Apartment 3B

by Patricia Scanlan

  ‘You’re not yourself,’ her husband assured her after this uncharacteristic outburst. ‘I’ll bring you up a cup of tea.’

  It was Rosie who got her through those first few months in Dublin after the miscarriage, listening patiently as Claire spoke incessantly about her unborn child. ‘I wonder did it sense that I didn’t want it?’ she would weep. ‘Did it feel any pain when I fell down the stairs? Oh Rosie, I feel so bad about it. The poor little baby.’

  ‘Stop tormenting yourself, Claire. You’ll only make yourself ill. What happened happened. It was the will of God and you had no control over it. And you did love that baby. Look at the way you’re grieving now.’ Rosie was so positive about everything. Claire always felt much better after one of her visits. Sean usually went out into the garden when she arrived so they were able to natter away to their hearts’ content. In time Claire’s depression lifted but she always felt a sense of guilt whenever she thought about the baby she lost. Rosie was very kind to her and she knew she was lucky to have a friend like her who was always there for her in good times and in bad. Rosie was as solid as a rock and during that hard time after the miscarriage Claire drew great strength from her friend.

  Rosie and her husband Shane lived in a beautiful bungalow in Howth and Claire had been really impressed by the luxurious decor. ‘It’s gorgeous, Rosie! You’ve got great taste,’ she said warmly after her tour of the house. The bedroom with its en suite bathroom had been most impressive with its elegant tinted Sliderobes, its luxurious deep-pile carpet and the huge satin-quilted double bed.

  ‘Well we worked hard for it, Claire, and we knew what we wanted. But I love decorating and I’ll give you any help you need with the house,’ her friend offered generously.

  Sean looked most alarmed at her offer. ‘Claire, we can’t afford that type of lifestyle so don’t start hankering after Sliderobes and dishwashers and the like,’ her husband warned her as they drove home after the visit.

  ‘Well, when the children get a bit older I could always go back to work to buy the few luxuries.’

  ‘Indeed and you will not,’ Sean said rather sharply. ‘I’m quite capable of providing for my family and your place is at home looking after them and not out as some type of career woman while your children are left in crèches to be looked after by strangers.’ This was a snide dig at Rosie’s lifestyle.

  ‘I said, when the children are older,’ Claire quietly corrected her husband.

  ‘Well, God willing, we will be blessed with another baby or two so that won’t be for many years yet,’ Sean said cheerfully, overtaking a Saab at eighty miles an hour as they drove up the Ballymun Road dual carriageway.

  Claire sat silently in the front seat, his words searing into her brain like a brand. ‘Another baby or two.’ Was that why he wanted her to be pregnant? Because being pregnant and having young children made her even more dependent on him, with the prospects of going back to work even more remote. Once he had married her, he had given up coaching her for her Leaving Certificate. She had planned to resume her studies as the children grew older and needed her less, but Sean never seemed as anxious to help her as he had been when she had been single. It struck her then that Sean didn’t want her to better herself by resuming her education and he certainly didn’t want her ever to return to work.

  It was only as a result of going shopping with Rosie and comparing her situation with her friend’s that Claire truly began to comprehend how little control she had over her own life.

  One day they went into town together and Rosie was horrified to discover that Claire did not possess a cheque-book. They had been thoroughly enjoying themselves wandering through Arnott’s. Claire saw a lovely boxed set of towels and said, ‘Oh aren’t they lovely. We’ve to get a wedding present for Sean’s niece and they’d be ideal.’

  ‘You should buy them now. They’re in a sale and they’ll probably be snapped up,’ Rosie advised.

  ‘I don’t have the money now. I’ll have to get Sean to come in at the weekend.’

  ‘Can’t you write a cheque?’ Rosie urged.

  ‘I don’t have a cheque-book,’ Claire said, not attaching too much importance to it. It was something she had never thought much about. After all, her mother had never had a cheque-book either. She too had been dependent on her husband. Wasn’t that the way of it with most wives?

  ‘Oh have you Visa or Access then?’

  Claire laughed. Sure they were only for people who were loaded. She shook her head.

  ‘That’s a bit of a nuisance. Do you have to go to the bank and draw out money every time you need it?’ Rosie enquired as she held up a pair of midnight blue silk sheets.

  ‘God, no!’ Claire laughed. ‘Sean would have a fit if I did that.’

  ‘Well, what do you do when you need money, then?’ Rosie asked, perplexed.

  ‘I ask Sean for it,’ Claire said simply.

  Rosie paused in her examination of the sheets and turned to face her friend.

  ‘You ask for money?’

  Claire nodded.

  ‘For everything you need?’

  ‘Yep, but I usually wait until he’s in a good humour. You know Sean.’

  ‘Oh Claire!’

  ‘Well we don’t all have boutiques and careers,’ Claire said, a little defensively.

  ‘That’s not the point, Claire,’ Rosie said gently. ‘Come on, let’s go and get a cup of tea and have a chat.’

  Now, sitting in the car with Sean as they drew up outside the house, Claire could still remember the icy fingers of embarrassment that had touched her at that moment. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision to go into town with Rosie and she hadn’t asked Sean for any extra money. All she had in her purse was seventy-five pence. And besides, even if she had asked, Sean wouldn’t have been too impressed at her squandering money on tea and cakes in town.

  It was the first time she had ever felt so acutely the fact that she had no money of her own, and she didn’t like it.

  Rosie, seeing the expression on her face, had instantly divined the reason for it.

  ‘Well maybe we haven’t time for tea. Won’t David be home from school soon? I’ll tell you what, I’ll get a few cream cakes in the Kylemore and we can have a cup in your house.’ Rosie had a live-in nanny and didn’t have to worry about being home in time for her children’s arrival from school.

  As they sat drinking tea and eating the lovely gooey éclairs that Rosie had bought, Rosie said quietly, ‘You should discuss opening a joint account with Sean. After all marriage is a partnership – you contribute as much to it as he does and you’re entitled to your share. I hope the house is in joint names.’

  ‘Well it’s not, actually,’ Claire murmured uncomfortably. ‘Sean feels he should look after the money. He doesn’t want me to be worrying about paying bills and things.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ Rosie retorted succinctly. ‘Do you know how much he earns?’

  Claire shook her head.

  ‘Listen to me, girl, it’s about time you copped on and started asserting yourself,’ Rosie said grimly. ‘This is the nineteen-eighties we’re living in, not the Middle Ages. And if I were you I’d think about going back to work even part-time now that the children are both at school.’

  David’s arrival cut short any further discussion but Claire pondered her friend’s words and that weekend as Sean sat doing his Saturday-night calculations, asking her to account for what she had spent her float on, Claire raised the matter of a cheque-book and joint account with him.

  Sean nearly blew a gasket. ‘I knew it! That’s that Rosie giving you ideas. Haven’t you managed perfectly well up until now without a cheque-book? Don’t I give you money when you ask for it? Such bloody nonsense. We’d be bankrupt within a week. You’d give those children everything they asked for. You’d have this that and the other in the house and we’d be broke!’

  ‘We would not!’ Claire said hotly. ‘And how dare you even suggest it, Sean Moran! I was so embarrassed today when I co
uldn’t even go for a cup of tea. Have you any idea what it’s like always having to ask for money, money that’s as much mine as it is yours.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Claire!’ Sean said, shaking his head. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he continued reluctantly, ‘I’ll give you a personal allowance every week so that if you want to go and have a cup of tea with that one you can, but I’m looking after the money. It’s my responsibility as a husband and I think I’ve fulfilled my role more than adequately.’

  After that he would hand her a fiver for herself each Friday and you would think by him that he was handing her a million. But a joint account he would not countenance and as time went on, Claire became more determined in her resolve to start working again and earn her own money. When she heard him mentioning her having more children and staying at home to look after them, Claire decided to go back on the pill. She had not gone back on it after the miscarriage, out of guilt. But she was going to now, after what she had just heard. Sean wasn’t going to trap her with babies, she vowed. She would go back to work. She’d make sure it didn’t adversely affect Suzy and David but she had come to Dublin with the intention of doing something with her life and by God she was going to do it.

  Lying in bed in Knockross, after her father’s funeral, Claire felt adrenalin surge through her. She was going to stay in Knockross with her mother for at least two weeks, maybe three, and then she was going to go back to Dublin and start looking for part-time work in a hairdressing salon. And with her first week’s wages she was going to treat David and Suzy and her mother and Rosie to a slap-up meal somewhere. Now that she no longer had Billy to worry and fret over, Molly would be able to come up to Dublin and they’d have great times going shopping and exploring the city. Just wait until Molly saw Dublin at Christmas. It was beautiful to behold: the trees decked with fairy lights, the streets aglow with decorations and lights strung between the shops, the store windows a child’s delight with Christmassy scenes. Oh, Molly would love it! Next Christmas, she could come and stay with them and with any luck Claire would be working and have her own money and they’d have a ball. Snuggling down into the soft mattress, Claire fell asleep, smiling at her plans.

  Friday 16 October 1987

  It had been one of the worst storms in living memory. In fact in England they were calling it the storm of the century. Claire thought that they might not be too busy at work today, even though it was Friday. People might be afraid to venture out for fear of terrible weather. Listening to the accounts of the storm on the news, she shivered as she stirred Sean’s porridge. She had been up for the past hour, bringing Sean his cup of early-morning tea and preparing his breakfast and lunch. It was cold down in the kitchen. Now that she was working every day, Sean didn’t allow the heating to be switched on until late afternoon. ‘No point wasting good money when there’s nobody here to waste it on!’ he pronounced.

  He had been absolutely furious when she announced one day about two months after her father’s funeral that she was starting to retrain as a beginner at a big hairdressing salon in Finglas. Claire had been elated. They couldn’t have been nicer when she approached them. She had tried a few places and some of them had told her quite bluntly that she was too old. Indeed, when she met the other juniors that she was training with, she did feel old. Some of them were only two years older than Suzy, who was fifteen since April. It had been a bit nerve-wracking even going in to the salons looking for a job in the first place. Even the fact that she had hairdressing experience hadn’t made a difference. She had been put off after her first rejection but Rosie had kept at her and so had Suzy, who thought it was a great idea for her mother to go back to work. Now that Suzy was maturing and coming into contact with the world through her secondary education, she was beginning to realize that Claire was not treated the same by her father as many of her friends’ mothers were treated by their husbands. Lots of her friends’ mothers drove cars and some of them worked. Most of them had cheque-books. They didn’t have to ask their husbands for everything that they required.

  As she grew older, Suzy grew closer to her mother, the bond between them deepening and strengthening. It was a joy for Claire to watch her daughter growing up. But she was growing up so fast. She was a child no longer but a strong-minded teenager growing from girlhood into womanhood almost before Claire realized it.

  Claire felt a stab of regret the day her daughter got her first period but Suzy had been thrilled. That was the real farewell to childhood. She was one of the first in the class to get her periods and her friends had been most impressed. She revelled in her new status as a woman and she confided in her mother that buying her first bra was one of the most exciting things that she had ever done. Claire smiled into the innocent trusting face of her daughter and hugged her hard. She would have loved to have taken Suzy somewhere posh, to treat her to a grown-up meal and then maybe go to the pictures, but most of her money had gone on clothes for Suzy and David and all she could afford out of her paltry allowance was a Big Mac each and fries and a milkshake between them. Suzy wolfed down the treat, enjoying the noisy din that surrounded them in McDonald’s. She gazed down at the traffic flowing past them in O’Connell Street, grinned at her mother and said cheerfully, ‘Isn’t this the life! I’m going to get a summer job and I’ll treat you the next time and we’ll get a taxi home so we won’t be waiting for hours. Look at the queue for the 13 bus!’

  One thing about her children, Claire thought with pleasure, they hadn’t inherited their father’s meanness. She had instilled in them over and over the concept of sharing their toys, treats, or whatever and it was automatic for them now to share whatever they had between them. If David got a bar of chocolate or crisps or something Claire was always the first person to whom he offered some.

  He was such a lovable son, so gentle and placid with his ready good-natured smile. She worried so much over him. Sean was always pushing him much harder than he should. David was not good at maths and science subjects and no matter how hard he studied and no matter what coaching his father gave him, it was always a struggle. But her son was a genius with his hands. He loved woodwork and was always carving pieces of wood. He was fascinated by nature and would sit in the kitchen with his binoculars and notepad, while she was getting the dinner, and watch birds to his heart’s content. There were plenty of trees at the back of their house and David knew every variety of bird that nested there and appeared in their garden. He carved robins and magpies and squirrels and rabbits and spent hours amusing himself. When Claire noticed his talent and saw how hard he was finding his science studies in secondary school she asked Sean to consider sending him to the Ballymun Comprehensive, one of the most progressive comprehensive schools in the country. There, he’d be able to study woodwork and metalwork as well as taking his Leaving Certificate in the subjects he was most competent in.

  Sean had nearly had a seizure. ‘A comprehensive! Good Lord, Claire! Indeed I’m not sending him to a comprehensive. He’s in a top-class secondary, with the best of teachers. He’ll just have to apply himself more instead of wasting his time with those carvings. In fact, if he doesn’t improve his grades in his Christmas report, I’m going to stop him going to the Boy Scouts.’

  Over my dead body, Claire thought furiously, knowing there was no point in arguing with her husband. David loved the Scouts, loved going camping, and it was a great way for him to mix with other lads of his own age. He had no other social outlet, unlike his extrovert sister who was off out with her friends as often as her father allowed her. That was another problem. Sean didn’t want her going to dances in the local youth club. Her time should be spent studying, he informed her. But Suzy, unlike her brother, had a mind of her own and was quite capable of arguing with her father. Claire often had to intervene but Sean would always get his own back by stopping his daughter’s pocket-money for the week – a severe blow to the young teenager. Claire had insisted that Sean give Suzy and David some pocket-money once they started secondary scho
ol. He had moaned and protested and given them a Scrooge-like sum but once she started working herself she was able to supplement the meagre amount herself. Not that her wages were anything fantastic; they weren’t. But Claire didn’t care; the money was her own to do with what she liked.

  When Sean found out that she was serious about going back to work, he told her that he would be discontinuing her five-pound-a-week allowance and furthermore that he expected her to contribute towards the shopping bills. He wanted her to start doing this when she finally succeeded in getting a position.

  ‘You really can’t take the fact that I went out and got a job, sure you can’t?’ Claire said. ‘Well I’ll tell you one thing, Sean Moran. My money is going to be spent on buying clothes for myself and the children. And – if I’ve any left over – for giving them little treats like the odd cassette or book or even a trip to McDonald’s. Little things that most parents give to their children but that you are too mean to. And if you think for one minute that I’m going to start paying for groceries and things and that you’re going to pocket the difference, you can think again, mister!’

  ‘Claire!’ Sean was shocked by her vehemence.

  ‘Don’t Claire me.’ She was deeply hurt by his attitude. Instead of being supportive and delighted that she had got herself a job, and pleased because she was so happy about it, her husband was being huffy and cold.

  ‘I just don’t think women should work if they don’t have to,’ her husband fumed. ‘A mother’s place is in the home, not taking the jobs from young school-leavers. You know the state of the economy! You know that kids in their thousands are emigrating and yet you go looking for a job just because you’re a bored housewife. Why don’t you take up voluntary work and make a contribution to society that way? There are several old people’s homes in the parish. Why don’t you go visiting them or do meals on wheels or something?’