‘Why are you late for class again, Miss Kelly?’
‘Oh, I’m really sorry, sir, but I was feeling very dizzy. I think I must be due my –’
‘OK.’ Mr Sweeney shifts about in his chair. ‘Just sit down quietly and get your book out.’
‘Right, sir. Sorry, sir. And pass no remarks on me if I’m a bit crabby today, sir, but you know how it is.’
‘That’s enough, thank you very much, Miss Kelly.’
‘You’re welcome, sir … any time.’
After that, Peig hasn’t a hope in hell.
Sometimes Lesley drifts off on her own, without telling anyone, even me, where she’s going or what she’s up to.
‘I just wanted to be on my own,’ she says huffily, when I question her about where she’s been and, although I feel a little hurt that she’s holding back on me, it makes me crave her company all the more. So, when she invites me to skive off with her, I jump at the opportunity. We spend ages creeping around the corridors, ‘dodging penguins’ as she calls it. We go to the convent chapel and smoke in the confessional box. If we’re peckish, we head down to Sister Bernadine, the old, wrinkly nun in the refectory who’s half-deaf, and con her into giving us something to eat. She never remembers us from one time to the next.
‘What’s your name?’ She has her hand on Lesley’s elbow and is looking up into her face.
‘Kimberley,’ Lesley says. ‘Kimberley Wilde. But you can call me Kim.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Kimberley, Sister,’ Lesley shouts. ‘Like the biscuits.’
‘Oh.’ She looks confused. ‘Why did your mother call you after a biscuit?’
‘Because it’s her favourite biscuit, Sister. She eats them morning, noon and night.’
‘Does she not have a favourite saint?’
‘No, Sister, more’s the pity,’ Lesley shakes her head, ‘but I suppose I’m lucky that she’s not too fond of Fig Rolls.’
Sister Bernadine is won over. Again. She strokes Lesley’s arm, turns to me and says, ‘You’re not called after a biscuit, are you, like this poor child?’
‘No, Sister. I’m –’
‘Kate,’ Lesley says into her ear. ‘Kate Bush. Isn’t she lucky to have such a lovely name, Sister?’
‘It’s a grand name all right. But never mind, Kimberley, you got the looks.’
‘Oh, thank you, Sister.’ Lesley hugs the nun gently, sticking out her tongue at me as she leans over the little woman’s shoulder.
‘I know I shouldn’t ask, Sister,’ she pulls back, looks at the ground and twiddles her thumbs, ‘and I wouldn’t only you’re so kind, but have you any leftovers that I could have for my lunch? My stomach’s rumbling. Can you hear it, Sister? Listen.’ She lifts up her jumper and exposes her midriff.
Sister Bernadine looks at it with a squint, as if somehow her eyes might do the job of her ears.
‘Ah, I’m a bit hard of hearing,’ she says after a few seconds’ silence.
‘Can you hear it, Kate?’
I walk over and put my ear to Lesley’s stomach. ‘God, it’s like an orchestra in there.’
‘Come on, come on.’ Sister Bernadine ushers us over to the long dining table.
‘Anything but bread and jam, Sister,’ Lesley shouts when she sees the nun with her hand on the lid of the bread bin. ‘I can’t look at the likes of that at this time of the month.’
‘What was that?’
‘I said, that’s all we’ve had to eat at home for the last month.’
‘Poor wee mite,’ Sister Bernadine says, shuffling across the refectory towards the refrigerator.
I learn how to take a good dressing-down from both my parents and my teachers, without being in any way affected by their anger. As Lesley says, ‘What can they do, only eat the arse off ya?’
Absolutely nothing. I’m beyond their control.
Lesley fixes me up with boys and I kiss them up against the wall at the back of the youth club hall. I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t do a whole pile for me either. Maybe that’s because she always keeps the best-looking boys for herself.
She’s delighted when one of Keith’s friends tells her that, from what he’s heard, I’m a mighty good shift. ‘Isn’t it great?’ she says. ‘At last you’re getting a reputation.’
I stop bothering to get permission off my parents to go into town to meet Lesley; I just walk out the front door and hitch a lift from the outskirts of the village. When he cops me leaving the house, my father follows me in the car and offers me a lift.
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I don’t like you taking lifts from strangers,’ he says. ‘Now, hop in.’
He offers to collect me when I’m ready to go home. I tell him that I’ll give him a ring if I’m stuck for a lift.
‘Promise,’ he says, as I get out of the car.
‘OK, OK.’ I wish he’d stop caring so much. It makes me feel guilty.
‘You know, it’s not right what you’re putting your mother and me through. All we have ever –’
‘Goodbye, Daddy,’ I say, slamming the car door.
I watch him drive away. My heart aches. I wish I could make him understand that I’m not trying to hurt him, but that I can’t avoid it either. He’s always there between myself and my mother; he’s in my line of fire.
When I’m at home, I spend endless hours alone in my bedroom. I don’t do much besides listen to music, daydream and wait for Lesley to ring. Sometimes I pick up one of my schoolbooks and flick through the pages, but I’ve no inclination to study; I find it hard to see the point. I’ve lost all interest in getting good grades. What difference would it make? The only thing that matters to me now is being popular, or being with Lesley; they’re much of a muchness.
One night, I’m sitting on the edge of my bed trying to give myself a love bite on my shoulder – Lesley has shown me how – to Roxy Music’s ‘Dance Away the Heartache’. I’m going to try it out for real on Friday night if I get off with someone at the youth club.
Downstairs, there’s an argument brewing. I think it might be about me. These days it usually is. When the song is over, I turn down the volume.
‘She has you down for a right mug,’ my mother says, ‘chauffeuring her around like Lady Muck, instead of having the backbone to stand up to her.’
‘There are all sorts of funny boys driving the roads nowadays. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.’
‘If it does, it’ll be her own fault.’
‘If it does, I won’t be able to live with myself.’
‘A lot worse could happen to her if she carries on keeping company with Lesley Kelly. She’s a cute hawk, that one, and she’s leading Frances a merry dance.’
‘A girl of her age needs a pal.’
‘A girl of her age needs a firm hand.’
‘We’ve done our best.’
‘So we throw in the towel, do we? Let her win?’
‘It’s not about winning and losing.’
‘Hah! It is, as far as she’s concerned. The girl is laughing at us, Joe.’
I want to shout down the stairs that it’s only her I’m laughing at.
‘Look, I’ll talk to her again, if you like.’
‘Talk! Ah, for God’s sake, have an ounce of wit. She hasn’t a notion of listening to anything you or I have to say; she’s already made that perfectly clear.’
‘What do you want me to do then, lock her in her room?’
‘You could do worse.’
‘It wouldn’t work.’
After a lull, one of them opens the door into the hall and I reach out to turn up the volume on my radio.
‘I know what my father would have done,’ my mother says, before I twist the knob.
‘What?’ It’s my father at the door. ‘You think I should beat her?’
‘It might put manners on her.’
‘She’s sixteen.’
‘She’s out of control.’
‘What’s wrong with you, Rita?
Have you forgotten what that man did to Lily?’
‘Lily!’ my mother shouts. ‘Lily! Will you have a tither of wit, you stupid man? Lily was no victim. You said as much yourself. She went out of her way to look for trouble. Never mind who she hurt in the process. Are you trying to tell me now it wasn’t all her doing?’
‘Rita, let’s not go down that road again. We’ve been over –’
‘DON’T YOU DARE TELL ME WHAT I CAN OR CANNOT TALK ABOUT.’
‘OK, OK. I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry,’ she sneers. ‘Is that all you can say? God, but you’re the weak man, Joe Fall. You have no moral fibre, no courage of your convictions. And I should know better than to expect someone like you to have any control over a devious little tramp who’s determined to get her own way.’
Sometimes I visit Aunty Lily’s grave. I still miss her. My mother has had the grass dug out and now the grave is covered with shiny grey pebbles. It looks so cold. I feel sorry for Aunty Lily because she’s all on her own in a double plot. Xavier is living back in London with his daughter Madeleine now and, despite his original intention of being buried with my aunty, has since decided to be laid to rest with his first wife, whenever the time comes.
‘I wouldn’t blame the man for changing his mind,’ was my mother’s comment when she received a letter from Madeleine not long after his return to London, informing her of the new arrangement.
My mother’s change of heart towards the sister she nursed with such unfaltering devotion makes no sense to me.
One day, as I’m sitting on a bench in the town square waiting for Lesley, I notice the daffodils in the flowerbed and think of Aunty Lily. There was a vase full of them on her bedside locker a couple of weeks before she died.
‘First daffodils of the year,’ she’d said. ‘Aren’t they very cheerful?’
‘A penny for them,’ Lesley says, touching my shoulder.
‘I was just thinking about Aunty Lily. She was mad about daffodils.’
‘Well, seeing as she’s in no fit state to pick them herself,’ she says, walking over to the flowerbed and plucking a daffodil, ‘we’ll pick a bunch for her. Come on.’
While we walk to the graveyard, I tell Lesley about Aunty Lily and about how my mother has stopped visiting her grave.
‘I don’t know why she’s turned against her,’ I say. ‘She couldn’t do enough for her when she was ill.’
‘Maybe it’s something to do with her will. Families always fall out over money.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Don’t be so sure.’
‘No. I know my mother, and getting upset over a few pounds wouldn’t fit in with her holier-than-thou image. She wouldn’t give in to it.’
As we walk through the graveyard gates, Lesley cups her hands around her mouth and shouts, ‘Aunty Lily, where are you?’
‘Would you ever shut up?’ I say, pulling her along the path between the graves.
Some of the plots are smothered with flowers.
‘Don’t be so fucking greedy,’ Lesley says, lifting a wreath off one and putting it down on a grave that is overgrown with weeds. ‘There you are, you poor forgotten bastard.’
‘Here she is,’ I say, laying down the daffodils on Aunty Lily’s grave.
‘How’s she cutting, Aunty Lily? I’m Lesley.’
‘The girl who used to dance like a French tart doing the cancan.’
‘What?’
‘Ah, nothing.’
I have to pile pebbles on top of the stems of the daffodils to keep them from scattering in the breeze. Lesley is leaning on the headstone watching me.
‘Do you think she knows we’re here?’
There’s a robin perched on a nearby headstone.
Fly away, I think. Fly away and I’ll know it’s a sign. I stare at it, willing it to spread its wings, but it doesn’t.
‘Nah,’ I say, looking at Lesley and shrugging. ‘Probably not.’
When I look back, the bird has gone.
4 November 1999 (middle of the night)
Sometimes the happy memories are as disturbing as the sad ones. They remind me of what I had, and lost. I don’t believe I will ever reach the same level of happiness again because now I know that love is never as real as it feels. Love is one-sided, dependent. It makes fools out of us. Love makes us lonely. Look at Aunty Lily alone in her grave, after all the devotion and all the tears. What happened to the love there? Did it ever really exist? And if so, where did it go?
5 November 1999 (after lunch)
Every time I hear the phone ring in the distance, I pray that someone will come and knock on my door to say, ‘It’s for you.’
I badly need to hear from my father. The last time I spoke to him was on the phone from Kilkenny Garda Station.
Goodbye, baby
‘Kilkenny Garda Station.’
In trying to blurt it all out as quickly as possible, I’m stuttering and snivelling and the Guard on the other end of the line tells me to slow down and take my time, because he can’t make out a word I’m saying. I tell him again who I am, what I’ve done, where I am and how sorry I’m feeling. He says it’s OK, to take it easy and to make sure to stay exactly where I am.
‘Tell whoever’s coming over that the baby’s asleep and not to bang on the door or they’ll frighten him.’
‘I’ll tell them.’
I hear crackly sounds in the background followed by urgent voices.
‘And tell them to turn off their walkie-talkies. The noise of them would waken him and I’m just after getting him off to sleep.’
‘Sure, Frances. Is he OK?’
‘Yes, of course he is.’
‘That’s good. That’s the main thing.’
‘Are they on their way now?’
‘They are.’
‘Thank you.’ I hang up.
Suddenly everything seems deadly quiet and for a split second it occurs to me to make a run for it, but I haven’t got the strength, and, anyway, how far would I get?
Anxious to be ready to leave when the Guards arrive, I crawl back across the room, pull a cardigan from my bag and slip it on. Then I curl up on the floor, resting my head on my travel bag and holding my knees in my arms. My eyes are sore and heavy. I’d give anything to be able to sleep.
Nathan lets out a sudden, sharp cry and then spews most of the contents of his bottle down the front of his baby-gro.
‘Oh no! Not now.’
My hands start shaking. Having to change him seems like such an ordeal; I’m all worn out. But I can’t ignore his screaming and I don’t want the Guards to think that I couldn’t or wouldn’t bother to look after him properly. I clamber to my feet and over to the dressing-table, where I’ve left my shopping. My face is tingling with perspiration as I rummage through the bags, like a madwoman, until I find a baby-gro.
‘Hurry up, hurry up,’ I tell myself as I lift him from his seat. I’m humming as I’m changing him, trying to keep myself calm, but it’s hard because he’s roaring his head off and squirming as if he’s in terrible pain.
‘I’m sorry,’ I sob, ‘but I’m doing my best.’
My clumsy fingers have to open and close the fasteners on his baby-gro several times before I get it right. It must be at least ten minutes since I’ve rung the Guards. Surely they should have come by now. I don’t know how much longer I can stick this pressure. My head feels like a time bomb on its final ten-second countdown. I need them to take Nathan away. Now.
I start walking around the room with him on my shoulder and singing:
Hush little baby, don’t say a word
Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird …
He keeps jerking back his head and my arms feel weak from trying to keep a tight grip on him.
And if that mockingbird won’t sing …
‘Frances,’ a man calls from the far side of the door. ‘This is Sergeant Hennessy.’ He has a gentle, fatherly voice.
‘It’s over, Nathan.’
I hurry across
the room and open the door.
‘Mind how you hold his head,’ I say, laying the baby in the sergeant’s arms.
The next couple of hours are all mixed up in my head; I don’t remember half of it. Some bits are clearer than others, like the bangharda nudging me in the back of the squad car and telling me not to fall asleep, that we’re pulling into the station. But I’m not actually falling asleep; I just have my eyes closed. I’d been thinking about the last time I’d spoken to my mother. Back in the hotel room, they had asked me about my family: had I a husband, children?
‘No,’ I’d said. ‘I live with my parents … sorry, not my parents, my father.’
‘Where’s your mother?’
‘She died a year ago.’
It doesn’t seem like a year ago since I’d last spoken to her. I can still remember it as if it was yesterday …
It’s a beautiful summer’s evening. My father is painting the fence in the back garden. My mother is sweeping the front doorstep and brushing away the cobwebs from around the porch. I’m in the kitchen washing the head of lettuce I’ve just taken in from the greenhouse. On the surface, we seem like a normal, even harmonious, family. But I’m distracted. It’s the day after my baby’s seventeenth birthday. It’s hard to figure out where the years have gone. My parents have continued to attend Mass on her anniversary every year, while I’ve never missed a trip to Dublin to buy her a present. And although we never mention her, she still manages to inhabit every molecule of the air we breathe. She’s in every corner of every room, waiting for one of us to break the silence. But I can’t. I still haven’t accepted her death. Secretly I’m convinced that I’m destined to have another baby and that, in doing so, I’ll bring her back from the shadows of death – new body, same soul. Only it hasn’t happened yet, after seventeen years. That’s what I’m thinking as I dab the wet lettuce leaves with a wad of kitchen roll.
Why hasn’t it happened? What’s wrong with me? My periods are like clockwork. I’ve had a smear test recently and everything is OK there. I’ve had sex with several people over the years, but haven’t had as much as a late period to built up my hopes. Time is pushing on. I’m almost thirty-five years old, getting less fertile by the year. I pat my eyes with the kitchen roll.
The Fall Girl Page 14