501

  I tell him that we’re going to be together, that we’re going home. Then I take down his picture and hold it to my chest. I let him feel the beat of his mother’s heart.

  I hold him as I go into the pokey sitting-room.

  I hold him as I check the window vents are shut.

  I hold him as I seal a sheet around the bottom of the door.

  I hold him as I open the gas on the portable heater that we use for cold winter nights.

  I hold him as I lay down on the settee, close my eyes and wait.

  I’m drifting away down a green lane in County Meath and Da’s dogs are barking and Mam’s at the window of the house. The sun is warm and bright and the swallows are rising and falling from a clear blue sky. I know I must reach the house before my strength dies, but it’s like I’m treading water, pushing against the current.

  At the gate my Da is standing with his hand on Davey’s shoulder. And Davey is all I ever dreamed he’d be; he’s tall and strong and blond and he’s smiling a shy smile at me. And it’s like they can’t step forward to help me, like they’re in a different world and it’s me that has to step into theirs. But I’m so weak, so weak, and I’ve got this terrible feeling that I’m not going to make it, not on my own. I pray then, I pray to a God that deserted me all those years ago and then suddenly it’s like a miracle.

  There’s a strong arm on mine, taking my weight like the Good Samaritan.

  But then the harsh words are in my ear.

  ‘Yer fucking Irish prossie. Did yer think you’d get away that easily.’

  Gobshite has a hold on me now, the iron grip of the possessor, and he’s turning me away from all I love, pulling me back, and…

  and there’s a plastic mask on my face and I’m after feeling as sick as a pig. And I just want to die.

  Let me die.

  They don’t let me. They sedate me. Watch me. Sit by my bed. And there’s a priest, a Catholic priest, who tries to hold my hand and tells me that God saved me.

  I tell him I don’t want fucking saving and that it was his fucking God who took my Davey.

  But what really saved me, if you can call it that, was our stupid neighbour.

  Mr Evans has finished his night shift and he’s dog-tired. He’s half-asleep and he’s trying to reverse his car into his parking space. This pale dawn-light doesn’t help him and it’s a bit of a tight fit. And the rear window’s steamed up. And he edges back and back until – ‘Shit’ – and there’s a crunch of our bumper. For a second there’s silence and then out comes the shriek of our car alarm like a banshee in suburbia.

  ‘God all bloody mighty.’

  Mr Evans gets out of his car and worries that he’s woken up the whole of the street. Already lights are going on and curtains are flickering.

  So he comes to knock on our door, and he knocks and knocks and knocks. Then he goes around the back and all the time that alarm is blaring into the dawn.

  Then he smells the gas because there’s an air-vent hidden behind the sofa and it’s pulling out just enough propane to taint the early morning air. So our little fucking hero breaks into my house, rescues me to a fate worse than death. He drags me out onto the cold grey of the concrete path, phones for an ambulance, gives me mouth to mouth. (I bet he liked that, me all warm and pink and offering no resistance.)

  Then, his heroics not quite finished, he goes in to rescue Gobshite.

  But Gobshite is long past rescuing.

  So I suppose he rings the police and I suppose they put the obvious together. And I suppose that’s why I’m here in this Secure Unit, where there’s always someone to watch over me.

  But I don’t want this place; I want to be in a warm, sunny day, walking up the track to my Da’s farm.

  I want to be in that world where my Davey’s waiting for me to join him.

  Thursday night practice in February.

  Lena.

  Dandy comes in from work and he looks knackered. ‘What a day; I’m glad that’s over.’ He sinks into his chair and I fetch him a beer from the fridge.

  I say, ‘I’m going down to the George now, Dandy.’ I’m dressed and ready to go.

  He says, ‘You sure you’re up to it?’

  I laugh. ‘I’m only pregnant; I’m not ill.’

  He laughs then. ‘Tell that to the toilet in the morning.’

  Then I ask him if he thinks I’m as fat as I feel?

  ‘You’re Gorgeous,’ he sings.

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Always.’

  I call him a soppy old man and he calls me a babe and then he asks very quietly, ‘Did you speak to your Mum today?’

  ‘This afternoon. We talked this afternoon.’

  Dandy takes a swig of beer and tries to sound casual. ‘And?’

  But what he means is, ‘How did she take it? What did she say? Is she all right?’

  I say, ‘I don’t think she was too worried.’ And I add, ‘She’s got a new boyfriend. It sounds serious.’

  Dandy says slowly, drawing out the words, ‘Well, as long as she’s happy.’

  ‘She’s fine. Don’t worry, Dandy. And Mikey, he sends his love.’

  This is what I tell him because the truth would have me in tears again.

  And him.

  So what I didn’t tell Dandy was that I’m…

  not going to work this morning. I’ve taken Dandy’s car and driven the fifty miles to Mum’s. And now I’m standing outside her door, rapping on the knocker and I can hear Mum say, ‘See who that is, Mikey.’

  The door opens and this skinny ten year old I haven’t seen in years is staring at me as Mum calls through, ‘Who is it, Mikey?’

  His face comes alight and he shouts back to Mum. ‘It’s Lena, Mum. It’s my sister.’

  Then Mum’s at the door and her face is hard and unsmiling.

  ‘I suppose you’d better come in, Lena,’ she says.

  There’re no hugs, no kisses for her errant daughter.

  We sit in her little kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil and she says that Mikey should be at school today but he’d complained of feeling sick this morning.

  ‘I think he used the old fingers down the throat trick. You know, like you used to, Lena.’

  She says this like a recrimination to me. There is no humour, no allowance for me in her words.

  The kettle boils and she gets up to make the tea. Even though it’s still early, Mum’s hair is done and her make-up’s on. She doesn’t look anywhere near her age and her features are sharp and pretty. She’s still slim, slimmer than me; but then she always was and everyone else seems to be now. But I can see what Dandy saw in her and a stab of jealousy jolts me.

  I say, ‘You look good Mum.’

  She says, ‘You’ve put a bit of weight on, Lena.’

  Then all the words I carefully prepared a hundred times in my head are swamped by my snap reaction of, ‘That’s because I’m pregnant, Mum.’

  The words are out before I can even consider them and then it’s like everything is frozen in this room and I say, ‘I need to talk to you.’

  Mum tells Mike to give us a minute. Then she sits across me from the table and says, ‘Tell me, Lena.’

  And it’s the way she says it, like someone whose last hope has just crumbled in front of them. Like she doesn’t really want to hear it.

  And as I tell her she just stares into my face as the tears trickle down her cheeks.

  So just when I thought things might be better, that this might bring us closer again, all I’ve done is to cut deeper into her heart.

  She says, ‘I think you’d better go, Lena.’

  ‘Mum, I…’

  ‘Go, Lena. For God’s sake just go.’

  ‘But Mum…’

  Mum screams at me. ‘What did you expect, Lena, that I’d be happy for you and him? I could never have imagined my tart of a daughter would be carrying his bastard.’ She spits out the last word.

  But now Mikey’s come back in and he’s looking from me to her in be
wilderment.

  ‘Go, Lena. Go,’ Mum says and I do.

  That’s how I leave the house: Mum upset, crying; Mikey scared and white-faced.

  I sit behind the wheel of Dandy’s car and, for the briefest of moments I almost wish I wasn’t pregnant. So I don’t let Dandy into the truth, I pretend that Mum’s coming round, that she’s living her life, and that one day it’ll all be okay. I don’t say, because he’d only worry, fret that nothing’s ever going to change.

  At least that’s what I tell myself for my reasons of invention.

  And now it’s evening and I’m putting my face on and Dandy’s gone quiet; he always does when we talk about Mum and Mikey.

  I say, ‘It’ll be all right, Dandy.’

  I sit on his knee, slip my arms around his neck, hug him tightly, because he’s mine, all mine, and I don’t want to share him with memories.

  The telly’s on and Dandy goes, ‘Shush Lena.’ And the voice on the box is saying that the dead man was Michael O’Brian and that his wife, Mary O’Brian, is in hospital suffering from the effects of gas poisoning. Then there’s a picture of a house with white-suited men going in the door, and the voiceover is saying that the man died from knife wounds and that the police aren’t looking for anyone else in connection with his death.

  Dandy says, ‘Christ, that’s only the other side of town.’

  Now I’d heard a few rumours, like you do, but no names, no details. Well, not proper ones, and I’m trying to connect these to the news when Dandy says, ‘She must have done it.’

  But I’ve put name and place to a face, to someone who swears like a trooper and drinks like a fish.

  She must have done it.

  Done it? Irish must have done it?

  I’m staring at the goggle-box like I’m expecting Irish to be holding her hand out to me in the first time I met her in the George. Aloud I say, ‘Oh no. Oh no.’

  ‘Well, it figures she must have done it if she’s…’ Dandy says and starts to explain, like I’m a bit slow on the uptake.

  ‘No, Dandy, it’s Irish. Who we play darts with.’

  But I can’t really believe this. My mind can’t seem to take it in. I suppose I must look stunned and Dandy is full of concern.

  ‘Irish? Lena, are you all right?’

  ‘It must be a mistake.’

  I’m still sitting on his lap and Dandy’s stroking my hair.

  ‘Don’t go tonight,’ he says. ‘It’s shaken you up.’

  I was thinking that things couldn’t get much worse after this morning’s episode with Mum, but this… well, I don’t know.

  I say, ‘It’s all right, Dandy; I’m all right.’

  When I’m not.

  It’s time to leave and I kiss Dandy like I’m not pregnant, like there’s not a bump in the way. Then I slip – well, not exactly slip, more of a lumber – off his knees and button up my coat.

  Then I go to meet Six of the Best, only it isn’t six now, is it?

  It’s five. Five of the Best.

  The George is quiet and the girls are sitting at our usual table. At the bar, Danny says, ‘You heard about Irish then?’

  ‘Not until tonight, Danny.’

  He pours my orange juice and shakes his head. ‘Can’t believe it. Who would ever have thought.’

  I’m shaking my head in unison with him and I’m still doing it when I sit down with the girls.

  ‘You got a nervous twitch?’ says Scottie Dog.

  Before I can get an answer in Katy scrapes her chair back, stands, and says just one word for a sudden, complete silence. ‘Irish.’

  She holds her glass out in a toast and we all touch drinks together over the table.

  Then we talk about it, go over it a hundred times, dissect it into a thousand pieces.

  We drink, or rather they drink, and the darts are left in their cases and the chalkboard stays clean. It’s Irish this and Irish that and I realise that we’re talking about her like she’s dead. And in a way perhaps she is to us.

  Danny comes to sit and reckons that Irish must have had brainstorm or something like that. He says, ‘No one could turn that quickly without a sign.’

  Scottie Dog, taking a large swig of her whisky, says, ‘Nothing surprises me anymore; it’s what people do.’ And she sounds wistful, almost sad.

  At this wake everyone’s got an opinion except Pegs who’s even quieter than usual. All she says is, ‘He must have been a bad man,’ and then she mutters a word to herself that sounds like mukado. Or something like that. A gypsy word, I suppose.

  I say, ‘He must have done something awful to set her off.’

  Katy wonders if we’ll ever know and Danny says she’ll be kept in the loony-bin for the rest of her natural.

  ‘Shame,’ he says. ‘She was a good-looking woman.’ He adds quietly to himself, ‘Bit of a waste that; she was well put together.’

  Then Maggie asks, ‘What are we going to do on Monday? We’ll be a player down.’

  Katy says, ‘I don’t even want to think about yet.’ Then she goes outside for a fag.

  Danny says, ‘I could ask Big Nellie; she throws a mean dart.’

  Scottie Dog reckons we should leave it for a week. ‘Out of respect, Danny. Out of respect.’

  So we sit for another hour until everyone’s had enough and then we all say our goodnights and Katy says she’ll have a think and let us know over the weekend.

  When I get home, Dandy’s already gone to bed and I make myself a hot chocolate and then I take a cigarette and slide open the patio door. I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but one fag’s not going to hurt.

  Outside, there’s a cold moon in the sky and the air is clear and still. It’s late now and there’s only a sprinkling of lights across the town. I’m shivering and drawing on my cigarette at the same time. I sit on a freezing plastic chair, filling my lungs with smoke, and wondering why Irish did what she did. It seems so unreal; I mean I was expecting her to walk in the pub tonight and ask, ‘Why all the fucking long faces?’

  And then I don’t want to think about it anymore and I lean back, close my eyes and empty my head. And then what intrudes is a bright summer morning when I was sixteen, with smoke in my mouth and love in my body. I shut this out but then I’m also remembering Mum today.

  And then the Mum of eight years ago.

  It’s a wet afternoon in the summer holidays and I’m revising in my room for my college course. I’m not really interested and I’ve read the same page on hair-care three times and not taken a word in. Mum and Mikey have gone to Aunt Edna’s and she’s left me instructions for tea. The rain’s tracking down the window and I’m feeling as miserable as sin when Dandy’s car pulls into the drive.

  I’m watching him as he climbs out of the car. His shoulders are damp and his hair is flattened to his head. He looks really pissed off.

  So I’m watching him and I’m wanting him and when he steps into the hall I’m on him like a Doberman.

  ‘Jesus, Lena. Your mum…’

  ‘She’s at Edna’s and I’m fed up with revising.’

  ‘I’m wet though, Lena. I’m dripping.’

  But he’s kissing me, hard and needing.

  I squeeze against him and say, ‘You have a nice hot shower and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Five minutes,’ he says. ‘Give me five minutes.’

  He slips his shoes off and bounds up the stairs and it’s times like this that he forgets – that we forget – about Mum. We shut her out of this world we’ve created; this exclusive place that exists for just the two of us.

  I give Dandy two minutes and then go into the bedroom, slip off my skirt, my blouse, my bra, my pants, and quietly open the bathroom door to surprise him.

  Really surprise him.

  He’s in the shower, behind the steam-streaked glass, singing softly to himself, and I tap on the panel, let myself in.

  Dandy says, ‘Lena. Christ, you shouldn’t,’ but I’ve put his soapy hands on me and are drawing them over m
y body.

  All over.

  We’re still wet when we’re on the bed, too hungry to dry, too ravenous for love. It’s like nothing on earth could prevent us. I’m gasping, moaning, almost breathless with this wanting for it to last forever.

  Then Dandy stops, freezes. Turns to ice. Melts inside me.

  ‘Dandy?’

  But before I’ve even finished saying his name, I hear Mum’s voice. She’s standing there looking at us. She’s crying, she’s sobbing. ‘On our bed, Andy. On our bed. How could you?’

  There’s a broken heart in her voice, in her words. There’s Mum with such hurt on her face that it starts a pain, a jolting physical pain in my heart. There’s Andy desperately trying to say something that isn’t a lie. He’s looking at me, willing me, to explain, to make Mum understand it wasn’t him, not really him, it was me; teenage temptress me, of the long legs and big boobs. Me who shouldn’t have used the power of transition, of the signals of availability. Me who shouldn’t have squeezed by him in the narrow hallway. Me who shouldn’t have been sitting opposite him after a bath, skin all soft and pink and hair carelessly, carefully, dropping curling and wantonly, onto my shoulders, so that he can’t help looking, can’t help following each shift of my body, each shuffle of my legs.

  And Mum saying time after time, ‘For God’s sake, Lena, put some clothes on.’

  Did she know, did she suspect, that I was trying to…

  Trying to what? Attract her man, steal him from her?

  I don’t know; even now I don’t know. I didn’t think, not deeply. All I could see was this man whose every word meant so much to me, who I wanted to please. Who I wanted to tuck me into bed at night.

  And then climb in with me.

  But now in their bedroom Dandy’s standing, sheet clutched around his waist and I’m still sitting on the bed with my legs together and my hands across my chest.

  Dandy just says her name and he says it like it’s the saddest word he’s ever said. And now this room is suffocating with hurt and guilt and Mum won’t look at me, doesn’t say anything to me. Instead she launches herself at him, hits his face with her clenched fists again and again. Blood trickles from Dandy’s nose, smears his lips, and, although he flinches with every blow, he doesn’t raise a hand to defend himself. Then Mum stops, wipes her eyes with her bleeding knuckles, and turns to me.