by Alison Walsh
Frances O’Brien had been different, though. She wasn’t one of the usual, the local slappers with high heels and short skirts that just wanted a bit of excitement, who thought that Daddy, with his silver earring and flashing dark eyes, was a loveable gypsy rogue. For a start, she was the first one that Daddy had brought through the front door. Mary-Pat should have known, from that one act, that it was the beginning of the end.
She smelled like ripe cheese, Mary-Pat had thought, as she’d stood beside Daddy in a ragged T-shirt with ‘I love NY’ on it in faded lettering. Her nipples could clearly be seen through the material, and she was tanned a rich, dark brown, like the mahogany sideboard in the living room. Mary-Pat had had to give Pius a good dig with her elbow to get him to stop staring at her breasts, although she could hardly blame him – they were fairly noticeable, along with her dirty feet in a pair of flip-flops and her grimy fingernails. Only her hair seemed clean, a lustrous auburn that spiralled around her face in thick waves, her hair and her teeth, which were white and strong. She should have been revolting, but instead she radiated sex, Mary-Pat had thought. As a nine-year-old, she couldn’t name it, but she could see it. Sex and health and joy. Next to her, Mammy’s pale beauty seemed insubstantial, ghostly, as if you could blow it away with one puff of breath.
‘This is Frances. She’s come to have a look at the goats,’ Daddy announced. He was almost shy with her, reverential as she stood there, leaning against the doorframe, head tilted towards his, a bright smile on her face.
‘Hi everyone,’ Frances had said, giving a little wave and a flash of those teeth, a little wiggle of her hips which set her breasts jiggling again.
‘Hi,’ they murmured, and while they all returned to whatever they’d been doing beforehand, it was clear that something had changed. From the moment she’d set foot in the house, there was a different vibration, one that Mary-Pat couldn’t quite put her finger on. It filled the house with a treacly, oily atmosphere and they all seemed to wade around in it, pulling themselves through it, herself and Pius and June and Mammy and Daddy.
When had she understood how serious it all was? That Frances wasn’t just another one of Daddy’s flings? Mary-Pat remembered now, it was the day they’d gone to the festival at Carnsore and herself and June had jumped into the sea in just their knickers. Neither of them had ever been in the sea before, not even once. The stones had been hot under their feet, she remembered that, burning the soles of them as they’d hopped down to the water. It had looked so blue and inviting and she’d wanted to jump right in, but the moment the waves lapped over her toes, she’d gasped in shock, looking at June, the pair of them collapsing in giggles. ‘On the count of three,’ June had said, holding her nose, her teeth chattering with the cold. And the two of them had plunged in then up to their shoulders, the icy water sluicing over them. Mary-Pat could still recall it, the cold, and the two of them squealing, splashing each other, great arcs of water catching the sunlight. They hadn’t wanted to get out, but Mammy had called them then and they’d hopped out to her, teeth chattering, the sun warming their shoulders, and they’d allowed her to towel them dry and hand them half a banana each.
‘Mammy, did you see me swim?’ Mary-Pat had been so excited about it, she remembered, thinking she was like Mark Spitz in the Olympics and that, next thing, she’d be winning gold medals for Ireland.
‘I saw you both.’ Mammy had smiled, squinting up at them against the glare of the hot sun. ‘You were like mermaids, the two of you.’ And when June had scuttled off up the beach, chasing after a puppy she’d seen, Mammy had said, ‘Look what I found for you.’ And she’d handed her a large black shell, about the size of an orange. ‘Hold it up to your ear and, tell me, what do you hear?’
Mary-Pat had looked at the shell for a long time, her fingers running over the bumps on its matt black surface, poking into the mother-of-pearl inside. It was beautiful, and it didn’t look like any of the other shells on the beach, the tiny little yellow ones or the flat razor clams. She held it to her ear and she heard it then, the soft hiss of the sea. ‘It’s magic,’ she’d exclaimed.
Mammy had laughed, a soft laugh, and had pulled Mary-Pat to her, giving her a squeeze. ‘You keep that shell, Mary-Pat, and every time you listen to it, think of me.’
‘I will, Mammy,’ Mary-Pat had promised, ‘but I won’t need to if you’re here, will I?’ And Mammy had shaken her head then, looking over her shoulder as if she’d seen something in the distance, and when she’d turned back to Mary-Pat, her eyes had been wet.
‘Some day you might, pet, so look after it, won’t you?’ Mary-Pat had been about to say that she would, when she heard a little giggle. The two of them had looked up to see Daddy and Frances O’Brien standing at the top of the dunes above them. Mary-Pat had seen Frances lean towards Daddy and whisper something in his ear. He’d smiled at her, a shy, private smile and then the two of them had laughed and clambered down to Mary-Pat and Mammy. Daddy had a cigarette in his hand and he’d kissed Mammy on the top of her head, which she tilted to one side so that the kiss landed on her ear. ‘Stop,’ she’d muttered.
‘Jesus Christ, Michelle,’ he’d said, his face colouring. Mary-Pat was used to their rows, so it wasn’t the exchange that bothered her: it was that there was something wrong with the way they were positioned, Daddy and the woman standing beside each other, looming over Mammy, while she’d squinted up at them. Then Daddy had said, ‘C’mon, Mary-Pat, I’ll race you down to the water,’ and she’d forgotten all about Mammy, rushing back into the icy waves again. If only she’d known what Mammy had been trying to say to her, if only she’d known she would have done something, but what could she have done? She was only a child, but even so, the guilt had never left her. The guilt and the blame.
After that summer – the summer of Frances O’Brien – when she practically took up residence with them and then suddenly vanished, Mary-Pat didn’t see the woman for another six months. Then one evening, Mammy had sent her down to the minimarket for a pint of milk. ‘Tell Dympna I’ll settle up with her next week,’ she’d said when Mary-Pat had been leaving, shutting the door and running off down the towpath, glad of fifteen minutes to herself. Glad to get away from the door-slamming and the whispers, the way Mammy would leave the room when Daddy came into it, his hands in his pockets, looking like a naughty child.
She’d made sure to take her time in the minimarket, browsing the aisles, taking in the packets of biscuits and the big boxes of cereal, her mouth watering, plucking up the courage to ask for credit – again. And then she’d seen her, Frances O’Brien, except that she hadn’t recognised her at first. Her hair was lank and greasy and hung around her face, which was pale and drawn. Gone was the flimsy T-shirt and instead she was bundled up in a heavy fisherman’s jumper, her dirty feet now hidden in a pair of trainers. And she was unmistakeably pregnant, her belly a round bulge underneath her jumper. She hadn’t put on weight, Mary-Pat knew that, because everywhere else was skinny, her wrists, which were poking out of her jumper, were twig-thin and her legs a mottled blue beneath her gypsy skirt.
She didn’t know how she knew that this had to do with Daddy, but Mary-Pat knew. As an animal instinctively knows when it’s spring, she sensed it, knew it inside, in her heart, if not yet in her mind.
The woman must have sensed that Mary-Pat was watching, because she’d turned around and, before Mary-Pat could duck out of the way, she’d been caught. ‘Mary-Pat?’ Her voice was a tiny squeak now as she shuffled down the aisle towards her.
‘I was just getting some milk,’ Mary-Pat had murmured, hardly daring to look at the woman. ‘How’s your mammy?’ The question was such an odd one, Mary-Pat shook her head for a second and then found her voice. ‘She’s grand, thanks for asking.’ And then she’d added, ‘Daddy, too. He’s grand as well.’
The woman had flinched as if she’d been hit. ‘Good, that’s good. Well, tell them both I was asking for them, would you?’
‘I will. Ehm, I have to go now.’
Frances O’Brien had nodded and Mary-Pat was sure she’d seen tears in the woman’s eyes. Mortified, she’d shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot, eyeing the rows of milk cartons behind Frances O’Brien’s head. And then she’d stuck her hand out and placed it on the woman’s arm. ‘Hope you feel better soon.’ And then she’d almost bolted out the door of the shop, grabbing a carton of milk and waving it at the girl behind the counter, ignoring the filthy look she was given in return.
The phrase had come back to her again and again that summer. ‘Hope you feel better soon.’ As if the woman had simply had a bit of a head cold when, later, Mary-Pat would come to understand. The woman had been ruined. There was no other word for it.
That was the last she’d seen of Frances O’Brien for a long, long time: the back of a woolly jumper shuffling up the aisle of the minimarket, head bent low in shame.
The rumours started to spread that winter. About what had happened to ‘that young one’ Frances O’Brien. That she’d gone to the nuns, or to England ‘to have it seen to’, conversations that ended the minute Mary-Pat opened the door of the post office or the bookies to place a bet for Daddy.
How could she have forgotten, Mary-Pat wondered now. When Pi had given the shell to her, it hadn’t meant a thing. She must have blanked the memory of that day on the beach. In the chaos that followed Mammy leaving, a shell was probably the last thing on her mind, or perhaps she couldn’t bear to listen to it and so she’d put it away. It’s funny, she thought, as she stood beside a rack of leopard-print thongs, how we can so easily forget. She reached into her bag and pulled it out, the shell, and held it up to her ear, listening to the hollow hiss of the sea. ‘Every time you listen to it, think of me.’ I will, Mammy, she said now. I will.
‘Mum, I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’ Melissa hobbled up to her in a pair of fuck-me heels, black, with great big spikes on the back. ‘What do you think?’
Mary-Pat swallowed and shoved the shell back into her handbag. I think that old habits die hard, Melissa, that’s what I think. But she was quite pleased with herself when she managed, ‘They’re lovely. Very fashionable.’ Graham would be proud of her, that, for once, she hadn’t picked a fight. Hadn’t judged.
Melissa giggled. ‘Oh, Mum, you are so funny. I look like a complete tramp. I was just trying them on for the laugh. I have a pair of Converse here in my size that I’m going to get.’ And she shook her head, as if her mother were the greatest eejit in the world.
‘Oh, right,’ Mary-Pat said weakly.
‘Vanessa has a pair in maroon, so I thought navy would be good,’ Melissa was saying. Mary-Pat had only been half-listening, but at the name, her ears pricked up. Vanessa was the new girl in school – she’d moved down here with her family from Dublin, and they all thought she was the height of glamour. Melissa had taken to quoting bits of wisdom from her, beginning every sentence with ‘Vanessa says …’ and it had irritated Mary-Pat, but still, it seemed to have jolted Melissa out of her Dukes of Hazzard phase, so she should be grateful to the girl.
‘Why don’t you ask her over to tea some day?’ she said now. ‘She could give us the benefit of her Dublin sophistication.’ As soon as she’d said it, she knew that it sounded more sarcastic than she’d intended.
‘For God’s sake, Mum.’ Melissa looked hurt.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mary-Pat said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that.’ Clearly, I haven’t changed that much, she thought morosely to herself. ‘Invite her over. I’d love to meet her.’
Melissa gave her the sceptical look she deserved. ‘Look, you can’t say anything if I invite her over. None of your usual.’
‘My usual?’
‘Yes, your usual sarcasm, Mammy.’ Melissa looked at her pointedly.
Mary-Pat tutted. ‘Look, I won’t show you up, if that’s what you mean.’
Melissa brightened. ‘Well, OK then. Thanks, Mum, I will.’ She nodded at the little paper bag that her mother was clutching. ‘Must be a very small dressing gown.’
‘What? Oh, they didn’t have any in my size, so I got a few napkins instead,’ Mary-Pat said, knowing that that would put Melissa off. She’d never want to look at napkins. ‘C’mon, let’s have a coffee.’ And she linked her arm through Melissa’s and made for the café. ‘We’ll pretend to share a cake but eat two of them instead.’
Melissa gave her arm a squeeze. ‘Thanks for taking me, Mum. It was fun.’
Mary-Pat looked at her daughter in surprise. ‘Good, pet. That’s good.’ And, even through the numbness, she was glad of that. She could see that it was a good thing – herself and Melissa together and actually enjoying themselves. She spent the rest of the afternoon trying to have fun with her daughter, trying just to focus on that and nothing else. Living in the moment, Graham called it. It sure beat living in the past.
She didn’t hear her phone buzzing in her handbag, so she didn’t get the text until she got home, stashing her purchase in the back of the wardrobe where PJ never looked.
‘We need to have family conf. Tuesday eve suit all? June x.’
12
Pius drove as slowly as he could through the November gloom to Mary-Pat’s. He knew it was a bit daft because he could only delay things – he’d have to arrive sooner or later. He couldn’t actually refuse to go either. He’d never refused his sisters anything and he had no intention of doing so now. Life was awkward enough without having them on his back, he thought.
At least now he had the plan, and it gave him something, a focus and a connection to Mammy. Every time he weeded or hoed or picked out loose stones to get the soil ready for carrots, he felt that he was closer to her, could hear her voice in the tiny pencil notes on the back of the plan. ‘I think we’ll have snapdragons here, what do you think, Pi?’ she’d say as she’d draw in the tall spears of the plants, with their gorgeous pink and red rosettes. ‘And here, a few wallflowers and maybe some cosmos, oh, and some stock. We want lots of scent in the garden, plenty for the nose as well as the eye. Now, don’t plant the carrots too close together, or you’ll have crooked roots.’ I know that, Mammy, he’d smile as he put a good covering of mulch over the green shoots so that the leaves wouldn’t go bitter. And even though he wasn’t sure she was right about planting three leek seedlings in the one hole, he thought he’d give it a go. If Mammy had been able to grow them this way, it must work. And as his potager took shape, the interlinked circular beds planted exactly as Mammy had instructed, he began to feel as if a puff of new life had been breathed into him. That in some way he was taking shape too.
That’s what had given him the confidence to ask Daphne to that reading at the literary festival in Monasterard House, and what’s more, not to be daunted when she said no. To understand that she was right. ‘Look, don’t take this the wrong way, you’re nice,’ she’d said. ‘It’s just … I want a man who’s active, you know what I mean?’ Pius hadn’t known what she’d meant, at least, not initially. ‘I want a man who’s going places. Who has plans for life. I can’t afford timewasters because of Dara. I don’t want to make the same mistake again.’
She was right. That’s what he’d been doing his entire life. Wasting time. Sitting in his living room, knee-deep in old newspapers, or making bloody coffee, or wandering around the little grow-house he’d rigged up in Daddy’s old shed, stripped down to his underpants because of the heat, the lamps dyeing him a nice shade of blue. When you looked at it that way, it didn’t add up to much of a CV. So instead of sulking, he’d taken a deep breath. ‘Daphne, I know you think I’m not exactly a catch, but I’ll prove you wrong. I have plans, believe it or not,’ he’d said, thinking of his garden, ‘and when I put them in place, I’ll ask you again and hope you’ll say yes. Will you give me that chance?’
She’d looked at him for a long time, then nodded. ‘OK.’
‘Good. Great,’ he’d said. ‘That’s just … great.’ And then, because he couldn’t think of another word to say, he’d bolted back into the safety
of the kitchen, leaving her and Dara to see themselves out. He hadn’t been feeling that brave.
His phone buzzed again and he tutted in irritation as he pressed the button, while trying to keep an eye on the road, and looked at the text. ‘We’re all waiting. Get a bloody move on.’ Mary-Pat – she’d kill him if he was late.
When he turned into Mary-Pat’s cul-de-sac, he had to manoeuvre around June’s huge Jeep, parking the Beetle as close as he could to her back bumper, hemming her in, because he knew it would annoy her later on. Serve her right if she was going to drive one of those eco-disaster tanks.
He stepped over the huddle of garden gnomes beside the gate and walked up to the front door and was about to knock, but the door opened to his touch. Pius didn’t know why, but his heart sank. Either Mary-Pat had been burgled or they were all waiting for him, and he didn’t know which was worse.
When he stuck his head around the kitchen door, three heads turned to look at him. Mary-Pat, arms folded grimly in her electric blue fleece, June, a vision in cream silk and Rosie, in a pair of jeans and a Boston College sweatshirt, her hair piled on top of her head in a topknot. Christ, who died? A picture of Daddy in his wheelchair flashed into his mind, and before he could dismiss it, he felt it, that surge of relief. A feeling of lightness that both embarrassed and excited him at the same time. But no, it couldn’t be Daddy. They’d have told him straight out.
‘Sit down, Pi,’ Mary-Pat ordered and shoved a mug across to him, filling it with a stream of dark brown tea. Pius felt his stomach flip. Strong tea always made him feel faintly sick.
‘Thanks,’ he muttered, pulling off his jacket and folding it over the top of the chair. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
June sighed. ‘Well, you’re here now, so we can get started.’
Get started with what? Pius looked at Mary-Pat and then at June, faces set, mouths in a straight line, and then at Rosie, who was examining the bottom of her teacup, red head bent over it, worrying away at the enamel with a fingernail. It was always like this, the two of them, Mary-Pat and June, ambushing with their plans and orders. He felt a flicker of resentment and reached out and patted Rosie on the shoulder. We’re in it together, the gesture said. Two of us against two of them.