Thirty OneThe cemetery was much busier than usual. Christine preferred not to visit on holidays, for fear of bumping into her father, or anyone else. But this St. Patrick’s Day, she was making an exception. As they slowly walked along the tarmac path, recently dug graves to their right, a promised field to their left, she linked her arm through Mark’s. There was less chance of her turning and running away like that. And she didn’t want to run. Her other arm was by her side, two milky roses in her grip, her thumbnail sunk into the stem of one.
An unmistakeable scent of spring filled her lungs as they walked. It still felt cold, or at least it did to Christine, but she was still adjusting to the change from having been in Sydney. Dotted around the graveyard, little groups of people stood huddled over, some kneeling, weeding, scouring a greening headstone with wire brushes, others just standing, staring at a place they last left their beloved. The groups, mostly adults in twos and threes, some with small children skipping around them, were an unusual sight for her. She was used to seeing solitary individuals, mostly men, the regulars, those quietly visiting the graves on Saturdays when she would usually be here, striking in her youth. But today, there was a different mood around the headstones, as family groups, carrying cheerful daffodils and posies of wilting shamrock, many chatting gaily to each other, took the opportunity of the holiday to be there.
Mark was quiet as they walked along, very conscious of the significance of his being there. He would take his cue from Christine. He tried to silently gauge her mood. It wasn’t certain how she would feel once they were at the grave. Would she be sorry that she had asked him to come? He hoped to God not. He wanted badly to do this with her. After this, there would be nothing left between them. No barriers. No secrets.
Christine’s pace slowed almost imperceptibly. Mark stayed with her. They were close now. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the familiar names and headstones. Watching her. Judging her. Noticing this tall, dark-haired man she was pressed to. Wondering who he was. But as she walked past, Christine knew they would approve. That they would be happy for her. She inadvertently smiled to herself, and Mark gave her a questioning look.
“You okay?”
“Yes.” She squeezed his arm in hers, her expression now solemn. “It’s just here.”
Her words were hardly audible, but he followed her gaze to a gravestone just ahead of them, and they stopped walking. Christine’s eyes were fixed. Mark watched her, anxious for a moment, but she seemed calm. He turned to the plot of granite kerbing and stone. It was a simple, unassuming grave. Almost tasteful next to some of the gaudy testimonials that they had passed. Just a cross on a plinth. Mark read the epitaph slowly.
HERE LIES PATRICIA GROGAN
BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER
AND ZOЁ GROGAN
BORN AN ANGEL
SAFE IN THE ARMS OF HER GRANDMOTHER
They stood in silence, not moving, their arms linked. After what must have been three or four minutes, Christine took her arm away and left the two roses on the plinth next to a small pot of narcissus.
“Dad must have been here this morning,” she said to the tiny golden flowers. She stood back next to Mark, her hands in her pockets. Mark felt he could speak now.
“Your Mum was only fifty-three when she died,” he shook his head. “She was so young.”
“Yeah,” Christine nodded. “My Dad was eight years older than her.” She smiled, remembering. “She used to call him a cradle-snatcher when they were arguing. Only messing about, you know,” she looked at Mark. “And he would laugh, and accuse her of leading him astray. It was funny,” she said. “Because, because they were just peas in a pod. Real soul-mates. Best mates.”
Mark nodded. He tried to imagine what it might have been like to grow up in a home where your parents were best friends too. He found he couldn’t.
They stood in silence again for a while. “It must have been very difficult,” he said, “coming back here so soon after you had buried her.” He looked at Christine. He was terrified of going too far. Of treading on long-dormant memories and upsetting her. But they were here now. He wanted to dig as deep as he could. Reveal as much of her as he could, without hurting her. He looked back at the dates on the headstone. “Or maybe you didn’t come?” he said softly. “With Zoë?” He fell silent, watching her. Hoping. Hoping she would open up to him. Hoping he hadn’t said too much.
“I didn’t want to,” she said after a heart-freezing moment. A tear formed in the corner of her eye, but it didn’t fall. She thought back to the day itself. She hadn’t wanted to come. She hadn’t wanted to live. Parts of that day, that week, had been totally erased from her memory. Sometimes, when she felt the need to torture herself, she would close her eyes and try to remember those blanked moments, hours. Remembering was bad enough. Sometimes not remembering went deeper.
She could remember leaving the hospital with Aggie. Their aunt had driven them in her car to the graveyard. Her father had met them here with the undertaker. He had been carrying a tiny white coffin. It had seemed only big enough for a doll. She had stared at the unfamiliar man in the dark winter coat. She couldn’t understand why he was there. She had just stared and stared.
“Christine?” Mark put his arm gently around her waist.
“My Dad made me come,” she said. “I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.” She half laughed at Mark. “I definitely wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
Mark squeezed her to him. “Matt Grogan will take some living up to, I think,” he said.
They stood facing the headstone for another minute. There had been showers earlier that morning, but now the sun was doing its best to find a way through the grey, cotton wool clouds. A small mechanical digger clanked about further down the way, close to the unbroken field. Apparently out of nowhere, a wedge of geese flew high overhead, their honking sound causing Mark and Christine to lift their faces and gape at the sight. They watched them disappear past the tops of the trees at the cemetery boundary.
“Would you like to have more children?” Mark’s voice betrayed his unease at asking the question. He felt Christine freeze in his grasp. Half of him immediately wished the words back from whence they came, but the other half needed there to be no secrets. No secrets.
Christine turned her face away. She was shocked at the question. But not at its directness, or propriety. She was shocked because she realised no one had ever asked it of her before. Not her father, not Aggie, not Emily. Not even herself. Not one of them had seemingly thought she was at the point where she could think rationally about it. But Mark had. Was he right? Could she contemplate having another child?
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” Mark looked terrified. “You don’t have to answer.”
“No.” She turned to him. “No, I, I don’t mind that you asked. It’s just,” she looked back at the headstone. “It’s just I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about it.”
They stood there, Mark staring anxiously at Christine, while Christine searched her soul for the answer to a question she had never before heard uttered. And yet, the question seemed to her to be the key that might unlock that very same soul.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I suppose I would.”
Mark heard the words, and knew that whether she had said yes or no, it would have made no difference to him. A high-pitched laugh grabbed his attention for a second, and he saw a couple with a little girl beside them, skipping along the path, a baby cocooned to the mother in a sling across her front. The sight of them filled Mark with a sense of hope and excitement. He looked quickly back at Christine, but saw that she too was watching the scene, the little girl’s pigtails bouncing with shiny, green ribbons.
She looked back at the headstone, and stooped to smooth out some imagined unevenness in the gravel. Then she stood, and went to the cross and kissed it, and turned back to Mark.
“Okay?” she said evenly. “Shall we go?”
“Sure.”
They linked arms aga
in, and started to walk back along the path. Christine didn’t look back once. As they walked along, the sun was briefly successful at getting around the clouds. Christine lifted her face to the rays, lapping up the heat like a junkie.
“How about you?” she said, squinting at Mark in the light. “Would you like to have children?”
“Eh, yeah,” Mark said. “I would. It’s not a deal-breaker though, or anything,” he added anxiously.
Christine laughed. “Very poetic choice of words,” she said. “But you and Jennifer. You never?”
“She didn’t want kids,” Mark said, looking at the path just ahead of his feet. “And, I guess, I didn’t want them badly enough to push it.”
Christine nodded in silence.
“But maybe that’s more indicative of our relationship than anything else.” He looked at Christine. “She didn’t want kids with me, nor I with her, I suppose. It’s only now,” he reddened, “with you, that I think I do. I do want them. With you.”
Christine said nothing, but he could see her smiling as they walked along, past rows of carved names.
“I mean, please don’t think I’m pressurising you or anything.” He stopped walking and pulled her facing him. “I don’t care. If you do. Great. But if not, that’s okay, or, or whatever. Maybe in a few years, maybe -”
“Mark.” Her tone was urgent. “Mark. It’s okay.” She kissed him softly. “I love you.”
It wasn’t the first time she had said it, but it still made Mark’s stomach contract. He held her cold cheeks in his hands and kissed her forehead. An elderly couple lowered their eyes as they shuffled passed them.
“C’mon,” Christine said, resuming their path along through the oldest part of the cemetery and towards the gate. “Let’s go. I’m freezing.”
“You know,” Mark said as they walked, “my parents are buried here too.”
Christine stopped abruptly. “Where?” she said. “Oh, I’m so sorry. So typical of me. I’m so wrapped up in myself. I never thought.”
“No, no. I don’t come out much. Ever, actually,” Mark said.
She regarded him thoughtfully. “Well, would you like to now?” She didn’t want to be presumptuous. She of all people knew how it might not be something Mark wanted to do. But apparently, Mark was just worried about upsetting Christine.
“You sure?” he said. “You’re up for it?”
“Of course,” she said squeezing his hand. “I’d be honoured.”
“Right so.” Mark turned around and squinted across the rows of headstones in the sun. He appeared lost. Then he pointed towards a corner near the main gate, to a part of the graveyard Christine hardly ever gave a second glance to. “Over there,” he said. “I think,” he grinned. “It’s been a while.” He held out his arm. “Ready to meet the parents?”
“Mark,” she laughed and pushed him.
They left the tarmac avenue and walked along a grassy path where the headstones were weathered and the walkways narrow. After a moment, Mark stopped at a plain rectangular headstone with the name Harrington engraved in black on the plinth. “Here we are,” he said.
The inscription, telling of his father’s demise almost twenty years before, was faded. Beneath it, the letters told of the more recent death of his mother.
Mark laid his hand on the cold stone. “I suppose I should have brought something,” he said quietly.
This part of the graveyard was quieter. No machinery chugged about. The graves here were more or less left in peace now.
A few wrought iron benches marked the perimeter. “My mother used to sit there a lot,” Mark pointed at the bench closest to them. “After he died. I remember her sitting there, just staring at his grave.” Mark mirrored the memory, standing at the headstone, staring back at the empty space on the bench.
“She must have been heartbroken,” Christine said.
“Not really,” Mark walked over to the seat and wiped his hand across it, dispersing the last trace of the morning’s rain. He sat, and opened his arm to Christine who sat down next to him. “They had a difficult relationship.” He gazed across at where his parents now lay together for perpetuity. “I think… I think he disappointed her.”
Christine felt sad. She watched Mark as he remembered times which sounded far from her own family experience. She couldn’t imagine her father and mother any way but in love.
“Thinking about it now,” Mark continued. “It sort of makes sense to me that she never really pushed me into marrying Jennifer. Her own sisters,” Mark made a face at Christine,” never stopped, going on about their nephew, living in sin, blah blah blah. But Mum, she never pushed it with me. Maybe that was why. I’ve never really thought about it.”
They sat looking ahead of them, Mark’s arm around Christine’s shoulder. Above them, something startled a crow, and she looked to see a flock of them break away from the topmost branches of a tree, their caws scattering to the wind, leaving the tree naked.
“I’m going to Edinburgh next weekend,” Mark said suddenly, his gaze never moving from the Harrington headstone before him. Christine froze. She wasn’t sure what to expect next. “I need to see Jennifer,” Mark turned to face her on the bench. “I need to tell her about you, and I’d rather do it face to face.” He touched a button on her coat which was about to fall off. She’d meant to sew that on. “We need to talk about the house too.”
Christine stayed still. She was afraid to look at him. Afraid of what she might see in his eyes. Afraid of seeing any trace of feeling for Jennifer. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Of course he had to see her again. She understood that. They still had the house together. And there must be a hundred other little ties binding them. Ties that grow over ten years spent together, like ivy tentacles that would now need to be cut. And after all she had asked of him, she had to let him do that. But still, the thought of him in Edinburgh, with her -.
“I’m going to fly over and back in the one day,” he said to her, reassuring her. “I just have to see her once more.” He turned back to the gravestone. “It just seems like the right thing to do.”
Christine reached out and clasped his hand in hers. “I understand,” she said. “You’re right. Do what you have to do. And I’ll be here.” She squeezed his hand. “When you’re ready, I’ll be here.”
He drew her to him and kissed her again. “Come on,” he said. “Will we go?” They stood for a second more at Mark’s parents’ grave, and then walked back, hand-in-hand towards the entrance gate.
“So have you heard from baby Mark in the past few days?”
“Yeah,” Christine laughed. “Aggie had the poor child on skype yesterday evening. It must have been six in the morning in Sydney. She said she was up giving him his bottle anyway, so she might as well be online at the same time.”
“That’s great.”
“I know. I’m so glad I was there when he arrived,” she said softly. “I think, well, it really helped. And I think Aggie was glad too. It was very, fateful.” She looked up at Mark like he might have planned it all somehow. “Dad’s booked his flight over for the end of the month. Jamie’s mother will be around until then. So she’ll be okay.”
“Of course she will.”
“It’s just, very far.”
“I know,” Mark put his arm around her shoulder. “I know.”
“Anyway,” Christine rubbed her eyes quickly as Mark held open the gate for her. “She’ll be back in the summer. That’s the plan. So that’s not so bad.”
As they walked along towards where Mark had parked his car, the sound of a brass band in the near distance made Christine pull away from him and crane her neck down the avenue towards the main road. She could see people gathered and flashes of colour moving past.
“Is that a parade?” She shaded her eyes.
“Must be,” Mark said. “Just a local one. We shouldn’t be held up too long.”
“Let’s go down and have a look,” Christine pulled at Mark’s arm, and he saw the light in her
face, and he smiled. They walked together to the end of the avenue where a parade was dancing past, flanked by what seemed to be children and teenagers from a local hurling club, green ribbons tied around the hurleys swinging from their hands. A small group of Irish dancers had just passed, their ringlets bouncing along after them like springs. Mark and Christine just got there as a karate club marched past, children and adults all dressed in gi, some of the younger participants enthusiastically attempting chops and kicks as they walked. The last group was a band of elderly musicians with trumpets and drums, a wide green banner with golden tassels held high behind them. Mark and Christine clapped and cheered with the other onlookers, mostly comprising proud, waving parents with green ice-cream eating toddlers on their shoulders.
“Show’s over, I think,” Mark said and they turned to go back up the avenue to the car. “Not exactly Chicago standard,” he laughed.
“Aw, cute though.”
They sat into Mark’s comfortable car. “I’m in Chicago all next week,” he said suddenly.
“Yeah?”
“Actually,” he kept his hand on the ignition, “I want to talk to you about it. I’ve been offered a position over there. They want to discuss it with me next week.”
Christine went from shock, to despair, to delight at her own feeling of despair all in the matter of a second. “Wow,” was all she said.
“It’s just an offer,” Mark stared at her, his hand still on the key. “I, I don’t have to consider -”
“I love Chicago,” Christine said quietly to herself, as she stared out the windscreen. A child of eight or nine, dressed in an Irish dancing costume was skipping towards the car parked in front of them, followed by her clearly adoring parents. She turned to Mark. “I know I’m only back two weeks, but I’d already thought about leaving CarltonWachs.”
“No,” Mark sat back in his chair, shaking his head.
“Not in a bad sense,” Christine put her hand on his arm. “It’s just, I don’t think us working together long term would be such a good idea. Do you? And, I’m pretty employable, you know. There’s lots of things I could do.”
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