‘Yeah, no worries.’
‘What’s going on up there? It sounds like an All-Ireland final at Croke Park.’
‘What did you say?’ Cillian couldn’t hear a word. ‘Hang on a minute,’ he told her, ducking into the utility room where there was – mercifully and possibly only momentarily – nobody. He sat on the floor with his back against the door to ensure against intruders.
‘What on earth is happening?’ said Joan.
‘The Bennetts are happening. They’re everywhere.’
‘Were you expecting them?’
‘No. It’s a surprise party.’
‘Oh Jesus, you poor thing.’
‘They’re singing now.’
‘Dear God!’ said Joan who was – ordinarily – unflappable.
The handle of the door jerked up and down. ‘I better go,’ said Cillian, holding the door closed with his back as he pushed himself off the floor with his feet.
There was a herd of children on the other side of the door. They wanted to play hide-and-seek and one of the sisters – Selene or it might have been Susan: it was difficult to make out the names amongst the clattering of their voices – had said they must ask Cillian because it was his house and he was in charge.
Cillian found that amusing.
‘I’ll tell you in the hall,’ he told them, taking their hands and using them as a human shield to run the gauntlet of the kitchen, the danger of the sitting room – where ... it might be Sorcha ... was on the umpteenth verse of an ancient Irish dirge.
Despite their diminutive size and giddiness, they managed to ferry Cillian to the safety of the hall without attracting many obstructions. There was a smell in the hallway, warm and cloying. A mix of the central heating that was belting full blast and the flowers Stella had arranged on the hall table in a vase he did not recognise.
‘Here,’ Cillian said, fishing a handful of euro coins from his pocket and dispensing them into their small outstretched hands.
‘Is this a reward?’ one cherubic boy asked, his blue eyes round and curious.
‘Yes,’ said Cillian and, without further ado, he grabbed his suitcase and hurried up the stairs.
His bedroom was not the sanctuary he had anticipated.
Stella was there. Sitting on the edge of his bed.
‘I hope you don’t mind me hiding up here,’ she said and her voice was small, a little drained.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
She smiled brightly. ‘I’m fine now.’ There was an emphasis on the now. ‘Sometimes I forget how noisy they are when they’re in a confined space.’
Cillian opened the wardrobe door. The empty hangers moved against each other in the draught, producing a melancholy sound.
‘Do you want a hand unpacking?’
‘No. Thank you.’
‘Seriously, it’s not problem I can—’
‘So, how are you feeling? Your infection?’
‘Oh, yeah, fine, a little tired maybe.’
‘And still no sign of your, eh, visitors?’
‘Oh, God, sorry, Cillian. I completely forgot to mention it, with all the organisation for your surprise party.’
‘Mention what?’
‘My visitors. They arrived yesterday.’
Relief poured through him. And euphoria. Was that too strong? No, no, it wasn’t. He sank onto the bed. ‘That’s ... that’s great news,’ he said.
Stella stood up. ‘I’ll get you some food. You must be famished after the drive home.’ She trotted towards the door.
‘Stella, wait, we should talk.’
‘Oh, but they’re all downstairs and you—’
‘Stella, listen—’
‘We can talk all day tomorrow. And the day after that. And the—’
Honesty is the best policy. That was one of Joan’s mantras. Her staff had felt the brunt of her honesty many’s the time.
‘This isn’t working, Stella,’ said Cillian.
She stood there for a moment, not saying anything, not moving. Then, ‘You wouldn’t be saying that if I were pregnant.’ She glared at him.
Downstairs, they were starting in on ‘The Fields of Athenry’.
Cillian shook his head. ‘I would. I’m sorry.’
‘What, you would have abandoned me and my baby?’ Stella put her hands on her hips, glared at him.
‘No, of course not, but ... we want different things,’ said Cillian.
‘I want you.’ She whispered it, began to cry softly. Cillian steeled himself against the sound. ‘We can make it work, you and me,’ she said.
‘No,’ he said, gently but firmly. ‘We can’t. We’d regret it. In the end.’
Stella stopped crying, just like that. Now she was shouting. ‘It’s because of that bloody article, isn’t it?’
‘What article?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. Your ex, the alco, that stupid article in the paper today.’
‘I don’t know anything about it.’
‘Liar!’
Stella wrenched open the bedroom door, stormed out. She paused on the landing long enough to shout, ‘You’re just like Patrick, you selfish prick.’ Downstairs, the Bennetts’ soaring voices – on the last verse now – dribbled away into silence.
Everybody left pretty soon after that.
When they were gone, the house was quiet. Cillian pulled the silence around him like a blanket, sat in an armchair and luxuriated in it, like it was a warm bath. He should feel worse but, for the moment, relief had the upper hand. He made a banana sandwich, washed it down with a mug of tea, then set about clearing away the debris of the Bennetts, flinging the windows open, sweeping the floors, filling the bins. All the while, he thought about the article. The one Stella had mentioned. The one that Martha had written.
What had Stella said? It’s because of that bloody article, isn’t it? What had she meant?
He went into the sitting room, where his laptop was. It took ages to boot up. Much longer than usual. He drummed his fingers against the keypad. Waited for the green light.
Martha’s article was the headline on the cover of the magazine that came with Saturday’s edition of the paper.
My name is Martha Wilder and I am an alcoholic.
And then, in smaller print below, Inside: Martha Wilder writes about regret.
A photograph of her in the corner of the page, sitting cross-legged on the sofa that was too big for her apartment. The one she’d bought anyway. Her hair was caught loosely in a side ponytail that reached almost to her waist. She was nearly smiling – that twitch at the corners of her mouth – and the photographer had captured the sceptical glint in her bright green eyes. She wore skinny grey jeans and a black T-shirt with the words I don’t give a book printed across the front.
She looked exactly like herself.
She looked beautiful.
He began to read.
I don’t believe in regret. For starters, it’s a terrible waste of time. A non-achiever of an emotion. Redundant. Like men’s nipples. It’s like someone saying I told you so when the damage is already done.
Regret is what happens when you realise you’ve lost something – something you value – and there’s no one to blame except yourself, and it’s too late to do anything about it.
I learned about regret the other day. Of course, I’d heard of it before, knew the dictionary definition of the word: ‘Feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over something that one has done or failed to do.’
But it was only the other day – broad daylight, walking around, minding my own business – that I acknowledged it. People talk about pangs of regret. This felt more like a wallop. A backhand in my face.
I won’t bore you with the details. Especially since I don’t use words like love of my life if I can help it.
But, yes, I had to admit to feeling sad, repentant and disappointed over something – someone – that I discarded, oh, a long time ago now. Back when I was a working alcoholic, although I did not refer to myself thus
, only as someone who had an ‘uneasy relationship with alcohol’.
There’s nothing like a dose of alcoholism to keep things at bay. Things like regret. Sadness. Disappointment.
In this regard, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
I put my back into it. I was the best alcoholic I could be. An A-plus student. It went really well for a long time. And then came a period I like to refer to as ‘a series of unfortunate events’. Highlights included getting fired, marrying in haste, bereavement – the usual.
That period culminated in me pouring an excellent Scotch, a case of a fairly bland Bordeaux and a bottle of Baileys – which was out of date but, let’s face it, I would have drank it anyway – down the kitchen sink one glorious summer’s evening. Then I went to bed, slept for two days straight, got up, had a shower, drank two cups of tea and proceeded to get on with what my friend Tara menacingly referred to as ‘the rest of my life’.
Sobriety – for alcoholics – is like travelling through a foreign land with no currency and little language and negligible social skills. And just when you think you’ve got the hang of it – you have acquired a number of pertinent phrases, people you meet assume you are normal and you do not disabuse them of this notion, you even have money, since you stopped drinking twelve-year-old single malts – that’s when it happens.
You meet someone you used to know from that faraway land we call The Past and you realise, all of a sudden, what you had.
You realise what you lost.
That’s when regret sidles up to you, taps you on the shoulder and says, I’ve been expecting you, in a soft, sinister voice, like some James Bond villain.
There was more but that was the bit that Cillian returned to. He read it three times. The love of my life. She couldn’t be talking about Dan because ... well, her marriage was listed as one of the ‘series of unfortunate events’. She’d had other boyfriends before Cillian, of course she had. But she had referred to them as short-term and non-committal, in the main.
Cillian sat in the armchair in the sitting room for a long time. When he looked up, he was surprised to see that night had fallen. He should do something. Finish unpacking. Turn on the telly. Something.
Instead, he read the article again, all the way through this time, right to the end:
Regret, pointless yet persistent, needs to be spoken to firmly. Needs to be gripped by the arm, persuaded out the door, sent on its way.
Because the past is not for turning. There is no changing it. All we can do is acknowledge it, then step away, move along.
Say, Yes, mistakes were made.
But that was then.
And this is now.
Thirty
It seemed natural that Seamus would become Martha’s sponsor. ‘I have an informal sponsor but he’s quite drinky and he’s also my ex,’ she told Seamus at her second AA meeting.
Seamus laughed until he noticed Martha wasn’t laughing. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You’re being serious.’
Martha wanted everything to be clear. ‘You’re not helping me because you want to have sex with me, are you?’
‘No.’ Seamus was adamant. ‘I’m helping you because, five years ago, somebody helped me. And five years from now, maybe you’ll help someone else. That’s the idea.’
‘Five years?’ Martha looked dubious. The slope of the mountain she was climbing seemed suddenly steeper.
‘One day at a time,’ said Seamus.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ said Martha.
Martha spoke for the first time at her third AA meeting and, while there was no round of applause nor shuffle of approval, she nevertheless felt the support of her fellow-alcos as clearly as if they had put their arms around her.
Afterwards, she decided to visit her mother. It had been a while. On the way, her phone rang. It was Tara.
‘How are things?’ said Martha.
‘A bit better. Mum only cried twice today.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘At mass.’
‘Praying the gay away?’
They laughed and it was such a familiar, good sound that Martha found herself saying, ‘I missed you so much. When you were doolally.’
‘Christ, you haven’t been at the Little Book of Calm, have you?’
‘I’m sipping lavender milk as we speak.’
‘Will you be my Best Woman?’
‘I thought I already was.’
‘Will you?’
‘I will.’
Her mother was in the kitchen when Martha let herself in.
Oh,’ her mother said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘Is it a bad time?’
‘Not at all. I was making tea. Would you like some?’
‘Thanks.’ Martha sat down. ‘Were you at Sunshine House?’ she asked.
‘Yes. The fundraising committee were dotting the i’s for the sponsored cycle.’
‘You’re great, you know,’ Martha said.
Her mother looked surprised. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Just ... all the work you do at that place.’
‘It’s not entirely selfless. I feel close to Amelia when I’m there, you know?’
‘I can hardly remember her,’ Martha said. She felt bad saying that. Was sure her mother would be hurt by it but she shook her head instead. Said, ‘You were only little – how could you remember her?’
Her mother made tea and chicken salad sandwiches, cut into triangles with the crusts off, as if Martha were still a fussy kid.
They were delicious.
‘I’ve decided to get rid of my sofa. Finally,’ Martha said when she had finished eating. ‘So I can take Dad’s chair. Save you having to dump it.’
‘But you love that sofa.’ Martha wondered how her mother knew that.
‘It’s too big for my apartment. You said so yourself.’
‘Yes, I know. It still fits, though.’
‘Look, it’s fine if you want to keep the chair. I just thought you were going to throw it out.’
Her mother looked sheepish. ‘I don’t think I ever really meant it. About throwing it out. This will sound silly but ... sometimes I sit in it. Swing myself around.’
‘Really?’ Martha grinned at the image this provoked.
‘I told you it was silly. It ... I suppose it reminds me a bit of your father.’
They smiled at each other, then took to their tea. The silence between them was neither harsh nor awkward. It was simply there.
‘I bought the couch with Cillian,’ said Martha then. ‘I mean, he was with me when I bought it.’
‘Did he not tell you it was too big?’
Martha laughed. ‘Once I’d bought it, he didn’t mention it again.’
‘Wise man.’
‘It’s a bit like Dad’s chair, I suppose, the couch. It sort of ... reminds me of him.’
‘Is that a bad thing?’
‘Well, it can ... hurt sometimes.’
Her mother nodded like she understood.
‘I read your piece in the Times today,’ she said.
‘I didn’t think you read that paper.’
‘I don’t. But Norma at Sunshine House told me you were on the cover of the magazine so I bought it.’
‘What did you think?’
Martha found herself putting a hand behind her back, crossing her fingers. It was a habit that had persisted from childhood.
Her mother leaned towards her, touched her arm, briefly, with her hand.’Your father would be very proud of you,’ she said, and her voice was tight, like she was holding onto it with both hands. She stood up, gathered their plates and cups, carried them to the counter. The clattering of the crockery filled the space between them now.
She raised her voice to be heard over the sound of water filling the sink. ‘Would you mind getting my slippers for me, Martha? I think they’re under my bed and I’m getting too old for bending.’
Martha had to lie on her stomach on the floor beside her mother’s bed and stretch out her arm to it
s full capacity before she managed to reach the slippers under the bed. Beside them, a wooden box with a leather handle and brass catches. It looked ancient and curious. Martha slid it out, sat up and blew the dust off it. She released the catches, opened the lid. Inside, cuttings. Hundreds of them. Her articles, her stories, her opinion pieces, her columns. Piled one on top of the other. Martha lifted them out. They were in date order. At the very bottom of the pile, her first piece of writing. In pencil, the letters big and crooked and, sometimes, the wrong way round.
My News.
Her mother had kept them. Kept them all. Martha knew it shouldn’t matter. She was too old now for things like that to matter.
But it mattered all the same.
In the space provided at the top of the page, Martha had drawn a picture of her family. A matchstick man and woman and, between them, two matchstick boys and one matchstick girl. They were holding matchstick hands. Beside them, a rectangular house with a triangle for a roof and four square windows in each corner, a front door in the middle. There was a matchstick dog that had not yet been put down. A circle for a sun with straight lines poking from it. A cloud with a scalloped edge and, sitting on top of the cloud, barely discernible, a tiny matchstick girl.
She had put Amelia in. She hadn’t forgotten her. She’d been there all along.
Thirty One
At midnight, Cillian sat up, pitched his duvet on the floor, jumped out of bed and threw clothes on, without reference to temperature, season or coordination. Just whatever he could find. He couldn’t get them on fast enough.
He took nothing other than his phone, his wallet and his keys. He threw them on the passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life. It sounded like a cheer from the sidelines.
He drove.
The drive between Donegal and Dublin had sometimes taken him as long as five hours when he had the time. He liked to meander along the back roads, ignoring the motorway that promised a faster, more fuel-efficient turnaround. In this way, he passed through villages and townlands, drove over rivers, through valleys, under the shadow of the cliffs of Magho as he negotiated the twisting edge of Lough Erne, the water gathered around hundreds of tiny islands whose names he always wondered at but never got around to investigating.
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