And then he was gone, just like that. Becks sat there and wondered whether it meant anything that he’d kissed her on the forehead rather than on the lips. Did she have panini on her mouth or something? She ran her tongue over her lips and was satisfied that nothing icky was adhering to them, inside or out. So, what was it then? It couldn’t be because he was afraid of Public Displays of Affection. They’d kissed and cuddled way more than that in public places before. Like, a thousand times – it was no biggie these days.
Brooding on it, she got up and left the café, hurrying across the road to the Luas. It was genuinely amazing how many of them sailed blithely away while you were still standing around daydreaming and tapping your bloody Leap card.
It was coming up to six o’clock when Becks let herself into the house in Terenure, her heart pounding and her mouth suddenly dry. She dreaded this time every night, because she never knew what kind of state she’d find her father in. Tonight, it wasn’t good exactly, but it was nowhere near as bad as it could have been either, as it had been on some nights. Stephen Jamieson was slumped in his armchair in front of the telly. Nothing new there. That was where she found him most evenings when she came in from work. They’d have dinner together and then Stephen would go to the pub. The Angelus was on the TV with its distinctive ‘donging’ sound and the News would be on in a minute. Two, three, four, five empties lay scattered on the floor by Stephen’s chair. One can remained out of the six-pack. It was clutched in Stephen’s hand, his elbow resting on the arm of his chair. And this was him supposedly drinking less, since the doctor’s recent diagnosis of certain liver failure if he kept at it hell for leather the way he had been.
“Hi, Dad.” Becks used the tone of false breeziness she tried to adopt with him every night. “How was your day?”
He grunted something unintelligible in return.
“How was work?” Stephen still had his own carpentry business. “Have you had anything to eat?” She prattled on, still doing the bright ‘n’ breezy thing. “I’ve got some nice mince here from the supermarket and some of those taco shells you like. We can have Taco Night again. You like that, don’t you?”
“Not hungry,” he mumbled.
“Well, see how you feel once you smell this delicious mince frying.” She attempted a laugh. To her own ears it sounded hollow, a hollow ghastly thing.
“It’s November the second tomorrow,” he said to her retreating back, as she headed for the kitchen with her bag of shopping.
She froze in her tracks. How could she have forgotten? November the second was the hardest day of the year for them both. She’d been so caught up with worrying about whether or not Barry still loved her that it had pushed November the second out of her head completely. Now she was wracked with guilt.
“Oh, Dad.” She went to sit on the arm of his chair and put her arms around him. “I’m sorry. I forgot! I’ve just had so much on my mind lately . . .”
“It doesn’t matter.” Stephen’s voice was gruff, but he didn’t push her away.
They sat there for a while like that, and then Becks said: “Will you be okay by yourself while I go and make the dinner?”
“Go on, away with you, woman. I’m not a baby.”
Poor, poor Dad, she thought as she unpacked the food and began getting the dinner ready. She felt crippled with guilt for not having remembered. It was the anniversary of the day on which Becks’ bright, vivacious mother, Joanna, had walked out on her husband and five-year-old daughter, Rebecca, for ever. As Becks busied herself at the cooker with the mince and the taco shells and set the table for dinner, her mind wandered back, as it so often did, to what she remembered of that time twenty-three years earlier.
Becks often suspected that her imagination, always vivid and kept active by reading, both for pleasure and in her job (which was also a pleasure), had added some of the details of her memories over the years. Could she really remember how heavy the raindrops had sat that day on the leaves of the trees in the garden, the trees that hadn’t already lost their leaves, that was? The leaves had looked positively bogged down with the weight of the water. The whole garden had been waterlogged after the recent rainfall. It was a dark and gloomy day, perfect for November, and Becks’ mother Joanna, a true child of the sun, would have been depressed and restless all morning as usual if there hadn’t been something special, something different about that particular day. While Stephen had been at work, she’d paced excitedly up and down the long living-room, the one with the big windows that looked out onto the front and back gardens, smoking one cigarette after another. They hadn’t had the summerhouse then, the gorgeous little summerhouse which Stephen, a carpenter with his own business, had built after Joanna had left them. It was too wet to go out in the garden that day anyway.
“It gives me something to do,” he’d said when he was building the little structure and Becks, as young as she’d been, had thought she understood. “Anyway,” he’d added with a catch in his voice, “it’ll be a place where . . . where you can go to remember her, see? Because she loved the sun and being outside in the garden.”
“Will you read me a story, Mummy?” she would have asked her mother on other rainy mornings before the rainy morning of Joanna’s last day in the house in Terenure, the one Becks had lived in nearly her whole life.
“Not now, darling,” Joanna would reply irritably on those other mornings. “Can’t you see that Mummy’s depressed?”
Rebecca had always just sighed sadly at these rejections and gone back to reading her book by herself. What else could she do? Mummy was so often depressed these days, and most of all on rainy days. Rebecca wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that she fought with Daddy such a lot. They’d been fighting more than ever lately. Rebecca wasn’t entirely sure about what, but she did know that Mummy was always telling Daddy how bored she was, stuck in the house on her own with a child while Daddy was off working. Mummy didn’t call it working though, she called it something else – what was it again – ‘swanning around’. And Daddy always retorted by demanding to know how his working all the hours God sent to build up the business was ‘swanning around’, how was it ‘swanning around’ when he had callouses on his hands from working as a carpenter for ten hours a day? They’d had some vicious arguments about that very subject. Mummy would fly at Daddy and flail at him with her little fists and Daddy would try to restrain her by pinning her arms to her sides while repeating “For Christ’s sake, Joanna, think of the child!” at her over and over.
When it became clear that Daddy wasn’t able to take any time off work to ‘entertain’ Mummy, as he put it, that was when five-year-old Rebecca, accustomed to always being quiet and watchful, always trying to gauge her parents’ moods, started to notice that men her mother called ‘Uncles’ would call to the house while her daddy was out at work. The Uncles were nearly always very friendly to Rebecca, giving her a couple of quid (it was pounds back then, not yet euro) to buy sweets or even bringing ones that kids didn’t really like but adults did, like liquorice sticks or cough drops. Rebecca liked it when they brought her chocolates or jellies, and there was one Uncle who even bought her comics – Beanos and Dandys and Buntys and Twinkles.
Rebecca quickly recognised that one of the Uncles, Uncle Victor he was called or Uncle Vic as he preferred, was rapidly becoming more popular than the others. Soon enough it got to the point where he was pretty much the only Uncle calling to the house in Terenure’s Sycamore Drive. He’d call about an hour after her daddy had left for the day, giving Mummy time to have a long luxurious bubble bath and wash her short shiny blonde hair (that Mummy said came out of a little magic squeezy bottle called ‘Radiant Blonde’) and put on make-up. She had such a pretty face. She was always telling Rebecca how lucky she was to have such a pretty mummy, then she’d stroke Rebecca’s face lovingly and say that she, Joanna, was really the lucky one to have a daughter as beautiful as Rebecca. No one had ever been able to make Rebecca beam with sheer happiness the way her mothe
r had.
Uncle Vic would ring the front doorbell in the mornings with his arms full of presents, presents that Joanna would have to hide or tell her husband she’d bought herself out of the housekeeping money – little gifts of flowers, chocolates or baskets of bathroom stuff like bubble bath and mini-shampoos and conditioners, and fancy little soaps shaped like hearts or like tiny bottles of champagne. Mummy always used to laugh and ask Uncle Vic what hotel he’d stolen the bath stuff from this time, and Uncle Vic would take the joke in good part and laugh too. He brought presents for Rebecca as well, who wouldn’t be going to school for another year. (“There’s no rush for stupid old school, is there?” Mummy was always saying. Rebecca sometimes wondered if Mummy was afraid to be left by herself in the house all day. Daddy had protested but he let Mummy have her way as usual.) Vic was the Uncle with the comics, but he also brought toys, like a cuddly teddy bear dressed in blue dungarees with a pair of sunglasses and a little blue pail and spade for the beach (Rebecca had immediately named him Teddy Bucket), and a set of tiny delicate dolls’ furniture. Once he’d brought a Baby Doll so precious and beautifully dressed that Rebecca had loved her on sight. She had never again owned a doll so perfect, a doll she loved more than Baby Audrey.
When the flurry of greetings was over and Mummy and Uncle Vic retired for the day to Mummy and Daddy’s locked bedroom to do private things that caused them to make a lot of funny noises, Rebecca would be left to her own devices for the rest of the day. She’d sit in front of the TV and watch the kids’ cartoon shows, or she’d play with the toys that Uncle Vic had brought. She was allowed to take whatever she wanted to eat or drink out of the fridge. By now, she was able to make herself a sandwich and she would usually just spread strawberry jam on several slices of bread and take them into the big living-room to eat while watching the TV. On the days that Mummy had forgotten to buy jam, Rebecca would eat the bread dry, which wasn’t as nice. On the days when Mummy had forgotten to buy bread, she’d eat a yogurt or an apple. On the days when Mummy had forgotten to buy anything at all, Rebecca would just have to wait till Mummy and Uncle Vic came out of the bedroom to eat anything. Even if her tummy was rumbling so loudly that she could hear it, she wasn’t allowed to interrupt Mummy and Uncle Vic. She was allowed to interrupt them only if Daddy came home early without them knowing about it. Sometimes she wished he would come home early just so that she could get something to eat, but he never did.
Mostly, she curled up in her favourite armchair and read for the day. Mummy had taught her to read almost as soon as she could walk and talk. Mummy said you were never lonely when you had a book. Rebecca was already able to read the books Mummy had read in her childhood, books like What Katy Did, The Wind in the Willows, and Enid Blyton’s animal stories, her fairy stories and her school stories like First Term at Malory Towers and Claudine at St. Clare’s. There was an entire shelf of the actual books Mummy had owned in her childhood in the sitting-room, books she’d taken with her when she’d left home because she couldn’t bear to part with them. Rebecca was particularly entranced by the works of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. Their stories of beautiful princesses, wicked witches and queens, ogres, enchanted castles and magic spells worked their own magic on her. Mummy said that when Rebecca was older, they would read Mummy’s battered old copies of classic novels like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Lorna Doone, books about windswept moors, doomed love affairs and mysteries. “And, of course, one day when you’re older, we’ll read Daphne du Maurier’s famous book about a timid young girl who marries a rich man who owns a fabulous house in the country called Manderley, and he has a dead wife that everyone seems to still love and miss most dreadfully. Oh, if only I could remember her name!” Then Mummy used to tickle Rebecca and Rebecca would giggle and tell Mummy that they both knew perfectly well what the girl’s name was. She still had Mummy’s copy of that book, with the words ‘This book belongs to Joanna Tate’ inscribed on the inside cover in Mummy’s lovely flowing handwriting.
Rebecca had particularly enjoyed the days when she and Mummy would curl up on the couch together, each lost in their own reading adventures. These days Mummy read romances and spy stories, anything with a bit of glamour about it to take her mind off her dreary life, she used to say. Sometimes they’d help themselves from a box of chocolates Uncle Vic had brought, because Mummy said you were never too young to know the joy of combining eating chocolate with reading books.
Often, though, Rebecca would spend her days alone sitting quietly at the front window looking out at the road they lived on. In the mornings, it would mostly be quiet because the adults would all be at work and the kids at school, except of course for Rebecca herself. Things would start to get busy again after lunch when the kids began to come home from school. Rebecca loved watching the people as they scurried past, intent on their own business, their own worries, their own destinations. It made her feel less lonely. She loved it even more when it was raining and people had to put up their umbrellas. Rebecca adored the rain. It had such a friendly pitter-patter sound and it decorated the window-pane with such pretty patterns. It made her feel less alone, somehow. Maybe it was company for her. Mummy hated the rain, saying it depressed her.
“I’m a little sunbeam and you’re a teensy-weensy raindrop,” she would say about their different tastes, making Rebecca giggle.
Once, a horrid social worker had called to the house, saying that she’d had a report about a school-age child being left at home alone every day. Mummy had been magnificent that day, like a lioness fiercely defending her cub. How dared that awful woman in the ill-fitting, drab-coloured suit insinuate such a thing, when she, the child’s mother, was clearly in the house with the child the whole time? And as for why a child of five should be at home in the middle of the day in the first place instead of at school, well, if the woman knew even the first thing about the law of the land, then she’d know that the legal age for starting school was six, and the woman ought to mind her own business and concentrate on looking out for children who were actually being abused or neglected instead of harassing innocent families.
“We have to investigate every report we get,” the woman had said primly as Mummy had ushered her out of the front door, which she then slammed smartly shut behind her.
Mummy had seemed to go crazy with rage once the door had been shut behind the social worker. She screamed and tore at her hair and even threw a few cushions and ornaments across the sitting-room, heaping venomous abuse on the woman’s head the whole time.
“How dare they? How bloody dare they, the fucking busybodies?” she’d muttered as she’d poured herself a big drink from the whiskey bottle that Uncle Vic had brought with him on his last visit. Her hands trembling, she drank the whiskey back in one and immediately poured herself another before lighting a cigarette.
Rebecca was sworn to secrecy about the social worker’s visit. “We can’t tell Daddy about it because it would upset him,” Mummy had said. “He works so hard and he doesn’t deserve to be upset over a silly little thing like this.” And so Rebecca had crossed her heart and hoped to die, as Mummy had requested. That made two secrets that Rebecca was supposed to be keeping from Daddy. The one about the Uncles in general and Uncle Vic in particular (you could nearly say that that was actually two secrets and not just the one), and now the new one about the social worker coming round.
Rebecca loved her daddy and she felt guilty about keeping secrets from him, but she loved her mother more. She adored her mother, with her soft creamy skin and her hands that were always gentle and never hurt (unlike Daddy’s, which were rough and calloused from work, although he couldn’t help it), and her shiny blonde hair and her perfume that always smelled to Rebecca like a garden of beautiful wild roses after the rain. Ironic, maybe, because Mummy loved the sun so much. Rebecca wanted to be like her mummy when she grew up. She wanted to be Mummy, worshipped by all the men who flocked to her shimmering, vivacious brightness like moths to a flame. So she kept her
promises, and Mummy’s secrets.
The last day Rebecca saw her mummy was November the second, 1993. It was raining steadily outside but, for once, Mummy wasn’t depressed. In fact, quite the opposite. There had been a feeling of excitement in the air from the moment Mummy had come into her bedroom that morning and climbed into bed beside her, warming her cold bare feet on Rebecca’s toasty ones. It was a feeling that crackled like electricity in the air and made Mummy’s eyes sparkle and shine and her cheeks flush red. The excitement was catching. Rebecca could feel it transmit itself to her before she even knew what the cause of it all was.
“We’re going on an adventure,” Mummy told her, waiting expectantly for Rebecca’s reaction.
“What kind of an adventure?” Rebecca whispered, her eyes wide.
“With Uncle Vic.” Mummy’s brilliant blue eyes were flashing in anticipation. “You like Uncle Vic, don’t you, sweetheart? He’s always been so kind to you? Well, the three of us are going away together. You, me and Uncle Vic. We’re going to live in Vic’s house. It’s not as big as this one but it’s much nicer, nowhere near as gloomy as this – this old mausoleum, and it’s near the seaside too. We’ll be able to go for long walks on the beach together, the three of us. You’ll love that, won’t you, my little Becky, my sweet precious little Becka-Boo? We can even go swimming if you’d like.”
Rebecca nodded, then she remembered something. “What about Daddy? Is he coming too?”
Her mother hugged her tightly. “Forget about grumpy old Daddy. He’ll be just fine here on his own without us. Better, in fact. All he cares about is his precious work. Now he can concentrate on it round the clock without having to stop to come home to his family. He probably won’t even notice that we’re missing.”
She laughed gaily and Rebecca did too, all caught up in the merriment.
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