by Alison Walsh
‘Thanks.’ PJ’s hand on her arm was warm. ‘C’mon, love, it’s time to go.’
Where did you come from? she thought, as she said, ‘I can’t fucking get into a car with him,’ turning to PJ then, ignoring the snot streaming from her nose. ‘Did you not hear him?’
‘I heard. And he doesn’t know his mind,’ PJ said gently.
‘I told you this would happen if she came back – I knew it would happen sooner or later. I couldn’t keep it in for ever.’ The words were out of her mouth before she had time to edit them, and Mary-Pat clamped a hand over her mouth, to prevent anything else escaping. ‘I mean, I—’
But PJ didn’t seem to have noticed, thank God. His voice was low now, a soothing rumble. ‘Shush, shush, let’s go, MP, let’s go.’ He put an arm gently around her shoulder and tugged, and she found herself following him in the direction of the car, where she could see Pius wheeling Daddy up the ramp into the back, Duke trotting close behind.
‘Sorry, Craig, so sorry.’ Mary-Pat turned and extended a hand to him, which he threw off, a look of disgust on his face. ‘Your family,’ he hissed. ‘You’re all insane, do you hear me?’ and he mimed a ‘gone in the head’ expression with his hand.
‘Now, Craig, there’s no call for that.’ PJ was gentle, but firm. ‘He’s an old man who has Alzheimer’s; he doesn’t know what he’s saying.’ This was addressed to Craig’s back, as, muttering, he’d turned away and was striding across the grass to the house.
‘You take him back to the car,’ Mary-Pat said to PJ. ‘I’ll go and see how Rosie is.’ And she made to follow Craig back to the house, until he turned on his heel and yelled, ‘You stay away from her. Do you hear? Stay away from my wife.’ He was jabbing his finger at her now and his face was red with rage.
‘C’mon, love.’ PJ grabbed hold of her sleeve and tugged gently, and when she turned around, he was giving her that look, the one she knew meant that he was taking charge.
‘But she needs me …’ Mary-Pat began, but PJ was shaking his head. ‘No, let herself and Craig sort it out tonight. You can ring her in the morning.’
She allowed herself to be guided into the car, PJ clambering in beside her. ‘I’ll drop you all home and then I’ll leave Daddy in, all right?’
Mary-Pat nodded, not trusting herself to speak, her fists clenched tight on her knees. I want to kill him, she thought. I just want to finish him off. She shook her head, unable to believe that she could think such a thing about her own father. And yet, the words must be true, because they’d come from somewhere deep inside, from a place where you couldn’t lie.
The silence lasted all the way home, Mary-Pat not even turning to say goodnight to Daddy, just letting PJ carry him off into the night, going inside and letting Melissa make her a cup of tea and smoking three fags in a row. The light in the kitchen was too bright and so she turned it off and sat there in the dark, watching the moon rise, telling herself that she hadn’t really meant it, that dark thought that had pushed its way into her head on the way home from the wedding, and that just because Daddy had said what he’d said, it didn’t mean that anyone had to believe him.
She was so lost in thought that she didn’t hear PJ come back, keys jangling as he stood in the kitchen door. ‘Why are you sitting in the dark?’
At the sound of his voice, Mary-Pat jumped up and gave a little scream. ‘God almighty. You might have let me know you were there.’
‘Sorry.’ He looked sheepish, shifting slightly from foot to foot. He had a yellow can of air freshener in his hand, which he put gently down on the counter beside him.
‘Yes, well. Where have you been? It’s half-one in the morning.’ She looked up at the kitchen clock.
‘Ehm … well, I put Daddy to bed at St Benildus’s. The nurse said she’d give him something to help him sleep. And then I, ahm, I had to get something in the minimarket.’
‘What?’
‘Sorry?’ He looked startled.
‘What did you get at the shop?’
‘Oh. Ehm, we needed some air freshener.’ He nodded at the yellow can. ‘The car stinks. Must be the heat.’
‘Oh.’ Mary-Pat couldn’t understand why he needed to go to the minimarket in the middle of the night, even if it was open 24 hours. Could he not wait until the morning? But she was too tired to ask.
‘PJ, would you help me up to bed?’ she said quietly.
‘Sure, love,’ and then he was beside her, her big rock of a man, his arms around her. He gave her a brief, tight squeeze and then led her gently up the stairs to bed.
Only when they had closed the bedroom door behind them did PJ speak. ‘Love, you’ve had a shock, that’s all. You’re not to listen to him. He’s talking rubbish. It’s the disease. I’m just sorry that Rosie had to hear that. Even if it is a load of bollocks, she’ll still be wondering …’ he said, his voice tailing off when Mary-Pat didn’t move to contradict him. She felt a wave of intense exhaustion so strong it felt impossible to resist. She looked around at the bed and wondered if she could lie her cheek against the bedspread, just for a minute, and close her eyes and just drift away.
‘It is a load of bollocks, isn’t it?’ PJ caught her eye, and she knew that if she didn’t look completely blank, he’d rumble her – he always knew when she wasn’t being truthful.
She nodded again. ‘Utter and total bollocks. I’ll go and see Rosie in the morning and put her mind at rest.’
‘Good idea.’ The hand, when placed on her shoulder, was warm and heavy and full of quiet hope. When she made no move towards him, the hand was removed, and she heard him sigh gently, and she felt a wave of sorrow wash over her. But she couldn’t yield to him, she just couldn’t. If she did that, she’d end up blabbing, she knew she would. She had to be vigilant, for Rosie’s sake.
5
Rosie had to use Pius’s bike in the end because she couldn’t run fast enough in bare feet. She’d tried, but the stones on the towpath had hobbled her, digging into the soft flesh on the underside of her foot, making her scream in pain.
She crept around the side of the house to where Pius kept an old racing bike, a tall narrow-framed Raleigh with the handlebars that curved under, like rams’ horns, bound with dirty white gaffer tape. Tucking her dress up into her knickers, she swung a leg over the crossbar, putting out a hand to steady herself on the gable wall. She’d have to be careful – she hadn’t ridden a bike in years.
She pushed on the pedals, gaining a little speed before removing her hand from the wall, gripping the handlebars as the bike moved forward with a wobble. Oh, Christ, she thought, I’m going to come a cropper, but she kept pedalling until she was down the garden path and veering out onto the bank, where she managed to steer the bike towards town.
The moon was up now, a huge silvery ball which hung over the row of gloomy leylandii that marked the boundary to Sean O’Reilly’s chicken farm, the fishy smell of feed and chicken poo now floating over the hedge to her.
Her hair flapped around her face as she picked up speed, but she didn’t dare tidy it behind her ears with a hand in case she lost her balance. She just needed to keep going, not to stop until she got there. If she stopped, then she’d think and if she thought, then she would just turn around and go back home again. Home to her husband, curled up on the bed, his back towards her.
At first, he’d refused to utter one word to her. She’d tried: after everyone had gone home, murmuring and whispering and laying regretful hands on her shoulder. She’d trudged up the stairs to their bedroom to find him sitting on the bed, his back to her. He’d taken off the cream linen wedding suit jacket and his shirt was rumpled, a grass stain just above the left elbow. He was completely still. She knew that stillness. She’d witnessed it many times before. It didn’t bode well. When she’d put a hand on his shoulder, he’d whirled around, his face twisted into a snarl. ‘Don’t say a fucking word,’ he’d hissed. ‘Do not speak to me, do you hear?’
Rosie had shrunk back against the door. ‘But, Craig, I
didn’t know this would happen.’ As she tried to explain, the thought flitted across her mind: nobody said anything to you: they – he – said it to me. My father told me that I wasn’t his. That my mother was a knacker. Daddy said it to me. His favourite.
‘What did I say? Do. Not. Open. Your. Mouth.’ His face was a livid red and spit flecked the corners of his mouth so that he looked as if he was having a seizure. He yanked the bow tie off and threw it on the ground. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, those pale Midwestern eyes blazing. ‘Why didn’t you warn me about them? To pull that shit on us, on our wedding day.’ He shook his head, bewildered. ‘I mighta known. Since you came back to this dump, you—’
‘I what?’ She tried to overlook the word ‘dump’, even though she wanted to say that she’d told him so: that there were no castles or fairies in Monasterard.
He tutted and swore under his breath. Craig never swore. ‘You’ve become someone else. Someone I don’t really know.’
She didn’t even try to answer. There was no point – and besides, he was probably right. Instead, she’d said, ‘I need to go out for a second,’ and turned and closed the bedroom door behind her. She’d slipped quietly down the stairs, stopping only to pull her platform wedges off her feet. Mary-Pat was right about them – they were totally, stupidly impractical and they’d cost a fortune. She’d quietly placed them next to Pius’s wellies and opened the door as silently as she could. And now, she was cycling under the huge copper beech, the darkness under the branches, with their thick covering of purple leaves, swallowing her. For a second, she panicked, unable to see the path in front of her, but then she steadied herself, looking to one side to where she knew she would see the remains of the bright blue rope hanging from the lowest branch. Pius had put it up for her one day, when she was ten, after she’d spent an entire afternoon whining at him about how bored she was.
She’d spent the rest of the summer on that swing, back and forth, back and forth, watching the others as their lives played out before her, from her safe vantage point. Pius’s regular departures in Daddy’s old Volkswagen, the distinctive rattle of the engine as it drove along the gravel road by the canal, on his way to meet the girlfriend he had at the time. Katy, the one who was always laughing and didn’t mind playing Monopoly with her even though Rosie had to win all the time. Then there were Mary-Pat’s trips to the clothesline and back, to the hen-run and back, to the vegetable patch and back, the clatter of the screen door as it bashed against the wall, the huff and puff as she bustled across the garden, the brisk tutting to herself, the tight snap of the clothes as she took them off the line and folded them. When Mary-Pat came out, Rosie would stop swinging, afraid she’d draw attention to herself and be asked to help.
June never appeared at all. She was always in her room, the record player on, singing ‘Waterloo’ at the top of her voice. Rosie had been able to hear her at the other side of the canal, warbling away, out of tune. If Rosie managed to sneak into her sisters’ bedroom, she’d find June lying on the bed, a homemade facemask on, two teabags on her eyes, a discarded copy of Jackie on the bed beside her. If she was lucky, June would have nodded off and wouldn’t hear her as she lifted the magazine from the bed and sneaked it off, to take it back to her lair and peruse the mystifying articles about meeting boys with funny names at the school disco and things like periods and spots and a world she didn’t know existed. Not here, anyway. She was sure people didn’t have periods and spots in Monasterard.
Of course, there was another reason for the swinging. Before that, she’d stood at the stile, watching. Once Pius had built the swing, she could scramble up onto the chunk of wood and see the path across the field all the way to the town. She could watch to see if anyone came down the track, the head visible first, then the shoulders and finally the whole shape: of Sean O’Reilly, the farmer, or Daddy, or June if she’d gone to the chipper. No one else. Never anyone else.
But she never gave up looking, she thought now. She never gave up. How foolish it seemed, that childlike belief that if you wanted something badly enough, it would happen. That the birthday wish made before you blew out the candles would actually come true. That one day, she’d look up from her swing and see her mother’s blonde head, then her shoulders, then her whole self, arms outstretched, inviting Rosie to run towards her, enfolding her in a tight hug, the way she’d seen other mothers do.
She was at the edge of the cornfield at the back of the town now. Her foot slipped on the pedal and she stubbed her toe off the hard earth, sending a jolt of pain up her leg. She had to stop then, tilting sideways so that she could place a foot on the ground, then sliding off the bike, which she had to heave over the narrow stile into the cornfield, grunting as she pulled the back wheel off the ground, then trying to hold on as she slid the bike back down the steps and onto the ground.
She was standing at the top of the stile, looking down at the bike when it hit her. He’d loved her the best – she knew that. He’d told her often enough.
So, how can it be true, she thought as she looked down at her feet, blue in the moonlight, at her wonky knees, at the way her hips jutted out in the dress, at her tiny, flat chest. How can it be true when I’m still the same me?
Rosie blinked and nearly lost her balance. She put out a hand to steady herself, then slid down the steps of the stile onto the ground, landing with a thump. She suddenly felt tired, sitting there at the edge of the field, the stalks of the golden corn now a silvery blue in the moonlight, swaying above her head. I’ll just stay here, she thought, feeling the ground warm through the fabric of her wedding dress. If I stay here, nothing else will happen.
But then she remembered her purpose and managed to pull herself up after a while, to walk the bike over to the road, where she clambered up on it and wobbled off again towards Main Street, passing a huddle of people outside the chipper. The cream lace of the wedding dress was now smeared with dark soil, a large rip at the hem from where she’d stood on it, trying to get back up on the bicycle. Half of it was still tucked up into her knickers, which, when she looked down, she saw resembled a Victorian lady’s bloomers. Her feet were filthy and her toe, where she’d bumped it, was now bleeding. She kept going, past the neat Protestant church with the lovely manicured lawn, the clean tombstones in the graveyard at the side, so organised, somehow, so tidy. She’d spent more or less her entire adolescence in the place, long summer evenings, puffing away on a joint that she’d nicked from Pius, letting the smoke drift into the damp night air, and then the brown plastic bottles of cider, guzzling the stuff, enjoying the fuzzy feeling that would sweep over her, the numbness on her tongue that would make her slur her words. And all because she’d wanted to fit in with the girls in the Protestant graveyard. She’d wanted their approval so badly, those bitchy girls without a brain cell between them – badly enough to flunk her final year of school and end up in a secretarial school at the bottom of South Great George’s Street in Dublin, bashing out the letters AFCD over and over again on a huge manual typewriter, thinking that she’d never been so bored in her entire life. Badly enough to trash the one person in her life of any value. The one person who really mattered.
Rosie could still remember the first day she’d seen him. ‘Vuong’s here to give a hand with the housework,’ Daddy had said when the two of them had just appeared at the gate, looking like birds of paradise in the grey, watery mist. ‘It’s getting too much for Mary-Pat.’ And even aged nine, Rosie had wondered where Daddy was going to get the money to pay this tiny lady, in her black trousers and pink jacket that had funny ties across the front and a little collar, and her son, in his yellow shorts and a T-shirt with a faded Coca-Cola logo on it. She had never seen anyone like them before, with that colour hair, so black it had a blue sheen to it, and their faces a deep nut brown. The boy looked at her with black eyes that folded at the outer edges, that looked like splashes of ink on his face. The boy’s mother had nudged him with her elbow and said something in a nasa
l, sing-song tone and he’d nodded and then looked at Rosie expectantly.
‘Do you want to see Morecambe and Wise?’ she’d asked him, thinking that he’d probably like to see the goats.
He’d followed her out into the garden then and they’d done a tour of the place in complete silence. Rosie had pointed out the things she’d thought he’d like: the henhouse and Colleen, the sheepdog, and the goats nibbling the grass behind the vegetable patch, which contained only a few scraggy onions and a few potatoes. The boy had looked at it all but had said nothing, not one word, and she’d wondered if he had something wrong with him, if he was a deaf-mute or something like that. One of the saints she’d studied in school was deaf-mute.
‘He doesn’t speak English,’ Daddy had told her later after tea. ‘He comes from a place that’s thousands of miles away, love, where they speak another language altogether. Like Chinese.’ And he’d ruffled her hair and she’d wondered what kind of a language Chinese was.
‘They’re like those refugees,’ Mary-Pat had thrown over her shoulder. ‘Boat people.’
At the mention of the word ‘boat people’, Pius had looked up from his work of tying a fly in the hope of catching a rare sea trout on the river, and Rosie remembered that he’d said he’d take her after tea. She’d caught two perch the last time. ‘For God’s sake, MP, they’re not boat people – they’ve just come in search of a better life. The boat people were refugees from the war. And the poxy government only took in a hundred and fifty of them. Left the rest of them to float around the South China Sea until they drowned or starved, whichever came sooner, and all that after being napalmed by the Yanks in the first place.’
‘Pi, take it easy.’ Daddy had looked up from the Evening Press then and had shot his son a look over his reading glasses, with the big lump of Sellotape on the bridge because he’d fallen over one night and broken them. ‘The child doesn’t need that level of detail.’ Rosie had been surprised then, that Daddy would talk to Pius like that, because he normally didn’t say much to him at all.