by Elske Rahill
What a ridiculous child Cara was, and a ridiculous adolescent; an embarrassment to herself but too stupid to see it. From what Aoife knows of her she’s still a smug little madam – anti-consumer and organic and all that. AKA grubby. Delighted with her silly children’s books. Delighted to use Daddy’s surname to get ahead, though she’s no right to it.
*
This corkscrew is an amazing thing – she ordered it online, number one in that list of ‘Top 20 Gadgets’ in Real Homes. It pops the cork out in a moment, with no risk of splitting or crumbling. She opens a Mercurey from 2010 – a good year.
She’ll leave the wine a while; let it breathe. Maybe she and Brendan will have a nice lunch together, and share the bottle. But he’ll be disappointed about Valerie. He will feel he has come home from golf for nothing.
She was going to just hand Mammy the bag today as she left, Of course I got the shopping like you asked me why wouldn’t I?
It’s her mother’s sigh that hurts – weary, as though Aoife is the problem, and not those girls. Just because Aoife thought her mother should look after herself instead of raising kids all over again. The three of them were sent to boarding school – she and Sinéad and Eileen – but not the Ladies Muck. Why? That dismissive shrug Mammy gives. You’re a funny one. Her mammy, always just out of reach, disentangling herself from Aoife as though their relationship is an arbitrary misfortune. Oh my Feefs. Where did I get you from?
From her – that’s where Aoife came from, the hot, bloody inside places of her Mammy’s body. Does Mammy forget that?
Who was it at Mammy’s door?
No, Davitt would call Aoife if there was something up. Brendan had a good talk with him. He’d know better than to go behind their backs again.
Brendan will be disappointed to come home to only her, and Daria still here doing the cleaning.
Aoife’s not even hungry now.
She’ll leave a note and an envelope for Daria and a sandwich for Brendan – he’ll be late anyway; he’s always late back from golf. She’ll text him, tell him not to rush. Lunch is off.
She’ll drive to Dublin now with the silly little knickers for the stupid little bitches and she’ll catch Mammy minding the Golden Child, or whatever she’s doing and she’ll give her a piece of her mind about the terrible injustice of her trying to mess with Daddy’s will – that’s the word she will use, injustice. That will get Mammy thinking twice about interfering with her inheritance, giving everything to the young Ladies Muck while her daddy turns in his grave.
18
‘CARA, I HAVE TO whisper, I’m in the library.’
‘Go outside.’
‘No, I am – I did – like, I’m in the toilet lobby place but I have to whisper. Listen, I’m way behind with this reading – any chance you’d collect Jem? I found a perfect book here, actually – remind me to tell you about it. You know my dissertation idea for next year?’
‘No, but listen, Freya, I’m working. What time do you need him collected?’
‘I told you about it, Cara – Women who perpetuate patriarchy. It’s about patriarchal laws relying on women’s participation. There’s a book here on patriarchy and property… it’s perfect but I’m not allowed to take it out. There’s a huge queue for the photocopier, so I’m going to—’
‘Freya, what time do you want him collected? I’ve literally just sat down to work. I’ve just made myself a coffee and I’m about to start…’
‘Twelve.’
‘Twelve?’
‘It’s twelve on a Wednesday.’
‘Oh yeah. Fine. Okay. I’ve to get Megan too, I’ll just get her early…’
‘Thank you, thank you.’
*
Cara shouldn’t have picked up. She leans back in her chair and cocks her head at her drawings. She hates them.
She plucks a sugar crystal out of the cork jug and drops it into her cup, careful not to cause a splash. She’ll have her coffee at least. She runs her hand over the weird little jug. She puts it to her lips. The cork covering is uneven and warmish, like something alive.
Each piece is a wound – her grandfather told her that. Cork is made by slicing into the bark again and again, and harvesting the scab that the tree makes. He ran his fingers over the pocked swatches, tracing the seams with his thumb. Do you understand why that is beautiful? Cara didn’t understand at all, but she nodded. She must have been only a teenager then, and it was frightening; the way he looked so hard at her, the slight tremble in his eyelids.
She pulls a sheet over her preparatory scribbles – she wasn’t making much progress anyway, no character at all to Crafty the Rainy Day Duck. The park will do her good. She can study the ducks.
*
Jem sits in the back, his fine, dry hands neat in his lap, a dull- skinned yellow apple untouched on the seat beside him. ‘Em, Aunty Cara, where’s my mammy?’
‘She’s in college, Jem. She’s doing some work. She’ll come and get you soon. We’ll collect Baby Peggy and Denise and we’ll go to the park, won’t that be fun?’
‘What work is she doing?’
‘I don’t know – college work.’
‘Where’s Mimi?’
‘I don’t know, love, probably getting her hair done or something. No – lunch. She told me she might go to my Aunty Aoife’s house for lunch. Come on now, eat your apple. Megan, are you eating your apple, Megan-my-baby?’
In the rear-view mirror, Megan nods, the apple covering her nose and mouth. Megan’s eyes are eerily pale sometimes, like fog, or the air after rainfall. With effort, she pulls the apple away from her face, leaving a large, frothy chunk in her mouth. She chews and, her mouth still full, says, ‘nice apple, Mammy.’
‘That’s good, my loveliness. Right, you two stay in the car – Jem you’re a big boy so you’re in charge, okay? Beep the horn if there’s a problem – ONLY if there’s a problem, okay? I won’t be long, I’m just getting Baby Peig.’
Jem nods earnestly. ‘I’ll hold Megan’s hand.’ Megan lets out a shriek as he clutches her.
‘No, it’s okay, Jem, let go of Megan – you don’t have to hold Megan’s hand. You just sit nicely now and eat your apple and if there’s a problem beep the horn, but there won’t be a problem so just sit nicely, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay, Megan?’
‘Otay.’
*
The new baby-room assistant opens the door only a crack.
‘Peig’s mum,’ says Cara, ‘sorry I’m late.’ She rolls her eyes as though her lateness is a naughty child that they both know only too well and before she can stop herself, she has pushed into the hallway. ‘Em… I’ve got the other kids in the car so…’
She has left them eating apples, of all things; apples that they could so easily choke on; apples proverbially used for killing pretty daughters…
The new assistant closes the door after her and they are left standing too close in the small space. Cara is too loud and big for the little porch and the thin girl in the pink gingham overalls. The assistant’s face looks uncooked; vague features and very fair, blotched skin. Everything about her delicate body and her thin voice is so frail that Cara feels her own brashness like an insult. She takes a stray lock that has swung down in front of her face, twists it firmly and tucks it under the hair-slide above her ear. ‘Poor baby, I meant to get her earlier. I got caught up… I had to collect my nephew.’
The baby-room assistant shrugs, yawns quietly into her shoulder, and gestures at the clock on the wall of the reception booth. ‘It’s not even half twelve…’ She fetches a clipboard from the office and writes the time on Peig’s sheet. Cara signs her name.
Cara takes the baby’s tiny jacket and nappy bag from her personalised hook (her name – Peig – with a penguin making the P). Baby Peig only goes to creche part-time – eight to twelve, usually – but because of Cara’s new commission they registered for flexi-hours this month, just in case. That was a mistake. Cara never gets much work done durin
g the day, flexi-hours or otherwise, but she still ends up leaving Peig for longer when there’s a choice. Wouldn’t you be ashamed, Grandma would say, and Cara not even bringing in minimum wage.
The baby room is cordoned off by a waist-high gate with a lock code. There’s Peig! There, in the middle of the big bright play mat. She’s as dark as Megan. Her short, silky hair sweeps in so many different directions that she looks like a frantically licked kitten. The mat is composed of different coloured squares arranged one after the other in maddening repetition. The tones are offensively primary; an abstract blue, a flat red, a crazy pure yellow – the colours of computer screens or laboratories; too eerily monotone to exist in nature. There are nine across; red, blue, yellow, red, blue, yellow… and twelve down. The next row starts with blue: blue, yellow, red; blue, yellow, red… and so on. This makes diagonals of each colour run across the mat, and they are so bright that they seem to lift away from one another and swagger in turn above the floor. Baby Peig is sitting on this mat and trying to thread the laces on a big pair of cardboard shoes. Cara watches her; wet baby lips too plump to purse, frown so low the brows meet her thick lashes – and she feels a sudden shot of outrage, as the minders fuss about helping other children with their tasks. Do they not notice the absurd beauty of little Peig? Sitting there with her earnest self-importance, the little paunch on her and the chubby hands trying to fiddle the laces into the holes.
There is a stuffed baby bear in the Natural History Museum. It sits like that with a round back and its legs curved around itself. In the morning, she will draw a little bear like that, a beautiful little Peig-bear, frowning at some task, a pink bear-tongue straining out of its muzzle with the effort of rooting honey from a hive. She won’t worry about finding a book to put the bear in. It will be just a picture. She will make it a pen drawing with a light watercolour wash on the tongue and the pads of its feet. She will write ‘Peig Bear’ beneath it and put it in a little frame on the wall, and as Peig grows up she will look at the picture and she will always know how loved she is. Cara hopes she remembers to do that. She hopes she’ll have the time.
The baby has seen her – her face shifts immediately into a grimace, and she begins a dry, comical cry, her whole mouth drawn down and open and her arms floppy in her lap, but she has been caught enjoying herself at creche and she knows it. She drops the shoes and, without leaving her spot on the floor, she stretches her paws up and grasps the air: ‘Mam Mam Mam Mam…’
‘Now Peig,’ says one of the minders, ‘we have to put the shoes away don’t we?’
Peig wraps her arms loosely across her chest – her impression of arm-crossing. ‘No,’ she says, and points at Cara. ‘Mam.’
She is a brat, her youngest little baby girl. She is a stubborn obstreperous little menace. Fat despot is what Pat calls her, fondly, as though pleased with himself for spawning such mayhem. Our fat despot. But Peig will be fine, she’ll be fine out in the world. Oh, look at her, raising herself reluctantly off the play mat and her funny stride, shoulders dropped into an arrogant slouch, limbs swinging apelike as she waddles over to the shelves with the minder to put the shoes away. Afterwards she cannot accept that she has done as she was told, so she frowns and puts her lovely fat fists on her unformed hips, shakes her head and pouts. ‘No.’
Cara laughs, but Lisa, the toddler-room leader, does not.
‘Peig,’ says Lisa, squatting down beside her, ‘would you like to say bye-bye to your friends?’
‘No.’
‘Let’s say bye-bye to your friends and then we will go and say hello to Mummy.’
After a pause, Peig nods, ‘Yep,’ and poddles over to a cluster of toddlers, ‘Bay Bay!’ and then her grin and that funny little fingery wave. Where did they get her from? She turns at last towards Cara, feet out-turned and her arms tucked up like wings. She is stealing something from the creche and trying to conceal it in one of her hands.
Cara will make it a duck in a mac for the Rainy Day Book; a little white duck in a yellow mac with a round, messy, feathery tummy. No, a red mac. Because the feet and the beak will be yellow. A blue mac, in fact, and red boots, and the duck will use its wings like hands and fiddle with pipe cleaners and craft tacks and get feathers stuck in the spilled glue. Yes, she can make the Rainy Day Book work.
There is a sign asking parents not to reach over the barrier for their children, to wait until a team member brings them out. Baby Peig is her lovely fat despot and Cara will pick her up when she wants to. She reaches over the barrier and then the child is clamped to her – all four of her limbs clinging fast and her head in Cara’s neck. ‘Mam Mam Mam,’ says Peig, tapping her mother’s back, ‘Mam.’ Cara breathes in the smell of the child; her coconutty sweat, her grubbiness. Though it’s over a year since she gave birth, Cara’s body still misses Peig; it is like breathing again to have her whole little body on her chest. She smells the back of her neck – dirt, the waft of teenage girl’s perfume, but still the smell of Peig under it, and the milk drops in her breasts.
‘Let’s go get Den my little Peggy baby… Give the tractor back to Lisa. You can play with it tomorrow…’
*
Strapped into her car seat, Peig starts to complain that she is hungry, touching her mouth and saying, ‘Am. Am.’
‘Here, Megan, can you hold the bag of baby rice cakes? Give one to Baby Peig and when she’s finished give her another if she wants it.’
‘Can I give one, Aunty Cara?’
‘Yes, Jem, sorry love, yes – let Jem give the next one, Megan…’
As she releases the handbrake, Cara sees a silver four-by-four swing into the spot opposite them and she lowers her head, pretending to search for something on the passenger seat. She is relieved to have collected her baby before the other mothers collect theirs.
‘Dool’ says Peig from the back, ‘Doool’; by which she means ‘Jolene’, by which she means Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits. Cara obeys, nudging the cassette until the slot sucks it in and the thinning tape turns. She sings along – so does Megan and so does Baby Peig, her head back, the little fingers stretching taut in the effort and her voice open and as loud as she can make it, ‘Dool… e, Dool… e, Dooleeeeeeeee,’ and Cara loves her girls – she loves them loves them loves them, these lovely, ridiculous, weird little miracle creatures. A thread of guilt snags in her chest when she sees Jem in the mirror, his hands over his ears, big, sad eyes, and his mouth reduced to a little waver.
The traffic is bad, but Cara will take the other route – up the quays and out by Christ Church – and they should still be on time for Denise. Cara doesn’t want her left waiting in the hall. At five, Denise is the youngest in the music class. The other kids are only a year or two older, but they have bracelets made with elastics up their arms and stickers on their violin cases and they play instrumental versions of pop songs and collect and swap some kind of round cards. Cara was never allowed to put stickers on her violin case. She tries to encourage Den to decorate it, but ‘I just don’t want to,’ she says. ‘Why would I Mammy? What if I change my mind and they won’t come off?’
She is very good at the violin, her Denise, but Cara still isn’t sure why she enrolled her in the first place. ‘Well it seemed a waste not to use the violins’ she told Freya, but was that why, really? She loves the violins; the smell of them, the warm, fruity wood, the f curls, the perfect weight of the scroll and the sticky dry summer smell of resin powder. And yet she remembers hating the violin, and that she was bad at it.
*
Her mother had an intercom between her bedroom and the music room, so that she could hear Cara playing while she sat in bed, and when Cara was not good, she used to scream and cry and then Cara could no longer hear whether it was in tune or not. She could hear only her own pulse and all other sounds took on a warped, faraway quality. So she should not cherish her violins like this, she should not want her daughter to play.
Cara should have been musical. When The Lily decided to make a child, she said, she
didn’t just grab anyone off the street. She was careful. She planned. She did her research and she selected Ireland’s most gifted musician, because if she was going to do it, she was going to do it right. She told Cara over and over how she had spent each day of her pregnancy playing classical music to the bump, how Cara had been bounced and sung to at baby music classes from three months, ‘The cost of it…’ At one and a half, Cara was bought a tiny Chinese violin and began lessons, learning the formations before she was allowed to pluck the strings, tapping the beat on the triangle. One and a half. That’s not much older than Peig. The lessons were held twice a week in a big wide hall and each child had a parent with them to help. How long did that go on? Long enough that she can remember it. Cara and her mother were always early and her mother talked to the teacher a lot and flipped her hair and threw her head back and laughed with her big jaw open.