ice-cream and a red lemonade at the Palace Dance Hall in Tramore when I first met your mother?’

  ‘What kind of ice-cream?’ she asked, curious.

  ‘Choc-ice. I got talking to two lovely girls, sisters, and ended up buying them a choc-ice each. Afterwards I asked the small pretty one, Maeve, up to dance with me. And as they say, the rest is history.’

  Romy liked the way he told stories and explained things and let her ride in the car with him when he was working. She loved her mammy and sisters but sometimes maybe she loved her daddy more.

  ‘Race you back!’ she dared him, grabbing two ices and her own creamy Golly Bar, screaming with excitement as he pretended to chase her back.

  The week before Christmas their mother told them she was expecting a baby. ‘Isn’t it lovely news for the Christmas?’ she smiled, her face pale and strained.

  ‘Everything’s going to change,’ Romy blurted out, flinging herself in her mother’s lap and burrowing into her.

  ‘Well, naturally it will a bit,’ laughed their mother. ‘I’m sure things were different for Moya and Kate when I first brought you home from the hospital! But having another little person in the house to love is going to be wonderful.’

  Moya had sat in the middle of Christmas lights, tinsel and ornaments, not believing. How could it be that her middle-aged mother was announcing she was pregnant? It was the most mortifying, disgusting thing she’d ever heard of. What would Cora and Niamh and all her friends think when this news got out? God, how had she not noticed the swollen stomach, the full breasts, and her mother’s recent constant complaints about being tired? She had just presumed her mother was getting fat, or getting the change like their neighbour Mrs Costigan, who kept forgetting things and had locked herself out of the house only a week ago.

  ‘Are you sure?’ was about all she could manage.

  ‘Of course,’ laughed her mother, patting her stomach.

  Moya couldn’t believe her youngest sister’s instant and honest assessment of the appalling situation they were in.

  ‘I know I’m no young chick but you’re all getting so big that I know I’ll have loads of helpers this time with the nappies and the bottles and changing and bathing the baby.’

  ‘Mammy, I think it’s wonderful news!’ said Kate firmly.

  Moya had to at least pretend to be happy for their mother’s sake. ‘It’s great, honest. You and Daddy must be thrilled,’ she said.

  ‘Your father is over the moon about it.’

  ‘If it’s a girl can I name her?’ begged Romy.

  ‘It’s not a kitten or a doll,’ Kate said protectively.

  ‘We’ll just have to wait and see what your little brother or sister is like.’

  Frank Dillon told everyone who came to the Stone House over the Christmas the good news about the expected arrival of another young Dillon.

  ‘There’s still lead in the pencil,’ he’d joke as he offered glasses of whiskey and gin and beer to everyone who crossed the threshold.

  Moya tried to banish the cringe-making thought of her mother and father doing it in the big bed upstairs.

  ‘Don’t mind your dad, Moya pet,’ Aunt Vonnie consoled, seeing her embarrassment. ‘Frank’s just so excited about another baby, that’s all.’

  ‘There’ll be another Dillon to carry on the family name,’ he boasted.

  ‘He thinks it’s going to be a boy,’ she confessed worriedly to her aunt. ‘What will he do if it’s another girl?’

  ‘He’ll thank God for another beautiful daughter who is almost as nice as her three sisters.’

  Moya blushed. How could she be so insensitive? Aunt Vonnie and Uncle Joe had four boys – Neil, Conor, Fergus and Liam. Maybe they had wanted a girl.

  ‘Naturally Joe and I would have loved to have had a little girl but to tell the truth I don’t know how one would have survived in our household with all the men talk and sport and football and old GAA guff that goes on! That’s why I love coming over here to you lot for all the tears and tantrums and stories. Why do men never know any good stories or gossip?’ she pondered.

  Moya laughed.

  ‘Anyways I wouldn’t be without my boys for the world.’

  ‘I’d better help passing round the smoked salmon and brown bread,’ Moya said as her aunt and mother sat down together chatting, heads together.

  A month before the baby was due Maeve Dillon was brought into hospital as her blood pressure had gone through the roof and she needed total bed rest. Their father arranged for a local woman, Mary Dwyer, to come in and give a hand with the housework and ironing and to cook their dinner when they came in from school. Wearing a selection of ancient Aran cardigans and a brown tweed skirt she’d sit for hours watching the TV or doing the crossword in the daily paper, her huge body wedged in the armchair as one of her meat and potato concoctions bubbled on the cooker.

  ‘She smells of BO,’ complained Romy who was collected from school by her.

  ‘Shush,’ hissed Kate, who hated the disruption and the boiled potatoes and was trying to work on her science project, disappearing to her room as soon as she’d eaten.

  Moya took it on herself to scrub and clean the kitchen with Jif every night.

  ‘You’re cracked,’ jeered Romy.

  Two and a half weeks later all the worry and waiting was ended when Sean Francis Dillon was born, weighing in at five pounds and seven ounces.

  Looking at their new brother in the little crib beside their mother’s bed in the maternity ward, they all agreed he looked tiny, with his baldy head and snub nose and wizened expression. Five days later their mother brought him home.

  Sean was small, but his crying was loud enough to be heard all over the house, their mother dropping whatever she was doing to attend to him.

  He was a poor feeder and after two weeks of his fussing and crying and not gaining any weight their mother had reverted to using a bottle and formula to feed him.

  And as Romy had predicted everything did change. Her position as the baby, the youngest in the house, was usurped as she became ‘Sean’s sister’. The house was organized around the tiny person who slept in the small bedroom beside their parents’ room. Maeve Dillon, unwilling to leave him till he got a bit bigger and put on weight, contented herself with staying home. Their father deserted his usual after-work pints and dinners and late-night meetings, coming home to join them for tea, checking on his son and lifting him up in his arms and parading him around the house.

  The girls were bewildered by his intense affection for Sean and the havoc created by such a tiny mite. However, over the weeks they each grew to love their small brother with a similar intensity.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘SMILE, GIRLS!’ COAXED their mother, looking through the camera lens as they stood at the front door step in their school uniforms. The morning sun glimmered over Rossmore’s village and harbour, making them squint and fidget as the light flashed t
hrough the trees in the driveway.

  ‘Try to look happy. It’s a big occasion, Romy starting secondary school.’

  ‘We’ll be late on our very first day back,’ worried Kate, glancing at her wrist-watch. ‘Romy, for heaven’s sake put your chin up and stop messing.’

  Moya tilted her head in the bright September sunlight, pulling in her stomach and putting a wide smile on her face. She couldn’t wait to be finished with this awful uniform, her last year in school over, adulthood beckoning. Poor old Romy, only starting in the convent and having Mrs Cusack as her First Year head!

  ‘Come on, smile! You look lovely!’

  Moya didn’t think anyone would ever believe they were sisters, they all were so different except up close around their full lower lips and the wide spacing of their varied coloured eyes. She hoped to God Romy wouldn’t be depending on her to mind her as she wasn’t having a first-year trailing around the school corridors after her.

  ‘That’s it!’ Maeve smiled, putting down the camera. ‘A perfect photo of my three beautiful daughters.’

  Romy looked all wired up, pale under her freckles and nervous. Her uniform skirt was too big and too long, right down to her knees as her mother had insisted on allowing space for growing. She had Kate’s outgrown jumper and a crisp new white shirt and an impressively huge new schoolbag, which weighed a ton.

  Cora and Ciara had been standing patiently at the gate waiting for them during their mother’s shenanigans with the camera.

  ‘Morning, girls,’ yoohooed Maeve, waving to them. Cora felt relieved that their mother never bothered taking the family camera from out of the kitchen cabinet where it had been thrown a few years ago. ‘Doesn’t Romy look wonderful – a real St Dominic’s girl!’

  Moya wished her mother wouldn’t make such a big thing over an everyday occurrence. She grabbed Romy, pushing her towards the gate.

  ‘Now you two remember to look out for your sister and help her if she needs it and Romy, I’ll be waiting to hear how you got on.’

  As the autumn days got shorter Maeve Dillon pushed the buggy through the falling leaves and around Rossmore, baby Sean, snug in a cosy zip-up pram suit, complimented and admired by all who knew her. He had lost the delicate look and was becoming a smaller sturdy version of his father. She was still tired with the lack of sleep and night feeding but at long last felt she had turned the corner and despite her age was enjoying motherhood again. Her sister Vonnie had been on to her about going to Dublin to do a bit of shopping.

  ‘Come on, Maeve, you haven’t a stitch of clothes for the winter! You know Brendan Butler will invite you and Frank to the Fianna Fail fundraiser, and then you’ve got the Council’s dinner dance. What are you going to wear to them? Buying a few new things will give you a boost and besides, I want to go to Dublin to get a new coat and a pair of winter boots for myself.’

  ‘What about the baby?’

  ‘Maeve, we’re not trucking the baby with us. When was the last time you had a day out on your own? Think of yourself, for a change! Frank and the girls will be well able to mind him.’

  It was tempting, the thought of a day away, shopping, trying on shoes, getting some new make-up, seeing the latest style.

  ‘We’ll treat ourselves to lunch in Mitchell’s. What do you say?’

  Maeve could feel the smile spread all over her face as she said, ‘Yes, please.’

  Moya looked at the list her mother had left: times for bottles, instructions for changing, teething gel, and what to feed the baby with at lunchtime and at teatime. It looked easy enough. Sean was getting to be such a good baby that he was no bother at all. He had a touch of a snuffly cold so her mother had expressly forbidden her to take him out for a walk.

  ‘I’m going out,’ called her father, grabbing his car keys. ‘I’ve got to see Ray O’Carroll about the few outhouses and acres he wants to sell between here and Woodstown.’

  ‘Daddy, you promised to stay home and help with the baby.’

  ‘Listen, I won’t be too long. I’ll have to have coffee and a chat with him. It’s a site with good potential and Martin and I feel if we got the right planning permission through we could build about a dozen houses on it.’

  ‘Can I go with you?’ pleaded Romy, getting up to follow him.

  ‘Not today, pet. You stay home with your sisters and help mind the baby.’

  Annoyed, Romy flounced out of the room as Frank Dillon left.

  Moya was intent on trying to tidy her bedroom and create a study zone as Sister Breda had advised them, clearing a place for notes and revision and a study planner. Getting rid of the clutter of old shoeboxes and little baskets of old Rimmel and Revlon and 17 make-up, and the collection of stuffed dolls and teddies she had grown out of, would certainly help create a bit more space. Romy could choose from them as she was into that sort of stuff now. First she’d dust them off and clean them up so they’d look more appealing to her younger sister.

  Kate interrupted her an hour later, calling her to come downstairs to the kitchen quick. ‘Wait till you see what Romy’s done.’

  The two sisters stood in utter disbelief at the kitchen door as they surveyed the mess and the crestfallen expression on their dog Lucky’s face.

  ‘Christ Almighty, what have you done?’ roared Moya, taking in the damage, the wet floor, the spilt shampoo and soaked towels and the clumps of wet dog hair scattered everywhere.

  ‘His hair had got too long!’ she argued. ‘Mammy wouldn’t bring him to Monica to get cut because she was too tired and too busy so I decided—’

  ‘To do it yourself,’ Kate and Moya said in unison.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But he kept moving and trying to get away from me. He has far too much hair.’

  Not any more, thought Moya. The poor dog looked like he’d been attacked by some mad thing, with hair and fur missing all over the place, a large bald patch on one side and one leg almost devoid of hair. His face looked lopsided, which gave him a totally different expression.

  ‘Poor Lucky,’ said Kate, running to hug him and almost slipping on the floor.

  ‘You have the dog and the place destroyed,’ threatened Moya. ‘Just wait till Mammy and Daddy get back and see what you’ve done. You’ll be in right trouble.’

  ‘I was bored,’ she muttered. ‘I had to do something.’

  ‘Well then, you won’t be so bored as you’ll have to get the mop and the big brush, and the brush and pan and give us a hand with cleaning this place up, and taking up all the flipping dog hair.’

  It took three-quarters of an hour to restore the kitchen to a reasonable state, Moya hiding away her mother’s large kitchen scissors.

  ‘I’m starving,’ murmured an unrepentant Romy, slouching onto a kitchen chair. Moya put on some tinned tomato soup and toast for them, realizing the time and that the baby was due his lunch more than an hour ago. She didn’t want him sleeping all afternoon so she decided it was better to wake him.

  The moment she reached the top of the stairs, she sensed it. Something was wrong. The fraction of a second it took to cross the doorway and see the small still figure in the cot, she knew. The memory of it would stay with her for ever.

  She lifted him up immediately and tried to rouse him, shaking him, listening to his chest but knowing by the cold touch of his skin and the obstinately closed eyes and calm expression on his face that her small brother had stopped breathing.

  She screamed and screamed for Kate and her sister galloped up the stairs to help her. All three of them were screaming and shouting at each other, panicked, disbelieving, useless in their attempts to revive him as his heart had stopped beating.

  Kate ran and phoned for the ambulance and for Dr Deegan. Moya, shocked, sat holding him in her lap till they came, praying that they could somehow resuscitate him.

  The family doctor gently took Sean and laid him on the bed to examine him.

  ‘It’s nobody’s fault,’ he assured her. ‘It’s what we call a cot death. He must have died a few
hours ago. There’s no explanation or reason for it. Babies sometimes fall asleep and forget to breathe or wake up. There’s nothing you or anyone could have done.’

  It didn’t matter what the doctor said. Moya had no doubt in her mind that in some way she was partly responsible for what happened. If she hadn’t been distracted, tidying her room, dealing with Romy, her little brother might still be alive.

  Mrs Costigan came across and brought them over to her house while Uncle Joe and Dr Deegan waited to tell the news to their parents.

  Sometimes Moya found it hard to remember the church and the funeral and all the cards and flowers from the people of Rossmore, and their family friends and her father’s business acquaintances and all the girls in school, the walking in the gusting wind afterwards to the place where they buried baby Sean aged only nine months and eleven days and the people back in their house afterwards drinking wine and whiskey and saying what a good baby he’d been.

  The impact of their small brother’s life and death was immeasurable, for none of them could or would ever forget him. Their mother had cried and cried, a torrent of tears, eyes swollen in her puffed face until her eyes were so dry and red and sore, they could produce no more tears. She stayed in bed, lost in her misery, often forgetting to get dressed or to wash her hair. For months she took tablets to make her sleep and then tablets to make her wake up, Aunt Vonnie the only one who could seem to reach her.

  Moya still blamed herself. She was seventeen, the eldest, and had been in charge; over and over again she repeated the pattern of that day once her mother had left the house – her father’s going off on business, her attempts to follow what Sister Breda had suggested, and Romy’s crazy attempt to cut the dog’s hair.

  ‘I shouldn’t have left him,’ was her mother’s constant refrain as she pretended that Moya had done nothing wrong, saying only, ‘We have to accept it was God’s will.’

  Maeve Dillon found some consolation in prayer and mass-going and attending novenas and prayer meetings.