Teresa hugged her tightly. “Imelda, it was brilliant!” she exclaimed. “Look, there’s Nell McCafferty.” She pointed to the renowned journalist who had come up with the idea of going up North to buy contraceptives. “She told us exactly what to do and what to ask for. We had a list. All I’d ever heard of were French letters and the jelly. There’s something called the coil, and the diaphragm that you stick inside you, but you need a prescription for them. God, she’s afraid of no one,” Teresa said admiringly.
“I know. I’d be a bit afraid of her myself.” Imelda grinned, watching the pint-sized Boadicea surrounded by her cheering comrades in arms.
“And that’s Máirín Johnston—”
“She was great on the Late Late; she wouldn’t let the men get away with anything.” Imelda was excited to be amongst all these famous activists who were changing the lives of women in Ireland.
“The customs officer asked Máirín had she anything to declare and she waved the jelly at him and said, ‘Jelly! And you’re not getting it. It’s mine.’ And when he argued, she said, ‘No, you’re not getting it.’ And he didn’t know what to say to her. He was mortified.” Teresa grinned. “Come on, let’s walk up to the Capital and have something to eat, and we can get the number nineteen or the thirteen, whichever comes first, afterwards.”
Sitting opposite her friend in the dim interior of their favourite restaurant, Imelda felt far from her days of squelching across the fields to school in her wellies. Here she was, up in the capital, protesting with the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement—unbeknownst to her mother-in-law, who was minding the children for the day—lunching in a fancy restaurant, and being highly entertained by her best friend’s description of the groundbreaking journey that had taken place earlier.
“Imagine, though, that we could have been arrested, faced a large fine and social disgrace for breaking the law and bringing back contraceptives from the North. It’s outrageous, Imelda. It truly is,” Teresa said indignantly, lighting up a cigarette, after offering one to her friend. “The Church and State have worked hand in glove to keep women down.”
“I know. There’s a real change happening, isn’t there?” Imelda sat back in her red chair and exhaled a thin stream of smoke.
“It nearly all came unstuck, though.” Teresa sat back, relaxed now. “Nell asked for the pill and the coil and the chemist said, ‘Where’s your prescription?’ And Nell’s looking at him like he’s got two heads. Sure, getting a prescription for those things here would be like finding gold dust—”
“Oh no! After going to all that trouble of taking the train up to Belfast. What did you all do?” Imelda exclaimed.
“Well, the pharmacist couldn’t give us the pill so Nell told us to buy aspirin and take them out of the packets. None of the customs men had ever seen the pill. Neither had any of us, come to that. So they would be none the wiser. No contraceptive pill came into the Republic today, but a hell of a lot of aspirins did,” Teresa said drolly.
Imelda laughed heartily. “No more sending off postal orders to England with stamped addressed envelopes for rubber goods to be back sent under plain cover then.”
“Ah, I’d say we’re not finished with the days of ‘foreign correspondence’ yet,” Teresa said sagely.
“Foreign correspondence?”
“Another name for French letters.” Teresa winked. “The Church won’t give up without a fight, and sadly, what the Church says still dictates what goes on here.”
“It’s changing, though. It’s changing. By the time Keelin grows up, it will be nothing like it is now.”
“You hope.” Teresa shrugged. “One battle at a time.”
* * *
Imelda felt refreshed and revitalized driving into Glencarraig the following morning. Her trips to Teresa, and Dublin, were a godsend. She knew how lucky she was to have a husband as decent as Larry. He never moaned; in fact, he encouraged her to have her days out in the capital because, he always teased, she came back in good humour after spending all his money.
They hadn’t had sex since she’d had the miscarriage at Christmas, nearly six months ago. And he was wary of the protection offered by condoms. He said he didn’t want to risk her getting pregnant again. Well, tonight there’d be no risk because she’d a tube of spermicidal jelly to go with the French letters Teresa had bought her, on her “Occasion of Sin” to the North.
On a whim, Imelda turned into the car park in front of the shop. Larry had had a new extension put on, and a chill room, and the plate-glass windows gleamed in the May sun. The cheery baskets of cascading pink, purple, and white petunias looked almost continental against the whitewashed walls. She was proud of her husband. He was a hard worker. A man with a vision for his business, and he treated her and the children very well. And she had standing in the community, as his wife. She might not have been in love with Larry when she married him, but she could say, at last, that she was reasonably contented.
Imelda was feeling uncharacteristically cheerful as she made her way through the busy store, greeting customers and neighbours. Larry wasn’t on the floor, so she poked her head into the office to see if he was there. “I think he’s out the back, Imelda,” Betty, the secretary, said, lifting her head from her ledger.
“Grand. Thanks.” Imelda smiled at the middle-aged, grey-haired woman who always had a pencil stuck behind her ear. She pushed open the rear exit, immediately feeling the difference in temperature as she walked along the hallway, past the chill room, to the large storage area at the back of the building. Hoping to surprise her husband, she was glad she’d changed her high heels for flatties for the drive back from Dublin; her footsteps made no sound on the vinyl flooring. She took the jelly and a condom out of her bag and silently pushed the door open.
She heard the murmur of voices behind a stack of tinned foods and made a face. She couldn’t very well prance up waving a condom in front of someone. She was about to call out when she heard Larry’s deep voice say with a passion that rocked her to her core, “I love you, and I’ve always loved you, and I can’t change that.”
Frozen, Imelda stopped in her tracks.
“I love you, too. It’s hell on earth, Larry. I wish we could be together,” she heard the soft response, and, rounding the corner, she saw Larry and Fran Cassidy, the art teacher in the local secondary school, staring tenderly at each other, before their lips met in a passionate kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Imelda gasped and turned away, and heard Larry call her name, in shock, but she kept on walking, desperate to get away and be on her own to absorb the impact of what she’d witnessed. She thought she was going to puke. Her legs were shaking. She hurried out the side door, into the backyard, and then ran to her car, heart thumping, mind swirling.
Larry and Fran Cassidy were lovers.
Fran with the soft, melting brown eyes, and the longest, blackest eyelashes Imelda had ever seen. Did Fran run those delicate, long painter’s fingers over Larry’s body and bring him to passionate delights that somehow she’d never been able to? Now it all made sense. She’d always been more sexual than her husband. He was much more passive. Larry had done his marital duty with Imelda, but he had made love to Fran, she thought bitterly, bursting into great gulping sobs in the safety of the car as she saw Larry rush out into the car park. She gunned the engine and sped out onto the main street. She couldn’t go home and face her mother-in-law and her children after what she’d just seen.
Dazed with despair and shock, her eyes blurred with tears, she drove on autopilot, wondering if she was about to wake up and be overcome with relief that it was only a bad dream. But it was no nightmare. This was real, Imelda acknowledged, jamming on her brakes to avoid a black cat who was sauntering nonchalantly across the road. Her marriage was over, she thought frantically. Larry could go and live with his fey, artistic lover, because she was kicking him out of the house.
What a scandal it would cause if she did that, though, she thought miserably. The townland
would be riveted, the gossip spreading like wildfire. Her parents would be horrified. Marriage breakups were unheard of. People got on with things in good old Catholic Ireland.
Perhaps she should move to Dublin. Her thoughts skittered here and there, seeking a solution. She’d every reason to go now. What a relief it would be to live in an anonymous city where no one knew her business. She could get a house near Teresa. Larry would have to pay for the children’s upkeep and she could get a job. She’d plenty of retail experience.
Could she uproot the children from their home, their friends, their schools? Could she wrench them from their father’s loving care? They adored him. She couldn’t do that to her children. Was she yet again going to have to sacrifice what she needed for others’ happiness?
Imelda turned left down a side road that was more a boreen than a road. There was a copse of trees halfway down and she pulled in and parked the car, got out, and made her way to a round, smooth boulder where she often liked to sit peacefully and look out across the valley. The breeze whispered through the leaves. Clusters of bluebells swayed gracefully at her feet, but today Imelda, ensnared in turmoil, saw none of the beauty of Hedigan’s Wood.
“Why?” she roared up at the clear blue sky. “Why do You keep picking on me, God? What have I done to deserve this shite that You keep shovelling down on me?” Imelda sat on the rock and put her head in her hands and wept brokenly, her body shuddering with sobs until she’d no more tears to cry. She felt sick, tired, and weak. Her stomach was tied up in knots, her head beginning to pound. After she’d composed herself, she went back to the car, rooted in her bag for her cigarettes, and lit up.
She didn’t know how long she sat on her stone, smoking cigarette after cigarette, but the sun had long reached its noon zenith when she took note of where she was and what time it was. Heavy-hearted, Imelda knew that she should go home. She’d children to take care of. Keelin and Cormac would be finished with school and wanting their dinner and she’d to collect Peter from her mother-in-law’s.
She was stubbing out her last cigarette when she heard the crunch of tyres along the boreen. Imelda’s heart sank. She swore, wiping her tear-stained face with her hands, sure that her mascara had run after her bout of crying, and knowing that she looked a sight.
Her stomach lurched when she saw Larry’s red van.
Imelda stood up and squared her shoulders as her husband parked behind her car and made his way towards her, his face ashen and drawn in torment.
“Imelda, I—”
“How did you know I was here?” she said dully.
“I went home. I went to Mam’s. Saw no sign of the car and I thought I’d try here. I know you. This is where you come when—”
“You know me,” she derided. “Am I that predictable? And I thought I knew you. Well, I was wrong about that, for sure. In a million years I would never have imagined you and Fran Cassidy together.”
“I want to talk to you about that—”
“Why did you marry me? It certainly wasn’t for love,” she interrupted bitterly.
“I could ask you the same question,” Larry said quietly.
His unexpected answer left her without a response. Because it was true. She hadn’t married him for love; she’d married him to escape.
“So it’s all been a sham then,” she said. “It must have been such an ordeal for you, having sex with me, when all that was in your head was Fran Cassidy. Oh, it explains so much, Larry. So much,” she raged.
“Don’t say that,” he muttered, reddening.
“I will say it. I’ll say what I bloody well like, you bastard. And I thought we had a good marriage, despite everything. What a fool I was!”
“We did well, until today.” He kicked a stone around, hands jammed in his jeans pockets, head lowered, unable to look at her.
“I want to leave.”
“I understand that—but, Imelda, I’m begging you not to take the children away from me completely. That I couldn’t bear. I’ll do anything. Give you anything you want. As much money as I can afford, but they are my world,” he pleaded, tears rolling down his cheeks.
“The children are your world. Fran is your world, and I might as well be a leper,” Imelda replied flatly. “I hate you for what you’ve done to me, Larry. I will never forgive you, but I will do right by my children and I won’t disrupt their lives. Our marriage is over. You know that, don’t you?”
“Please let me try and make it up to you. I’ll never see Fran again; I promise,” Larry begged. “Imelda, I’m so sorry. I—”
“Larry, what I saw will live with me for the rest of my life. Nothing you say is going to change that. Maybe time will dull the pain of it, I don’t know, but for now, let me feel the way I feel and don’t make false promises to me—”
“They’re not false, Imelda. I will never, ever see Fran again,” Larry assured her.
Imelda couldn’t think straight. Everything in her life had changed in that instant. If she’d no children, she’d be gone. But she did have children and she had a responsibility towards them, whether she liked it or not.
“Do what you like from now on,” she said bitterly. “I’m never going to speak to you about this again. Let the façade continue, because that’s what it is and always has been. You’re right. But you need to remember that once I became your wife, I was as good a wife and partner as I could be. I kept my marriage vows and I was never unfaithful to you. That counts for something, in my view. Here.” She scrabbled in her bag for the condoms and threw them at him. “I won’t be needing these. I’m the biggest fool this world has ever seen.”
* * *
The water lapped gently against the quay. The boats bobbed up and down on the silky blue-green water. Her children were enjoying their Saturday out in Galway, a summer holiday treat that had been long promised. Imelda was going to bring them to have their lunch in one of the cafés around the Spanish Steps and their excitement was mighty. The deep musical chimes of the church bell across the road signalled midday, and automatically she and the children blessed themselves and began the Angelus. “The angel of the Lord, declared unto Mary,” she intoned, and Keelin’s clear voice answered, “And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.” A thought struck Imelda. She could bring Keelin to confession here; it would save her having to bring her tonight. One more chore of motherhood ticked off.
“Will we get confession here and then we won’t have to go tonight?” she asked her daughter.
“OK, Mammy,” her daughter agreed easily.
“I don’t want to go into a church.” Cormac made a face.
“We’ll be in and out in no time. And you know what, we’re going to get a big fat ninety-nine cone after we have our lunch.” She smiled at him.
“Yippppeeeeeee!” he yelled, dancing up and down.
“You’re easily pleased.” Imelda laughed, in spite of herself. “Come on, take Keelin’s hand crossing the road.” She turned Peter’s buggy around and checked for traffic before crossing over to the church.
“Can I light a penny candle?” Cormac begged as they walked up the long aisle, towards a confession box, which had a small queue waiting.
“Go on. Keelin, go with him and make sure he doesn’t set fire to himself or the church. I’ll sit in the queue.” She handed her son and daughter a bronze coin each, removed Peter from his buggy, and carried him into the row of seats beside the confession box. She watched her children lighting their candles. They were well behaved, she acknowledged. A credit to her and Larry, her father had said recently.
The one good thing to come out of her marriage, she thought, sighing and moving up a seat as the queue got shorter. “Go on in,” she said to Keelin when the door to the confession box opened and the penitent before them emerged, head down, blessing himself. Keelin scooted in obediently, the picture of piety, Imelda thought, amused.
She was out in less than five minutes. “I’ll mind Peter while you go in.” Keelin held out her hands for her baby brother.
“Oh!” Imelda was thrown. She hadn’t planned to go to confession. But when she saw her daughter’s innocent, trusting face looking up at her expectantly, she handed Peter over to her and slipped into the dark box that smelled vaguely musty, despite the polished wood.
She heard the click of the shutter as it was pulled across and saw the priest in dim shadow, head bowed, on the other side of the grille. He nodded his head: Make a good confession, my child.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned; it’s two months since my last confession, Father,” she murmured. “I—”
“Two months! What sin has kept you from the sacrament that long?” The priest lifted his head and looked at her sternly.
“Anger, Father.” Imelda shrugged despondently.
“Anger at whom, my child?”
“My husband, and God!” She might as well be honest, she decided. She was, after all, in confession.
“And what has provoked this anger?”
“I caught my husband having an affair and—”
“What caused your husband to have a relationship outside of the confines of marriage? Have you been granting him his conjugal rights?”
“What?” Imelda snapped, not sure if she’d heard right.
“Have you been giving your husband his conjugal rights?” The priest looked askance at her disrespectful tone.
Wrath, primal in its origin, scorched through her. “How dare you? You impudent article. What about my conjugal rights?” Imelda hissed. “My husband is the one committing mortal sin, and you’re blaming it on me!” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She stuck her face close to the grille, and all the injustice that she and her kind had endured for centuries impelled the words that erupted out of her. “This is my last confession, Priest! I’ll never kneel before one of you lot again.”
The Liberation of Brigid Dunne Page 13