by Alison Walsh
‘Oh, yes, Sister Fidelma makes us pray for all the poor people in the North,’ June says, talking for the first time since we’d arrived. When I look at her, she doesn’t meet my eye but looks down at the ground instead, the toe of her sandal scuffing along the sandy ground.
‘Well, that’s a lovely thing,’ I say. ‘I’m sure they can hear your prayers.’
She gives me the look then that I deserve.
‘C’mon, let’s go down to the water,’ I say, and the two girls scream in delight. They haven’t been to the sea, not really, and the size of it, the flat blueness, intrigues them. They are used to the warm brownness of the canal and Mary-Pat shrieks as she dips a toe in the water. ‘It’s freezing. Mammy, can we swim?’
I nod and they strip to their little red knickers and hop up and down in the tiny waves, letting out little screams of delight. And I remember that Mummy used to take me to Sandycove every day during the summer and I’d watch her swim out to the buoy about a hundred yards away, a firm, ladylike breaststroke, her head high above the water in her frilly rubber swimming hat. She’d get out of the water then in her black swimsuit, her thighs heavy and mottled, her toes turning in with bunions and she’d sit down beside me and reach a damp hand into her purse and pull out two sixpence pieces. ‘Off you go,’ she’d command and I’d run up to the ice-cream van, returning with two 99s to see her in her tent, a big circle of blue towelling with an elasticated top, under which I could see her arms move, her knees lifting to pull off her togs and pull on her roll-on. She’d send me for ice-creams so that she could preserve her privacy, her dignity, and as I watched the girls, I wondered what dignity I had to preserve. What sense of myself I still had left, what kind of a mother I could be to my children.
And then I see it, the shell. It’s hard to miss because it’s about four times the size of the other shells on the beach. This one is big and black and has a bumpy matt surface, a bit like the surface of the moon, and when I hold it in my hand, it feels warm. I hold it up to my ear and I hear the hiss of the sea, and then I think of my childhood swims with Mummy and it’s all I can do not to let out a bellow of pain, right here on the beach.
When Mary-Pat comes up to me, shivering, water dripping off her hair, I give it to her and tell her to hold it up to her ear, and when she does, her mouth opens in wonder. ‘Every time you listen to it, think of me, will you?’ I say.
She doesn’t reply because she has no idea what I mean, and so I just shake my head and tell her not to take any notice of my nonsense. ‘Let’s go and find Daddy, shall we, and we’ll have our tea,’ I say, rubbing the girls dry with the small hand towel I’ve brought, then watching them run off together up the dunes. They’d be all right, I think, if I wasn’t there. They have each other. It’s Pius I’d worry about. He’d miss me more than any of them.
I can’t believe I’m even imagining this, I think, as I tilt my face up to the hot sun, that it’s even entered my mind. But more and more these days, I find myself wondering what it would feel like not to live this life any more. Not to have to face another day of disappointment, of looking at John-Joe over the kitchen table and thinking about just how much I’ve come to hate him. You’ve let me down, I think. You’ve let us all down. You’re not the man I thought you were. Maybe you never were.
I pull myself up to a standing position, and my bones ache; they feel stiff and tired, as if the years of damp and cold have lodged in them permanently. I trudge off up the dunes to find the girls, wandering through the sea of orange until I see the yellow tent that Bob brought with him. It’s not hard to pick out because it’s decorated with huge Tibetan prayer flags that he brought back from his ‘pilgrimage’ to that country. That and a tendency to preach about spirituality and being at one with the universe.
I walk towards the tent and see that Bob and John-Joe are bent over the guy ropes, pinning them into the dry ground. Beside them, drinking from a bottle of beer, is a nut-brown girl with auburn hair and a ready smile. ‘I’m Frances,’ she says, reaching out her hand. ‘Your hair’s really beautiful.’ And something about that compliment makes me realise. And then John-Joe stands up and lights a cigarette, and I catch his eye and he looks away. And I think of Mummy again in her towelling tent and I understand that I have nothing left. Nothing.
‘Christy Moore’s on next,’ Frances is saying. ‘You coming, Michelle?’
‘In a bit – I need to make the kids their tea,’ I say, and that phrase should give me my dignity, but instead it makes me feel like a nobody.
‘Of course you do,’ she says. ‘You’re a mother,’ in a tone of awe.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ I say, as if I need to remind myself. At least the girl has the grace to blush, because there’s nothing as unassailable as a mother, nothing so sacred, is there? I thought it would protect me, like an amulet of sorts, keeping John-Joe beside me and other things away, but now I see that it has no value at all in this new world that I, for one, insisted upon. And I feel a fool. There would be no such thing as a title in my world, or a boundary, or a notion of status; it would all, somehow, blur into a happy nothingness, where respect and status were irrelevant, would come from hard work and self-satisfaction. Now, I realise that I’ve given away the only thing of worth I have.
I muster up as much defiance as I can manage and I look that nut-brown girl in the eye and I say, ‘A mother’.
I plead a headache so that I can leave later, even though Christy Moore is still warbling away on the stage. I’ve been standing behind the nut-brown girl, inhaling her scent of patchouli and sweat. I can see her shoulders tense, her head held rigid, the beer bottle she’s been clutching in her hand waving around and I think, good, I’m glad you feel tense. When I declare that I have a headache, I can see her shoulders relax and it’s all I can do not to rip every hair out of her head. Instead, I say that I’m taking the girls back to my tent, that they’re exhausted after the trip down and the heat. ‘Of course they are!’ nut-brown girl declares and tries to pull Mary-Pat to her in a hug. Mary-Pat goes rigid in her arms, like a board, and I want to pull her towards me and kiss the top of her plump little head and thank her, but then June lets herself be hugged, putting her skinny little arms around the woman’s neck, just for a second, and I see it, that they’ve met this woman before, and I wonder how often and where.
They’re subdued, the two of them, as if exhausted by what’s going on around them, absorbing all the unspoken tensions between their parents without even knowing it. They lean into each other as we walk back across the crowded dunes, stepping over bodies or around people sitting cross-legged on the grass, a cloud of dope smoke rising up in the sky, which is the palest pinky-blue, the grass crackling beneath our feet. Mary-Pat tucks an arm into June’s and the two of them bump along, June’s head touching Mary-Pat’s shoulder, bouncing off it, the wisps of her brown hair flying around her head, and Mary-Pat lets her lean in, accepts the weight of her, supports it. They have each other, my two little girls, together with that silent language they both speak, pushes and shoves and hugs, and I think how lucky they both are. And I wonder, just for a moment, if I wasn’t behind them, what might that be like. Would they even notice or would they just keep on walking, moving forward together? The thought is so frightening, so distressing, that I have to run to catch up with them both, an arm around each shoulder, breaking their perfect circle by sticking my head in between theirs and planting a kiss on each cheek, which they suffer with a silent smile.
When we get back to the tent, Pius is sitting outside with Bob, the two of them cooking marshmallows over the fire Bob has made, the light flickering orange in Pius’s monkey features, his currant-black eyes, his eyebrows sharp black lines above them; he’s jabbering away to Bob about some theory he has – Pius always has a theory, whether it’s about fishing or the stars or the lifecycle of the newt. ‘I have a theory, Mammy …’ he’ll say. My clever, restless little boy.
Bob normally just does small talk, harmless chat, the odd dry one-li
ner, because he’s a shy man, particularly with women. Melody is the only woman he trusts, and I wonder what that must be like, even if she is a complete twit. She’s his twit. But now, he pats a place beside him on the grass. ‘Sit. Have a marshmallow.’
I can hear the girls squealing in the tent, something about a spider, and I sit down, feeling, as I do, the fight suddenly go out of me; my bones are melting into the ground, sinking down into the earth. I fight the urge to lean against Bob, but in the end, I give in and allow the top of my arm to rest against his. And then he puts an arm around me and squeezes my shoulder and kisses the top of my head. And I feel like a child being comforted by a parent, and it feels good. So good.
‘I’m sorry, Shell. It’s not right …’
I shake my head. ‘I can’t help thinking that somehow I asked for it. I brought it upon myself.’
His voice is a low rumble in my ear. ‘You did nothing wrong, love. Nothing.’
The hot tears come then, filling my eyes and spilling down my cheeks, and I shake my head vigorously, wiping them away with the back of my sleeve. ‘Oh, I did, Bob. If only I’d known. I forced him into being a person he isn’t, and I suppose I have no one to blame but myself for the way things have turned out. He told me, you know, that he didn’t want this life, but I ignored him. I just ploughed on, hoping he’d just go along with me, and I suppose this is his way of showing me, isn’t it? He’s been trying to show me how he really feels, because when he told me, I didn’t listen.’
Bob sighs. ‘He’s an adult, Shell, he can act of his own free will. Nobody forced him to live this way. He chose it. The place in Kildare, don’t you remember? It was his dream. Turns out, he just liked the idea of it, not the reality. Who’d have thought it, that you’d be the one with the grit?’ And he gives a little laugh. ‘When I first met you, I thought, this girl will never make it. She’ll be gone the first time the pipes freeze or the range packs up. But you didn’t. You stuck it out. You stuck by your principles.’
I give a short laugh. ‘Principles don’t pay the bills, Bob. And I’m tired of it, to be honest. Tired of doing it all alone. I don’t really think I can go on much longer.’ And as I say the words, I realise that they’re true. That I have nothing left to give.
11
Mary-Pat closed her eyes as she held a matching pair of red satin briefs and a slinky top, wondering if she could squeeze into them, then opened them again, almost surprised to find herself in the middle of a lingerie shop at Kildare Village. It was all too much: too overwhelming, to be knee-deep in thongs and cut-price designer clothes, confronted with the way she’d been feeling all these years. She just didn’t know how to process it all. Graham had said to be kind to herself, but she didn’t know how when she’d done so much wrong.
‘You made the best of an impossible situation,’ had been Graham’s parting words, but she couldn’t accept that. She just couldn’t.
She could hear Melissa’s voice from the other corner of the shop, laughing and chatting – she must be on her mobile. Mary-Pat had sent her off to the shoe place because she didn’t want her to see her mother shopping for fancy underwear.
‘Mum, are you in there somewhere?’ Melissa’s voice drifted towards her over the racks of lace and satin.
Oh, Christ. Mary-Pat threw the red slinky thing back on the rail and grabbed a pair of not-too-hideous-looking blue lacy undies that came with a matching corset that looked about her size and made for the till, her eyes scanning the rows of clothing to make sure that Melissa wasn’t about to appear.
‘Very nice.’ The girl at the till smiled at her as she folded them carefully into pink tissue paper. ‘Must be a special occasion.’
‘You could say that,’ Mary-Pat agreed, looking at the girl for the first time. She was Eastern European, judging by her accent, a lovely slim girl with sallow skin and lustrous dark hair and the kind of fabulous figure they all had, all long legs and tiny waists – none of the blubber of the Irish. Mary-Pat blushed then: she’d bet this girl would look fantastic in a lacy bra and knickers, not like an elephant.
‘It’s our anniversary,’ she blurted.
‘Oh, congratulations. He will be pleased with his present.’ The girl laughed.
Oh, Christ, Mary-Pat thought. Why had she said that? It wasn’t even their anniversary, but she could hardly tell the girl the truth, that she was trying to seduce her own husband in the hope that it might put him off the competition. That she hoped a nice bit of underwear might tempt him to forsake the pleasures of a gingham pinny and a puff of blonde hair. It sounded pathetic, when you put it like that, but Mary-Pat couldn’t think of anything better. She needed to make a statement to PJ, to show him what he’d be missing if he thought a bit of Polish totty would do him.
At least Graham would be pleased with her, she thought, taking the bag off the girl with a muttered ‘thanks’. Pleased that she was taking a positive approach to things and not resorting to anger or recrimination. ‘Confrontation is your raison d’être, Mary-Pat. Have you considered another approach?’ he’d asked her once. Stifling the urge to tell him to feck off and thereby proving his theory right, she’d said that, funnily enough, she had. She was going to have a nice dinner with her husband and discuss their relationship in a calm and rational manner. Not that she’d told Graham what she’d be wearing.
She hadn’t told Graham, either, that she’d paid the opposition a visit. She knew he wouldn’t like that. He’d think badly of her. That she was the kind of woman who would pour paint on her rival’s car or would chop up her husband’s suits in a jealous rage, but she wasn’t. She knew that she could be a bit … direct sometimes, but she wasn’t prone to losing it like that. It wasn’t her style. She just wanted to look the woman in the eye to see what she was dealing with.
She’d waited until the lull after lunch, when the sales reps had bought their greasy rolls full of fried food and bombed off up to Dublin, when the locals would be at home after lunch or at work and, more importantly, when she’d known PJ would be at the shop, and before she could think twice about it, she’d pulled up in front of the minimarket and hopped out, taking in a deep breath before pushing open the door and going inside.
She’d lurked down the back for a few minutes, trying to catch a glimpse of her over the tops of the plastic bottles of oil and antifreeze, the deodorising trees that you could hang from your rear-view mirror. She had been able to hear her, a gentle murmur of English with a foreign intonation, a tinkle of laughter which had made Mary-Pat want to scream. Maybe that’s why PJ liked her, because she laughed like that, like a young woman, a carefree youngster with her whole life before her and boobs that didn’t hang around her ankles.
Mary-Pat had grabbed one of the little trees and made for the counter, her feet carrying her forward even while her mind was darting around frantically, asking herself what, exactly, she thought she was doing. She hadn’t looked up as she’d handed the tree over and rummaged in her purse for a few euro.
‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ The woman’s voice had been warm and lively and, as the question had been directed at her, Mary-Pat had known she’d have to look up to answer her. She’d found herself looking into a pair of vivid green eyes, outlined with a big sweep of dark eye-liner, and that hair, piled into one of those topknots that were all the rage.
‘It is.’ Mary-Pat had found herself agreeing, handing over a few coins. She’d hesitated, wondering what else she would have to say to this woman. Stop bothering my husband? Leave him to come back to his wife and children? ‘Ehm, can I have twenty Benson and Hedges as well?’
‘Sure,’ the girl had said brightly and turned to the cigarette dispenser, giving Mary-Pat a glimpse of a slender waist, a curvy bottom. Oh, Christ, no wonder he fancied her.
‘Eight-twenty please,’ she’d trilled. Handing over the change, the girl had said, ‘Have a good day!’
‘You too,’ Mary-Pat had muttered, grabbing the cigarettes and trying to bolt out of the shop.
‘Excus
e me?’
Mary-Pat had been at the door and had contemplated pretending she hadn’t heard, but she’d looked up and the girl had been waving the bloody cardboard tree at her. ‘I think you forgot this.’
Mary-Pat had had to walk back up to the counter, her head bowed. ‘Thanks.’ She hadn’t even been able to look the woman in the eye, let alone speak to her. It had just been too much. Just too hurtful. It was all she could do to dash back to the safety of the Pajero and sit there and sob.
It was funny, Mary-Pat thought, scanning the racks of clothes and bags, trying to catch a glimpse of her daughter’s dark head, how history could repeat itself. She’d never have thought that PJ had it in him, that weakness, just like Daddy had. Maybe all men had it, even Graham, with his beige sleeveless jumpers. Some part of her knew that it wasn’t fair to lump PJ in with Daddy, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted to kill him. Now she knew how her mother must have felt, all those times. How betrayed, how lonely. And none of them had done a thing about it. They’d just left her to it, to her shame and humiliation.
The pattern was always the same. Daddy would be morose for a while, puffing away on his cigarettes and looking out the window, tapping a foot agitatedly on the kitchen floor, before announcing that he was ‘going out for a little drive’. June would look up from whatever she was doing and catch Mary-Pat’s eye and then they’d both continue, as if the unspoken thought had never existed in either’s mind. Daddy would come back from his ‘little drives’ whistling and humming to himself and be full of the joys, bursting into one of his songs as he opened the fridge and then closed it again, there naturally being nothing inside. He’d turn to them then and boom, ‘Well, ladies, how’s about we treat ourselves to a trip to the chipper? I fancy a single of cod and chips.’ And he’d pat his stomach expansively. To Mary-Pat’s shame, they always said yes, acquiesced to being bought for the price of a bag of hot, greasy chips.