Joyce tells me to sit down and asks where I keep the vase. I point to the cupboard. She takes it out and sets about arranging the flowers. I get up to put the kettle on, but Maura shushes me and fills it up and gets out the mugs.
I let out a sigh. It’s nice to be waited on. When Michael comes home, I have the shopping done and the dinner on. Clothes have been washed and hung out to dry. The baby’s nappies have been washed. She is bathed and dressed and I am sometimes bathed and dressed, too. I make tea and breakfast in the morning. I do it because I want to, because he works hard and I’m at home all day, because this is the deal we made when we became husband and wife, but I am tired.
I watch them, and I miss living in the flat with them, drinking at the kitchen table, getting ready to go dancing.
‘Can I smoke in here?’ asks Maura.
I nod.
She lights a cigarette and I breathe in deep the grey clouds of smoke, getting woozy. I would love one. Sometimes, when I can’t take it any more, I go out the back door and take a few drags of a cigarette while Clare is asleep.
‘Jesus, we haven’t even seen the baby!’ shrieks Joyce.
‘Shush!’ We all giggle, and it’s like we live together again.
But it’s my baby we’re giggling at. I have a baby, I think, and a warm glow ignites within me.
Maura leaves her cigarette balanced on the edge of the ashtray and we creep into the sitting room.
As soon as we go in, I’m aware of the mess. The cot is in the middle of the room. There are dirty mugs on the coffee table with dried teabags inside and the curtains are only half-drawn, casting the room in that half-darkness that is so depressing. A dirty nappy is in a ball on the floor, waiting to be picked up and washed. New nappies sit in clean, folded squares on the table. Michael says we should try plastic throwaway ones, but these are the best.
We gather around the basket and they peer down at her, each reaching for a hand and stroking it.
‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ says Maura.
‘She is, isn’t she?’ says Joyce.
‘Oh, look at her little button-nose and her little hands and that fine head of hair!’
‘She’s as gorgeous as her mother,’ smiles Maura.
Clare stirs, so we sneak back to the kitchen to drink our tea.
They can’t stay long, they say, and apologize for taking so long to stop by. They’re both going steady with a fella and, between work and everything, it’s hard to find the time. Tonight they’re going out to the dance in the church hall.
‘Sure, I know. Tell me about it. The days fly by…’ I shake my head like I can’t believe it. I don’t tell them that sometimes the day lies ahead of me like a long, black tunnel.
I close the front door behind them, go into the kitchen and open the chocolates. Just one. I pick out a hazelnut-and-caramel one, then a strawberry cream, then the orange. Then a praline one. I imagine the girls later at the dance, with their boyfriends. I picture them jiving on the dance floor. I pour myself a drop of brandy to take the edge off my jitters.
Clare cries out. I run in to get her and, bobbing her on my shoulder, prepare the milk in a bottle. Back in the sitting room, I sit in the corner of the sofa and prop her up on a cushion. She screams like the Antichrist while I shake the bottle and test a drop on my wrist. My chest tightens and, desperate to soothe her, I shove the bottle in her mouth. I check her ear isn’t folded back against my chest.
When she has finished feeding, I burp her on my lap, careful to hold her little face in my hand. A bubble of air escapes her mouth and I congratulate her with a shower of kisses. ‘You see, you don’t miss breast-milk at all, do you?’ I ask her. I am relieved she didn’t wake for feeding when the girls were here. I wouldn’t want them to know that I have already failed as a mother.
I leave her on my shoulder and wait for her to sleep, soothing her with my shushes all the time.
We have a quiet christening and some food and drink at our house afterwards. That’s when it occurs to Michael that we haven’t sent photos of Clare home, to his family or to mine. He decides we have to buy a camera and take photos to send to everyone. It has been a long time since I have heard from anyone, and I have no intention of sending them anything, but he wears me down slowly. He says we have to, that our parents will be dying to see their granddaughter.
It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon when he sets up the camera and the tripod and insists we sit on the sofa together for a photo of the three of us. I put on a royal-blue dress with a wide collar, hoping it will hide the weight I’ve put on. I put Clare in a dress that Michael’s mammy sent to us. It’s yellow with little pink flowers. And I put a bow in her hair and a navy cardigan on top. I spend a good hour putting make-up on myself to take away the bags under my eyes and give myself some colour. Michael puts on one of his shirts and a pair of trousers, but he has no extra weight to hide, his body hasn’t just been through a triathlon.
I sit on the sofa with Clare on my lap and he sets up the timer and runs for the sofa, just making it as the flash of the camera goes off. Clare jumps and shuts her eyes and we laugh, and I have to admit it was a lovely idea. He goes back to set the timer again and comes running back, quicker this time, and he kisses me as the flash goes off.
Michael says he’ll take some of me and Clare. He goes behind the camera and clicks away, and I tell him not to be daft, that he’ll waste the whole film.
‘And how would I waste the film on my two favourite girls in the world?’ he says, and I think, This is what life’s all about. It’s these moments of happiness right now, these snippets of us being together.
We go out to do the shopping and buy things for a nice dinner, seeing as we’re all dolled up. Everything is easier on the weekends. Michael is beside me and Clare’s cries don’t hurt so much, and I don’t feel as drained.
The photographs are lovely when they come back. I write a letter to Michael’s mother and thank her for the dress, and tell her we are doing well and plan to come out and visit next summer or the one after, when Clare is bigger. To my own mother and father, I send a photograph of the three of us and I choose the one where Michael’s eyes are closed. I want the nice one for myself. I write Clare’s full name and date of birth on the back. I don’t ask how they are or for them to tell me the latest news, so that I don’t expect any reply. I enclose cash, as I always do.
It crosses my mind to write separate letters to Sean, Siobhan and Brendan, but it has been so long now that I wouldn’t know what to say. Besides, none of them have picked up the pen and paper for me. A flush of anger comes over me, and then I think of Siobhan. I wonder how life has been for her. Maybe I would do things differently if I were to do them over. I asked Bernadette to look after her, and that was about as much as I could do. Any more and I would have exposed myself. Anyway, she is not my daughter, and I can only think of Clare now.
The next time I hear from them is more than a year later, and it’s to tell me that Uncle Patrick died in his sleep. No note, just the cutting of the obituary from the local paper. I don’t even know who sent it. For days I am subdued. It’s the not knowing. Not knowing if finally I am free, and my prison guard is dead, or if poor Uncle Patrick did nothing at all and I have spent all these years hating him for nothing. Michael mistakes it for mourning. He says the next time we go home we should go to my part of the country as well, that it would do me good. I shake my head. I won’t go back, I tell him. He sighs with frustration, not understanding, and I wonder if I never should have lied to him at all.
Michael works on the house and I work on Clare, and like that life edges by, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. She shrieks, she giggles, she says Mama and Dada, she walks and then she runs. She helps me with the washing, taking it out of the basket onto the floor, then back into the basket. She runs out into the garden, come rain or snow. Patting at the French windows with her little paws, putting streaks down them until I wrap her up in a coat and boots and scarf on top of her pyjamas. And off she goes, to
explore the flowers and the earth and the worms and the snails.
One morning she takes a bite out of a worm and I nearly die with the shock. I scream at her and put my fingers in her mouth and fish out the end of the worm – I don’t know if it’s the head or the tail, who does? And I throw the rest of the body away and tell her never to do that again, do you hear? She cries and cries for the rest of the morning. I feel terrible. I explain that Mummy got a shock and that worms aren’t for eating, and I say I’m sorry for giving her a fright.
Her eyes are wide and watery and she is unsure of me. For the first time I see how like me she is, with that look of hers, those big eyes and auburn curls on her small, intelligent head.
Soon she is at nursery in the mornings and I am missing her terribly, waiting till twelve o’clock when I can go and pick her up. Sometimes I watch her through the window, playing with other little girls and boys, and I wonder where the years have disappeared to.
Then, when Clare is three, we try for another and soon we are blessed again. I am delighted. I think of names for a girl and for a boy. I get out all of Clare’s baby things and wash, iron and fold them and put them in the chest of drawers in the baby room. I grow bigger – bigger than last time. I fight the voice and the bad thoughts. Look at you, look at the size of you. A hippopotamus! How does he love you at all?
‘Am I like a hippopotamus, Michael?’ I ask him one evening, when Clare is in bed and we’re watching television.
He wraps his arm round my shoulders, like I knew he would, and tells me that I’m the daftest, most beautiful hippopotamus he’s ever seen.
I shrug off his arm.
‘What? What did I say wrong?’ His voice is desperate, and worry lines are creasing the skin around his eyes.
‘This is no time for jokes.’ I get up and go to bed.
When he has turned off all the lights and locked and chained the front door, he comes after me. He gets into bed and envelops me from behind, intertwines his feet with mine. They are cold and I move mine away.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers in my ear. He can’t see the tear streaks over the bridge of my nose, down my cheek and into the pillow, but he knows me well enough by now.
I release a shaky sigh.
When my breathing has relaxed and the tears are dry, I reach back with my feet and find his, warmer now. I hide myself there, in the crescents of his insteps.
*
I send another photograph when Thomas is born. Thomas, the image of his daddy, with the same blue eyes and blondie hair. With his baby gurgles I had forgotten the sound of, and his cries, more ferocious than Clare’s. Unlike Clare, he takes to the breast. Every time I feed him, I am vindicated. With the gentle tug of his suckle, all is right in the world.
Michael gets out the tripod and this time there are four of us on the sofa, and Clare squeals with the surprise of the flash and kisses Thomas on the forehead and holds onto his fists. Michael takes some of the three of us – myself, Clare and the baby – and then of Clare holding Thomas in her arms. I even get behind the camera and there they are, Thomas in Clare’s arms on Michael’s lap. Clare is a daddy’s girl, that’s for sure. She adores her daddy. That’s what I say to people, laughing as if it didn’t hurt me deeply, the fact that she prefers her father to me, with all that I do and give and love.
CLARE
23RD JULY 1997
Me and Thomas and Sarah and Mary get in with Mummy and Daddy. Uncle John and Aunty Joan take John and stop for Aunty Anne on the way. We’re meeting at the beach, down by the chip shop. We have a picture of us there on the wall in the sitting room, and I make sure Daddy has his camera, so we can get another photo of us all this year and put it next to it.
I love it here. It’s not like the beaches on the TV, it’s not sandy and gold and soft. It has stones and pebbles that you have to walk on, and when you walk on them you say Ow-ow-ow! because you can’t help it, it hurts so much. It smells of seaweed, which is so salty and horrible, but Daddy loves it and always takes bags of it home to London to eat long after we’re back. Me and Mummy scrunch our noses up and she says it stinks the house out to the high heavens, so she makes him keep it out in the utility room, but Daddy and Thomas love it and eat it like it’s chocolate. Sometimes Daddy brings some into the sitting room on a nice evening when we’re all watching the TV together, and he and Thomas eat it like it’s popcorn until Mummy has had enough.
The sun’s out, but there’s a nice soft wind and the smell of salt and water is refreshing. We have so much fun because everyone says Ow! over and over and we all laugh, which makes it hurt more. Mummy is laughing at the top of her voice and that makes me laugh so much that I wee myself a little bit, but it doesn’t matter because we’re going into the sea anyway.
When we are down in our spot where we come every year, over past the chip shop, we lay our towels out, one by one, next to each other’s. Then it’s time to change into our swimming costumes.
My tummy goes tight because I don’t want everyone seeing my fanny. I should have changed in the house before we came, but Mummy said not to be silly, that it doesn’t matter, but that’s not what she told me before.
‘Mummy!’ I call. ‘You hold the towel while I get changed.’
‘Come on then, hurry up,’ she says. She takes the towel and holds it round my shoulders.
‘Promise you’ll hold it?’
Mummy tuts. ‘Stop dilly-dallying.’
I take off my top, doing my best to keep my shoulders in, so I don’t poke open the towel.
Mummy passes me my bikini top and then turns round when Thomas calls her, and the towel falls down to my waist.
I squeal and grab it and hold it close to my chest. ‘Mummy!’ My face burns and my throat swells up. I look round. Sarah has taken all her clothes off and doesn’t even care that I can see her, but she’s skinny, so she doesn’t have boobies that stick out a little bit like I do. Mary is too small to have boobies yet, so she doesn’t care about anything, either, and she takes her knickers off right there and then before she puts on her swimming costume.
‘Cop on now, Clare,’ Mummy says. ‘You don’t have anything for anyone to see.’
I grip my lips tight together and look at her hard because I remember what she said to me, even if she doesn’t. To not let men near me or see me, and that I was growing into a woman and had to protect myself and not reveal myself to anyone. That my parts were precious, and I had to make sure no one ever saw them. It was when I was getting out of the bath one afternoon and she stared at me and I felt weird, even though I never feel weird having a bath in front of Mummy, because we’re all girls and we have the same thing, so what does it matter? Thomas has a winkie, but it doesn’t matter because he’s my brother, and Daddy has a winkie too, and that never mattered before. Until I heard Mummy tell him that he shouldn’t be bathing me, that it wasn’t appropriate, and he said, Don’t be daft, and she said, I’ll give you daft. I heard that from the top of the stairs and I wanted to shout down to Mummy that she was being a big stupid idiot, but I didn’t. That made me mad because bath time is so much fun with Daddy, more fun than with Mummy, and what does it matter if he sees my bits, because he is my daddy. So when I was drying myself by the bath and Mummy was looking at me in a funny way, I said, What? and she said, Nothing. And afterwards she was all funny with me and spoke in her serious voice and told me I was a girl now, but I would be a woman before I knew it. She said it like it was a bad thing, and it made me scared and I decided then I didn’t want to be a woman with precious parts that I couldn’t let anyone see.
And now she lets the towel fall down, so everyone can see my boobies, and she says I have nothing and that I’m being stupid. For a second I feel like screaming at her, That isn’t what you said before!, but I don’t. I know that I don’t have nothing to hide and that I have my boobies, and I don’t want anyone to see them because she said I shouldn’t.
I hate her a little bit when she lets my towel fall down, and decide that I won�
��t trust her when I’m changing, after being in the sea.
The others arrive and we wait for John to change and then we race into the sea, even though the stones hurt. The water is so cold that my teeth chatter like a machine. Daddy says we have to swim to get warm and he picks me up and I scream, and he throws me down and I go under and the sea goes in my ears and up my nose and I gasp for air, but only get water. I wave my arms about like I’m a bird flying, until I’m up again and can get air. My eyes sting and snot comes out of my nose and, when I open my eyes, everyone laughs. I start splashing Daddy to get him back, but he’s way too tall and he splashes me and I have to turn round and wade my way through the water to get away. We all try at the same time, but he picks us up one by one and throws us in the water and we all scream and yell and giggle. Daddy says we’re water babies because we swim and jump and go under the water and don’t care. Sarah teaches us how to do three somersaults in a row and we play a game where you have to swim under two people’s hands under the water. Uncle John comes in with a ball and we play ‘Piggy in the Middle’. Thomas and Mary are Piggy most of the time because they’re smallest and always miss the ball.
Then Mummy and my aunties come in, but Mummy warns us all to stay away from her because she doesn’t like the water very much. She slides in like a dolphin, without making a single splash, and lies on her back, floating in the sea. She never swims because she’s scared of deep water.
I watch her lying on the silky surface and think I see her smile. The water around her sparkles in the sun, like it’s winking a thousand times, and her hair spreads out like the bare branches of a tree. I wonder if she’s remembering that time when I got out of the bath.
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