‘He makes me go into a cubicle and pull the curtain so I’m alone inside.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘I feel odd alone behind the curtain.’
Alison drew him to her. ‘We’ll get you your swim somehow,’ she said. ‘Leave it to me.’
‘I miss Daddy.’ His voice was muffled by her sweater.
‘I miss him too. Now how about that milk you’re dying for and a nice big fry?’
Danny ran ahead, pushing the door open and ushering the others towards their table. He had ordered for them all before Alison even sat down.
There was no way you could enjoy breakfast with three children to mind. Spilt milk had to be wiped up and sausages cut. Sheila just ate toast and milk because of her throat and enjoyed being fussed over by the waitress who had heard about last night’s scare. Danny was on his best behaviour, enjoying the role of family elder.
There was a reason, of course. He wanted to be out of doors as soon as possible. He pushed his half–eaten breakfast away before she’d even got the chance to touch hers, and offered to mind the others.
‘They’re not finished yet,’ she said, to be greeted by a Greek chorus of Shane and Sheila crying, ‘We are.’
‘You have to rest your stomachs. You can’t jump up,’ she argued, but knew it was no good. They had been constrained in the bedroom already, it was impossible to keep them still. The sun was shining with no breeze, but she was concerned for Sheila. After last night she’d have happily cuddled the girl on her knee all day, but Sheila was a bundle of energy again. She warned Danny to keep her in sight, then let them loose, resigned to eating breakfast alone.
Joan waved, herding her brood from a nearby table. Alison smiled across, determined to start the day afresh. Mr BMW passed with his exploding hormones of daughters.
‘Has he done a bunk or is he washing dishes in the kitchen?’ He threw his head back to laugh at this startling witticism. Alison smiled, icily, thinking that chemical castration would be too painless for him, and, when he moved away, she noticed the small table in one corner where Chris Conway sat, watching her.
So he hadn’t booked out or maybe he was finishing breakfast first? The surge of pleasure she felt confused her. It would be simpler if he had departed, if last night could be left to stand alone in her mind. He rose, wiping his mouth with a serviette, and made for her table.
‘How is the patient this morning?’ he asked.
‘She’s fine, full of life. Thanks again for helping.’
He lowered his voice, leaning forward so his hands rested on the table. Anyone watching might think they were conspirators.
‘I want to apologise … if I did or said anything to disturb you.’
‘Chris, let’s just forget …’
‘I know. I’m just not used to letting anybody get close.’
He glanced around at the last few couples enjoying their breakfasts. She noticed the Irwins, Mrs Irwin especially, watching them.
‘Back in Dublin it felt like I was drowning in concern. That’s why I’ve travelled so much, hardly sleeping in the same place twice. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed meeting you, but there’s less pain in being anonymous.’
‘Is that why you’re leaving?’
‘Do you want me to go?’
Whatever Chris did should not concern her. Alison had enough concerns. She wanted no repeat of last night, but these snatched moments talking to him felt like a tiny air pocket in which she became an individual again and not just someone’s mother or wife.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Not on my account.’
‘I didn’t sleep much,’ he said. ‘I was up early, down on the beach. The blueness of the blue waves, everything looks so special.’
‘Why?’
‘A different light. I might stick around a while longer. But you won’t be upset if I decide to slip off?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘It’s just that I’ve told you things I’ve told no one else. But it’s not fair on you. You’ve your own kids to mind.’
His concern annoyed her, for being unconsciously patronising. Part of him hadn’t changed.
‘My kids don’t own me now, any more than Peadar did twenty years ago. Why must you always decide things in advance for me? Maybe you find it chivalrous but I think it demeans me.’
He scratched his chin. ‘Well, that puts me in my place.’
‘I simply want you to see me in my own right.’
‘I see you getting hurt if you’re not careful.’
‘You hurt me once before.’ The Irwins were leaving, Mr Irwin taking one last glance back.
‘I never did anything,’ he said.
‘Exactly.’
He sat down, smiling ruefully. ‘Was I that bad?’
Something in his voice made her laugh and brought back how easily it used to do so.
‘You were worse.’
‘I wasn’t used to being around girls,’ he said. ‘I grew up in an apartheid society. Then suddenly I got a job, sharing a tiny space behind the counter with the most beautiful girls.’
Alison smiled. ‘That must have been hard.’
He shook his head ruefully. ‘I’d no sisters, no experience of the opposite sex. The different smells, hair sprays and perfumes, and sunbathing out in the yard in summer. The way girls talked, their different laughs, your laugh especially.’
‘What was it like?’ Alison felt charmed now.
‘You’d try to act all grown up, telling dirty jokes, then forget the punch–line or go into a fit of giggles, blushing furiously in the middle of it.’ He looked at her. ‘There was a young man from Sneem …’
‘What?’
‘I remember you still, sitting up, swinging your feet in the van, reciting it in a Waterford accent.’
She thought for a moment, then it came back.
‘Who invented the wanking machine.
On the thirty–ninth stroke
The fecking thing broke
And it whipped his balls into cream.’
Her face went red as she smiled with him. A waitress came to clear the table. Alison glanced down, hoping the girl hadn’t overheard. She moved away and Alison looked up.
‘I didn’t know it back then,’ Chris said. ‘I was too nervous, but I love the company of women.’
‘Did you stay long?’
‘Six years. You wouldn’t do six years now for armed robbery.’
‘You must have had your pick.’ She found herself teasing him.
‘There were nights,’ he said, ‘the sort you have when you’re young. The details get jumbled up, but a few stand out. Once in Clondalkin library with two blankets and a bottle of gin among the non–fiction.’
‘You did not?’ Alison laughed.
‘Not to mention a night locked in among the rare Y–stock in the mobile library book store. Remember those long shiny tables, cool on a summer’s night?’
Alison shivered. ‘That place gave me the creeps.’
‘A Cork girl who liked adventure. Making Irish coffees down the cellars with crumbling boxes of books around us. Eileen Delaney found us.’
‘That old witch?’
‘Eileen was an intelligent misfit. She kicked a borrower once in some posh branch library. They couldn’t sack her, so she was banished into the dungeons of the book store.’
Alison recalled being forced to visit the old woman’s lair. Passing through the book store that smelt of wax and stale air, and stooping to enter the cellars where an old woman’s clothes hung on makeshift lines to drip–dry. Eileen Delaney always frightened her, appearing in shabby cast–offs from behind a wall of cardboard boxes with several cats at her heels.
‘What did Eileen say?’
‘“I’d kill for a cuddle myself.” Then she saw the whiskey and cackled. The three of us sitting there, drinking Irish coffees at dawn.’
‘People never really talked to her,’ Alison said.
‘We were too young,’ Chris replied.
‘We didn’t want to know. She died in that book store. Glue sniffers set it alight. They didn’t know anybody was in it. Neither did the firemen till they found her body, cradling two dead cats. Youths in Ballybough were stoning her cottage. She’d started sleeping in the book store with a fortune lying idle in the bank.’
‘Oh my God.’ Only Chris had taken the time to know her. His face seemed younger and more alive than yesterday. She knew why Jane must have fallen in love with him.
‘You became quite a Romeo,’ she teased.
‘I only ever fell in love twice.’ He gazed at her as Danny led the charge back into the dining room, saving her from having to reply. Her children careered between the empty tables, with Shane demanding to go swimming.
‘You’ve got your hands full.’ Chris rose. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Come for a swim too.’
‘Not this morning. Besides, I can’t swim.’
‘A sauna never hurt anybody,’ she bullied, nodding discreetly towards Danny. Chris looked around, understanding. Alison rose, ruffling Danny’s tangled hair. ‘This is an old friend of Daddy’s,’ she said. ‘You may as well wander into the changing room with him.’
It was no lie. The odd thing, back then, was how Chris went out of his way to become friends with Peadar. It almost seemed another way for him to feel close to her. The libraries had Dublin’s worst soccer team, perpetually in search of bangers. At the first party she brought Peadar to, he had got coerced into playing for them in the County Council Cup and told to give his name as John Maguire, an elderly mobile driver, if booked. Alison had cycled out to see them play the sanitation department in Fairview Park, with Chris in goal and Peadar immediately asserting himself as a midfield general. The muscular binmen of the sanitation department led by double figures before half time. Ten minutes from the end Peadar lunged at one in frustration and the referee opened his book.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he’d said, ‘you’re John Maguire. The last two I booked were as well.’
Alison smiled at the memory as she emerged from the ladies’ changing rooms to find Danny and Chris playing in the shallow end of the pool. There was a tenderness in the way he played with Danny which she found difficult to watch.
Sheila was warned that she could only stay in the pool for five minutes today. Alison had brought her dressing gown and knew the child would enjoy wearing it as she pottered around the poolside.
Chris climbed from the water as she waded down the steps. It was almost like he was being careful not to be seen with her. Danny immediately paired off with the twins, indulging in clandestine spying on the old swimming instructor and his equally old pupil – though not even Alison could fathom exactly what crime the gang had decided they were engaged in.
She fussed over Sheila, watching Chris chat to two men in the jacuzzi. With his chameleon quality, he seemed at ease discussing anything from the stock exchange to farming. Joan’s walrus–bellied husband, Joey, emerged from the steam room and joined them. She wondered if Chris would sense his wife’s disapproval, but suspected that Joey’s smalltalk rarely rose above his despairing addiction to Dundalk Football Club.
She noticed the start of a bald patch as Chris bent to listen to whatever Joey was saying. She could still remember him hanging intently onto Peadar’s every word in Gaffney’s pub across from Fairview Park after that match against the sanitation department. From the moment they trooped into the bar he had cosied up to Peadar, insisting on buying the first round even back then. She had already noticed this effect Peadar had on other men who enjoyed forming manly huddles around him, with less assured lads like Chris grateful to be allowed to converge around the fringe.
The absence of any apparent rivalry with Peadar had surprised her. She’d already sensed Chris’s attachment to her at work and spotted his funereal look when Peadar kissed her after the game. In truth she’d only met Peadar two weeks previously in the Cat and Cage pub and her initial attachment had been mainly relief at finding a boyfriend as tall as herself. But they could have been celebrating their silver wedding from the way Chris behaved.
That Sunday in Gaffney’s pub Chris had volunteered to play in goal for Peadar’s team at the teacher training college. During the following weeks he never found the courage to cross Peadar by asking her out, but had compensated by spending two nights a week drinking with him, the first man to sleep with her. This used to disturb her as she lay in Peadar’s small bedroom on campus and knew that Chris had sat on the bed the night before, thinking about her as he drank into the small hours.
Had he still thought about her during the months following her miscarriage, when word must have reached the libraries that Peader and she had broken up? There were mornings when she had finished a night shift at the hospital and cycled out to that same bench where he used to sit on Drumcondra Road, pretending to read her paper as she waited for the fleet of mobile library vans to pass. It hadn’t happened often, just at her most insecure, when she wanted to give Chris a second chance to tell the driver to pull over if he passed. Not that she was making a play for him, but – with ward sisters abusing her and slow crucifixions being suffered on dance floors – it was hard not to wish to recapture the heady sensation of being at the centre of somebody’s world. Yet no van had ever stopped for him to run back calling her name. Perhaps Chris had never spotted her there or maybe after the miscarriage she was tainted goods?
Certainly, during those three years alone, there had been nights of biting loneliness. But why had she married Peadar so quickly after he found her again? She didn’t regret her marriage, it was just that, looking back, twenty–two seemed so young, when she was only finding her feet as a person.
Joey was leaving the jacuzzi, with foam dripping from him. Chris glanced towards her. She nodded to indicate that Danny would be ready to get out soon, knowing she would never ask Chris if he had seen her on Drumcondra Road all those years ago. She would never discover if Chris had chickened out a second time and he would never know how close he might have come if he’d only had the courage to try again.
It seemed ridiculous not to ask Chris to join them for lunch. The boys were bored of the huge buffet already. They would have been happier with chips and a bread roll, but the all–in price of the holiday was so expensive that she found herself piling up their plates.
Sheila looked down the long buffet tables brimming with delicacies and declared that she only wanted Weetabix. It was Chris who coaxed her into trying new foods, turning it into a game that had the girl laughing. Last night it was clear that Sheila had taken to him. For himself Chris simply picked some salmon and salads, asking the waitress to charge a half bottle of red wine to his room.
They chose a table on the terrace, even though it was windy. But Alison knew the children would scatter once they’d had milk and a few mouthfuls of food. It was simpler out here than having them run in and out. Danny saw the twins playing crazy golf and picked up a bread roll, ready to join them. She scolded him into at least eating some baked ham and said that he was going nowhere unless he took Shane along.
She was so busy keeping the peace between her sons that she didn’t notice Chris playing the feeding game with Sheila. Her plate was divided up into a farm, with Chris making the noises of hungry animals as Sheila took bites for them and laughed at his running commentary. Anyone passing would think them the perfect father and daughter. This made Alison uneasy. His own food was untouched but the halfbottle of wine almost finished. She let the boys go, knowing Sheila would soon demand to be allowed to follow them.
When the girl wandered off, Chris sat back, taking another sip of wine and toying with his fish. He looked at Alison.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I sort of took over. I didn’t mean to do you out of a job.’
‘You’ve a way with children.’
He smiled. ‘It’s amazing what they’ll do for you when they’re not your own.’
‘Still, it must be hard …’
She let the sentenc
e hang. Chris finished his wine, abandoning the food altogether.
‘She reminds me of Rachel years ago,’ he said. ‘I had photos, taken in these gardens. Not her features so much, but the same smile.’
‘Chris …’ She touched his arm across the table.
‘Do you mind me saying that?’ he asked. ‘Say if you do.’
‘I don’t mind.’ She withdrew her hand before anyone noticed, busying herself with a knife and fork.
‘It kills me not knowing how she looked at the end.’
‘What do you mean?’ She let go the knife and fork, folding her hands onto her lap.
‘They didn’t want me to see the girls’ bodies. Jane’s brother had already identified them. I saw Jane but, whatever state I was in, the doctors said there’d be no point served by my seeing the girls. They were wrong, I don’t care what their wounds were. I wanted to touch their hair and hands that I’d kissed a thousand times. But there were so many doctors fussing around, everybody trying to do good, neighbours arriving at the hospital, priests, their head teacher at two in the morning. All I wanted was time to myself, just to sit with the girls, but nobody would let me. Later on some undertaker tarted them up to make them presentable, but they weren’t my daughters any more.’
‘You’re upsetting yourself,’ Alison said, though it was she who felt upset.
‘I’m sorry,’ Chris replied. ‘I came here to remember them at their happiest. I have the autopsy reports, details of wounds, but I lack the mental pictures. That means I keep inventing them, grotesquely. Not their flesh but their eyes, the different ways they might have looked at the end.’
‘Please,’ she said. The sun went in but it wasn’t the wind that made her cold. She suddenly wished he hadn’t drunk the wine, that he had left at dawn without seeing her.
‘I saw the car,’ he said, ‘but even then I couldn’t be sure it was mine. They had it at the police station in Dunleer. I gave the posse the slip around three a.m. and took a taxi. There seemed no point going home, or at least I hadn’t the courage to. The taxi driver got freaked. I mean we drive fifty miles and I’m just standing on the roadway, staring through a fence at twisted wreckage. He fetched the cops. I remember sitting in some room with an old guard saying nothing, keeping me company. He brought me outside but I could hardly believe it had been a car once. It was madness, the terrible hope of some mix–up. Then I saw a scarf belonging to Sara and just knelt down crying.’
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