All That I Leave Behind

by Alison Walsh

  Boy, am I glad to see you, she thought. She managed a weak smile. ‘Oh, just going for a little walk.’ As if any normal human being would be wandering around the town at midnight in November. ‘Can I grab a lift?’

  He turned down ‘The Mountains of Mourne’ and opened the passenger door. ‘Hop in.’

  ‘Thanks,’ and she slid into the passenger seat, the warm blast of the heater enveloping her. He turned the music back up and drove along the street in silence, the words to ‘Mursheen Durkin’ reverberating around the car, his collection of holy medals and scapulars swaying from his rear-view mirror, the pyramid of fag ash in the ashtray behind the clutch. She knew that he was the same age as Pi, because they’d been to school together, but Wee Petie looked about ten years older, with his red eyes and purple, swollen nose, the legacy of too many years drinking spirits.

  Rosie let herself be lulled by the heater for a few seconds, her eyes suddenly drooping. She couldn’t understand it, how exhausted she felt, how weary to her very bones. The adrenalin burst she’d felt earlier at Mark’s just seemed to have deserted her and she felt herself grow sleepy, the warm air blasting her face, the odour of pine air freshener filling the car. And then she was three years old, curled up on the back seat of Daddy’s car under a blanket, the heater blasting her with warm air. She’d felt sleepy then, too, her eyelids drooping as she lay there, thumb in her mouth. Daddy was driving, his black hair, streaked with grey, curling over the top of his shirt as he stared into the rain, the wipers swishing back and forth across the windscreen. She could still remember the steady whump-whump as they moved, the way they cut a swathe through the silver raindrops as the car drove through the night.

  He hadn’t said anything when he’d collected her from Maeve’s, just stood there on the doorstep, hands in the pockets of an old grey cardigan that Mammy had knitted him, shoulders stooped, his face old and tired. He’d held his arms out to her and she’d gone to him, inhaling the smell of Woodbine and woodshavings as she’d pressed her face into the rough material. ‘Ah, my little Doodlebug,’ he’d said gently. ‘My little Rosie.’

  ‘Mammy’s gone, Daddy,’ Rosie had said then. She remembered how eager she’d been to tell him, as if it was something really exciting, like a holiday or a trip to Switzers department store to see the Christmas lights. ‘She told me to be a good girl and to remember her every night before I go to bed and to tell Mary-Pat and Pius and June to do their homework.’ She’d looked up at him then, expecting him to exclaim that wasn’t Mammy the lucky girl and they’d all miss her until she came home, but he hadn’t said anything at all, just looked far into the distance, patting her idly on the head.

  She didn’t know if he’d spoken to Maeve – he must have done – but Rosie remembered him carrying her gently out into the car and placing her on the back seat, his breath coming in short puffs as he manoeuvred her in. He’d lit a cigarette then, she remembered that, because he’d pressed the cigarette lighter down for a bit, then lifted it out, the coils a livid orange, and put it to the cigarette, inhaling and then exhaling a great cloud of smoke before returning the lighter to its spot behind the handbrake. ‘Homeward bound, Rosie,’ he’d said then quietly. ‘Homeward bound.’ He always said that whenever they were coming back from a journey, even if only to the supermarket. And off they went, into the night, the two of them in the rain, Daddy puffing away and she almost asleep on the back seat.

  And then, after a while, he’d turned the radio on and the song had come wafting out. ‘A Cushla’, an old song which crackled and hissed and in which the singer’s voice sounded as if it were coming from very far away. ‘A Cushla, a cushla, your sweet voice is calling, calling me softly again and again.’ Daddy had begun to sing along then, his tenor voice filling the car, rolling around it, filling every space. He always did have a lovely voice, Daddy, sweet and strong. And as he sang, Rosie felt that he was singing it for her, that she was his Cushla, but now, as she sat in Wee Petie’s car, she knew. He hadn’t been singing it for her at all. He’d been singing it for Mammy. Because, in spite of everything, he loved her. And the memory made her realise that he must have loved Rosie too. She knew that, because he’d come to take her home.

  ‘You drifted off there for a second.’ Wee Petie’s voice sounded loud in her ear and she jumped in fright.

  ‘Sorry, Petie, it’s late.’

  ‘It is. How’s himself?’

  Rosie swallowed, groggy still. ‘Oh, he’s grand, Petie, thanks. He’s hard at work in the garden, you know …’

  ‘I meant that young lad of yours.’ Wee Petie’s bloodshot eyes were still focused on the road ahead, but he grinned broadly, revealing an expanse of cracked yellow teeth.

  ‘Oh, ehm.’ Rosie examined the worn spot on her jeans, trying to work out what she could usefully say. ‘Craig’s gone, Wee Petie. He went home to America a while back.’

  Wee Petie tutted, flicking the indicator as he turned slowly left onto the towpath. ‘Not that fellow, I mean Mark.’

  ‘How did you know about him?’

  He grinned, revealing two rows of yellow teeth. ‘Ah, you know what these places are like, Rosie, or have you forgotten? Word travels fast, even if some of it is utter shite. But you know, you’ve picked the right one there. A giant of a man, make no mistake about it. He’s done a lot for this town and it just won’t be the same without him. But, sure, we all have to leave sometime. At least those of us who have any sense.’

  Rosie mumbled something in reply, willing Petie to shut up, to just stop talking, telling her how much Mark had done for the place. She didn’t need to hear it, not now that it was too late. Not now that he was leaving.

  ‘I never got out and look at me,’ he said ruefully. ‘I’d have loved to have gone somewhere like Vietnam – all those temples, and that food. Of course, there’s the communists, but sure there’s always some kind of a catch.’

  Rosie listened to him ramble on. ‘He deserves it, after all the hard work he’s done, to take some time away. A gap year, isn’t that what they call it nowadays? Still, I’d say you’ll miss him, with you only just home. Are you planning to go out there yourself at all?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course I am,’ Rosie said. She was struggling to find the right words, because she was still trying to make sense of it all. The fact that he was finally going back to Vietnam. She knew that she could have tried to make him stay, but maybe he just didn’t love her enough and she didn’t want to test it, to find out.

  ‘Well, good for you, love. You don’t want to end up like me, you know. I’ve wasted my whole life here looking for salvation in the bottom of a glass. Looking for answers and all because I was just plain scared of life. Scared of living. So I missed out on it all, kids, a wife, the lot. You don’t want to be making the same mistakes, you or the young fellow.’

  Rosie had no answer for him. Before she’d come home, she’d thought she was going along one path, long and straight, like the towpath, that just stretched on into the distance, and all she had to do was keep walking forward and life would just unfold ahead of her. Now she’d been thrown off it, almost violently, left to scrabble around in the bushes at the edge, trying to find her way back, with no one to guide her. No Mary-Pat or Junie to point and say, ‘It’s that way, Rosie,’ the way they always had. No Craig ready to grimly push her back onto it if she fell off, a displeased expression on his face. No Mark waiting for her at the end, arms open, to pull her into a hug, to whisper into her hair, ‘You made it. Well done.’ She was on her own. She’d have to find her way by herself.

  ‘Ah, sure, you’re probably not planning on staying anyway,’ Petie was saying. ‘Sure who would, except for the likes of me, who has no prospect at all of leaving?’ He was grimacing as he bounced over a pothole on the towpath, guiding the car very slowly in the direction of the house.

  ‘Oh, I am staying, Petie. Sure, where else would I go, as they say?’ And as she said the words, she knew that they were true. That this was the only place for her; this w
as where the path would begin, no matter how much she wished it otherwise.

  ‘You’re right there. Well, there’s no better place than home, in the bosom of the family.’ He smiled as he reached the gate up to the house. ‘Families are peculiar, but they’re all we’ve got.’

  For fuck’s sake, Rosie thought, I can’t take any more of this, as she thanked him for the lift and waved him up the towpath, watching the tail lights of the car disappear very slowly into the darkness.

  September 1981

  Michelle

  I only saw that girl one more time, the day of Rosie’s christening. I had told John-Joe that she was never to set foot in my home again, and if I wondered why she didn’t want to see her child, why John-Joe didn’t take the baby down the canal to that horrible cottage where she’d been living, I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know. She’d only asked for one thing: that we have Rosie christened. ‘Baptised’, really; as if Catholicism wasn’t responsible for most of the ills in this country. Her mother would want it, was John-Joe’s explanation. It seemed little enough to offer her.

  It was such a beautiful day, as if nature was declaring that she couldn’t care less about our silly lives, about the messes we’d made: she had other, larger things to do. The sky was that vivid blue that makes everything pinpoint sharp, the green of the leaves, the yellow of the barley in John Rogers’ field. We bumped over the road to Porterstown in the Beetle, John-Joe and I in front, the kids squashed into the back seat, Rosie in her carrycot across their knees. If anyone had seen us pass, they’d have saluted us, as they all do around here, a family on its way to Mass. This normal family.

  I tried not to look at John-Joe, but in the end I couldn’t help it. I needed to study his face, to see if I could work out what he was thinking. What it meant to him to be driving us to his daughter’s christening, whether he felt remorse or shame at what he’d done. Then I looked up for a moment into the little mirror in the sun visor above my head and I saw the three heads, Mary-Pat looking out at the fields, her soft face tired, tears gathering at the corners of those lovely blue eyes of hers, as if she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. I wanted to hug her then, to hold her and to tell her it’s not her fault – none of it is her fault. Pius was leaning over the carrycot, his features mobile as he made faces at the baby, rewarded by giggles and gurgles – he was in his own little world, oblivious to everything that was going on around him, and I thanked God for that. Only June was her usual self – like a sphinx, her expression unreadable. She’d dressed for the occasion as if it were the Royal Wedding – she’d been obsessed with Charles and Diana ever since we watched the whole thing in Bridie’s living room, ordering a big white frilly blouse with leg-o-mutton sleeves from Dympna Moran with her pocket money.

  When I looked back at John-Joe, his jaw was working and a deep groove had formed in the middle of his forehead, between his eyes, as he focused on the road. His expression was solemn, but I realised that I had no idea what he was thinking. How can I have lived with this person for fourteen years and feel that I don’t know him, I thought. He’s as much a mystery to me now as he was the day we first met. Maybe we never really can know another person: essentially, we are all a mystery to each other.

  He must have sensed me looking at him, because he turned to me, a small smile on his lips. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly.

  I said nothing for a moment, just pulled a battered compact out of my handbag and attempted to powder my nose, but my hand was shaking too much. And then I turned to John-Joe and the words left my mouth. ‘I will never forgive you.’ The words sounded like gunfire in the car, and I turned around to see if any of the children had heard, but the girls were absorbed in their staring out the window. Only Pius looked up from playing with Rosie, a look of shock on his face. Then he shook his head, as if doubting what he’d heard. I turned back to my work with my compact, dabbing powder on my nose, knowing that once the words were out, I couldn’t take them back. It was over.

  At the church, the girl had to stand behind John-Joe and myself at the baptismal font, watching her own child enter God’s family, and if I felt sorry for her, I managed to push those feelings down; the pity I felt because she looked so worn out – all that shiny confidence gone, all that zest for life. Her face was grey and her hair was lank and her coat was two sizes too small for her. Those nut-brown eyes were dull as she cast them at the floor. And then I noticed the string of rosary beads in her hand, tightly clasped as her lips formed the words to the prayers which were so unfamiliar to me: ‘Hail Mary, Mother of God …’ and I felt a certain kind of wonder that she had this faith, in spite of everything, in spite of losing her own flesh and blood to another woman. There was a part of me that admired her for it. That admired her courage as she signed the register as Rosie’s godmother, her pen not wavering for a second, then picked up her handbag and tucked it over her arm and said, ‘Well, goodbye then,’ outside the church and walked back up the road towards God knows where, head held high.

  I can still see her walking away from me as I sit in Sean’s kitchen a week later, a big green ledger book in front of me. I’ve come over to give him a hand with his accounts; it turns out that I have a head for figures, making sense of the jumble of receipts which he keeps in an old brown envelope, being able to decipher the arcane rules behind the milk quota, the grain subsidy. It seems odd that I can focus on this kind of thing with the chaos all around me, but I find it soothing, putting the rows of figures into the ledger. Rosie is lying in the old pram, lifting her foot to her mouth, sucking her toes with a satisfied sigh. She’s such an easy baby, always smiling and gurgling; she hardly ever cries. Without Rosie, I just don’t know what I’d do.

  ‘You have some expenditure that I can’t account for,’ I’m saying to him, my biro pointing to a row of numbers on a battered stub, almost obscured by a large tea stain. ‘It says Murphy’s grain and feed – was it for the hens?’

  ‘You know, you don’t have to put up with it, Michelle.’

  His interruption is so sudden, I look up. He’s standing beside me, too close, leaning against the range, hands in his pockets. A muscle is working in his jaw and his eyes are bright with emotion. ‘I can help you, you know,’ he says more softly.

  I put the ledger down, and I go to the pram and I pick Rosie up. Her bottom is heavy and damp and I need to change her nappy. I coo into her ear and she giggles to herself, little feet thrust outwards with excitement.

  ‘I don’t need anything, Sean,’ I say, my mouth to the top of Rosie’s head.

  He tuts impatiently. ‘For God’s sake, Michelle, how can you say that? He’s left you with a child that isn’t yours, humiliated you in front of the whole of Monasterard. I mean, how much longer are you going to put up with it? What kind of a woman allows her husband to do that to her?’

  The kind of woman who’s too proud to admit defeat, I think to myself. The kind of woman who is hanging on by her fingernails to everything she’s worked so hard to achieve. The kind of woman who loves her husband, in spite of everything. Because I do love him. I love and hate him at the same time.

  ‘Please don’t judge me, Sean,’ I say. ‘It’s complicated –’ I begin, but to my horror, he comes over to where I’m sitting and he kneels down beside me, and he puts a hand on my knee. It’s heavy and warm. And I look at it and I think that there might once have been a time when I’d have liked him to put his hand on my knee, to stroke my hair, to kiss me softly on the lips. But not any more. The idea of any man ever holding me again feels revolting to me.

  ‘Why don’t you kick him out, Michelle? God knows, you run the place yourself anyway. I’ll help you – you can come and live here with me. I’ll look after you. I’ll show you that men aren’t all like him.’ He’s squeezing my hand now and I want him to stop. ‘Please, Michelle, you know how I feel about you. You’ve always known.’ He begins to rub my knee in circles, and it’s making me feel ill, and his other hand is on my shoulder and he’s whispering, �
�Please,’ in my ear.

  I jump up so suddenly I have to grab Rosie to stop her from falling off my knee. She gives a wail of surprise. ‘Stop it,’ I say, my voice sharp. ‘Stop it now.’ I lift Rosie into my arms and bundle her into the pram, then turn to manoeuvre it out the door. He tries to stop me then, his hand on my arm. ‘Michelle, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It was a mistake.’

  I turn and I look at the kitchen, with its ticking grandfather clock and lovely delft, the kitchen that’s been my haven so often over the years, my refuge, and I see it then, that this, too, was an illusion. I wouldn’t have wanted this life, not one little bit. It would have stifled me, crushed my spirit. I could no more play the farmer’s wife than fly to the moon. The only life I ever wanted, I had, the one I worked so hard for, and I was prepared to pay any price to hang onto it. Even losing the man I loved.

  ‘You were wrong, you know,’ I say.

  ‘Wrong about what?’ He looks mystified for a second.

  ‘That all men aren’t like him. They are. Goodbye, Sean.’

  I feel that I’ve used up every ounce of energy and can barely walk out the door and trudge across the yard with the pram. I know he won’t follow me. The exhaustion which now overwhelms me is so powerful, I feel I can barely walk, but instead of turning left to the house, I turn right and push the pram down the towpath a bit, my breath slowing as I walk, the whispering of the rushes and the pip-pip of the wagtail soothing me. Rosie sits high up in her perch and she looks around her, pointing at the hens, at the water, at the rushes, and then she gives a little laugh, her pudgy hands clutching her little pink blanket. It’s then that I understand, that I can see clearly. It’s worthless. All the years of sacrifice, pulling everyone along behind me as I marched on grimly, enduring year after year of it, of the cold, the damp, the discomfort, the sense that my life was just a huge mountain that I would never be finished climbing. For what? To stand here and to feel that the whole thing has been a waste, a sham. I know now that my life here is over.