In The Name Of My Father Chapter: 39
Will Sara Make the Call?
Arriving back in Melbourne, Richard and Sara remained in awe of all they’d experienced in such a brief amount of time, a whistle-stop tour that now had them begging for more. Still, they had work to do, work that they were both finding challenging!
So much to think about, Sara wondered, should she, would she make the call? What were the chances?
“It doesn’t matter how we look at things,” she told Richard. “If I call this person, what on earth am I going to say…that I met this bloke in France and he just happened to have the same surname as I had, and he just happened to mention that…”
“Come on Sara. Life is full of coincidental situations. It’s just that we’re not always in touch them all. Remember how Ava went to work in New Guinea and just happened to be given a house right next door to a girl she went to school with? There she was, determined not to be homesick, and she finds a school friend she wasn’t looking for. Had she been looking for that friend, she would probably have been thrust into a different situation and befriended somebody else. It’s life, my love, and it’s fabulous! How boring would things be if every day were predictable!
“Make the contact. It might be that an even better surprise is lying in wait, but you won’t know if you don’t step over the threshold of your fears. What have you got to lose?”
What indeed? It was only a name. Somebody clearly needed some information. Determined to be positive, to emit her own frequency into the universe, she logged on.
If it was meant to be, it would surely happen.
Attica…a meeting place of differing kinds of news…
At Ailsa’s suggestion, the two women had agreed to meet up at Attica’s coffee shop.
Ailsa was nervous.
Sara’s heart was skipping beats.
They had both arrived at the coffee shop ten minutes early, (as they later admitted to each other), to be prepared, and with any luck be one step ahead of the other.
Both women chose a table that gave them full view of the door.
Each of them was tall and dark.
“Would you like to order?” asked the waitress, hovering between the two.
“I’m waiting for someone,” they each said in unison, which brought a smile to all of them. Ten minutes later, still waiting for that someone, Sara stole a quick look at the pretty woman close by. She could have been one of her daughters, the same wide, dark eyes, with wayward curls that loosely framed her face.
“You’re not waiting for Sara by any chance?” she asked hesitantly.
“Yes…yes I am…are you Sara?”
“That I am!”
“No! I was beginning to think I’d been stood up, but then, as we are the only two alone in the shop, I also began to quietly wonder about you. I’m Ailsa.”
“I knew you were, but I didn’t have the courage…”
“Well now, that makes two of us.”
“Always difficult,” Sara smiled, reaching out to shake her hand. “Hello. We should have organized to wear a similar scarf or a red rose. That would have helped.”
“But we did!” Ailsa laughed, comparing their similar soft-green scarves. “We have similar coloring. That might explain why.”
“I was thinking you could be my own daughter. I have two who complain daily about their unruly curls!”
“Now that is funny. My hair used to be the bane of my life too, but I’ve given up. It is what it is. My friends all love it. Just as well they didn’t have to deal with it through their teen years when everyone wanted straight hair, but accepting it as it has saved me a fortune.”
“I’ll pass that information on to my daughters. Usually, I think, you have to get to my age to appreciate the gift that vibrant hair is. This is a pretty nice coffee shop, by the way,” she said, looking around. “I’m told their coffee is as good as it gets.”
“It’s true! The last time I was here was to meet up with a doctor from the hospital to discuss my dad’s health. Fortunately, against expectations, he got well again. At that time I had no reason to believe he wasn’t my father, but after my mother passed away, he told me the truth.”
It was unlike Ailsa to blather, but somehow the words spilled out easily, too easily.
“Oh dear! What a lot to deal with.”
“Oh he’s fine now. He’s my rock. Mum was killed in an accident. She was helping clear out Dad’s apartment…they’ve lived apart for many years…it was her first day there. The floor collapsed beneath her and she was crushed in the rubble. It’s something I have to live with for the rest of my life.”
“Why is that?”
“I coerced her into helping me so that I could get back to work.”
“That is too, too sad, but time is a great healer Ailsa. When my brother Alistair was killed I thought I’d never live again. He was an amazing human being, great fun, with a devilish sense of humor. Everybody loved him, especially the girls, and then right out of the blue he decided to become a priest. You could have knocked us all down with a feather. Even today I beat myself up for not having worked harder on dissuading him from entering. None of us was happy with his decision, my mother in particular. He was her only boy and to be honest, Mom’s favorite.”
“Was that hard for you?”
“His being the favorite? Not really. It was a bit of a joke for us. He was the youngest, a lovable rogue, and a boy, so preferment was easy. I was the eldest…still am, by the way!” she smiled.
“Me too…more correctly, the elder, as there’s just Craig and me.”
“Now that’s interesting. Is your family Scottish by any chance?”
“I don’t think so. There’s never been any mention of it.”
“You see, my mother used to talk wistfully of Ailsa Craig which is a tiny island that she could see from her bedroom window in Ayrshire, in Scotland. She always dreamed of going back to visit.”
Ailsa gulped. Sara was more than likely the person she was looking for. It couldn’t be this easy, could it. Words failed her. What on earth could she say? Her head hammered in anxiety.
“Are you alright Ailsa?” Sara asked as the younger woman’s eyes filled with tears. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No, not at all…I never thought that my brother’s name and mine were significant, but now I’m not so sure…Ailsa Craig…how strange!”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s unlike me not to be inquisitive. I asked questions to the point of distraction when I was little, but for some reason I never even thought to ask why I was called Ailsa. I like my name and I haven’t met another one to date, nor a Craig, to be honest, so I just accepted mine as the pretty name that it is.”
Sara looked searchingly at Ailsa, unnerved by the simple disclosure that had so easily happened for both of them.
“My mother used to say to Alistair that if ever he had a girl, she would like her to be called Ailsa, but he’d just ruffle her hair to humor her. Having children was the last thing on his mind, as we later found out.
“But…here I am, rambling on about my brother and family…as if you’d be interested.”
“I am, actually…I’m very interested.”
“And why is that?” Sara asked.
“Because I think we could be related.”
There! It was out! All the preparation that she had planned to lead sensitively to a disclosure had been summarily abandoned, as the words escaped as freely as melted butter from her lips, and she watched as Sara’s body stiffened.
“What makes you say that?” she asked eventually.
“I found out recently that the man I call Dad is not my biological father. My father was a priest, killed by a truck on his way home from asking his superior to be released from his vows.”
“NO!” Sara’s eyes linked with Ailsa’s, wide, and shocked, and incredulous, the coincidence not lost on her, as Ailsa continued.
“It was as much a shock to me as it obviously is to you. Can you tell me how your brother died?”
“It was an accident. He stepped into the pathway of a truck. The driver didn’t have time to stop.”
“And as a family, you never got over it?”
“Correct…we never did. We needed answers to our questions and, the church was not forthcoming, so for us there was never any closure.”
“I have to tell you Sara. I have been so fortunate to have had people go to great lengths to help me find you, and in fact to find ANYONE who might belong to my biological family.”
The silence between the two women was heavy with unspoken words, with the revelation of a shared wisdom, where questions were intentionally left unspoken. Ailsa looked at the older woman and gently added, “It also includes the retrieval of a part of a recording that Alistair made of his meeting with his superior.”
“What? Why on earth would that suddenly be available? None of that was offered to us.”
“Look it’s a long story and…”, but Sara cut in.
“I didn’t ever believe he would have taken his life. He was too much fun for that, and far too level-headed. He loved life. We asked questions of the church at the time, but we got nowhere. I knew I should have pushed for answers,” she added, shaking her head angrily. “But you know, after a while you just run out of steam and you give up, but the regret lives on.
“So,” she said, looking squarely at Ailsa, “are you saying that his partner at the time, was the woman, your mother, who tragically died?”
“Correct!”
“I’m tempted to believe you…but it’s been such a while.”
“Close to thirty years?”
The question made Sara stop. “It IS almost that.”
“My mother was carrying me when he died.”
All around them the air was filled with the incessant noise and busyness typical of popular coffee shops, but between the two women was a strong, reflective silence, neither with any idea as to how to proceed.
But eventually Sara spoke.
“I can see so many similarities, in you,” she said quietly. “You have similar eyes, his curly wild hair, even the way you hold your head, just slightly to the side when you’re listening to me…and your height. He was tall, and as I said before, you could easily be my daughter…it makes your story plausible. Do your pinkie fingers refuse to straighten by any chance?” It was a silly question she immediately realized.
“They do…look! My pinkies are as unruly as my curls,” she said uncertainly, “I can straighten them on the table, but like a curl, they spring back into their comfort zone. At one stage my mother took me to the doctor to see if something was wrong.”
“It’s a family trait, I’m afraid.”
“BUT this seems all too easy. YOU bump into a man with the surname O’Grady, in rural France, of all places, who tells you about my pathetic message on Facebook back in Australia, and in such a short space of time, here we are. It’s very hard to take in.”
“And it so easily might not have happened…a few glasses of wine and out it came…from a man called O’Grady, and I could have tossed the idea of contacting you aside as too much of a coincidence. I almost didn’t follow through, to be honest, but something, including pressure from my husband Richard, coerced me to just check it out.”
“I’m almost embarrassed to admit my use of Facebook.”
“Desperation makes people do crazy things.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“Obviously I need to talk with my family, and I would like to hear the recording. There’s also so much I need to think about. Can you give me a few days Ailsa? I need to talk with Richard, and maybe my mother. She’s never completely healed since Alistair and Dad died, but she’s strong. Let me think about that one.”
The two women hugged, and wordlessly exited the shop.