by Anne Griffin
That was until Doctor Arthur McRory arrived in Duncashel. His practice wasn’t open a wet week and there we were, in line to see him. Where she’d heard this man could help us any more than Doctor Matthews in Rainsford, I had no idea. But I came home one evening to find her standing waiting for me at the door. I was barely through it and she had the coat and boots off me. I was escorted to the table where she sat me down and took a seat beside me.
‘Maurice. We’re going to a doctor.’
‘We are, are we?’
‘He’s new. In Duncashel.’
‘And why might we be doing that?’ I asked, having a good look around to the stove to see if there was any sign of a rasher for the tea.
‘For to see. You know,’ she said, nodding her head below.
‘Oh, right.’
‘You’ll go so?’
‘Suppose.’
‘Grand. Tuesday. Four o’clock. You’ll have to have your bath Monday night so.’
Young and confident, he greeted us with a compassion that made me wary. I wasn’t used to kindness, having never looked for or given it to those beyond my own. But Sadie grasped hold of it for all it was worth, trusting and believing all he said. She did the talking. I stayed quiet while she answered every question. He tried to engage me, but it was as if there was a boulder stuck in my throat, stopping me from telling him any of those intimate details that Sadie seemed only too willing to expose. Every time a question was pointed in my direction she laid a hand on my leg and answered for me. He sent us off with our instructions and promises of further interventions.
‘Tests,’ he said.
I did manage to say one thing to him just before we said our goodbyes:
‘And how much will all this cost us?’
Sadie shoved me out the door.
Over the coming weeks and months, we had tests and charts and appointments coming out our ears. It drove me demented. ‘Rhythm’ fecking this and ‘cycle’ fecking that. I hadn’t a clue. I just did what I was told. Performed when it was required and looked for nothing when the calendar had a big mark through it.
‘Well, everything is looking very well, Sadie, I must say,’ Doctor McRory beamed at her one spring day. ‘The reports are showing no difficulties. If we keep going as we are [we? I thought], I’m hopeful that soon there might be news. Yes, it’s all looking very promising.’
He hadn’t lied. Within three weeks of that great proclamation, our teatimes came back to life. Sadie was indeed pregnant. She couldn’t be contained for the joy of the news over the following months. And neither could I. Everywhere I turned the world was a nicer place. People were nicer. I was nicer. I bantered with Lavin, smiled at Nancy Regan in the street and even tipped my cap to the bank manager.
Our little Molly was to be born 9th of January 1966. Not that we knew it was a girl for sure. Or should I say, not that I knew. From the get-go Sadie was convinced of it. She’d bought pink and yellow bedding and a couple of wee dresses, as she said herself, home from one of her trips to Duncashel. The little heart was beating perfectly Sadie was told, at every visit to the doctor. Limbs dancing and kicking away, elbowing her mammy to pure ecstasy. It was a happy time. They say women glow when they are pregnant. It was no different with Sadie. The woman shone. Everything about her seemed alive and triumphant in the happiness of what was to come.
Things couldn’t have been better for me workwise either. I was powering away. All the bits of business, the cows, the land buying was motoring better than I’d hoped. I had gotten into leasing machines at that stage, combines and tractors. I had a few on the go. I was putting the hours in and seeing the benefits. I had a whole team of lads around me, taking care of the everyday stuff while I was off making sure the bigger picture kept expanding. They were good lads, dependable. Things felt as they should be: a happy wife, a new home and a baby on the way. I was doing right by everyone. Making sure they would never have to worry about anything and want for nothing, or so I thought.
I arrived home one evening to find Sadie sitting in the kitchen staring at her eight-month-old bump, holding it.
‘I can’t feel her, Maurice,’ she said, looking up at me.
‘Sure, she’ll be asleep.’ I went over to her and hunkered down, putting my hand on hers, on Molly. ‘Having an auld snooze.’
‘But not now, Maurice. She’s usually doing somersaults at this time.’
‘Ah, don’t be worrying. I’ll make the tea. You just go on and have a lie down on the bed,’ I said, distracted by a meeting I had planned that evening with Jim Lowry, a solicitor from Navan. He was selling some land up in north Meath on behalf of the estate of a farmer who’d died a few weeks prior. I’d gotten a sniff of it on the grapevine and approached him immediately. I had plans to begin leasing my machinery up that end of the county. No one else was operating there at the time. It wasn’t a huge farm by any means. What I wanted were his sheds. Big and modern they were. Secure enough for my machines. The revenue would be good enough with Cavan, Monaghan and Louth on the doorstep. An opportunity not to be missed.
Sadie did as she was told and lay in the bed all evening, staring at our Molly’s quietness.
At eight, I popped my head around the bedroom door.
‘Just going out for a half hour, Sadie. You sleep, and I’ll be back before you know it.’
I didn’t wait for her reply, didn’t respond to her worried face, simply marched my way out of there to secure another bargain. With not a shred of guilt or concern, I turned the key in the ignition and drove off down the driveway.
At around eleven I came home with the deal done. Happy out. I crept into the bedroom, tiptoeing to the bed only to find her still wide awake.
‘Where were you?’ she said, her voice unsteady. ‘I rang every hotel in the county looking for you. You said you wouldn’t be long.’
‘It took a bit longer than I thought.’ I was sitting on the side of the bed taking off my socks.
‘She’s gone, Maurice.’ Her words steadier now – matter-of-fact almost. No tears, no hysterics. Was there blame, though? I can’t remember the sting, even if she had intended it. Just – she’s gone. ‘We’d better go,’ she added.
I got up and followed her to the car for the trip to Dublin. Not one word passed between us the whole way. They induced her the next day. Fifteen minutes, that’s how long we held her. Our little porcelain doll with her golden hair. Plump cheeks, a dimpled chin and a red birthmark on her lower lip, like she’d been sucking away at it for all that time in her mammy. Still and quiet, she lay in Sadie’s arms with no breath to feel the rise and fall of, to awe over. But that didn’t stop your mother rocking and singing to her. Her tears falling on the yellow blanket.
‘Molly,’ she said, ‘that’s who she is. Our beautiful Molly.’
I had to take her from your mother’s arms. May you never, son, never have to do that. It felt as if someone had my insides in their hands and was squeezing them as tightly as possible, trying to drain the life and will from me. I felt the physical pain of it, as I gently took Sadie’s hand away, cradling the bundle of our making in the crock of my arm. She was magnificent, that little thing, our magnificent Molly. I lay my lips against her soft cheek and let my body convulse in the grief of never having known her and of never being afforded the opportunity.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered into her ear, into the crisp cotton smell of the blanket. Sorry for not having whisked her and her mother away to the hospital the minute I walked in the door the previous night, giving the mite the chance she’d deserved.
Despite her closed eyes and the anguish of my guilt, I smiled for her, showing her my endless, hopeless unquestionable love before giving her away to the midwife. I grabbed your mother’s hand as our daughter left the room in the arms of a stranger. I knelt by her side and laid my head on her lap. She ran her fingers back and forth through my hair, before I felt the weight of her head on mine.
The funeral was small. We stood beside Molly in her tiny white co
ffin. Your mother closest, then me with my arm around her, giving support should she fall. There was my mother, your aunt May – the only one of my sisters who could make it back in time, although Jenny did come back a month later to have a few days with us – your granny Mary and grandfather Michael and your Auntie Noreen. Doctor McRory, and Robert Timoney senior, the solicitor from home. The chapel in the basement of the hospital smelled clinical, despite the best efforts of the flowers and aromatic candles. Three rectangular windows up high, let in the only light there was. It was a bright, crisp winter’s day – blue sky and the whitest of wispy clouds skitting across it like they were in a race to something good beyond that I couldn’t see. I remember watching them as the hum of the prayers and cars passing in the street above held the room. The hospital chaplain led the small service alongside Father Forrester, the parish priest from Rainsford. We brought Molly home to be buried. The same grave in which your mother now lies, five rows down from Tony and my father. I don’t think I opened my mouth once, not in homage to the Lord nor to those who shook my hand as I stood by the graveside. Molly’s loss had all but taken the will out of me.
During the year that followed, I returned to spending as much time as I could away from the house and Sadie. Me and my guilt stayed out until after midnight and rose before the dawn. Avoiding her eyes, her accusation, that she had every right to level. What a fool I’d been, what a damned stupid fool, allowing a piece of land and a handshake to rule me. The ‘if onlys’ tore at me in the day and in the suffocation of the night. Dragging on my breath and haunting my dreams. I watched Sadie from the corner of my eye, when I thought she couldn’t see me. I saw her pale skin grow old before me. The worry-lines, digging deeper, taking hold. I was powerless, to stop the silver sneaking into her hair. I closed my eyes to it and left. It seemed those months were full of closing doors – me, always on the other side, running away from what I’d done.
Did she watch me too, I wonder? And if she did, what did she see? I couldn’t even look in the mirror for fear of what I’d find there. So convinced was I, that greed dripped out of every pore, into the dark shadows under my eyes and the crevice of my scar. It felt as if my voice had lost its magic, and in its place, I croaked.
‘We’ll be grand, Doctor,’ I said, the first day Doctor McRory called by, waylaying me in the yard, his case in his hand. It must have been a couple of weeks, maybe a month after the funeral. I didn’t lift my head to him. But concentrated on the stick I held. Tapping it against the side of my boot. Waiting until he got the hint to leave.
‘I’d like to see her, Maurice. To check she’s OK. I take it you’ll not object if I go on in.’
The stick tapped out its rhythm louder and longer, as we waited. Of course, I objected. Jesus, could the man not leave us to the awfulness before he came ’round, poking his nose in. But in the end, I lifted the stick towards the house, giving the permission he was looking for, and off I went down to the fields, saying nothing.
To be fair to him, his intentions were good and he never let up. If he hadn’t, God knows how things might have ended up. I found evidence of his visits around the house when there was nothing further to distract me and keep me from going home. Pamphlets lay beside the kettle or on the little table beside my armchair where I put my tea and the handful of biscuits. They remained unread, covered in crumbs and teacup stains. But the more I ignored them the more they seemed to multiply. Eventually, one found its way into my jacket pocket. I pulled it out in the tractor one day, looking for a rag: Working Through Your Grief. She had put nothing in there about working through your culpability. I crumpled it up. Crumpled loads of them in fact, whenever I found one in the house.
‘I want to try for another,’ Sadie said, into the darkness after I’d crept into our bed one night some weeks later. Late it was, about two in the morning. It’d been past midnight when I came in. I’d fallen asleep in front of the telly and had woken to that awful hum they used to have on back when there was no such thing as all-night TV.
‘Fine,’ I replied, like it was nothing. It was anything but. Truthfully, I didn’t want another, may God forgive me. I didn’t want you. What madness had come over her, I wondered, as I stared above me into the darkness? Did she not know who slept beside her? A man whose greed was put before his child’s life. Is this who she wanted to father another, if by some miracle it made it to us?
But I didn’t deny her. I owed her.
I was as nervous the next night as if it was my first time. No, it was worse. I shook, unable to control myself. Petrified, I waited for her, as she got ready in the bathroom. When at last she arrived, I made myself look at her face and deep into her eyes. In that moment I begged her to let me be, to remove this burden. But she laid her hand upon my cheek, lowered her face to mine and kissed me, imparting a forgiveness so deep and honest that I had to fight back my tears of relief and gratitude. Her kindness flowed through me, saving me, bringing me home.
The nine-month wait for you was the hardest of my life, or so I thought back then. I didn’t know whether I was coming or going, I mean that literally. I’d be halfway down the driveway in the morning and would turn back to make sure Sadie was OK. Or I’d call her incessantly from wherever I was. Like the evening I held up the phone in Royal County Hotel, when she told me she’d vomited.
‘For pity’s sake, Maurice. It was just the bacon we had for the dinner. It didn’t agree with me, that’s all. You’re causing me more trouble every time I have to haul myself up from the couch to answer the phone,’ she said, after my fourth call.
I hadn’t wanted to go to the bloody meeting at all, but Sadie insisted, nearly pushing me out the door. And then there was the weekend she decided to visit her father to stay for the couple of days. I dropped her off with the intention of heading back after a cup of tea. But I couldn’t make myself start the car. I ended up staying too.
And as for the doctor’s visits, I made every one.
‘Maurice! Back so soon?’ Doctor McRory said, on another of our weekly visits that I insisted on.
You made it in the end. Strong as an ox. Screamed your way into our life on the 20th of February 1969, like you were screaming for two. Maybe Molly had left a small bit of her breath in there for her baby brother. That’s what Sadie said, and she laughing in the bed, holding you to her. I watched Molly grow, alongside you. With each of your milestones, I have imagined hers also. Her first step. Her first word. First day at school. Her debs. ’Course I never told Sadie a hint of the fact that her daughter has lived in my head all this time, loving her life; the picture of her mother. Blonde hair, though, with a little wave in it that Sadie would have envied. Slight but not too dainty, just the right side of it. Determined. Doing whatever she set her mind to. A great sense of what’s right and wrong in the world. No middle ground with her. No grey area in between. I like that in her. But, for all her bravado, she has a vulnerability that’s made me want to make the world just right for her.
Mad isn’t it? There you were, my living son right in front of me, waiting to be noticed, but my head lingered with a ghost. My heart, missing a small beat of its rhythm. Not so unlike my mother after all.
It wasn’t just me I blamed for Molly’s death, you know. Our maker had to answer the charge also. It’s true my faith was tested when Tony was taken but when He decided on Molly too, well, I called it a day. Your mother still believed. I’d walk her to the door of the church for Mass and there we’d part ways. I’d hang around outside or go back to sit in the car. I couldn’t go inside. I wouldn’t give Him the pleasure.
I made my peace with Him, in a manner of speaking, after you were born. He never received my full forgiveness, though. My faith never felt quite the same again. I know the theory: these things are put here to test us, with one hand He taketh and so on. But all the words in the bible and the placations of Father Forrester could never smooth the injustice of Molly’s death. I’ve only crossed over the threshold of His house for funerals – Noreen’s, not to menti
on your mother’s but that’s different. I did that for Sadie, that’s nothing got to do with Him. We have an unwritten rule now, Him and me. He lets me live my life as I see fit and in return I say the odd quiet prayer in my head. Our gentleman’s agreement works. We’ve made a new one of late, His greatest test yet. But I can’t be getting into that yet. There’s an order in which I want to do this. Bear with me just a little longer.
Emily reminds me of Molly. Small, fair haired, precious looking. When she stood before me on that first day, all I could see was my daughter. Floored, I was. Could barely get the words out of my mouth, to book the rooms. Did I tell you that bit yet, about the first day I met Emily?
You see, true to his word back well after you were born, Jason Bruton, Hilary Dollard’s husband and Emily’s father, did the hotel conversion. It opened in 1977. We were invited to the opening but I purposely hid the invitation from your mother. She’d only have wanted to go. I’d seen Jason around the village over the years since our showdown. He’d nod in my direction or mouth a very curt hello. Always in a rush somewhere. In return I’d raise my index finger, not too high mind. Regret is too strong a word, but I wish I’d made an effort to know him. There was something trustworthy in his bravery the night he’d stood at our front door asking me to give more money for the Dollard land. But even if I had reached across the divide and stopped for a chat on those days we passed each other by, I doubt he’d have given me the time of day. I wouldn’t have, had the shoe been on the other foot. In the end, he possibly came out the better man. It was your wedding, nineteen years later in ninety-six that did that.
‘Mr Hannigan, it’s my absolute pleasure to welcome you to the Rainsford House Hotel,’ he said, standing at his reception, holding out his hand once more to me on the day of the viewing. ‘We’ve had our doubters, but here we are, defying the odds, ready to spend your money,’ he said, a big grin on his face.