In a Moment

by Caroline Finnerty

“How do you mean?”

  “This can’t continue, Jean,” Terence Fingleton said. “He savagely beat you last night, you’re lucky the damage wasn’t more serious. He has done it to you before and, in my experience of situations like this, I would say there is a pretty high risk he will do it again. For the sake of your two younger children . . .”

  “It isn’t a good environment for them to be living in, Jean,” Lisa Jones interjected. “And they could be in actual danger.”

  “I know.”

  “So what we need to ask you is –” Terence Fingleton looked at his colleague before continuing, “whether or not you intend to press charges?”

  She was horrified at what they were suggesting. “Against my own son?”

  “Jean, I realise this is hard for you but domestic violence is a crime like any other. The sad part about it is that it is usually someone we love that is the perpetrator, which leaves the victim in a very difficult and emotionally conflicting position – but that doesn’t mean it should go unpunished.”

  Jean zoned out on what they were saying. All she could think of was they wanted her to Judas her own son.

  “Of course we are very sensitive to these matters and we have dealt with similar cases in the past. Now, granted, the usual cases are husband and wife rather than mother and son, but we have very experienced staff who are available should you require their services.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “I can’t do that to my own son. I just can’t do it.”

  “Jean, I would strongly urge you to consider it. You are not to blame here. He has committed the act, not you.”

  He wasn’t like that, she wanted to tell them. Paul was her son, her baby. It wasn’t black and white like they were suggesting. What had happened to her baby boy who had been the light of her life, her firstborn that had filled her with such pride? When he was a boy, he had been sweet and gentle, constantly giving her kisses and cuddles. She still had his artwork from primary school, scrawly drawings with childish handwriting “I love you, Mammy” with hearts falling in an arc from a small stick-boy towards his mother. He used to be great helping her around the house, cutting the grass for her or watching the other two. In fact she had relied on him, he was the man of the house, he took pride in helping her out and they had a special bond, a different bond than that she had with Chloe and Kyle. He was older than them by a good few years so had an understanding of the situation. Maybe it was her own fault because she had been unconsciously treating him as an adult for years. They had a special trust but recently he seemed to have replaced their closeness with resentment and anger. She still could only see Paul as her son and it was her job, as ever, to protect him.

  She stood up and they took this as their cue to go.

  “Okay. Well . . . ultimately, Jean, it is your decision. If you decide not to pursue things any further, he will be cautioned and released today and hopefully that will be enough for him.”

  “It’s okay. I just want to leave it for now.” She could see it in their eyes: they were judging her.

  “Well, it’s up to you how you handle things from here but please be aware that we are obliged to inform social services about Paul’s behaviour due to the fact that there are children living here who may be in danger.”

  “I see,” Jean said.

  “In the meantime please don’t be afraid to ring the station if you run into any more problems with him.”

  “Okay, thanks.” She just wanted these people gone from her house.

  She showed them out and stood at the door watching the squad car as it drove off and made its way towards the top of the estate. Litter swirled along the green, dancing in the wind before it got caught in the wire fence at the edge of the estate. She shivered and went back inside and closed her door to shut out the cold air.

  28

  November, 1991

  Jean bundled herself into the phone box and slotted in the coins and dialled the number of her home. It was her mother who picked up.

  “Hello?” Jean could hear the tiredness in her voice and her heart ached with regret.

  “Mam, it’s me.”

  “Jean, oh Jean, love! Where are you? Are you okay?” She started sobbing hysterically down the phone.

  “Mam, I’m fine, please, don’t worry. I needed to be with Gavin. We’re a family now.” The guilt began to rise inside her.

  “Jean, please come home!” her mother wailed.

  Jean had never heard her cry like that before.

  “Pleeeease, Jean. I-I’m so worried, I haven’t slept since the night you left. Y-y-you’re pregnant, you’re not in any condition to be running off around the country. Come home, love, we’ll talk it out, we can sort it out. We were probably a bit too hard on you, I can see that now, but if you just come home, we’ll work it out.”

  Jean would have liked nothing more than to tell her mother where she was and have them come and collect her and take her home. She wished desperately she could say she was coming home, get on a bus back to Ballydubh, run through the kitchen door and put her arms around her mother and sleep in her own bed, but she had to be an adult now, she was going to be a mother in a matter of weeks, she needed to grow up sometime.

  “I can’t, Mam.” She started to cry too.

  “Please. Jean, I’m begging you – for your sake and the sake of your unborn child – you’re only seventeen, you need your family around you, love.”

  “I’m sorry, Mam, I’m so, so sorry. I love you all. I really do.” And then she hung up on her mother.

  Her body heaved with sobs as she stood in the Perspex phone booth, tears streaming down her face until an angry-looking woman rapped on the door and told her “Get the fuck out of the box if you’re not using it!’ Jean wasn’t used to people speaking to her like that and the woman just made her feel even more wretched.

  She ran down the street with tears blinding her vision. She didn’t feel ready for this; she had made a mistake, she wanted to go home. She needed her mother, someone who knew what it was like, someone who would take care of her. She was frightened, alone and scared. She came up to a bench overlooking the river; she sat down on it and cried. She loved Gavin but, in the harsh light of reality, their dreams of running away together now seemed ill thought-out and immature. How were they going to afford a baby when they couldn’t even feed themselves? She had never even held a baby before, she was the youngest in her family, she had never had younger brothers and sisters or even small cousins to practise on. Then there was the birth. She was scared and she didn’t know what to expect and the more she watched her bump grow, the more the fear inside took over. How was she actually meant to get it out? But she was too embarrassed to talk to Gavin about it. She knew he was trying hard to sort them out and provide for them but as the weeks went on she was becoming disillusioned by his attempts and now he was starting to grate on her.

  She sat there alone for a few hours, just watching life around her. She knew she had to stop feeling sorry for herself – this had been her choice as well but she hadn’t known it was going to be this hard. She had to keep telling herself that she wasn’t a baby any more; she was going to have a baby. She had made her bed, now she would have to lie on it.

  Almost as if he could read her thoughts, when Gavin came home that evening he had a bouquet of bright, unnaturally coloured carnations in his hands for her. She groaned inwardly because they couldn’t afford flowers. Flowers meant they went without a meal because their finances were so bleak but when he announced that he had managed to get a job in a pub, she jumped up and hugged him. He told her how he had been calling into every bar and pub in Cork City but no one had any work. He’d almost walked past a tiny pub, dismissing it as too small, but he said he’d try anyway. There had been an old man, about eighty Gavin reckoned, sitting on a stool behind the bar with a few old men with caps on sitting up on stools at the bar. They all turned to look at him and he was about to walk back out when the old man ask
ed if he was all right. He mumbled that he was just looking for work but that he could see they probably didn’t need anyone. He turned again to leave but then the old man said he was getting too long in the tooth for running the pub himself and was looking for someone to come and do the evenings for him. He told him he could start tomorrow night.

  Jean jumped up and down and hugged him. She didn’t care that this meant he would be gone every evening; she was just so relieved that he had a job.

  From then on, Gavin headed off to work every day from four to close which was usually the early hours of the morning. The work itself wasn’t too hard – basically, he was serving the same few elderly men that had been coming into the pub, some every day, for the last forty years. For them it was more a social outlet than for the drink. Gavin soon learnt that the majority of them were widowers or bachelors who had never married. He grew to know them and their stories and they warmed to him too and would slip him the odd fiver here and there which he promptly gave to Jean to save up for the baby. He would come home and climb into bed beside her and sleep until lunchtime before getting up again to get something to eat before heading off on his bike to the pub.

  He worked all the hours he could get and so Jean spent most of her days alone. She would usually walk into town, picking up tiny fleecy baby outfits in expensive boutiques to look at them before putting them back down again because they couldn’t afford them. Sometimes she would ring her mother or Louise just to talk to them and hear their voices, but no matter how many times they asked, she would never tell them where she was. They would cry and beg her to come home, telling her over and over that they were worried about her and that the way she was living was no way to bring a baby into this world, but she wouldn’t change her mind, not now, not after all Gavin had done for them. He was working so hard to make a life for them together, to take care of her and their unborn child. She didn’t admit to them that she had the same fears as they had; how were they going to manage? Was she going to be on her own all day with the baby while Gavin worked? Would he be around to help? But even though she was scared about what lay ahead for them, she couldn’t throw that all back in his face, not now after all he had done for her.

  29

  The stress and strain of the final months of pregnancy began to take its toll on Jean; money worries, doubts over how they would cope when the baby was born and even fears about what to do with a baby were continuously on her mind. She wasn’t sleeping well at night and she was constantly tired and pale. She desperately wanted her mother near her; she needed her reassurance about what lay ahead. She would pluck up the courage and dial the house phone. She longed to say the words “Mam, I’m sorry – I want to come home” but the words would never come out. Sometimes she didn’t say anything at all. She would hear her mother’s soothing voice at the other end of the line saying “Hello. Hello? Hello, is there anyone there?” and she would hang up the phone again with tears streaming down her face.

  One chilly February day, she sat shivering in their bedsit. The rain was coming down in icy sheets outside the house. It was a grey and bleak day. They had only storage heaters and as they couldn’t afford the cost of them they didn’t use them so the place was permanently freezing. The paper-thin walls had no insulation and you could feel the draughts coming through the sides of the windows. She walked around tidying up the bedsit, wearing a hoodie and a large woolly jumper belonging to Gavin over it, but no matter how much she moved or how many layers she put on, she just couldn’t get warm. Gavin had already gone into work for the evening. She tried to read her book but she just couldn’t get comfortable – her bump was heavy and awkward and was starting to weigh down on her now. She got up to make herself yet another cup of tea to keep her hands warm when she felt a pain across her whole bump. She had to lean forward and hold onto the side of the cooker until it passed. The same thing happened again some minutes later. The baby wasn’t due for another few weeks yet, she told herself, it was too early for labour pains, but soon she was caught up in waves of agony and she knew that the baby was on the way.

  She threw on a raincoat that was hanging on the back of the door and made her way to John Grace’s front door, picking a path through the puddles. She knocked hard but he wasn’t home. The lights were all off and his car wasn’t in the drive. The rain was pouring down on her now. She had to lean forward and place her palms flat on to the panels of the front door to steady herself as another contraction gripped her. She knocked harder still, willing someone to answer but there was no one there. She knew she would have to walk to the telephone box down the road.

  Her steps were slow and clumsy as the pressure became unbearable. She kept having to stop as another contraction took hold. Passing motorists splashed the pools of water from the side of the road up onto the footpath so that muddy trails of grit were running down her face as she bent to endure the contractions. Finally a car, seeing the hunched-over figure out on such a night, knew something must be up and pulled up on the path beside her. The driver asked if she was okay and then, when he saw her bump and the agony on her face, he told her to get in and said that he was taking her to the hospital straight away. Jean couldn’t even answer this stranger. He told her it was okay, he was a father of three himself. Jean knew from his kindly eyes that she could trust him. He brought her into the hospital and handed her over to the nursing staff. She didn’t even get to thank him.

  She was led straight to the delivery room. The midwives looked at her, full of pity, a young girl drenched with rain and her eyes full of fear and terror. The contractions were coming thick and fast now, one on top of the other, there was no let up. They would start off down low before gripping her abdomen like a vice and then wrapping around into her back. She tried to tell the midwives to ring Gavin but they told her there wasn’t time and that it was time to start pushing the baby out. She felt the pressure bearing down on her and the urge to push became overwhelming. She summoned up all her strength and pushed her baby out into this world.

  “It’s a boy!” she could hear them telling her from afar and then she heard the primal infant cry as they placed her newborn son in her arms. She looked down at him with his tufts of dark hair, looking so much like his father. He was small but perfectly formed, with the most beautiful little fingers and toes. She couldn’t believe that this tiny little being, this small bundle, was hers.

  * * *

  A while later, when she was back in the ward, Gavin’s head appeared around the curtain of her cubicle.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!” he panted. “I only just got the call and I came as fast as I could.”

  He stopped in front of her in awe of their tiny baby in her arms.

  “Do you want to hold your son?”

  “A boy?”

  Jean nodded and placed the towel-wrapped baby delicately into his arms.

  Gavin stared at him in wonderment, taking in every detail on his small scrunched-up face and his pouty lips.

  “He’s perfect, isn’t he?” Jean asked.

  “He is that all right.” He couldn’t take his eyes off him. “What are we going to call him?”

  Jean went silent.

  “What?”

  “Well, I was hoping – if you wouldn’t mind – I’d like to call him Paul, after my dad.” She lowered her gaze and felt the familiar pang of longing for her family. There was an unmistakable sadness in her eyes.

  “Sure, of course, pet. Baby Paul it is.”

  * * *

  In the weeks that followed, Jean was snowed under by the routine that her new baby demanded. It was a never-ending conveyor belt of nappy changes, four-hourly feeds and winding. Sometimes it felt like she had just put Paul to sleep after the last feed by the time he was awake and grizzling again. She would look at the clock in disbelief but it would indeed be four hours later. She would sigh before lifting him from his crib and the cycle would start all over again. In the evenings he would cry so hard his whole body would tense up and his face would tur
n purple because he was screaming so hard. He just wouldn’t settle no matter what she did – she tried burping him, walking with him around the room, rocking him in his crib or singing to him – but nothing she did would ease his distress. Jean herself would begin to get upset because she felt like such a failure watching her son in pain and not knowing what to do to help him. Then John Grace would bang on the wall and roar at her to “Shut that bloody child up!” She was starting to feel trapped, as if the four walls with the velvet wallpaper were coming in around her. Sometimes the crying felt as though it was drilling into her brain and she didn’t think she could stand it any more. And because Paul was still so small and the weather so bitter, she didn’t want to risk taking him outside until he was hardier so she was confined indoors most of the time.

  The days dragged with no one to talk to but her baby son and she longed for other company, but then he would look up at her with his innocent blue eyes and she would feel guilty for her thoughts.

  Now that Paul was here, neither could believe how much having a baby ate into their already limited finances. Gavin was working more than ever to pay for the nappies, formula and clothes for him, plus it was one of the harshest winters on record and they needed to have the heat on constantly. He would reassure Jean with a kiss every day that it was just for a few months and, when summer came, he would be at home more to help her – but the weeks seemed endless to her.

  Gavin would come home in the early hours of the morning and, no matter how quiet he tried to be, inevitably in the one-roomed bedsit he would wake Paul, always after Jean had just settled him. Gavin would collapse into bed exhausted, leaving Jean to get up again to see to the baby. Then in the mornings she would be busy looking after Paul while Gavin slept late.

  She had phoned her parents from the hospital the day after Paul was born to tell them that she’d had a baby boy and that they had named him Paul after her father. They had begged her to let them come and visit, promising that they wouldn’t put any pressure on her to come home, that they just wanted to see their grandson and her, just to make sure they were both okay. She had asked Gavin what he thought but he told her it wasn’t a good idea, that once her parents knew where they were living that would be it. So even though it broke her heart, she stood firm and refused to allow them to come to see her. She missed her mother desperately – she needed her help, she had so many questions about Paul that she wanted to ask. Was it normal for him to cry this much? Was there something wrong with him? She felt so alone.