A Gift to You

by Patricia Scanlan

  It wasn’t all gloom and doom though. I loved where we lived in a snug cottage overlooking the beach. I shared a bedroom with my two younger sisters but my bed was beside the window, under the eaves and I could turn away from their giddy chatter and look out to sea and drift off into my fantasy world. The beach was my saviour. The sea and all its glorious moods was my companion. Thundering angry waves against the shore when you couldn’t see where its pewter grey ended as it merged with an equally leaden sky, it mirrored my mood. Or on a good day, caressing my toes in feathery little white-wave kisses under balmy blue skies when the sun scattered, glittering diamond prisms across the azure blue, as far as the eye could see.

  Our dog, Waggy, and I would tramp along the beach in hail, rain sun or snow, enveloped by salty invigorating sea breezes that couldn’t but induce a sense of wellbeing. I was mostly happy on the beach, except on moonlit nights, when I’d watch the blood-orange moon rise slow and majestic on the horizon and wish with all my heart that I had a boyfriend to hold hands with and kiss and cuddle and talk to. There’s nowhere lonelier than a moonlit beach when you’re alone.

  Anyway, to move on. I did a good Leaving Certificate. Six honours, enough to do accountancy, my father’s choice of career for me. I couldn’t think of anything I’d hate more and, when I told him I wasn’t doing it, his face darkened in anger and he told me I was a silly little fool to miss out on an opportunity to make something of myself.

  For once, my mother took my side. She had a sister – I’ll call her Vera – living in Dublin, and she asked her would she put me up for a couple of months until I got a job and got sorted. Vera agreed and, to my father’s fury, I left home the week after our bitter row and I tasted the first fruits of freedom.

  Vera was the greatest fun, ten years younger than my mother; she worked in PR and had the most glamorous lifestyle. Parties, launches, lunches, brunches. She’d whizz into her small two-up, two-down in Ranelagh, change an outfit, and whizz out again. She taught me how to apply make-up and how to dress up an outfit with a scarf or a bag or piece of jewellery, and she introduced me to champagne. It was exhilarating. I got a job as an admissions officer in a private hospital, I won’t say where, and I couldn’t have been happier.

  I even dated boys! I will never forget my first kiss, even though, to be very honest with you, I didn’t really enjoy it. So much slurping; he had wet lips. Even so, as I was being kissed and as Mr Wet Lip’s hands roamed under my jumper, I thought to myself, I don’t know what the fuss is all about but at least I’ve been kissed and fondled – groped might actually have been more appropriate to describe it – I am on the right road to not dying ‘wondering’. I’m just like those girls I envied, at last.

  The naivety of me. The foolishness of me. I would have been better off I think sometimes if I had died wondering!

  I met my husband in the hospital I worked in. I met him at the staff Christmas party. He was an anaesthetist, a tall gangly chap with the beginnings of a receding hairline. He was just starting out on his career, and though he wore a smart pinstriped suit, he drove a battered old Ford that hiccupped and farted its way out of the car park, leaving a waft of black smoke in its wake.

  I had often seen him walking briskly, confidently, along the Parquet-floored corridors – a faux confidence, I was to learn later. All the consultants seemed to stride purposefully; as if it was something they had been taught. I always knew by the sound of the firm, decisive footsteps that a consultant was on the floor.

  His name was Martin – one of the receptionists introduced us – and he appeared reserved and ill at ease but, after a couple of drinks, he loosened up and I couldn’t believe it when he asked me to dance a slow set. There were plenty of gorgeous nurses there. Consultants generally ignored us plebs.

  ‘I’ve seen you down at reception a few times. Do you like working here?’ he slurred as we lurched around the floor. I wasn’t exactly drunk, but I wasn’t exactly sober, either.

  ‘Yeah, I love it,’ I half shouted – the din of music and chat was so loud you had to shout to be heard.

  ‘I suppose you’re looking to marry a doctor. I see ye all batting your eyelashes at us when we come in.’ He gazed at me, his grey eyes slightly glazed and bloodshot.

  Don’t flatter yourself, I wanted to say, but I thought it would be rude. After all, doctors and consultants were treated like gods when they were on their rounds. ‘I’m having too much fun to want to get married,’ I fibbed, pretending to be liberated and sophisticated. The truth was, I wanted to be married. I wanted what I had never had: a happy family life. I wanted the security of having my own home, a husband who loved me and children around me. It would be so different to my parents’ marriage. It would be a real marriage when I got married, I vowed to myself.

  ‘Do you want to split and have some fun with me, then?’ Martin murmured into my hair, pressing himself against me. I could feel that I was turning him on and that gave me an unexpected and gratifying sense of power.

  ‘OK then,’ I said recklessly, and we made our way through the swaying throng.

  ‘I know where there’s a couple of rooms where on-call staff crash,’ Martin said, leading me towards the back of the hospital to a wing I never had any reason to go to. It was my first and last time there. I lost my virginity in a heated rush with my dress in a tangle around me, on an old hospital bed with a wonky wheel that squeaked against the lino floor when Martin took me by surprise and penetrated me almost as soon as he had thrown me on the bed and yanked off my knickers.

  It was over in moments, painful moments, and I lay there listening to him panting on top of me and wondered how it could be so different to all I had imagined. All the romantic novels I had devoured from the local library had not prepared me for this crushing sense of disappointment and bewilderment. Nor had they prepared me for the sudden, terrifying panic when I remembered how my mother had got pregnant with me, resulting in a life of misery.

  I started to cry and that sobered Martin up quick enough.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, he muttered. ‘Are you OK? I didn’t know you were a virgin. I thought you were experienced. You seemed so . . . so . . . Don’t cry.’

  ‘I’m just afraid I’ll get pregnant.’ I howled.

  ‘Shush! Shush! You won’t!’ He looked as panicked as I felt.

  ‘How do you know?’ I’d bawled, pushing him off me, rolling off the bed and gathering up my knickers, shoes and bag. All I wanted to do was to get out of that moonlit dingy room that smelt faintly of antiseptic.

  ‘Where do you live? Will I bring you home?’ He stood up and zipped up his fly.

  ‘No. I’ll get a taxi.’ I tried to adjust my clothing.

  ‘OK, OK, here’s money for the fare.’ He fumbled in his wallet and extracted a pound note.

  ‘I don’t want your money, I’m not a bloody whore,’ I’d sworn at him, trying to regain some semblance of dignity before hastening out the door praying that no one would see me.

  I cried myself to sleep that night in my sore, deflowered and possibly pregnant state. No doubt my poor mother had spent a night such as I, had all those years ago.

  I didn’t see Martin for another ten days. The hospital did not admit patients over the Christmas season and I spent the holidays petrified that I was pregnant.

  I got my period the morning I went back to work, and to this day, I remember the utter relief that flooded my body as the for-once welcome, painful cramps signalled that an unwanted pregnancy would not be my fate this time.

  That same day, a hesitant knock on the door led me to open it to find Martin standing there, abashed and awkward, swallowing nervously as he ran his hand through his thinning hair. ‘Hello, are you all right? I’m sorry about the night of the party,’ he said gruffly.

  It was then I knew we would end up together.

  To make a long story short, we married a year later. I was contented rather than happy, I think, when I look back now, especially when I got pregnant and we had twin girls on our se
cond wedding anniversary.

  I had everything I wanted in life, all I ever dreamed of.

  But as the years passed, cracks began to appear in my relationship with my husband. The stress of his job seemed to overwhelm him, particularly after a patient died on the table from a heart attack. It wasn’t his fault but it unnerved him and affected his confidence. You might ask me, why did my husband not confide in me and talk to me about his worries. That was not his way. We didn’t have that loving degree of intimacy that I envied in other couples.

  He would take it out on me, though, in cold, vicious, undermining exchanges. ‘What would you know about it, you never even went to college!’ he said once, in front of his parents, when I proffered an opinion on some political crisis or other that was taking place.

  ‘That’s all you’re good for,’ he flung at me one day when he came home between surgeries to find me painting a still life in our conservatory, and no sign of lunch on the table. I’d been so immersed in my work I’d forgotten the time.

  He became more grumpy and bitter as he grew into late middle age, claiming that some colleagues seemed to have more surgeons on their lists than he had. It got worse when our daughters left home to work abroad. He was annoyed neither had followed him into medicine and moaned continuously about how much money he had spent on their education in private school and for what. It was wearing living on my own with him and I withdrew into myself and sought solace in my painting.

  And then, one day as he scrubbed up before an operation, my husband had a serious stroke. It affected his left side and his speech and left him hospitalized for many months.

  To be very honest, and again I’ve never said this to anyone, but after the shock of it, once I got used to our changed circumstances, I rather enjoyed my freedom. I visited him every afternoon between two and four even though I could have stayed longer because he was in a private room. I stayed longer in the early months until he was no longer critically ill but as he slowly improved physically, his mental state deteriorated and he became even more dour and bad tempered as he struggled to communicate. Some sense of self-preservation kicked in and gradually I reduced the time I spent with Martin. The day he wrote on his pad that I was to stop talking because he wanted to watch a snooker match, I decided to reclaim my life.

  From that day onwards, after my afternoon visit, I was free to do as I pleased without having to worry about cooking or cleaning or doing his laundry. I painted and gardened and met my sisters and friends for brunch or dinner or sometimes just a coffee, and enjoyed the company of my daughters when they came home to visit.

  Eventually, Martin was moved to a rehab hospital and when they had rehabilitated him as much as they could, I was told to start making preparations for his return home. Occupational therapists came to assess the house. I needed to turn one of the downstairs rooms into a bedroom, with an adjoining walk-in shower suitable for his needs, as he wouldn’t be able to manage a chairlift.

  I’m ashamed to say that my heart sank at the thought of him coming home. He was so angry and frustrated at his situation, an invalid to all intents and purposes – shuffling around on a cane – who could no longer communicate except through strangled grunts that we could barely understand. He could still write though. And the notes came fast and furious.

  Tell that gobshite night nurse to stop shining her fucking torch in my face.

  Tell them to sack the bloody chef, that soup they serve up is watery slop.

  Sell the BMW, and get something I can get in and out of the passenger seat easily, and don’t spend a fortune, we need to cut back.

  That last one threw me. I was going to have to drive him around. He’s never rated my driving and I rarely got to drive the Beemer. I loved my little hatchback but I’d have to change it for something with a higher passenger seat that he could swing in and out of easily. I couldn’t think of anything worse than having him sitting beside me grunting and gesticulating and clutching the seat because he felt I wasn’t braking in time or some such.

  I felt like running away.

  One wet blustery Sunday, the rehab hospital mini-bus rolled up the drive. Martin was coming home for an afternoon visit. A carer assisted my husband down the ramp and he shuffled into the house for the first time in almost a year. I felt I was welcoming a stranger into my home. He sat sullen and morose in the brand new cream leather riser chair we’d bought for him. The girls fussed around him and I saw the tears in his eyes and nearly cried myself.

  It was the only time I felt sorry for him; after that, it was myself I felt sorry for, and honestly, I’m not a nasty person, I do my best, but he would try the patience of a saint. It seemed as though he blamed me for everything that had gone wrong and when I mentioned this to a friend in my book club, she said, wearily, ‘They always want to blame someone and it’s usually the wife that gets it.’ Her husband had MS and his mood-swings frequently had her in tears.

  One Sunday afternoon in March, squalls of sleety rain battered the windows while we sat and watched TV. Martin had been dropped off after lunch at the hospital and the driver said he would be back for him at four-thirty. A film came on and I settled back on the sofa, glad to have something to take my mind off our circumstances. Death at a Funeral: not the most appropriate subject, I reflected, but I said nothing and we sat in silence watching it. The film was hilarious and I was laughing heartily at the antics of a character that had taken LSD thinking it was Valium when Martin glared at me and flicked the remote.

  ‘I was watching that and enjoying it, Martin!’ I exclaimed indignantly, as an old episode of Murder She Wrote filled the screen.

  He gave a guttural grunt and scrawled Bloody rubbish! on his writing pad.

  Oh, Divine Mother, this will be my life when he comes home, I thought with dread as Herr Flick surfed the channels until he found a football match.

  He picked up his pad and scribbled furiously and handed it to me.

  By the way, I want to be cremated when the time comes, just so you know. And scatter my ashes in the back garden.

  ‘I’ll cremate you myself on a bonfire out in the back garden, if you’re not careful, or throw you on the compost heap,’ I snapped, handing him back the pad.

  He glared at me and his eyes narrowed.

  I mean it he wrote in big black letters, underlined.

  You make sure you follow my wishes to the letter. No hymns, eulogy or flowers.

  ‘Fine!’ I retorted. He had mentioned some years previously that he was thinking of being cremated rather than buried. The idea of his body mouldering in a grave gave him the heebie-jeebies.

  He scowled and bent his head to write again.

  I want a mug of tea and a ginger nut biscuit, and go upstairs and get me some fresh handkerchiefs.

  If he had written, please, and said, may I have, instead of I want, I might not have flipped but it was like a red mist exploded behind my eyes and I shot to my feet and roared. ‘If you don’t have some manners and treat me with a bit of respect, you won’t be cremated, you’ll be buried. And the worms can feast on you, you rude ignoramus. Because get used to this, mister, I’m in charge here now, not you.’

  His eyes bulged and I saw temper and something else . . . fear.

  It seemed to trigger something in me, a viciousness I didn’t know I possessed. Something of my late father, perhaps.

  ‘Yes, Martin,’ I said nastily, giving full rein to my feelings. ‘I’ll put you in a coffin and you’ll be buried underground and then,’ I glared at him and bent my face close to his and recited in a sing-song voice:

  ‘The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out.

  ‘The ones that go in are lean and thin.

  ‘The ones that come out are fat and stout.

  ‘Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out—

  Martin gave a gasp and turned a grey-green ashen colour. His pad fell out of his hand and I could see the panic in his eyes as he struggled for breath.

  I stared at him, stunned. He was trying
to say something, pointing to his mobile phone, which was on the coffee table in front of us. I picked it up, about to tap in 999 for an ambulance.

  I felt strangely calm, disconnected almost.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on for your tea,’ I heard myself say and walked out to the kitchen.

  I sat for twenty minutes at the kitchen table before calling the paramedics.

  Martin was dead when they wheeled him into the ambulance.

  I had him cremated, just as he wanted. No hymns, eulogy or flowers. I drew the line at scattering his ashes in the back garden. The girls and myself surreptitiously scattered them in the Rose Garden in the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin.

  I have nightmares sometimes but I don’t dwell on the way of Martin’s passing. The way I see it, it was him or me. He would have seen me under if he had come home to live with me.

  My life is back to its calm, peaceful rhythm. I’m enjoying my widowhood, apart from the nightmares and the occasional pang of guilt when I wonder, Am I, or am I not a murderer.

  Ripples

  ‘The McHughs were a bit frosty tonight,’ Mike Stuart said.

  ‘That’s an understatement if ever I heard one,’ his wife, Kathy murmured out of the side of her mouth. ‘They’d have been at home in the Arctic.’

  ‘What’s new?’ Mike asked glumly. They stood at the front door, waving goodbye to their guests.

  They were caught in the wide beam of the car’s headlights as Garry McHugh reversed down the drive. He gave a toot on his horn. Beside him, his wife Alison looked utterly pissed off. Kathy knew that the tight smile she gave them would be gone in seconds as soon as the car headed towards the main road.