The Irish Nanny

by Sandy Taylor

My eyes filled with tears but I didn’t want to cry in front of Sarah. ‘I’m not sure, darling, but I think that wherever he is, he will be watching over us and so will your mummy and Raffi and your Aunt Martha.’

‘And I forgot to say that I love her like my own and she loves me.’ Father Paul smiled. ‘And didn’t I know that already, Rose? I just wanted you to know that there was an alternative.’

Motes of dust danced in the shaft of light streaming in from the long windows that took up the whole of one wall.

‘You don’t,’ she said, smiling. ‘You can come in here anytime you like and read the books but if you were a member, you could take books home with you.’

The white snowdrops were back again and the purple crocuses were as beautiful as they had been when I still had David beside me, that day when I still had a wonderful life ahead of me. I would never forget him, or Martha and I would never forget Alice and Raffi, but I had

I started walking back home, with my head held high. Something inside me had changed. I didn’t question what it was but I was just going to embrace it with open arms and be grateful.

Maybe God was feeling guilty and was trying to make it up to me. I felt a cloud lifting from my shoulders. As I approached the brownstone houses, I could hear laughter and cheering and as I got nearer, I could see people were hugging each other. I smiled at a young woman who was dancing and twirling on the pavement.

‘The war in Europe has ended. Germany has surrendered.’

After all, weren’t we all going to end up on the same gangplank?

She would make her own decisions and walk her own path without having to lean on anyone else to hold her up.

Alice was the most complicated person I had ever met. She was like a rare exotic bird, with wings so wide that she left the rest of us in her shadow.

I had never really

understood her until the night she had walked awa...

She had walked away without a backward glance because her own needs had come first. That was the moment the veil lifted and I saw her for who she was. Be...

Alice and myself couldn’t have been more different and I wondered what had made David fall in love with me. What had he seen in this simple, uneducated girl after loving...

I would soon be in the arms of my family, in the little cottage in Cross Lane.

More people were saying hello as we walked along. Jesus, we would never get home at this rate. We passed the bottom of Windmill Hill. ‘That’s where my best friend lives, Sarah. Her name’s Polly.’

‘You have a mummy. Rose, why haven’t I got a mummy?’

‘How about a grandma, Sarah? I would love to be your grandma. Would you like that? Because I would like that very much.’

‘Ruth is deaf in one ear and she couldn’t hear what I was saying, so I had to find my voice because I really wanted her to like me.’

‘She saw the face of Christ in a piece of toast and she hasn’t been the same since.’

‘America isn’t as exciting as you think. I mean, it was lovely and I have wonderful memories that I wouldn’t have had, if I hadn’t gone, but it wasn’t home. I learned that people are more important than places.’

I wanted to say that love was more important than a swanky car but I had a feeling that was not what she wanted to hear. ‘Life has a way of working out, Polly.’

‘I wish it would bloody change. Ballykillen is stuck in the eighteenth century and it always will be. The only changes around here are folk dying and folk giving birth.’ ‘That’s called life, Polly,

and sure, I wouldn’t want it any other way.’

‘Maybe time has little to do with love.’

‘The “child” as you call her is not and has never been a burden. Sarah is a gift, the most precious gift that I have ever been given. It’s you who are the fool if you can’t see that. Goodbye, Christy.’

He had been nothing more than a sticking plaster over an open wound. The trouble with sticking plasters is that they eventually peel off, leaving a place underneath that hasn’t healed and is just as painful as it ever was. When we were children and we’d

hurt ourselves, Mammy always said, ‘There is no point covering it up, you have to let the air get at it.’ But that was what I had been doing. I had been covering up my grief with a bit of plaster, instead of letting it heal in God’s own good time.

‘I’m learning that looks aren’t everything, Polly. Christy was like a book with a beautiful cover but with no substance inside its pages.’

Some said that the spirit of Christ himself had entered the soul of Finn McCool, just to bring Polly to her senses and make her realise how much she loved Jimmy Coyne.

They speak to me of artists and gigolos, gypsies and clandestine affairs in the dark alleyways of Paris. They speak to me of life and love, of meetings and partings. Wonderful, wonderful memories that I thought would last forever, only to realise that the first hallo is already racing

towards the last goodbye but of course when you are young, you think that you have all the time in the world.

I still think of myself and my darling Alice dancing around the room in our finery. She so loved dressing up in these beautiful clothes. It’s a memory that I cherish. And so, I say to you, Rose and Kathy, Agnes and Bridgy and your wonderful mother: wear them, enjoy them, feel the sensation of silk and satin against your skin, don’t let them hang in a cupboard as I...

My love to you all, especially to you, Rose and Sarah. May you all have happy lives, with the odd bit of excitement thrown in. Embrac...

Be the best version of yourself that you can be, but above all, never harness yourself to someone else’s wagon; find your own. Don’t waste your time longing for someone who can never be yours. It is only through our mistakes that we find wisdom, so take a deep breath, cry if you must but move on, for there will b...

Oh, and read books, read lots and lots of books. It’s the only way to find Wonderland. Think ...

‘Get yourself out for a walk, Rose. Blow those cobwebs away, for you have me brain mashed with your wanderings.’

The sea was different; it seemed always to be in a hurry, rushing towards some destination. Changing, always changing, never stopping long enough to enjoy the shore that it was rushing towards,

never staying long enough to notice the beauty of the smooth pebbles that it dragged back into the ocean.

I realised that was how I had been, since losing David. I had never given my heart the time to really take in what had happened. I had blocked him from my mind because the pain was so huge that I was afraid of it. That was why I had turned to Christy. I had tu...

Mammy once said that you don’t get over someone you have lost, you learn to live ...

was true, then they deserved ...

She was no longer wrestling with the grief. But could sit down with it, as a lasting companion And make it a sharer in her thoughts.

It was written by a woman who wrote under the name of George Eliot. That is what I would do, I decided: I would make friends with my grief. I would sit beside it and I would remember the love David and I had for each other and not be afraid. I would take it slowly like the river. I would give myself permission to cry, I would allow myself to scream if I needed to. I would not look outside my heart for someone to fix it. I would accept that some things just can’t be fixed.

When I thought about the journey I had been on and the people I had met, it felt more like a dream than reality – as if it had never happened at all, as if I had never left Ballykillen. My fingers closed over the aquamarine crystal around my neck. This was real, this was solid, but the people I had met and loved were

more like characters in one of Alice’s books, not real people at all. Alice used to say that even if a book wasn’t to your liking, you will always have learned something from it. So, what had I learned, now that I had read the last chapter and closed the book? I suppose I had learned that I could be strong and perhaps even brave. I had learned that even a broken heart can mend and I had learned that grief doesn’t kill you. I had found love in unexpected places and that love would live in my heart forever. I had my memories, even if they were now no more than shadows that drifted in

and out of my mind, but most of all, I had learned tha...