Peeling Oranges
Page 20
Pause.
‘I wanted to tell you...’
‘Yes.’
‘About Spain. Everything is sorted.’
‘What did they do?’
‘Don’t ask, Derek. Just be thankful.’
‘Thanks,’ I say.
‘There was something else.’
‘What?’
‘That I was going to tell you…’
‘What was that?’
A pause. ‘Are you there?’
‘Yes,’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘What?’
‘Another one for the Cause. To add to all the other babies,’ I say coldly.
‘What other babies? There weren’t any other babies. That was just a theory.’
‘A theory?’
‘Yes.’
Another pause. The sound of her breathing. She’s waiting for my response. What can I say?
‘Are you glad then?’ she says.
‘Should I be glad?’ I say. ‘I mean how can I ever believe you, Sinéad?’
There are tears there. I know by her sniffling, there are tears there.
‘I was thinking of going away,’ I say.
‘When?’ she says with shock in her voice.
‘Soon.’
‘Where?’
‘Europe.’
‘Europe?’ She sighs. ‘Europe is a big place, Derek.’
‘I know.’
‘I…’
‘Yes?’
‘I would miss you.’
‘Would you really?’
‘You know I would.’
‘How do I know?’ I say teasingly.
‘Because I...’
‘Yes?’ (I’m holding my breath. Will she say the word?).
‘I love you. I mean I could love you.’
‘Could?’ I say. Are we backtracking now?’
‘Of course not.’
‘How come you’re only telling me this now?’
‘Maybe it’s the absence.’
‘You’ve often been gone longer.’
‘Maybe it’s the phone; maybe it’s easier to say things like that on the phone. But don’t start getting notions, Derek Foley. I don’t mean in any bourgeois sense of marriage and pram pushing and...’
‘I have a rocking cot,’ I say. (Why do I say that? Something unfulfilled springing out of the coils of my infancy).
‘What did you say? The line is very bad.’
‘I said I had a rocking cot.’
She laughs. An emotional laugh. ‘I thought you said you had a ‘rotten cough’.’
‘For the baby.’
‘It won’t be for some months, you know.’
‘But I have the cot anyway.’
The pause.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that gunfire I hear?’ I say anxiously.
‘It’s all right. It’s far away.’
‘You’re sure you’re all right?’
‘The way you fuss. I told you. We’ll be coming home soon.’
‘Yes,’ I say excitedly, ‘the two of you. I’ll be waiting.’
‘You’re not going away then?’
‘That depends, doesn’t it?’ I say. ‘Maybe it was just a theory as well.’
She laughs. (How good it is to hear her laugh).‘We should be talking in Irish, you know.’
‘Of course,’ I say, conscious of the emotion breaking in my voice, ‘of course we should.’
***
Early morning finds me standing in the back garden of the house, dishevelled, a coat thrown over my shoulders, sleep-starved eyes smarting at the sunlight. I’m observing a blackbird pecking at a shell. It hammers the shell on the half dug tree stump, shaking its head as it tries to extract the snail with its beak.
The elongated eye of the bird senses my presence. It retreats, carrying the shell into the privet hedge. I hold my breath, silent among the leaves. There are twigs and bits of dried grass and moss forming a nest, for a mother with her tweeting chicks.
Acknowledgements
I wish to gratefully acknowledge Dermot Keogh’s Ireland and Europe: A Diplomatic History, 1919-1990 (Hibernian University Press, 1990) for throwing light on Ireland’s diplomatic links with Spain; Tony Farmar’s Ordinary Lives: Three Generations of Irish Middle Class Experience, 1907, 1932, 1963 (Gill & Macmillan, 1991) for its illuminating record of the Eucharistic Congress; Kevin C. Kearn’s Dublin Tenement Life: An Oral History (Gill & Macmillan, 1994) for its anecdotal accounts of Dublin slum life. I would also like to express my thanks to the staffs of the National Archive, of the Central Library, and of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, Dublin.