‘She wrote week after week, after the first letter, and never got a reply,’ Stan said. ‘She was all for going over once to see them face to face, but she was nervous. As she said, if her parents wouldn’t even write to her, they wouldn’t be likely to give her much of a welcome and indeed might not let her in through the door at all. Anyway, in the end, she never went.’
‘I don’t blame her.’
‘I don’t either, and Ted said he would abide by her decision, but the silence has just gone on and the family in Donegal, might as well not exist.’
However, none of them in Birmingham was aware that when Nuala’s parents had received the first letter she had sent, her father had died of a heart attack, the letter still clutched in his hand as he toppled from the chair to the stone-flagged floor. Her mother, Biddy, was almost consumed with bitterness against her daughter, whom she felt was responsible for her husband’s death.
She elected to cut Nuala off from the family. Not only did she not write, she also forbade any one else to contact her either and so Nuala knew nothing of the death of her father, whom she had loved so much. Nor did she know that her brother, Joe, unable to stand the atmosphere in the house any more, had taken himself off to America. That only left Tom, the eldest, still on the farm.
‘It’s sad, though,’ Molly said to her granddad. ‘Do you think she still misses her parents – or her brothers, anyway?’
‘I reckon she is used to it by now,’ Stan said. ‘Ted told me that in the beginning she used to talk about them a lot. As the years passed, she would say she often wondered if her brothers had married, and that it was sad for you to maybe have Irish cousins that you would never ever know.’
‘Well, I’m glad Mom didn’t let her parents stop her getting married, anyway,’ Molly had declared stoutly, ‘for me and our Kevin have the nicest and kindest parents anyone could wish for.’
‘Oh I don’t think either of them ever regretted it,’ Stan said. ‘Like me and Phoebe were, they are happy and easy with each other. Your father has been like a lost soul without your mother and now soon she will be here again and everything will be back to normal.’
But the minutes ticked into hours and there was still no sign of the car. Stan sat in the chair and smoked one cigarette after the other, anxiety tugging at him.
He opened his packet of cigarettes again and was surprised to find it empty. ‘Will you pop down to the paper shop and get me ten Park Drive, Moll?’ he said. ‘I must be smoking like a chimney. I’m clean out.’
Molly didn’t want to stir from the house until her parents came through the door, but it wasn’t as if the paper shop was miles away. It was only in Station Road, which Osbourne Road led into, and it would take her no time at all, if she ran. So she said, ‘All right, Granddad’ and took the half a crown, he offered her.
Molly had scarcely left the house when Stan saw a policeman striding up the path, and his stomach gave a lurch. Telling Kevin to stay where he was, he went to the door, his heart as heavy as lead.
The young and very nervous policeman licked his lips before saying, ‘I am looking for a Mr Stanley Maguire.’
‘You’ve found him,’ Stan said, in a voice made husky with apprehension. Policemen didn’t come to anyone’s door to impart good news.
When the policeman said, ‘Could I come inside, sir?’ Stan said, ‘I’d rather not have you in just now. I have my grandson in there and he is only five years old. Perhaps you’d better state your business here.’
The policeman wasn’t used to imparting such news and certainly not on the doorstep, but he could quite see the man’s point of view. He gave a slight shrug of his shoulders and said, ‘I’m afraid, sir, there has been an accident involving a Mr Edward Maguire and a Mrs Nuala Maguire. Your name was among their effects. I believe they are your son and his wife?’
Stan nodded solemnly and let his breath out slowly, while the news seeped into his brain. Hadn’t he feared something like this when they were much later than expected? ‘How are they?’ he asked.
‘I’m afraid, sir, the accident was a fatal one.’
Stan couldn’t take that in. ‘Fatal?’ he repeated. ‘You mean they are dead?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Both of them?’
‘I am afraid so. They died instantly, so I believe.’
‘But how … ? I mean, what happened?’
‘They were in collision with a van,’ the policeman said. ‘The doctors think the van driver had a heart attack and died at the wheel and the van then crashed into your son’s car.’
‘Dear Almighty Christ!’ Stan cried. Tears started in his eyes and began to trickle down his wrinkled cheeks.
‘Is there anyone I could call for you, sir?’ the policeman said, worried for the man, who had turned a bad shade of grey.
‘There is no one,’ Stan said, realising at that moment how alone he was. There was no one left but him and the children and the burden of responsibility joined that of sorrow and lodged between his shoulder blades weighing him down. But he faced the policeman and said, ‘It’s all right, I will be fine. I shall have to be fine, for my son and his wife were the parents of the wee boy in the room there and I shall have to break the news to him and his sister.’
‘If you are sure, sir?’
‘I’m sure,’ Stan said, but he wiped his face with a handkerchief before he went in to face his grandson, who looked up at him bewildered and a little frightened.
Kevin had wondered who was at the door and normally he would have gone out to see, for in fact few people knocked in that street, but as he neared the door, the serious tone of the conversation unnerved him, though he couldn’t hear what was being said. So, instead of going out to them, he stole up the stairs and into his parents’ bedroom where the window was a bay and, even with the overhang of the door, a person could usually see who was there. Kevin could see the policeman clearly.
In Kevin’s short experience of life, policemen spelled trouble. Even when you had no idea you were doing anything wrong, they could usually find something to tick a boy off for. He didn’t associate them with breaking bad news, so when his grandfather returned he was back in the room and he asked apprehensively, ‘What did the copper want, Granddad?’
Stan looked at the child and he wished with all his heart and soul he could protect him from what he had to say, but he knew he couldn’t. He sat down beside Kevin and put an arm around his shoulders as Molly burst in. She had spotted the policeman leaving their door as she had turned the corner and sped home as fast as she could.
Older and wiser than Kevin, she knew that the police did other things than box the ears of errant and cheeky boys. She cried, What is it? What’s up?’
She saw that tears were spilling from her grandfather’s eyes and her hands were clenched so tightly at her sides that she was crushing the cigarette packet she hadn’t been aware that she was still holding. ‘Please, please,’ she begged, sinking to her knees before her grandfather. ‘Please tell me what’s wrong.’
Stan tried valiantly to stem the tears and he lifted Kevin onto his knee and snuggled Molly beside him, his arm encircling her as he broke the news as gently as a person could, that their parents had been killed in a car accident.
Both children looked at him in shock. Molly thought there must be some mistake, it couldn’t be true, of course it couldn’t.
It was the howl of sheer unadulterated agony, which preceded the paroxysm of grief that Kevin