501

  I envy Scottie Dog her cats.

  I envy Pegs her gypsy freedom.

  And I envy Maggie a husband who’s dependent on her.

  So on this morning of another endless day I do what I always do; I replay the past.

  I’m eighteen years old and my home, our home, is a downstairs flat on the outskirts of the Belfast. I’ve been with living with Michael for just three weeks when, of a Saturday morning, the car’s outside of our door. Michael’s just going for a newspaper and I’m watching him through the window. He stops, looks at the car, opens the door, looks inside. Then he looks at me through the glass and he doesn’t smile at me like he usually does. He doesn’t go for his paper, he comes back inside the house.

  ‘That car,’ he says, putting on his coat. ‘I’ve got to take it to a friend.’

  I snatch up my coat and purse and follow him out.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Tis all right.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘There’s no need, I won’t be an hour.’

  But cheeky, stupid, headstrong me streaks around to the passenger side and gets in.

  I’m laughing but Michael’s not.

  ‘Mary, get out.’

  I’m not moving and he’s glancing up and down the street and looking at his watch like his life depended on the time. Then he opens my door, grabs me by the wrist, tries to yank me from the car.

  ‘Get yerself fucking out, Mary.’

  He’s hurting my arm and young fiery me wedges my feet in the footwell. I’m definitely not for the moving now. I don’t know what would have happened next if the police car hadn’t been driving slowly up our road. A row would have been the least of it.

  Michael lets go of me like he’s been scalded. He hisses through his teeth, ‘Suit yer fucking self,’ and his face seems to contain all the anger of the world but he takes himself casually to the driver’s seat.

  ‘Act normal,’ he says as the police draw abreast.

  He leans across and kisses me on the mouth and I bite hard onto his lip.

  He flinches and mutters, ‘Just wait, Mary. Just you wait.’

  The police car has stopped across the road and it looks like they’re checking out vehicles. Michael starts the motor. ‘Jesus, we’ve got to get out of here.’

  We edge away and he keeps his eyes on the mirror until we’re in the traffic. He’s sucking his lip.

  So we drive into the city, into the Saturday morning traffic; Michael and me and the baby I haven’t told him about.

  I’m chattering on about this lovely motor, about how big, how luxurious it is and, ‘Do you think that one day, Michael, we’ll be able to afford something like this?’

  ‘One day,’ he says. ‘Everything will be all right one day.’ He looks at his watch every few seconds; he looks at the clock on the dashboard, at every church tower we pass. He mutters to himself, ‘Jesus, you’d think there’d be a second to spare.’

  I say, ‘What for, Michael?’

  And he says, ‘It’s how it works.’

  I’m nervous now. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  Michael says, ‘You’re in this now. Like it or fucking not, Mary.’

  My Michael has gone. This stranger here is not my night-time lover who holds me so close and whispers of what we can do to each other.

  My Michael has gone and this man is cold and hard.

  We’re in the city now and we slow, almost stop, alongside a block of flats where a bold sign states:

  Security – Restricted Parking – Permits Holders Only.

  Then a strange thing happens; a car the same colour, the same make – basically the same car as ours – pulls from the parking lot and we glide into our twin’s place.

  And then that’s it. Our ride is over, the delivery is done. Michael opens the glove compartment, takes out a yellow parking permit and sits it on the dashboard. Then he says, short and sharp, ‘Out.’

  I grab my coat and already he’s locking the doors and then he’s striding away and I’m almost running to keep up with him.

  God knows where he takes me. It’s through a maze of back streets and alleys and walls topped in concrete and broken glass and barbed wire. There’re burnt-out cars and potholed roads and an air of hard despair in shattered, derelict houses. On brick walls the legends of ‘Free Derry’, ‘Prodees out’ and ‘Fuck the Queen’ are spraypainted on brick, on concrete. We’re watched; boys circle us on bicycles and housewives, grouped on corners, turn to stare. Then we’re in a small square and then inside a crowded dingy bar where Michael buys a pint and a half of Guinness and we sit at a small table and watch the door.

  ‘What are we doing, Michael?’

  ‘We’re waiting for Leary, that’s what we’re doing.’

  I’m feeling in my coat, rummaging through my pockets.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he says.

  ‘My purse, Michael; I can’t find it. I must have dropped it.’

  ‘Dropped it? Where could you have dropped it? Christ, not in the fucking car.’

  He says this so loud that heads tilt towards us.

  ‘Michael, it’s only a purse. There’s a fiver in it, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all? No letters? No ID?’

  ‘A fiver, Michael. A fiver.’

  ‘Christ, Mary.’

  I feel like I’m in some crazy dream. Things aren’t making sense. Michael’s not making any sense in this bar where the tri-colour is pinned to the wall and, in an ancient photo, in sunlight and dust, a ragged line of volunteers march towards the camera. The date, handwritten, marks the title and the year as ‘The Boys of Killarney. 1919’.

  Then Leary comes in and the bar’s noise and bustle stutters to a halt. How do I know it’s Leary? I know because he fits into the disjointed unreality of this day. He owns these moments of averted eyes and shuffled feet, and drinks stopped in mid-pour.

  ‘Michael,’ he says. ‘Tis time to go.’

  His eyes, as cold and hard as glass, sweep over me.

  ‘You,’ he says. ‘You as well.’

  He turns and I can’t think to argue as Michael takes my arm and leads me after this man.

  Outside there’s a car with its engine running and before we’re in the back seat there’s a rumble of an explosion from across the city. The pavement shudders, the houses tremble. A startled cat leaps off a garden wall, bounces off a dustbin. Then, catching up, there’s the whoomph of the blast in the blowing apart of bodies, of lives.

  Then, before the sirens, before the ambulances, before the Brits seal the roads, we leave the city and before an hour’s gone we’re over the border.

  I live this day, over and over. This day from more than a quarter of a century ago. I can’t see what happened but I know what happened: the army patrol, the squaddies who are no more than boys in big boots, who are all some mother’s son. The corporal’s eyes flicking across a scene where nothing is out of place. Right cars, right number plates. I bet he’s thinking that it’s all hunky dory and he says, ‘Okay, lads.’

  But it’s not because the Watcher, from his attic hideaway, is slowly pressing the buttons into the number of the Beast and it ends the world for this pack of Brits.

  And I can’t tell anyone. I dare not tell anyone. There’s an invisible thread that forever demands the complicity of silence. I sip my tea, listen to the radio, try and read the newspaper while that day breathes again.

  Dies again.

  Leary, taking my face in his fingers, looking into me with those cold, cold eyes. ‘If ever,’ he says, ‘if you ever tell a soul of what you think you know, it won’t only be you that pays.’ And then he says my Ma and Da’s names: ‘Mr and Mrs David Donalee’. Still gripping my face with those cruel, cruel fingers, he says the address: ‘Ford Farm, Kinnerley, Co. Meath’.

  Then he lets me go and thrusts a thick, brown envelope at Michael.

  ‘You take this and you get yerself to England. You disappear, you understand? You fuckin
g disappear for a while and take this stupid bitch with you.’

  So we cross the water and for three whole years we live in a collection of first-floor flats in Kilburn.

  Michael likes Little Ireland, as he calls it.

  ‘Like a home from home.’

  For him there’s the pubs, the craic, the painted ladies of the parade – the Mary Magdalenes of the profession.

  I hate it. I hate the concrete pavements, the neglected streets, the remnants of MacAlpine Fusiliers who drink their dole and sing of a country that’s long gone, of a land they’ll never see again.

  And in this time, this exile from Ireland, Davey’s born. He learns to crawl, to walk, to show a smile that would break your heart.

  He’s mine, is Davey. He belongs to me. All the days that Michael is away, Davey shares with me. All those nights his firm little body lies in my arms, his breath, sleepy and sweet, softly fanning my face.

  Like I said, I hated those three years in Kilburn but if I could call them back now I’d call them back forever.

  But in this here and now Gobshite comes home for tea and we make small-talk like any other middle-aged couple.

  Gobshite says, ‘Yer day? How was yer day?’

  ‘Fine. How was your day?’

  ‘Fine.’ After this exchange he gets up from the table and switches the telly on and we don’t talk again for another hour. Not until he gives me that look, yawns and says, ‘It’s been a long day, Mary.’

  ‘Oh, are you tired, Michael? Do you want to go to bed?’

  ‘Bed? What are you offering, yer fucking tart?’

  The game has started again.

  The next morning I’m up before Gobshite and I make him his breakfast. He comes down the stairs without his shirt. He’s starting to run to fat and it ripples over the band of his belt.

  But I know it’s not only himself.

  I stand in front of the mirror most days, take off my clothes, smooth my skin over my hips, lift up my drooping breasts, tense my slack arse.

  You know, you’d have to look real closely to see any stretch marks, the signs that I carried my baby for the full nine months.

  But I search out these blemishes of flesh for comfort, for confirmation that Davey grew inside of me.

  I cry then. I cry for all the wasted years. I cry for all I’ve got left in my life. I cry for the Michael that I glimpsed, for the Gobshite that’s in his place, for the cold heart of the terrorist.

  But most of all I cry for my Davey.

  Later I have a shower and try to kill time. Gobshite’s going to be away for a couple of days and I’m between jobs at the moment. Well, not just at the moment, but for the last few months. I know I should be working because I need things to fill my days but I can’t seem to find the enthusiasm. Outside, the sky’s grey and a drizzle of rain is washing the window and I’m thinking again of those dingy flats and the constant moving of the early days. I’m thinking of me in a strange city, me and my Davey and the quiet of the nights when Gobshite was away.

  And away he was with no notice, no warning. It might be a postcard with plane times, with ferry times. Or it might be a stranger in a pub sidling up to Gobshite and saying, ‘Wednesday. Fishguard. Two thirty.’

  I never asked, he never told, but we both knew.

  But then there was the homecoming.

  I let the phone ring for a long time and Gobshite, worse for the drink, says, ‘I thought you were never going to fucking answer.’

  I say calmly, sweetly, ‘I was in the bath, Michael, and now I’m standing here with just a towel around me.’ I add, ‘Nothing else, just a towel and it’s hardly covering me at all.’

  Gobshite says, ‘Jesus Mary, I wish you hadn’t told me that. Yer fucking tart.’

  And then I tell him what I’d like him to do when he gets home.

  And I tell him because we only have each other.

  And all we’ve got, all that makes life bearable, is this sex. It’s our escape. My escape. His escape. I let it fill my head, fill my existence, make this living tolerable. Just tolerable.

  I used to think that God would understand, make allowances for innocent involvement. But He brought no comfort, church brought me no comfort, and my confessions were incomplete. I stopped getting up on Sunday morning and I would scream at Michael, ‘How can you go? After what you did, after what happened to Davey. How can you take the Communion?’

  Michael says, Gobshite says, ‘We need God with us in this struggle.’ Then he says very quietly, almost to himself, ‘And Davey is with God.’

  So it’s not love that keeps us together. It’s hate, this perverted physical need that’s never quite fulfilled. It’s hate and secrets and grief. That’s why we can never, never be apart.

  Me and Gobshite forever or ’til death us do part.

  Later, in the afternoon, I phone around the girls to see who fancies throwing a few darts at the board and the taking of a drink or two – or three. I want something to look forward to, something to fill my head because all my memories are careering down a one-way street. I need something to put the brakes on before I go mad, before that terrible thought in my mind grows into a giant beanstalk.

  Monday night darts in November.

  The George versus the Drapers’ Arms.

  Maggie.

  Ken’s difficult to get out of bed this morning; he’s hardly helping at all. I’ve got to pull him up to a sitting position, drag his pyjama trousers down and then slip off his top while he stares at the bedroom television, his babysitter.

  Then I dress him, lead him to the kitchen and turn that television on. (It’s a good job I don’t have to buy a licence for every set in this house.) He watches the morning news – at least, I think he does – as I spoonfeed him his cereal. When he’s had enough, he clamps his mouth shut.

  ‘Come on, Ken, try a bit more.’

  He doesn’t speak, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

  ‘Another mouthful, that’s all, Ken.’

  I nearly say, ‘For Mummy,’ because this is what it feels like.

  So we’re in the routine of a thousand days; these years of living with dementia. These years of broken sleep, of bedwetting and worse.

  Around mid-morning Kayleigh calls around for a cup of tea.

  ‘How’s Dad?’

  ‘He’s in the lounge watching telly.’

  She gives me that look that tells me there’s more to come.

  ‘I didn’t ask where he was, Mum, I asked how he was.’

  ‘The same. Just the same.’

  ‘Mum, he’s getting worse by the week. You know what the doctor said.’

  ‘They don’t know everything.’

  ‘Mum, he should be in a home where they can care for him.’

  ‘I care for him.’

  Kayleigh touches my arm, takes my hand, looks directly, softly, into my eyes.

  ‘I know you do, Mum. But it’s too much.’

  ‘Soon, Kayleigh. We’ll sort it out soon.’

  I’m lying and she knows I’m lying and she can’t say. So she changes the subject.

  ‘I’ll come about eight tonight, in time for your darts.’

  My darts. My going out two nights a week for a few hours while Kayleigh sits with her dad. I wonder if she talks to him like I do, shows him photos of when our life was normal?

  ‘Do you remember this? What about that holiday? It was so hot.’

  Does she try to see behind those blank eyes, look into the mind of a father she once had?

  Sometimes I forget that I’m not the only one in this situation.

  But even now, after all of this, and like Kayleigh, I look for something of the old Ken behind this shutter that’s fallen over his mind, behind his grunted, unintelligible speech.

  I still sleep with him, still hold him while he dreams. And I wonder if in those dreams he’s the old Ken.

  Once I was in that limbo between sleep and being awake and I’m sure I heard him say, quite clearly, ‘I love you, Maggie.�
�

  That woke me properly and all night I lay in the dark, hoping, wishing, praying that a miracle was taking place. So as not to break the spell I got up at my usual time, made him his usual breakfast, and, as usual, went to wake and dress him. But there was no miracle, no going back. His movements were slow and clumsy and he looked at me like he didn’t know me.

  Everything was as usual.

  When this thing happened, when all the warnings could not be ignored anymore, when all the telltale signs added up to a conclusion, it was this day; it was him saying:

  ‘I stopped at the end of the road, Maggie. I couldn’t remember what number we were.’

  On his face is a perplexion of a smile, a bewilderment that creases his forehead.

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’

  He talks of overwork, of tiredness, of stress, while I hold his hand across the kitchen table. He wants a reassurance that I can give, that I can’t believe.

  And inside me that coil of unease, of worry, starts to tighten.

  I’ve tucked Ken up in bed and dimmed the lights and Kayleigh’s knock is on the door.

  ‘Mum, you there?’

  Where else would I be? What else would I be doing this time of night? The same thing I’ve done over and over and over again ’til I want to scream.

  So tonight I’m out with the girls but, before I go, there’s the ritual of just checking Ken, of leaving him with a smudge of lipstick on his cheek: leaving my mark on him as he sleeps like a baby. For a few brief hours I’m stepping out of being a mother, a carer, an occasional lover.

  I’m sixty two years old and I didn’t want my life to be like this.

  I walk down to the George and I’m the last to arrive, to make it Six of the Best. Pegs and Lena are on the oche. Scottie Dog is in the loo. Irish is already lining up her drinks, and Katy looks awful. She’s smudged under her eyes and she looks tired out. She’s sitting at a table with the Remnants, the team from the Draper’s Arms, pulling out the draw.

  ‘Maggie,’ she says, turning over the cards, ‘you’ve got Debbie.’

  Just my luck to get their best player.

  Katy goes through the list while I have a warm-up throw and grab a swallow from my half of bitter.