by Alison Walsh
‘Of course.’ Maeve had sat upright then, all business. ‘I’m sure you’re wondering why I suggested we meet.’
‘You know something about Mammy,’ June had said baldly. ‘What do you know?’ The question didn’t come out the way she’d meant it, and Maeve shrank back slightly.
‘Sorry,’ June had muttered. ‘It’s just, it’s hard after all this time.’
‘I know,’ Maeve had said. And when she didn’t add anything, June had blurted, ‘Where is she, Maeve?’
Maeve had shaken her head then, just slightly. ‘I’m afraid I can’t say. And not because I’m hiding anything,’ she added hastily. ‘I don’t honestly know, June. But I can tell you she’s safe.’
June had had to bite her tongue then, clenching her fists tight, trying to suppress the urge to stand up and yell, ‘Safe? Do you think I care whether or not she’s safe? After what she did?’ In that second, New June just melted away and in her place there was a desperate young girl, and June hated herself for it. For her weakness. ‘I know that she is – was – alive. She left word with Granny Kate in Donegal. I just want to understand, Maeve, that’s what it is.’ The statement was more like a whimper, and June had felt her eyes fill with tears. She took a hankie from her bag, dabbing at her eyes with it. ‘Sorry.’
Maeve had nodded silently and reached into her own handbag. June had flinched, as if the woman were reaching for a gun, but instead she’d pulled out a white envelope with June’s name on it. ‘Your Mammy wanted you to have this,’ she’d said. ‘Don’t read it now,’ she’d added hastily, placing a hand on June’s. ‘When you have some time. I think you’ll probably have some questions and I hope I’ll be able to answer some of them anyway. Give me a call then?’ And she’d got up, squeezing June’s shoulder. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, the number 45 bus is a rare bird and there’s one due any minute.’
And then she’d left, and June had sat there, looking at the fat white envelope, holding it in her shaking hands. And then she’d walked out of the hotel and into the glare of summer and had walked home to Haddington Road, ringing Paddy and telling him she wouldn’t be back after lunch, because she had a really bad headache. And she’d sat on the bed and composed herself, sitting up straight, hands folded in her lap. The envelope she’d placed in front of her on the bed and she’d stared at it until the writing on the front became a blur.
As she sat there, she could hear the sounds of the traffic outside, a child laughing, a siren far away near the canal, and it seemed strange to her that life could just be going on outside the window, that people could be going about their daily business, just like that, when her life had stopped. And the gap between her two lives, the one she could have had and the one she now faced, opened up in front of her. When she reached out a hand and grabbed the envelope, tearing it open so quickly that great, jagged lumps appeared at the top, it was as if she were standing outside of herself, looking at the girl with the two spots of pink on her cheeks, at the way she pulled out the wad of flimsy paper, held it in her hands, lips moving as she read the words, the way they always did when she read. Mary-Pat said it gave her the creeps, like she was some old nun saying her prayers, but it helped her to get the words into her head. It helped her to understand them better.
‘My dear June, I don’t know where to begin. How to tell you about the past ten years and what they’ve been like for me.’ She’d had to stop then, to look out the window and twist a lock of her hair into a tight, hard knot. What about what they were like for me, Mammy? What about that? When she’d looked back down, the letters had swum in front of her eyes. ‘I just need to tell you that I never intended to leave you. Not for ever. I thought that you’d come with me, you see, and we’d all be together, but then … it didn’t work out like that. I had no choice, Junie. You have to believe me.’ June had shaken her head then, unsure. There was no such thing as ‘no choice’, not really. Even she knew that.
‘It’s very hot where I am. Hot and dry and there’s no rain for months at a time. The sun burns down day after day. You’d think it was Hell, if you didn’t know better, and sometimes I think it is. But it’s what I deserve, I suppose. It’s my punishment for running away. My penance. And I try to serve it as best I can. I’m helping mothers and little girls and it’s good work, June. Meaningful work. I feel that what I do makes a difference to another person …’
June had put the letter down then. She was trying to understand it, but she just couldn’t, even though she was reading the words out loud. She knew what the words meant, but it was hard to see why Mammy couldn’t do that kind of work at home, with them. Why she had to leave them all to go and help other people. Surely that wasn’t enough reason to leave your children?
‘Please try not to blame me. One day, when you’re older, you’ll understand what can happen when love spoils, when it goes off, like sour milk.’ The viciousness of it had always made June feel a bit sick – the idea of love ‘going off’ – like Daddy was a pint of milk with the top left off. Oh, he was no angel, Daddy, but he had stayed. ‘I miss you all so much, it feels as if my heart has been squeezed in a vice with the pain of it, but then I hope that, some day, you can forgive me.’
Whenever June got to that bit, she always shook her head. No, Mammy, she thought. I can’t forgive you. ‘You were always such a tough little girl, Junie. Much more so than Pius. You were twins, but it was as if you were two halves of the same person, the ying and yang’ – God, Mammy was still into that nonsense – ‘I imagine he took it hard, and Mary-Pat, too, even though she’d never admit it. She’d bury it deep inside and let it eat away at her’ – Mammy had been right about that – ‘but you, June, I think you’ll triumph. I never really knew what was going on inside your head, Junie, but I did know that you had some inner strength that would help you to pull through.’ That bit was the most upsetting for June: the idea that she somehow didn’t feel it as much as the others.
‘Do you think that you might write to me, Junie, and tell me about your lives, about what’s going on for you all? That way, I can feel I’m part of it, that even though I’m far away I’m still, somehow, in your lives. Does that make sense?’ The first time she’d read this, June had sucked in a huge breath, holding it inside her chest. It took her a while to realise that she wasn’t breathing and she let it out then in a big rush. She knew, of course, that she’d say yes, that she’d agree to whatever her mother asked her to do. And that, by saying yes, her life would be stolen away from her, the life that she could have had.
And sure enough, that new hope she’d had for herself just went up in smoke with the burden of it, the weight of responsibility for keeping the secret. She’d kept up appearances, but it had cast a shadow over her whole life: Gerry, the births of the two girls, his success at Talk FM, the good times they’d had together, all of it. Oh, how she’d longed to break free of it; so many times she contemplated finishing it all, but she never could. What kind of a daughter would do that? Would spurn her own mother? And so, once a month for the next twenty years, she’d pull her writing box out from under the bed and take out the lovely cream notepaper that Gerry had ordered for her from Smythson, and she’d sit down to compose her letter, nonsense about holidays in Portugal and Spain, about Mary-Pat and the kids, about PJ’s business and silly local gossip, carefully crafted lies to spare everyone’s feelings, hating herself as she put the words onto the paper. And she’d hand it to Maeve and a week or two later a letter would be sent back. And over these twenty years, not a word of the truth would be spoken by either of them.
It was a lifeline, the connection between them, June knew that. She knew that she was keeping something alive by writing to Mammy like this and by reading the letters that would be sent back via Maeve. But if it was, why did it make her feel so bad?
It had been coming for a long time, June thought that morning as she drove past Avoca Handweavers, thinking about the lunches she and the girls had enjoyed there, sharing those enormous plates of quiche – whi
ch June had avoided – and salad, a half-glass of Chardonnay so that she wouldn’t get pulled over on the way home. June hadn’t even realised it until she’d opened her mouth last night to tell Gerry that she was going to see Rosie today. ‘You’ll be gone in the morning,’ she’d said, tapping on his study door. ‘I’ll be back for dinner.’
He hadn’t even turned around, just looked up from his computer, throwing half a glance over his shoulder and waving an arm. ‘Have fun.’
I’m hardly going to ‘have fun’, June thought, as she passed the garage on the way into Monasterard, the lovely manor house that she’d dreamed of living in, the bridge over the river, then left towards the canal. I’m going to see how my sister’s doing and I’m going to try not to torture myself with guilt, if you call that ‘having fun’.
It was a blustery day, gusts of wind blowing a warm drizzle over the water, and June pulled the Land Rover up in the parking space just before the humpback bridge and watched the September rain fall. A mother duck and her nearly grown ducklings were marching up the towpath, she leading the way and they shuffling along behind, feathers ruffling in the wind. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, June thought, as they waddled along. She was in charge of her own destiny, Mother Duck. June thought for a few moments, then turned the key in the ignition again and drove slowly over the bridge.
Mary-Pat’s house was to the right, the little cul-de-sac behind the church, but June turned left instead. She drove down past the school before turning left again, bumping over the rutted narrow road that led to the garage. It had a sign with a Michelin Man on it hanging from the wall. June stopped the car and sat there for a few seconds before climbing down and walking out of the bright sunlight into the dim shade of the workshop, the smell of rubber and petrol filling her nostrils.
She stood by the door for a minute, taking in the grey-painted walls with the rows of tyres lined neatly along them, ‘Goodyear’ written above them, the tools arranged in order of size along magnetic strips above a large workbench, on which two order books were placed below a small filing cabinet, and a manual on Nissan Micras. He always had been neat, Dave. ‘A tidy workshop means a tidy mind,’ he was fond of saying. It was one of his more interesting quotes, but as she stood there, trying to adjust to the gloom after the brightness outside, June tried not to think about Dave’s limited command of the language, or his smoking habit, or the way he used to smell of diesel. Or to think about why she was there for the first time in twenty-five years. Why she’d come.
A radio was humming in the background, a murmur of chat and then a rising tone of indignation as the presenter held forth on the Troika. June realised that it was Gerry. She looked down at her watch – 11.30, he was nearly finished his show. She should have taken it as a sign, but instead she just ploughed on.
‘Is Dave here?’ she asked the pair of feet sticking out from under a Ford Focus.
The feet slid out from under the car and a freckled face streaked with oil beamed up at her. ‘Well, well, if it isn’t June O’Connor, the Belle of Monasterard. After all these years.’
June stood there for a moment, looking down at Dave O’Leary, before clearing her throat. ‘It’s June Dunleavy now.’ As she spoke, she blushed, not sure why she was insisting on using her married name. After all, she was hardly going to be in a position to be protecting her status, was she? Not when she was about to do what she was about to do.
He scratched his head. ‘Oh, yeah, you married that fellow on Talk FM. He’s quite the man, isn’t he?’ and he nodded in the direction of the radio, giving her that sly grin again, the one she remembered from twenty-five years ago. He hadn’t changed, really. His hair was still black and those eyes still bright blue, and his face still had a youthfulness to it that Gerry’s had lost – too many steak dinners in Shanahan’s on the Green had seen to that.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Dave said, rolling up the sleeves of his overalls to reveal tanned brown arms, the ropes of veins twisting upwards to where she could see pale skin. A workman’s tan. June swallowed, eyes darting around the room. It’s not too late, she thought. You can still leave.
‘Oh, it’s my car,’ June improvised. ‘It’s been making a funny rattling noise.’ And as June said the words, she realised how implausible they must sound. After all, how many garages were there in her neighbourhood? And anyway, the dealership on the Navan Road was the place to go, everyone knew that. ‘I want someone I know to take a look at it.’
Dave looked at her steadily for a few moments. ‘C’mon in for a cup of coffee,’ he said. ‘We’ll take a look at her after. Unless you’re in a hurry.’
‘No hurry,’ June replied, following him into his office, closing the door carefully behind her.
September 1972
Michelle
I’ve taken to pushing the massive pram down the towpath, watching it rock and sway as I drive it over the bumps and tufts of grass, my little girl gurgling with laughter. We’ve called her Mary-Pat, after John-Joe’s sister, a name which seems to me to be very old-fashioned, like a nun’s, but I gave in to him only if I could name the next baby. I’ve already decided that if it’s a girl I’ll call her June, after Mummy. Mind you, I’m so big at this stage that I wonder if I’m going to have two! I’m six months along now, but I feel so heavy, and the pain in my back and hips is so bad that, sometimes, I worry that I’ve made a mistake and got my dates wrong.
I didn’t intend to have another baby so quickly after Mary-Pat, but nature had other ideas. Of course I know about birth control, but there certainly isn’t much of it around here, and Dr Meade only gives the pill to married women – and he’d ask for my marriage cert, I know he would. My only hope would be to get on a train to Belfast and come back waving condoms, like those brave women I see on the front page of The Irish Times, triumphantly getting off the train, armed with enough contraception for half the country. I look at them and I think, God, I wish it was me. They are marching forward and doing brave and remarkable things, and I’m trudging up and down the canal with one baby and another on the way. You’d never think I’d read Betty Friedan – not that Betty Friedan’s ideas would hold much sway in Monasterard. Father Fathom would, no doubt, denounce her from the pulpit, had he even heard of her – but I can’t help wondering how easily I forgot what the book taught me, that there was another way of life open to me, one of freedom, of self-realisation. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t become like Mummy, content with keeping house and gardening and knowing her place. I’d forge my own path, my own destiny. And yet, children have a way of making your world shrink, making your options just seem that much smaller, so that, at the end of the day, just going into the village for a walk can seem like an achievement. So much for Betty Friedan!
I wonder if she had a husband who pestered her, wore her down with charm and persistence, even during those tricky times of the month: it seems he can’t get enough of me. It’s exciting, I know, and it seems worth it at the time, until I miss a period and my heart sinks to my boots. I suppose I could say no, if I really felt that strongly about it. But I don’t. Because I like it, and because I like the way, when we’re together in bed, John-Joe belongs wholly to me. To me and to no one else. I wonder if that’s why I give in to him so much, because I don’t want him to look elsewhere. And I have a feeling, an intuition, that he would. Oh, he hasn’t so much as given another woman a look, but I’ve seen the way some of the women around here look at him, particularly that cheeky Fidelma at the post office – she practically waves her bosom in his face, which he thinks is hilarious. I don’t find it quite so funny, particularly when I look like a hippo nowadays.
But my baby is my reward. My reward and my consolation. I love babies. It’s a contradiction, I suppose, but I love Mary-Pat’s milky, rusky smell and silky hair, the little murmurs and gurgles. When I look at Mary-Pat, I know that she’s completely mine.
It’s a beautiful summer’s day and I sit down to rest on the canal bank, exhausted from the
walk. I put the brake on the huge pram and lift Mary-Pat out, my arms aching, and put her down on the grass. I sit there beside her for a while, feeling the sun on my face, and I thank God it’s summer and that I have a beautiful baby with me to enjoy it.
Bridie nearly ate me, of course, when I told her I was pregnant again. ‘What in the Lord’s name can you be thinking?’ she scolded, as she sat opposite me, looking around her with a sniff, her watery blue eyes taking in every inch of the peeling wallpaper, the grubby linoleum, which no amount of scrubbing would rid of its scuff marks and blotches of old food. Bridie is a big woman, with a broad bosom and greying hair which she ties into a funny kind of sausage roll at the back. She has a face scrubbed raw by the wind and rain and a long nose from which often hangs a drip, which every so often she blows away loudly into a huge white hankie, while John-Joe and I try not to laugh.
‘You need rest and good food and the Lord will take care of the rest,’ she said the first time she asked me to lie on the bed while she examined my bump, her huge hands pushing and prodding. ‘And you tell that husband of yours that this room is to be clean and tidy the next time I come.’ She looked around our bedroom, with the mould clinging to the walls and the condensation on the windowpane, sceptically. ‘I’ll send my fellow down with something for the damp.’
‘Yes, Bridie,’ we both chorused then, like guilty children.
She nodded brusquely. ‘Yes, well,’ and she patted my shoulder absently. ‘A child like you giving birth to a child. You need every bit of help you can get.’
‘I’m twenty-one,’ I protested.
‘What did I say?’ She folded her arms across her bosom, a satisfied look on her face. ‘A child.’