The Truth Will Out

by Anna McPartlin

  So much more has happened. Matthew and I are brilliant. When I’m with him the world’s a better place. We talk and talk and we never seem to run out of things to say and it’s never boring or dull. We talk about everything. I even told him about that night a few months back when Mam was out walking and HE was drunk and came into my room. I told Matthew everything and I never thought I’d actually say it. He was so angry he wanted to find him and kill him, and it was nice that he was so angry. It was nice not to be the only one angry, and now that he wants him dead too, it makes me feel a little better about things. I was beginning to think I was a bit sick in the head. Anyway, I told him I was fine and I’d be able to fight HIM off but now he worries. He says he’s going to put an extra lock on the door for me, a padlock.

  I wish he didn’t worry. He has enough going on. His dad is being really mean to him. He puts him down all the time and it’s getting worse. I don’t know why. He’ll be back in school in September and I dread it. What will my world be like without him? I can’t imagine. I don’t want to. He’s my world. I won’t see him for weeks and weeks because his dad only allows him home for holidays. What a dick! Matthew is the love of my life.

  Two weeks ago we lay on the marram grass (which is as soft as any mattress – it’s so soft it bounces under your feet – weird) by the castle listening to the sea and watching stars and we put our hands in each other’s knickers and it was really, really nice, and today he whispered that he’d save me and he held me so tight it hurt. He’d save me, he said, because he knew I needed saving. I didn’t have to ask. I’ll love him for ever for that. I’ll love him for ever for everything. I love him so much I miss him when he’s with me. Maybe I’m mad like my mother!

  Okay, one last thing. I’m listening to Elton John and he is so amazing. ‘Rocket Man’ has been out for ever but for the first time I love it. Matthew has all his singles and I really love ‘Candle In The Wind’ and ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’. The Bay City Rollers are over and he’s for ever, you can just tell.

  Anyway, I’m going out now. My fingers are liberated and Matthew is taking me for a picnic by the Glen strand. I love the water. Maybe some day I’ll work in water. I’m a great swimmer. This morning I opened my window and there was the blackest, fattest crow on my ledge. I know everyone hates them but I don’t. It was lovely. It sat so still and its neck was arched and it was proudly facing towards the sea. It turned its head my way slowly and it wasn’t scary, it was beautiful. I didn’t move. I just waited and then it looked me straight in the eye. I swear it looked at me for the longest time and I looked at it, and then it was gone and I needed to sit down. I don’t know why it was weird. Would it be crazy if I thought that the bird knew something I didn’t? I suppose so and still … Matthew will be here soon. We’re going to town to meet Sheila and Dave and his English cousin Simon.

  15. If only

  June had been a long month and, despite good weather and lots of work, Susan was glad to see it end. She had slept with Keith three more times, once in a hotel, once on a king-sized duvet behind some rocks just before dawn on Killiney beach and once in the middle of the day on her own marital bed. It was after that particular fulfilling but guilt-ridden tryst that she had truly admitted to herself that her marriage was over. Keith had left soon after they’d finished, and as the door was closing behind him she had found herself packing a bag. She didn’t cry or even think too much, just mechanically packed all that she needed to survive outside her home.

  She called Harri from the car. ‘Can I stay with you?’ she asked, as soon as Harri picked up the phone.

  ‘Of course,’ Harri replied, without needing to ask any questions. After all, Susan’s last desperate act had been a long time coming.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ she’d said. I’ll face Beth when I’m settled. I’ll tell her everything. Please, God, don’t let her hate me.

  Harri was waiting with fresh sheets on the pull-out sofa, tea, biscuits and a bear-hug. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. She had thought Andrew had thrown his wife out, and was shocked to hear that she had thrown herself out.

  ‘I couldn’t do it any more,’ Susan said. ‘I couldn’t bear the silence and the lies.’

  ‘What about Beth?’ Harri asked, alarmed when she realized that Susan’s escape had been spur-of-the-moment and unplanned.

  ‘She doesn’t know.’

  Beth was working in a boutique in town and would be home later, although Susan wasn’t sure when. Harri instructed her to call her daughter. As a recent victim of lies, Harri was adamant that she needed to be told. Susan left a message on her daughter’s mobile phone asking her to come to Harri’s after work, adding that it was important.

  Beth arrived a little after eight. Harri fussed over her, trying to persuade her to eat some leftover lasagne. Susan remained quiet. Beth said she didn’t want food, instantly sensing that something bad had happened. Harri decided to have a bath and leave them to it.

  ‘What’s he done?’ Beth asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Susan said. ‘He’s done nothing.’

  ‘I know he has!’ Beth said, full of fire.

  ‘It’s me,’ Susan admitted. ‘I’m the one who had the affair. He caught me seven months ago.’

  Beth was sitting, yet her legs still managed to go from under her. She visibly sank in the chair. ‘You?’ she questioned in alarm and disbelief.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ her mother said.

  ‘You?’

  Her mother nodded. Beth didn’t understand. All the time she had thought her father was the one playing away, that he was destroying their family, the bastard. All that time when she was slagging him off, berating him and comforting her mother, her dad had been the victim. Beth was speechless.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Susan said again.

  Beth regained the power of thought, word and movement and suddenly she was standing, then pacing and shouting, ‘He didn’t say anything! Why didn’t he kick you out? Why did he let me talk to him like that? Why did he cover for you?’

  All Susan could say was that she didn’t know because she didn’t know why her husband had insisted that their daughter should not know about her deception. He had made her promise not to say anything to Beth and she had agreed, willing to do anything to get him to forgive her. It had occurred to her that it had been odd that when Beth was spewing her venom at him he had never defended himself and never pointed the finger in the right direction. In the end the lie had imprisoned, demoralized, degraded and trapped her. She had wondered if that had been his intention, but it had seemed too Machiavellian and too cruel. She couldn’t explain to her daughter why her father had been so desperate to hide Susan’s adultery. It made no sense.

  ‘Who was he? When and for how long? How many times? Why?’ Beth had shouted over and over again, while circling Harri’s small sitting room.

  ‘A builder. Not long. A few times. Does it really matter? I was lonely.’

  Susan didn’t want to have to explain her sex life to her daughter. It wasn’t right. She wasn’t going to tell her daughter that her father had lost interest in sex two whole years before she even dreamed of having an affair. She would never tell her that she had tried everything to entice him – getting a makeover, losing weight, dressing up, dressing down, boots in the bedroom. She’d even attempted to woo him in peep-hole lingerie. He had laughed at her – he had laughed at her a lot. She would cry and he’d storm out. Sex was not something he was interested in having with his wife and she missed it. She wanted to feel attractive and alive and loved, not like an old woman, dried up and waiting for death. She was forty-six and horny. She wanted sex from her husband. She bloody deserved it, and she was angry because he had made her hate herself, and sad because she missed what they had once had, and guilty because it was wrong to do what she had done with Keith. Part of her screamed that she was innocent because Andrew had left her first. He might not have fucked somebody else but he wasn’t fu
cking her either – and he should have been because that was his bloody job. She had friends but what she wanted was her husband and he just wasn’t there. But she couldn’t say that to Beth. All she could say was that she was sorry – but sorry wasn’t good enough.

  Beth all but spat at her mother. ‘You disgust me!’ she said, grabbing her coat.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Susan begged.

  ‘Home to see my dad and to apologize for being such a stupid bitch!’

  She slammed Harri’s front door.

  Harri got out of the bath and into her bathrobe. When she entered the sitting room Susan was sitting in the middle of the floor. Susan didn’t need to rehash the argument. Harri had heard it all through the thin doors and walls. She didn’t have to explain her point of view or excuse herself because Harri knew that Susan’s husband had lost interest in her a long time before.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Harri said.

  ‘There’s a lot of that going around lately.’

  ‘There is.’

  Later, Harri and Susan sat together, drinking cocoa and watching an episode of CSI Miami, Harri having exhausted CSI Las Vegas.

  ‘You really need to get over CSI,’ Susan commented, halfway through the show.

  ‘I know. Did I mention there’s a CSI New York?’

  ‘Oh, sweet Jesus! You do know that it’s basically the same bloody show over and over and over again, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s what I like about it,’ Harri said. ‘I find it comforting.’

  Andrew didn’t get home until after eleven. Beth was waiting.

  She had cried most of the evening. She had phoned four of her friends, her favourite cousin Jessica and the ex-boyfriend who had given her crabs. He was most sympathetic and offered to come over, but after serious consideration she decided against allowing him access to her home. Her grief would make her weak to his advances and she didn’t trust him not to give her another dose of something unpleasant. She waited for her dad in the kitchen, sitting at the table, back hunched, hands clasped and head low.

  He seemed a bit shocked when he opened the kitchen door and saw her there. She raised her head slowly. ‘Beth?’ he said, betraying slight panic.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ she replied.

  ‘Sorry for what, love?’ he said, with a tremor in his voice. He sat beside her.

  ‘She told me the truth,’ Beth said, and she was crying.

  Andrew blanched.

  ‘She told me what she did.’

  ‘Right,’ seemed to be the only word he could manage.

  ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Right,’ he repeated.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Dad?’ Beth asked, bewildered. ‘All those times I attacked you for being a dick to Mum. It was her all along.’

  ‘And she’s gone?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because I wanted space to forgive her.’

  ‘And you couldn’t?’ she asked, in a tone that suggested she knew the answer.

  ‘No, I suppose I couldn’t.’

  ‘Screw her!’ Beth said, hugging him. ‘You have me, Dad, so screw her.’ And with that Beth transposed every ounce of the anger she had felt for her father on to her mother. I can’t believe she’s done this to us.

  Andrew hugged his daughter. Although he didn’t speak his head was bursting with too many thoughts travelling in too many directions, causing an ache. She’s really gone? She told Beth – the bitch! I begged her not to. Are we over? For how long? For good? What about Beth? Is this what I wanted? I hate her. Where is she? This is my fault. Will I miss her? Twenty-six years. Twenty-six years. Twenty-six years. Why was sex so fucking important to her? Why couldn’t she take me as I am? What’s wrong with me? Will I be alone now for ever? I should have forgiven her or at least pretended to – but if I’d let her back in she would have worked it out. There’s something wrong with me. I’m not a man. Oh, God, my wife is gone!

  Andrew returned to the bedroom he had shared with his wife until seven months before. The dressing-table was void of anything belonging to Susan. Her dresser drawers and her side of the wardrobe were empty. The bedclothes were changed because even though she was leaving him she had been kind enough to ensure he returned to a clean bed. He sat down on his side. It was this bed that had broken their marriage.

  For such a long time Susan and Andrew had worked beautifully. They had laughed together, enjoyed each other’s company, shared ideas, opinions and an interest in most things. He’d never understood her impulse to buy kitchen utensils but aside from that they were usually in unison. In fact, up to three years ago they would have been seen as the perfect couple – not bad going after twenty-three years. But then it changed. He changed. Andrew had begun to experience difficulty in the bedroom. He had grown up on a farm and was a middle child of six. He had two sisters, both Irish dancers, and three brothers, all strapping lads and none shorter than six feet two. Andrew had been county boxing champion at sixteen. He was as smart as he was big and the first of his brothers to go to university. He had studied law and excelled. When he grew tired of that he bought property and when that no longer satisfied him he had lectured part time and set up an investment-property consultation business, which quickly became a thriving success. He liked to drink, play cards, and enjoyed golf. He had played football well into his forties.

  Andrew was a man’s man, having come from a long line of men’s men, and he wasn’t used to failure. Until three years ago when that man, the only one he knew, had begun to ebb away. At first he’d thought he was tired, but after a while he wondered if he had lost interest in his wife – but he hadn’t. At least, he didn’t think so. She was still beautiful to him, despite a slight middle-age spread, a crude C-section scar and stretch marks. He kind of liked those: they were silvery and told the story of their miracle daughter. He used to trace the lines with his finger, marvelling at how the little girl fast asleep in the next room had come from such a petite woman.

  Then he’d wondered if he was stressed – but he didn’t feel stressed except when his wife pressured him for sex, and especially when she went to great lengths to titillate him. He had laughed at her and didn’t know why. He could only reason that it was panic-induced. He hadn’t meant to laugh and he knew how much he had hurt her. He had thought about talking to her but he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t bring himself to admit what was really going on. She had got so angry and he was so embarrassed. It sounds stupid for a grown man to be embarrassed in front of his wife, but he was, and the longer it went on the harder it was to confide in her or anyone else. He’d made an appointment with his GP once and he’d got as far as the car park but no further. As he was parking it occurred to him that he was in the same golf club as his doctor so obviously that wasn’t going to work. He had kept hoping the problem would go away – but it didn’t.

  When he had begun to suffer problems he had tried a number of remedies, such as vigorous masturbation, which had led to a slight penis bleed. Oh, God, my dick! He didn’t try that again. Instead he had watched porn – soft core and sensual, hard core and downright grab-you-by-the-back-of-the-neck filthy – but nothing had worked. He’d phoned sex lines and talked to women with names like Busty or Pussy Freak. Busty had been nice enough – she’d had a sexy French accent and was a Neil Simon fan. He hadn’t stayed on the line with Pussy Freak for too long – she’d come on a little strong and had a voice so deep she could have passed for a man. Of course he’d tried Viagra, which had made him feel dizzy and a little sick.

  After he’d found his wife kissing another man he’d got into his car and driven until he’d spotted a whore. She’d jumped in, and ten minutes later he was sitting with his trousers around his ankles and she was sucking and sucking but he just couldn’t get hard. ‘Here, mister? You’d want to see someone about that.’r />
  And now his wife was gone. His marriage, as pathetic as it was, was now over and all because of his inability to confess his humiliating impotency. If only he’d had the courage. He hated himself – stupid, stubborn, childish. He had stood by while the woman he loved tore herself in two trying to please him. He wished he’d had the strength to ask for help – but how does a fifty-year-old man who has never asked for or needed help set about it? More importantly, how could a man’s man like Andrew admit to impotency?

  ‘Dad, you’re crying,’ Beth said, and he wiped his tears away. She had knocked on his bedroom door, but he hadn’t answered. She put a tray holding a mug of tea and a plate of biscuits on the bed beside him.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘She doesn’t deserve you,’ Beth said, and her father closed his eyes.

  ‘I’m really tired,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I’ll see you for breakfast,’ he promised.

  ‘Okay.’

  She closed the door behind her. He looked around the room and resumed crying because his daughter was right. Susan didn’t deserve him. She deserved better than him and now she’d probably go out into the world and find that better man.

  3 August 1975 – Sunday

  My mam was really weird this morning. I found her sitting in the middle of the front garden. It was raining and she was just sitting there. She was crying, and when she saw me, it was almost as though she didn’t recognize me. Tingles went up and down my back. It was eerie. Then she was fine. I picked her up and we walked inside together and I made her some breakfast and she asked after Matthew and it was like nothing had happened. I really think HE’s pushing her over the edge but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m going to stay in tonight just to make sure she’s okay. There’s a programme on about the IRA ceasefire so I’ll watch that with her. She’d like that.