Girl Unknown

by Karen Perry

  ‘Can I have some?’ Robbie asked me.

  ‘Go on then. Just this once.’

  We raised our glasses to the birthdays, and turned our attention to the menu. There was some commotion as we gave our orders and baskets of bread arrived, a collective hunger voicing itself in the clatter of cutlery. I wish I could say that I became relaxed, that my fear over Holly’s new knowledge subsided, that the evening passed off peacefully, but that was not the case. The first signal that Holly wouldn’t let the matter go came when Zoë presented her half-sister with a birthday gift.

  ‘I hope you like it,’ she said, handing her a small grey box wrapped in a pink diaphanous ribbon, a sprig of dried flowers caught in the bow.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ Holly said stiffly.

  Inside the box was a bracelet – little shards of coloured glass strung together, a delicate thing in shades of lilac and purple.

  ‘I found it in a little shop near the harbour in Saint-Martin, when you weren’t looking. Aren’t you going to try it on?’

  ‘Maybe later.’

  An uncomfortable silence stretched across the table. I felt annoyed at Holly’s rudeness, even though I knew where it stemmed from.

  ‘Say thank you,’ I told her, in a forceful whisper.

  Defiance in her eyes. For the briefest of moments, I wasn’t sure what she would say. ‘Thank you, Zoë,’ she said, glancing across at her. ‘You really shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.’

  ‘No trouble.’ Zoë’s voice had become small. After a moment, she drained her glass and sat back, casting her gaze around the restaurant. One of the guys at the next table – the same guy as before – looked over. The incident with the bracelet had disappointed her, I could see. The little box sat forlornly on its side, forgotten beneath the bread basket.

  Our food arrived, and we began to eat, our conversation naturally turning to the events of the day Holly was born, reliving the details – reinforcing family mythology, I suppose. Chris, unaware of his fiancée’s growing sullenness, her attention drifting to the next table, was an eager listener.

  ‘So tell me, Caroline,’ he said, ‘this time twelve years ago, were you screaming your head off in the delivery ward?’

  ‘Not a bit,’ she answered, shooting Holly a smile. ‘Easiest birth ever.’

  ‘Bollox.’

  ‘I’m telling you, it’s true. Robbie, on the other hand, was a complete nightmare.’

  I kicked him playfully under the table. ‘Difficult from the start, weren’t you, son?’

  ‘Ha-ha,’ he replied. Perhaps it was the champagne, but he seemed to have perked up a little, leaning into the table to be part of the conversation.

  ‘Holly came so quickly,’ Caroline went on, ‘I barely made it up on to the bed. I just breathed her out.’

  Holly stirred with pleasure – she loved this story.

  ‘Tell them about the caul,’ I said.

  ‘Holly was born with the caul unbroken.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Chris asked.

  ‘It’s a membrane that covers the baby’s face and head in the womb. It tears during childbirth, except in rare instances, and in Holly’s case it was unbroken.’

  ‘They say it brings luck to the child,’ I said, putting my arm around Holly’s shoulders. ‘Isn’t that right, sweetheart? Or in some countries they believe the child has second sight.’

  ‘Do you, Holly?’ Chris screwed up his eyes and peered closely at her.

  She blushed beneath his scrutiny, and shook her head.

  ‘One of the midwives told us that sailors often use a caul as a talisman against drowning,’ Caroline continued. ‘She asked us if we wanted to keep it or even sell it.’

  ‘Gross!’ Robbie cried.

  ‘It was David’s birthday and I’d left his present at home, so I turned to him and said, “There you go, love. That’s your present.” ’

  ‘Please, Mum. TMI,’ Robbie said.

  ‘My mother kept my umbilical cord,’ Chris volunteered, sending Robbie into fresh groans of revulsion. ‘I found it after she died, this dry, shrivelled thing in a box. It looked a bit like tripe.’

  I placed my knife and fork on the empty plate and laughed. ‘Now that is gross,’ I said. My headache had lifted – the champagne, the wine that had followed, the food, they had all gone some way to relieving the pressure.

  ‘We kept the hospital bracelets the children wore, didn’t we, Caroline?’ I said. ‘Tiny little things – they barely fit around my finger. To think that they were once around your wrist, Robbie, and your ankle, Hols.’

  Zoë, who had been silent throughout this exchange, brought her empty glass down on to the table with a hard clink. ‘Well, no one kept any mementos of my birth.’ She wore a brittle smile but her voice was barely controlled. ‘And whether Linda had a rough time at the birth or if she just breathed me out, I’ll never know.’

  ‘Zoë,’ I began, ‘we didn’t mean to …’

  She pushed her chair back: ‘I’m going outside for a smoke.’

  Chris followed her with his eyes, until Caroline asked him to pour the wine. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was bothering Zoë.

  ‘Is she all right?’ I asked Chris.

  ‘She’s fine,’ he said, sounding unsure.

  Caroline sipped from her glass. Robbie and Holly were silent.

  From where I was sitting, with my back to the wall, I could see Zoë through the window outside, leaning against a tree trunk, putting a cigarette between her lips. The guy from the next table was with her – I hadn’t noticed him follow her outside – leaning in with his Zippo, her hand cupping the flame as she lit up. I glanced back at Chris. He hadn’t noticed.

  Our conversation had moved on to our college days by the time she returned, smoothing the folds of her dress against the backs of her thighs, taking her seat.

  ‘You okay, hon?’Chris asked.

  Robbie sat between them, making it impossible for any physical display of affection.

  ‘Fine,’ she replied, her eyes on the guy returning to his friends, tossing his Zippo on to the table and glancing at her. Chris followed her gaze. His expression darkened.

  Caroline had brought with her to the restaurant the birthday cake she had purchased at the market that morning, and once our dinner plates had been cleared away, the waitress carried it out – a delicate cream-filled mille-feuille topped with candles, the lick and sway of tiny flames. We were temporarily the focus of attention in the restaurant, and to the eyes of the other diners, we might have appeared celebratory, happy even at the short burst of applause. They had no idea of the tangle of confused allegiances, the discontent crackling in the air between us.

  ‘I sometimes think,’ Caroline said, puncturing the air with her fork, ‘that there should be particular-flavoured cakes for particular occasions. You know, chocolate cake for anniversaries, meringue for birthdays, something fruity for weddings.’

  I decided she must be a little drunk.

  ‘What sort of cake shall we have for our wedding?’ Chris asked Zoë, smiling across Robbie at her.

  Zoë put a delicate forkful of cake into her mouth but didn’t answer. She had hardly touched her food all night.

  ‘Come on,’ Chris said, warming to the subject. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered quietly.

  ‘You must have a preference,’ he persisted. ‘What’s your favourite?’

  ‘I don’t have a favourite.’

  ‘Chocolate or lemon?’

  Putting down her fork, she said sharply, ‘I don’t even like cake.’

  Without any explanation as to where she was going, she got up and left the table again.

  ‘Where’s she off to now?’ Chris asked, crestfallen. He turned in his seat and saw the guy at the next table calmly leaving the restaurant, Zoë turning to say something to him I couldn’t hear.

  ‘What the hell’s she playing at?’ he asked, almost to himself, before he dropped his fork on to
the plate with a little clatter and rose from his seat to follow them out on to the square.

  ‘Don’t get involved,’ Caroline warned me, and for a few minutes we sat in an uncomfortable silence, while outside the window Chris remonstrated with Zoë, the guy smoking his cigarette, bemused. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I could see Zoë’s cross face, her body language growing hostile. As I finished my dessert, she pulled the door open and marched back inside, Chris following. He took his seat, smiling at us all, but the redness of his cheeks betrayed his real emotions. The dude at the next table also returned, remarking to his friends in French, which set off a low rumble of mocking laughter around their table. Chris pulled at his collar. I began to feel sorry for him.

  ‘Shall we have coffee?’ Caroline suggested.

  ‘Perhaps we should just get the bill,’ I said. The air at the table was spiky now with the threat of argument.

  Jealousy is a terrible thing – I know what it’s like. It’s a grotty outcrop of insecurity and need. It eats you up inside, pushes you to do and say reckless things. Chris, I could tell, was on the brink of something drastic.

  ‘What are you guys doing the last weekend in August?’ he said, in an important way, making it sound like an announcement.

  ‘August?’ Caroline asked.

  ‘Saturday the 29th,’ he went on, leaning forward on the table knitting his fingers together. ‘What about it, Zoë?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said sulkily, clasping her arms at the elbows and sitting back in her chair.

  ‘An engagement party. Something to make it all official. We can invite all our friends.’ He was smiling at her but there was hardness in his voice, a challenge in his eyes.

  ‘Maybe now isn’t the best time to decide on anything official,’ I said, hoping to derail this line of conversation.

  Chris ignored me. ‘I thought it would be good to have a date nailed down.’

  Zoë was clearly uncomfortable with the term. ‘We’re not nailing anything down,’ she said, quietly insistent.

  ‘Why not? Isn’t that what we agreed? We’d tell Susannah, then have a party.’

  ‘You told Susannah?’

  ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  ‘I thought you were going to wait until we got home. You said you wanted to tell her to her face.’

  ‘Well, I changed my mind.’

  ‘How did she take it?’ Caroline asked.

  Chris coughed. ‘The main thing is she knows.’

  Zoë had leaned forward, her face partially covered by her hands. Her defiance was replaced by shock, the blood draining from her face. ‘Chris?’ she said slowly.

  ‘And the good news is,’ he went on, ignoring the warning tone in her voice, ‘she’s agreed to fast-track the divorce!’ He beamed at the rest of us as if expecting congratulations.

  ‘Fast-track? There’s no such thing in Ireland,’ Caroline said.

  Chris smiled. ‘She’s not going to contest it.’

  The waitress arrived and left the bill in the middle of the table.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Zoë said.

  ‘Here.’ Chris took a credit card from his wallet and tossed it on to the bill. ‘This is on me.’

  Caroline and I protested but he wouldn’t hear of us chipping in. All the time he was punching in the numbers and smiling up at the waitress, Zoë sat there, patiently biding her time. What was coming was obvious. He was only putting off the inevitable.

  ‘Chris,’ Zoë said again, trying to hold his attention.

  ‘Shall we go back to the house?’ he asked, with forced brightness.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ she told him.

  ‘Or shall we go somewhere for a digestif?’

  More insistent now, she said: ‘I can’t.’

  Chris’s smile faltered.

  I felt Holly shift beside me. All this time, I had been waiting for her to pull the pin on her little grenade. I had not expected the detonation to come from Zoë.

  At the next table, the guy stood up, this time openly gesturing to her to join him outside. Chris, seeing this, swung around in his seat and snapped: ‘She’s not going outside for another cigarette, so why don’t you just fuck off?’

  The dude raised his palms and told Chris to chill out in heavily accented English. Evidently, his ardour for Zoë did not extend to violence. He laughed and backed away, his friends teasing as he rejoined them, all shrugs and smirks.

  ‘How dare you?’ Zoë hissed across the table. Her eyes were lit up – I had never seen her so enraged.

  ‘You’re my fiancée,’ he snapped. ‘I will not be humiliated by your flirting with some tosser!’

  She was on her feet, twisting the ring on her finger. As soon as he realized what she was doing, he was backing down. ‘Now, come on, Zoë, just wait a minute.’

  She threw the ring on to the table. It bounced off a saucer, landing on the salver that held the bill. ‘You have no claim on me now,’ she said. Her eyes flashed around the table at the rest of us. ‘None of you do!’

  She ran from the restaurant, Chris following an instant later.

  ‘Fuck,’ Robbie said, exhaling the word, as if he’d been holding his breath.

  ‘What should we do?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Leave them to it,’ Caroline advised. That feeling was back with me – the same feeling that had lingered all day, accompanying the pressure in my head: the sense of something about to happen, something bad.

  I told Caroline to bring the kids, while I went after the others alone.

  What to say of what happened next? When I look back on it now, in hindsight, it’s from behind the shelter of raised hands, as if I can’t bear to look at it directly. I hurried after them along the street, watching as he dragged her by the wrist, tugging at her fiercely whenever she fell back, their sparring voices like daubs of paint in the night. To a stranger, he might have appeared to be a father dragging his recalcitrant teenager home, not her jilted fiancé. Anger made her cruel and she lashed out verbally, calling him a washed-up, middle-aged man, a pervert, a predator. I followed them without any fully formed notion of how to intervene or whether I even should. It was not until they reached the gate and I saw him slap her – a quick little swat at her mouth to stop the foulness pouring out of it – that I shouted: ‘Hey!’

  It’s a strange thing, living in a world that presents you with violence every day – violence filtered through the screen of your TV or the medium of your newspaper. Film violence, video games – it’s there in the cartoons we show our kids. You’d think we’d be inured to it. But when confronted with it in the flesh, as I was that night, it seemed to rise up as something not frightening but absurd – absurd in how easily it happened, that slap, the sound of it impacting on my own mouth. The simplicity of it and yet how it changed everything. Just like the blow I received a few seconds later when I pushed up against him – all the reason had gone out of him, leaving the blunt instrument of his fist. I didn’t even raise a hand in self-defence. I was kind of amazed by it. I think that was the last lucid thought I had before the night unspooled around me. The thought of how easy it was to raise one’s fist to a man’s face and in so doing take a pop at your own pain.

  I was on the ground almost instantly, brought to my knees, pain flooding in to replace thought. One thing shines clear: Chris’s words spat at me in the darkness – ‘Keep her then,’ he said. ‘The little bitch.’

  What then?

  Hands cupping my face. The warm run of blood from my nose. Someone saying: Jesus Christ! The rough edges of cloth pressing against my face and – oh, God – the pain. Pressure in my head unbearable now, ready to burst, like just before a sneeze only far, far worse. Vaguely, in the background, He shouldn’t drive. Someone should go after him. More footsteps. I can hardly see. Asphalt under my feet, moving now, stumbling indoors where the lights are too bright and there’s something very cold on my face, ice, a new and different pain. Take it easy, she says
, and I try to focus. Concern in her eyes, the liquid softness of them. And I’m back there at the very beginning, in a place I have lost, a place I have longed for, where there’s nothing, only time and love and endless possibility. And her, just as she was. Linda, I say and I kiss her.

  23. Caroline

  It was so dark that night. Not a star in the sky, the moon obliterated by the cloud of smoke blending into the blackness. As I stood at the side of the road, watching the red tail-lights of Chris’s car in their wild dash away from me, I fancied I saw a glow coming from over the dark hump of the land – the dying embers of the fire on the bridge.

  I had tried to keep him there, for his own safety, not out of any desire to see them reunite. I was glad they were done with each other – one of her tentacles severed – even if the manner of it had been ugly and hard.

  ‘Lying, to her, comes as easy as breathing,’ he had told me, bitter tears in his eyes.

  He wouldn’t be dissuaded and I didn’t try.

  ‘There’s nowhere for you to go,’ I had argued, meaning the closed bridge, the island cut-off. But his need to put distance between himself and her overrode my concerns for his safety. He listened to my pleas and warnings, my quieter regrets – ‘I wish she had been gentler on you’ – then muttered an apology about David and put the pedal to the floor.

  I was staring after his car, exhaust fumes mingling with the night air, when I felt it. Something hard in my pocket. All the commotion in the restaurant, the lovers storming out, David hurrying after them, everyone had forgotten about the ring. I remember picking it out of the salver, slipping it into my pocket, then going out into the night with the others. Now I stood there, turning it over in my fingers like a worry bead.

  The tail-lights were gone, but the hazy glow remained – a dirty orange smear on the horizon – and I imagined it to be the same colour as the pocket of hot air I felt inside myself. The sac of heat I had carried within me since the day I’d first heard her name. It wasn’t anger, or jealousy, or resentment – those hard, robust emotions pushing outwards with defiance. Rather, it was something inward-looking, fragile, its membranes delicate. I had to carry it carefully inside me lest it break. It’s a shy emotion, guilt. It cowers in the darkness, sits quietly for years, not bothering anyone, until something comes along – or someone – and pokes it with a stick. Then it swells, its membranes straining to hold it in, pressing up against your insides like another organ – a womb. For that was where I felt it. A pocket of hot air where a baby had once been.