I think he’s expecting a kiss. Why else would he want me to stand close to him? But I don’t know how he’s going to manage; he still has his helmet on. I step towards him, my lips and tongue suddenly draining of their juices. He pulls off his right glove and tousles my hair.
‘That’s better,’ he says, ‘the helmet flattened it on you.’
‘Thanks.’
He smirks. ‘You’d better go.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, without budging. I’m standing next to him, gawping into his face, still waiting for the kiss.
‘See ya,’ he says, turning on the engine and revving up the bike.
‘Bye.’
I walk wobbly-legged down the street, feeling both relieved and disappointed about the kiss that didn’t happen.
‘Hello, Mister Scully.’ He’s closing up the shop.
‘Young Fall, be the hokey!’
I’m glad I’ve shocked him.
Billy Brady, the village flirt from my class in primary school, is walking towards me.
‘Evening, Red,’ he says, and winks.
‘Hiya, Billy.’
‘That’s never you, Frances Fall?’
‘Yip,’ I say, striding on.
‘Well, fuck me pink.’
He stands looking after me. I throw back my shoulders and toss back my hair.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he shouts, ‘your father’s been looking for you. I’ve just seen him driving out the Castleowen road.’
My heart sinks.
‘Shite shite shite,’ I whisper, slowing my pace.
If only I had thought of ringing him from Lesley’s house and asking him to collect me. I could have talked to him on the way home and explained to him why I’ve done what I’ve done.
20 October 1999 (the early hours)
I’ve just woken up in a sweat. I thought I heard a baby crying, but there are no babies in here. I must have been dreaming.
Her eighteenth birthday
My vision is blurred. Indicating, I pull over on to the hard shoulder to dry my eyes and compose myself. I need to keep my wits about me.
When I turn to look at the baby, I find her lying on her back, hands facing upwards, fingers curled like petals on the verge of blooming. As I run my forefinger down her cheek, her lips quiver into what looks like a smile, then purse again into their little bud shape. Such beauty.
I turn off the engine just to gaze at her.
No, Frances, I think, not now. You’ve no time to brood, you must move on. You’ve stuff to buy, a hotel to find. Then you’ll have time and you can lay her down and brood all night.
As I go to turn the key again, she lets out a sigh, soft as fleece, and I wish I could climb inside her dreams and dissolve.
I let the engine idle, lean back, shut my eyes and listen to her breathing. My face is warm and smiling. Flickering sunrays penetrate my eyelids, splashing yellow streaks across the blackness. I feel weary, but calm. Cars are whizzing by. The whirring sound of the traffic ebbs until it becomes a distant hum and seems like it’s oceans away.
I drift off into a warm, easy sleep and sink to the bottom of the ocean. I’m lying on the seabed, watching tiny fish swim above me, circling me like a baby’s mobile. Each fish is either baby-pink or powder-blue. They’re blowing bubbles. I reach up and touch a pink one with the tip of my index finger. It falls, flopping on to my stomach like jelly and wriggling about as if it’s out of the water and struggling for breath. Frantically, I try to put it back on the revolving mobile, but when I scoop it up, I realize that’s it’s not a fish at all, but a tiny baby, cold and slimy and slipping from my grasp.
The traffic roars and the fish dart through the water and disappear. I can hear the sharp, shrill cry of a baby, but when I look down, she’s no longer in my arms. The water is draining away and the sun is blasting down on me like angry steam.
I wake with a jolt, look behind me and see that the baby’s blanket is draped over her erect legs. Inside her mouth is as red as cherries and her lips are vibrating like plucked harp strings. What in God’s name is wrong with her now?
I stagger out of the front seat and climb into the back beside her. My hands are shaking. My throat feels dry and acidy. Picking her up out of the carrycot, I see that her baby-gro and the sheet are drenched. After rummaging through the baby bag, I find a clean vest and baby-gro, a nappy and her soother.
‘Good girl, good girl,’ I wheeze, my head spinning so fast, I think I’m going to faint.
The soother pacifies her as I cradle her in one arm and pull the wet sheet off the mattress with the other. Then I turn the mattress over, take off my cardigan, spread it across the mattress and lay her down. Bending her limbs very carefully, I strip her down to her nappy. When I lay my hand on her stomach, I notice that her skin is clammy … or is it mine? I don’t know, so I blow on her skin anyway to cool her down. She gurgles and shivers, her eyes widening with the cold sensation. I lean over her and blow again, this time on her chest and neck. She shudders and gasps in amazement. A lorry rattles past, causing the car to shake. The fright urges me to hurry up and move on. Her nappy is heavy and sodden and feels like warm dough. As I peel back the sticky strips to open it, she smiles at me and for a moment I breathe easy.
‘What the – Jesus Christ! You’re a boy,’ I cry. ‘A boy.’
My face is tingling from perspiration. What have I done? Who is this child? And where is his mother? When I lift the nappy out from under him, his legs flap like socks on a line on a blustery day. I hold his feet in my hands and put them to my damp cheeks.
‘I’m sorry,’ I cry over and over, but all he does is smile and gurgle.
If only I could turn back the clock and start the day all over again, I’d choose the silver necklace and not the gold. Then I’d go home, place the necklace in the box at the bottom of my wardrobe, lie down on my bed and watch her dancing in my dreams. I’d see her on a stage, in the spotlight, smiling down at me, sure of my admiration. And I’d smile back, the proud mother in the audience, until sleep would come along and draw the curtains on me.
I don’t know what to do next. I dare not think about the trouble I’m in. If I turn on the news, I’ll hear all about it, but I don’t want to. Not yet, not in the car; not while I’m driving.
Come on, I think, pull yourself together, don’t crack up.
I give myself orders and follow them.
Put on his clean nappy. Give him his soother. Get back into the front seat. Dry your tears.
I open the front pocket to get a tissue and find a half-drunk bottle of Ballygowan water. A drink at last; warm but wet. My grateful lips, tongue, throat. Small mercies.
Put on some music, something mellow: A Woman’s Heart – perfect. Drive to the next town. I’m on the road again.
22 October 1999 (evening)
I walked across the grounds to the chapel today, lit a candle and sat in the back pew. There was an old man doing the Stations of the Cross, rosary beads dangling from his fragile hands. I held my hand to the corner of my left eye. I couldn’t say a prayer.
The showdown
It’s just a new hairstyle, I think, walking round the side of the house; no big bloody deal. My footsteps seem louder than usual.
‘Is that you, Frances?’ my mother shouts from another room as I step in through the back door.
‘Yeah.’
She comes thundering down the stairs. Straightening my back, I take a deep breath. The kitchen door swings open.
My mother yelps when she sees me and, as if it’s a reflexive reaction, whips my face with her rosary beads. She gets me in the corner of my left eye with the crucifix, and now my back’s not straight any more and I want to kneel down on the floor and cry.
Hand on my face and bleary-eyed, I try to push past her, but she grabs my sleeve and jostles me, screaming into my face about my father scouring the village for me and ringing the Guards, and her on bended knee praying that I had come to no harm, and then me turning up, bold as brass, looking like a cheap
whore.
My courage has deserted me. I don’t know what to do. She won’t stop shaking me and screeching in my ear. It’s been a few years since she’s hit me, but at this moment it feels as though it’s the very first time. The fear is back. I try to pull away from her, but ferocity is giving her the upper hand. She sneers at my feeble attempt to push her arm away and again lashes out at me with her beads, this time striking my neck. The sting makes me jolt backwards and I knock my head off the doorframe. Pain pierces through my skull. She’s standing in front of me, her hot, red face like a ball of rage. I cannot breathe. I have to put a stop to it – her madness, her yelling, the pain.
‘Fucking bitch,’ I howl, grabbing her by her hair and pushing her through to the living-room and up against the back of the sofa. She struggles and tries to unleash herself, dropping her beads in the tussle. When she goes to pick them up, I kick them away. Only when I have to let go of my scream to draw breath do I realize that she is now silent. Her face is white; her eyes are pinched, glistening, like two gashes.
‘How dare you?’ she says through constricted lips.
I loosen my grip on her hair and smile, although my face and neck are still burning with pain. I think it’s the relief; I’ve finally done it – stood up to her. And won.
As I head out the living-room door to go up to my bedroom, I step over her rosary beads, stop, turn, and start stamping on them, looking into her face as the beads fall apart beneath my feet. She doesn’t move; she’s still backed up against the sofa, her bottom lip clenched between her teeth. I don’t stop until I see a tear rolling down her cheek. Then I turn and walk out.
About twenty minutes later the phone rings in the hall and I hear my mother tell my father that I’m home, and to hurry back because I’ve gone berserk and God only knows what I’ll do next.
I’m lying on the bed wishing that I’d been born into a different family, with brothers and sisters who’d do my hair and play their records and fill up the house with noise. The key turns in the front door and before my father even steps inside, my mother is out in the hall crying and saying, ‘Oh, Joe, thank God you’re back.’
I think it’s a pity that she’s not always so grateful to see him when he arrives home after a hard day’s work. She’s not humming her way through the house now, pretending that she hasn’t noticed his presence and waiting for him to break the silence, which he always does in the end.
I want to listen to what they’re saying about me, but my ears feel clogged up from crying. I’m holding a tissue to the side of my eye to stop the tears from stinging the abrasion. The Blessed Virgin is staring down at me from a picture on the wall, her hands upturned like someone who’s checking to see if it’s still raining, or simply asking – What can you do?
Lesley says the only thing standing between me and my freedom is a yellow belly. If only I could ring her now and tell her what I’ve done! I know she’d be proud of me.
After a long session of listening to my mother, my father is climbing the stairs; I can hear his knees cracking. He knocks on the door and comes in before I get the chance to tell him that he can come in. I’m dreading this confrontation more than the one I had with my mother. He glances at me sideways and drags my dressing-table stool across the floor. I sit up on the side of the bed and lean my elbows on my knees, keeping my eyes downcast. There’s a pots and pans orchestra being conducted in the kitchen just so my father won’t forget who’s most upset over this row and whose side he should be on. Letting out a laboured sigh, he sits down in front of me.
‘What’s got into you at all at all, Frances? And what sort of ludicrous hairdo is that?’
I look up at him, finger my gluey hair and snigger.
‘Sorry,’ I say, trying to sound as serious as he looks. ‘For laughing, I mean; I just couldn’t help it.’
He’s staring at me as though I’m someone else and not his daughter, as if he has a whole lot of questions to ask, but now that he sees my face, the words won’t pass his lips, because I couldn’t possibly be the same girl he’d said goodnight to on the landing only the night before. He sighs again, scratches his head, then swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bouncing inside his neck like a ping-pong ball. I imagine a string of question-marks sliding down his oesophagus and into his stomach, where they are broken down by enzymes and no longer form questions at all.
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the broken rosary beads, holds them out in his hand and says, ‘This is hardly a laughing matter.’
‘Neither is this,’ I say, wincing as I touch the cut on the corner of my eye.
‘She told me about that and explained that it was an accident.’
‘And you believe her?’
‘She’s never lied to me before.’
‘It was no accident, Daddy, believe me. I swear, she lashed out at me.’
‘The poor woman was in a state of shock. She was climbing the walls all evening worrying about you; both of us were. What you did was cruel. For all we knew, you could have been attacked and left lying dead in a ditch.’
There are tears welling up in his eyes and he has to pull out his handkerchief and blow his dry nose into it, just so that he can wipe them away before they roll down his cheeks and make him look weak.
‘Wait till you have children of your own,’ he says. ‘Then you’ll understand how distressed we were.’
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, Daddy.’
‘But you did.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘And what about your mother?’
‘She banged my skull off the doorframe, you know. My flipping head is still throbbing.’
‘Because you pushed her.’
‘No, I was trying to get past her.’
‘She says you pushed her up against the sofa.’
‘Daddy, will you lis—’
‘Well, did you, or did you not?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘God Almighty, Frances, that’s no way to treat your mother.’
‘Oh.’ I let my head flop back, grit my teeth and make fists of my hands. ‘I hate her guts,’ I say, looking at the ceiling.
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Why not?’ I level my face with his. ‘It’s the truth.’
‘There’s a thin line between love and hate, you know,’ he says, his droopy eyes pleading for my surrender.
‘Well, she crossed it first.’
I cannot hide the tear that stings my cut and runs down the side of my face. Now I look weak.
‘Your mother doesn’t hate you. I’ve never met a woman more dedicated to her family.’
‘Is that why ye sleep in separate bedrooms?’
‘That’s a matter for your mother and me, young lady,’ he snaps, ‘and quite frankly none of your business.’
‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s just that she’s trying to make out that it’s all my fault, so that you’ll be on her side.’
‘Well, to be fair, Frances, in this instance, it is your fault. You took it upon yourself to go off and get your hair done without telling either of us where you were going, what you were doing or how you were getting home. How did you get home, by the way?’
‘Lesley’s mother.’
‘Lesley who?’
‘A friend from school. It was her sister who did my hair.’
‘And a right muck she made of it too. What on earth possessed you to do all this without getting permission from your mother?’
‘Because there was no fecking point in asking her, was there? She wouldn’t have let me go.’
‘If you needed a haircut, you should have told your mother and she’d have taken you into town for it on Saturday afternoon … and don’t you say “feck” when you’re talking to me.’
‘I’m sorry, but I’m fed up with my poxy life. I feel like a right moron being escorted by Mammy everywhere I go. I’m sixteen years old, Daddy, and I’m not even allowed into town on my own. There’s ten-year-old kids in this village with more freedom than I
have.’
‘Yeah, and a cheeky bunch of corner boys they are too.’
‘Ah, for God’s sake, Daddy.’
‘What?’
I thought of what Sandra said about him being young once too. ‘What were you doing at sixteen?’
‘Working in my father’s barber shop.’
‘And did you have friends?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘And where did you go with your friends?’
‘Football matches, the pictures …’
‘And did your father tag along to keep an eye on you?’
He slaps his hands down on his knees, stands up and starts pacing the room with long strides. My mother has sent him up to sort me out, and sort me out he must, because there’ll be a price to pay for letting her down. She won’t be satisfied unless he drags me puffy-eyed into the kitchen, begging for mercy and promising never to step out of line again.
But I know he’s thinking now, and considering both points of view, because he’s frowning and his lips look like they’ve been pulled together by a drawstring.
‘I didn’t really need a haircut, Daddy; I needed a friend.’
‘I thought you were friendly with that young Mulcahy lassie from out beyond Corfinn,’ he says, stopping and leaning his elbow on the chest of drawers.
‘Not any more. I’m friends with Lesley Kelly – remember her from Irish dancing?’
‘Oh yeah, the English lassie – a gobby wee one.’
‘That’s her.’
‘They’re a wild bunch, them Kellys, according to your mother.’
‘And what would she know about them?’
‘Ah now, you’d be surprised what goes about. People talk. Anyway, what’s wrong with young Mulcahy? Now there’s a lassie from decent stock; I believe they’re a highly respectable family.’
‘She’s a twit … and a lezzie.’
‘What?’
‘She’s a lesbian, Daddy.’
‘Good God Almighty!’
‘Yeah, well, it’s the truth, if you must know.’
The Fall Girl Page 9