The Alphabet Sisters Page 39

  She sat up abruptly, and moved away from him. “I’m sorry, Daniel, but I can’t.”

  “It’s okay, Bett.”

  It wasn’t okay. “I’m sorry. It’s not you, I promise. It’s me.”

  “Bett, it’s fine. I understand.”

  It suddenly seemed urgent to explain it to him. To tell him exactly how she felt. “I need you to know that I love it with you. I love being with you.” She meant every word. She did love him. “It’s just—” she was struggling now, “something is different at the moment. Lola keeps telling me it will get better eventually, that it won’t always hurt as much as this. But I’ll understand if you can’t wait. If you want to stop seeing me.”

  “Bett, please, come here. Come closer to me.” She moved and he met her halfway, holding her tightly in his arms. “I’m not going anywhere. And I don’t want you to go anywhere either.”

  One night in the motel bar, Jim, Geraldine, and Bett were shocked into silence by the sound of Anna’s voice. It took them a moment to realize it was coming from the TV.

  They sat staring at it, hearing her voice warmly extolling the virtues of a new range of baking products.

  Geraldine started crying. Jim turned off the TV.

  Bett went to Lola’s room each night to say good night, to check that she was okay, to make sure she had everything she needed. Lola had changed, too. She seemed older. When Bett hugged her now or when she curled up beside her on the bed like now, she felt that the spirit that had driven Lola had dimmed somehow. Nothing felt quite the same.

  “It hurts so much, doesn’t it, Lola?”

  “It does, darling.”

  “Was it as bad as this for you when Edward died?”

  There was a long pause. “It was different.”

  “Does it really get better?”

  “You get used to it, Bett. It becomes a part of you, like everything that happens to you in life becomes a part of you.”

  Lola stopped talking then, just stroked the head on the pillow beside her until Bett fell asleep.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Enjoy your stay, won’t you?”

  It was six weeks after Anna’s death. Bett was at reception, checking in some late-night guests. Carrie had gone home for the night. Bett had handed them their room key, explained how to order breakfast, where the dining room was, and the opening hours for the bar. She’d felt like a liar, a fake, the entire time, as she smiled and tried to talk normally to them. She wondered if any of the guests noticed that there was something not quite right with the family in charge of this motel. Could they see that their smiles weren’t real? That they seemed to move more slowly than usual? That the life had gone out of all of them?

  She had never expected it to hurt this much. She’d never expected to feel grief like a physical pain. But it was. She would be walking along and she’d feel the reminder of Anna’s death like a punch, a blow from nowhere. She felt exposed to the world, oversensitive, anxious, as if she had lost several layers of protective skin. She wanted to stop complete strangers, tell them that her sister was dead. That her beautiful thirty-four-year-old sister had died and that they had been given only weeks to say good-bye to her. Her heart ached for anyone who had lost someone suddenly, in a car accident or from a heart attack. She at least had had some time to say good-bye, to tell Anna how much she loved her. How much worse would it be if they hadn’t had that chance?

  She hadn’t ever thought it was possible to have so many tears. To wake up every day with the same feeling in her chest. But she was a different person now, Bett realized. They all were. Her parents had changed, too. They worked as hard and the motel kept running, but there was a different rhythm to their movements. The same heaviness that Bett felt in herself.

  Bett closed the registration book and found the day’s mail lying underneath it on the desk. She started opening it: bills, circulars, and several cards in pale cream envelopes. Word of Anna’s death had filtered through to her acting friends, advertisers she’d worked for in Sydney, clients, neighbors, and mothers of Ellen’s friends. The cards had come in a rush the first few weeks. Even now, weeks after, they were still arriving in twos and threes each day, some addressed simply to the Quinlan Family, some to her parents, some to Lola, or Carrie, or her. She opened them automatically, reading the messages, simple and heartfelt. “We are thinking of you in your great sorrow.” “She was a beautiful woman; we loved her and will miss her very much.”

  Bett noticed the airmail sticker on the final envelope as she slit it open. There had been quite a few cards from Anna’s overseas friends, actors working in Los Angeles or New York, or in different parts of Europe. This one had an Irish postmark. She opened the card and read the message. Then she sat down and read it one more time, trying to make sense of it.

  Dear Lola,

  I write this tentatively, hoping that you are the same Lola Quinlan, originally from Leixcraig House, Kildare, Ireland, whom I knew more than sixty years ago.

  I saw a program called Did You Know? on the Discovery Channel last week, featuring you and a musical you had written on General MacArthur. Would you be the same woman who married my brother Edward and then emigrated to Australia with him just before the war?

  I am sad to write that Edward died five years ago, leaving behind no family. After he left Australia he continued to travel, spending some years in America, before returning to Ireland and the family home in Kildare. He died at home, aged seventy-eight. May he rest in peace.

  Edward never explained the whole story of your separation but I wish you no ill will, Lola. If you find it in yourself to contact me, I would be pleased to hear from you.

  Yours truly,

  Margaret Hegarty (née Quinlan)

  Bett walked as if she were in a dream, through the motel, out to the yard, along the row of rooms until she reached Lola’s door. She knocked once, twice. A soft voice called her in.

  Lola was at her writing desk. “Bett? More cards? People are very kind.”

  Bett couldn’t speak.

  Lola was puzzled. “Bett? Are you all right?”

  She handed the letter over to Lola without a word. She watched as Lola started to read, watched Lola’s hand creep up to her neck. Heard as if from a long way away Lola say softly, “Oh, dear God.”

  Bett found her voice. “So Edward didn’t die during the war.”

  Lola looked up. Her hand was still at her neck. “No, Bett, he didn’t.”

  Bett wasn’t angry or upset. Not yet. She just needed to understand. “So who was Dad’s father?”

  “It was Edward. He just didn’t know that I was pregnant when I left him.”

  “You left him?”

  “I had to. If I had stayed with him I—”

  “You would have given Dad a father.” Bett was stunned. Confused. “Lola, I don’t understand. We had a grandfather all this time, and we didn’t meet him. He didn’t meet us. Me, or Carrie, or”—her voice faltered—“or Anna or Ellen.”

  “I’m sorry, Bett.”

  “Sorry for what? For leaving him? Or for not telling us the truth?”

  “Only for not telling the truth. I couldn’t stay with him. He was not a good man. We shouldn’t ever have been together. And I didn’t realize it until too late. Until we were married and here in Australia.”

  “But why the lies? Why say he was dead? Why not say you had left him?”

  “Because this was the 1940s, Bett. Because a month after I left him I discovered I was pregnant with your father. I was a young woman in a new country at wartime. What choice did I have? It was better if people thought I was a tragic widow. A widow was respectable.”

  “But I can’t understand why you didn’t ever tell us the truth.”

  “How could I? Tell Jim that the father he thought was long dead was in fact very much alive? And then what? Try to find him? Trawl every bar in the country? The truth is, Bett, I didn’t ever want to see him again. I didn’t know what would happen if he found out he had a son and I
didn’t want him to find out. He hit me once, one night he returned from a drinking binge, and that was enough for me. I didn’t want his family or mine getting their hands on Jim.”

  Bett took back the letter, trying to make sense of everything she was hearing. She read the address. “She’s writing from Kildare. Is that where Edward was from? Where you were from?”

  Lola nodded.

  “That day I went to take photos. You sent me to completely the wrong place, didn’t you? Not just the wrong house, but the wrong side of the country.”

  Lola was very calm. “I had to.”

  “Why? Because you thought I’d find out the truth? Find him?”

  “I panicked, I admit it. I was worried that you would go to the right house and possibly even find Edward living there. And I didn’t want you to have that shock. You might never have come back home, then.” Lola glanced down at the letter again. “But it seems he was dead by then. You wouldn’t have met him then either.”

  “This will devastate Dad, you know that.”

  “Only if he finds out.”

  “You’re not going to tell him? Show him that letter?”

  “No. There’s no point now. What he knows is enough. It was my decision years ago, and it’s one I’ve stuck with, even if it has been difficult.”

  “But how can I keep a secret like that from my own father? From Mum? And Carrie? Ellen? Don’t you see they have to know?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You’d let the lie continue? You, who spent your entire life telling us to face our fears and tell the truth?”

  “This is different.”

  “No, it’s not. Lola, can’t you see this changes everything? It’s like everything you’ve ever told us has been a lie.”

  “It changes nothing, Bett. I am the same person, you are the same person, all the things we have ever done or said to each other are the same.”

  Bett stared at her. “I think you’re wrong. This changes everything.”

  She left the room, shutting the door behind her. She ignored Lola’s call to come back.

  Bett returned to the reception desk. She updated the booking register. Set out the last of the breakfast trays. She sent her parents to bed, and closed down the rest of the motel herself, switching off the lights one after the other.

  She walked across the carpark to her room, pausing for a moment to look up at the clear sky, the Milky Way and the Southern Cross easily visible. She opened the door quietly and then nearly leaped out of her skin as she saw Lola, sitting in the armchair in the middle of the room.

  “You won’t do this to me, Bett. I won’t have it.”

  Bett was speechless.

  “I won’t have you walk out on me like that, or ignore me, or stop talking to me because of this. Do you hear me?”

  Bett had never seen Lola so angry. “I’m not ignoring you. I’m trying to take it all in. I can’t hear something like that, and just let it wash over me.”

  “Of course you can. That’s exactly what you have to do with it. With any news. Let it wash over you, let it soak into you, and then get on with it. Nothing has changed, Bett. I still want you to face your fears and tell the truth. Even if your fear is that the family is ruined and that you hate and despise me forever. But at least you would have been courageous enough to say it.”

  “I was trying to work out what I thought about it.”

  “So tell me now. How do you feel?”

  Lola didn’t need to mention a truth stick. Bett could feel it being pointed at her without being told. “I’m shocked.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I discovered my grandfather was alive all the time I thought he was dead.”

  “Yes, that would be a shock. What else?”

  Bett hesitated. “I’m disappointed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the grandmother I idolized for years was lying to me for years.”

  “A little melodramatic, perhaps, but all right, accepted. What else?”

  “I’m sad, Lola.” The truth burst out of her. “Sad, sad, sad. And I can’t take any more of it. Any more bad things. Any more shocks.”

  “Yes, you can. And you’ll take a lot more before you’re dead yourself. There’ll be more deaths, more disappointments, more people will let you down.”

  “I can’t, Lola. I can’t take any more hurt.”

  “You can and you will. Because there won’t just be hurt, Bett. There’ll be great happiness and moments of joy and lightheartedness and pleasure. Because that’s what life is like. Multicolored, not black and white. Stop judging people. Stop judging me. Step outside of yourself for one moment and think why I would have done what I did. Why I chose not to tell you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then try harder.” A long pause. “Perhaps I was wrong. But I thought I was right. I had to believe I was right, to go on. There was a time, when your father was small, when things were very hard, when it would have been easier to go back to Edward, to Ireland, to take that life, take back the security. But I couldn’t do it. I wanted more, for me, for Jim, for my life. I wanted freedom and I wanted adventure and I wanted a life. I was trapped in my family, Bett. You can’t know how that feels, having all the freedom that you and your sisters had. I had none of that. It was rules and regulations and expectations and it was suffocating me. And marrying Edward and going to Australia seemed like a lifeline. But I knew within weeks that I’d made an even bigger mistake. He wasn’t what I thought he was. I wasn’t what he thought I was.”

  “I can understand that. What I can’t understand is why you didn’t tell us the truth.”

  “I’ve wanted to. For years. But there just never seemed the right time. I wasn’t sure who to tell. Even how to tell it. And these were lies out of necessity, not out of malice, or trickery. There is a difference. And the lies became real to me. I began to think of Edward as dead. Began to think fondly of him in a certain way. Because when life puts you in those situations you have to go on, you have to make something of yourself. I started living life pretending I was a brave young widow and so I had to become a brave young widow.”

  “But it wasn’t true.”

  “No, it wasn’t. And I can’t force you to forgive me. But I can ask you to use your imagination, the imagination I have done my best to feed over the years. I want you to imagine yourself in my place, to see how it might have been for me. You know me. And I know you. Don’t disappoint me.”

  “You’ve disappointed me.”

  “No. What I’ve done is show you one more bit of truth about me. And that is something you would rather not see. In fact, you’ve disappointed me.”

  “What?”

  “I would prefer you were the perfect understanding granddaughter just as you would prefer me to be the perfect faultless grandmother. But I’m not perfect. I never have been. I never will be.”

  “You were perfect. You were the most wonderful grandmother.” Bett started to cry. “You still are the most wonderful grandmother.” She found herself in Lola’s arms. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. It was your life. You had to do what you had to do. Of course I know that. But it’s one more hurt, Lola. One more person gone, one more thing changing.”

  “You wouldn’t have liked him.”

  “That’s not the point. I might have liked him.”

  “Really, you wouldn’t have.”

  Bett was suddenly crying and laughing. “But I wanted the choice.”

  “We don’t always get a choice. We don’t always get what we want. I wanted a good husband, not an awful drunken old bully. I wanted lots of things I didn’t get.” She held Bett close. “I also got things that I never wanted or expected.”

  “Like Anna dying.”

  “Anna dying. But also the life I’ve had with all of you. Because the real truth is that I have never loved anyone in my life like I love your father and the three of you, and now Ellen, too. And if I had to do it all over again to give you a better life, I would. Do yo
u understand that? Because you have all been the most wonderful thing that ever came to me. More than I ever imagined I would have. We don’t get a list that we can tick off, Bett. I’ve learned that. Some things we can make happen, other things happen to us, other things surprise us, other things sneak up. We just have to keep going, whatever happens.”

  “I can’t. I just hurt too much.”

  “It will all become a part of you. I promise you that. This news. Even Anna’s death. You might think I am just a mad old woman, but I’ve seen a few things in my day.”

  “I just want her back, Lola.”

  “We all want her back, darling. All of us.”

  Bett cried then as if it was the first time since Anna died, until her body hurt from it. Lola held her tight until it passed, until Bett’s breathing calmed, the shaking stopped. She spoke again, her head buried against Lola’s chest, her face wet with tears. “I’m so sorry, Lola.”

  “It’s all right.” She kissed Bett’s forehead, tucked a lock of hair behind one of her ears.

  “I would never have stopped talking to you.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t have let you.”

  “And I won’t tell Dad or Mum or Carrie. It’s not for me to tell them any of this.”

  “You can if you want to. It’s up to you. I can’t stop you.”

  “What good would it do?” Bett hesitated. “Are you going to write back to Edward’s sister?”

  Lola shook her head. “There’s no point. I think it’s best that I don’t.”

  “But is it wrong for me to have a secret from the rest of my family? That you and I know, and the others don’t?”

  “A family without secrets is a very boring family. And I don’t think we want to be a boring family, do we?”

  Bett shook her head.

  “Come here to me.” She took Bett’s face between her two hands. “I’m sorry I hurt you, too. Because you are very precious to me. I want you to know that. And I’m glad you know. I’m glad it’s you who found out.”