Before the Fall

by Orna Ross

  "Oh, Peg..." Máire lay back, weary.

  "Never mind Tipsy. What about Daddy?"

  Máire closed her eyes. "You don't need to worry about that," she said, her voice fading into her exhaustion. "You can leave your father to me."

  * * *

  CASEBOOK: Wexford District Lunatic Asylum for the Insane

  Patient No: 1496:

  October 24th, 1923: Patient Discharged. Not Improved.

  1984

  By the time Jack asks me to leave, I expect it, but still, it seems sudden. It doesn't seem right that we can pass through all the stages and arrive at the end without even a decent quarrel. Heaven knows, I've tried to break through with snarls and insults and drunken diatribes. All he ever says is, "I'm happy to talk about it, Jo, when you're calm."

  When I'm calmer, though, I'm frightened. Fearful of being alone. So I wheedle or joke or outright humiliate myself, begging him to reconsider, making promises we both know I can't keep, even though I know breaking up is right for me as much as him. Jack always does the right thing.

  So we keep going, until the evening he comes home and firmly tells me I have to be gone by the end of the month. The end of the month. His face is set against me, craggy lines around his mouth shutting me out.

  "We haven't tried hard enough," I say. "We haven't talked. We should talk."

  He shakes his head. "Too late," he says. Two words only, as if they are rationed.

  I gabble: "I'll stop drinking, Jack...I know that's the problem. If that's what you want..."

  Again, that shake of his head.

  I throw myself on his mercy. "I have nowhere to go."

  He says nothing, as if he is the one who is helpless.

  I am starting to cry. "I gave up everything for you, you bastard. Where the hell am I supposed to go?"

  "I'm sorry, Jo."

  He doesn't sound it or look it, but underneath my blustering tears, I know he is. His sorrow is an axe, slicing me off.

  I move in with Natalie, who owns a flat in Camden Town, and has a box bedroom she never bothered to fill after her last flatmate moved out. The decor is dire and I keep promising myself I will paint the walls and the cheap melamine furniture, but I can't seem to get round to it. I'm too busy — out a lot — home only in time to cry myself to sleep.

  Crying is what I do now, especially after a few drinks. I tell everybody who will listen that Jack has broken my heart. This half-truth gives me permission to wallow in sorrow, and to try to drown thoughts I don't want to be having. Natalie and I drink in the pub near the flat now, instead of The Rose and Crown. It's handier. We can just walk home instead of having to negotiate the Tube after closing time. And anyway, the old gang has broken up. People have moved on: to relationships, marriages, mortgages.

  Natalie and I have fun in the pub, but at home we bicker, like an old married couple. She is small-minded about money and motives, and not very bright. Often I wonder how I ended up with her. I miss Dee, my old friend from school, and resolve again that I will write to her, a letter that I will finish, all the way to the end of a page, or maybe even two, and put in an envelope, and stamp, and actually send.

  Natalie is also a nag. She ticks me off for not keeping to the housework rota she drew up. The effort of housework is beyond me. I always intend to do it, but when we're not drinking, I wind up sitting in a corner of the couch, or on top of my duvet, staring at nothing, locked inside a struggle. Not moving, but with every coil in my brain contorted and all my muscles straining to keep still.

  When you're slipping, people think you don't know, but you do. For a long time before anyone raises a whispered note of concern to you, or passes a comment across a sea of laughs from others, you've been telling yourself what's wrong, and how to put it right. Giving yourself sensible advice that you don't know how to follow.

  I never drink at home, but I'm not stupid enough to believe that matters. I know what I am. I know I have to stop. And I try, I do try, and sometimes I even succeed. Every day starts with good intentions pressed into place, but many evenings, and sometimes even afternoons, find me again pouring drink down my throat.

  I am a limp drunk now, occasionally boisterous, but mostly weepy and full of self-pity. I can't stand her, this interloper who intrudes into my evening, wet-eyed every time, yet still I feed her. Whisky now, Scotch — never Irish — on the rocks. One night, I wake in bed beside a stranger and have no memory of how I got there. The skin on my chest and back stings and, when I investigate, I find I am covered in scratches.

  My boss calls me in. I have used up all my leave, paid and unpaid, and my sick days, certified and uncertified. I am late three mornings out of five. If I don't improve my performance, he has no choice but to let me go. So what? I say to myself after this rebuke. It's not like I like this low-grade, beneath-me job, but I have no qualifications and so no hope of a better one. It's a dilemma.

  Natalie and I take to the pub to try to solve it.

  At some stage in the evening, she goes home, but I go on to a club. Somebody puts me into a taxi at the end of the night. Staggering up the steps to our front door, I trip and burst my lip. Next morning, I arrive late to work again.

  I am shuddering a coffee cup to my broken mouth when the boss calls me to his office, makes me sign a form. My final warning.

  "Do yourself a favour," he says. "Get a grip."

  He is right, I know he is right.

  Get a grip. Stop.

  I stop.

  I'm in Natalie's kitchen, crouching on the floor, unable to move. Darkness is fondling the windowpane, which means it's late, but I have no idea how long I have sat here like this. In my right hand, I hold a kettle, full of cold water, but I have no memory of filling it. My arm hurts from holding on, but I can't let it go. My hand, my arm, everything is jammed. My body has wound down, like a clockwork toy, while my mind has gone into overspin, spewing up thought after self-lacerating thought.

  I am held captive, paralysed by the parade of taunts that come swooping in, cascading one over the other to flay me. Then, somebody speaks to me from behind, over near the door.

  Do it, she says.

  Fear creeps along my skin. I know that voice and I know she can't be here. She's in Ireland and she wouldn't come here, and if she did she wouldn't speak those words, not out loud. Did I imagine it? It doesn't seem so. It sounds like she is in the room behind me, her voice real and solid as a voice can be. Do it, she says again.

  On the table above me is the bread knife, with its row of shiny, sharp-toothed smiles all along the blade. It doesn't hurt: slash, slash the serrated edge once, twice, across the skin, faster than thought. Two burning flashes, then the thoughts fade to silky black whispers...It doesn't even hurt, that's what they say.

  Just do it.

  My hand jerks and opens. Cold water splashing over my jeans breaks the spell. I can move again, though not quickly, not easily. I leave the kettle on the floor where it has fallen, the lid where it has rolled away, the water gliding along the brown linoleum. On my hands and knees, I crawl away. In the bedroom, I close the door behind me, lean against it. The thudding of my heart echoes throughout my body. Even my toes and fingertips throb. I am so frightened.

  I have to go: that is what I realise. If I don't get away, the voice will move in. She will feel entitled, invited by default. I have to go, and I have to go now before Natalie comes back, before I am back into the everyday world where thoughts like these slip down under the surface and pretend they're not there.

  I find the backpack I brought from Jack's house and begin to fill it. It takes a huge effort, deciding what to bring. I would prefer to just walk out the door with only the clothes I am wearing, but I cannot afford that. I have very little left and am going to need everything that is mine.

  Into the bag they go: clothes, records, books, anything I can fit. When I am packed, I sit down at the kitchen table to write Natalie a note. I'm trying to find words when the key turns in the door. She is home early, but not — I
read by the slackness of her jaw — too early to have had a few drinks.

  "Whatever are you doing?" Her wide, inebriated eyes take in my rucksack, the other bags, my duvet and pillows rolled into a black sack. "What's going on?"

  I put down the pen. "I have to go."

  "Go? What are you talking about? Go where?"

  "I have to..." My voice has the shakes. "I —"

  "What about money for bills, and for rent while I find someone else? Were you going without paying?"

  "Natalie —"Aghast, I realise I can't speak. If I do, I'll break.

  "Where are you going?"

  I shrug. I cannot look at her drunken face, and her swollen, fluid eyes. I crumple up the sheet of paper I have been writing on.

  "You're a bit down," she says. "Are you? Is that it?"

  I pick up my bags.

  "You could have told me, you know. You should have. Sneaking off like this..."

  She doesn't get it. She hasn't a clue, about anything. The weakest part of her and the weakest part of me, that's where we connect.

  "You should leave here too," I tell her.

  "What are you talking about?" Her voice squeaks.

  The doorbell rings. "That's my taxi."

  "You can cancel it, Jo. We'll call it again in the morning if you still want to go then."

  I shift my backpack up onto my shoulder, hug the big plastic bag to my chest so I can barely see over it.

  "Jo. Please..."

  "I can't stay, Natalie. I don't know how." I turn away and she follows, picking up my other bag and walking behind me to the hall door.

  It's raining. I hand one bag to the driver, then the other. Bending my head to the weather, I run down the steps. She follows me out to the gate, insists on hugging me, her skin hot against my cheek. "I don't understand."

  Drips slink down the shiny black rump of the cab and the engine grumbles impatiently. I pull out of her grasp.

  "Ring me," she says, as I'm getting in. "Ring me soon."

  I slump into the seat, dizzy with relief. I'm getting used to leaving, getting to recognise its imperative: shut down; face forward. I'll write to her, I tell myself. As soon as I'm settled, I'll write a long, long, letter, the longest letter ever written, and explain it all. I'll write to Dee as well. And maybe even Maeve.

  The driver asks, "Where to, love?"

  "Heathrow Airport," I say.

  The taxi pulls away from the kerb and I turn to look back, just for a second, but I can't see anything. Already, Natalie and her house have blurred into rain and disappeared.

  1995

  I let myself in by the side door as instructed by Hilde and find myself stopping in the door frame, transfixed by change. The hinged door swings shut behind me with a slap that nudges me inside. Still I stand, bath towel cradled to my chest, looking at what has happened to our home.

  "Well, look at you," I say aloud. The blank, empty rooms echo my voice back to me: "Yoo-oo-oo."

  A hallway with a section cornered off by a tall mahogany desk where guests will check in to the new B&B. A row of open doorways, like empty picture frames, stretches away down the corridor.

  It seems vast, this premises, as I walk through room after empty room, across floor after bare wooden floor. The square-footage of the house has been doubled, but it feels four times as big: the old strangely-angled walls knocked down and re-erected somewhere more logical, the redundant nooks knocked into place. All the walls are naked, plaster-grey. The entire back wall of the building — along the dining room, bar and lounge — is glass, overlooking the sea. From here, I can see my little shed. Its days are numbered: now that the buildings are almost finished, attention will switch to the terraces and the gardens. Soon it will be time to go.

  Which is just as well.

  This is my first time inside the house in daylight, since the roof went on. I wait for a new feeling to hit — nostalgia? regret? — but the house is too changed, a blank canvas that has nothing to do with me.

  My sandals leave footprints in the dust as I walk up the stairs. Tubings of wire protrude from walls and ceilings, awaiting light fittings. Only the bathrooms are completely finished, tiled and plumbed, and that's where I'm headed for a long soak in piping hot water.

  When Hilde came by my shed with lunch today, she found me sitting in my swimsuit at my desk. Yesterday, the small offshore breeze that has been keeping us cool dissolved and the air grew thick and humid. I sat with sweat dribbling from beneath my breasts down my bulging abdomen, hating the heat.

  Hilde laughed. "Poor Jo, always the pregnant women find it difficult, the warm weather." It was then she offered me the bath. Usually I say no to Hilde's offers, but after weeks of washing from a red plastic basin I couldn't resist.

  I find the bathroom at the top of the stairs where she said. She has left out towels for me, and toiletries: soap and shampoo, conditioner and bath oil, perfume and talcum powder. Kindness in a collection of bottles. The room is stuffy. I open one of the windows a little at the top, but no air comes in. Down on the beach, a mother calls her daughter in out of the sea. "Tríona, come on now," she shrieks. "I won't call you again." But she does: "Tríona! Come in, I said. Trí-í-í-íon-a!"

  I turn on the taps and a gush of water drowns her out. Hilde's bath oil smells sweet, like pear juice. Under the torrent from the taps, it bubbles up, a froth of scent. I stand into the water while it's filling and my reflection appears in a big bath-end mirror. It's the first time I've seen myself in two months. I am a new me, brown face and arms and legs, a farmer's tan, and — in between — the big belly, white and round as a giant mushroom. Underneath is my pubic hair, dark and close.

  I face sideways to inspect myself, the miracle of engineering that I now am, front cantilevered out from an improbably flat backside. My breasts, swollen and heavy like overripe fruit, are marbled with veins. With my fingertip, I trace one of the blue coils.

  I slide down in the water, supporting my bump as I go. Heat and scent prickle my skin and draw from me a long, slow, sigh. I fill the bath until the water is level with my scalp line then turn off the taps and lie still in the soft water, so different from the salt sea. Lying quiet, enjoying the cosseting, I notice a quivering at the pit of my stomach (me, not you) and realise that it's been there all day, ever since Hilde suggested this bath, lighting up my insides. An old sensation, from long ago: anticipation. I'm not sure whether I want it or not, but there it is, regardless.

  I can't lie still under it. I sit up, take the sponge and begin to soap my distended body.

  * * *

  He comes up the path, as always, at dusk. It falls earlier now each evening, making our nights together longer. We sit on the rug outside, watching the light leak from a heavy, purple-clouded sky. Tonight, the sea is grey and flat as a floor. Coolanagh seems much closer than usual.

  "A sign of rain," Rory says, when I remark on that.

  "I remember," I say, reciting the old weather forecast: "Coolanagh near is rain, Coolanagh far is fine."

  "And if you can't see it at all, then it's raining already."

  I smile. "It's been so long since we had rain, I find it hard to even imagine."

  The word "it" comes out of my mouth long and drawn, with the 't' soft at the end, so it sounds almost like "sh". My accent is slipping back, I hear it myself, the vowels shortening and flattening, returning to what they were.

  Rory has brought red wine tonight, instead of the usual beer. He tries to persuade me to join him, stopping in the middle of twisting the corkscrew to curve his eyes up to meet mine. I shake my head to the wine, but smile his long, slow, significant smile back at him.

  Yes, we are all significant smiles tonight. Why now? Why "yes" tonight after all the months of "no"? His excitement is mingling with mine, doubling it up, and any feeling I used to have that my "yes" or "no" or "maybe" was the deciding factor has melted away, dissolved by an invisible force older and stronger and far more primeval than either of us.

  The cork slides fr
om the bottleneck with a faint, quiet pop. I pour myself a juice and we lift and clink our glasses together. The air is calm, eerily calm, thick and hard to breathe. The low cloud weighs down on my head and, for a moment, I feel something like fear, but I know it's only atmospheric pressure, pressing on my brain.

  I tell him, "Your hair is getting long."

  "Orla hates it." He imitates her voice: "'Get a haircut, would you?'"

  I don't like him mimicking his wife like that. "I always preferred it long," I say.

  "I know."

  I decide to dispense with the preliminaries and touch his wrist with the flat of my hand. "Do you still want to fuck?"

  He flinches. "Jesus, Jo."

  "What? Do you?"

  "You know I do."

  "Why?"

  "Jesus, such questions."

  "If you can't even say why..."

  He spreads his fingers wide, as if he's helpless. "I seem to have made such a mess of my life, Jo. I think it was because we went so wrong, you and me." The pupils in his eyes are welling wide in the dark. The brown irises have almost disappeared. "You were my first love, Jo. Part of me never got over you."

  I have stopped breathing.

  He goes on: "For so long, I was bitter at you for running away. I used to rehearse in my head the crushing things I'd say when you came back to me. But you never did."

  "But Rory, I —"

  "I know, I know. I see it differently now. Now I spend my time in my head, wondering which particular thing I said, or did, was the one that failed us."

  "It wasn't only your fault," I say after a small silence, able to admit that now he's stopped blaming me.

  "I know that. It was both of us and, hey, I absolve us both. We were too young, it was just the way it was. Just life. Well, now life has brought us back together. You're here and I can't pretend you're not. I want back some of what was taken from us. I know I have no right but —"

  I interrupt him with a kiss. A long kiss, deep and breathless, and by the end of it his hands are up under my T-shirt, palming across clammy skin. I pull away. I want this to be slow and deliberate, nothing pushy or clumsy. I kneel up and pull my T-shirt over my head and fold it, as if we have all the time in the world. My bra is for pregnancy, more harness than lingerie, but I sit back on my heels all the same so he can get a good look at what thirty-nine-and-pregnant looks like. My eyes hold his, trying to pin him to the moment, to what we are doing. It seems a point of honour to reveal myself and I want the same from him.