Barefoot Over Stones

by Liz Lyons

  ‘I think if you want to see Dr Abernethy again you will have to take yourself off to the surgery. We have very little to offer him here.’

  Colm tried to concentrate on his work after Dan had left but it was impossible for him to direct his mind elsewhere. He popped off an email to Ciara, as casually as he could manage, asking for Leda’s details. He made it clear that he didn’t intend to contact her but the family GP had advised him that it would be prudent to have Tom’s mother’s contact details in case of a medical emergency. He didn’t feel a shred of loyalty to Leda as he gave the false reason for his request. Leda had long ago shown that she could look after herself. As he pressed send he wondered if Ciara’s reluctance to visit them in Caharoe was linked to her knowing the Abernethys. Ever since they had moved to Cork Ciara had pleaded that work commitments in London prevented her from making a visit, and so he and Tom met her in Dublin for day-long visits after which she flew home and they moved on to spend the night with his mother in Grosvenor Gardens. He waited for a response for a few minutes and it came, as Ciara was never far from her laptop.

  Hi Colm,

  It’s 28 Seabury Crescent, Sandymount, Dublin 4. Apparently she has found the man of her dreams, a stockbroker (rich of course). Bob Cantwell I think his name is. Engaged. Wedding to follow in Mauritius by all accounts. Anyway it looks as if Sis has landed on her feet again, as usual.

  Love to Tom, will ring on Fri as normal,

  C

  PS. How useful do you think Leda would actually be in a medical emergency?!!

  Needing to clear his head he rang Mrs Timmons, Tom’s childminder, to tell her that he would pick Tom up at the school gate at 2 p.m. and drop him home to her at Lantern Lodge. Distraction, in the person of his five-year-old whirlwind of a son, was exactly what he needed to keep the morning’s events from preoccupying him solely for the rest of the day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - THREE

  DUBLIN 1999

  ‘It’s a boy. Good God, he is tiny.’ Colm Lifford was beaming, overjoyed and terrified he was going to cry and make a fool of himself. He thought his heart was going to break open. Leda was lying there stunned and not saying anything at all. ‘You did great, pet, absolutely brilliant. I am so proud of you! Wait until you get a proper look at him, he is amazing.’ Colm was gushing. He could not help it. He followed the midwife to the resuscitation area at the side of the delivery room. He watched entranced as his little son was checked, weighed and wrapped in a hospital blanket that had swaddled thousands of other babies in their first minutes.

  ‘Six pounds and seven ounces. That’s a grand healthy weight,’ the midwife said as she plonked the screaming purple baby on Leda’s chest.

  Leda was exhausted, barely able to focus on the little sparrow-like creature that had somehow attached himself to her. The room began to shudder around her, the bright lights swimming towards her and then away, making her dizzy. The huge metal light fitting over the bed seemed as if it was going to plunge down on top of her. She thought she might pass out or vomit or both. Colm was gazing at her and the baby. She felt his eyes upon her, upon them both, but she did not dare to take them on. She looked straight ahead at the clock on the wall opposite the bed. Quarter past five. Dawn was breaking for the second time without any rest. Not to mention the last six weeks of broken sleep as she rolled her alien, misshapen body around the bed in futile attempts at rest. No wonder I feel like crap, she thought. A day and most of a night filled with instructions, warm and good-natured, but instructions nonetheless: ‘Walk it out . . . Change position . . . Try the gas . . . Don’t push. Not yet . . . Not until I say so . . . Push now . . . Harder, Leda . . . Push harder . . .’

  The midwives had been lovely to them since the first moment they had arrived, breathless, distressed and terrified. Leda was suffocated by a rising panic, an absolutely ridiculous urge to run away. Colm held her hand tightly as if he sensed that she would rather be anywhere else in the world than in the place she would finally meet her baby. It gripped her now again as the unfurling baby lodged on her chest gave voice to another piercing wail. She needed to be alone, badly. She wanted to wash and sleep in darkness and silence. Alone. No Colm. No baby. Leda looked at Polly, the kindest of the midwives, silently begging for her assistance.

  Polly perched herself next to Leda on the bed and whispered in soft tones to the baby, trying to calm him down. She often witnessed this, a new mother so overwhelmed by a difficult birth, so shocked by the pain and the intensity of the experience that she was at a loss to respond to her new baby’s needs. She nodded to Colm to sit down. When Leda stole a look at him she saw pure delight in all his features. He was thrilled and it showed. She turned to the midwife before he could see that her expression was vacant and wanting. Colm was oblivious. The ocean in front of him was pure and clear and he had dived straight in.

  ‘Do you want me to help you latch him on? It’s a good idea to get this first feed in more or less immediately,’ Polly offered as helpfully as she could. Leda didn’t answer and Polly took her silence as acquiescence and began to manipulate her breast into the baby’s mouth. The baby tugged at her nipple, attempting to feed. It didn’t feel anything like Leda had expected. She didn’t flood with emotion as the book that Colm had bought said she might. She didn’t feel like herself any more. She was rooted to the spot against her will. The need to flee burned itself inside her while simultaneously she reconciled herself to staying put.

  Colm raced from the Reilly & Maitland offices on Baggot Street as soon as he could the next evening. The last meeting had dragged on despite his best efforts to wrap it up early. The client was notoriously long-winded and Colm had been fit to strangle him as each convoluted and superfluous point was made. He didn’t tell him that he had a baby son and girlfriend to see in the Rotunda because he didn’t want to spoil the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him by sharing it with this windbag.

  When he finally ushered the client out of the office at quarter to six he paused only to grab his brief bag and lock up the office door. It was pointless hailing a taxi. With the traffic at this hour of the evening he would be quicker walking. He sprinted for a while but then, as he picked up flowers for Leda, a little bear from a newsagent’s on Westmoreland Street for the baby and some of Leda’s favourite chocolate bars, he slowed down, enjoying the gentle stroll of anticipation. Buses roared over O’Connell Bridge, belching their fumes and noise into the air of a remarkably still and gentle October evening. Colm fell into the swell of people waiting for the pedestrian lights to change at Aston Quay. The rhythm of the crowd suited his mood, the noise, the jostling for better position, the rustle of bags and bodies united by the inexorable pull of home. He covered the last steps of the journey to the Rotunda infused with a settling sense of belonging.

  Leda, the pregnancy that she had concealed for so long, and now the baby had all been such a huge shock to his well-ordered and planned life. Since he had left college everything had been about building a career, getting on in life and eventually making a success of his own practice. He would not and could not live in the shadow of his father’s business ruin for ever.

  ‘Keep your head high, Colm. Head high,’ had been his mother’s mantra when Patrick Lifford’s hastily built and shoddily run business empire imploded in disgrace in the late eighties. It had all been bluster. Massive deals in the pipeline that had never even been close to being pulled off. Grandiose development plans that looked incredibly impressive on paper in times when everything was decidedly lacklustre but never amounted to anything. Patrick Lifford had charm, brass neck and a barrowful of guts. What he didn’t have when it all blew up in his face was a penny of his investors’ money. It had all gone on entertaining other potential investors and creating the image of a wealthy property developer on the up. When the house was searched for incriminating papers that would detail secret money trails only cheque stubs and bills were found. There was no secret stash salted away and no assets to confiscate except the house the family
had moved to a few months previously.

  Colm’s memory of his mother’s face as her home was raided came back to him as he reached the doors of the Rotunda. Ashen and subdued, she had fought back tears, railing at the impending disaster with every shred of her being but managing only a silent protest. She did not look to her husband for explanation or for protection from the nightmare. Colm had tried to catch his father’s eye but to no avail. Skulking by the elegant marble fireplace, puffing on a huge cigar, Patrick Lifford looked brazen and unbowed by the early-morning invasion. He oozed disdain for the legal process that was gathering its preliminary evidence in his family’s home. Colm thought much later that his father had surely known for weeks that his game of toss and shuffle with other people’s money was coming to an end. Maybe he thought they would be able to keep the house because surely no judge would be so cruel as to toss the deserted wife and dependent son on to the street when it was obvious that she was not complicit in her husband’s dishonest business dealings. Perhaps he didn’t think of his family at all before he filled his suit pockets with stones and walked into the sea, leaving them both for good.

  Colm’s own chance at fatherhood was coming absolutely out of the blue. It wouldn’t take much effort to outshine Patrick Lifford’s paternal record and he willed himself to do better for his son, to be present always, whatever that might entail.

  Colm took the three flights of stairs as a gaggle of people had congregated outside the lifts and he wanted to see Leda and the baby as soon as he could. He had been thinking of names. He had made a list to show Leda. They should call him something soon, shouldn’t they? He would have to be registered. So much to do, so much to sort out, but even that thought added to rather than detracted from his happiness.

  Polly was at the nurse’s station when he got to the second floor out of breath from the sprint up the stairs. She was cradling an infant in the crook of her neck while she looked through a patient file with her free hand. She smiled. ‘Here’s Daddy now.’ Colm had pictured his son several times during the day either lying in one of the clear plastic cribs by Leda’s bed or wrapped in her arms. Somehow it didn’t feel right that he was less than two days old and he was already in the care of a stranger – capable as that stranger undoubtedly was.

  ‘Where’s Leda?’ Colm asked, more than a little panicked.

  ‘Leda is just a bit overwhelmed. Exhausted really, I suppose, and she was sleeping through today when this little chap was crying so we thought it best to give her a little time to get some energy back. We will just bring him to her when he needs to feed. Luckily enough the wards are quiet tonight. It seems the stork is taking a little bit of a kip so we can have him up here with us.’

  ‘Well, now that I am here can I take him for a while?’

  ‘Absolutely. We were hoping that you would come in tonight but Leda said you were in court all day and could not be contacted.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. I have no court duties this week. She knows that and she knows my mobile number. I could have been here hours ago. I could have arranged things, cancelled appointments or got them covered by one of the others . . .’ His voice trailed off in exasperation.

  Polly smiled. It seemed daft that Leda would not want to talk to her boyfriend the day after she had given birth to their child. All the older midwives were fond of saying that no two babies were the same. They would repeat it ad nauseam to explain anything that happened in the labour ward. Polly was beginning to think that the babies weren’t generally the problem but some of the mothers were a rare bunch indeed.

  ‘Well, maybe Leda got confused,’ Polly said, although she doubted that she sounded any more convinced than she felt. He has landed himself a cold fish, she thought as she watched Colm deposit his belongings on the tubular chair across from the nurses’ station. The flowers, teddy bear and the massive bars of chocolate, the stock deliveries of the new father, lay with the brief bag in an abandoned heap.

  Polly expertly handed her tiny charge to a petrified Colm. He had never held a newborn. Dear God, don’t drop him, he counselled himself, but the little bundle appeared to welcome yet another warm-as-toast body to cling to. He snuggled, yawned and settled into the deep natural pillow of flesh on Colm’s chest. His father’s amateur skills didn’t stop him burrowing for comfort. His initial panic laid to rest, Colm flashed a smile of gratitude to Polly.

  ‘We moved Leda into room three to get her off the ward. You can pop your head around the door; if she is awake she might be glad of the company.’

  ‘I think I will let her sleep for the moment. In fairness, I’m tired too, and all I did was watch her giving birth.’

  ‘Well, his crib is here behind me,’ Polly said, motioning to the ad hoc nursery in the rear office of the nurses’ station. ‘He should need feeding in about two hours.’

  ‘How will I know?’ Colm’s panic started to rise again.

  ‘Oh, you’ll know! He might be the size of a stray kitten but his lungs will put a lion to shame when he wants grub.’

  Colm relaxed again, confident that he could keep his baby alive and happy until the next feed. Polly watched his solid frame covering the length of the second floor in relaxed strides with his small bundle of a son tucked cosily against him. She saw all types of men in this job but she would be happier if more of them looked like Colm Lifford. He was tall and broad without being too brawny. He looked good in a shirt and tie but Polly thought he would look even better in casual clothes. His dark hair was cut short and his strong features were softened by a smile that lit his entire face. There was something definitely wrong with the girl in room three if she couldn’t appreciate the gorgeous man she had landed herself, Polly thought. She managed one more appreciative glance before the ward sister arrived back to the nurses’ station intending to stamp out any idle tendencies in her staff.

  Colm noticed the other fathers coming and going as visiting hours proceeded, arriving to mothers sleeping alongside, watching or feeding their babies. Older children whooshed up and down the wards carrying balloons, ecstatic at the long-awaited arrival of a new sibling. He paused outside Leda’s room as if he was about to go in. The lights off within and the lack of any obvious sign of life gave him second thoughts and he continued his patrol down the overheated corridor.

  Polly opened Leda Clancy’s file. Day two was ordinarily too early to start thinking about postnatal depression. The expected baby blues, experienced by the vast majority of first mothers as pregnancy hormones crashed out of the system, had yet to play out. Polly overcame her residual reticence and noted on the file that the young mother may well require special attention. She didn’t mention postnatal depression but any of the medical staff on the ward would know what she was alluding to. She had seen many mothers scouring the charts hanging from the foot of their beds to see what the doctors and midwives had said about them, their delivery and their babies. Better be safe than sorry, she thought as she closed the file and headed to the canteen for coffee and chips and a swift fag at the back door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - FOUR

  ‘I was thinking of Thomas, Tom. Tommy even? What do you think, Leda?’

  ‘Haven’t really thought. You choose, Colm. He’s yours. You choose.’

  ‘For God’s sake, he’s yours too; you had him, remember? I just thought Tom is a good solid man’s man sort of a name. He’s not going to be Patrick anyway, that’s for sure. What about your Dad, Leda?’ Colm enquired, although he secretly wished that this little boy could start with a new name, nothing begged or stolen from the past.

  If Leda heard his enquiry about her father’s name she made no attempt to answer. Instead she said: ‘Tom is grand. Yeah, Tom Lifford sounds about right.’ She might as well have been naming a stray dog, but Colm’s interest in little Tom was spilling out of him. Its abundance made up for the want in Leda’s reaction. He was chuffed that the surname was not going to be an issue. It’s not as if they had had a chance to discuss the details since she’d dropped the time bomb of
the pregnancy just weeks before.

  Colm had brought their little boy to room three when he started to squall for his feed, just as Polly had said he would. He knocked first and then thought how ridiculous that was. The baby was hungry; Leda would have to wake up.

  Listless. That was the word he used afterwards when anyone asked him how Leda had seemed. He knew what they were doing, of course, asking him to point out for them the clues that he had so blatantly missed. The truth was that Leda’s interest in her pregnancy had been minimal to begin with. Colm thought she was so relaxed with the idea because she had lived with the knowledge for seven months before she told him and so had done all the thinking, agonizing and deciding before she saw fit to let him in on the secret. The trip to visit her sister in Spain made sense in retrospect. He thought he had been given the brush-off and wasn’t particularly upset: even though he had found Leda attractive and had enjoyed their short relationship he’d never seen her as a permanent fixture in his life. She just hadn’t seemed interested in anything long term in all the months he had known her: reluctant even to commit to a concert or dinner date that was anything more than days away. So he was taken aback when his apartment intercom had sounded about six weeks before and he’d heard her voice; and even more shocked when her appearance at his front door revealed an unmistakeable roundness and fullness where before had been the slenderest of waists.

  The prospect of a baby had changed everything. He didn’t have to think: of course he would do the right thing; Leda would have every kind of support that she needed. He thought they might even make the relationship work. A child was bound to bring them together, wasn’t it? He never doubted he was the father of the baby she was carrying. Even though it was a thunderbolt, totally unexpected, somehow the shape of the story seemed to fit something that was missing inside him. How long had she known? Why hadn’t she told him before now? The questions kept coming, but Leda soon realized they were not fuelled by any sort of recrimination but an appetite for detail that she sated with as many plausible answers as possible. Her older sister Ciara had lived in a small town close to Barcelona for a few years. She had gone to teach English the summer she finished her degree in Trinity and had never come home for long since then.