Feels Like Maybe

by Claire Allan

  “I’ll have to bin the voodoo dolls then,” she had quipped, before we left for our afternoon visiting.

  I had smiled. “Don’t worry, Anna, you’re still my most favouritest relation in the whole world. I doubt very much me and Mrs Jacqueline McLaughlin will ever be the best of friends, but it’s nice not to be at war.”

  “I dunno – I like a bit of war myself,” Anna said with a sly smile.

  “I’m sure there will be plenty of war in our family in the future,” I said. “We can never stay quiet for long.”

  Now, sitting on my mother’s bed I looked around at my family and smiled. Mum was looking brighter – still pale, her hair thinner, her hands still wiry – but brighter all the same, as if a burden had been lifted off her shoulders. Although she didn’t have the strength to bounce Maggie on her knee, she curled her arms around her on the bed and with Odhran on her other side she told them a magical story about Finn McCool and the Giant’s Causeway.

  As she spoke a memory stirred of times when I was child that she would sit me on her knee and tell me the same story.

  How strange was it that I had blocked out so much of the happiness that must have existed in my childhood? I knew it wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t seem it was half as bad as I remembered. Hopefully my mother was having the same sort of epiphany and that I wasn’t as bad as she remembered either. Even though I knew that in my teenage years in particular, I had been a wee fecker.

  When she finished her story, I showed her the colours.

  “Just choose what you want, Mum. Joe and Dad are going to help me do the room. Beth is going to send over some fabrics from the shop and we can make it really nice for you coming out of hospital.”

  “Oh, the neighbours will be jealous,” Mum smiled. “Imagine the likes of me getting a fancy makeover by a London designer. Very posh.”

  “It’s only a coat of paint and some new curtains, Mum – don’t get overexcited. I don’t want you giving yourself another coronary.”

  “Still, it’s designer paint,” Anna smiled, squeezing my hand.

  “It’s so nice that we are all getting along,” my mother added. “It does my heart good.”

  We all smiled – cheesy, corny Kodak smiles like people who had gone to the very edge and come back miraculously but knew we could go there again at any time. That was the nature of families, I suppose.

  “Do you know what would make me really happy?” my mother said before mopping her brow.

  She was starting to act dramatic so I knew instinctively this was going to be a biggie. She was going to ask me to sign Maggie up for the convent, or an arranged marriage, or make me promise to stay in Derry and never return to the sinful hole of London. She coughed lightly, rubbing her chest – her stitched-up and bandaged chest – and looked at me.

  “Aoife, it would make me very, very happy if you could have Maggie christened while you are back home. I’m sure Joe and Jacqueline would agree to be godparents and it would make me very proud to bring Maggie up to the chapel to meet everyone.”

  I was gobsmacked. My mother finally accepted my daughter enough to want to bring her to her chapel to meet the priest and she hadn’t asked me to wear sackcloth and ashes. This was major. This was acceptance at the highest level.

  “And, you know, Anna can even bring her new man to the party,” my mother said, and I wondered if I was going to collapse and find myself in a hospital bed for a second time.

  *****

  “New man? New Man? Anna, I think you better start talking and now, missus,” I said as we loaded Maggie into the car and set off for a drive down to Moville for a walk along the waterfront.

  “I could kill your mother,” Anna muttered, strapping herself in.

  “And you who had the cheek, the brazen cheek, to tell me off for keeping Jake schtum. You are in big trouble,” I teased.

  “Look, Aoife, it’s nothing. Well, it’s early days. I’ve only just told Maeve and she’s coming to terms with the fact her mother is still an attractive woman who may one of these days have sex again.”

  I blushed but not as furiously as Anna. “Well, all I’m saying, Anna, is that if you do have sex again then please be careful. We don’t want any other illegitimate children in this family,” I smiled.

  “That shop has shut a long time ago,” she laughed, “and don’t worry, I’ve no intention of jumping into bed with anyone. Christ, I wouldn’t remember how. I’m not sure I haven’t healed over down there.”

  “So tell me about him then,” I said.

  “Ach, Aoife. I don’t know. I still feel strange about it all. I know Billy has been dead a long time, but I know that no one will ever fill his shoes. I’d be lying though if I was to say I never get lonely and John, that’s his name, helps me feel slightly less lonely. We met at one of those god-awful weekends for bereaved and divorced people. Your mother made me go – she said I was spending too much time sticking my nose into other people’s lives and not enough into my own. I was going to tell her to go and fuck herself but Maeve persuaded me it couldn’t do any harm.”

  “So you went?”

  “I went and met him. He’s two years older than me. His wife died of cancer three years ago and his children are grown up. He’s a nice man, Aoife, and he makes me laugh again. I didn’t intentionally keep anything from you – I just wanted to get it right in my head before I said anything to anyone.”

  “It’s okay. I understand where you’re coming from.”

  “So you don’t think I’m an evil bad person for seeing someone?”

  “Ach Anna,” I said, squeezing her hand, “of course not. Although I am quite jealous that you have more of a prospect of a good shag than me!”

  We giggled together.

  “It’s nice to have you home, Aoife, maybe you should think about moving here full-time.”

  I laughed harder. “No, Anna, I couldn’t do that. My life is in London now. I still love Derry and you know I love coming home to see you but I have a nice wee life happening there and I can’t turn my back on that. And besides, Beth would kill me.”

  “And this would have nothing to do with any men you may or may not be interested in yourself?” she asked with a wink.

  “Most certainly not, although I promise if there is a stage when there is something to tell you about me and my love life and any prospect of anything remotely resembling a good shag then I will tell you and not keep him secret.”

  “You better not, missy,” she said.

  ***

  Now that the secret was out, Anna felt no shame in leaving Maggie and me alone in her house while she went out to the cinema with her new beau. We sat, the pair of us, still somewhat shellshocked by the events of the last week, looking at each other. Maggie gurgled contentedly and I wondered did I detect a wee Derry twang in her babyish bubble-blowing.

  “Let’s go for a walk, toots,” I said, strapping her into her pram. Now seemed as good a time as any to get that walk through Creggan I had been planning over and done with.

  It’s strange to walk through the streets of your hometown and not really know anyone. Of course it had been so long since I actually lived in Derry that should my old school mates or neighbours walk past me I doubted I would have recognised them. It seemed odd to me to hear people talking in Derry accents, even though it was the same as my own. I had grown so used to hearing the sound of a London voice and mixtures of glorious accents from all round the world. I thought of Mrs Morelli – for all intents and purposes my surrogate mammy – and smiled. The closest we got to Italian culture when I was growing up was Fiorintini’s ice-cream parlour on the Strand Road. I remembered my parents taking me and Joe there after our First Holy Communions. We were allowed Knickerbocker Glories filled to the brim with jelly and ice-cream while my parents would share a plate of chips saturated in vinegar. We would look at the pictures of Rome and Pompeii on the walls and imagine travelling there some day.

  However, with my mother and her refusal to ever leave Ireland, we n
ever got much further than Buncrana for a day trip. I wondered now that she had come to the edge would I be able to persuade her to take on a new challenge and come to London to visit me?

  As I pushed the pram up Broadway I felt a kinship with where I grew up, but I wanted so much to mix my two lives, old and new, together as much as possible.

  Walking up past the chapel, sitting down at the playpark, I lifted my mobile and dialled Beth’s number.

  “Hiya,” Dan’s voice answered.

  “Hey, you, is your gorgeous wife there?”

  “Why does no one ever want to talk to me?” he teased. “Irish, a man could get a complex.”

  “Dan, you know I love you and if you weren’t married to my bestest friend I would be jumping your bones right now, but I’m on my mobile, freezing my arse off in a park in Creggan and I’d love very much to talk to Beth before my jaw freezes over and I lose the power of speech.”

  “I should be so bloody lucky,” he laughed and called for Beth.

  “Hello,” she groaned down the phone.

  “Are you okay, sweetheart?” I asked, my high spirits replaced with concern.

  “Ach, you can blame that shit Tom Austin for getting me drunk last night. I must be getting old – I certainly can’t hold my drink in the same way I used to – I’ve been throwing my guts up all day.”

  The me of old would have teased Beth about being pregnant – luckily I stopped myself in time before I made an unforgivable gaff.

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “Two wine gums and I’m anybody’s this weather. Look, Beth, I’m phoning for a reason. Mum wants me to have Maggie christened back here. Is there any way you and Dan could make it over? It will be in a week or two – enough time for mum to be out of hospital – but it would mean a lot.”

  “Of course we’ll be there,” Beth said, her voice choked with emotion. “I wouldn’t miss my darling girl’s christening for the world.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “God, yes, just got the emotional hangover now. You know what it’s like for old birds like us. Have a couple of drinks and spend the next day like a paranoid and emotional wreck.”

  “The joys of aging,” I said before telling her I loved her and hanging up.

  As I wrapped my coat around me I thought about how life changes as you get older. Twenty years ago I would have been haring about on these climbing frames in the middle of winter with not a coat on my back and now, in April, walking back to Anna’s, I started to have illicit fantasies about woollen mittens and a nice furry scarf.

  “Better not stay in Derry too long,” I told a sleeping Maggie. “I appear to be turning into your granny.”

  When we got home I settled my daughter and made a cup of tea. My phone beeped to life and I lifted it.

  “Thinking of you. Come home soon, Tom x”

  As I curled on the sofa, cupping the warm mug of tea in my hands, I started to feel nice and fuzzy all over. No, there was no way I could stay in Derry forever. There was too much waiting for me back in London and I dialled the number of that very thing that was waiting for me.

  “It’s nice to hear your voice,” I said, sitting back and sipping my tea.

  “Yes,” Tom said and I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Elena Kennedy would be delighted we’re chatting so much.”

  Tom laughed. “I saw her yesterday actually. She was asking if we had been in touch. I was tempted to tell her we were having cyber sex every night.”

  I laughed, but my face reddened at the thought of any kind of sex with Tom. I chided myself. We were just friends. He was just my Eejit Man. I was here nursing my ailing mother. I could not be having impure thoughts about the gardener.

  There was an awkward silence. I imagined for a moment that Tom was having the same thoughts as me and my face reddened further – the heat spreading to all sorts of places in my body.

  “So how’s business?” I squeaked.

  “Oh, busy. Would you believe I had to turn down a floral order today because the garden business is picking up? I have three yards to transform for next week.”

  “Yes, Beth told me the yards were taking off.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “God, we got drunk last night. I hope I didn’t make an eejit of myself.” His pronunciation of eejit wasn’t quite right but I appreciated the effort. Then it dawned on me he might well be having regrets about telling Beth his feelings for me were growing.

  “Well, Beth never made any mention of eejitness, so you might just be safe.”

  “I don’t think I’m safe around you at all, Aoife. Not one bit.”

  

  Chapter 49

  Beth

  I crawled into bed within an hour of getting home. I was dog tired and the Lucozade had failed to lift my hangover. Rubbing my tired eyes and sipping tea from my oversized cup I switched on my laptop. There was much too much work to be done for me to go straight to sleep. Besides, Dan wouldn’t be home for another hour at least and I wanted to see him before I went to sleep. It surprised me how I missed him when we were apart, even just for a day at work. You would have thought that after fourteen years we would have had enough of each other. Aoife has mocked us of course. “Love in a bucket,” she called it. Of course I had to ask her what the hell “love in a bucket” meant and when she assured me it was a good thing I did smile kind of smugly back in her direction.

  No, I would definitely be staying awake until Dan came home, I thought, before setting to work to polish off Elena’s costings and proposals.

  As I typed, I realised it had been a week since I had logged onto my internet forum. It wasn’t that I didn’t want the support or the advice of the girls who I had spent the last two years chatting with, it was just that by now I wasn’t sure I had anything left to say.

  I had spent two years getting mine and their hopes up, then dashing them, telling them nothing was wrong, then perhaps it was, then no, everything was fine. I’d had enough babydust thrown at me to last a lifetime and, if I’m honest, it was hard now. There were women on there who were on their second pregnancies while I still waited for my first. Dan had been right, I had to let go of it for a little while. The dye test had shown nothing was wrong, so maybe it was just a matter of trying desperately to relax and see what happened.

  Nonetheless I clicked on, just to see how the girls were getting on. I found a message for my attention.

  Betsy Boo,

  How are you? We haven’t heard from you since the dye test. Hope you had good news, hon. Sending babydust your way.

  I tried to type a response but to be honest, I just couldn’t be bothered. Sighing, I returned to costing Elena’s transformation and thought about how I was going to break it to Dan that we were going to Derry in just over a week and a half to stand as Maggie’s godparents.

  Just then the phone rang and my mother’s cheerful voice said hello.

  “Hi, Mum,” I replied. “How are things?”

  “Never mind me, Beth, how are you, darling? Have you been taking those pre-natal vitamins I sent you? I was talking to Mrs Sedgewick today and she was telling me her Caroline had trouble conceiving and then she tried some supplement or other . . . hang on . . . I wrote it down here somewhere . . .”

  “Mum, you haven’t been telling all and sundry about us, have you?” I said, trying to keep my cool. The hangover was certainly affecting my mood and I felt I could snap at even the most minor indiscretion, never mind my mother sharing the intimate details of my fallopian tubes with the local gossip.

  “Darling, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I was reading in the Sunday Times last weekend how many more couples will experience fertility difficulties in the coming years. Assisted conception is going to be the norm.”

  I was in trouble now. My mother clearly had her research and development head on and would not stop now until she knew everything there was to know about fertility issues. Who needed Dr Browne when Mummy Dearest was on the case?

  “Mum, I�
��m really tired. Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

  “Oooh, you don’t think you could be . . . you know?”

  “Mum,” I said, exasperated beyond words, “no. I just had a few drinks last night and I’m suffering for it today. I’m fine and barren, remember? No babies here.”

  “No need to get snappy, Beth,” my mother replied and I felt guilty. I should have known when I told her that she would go into overdrive like this. She was a classic fixer and now that she knew that A) we actually wanted to produce her much-desired grandchild and B) we were actively trying and failing to do so, she would do everything in her power to make it happen.

  Most of the time I loved the fact that my mother was a fixer. If ever I had a problem I never thought long about running to her for help. She got the job done, but this was different. I just wanted her to listen this time. I knew she couldn’t find the answer, so I wanted her just to stop trying and then maybe we could all just let what was going to happen do it in its own time.

  “I’m tired, Mum. Sorry. I’ll ring you tomorrow.”

  I hung up and switched off the laptop, snuggling down under the covers and switching on the TV to watch Coronation Street. I was asleep within minutes.

  “You’re getting old, Mrs Jones,” Dan said, climbing into the bed beside me.

  I looked at the illuminated alarm clock and saw it had gone nine.

  Dan looked as exhausted as I felt.

  “Sorry, babe, I was wrecked.”

  “I know how you feel,” he said, snuggling down beside me. “I think we could really do with a break away.”

  “Funny you should say that,” I smiled. “I know of the perfect place.”

  ****

  Dan hadn’t been to Derry before. He was of a generation who was too terrified to even contemplate a visit to Northern Ireland in case he was blown up, shot or sprained an ankle dodging bullets. When we first met Aoife he would listen, eyes wide in fear, as she told stories of her childhood. Of course, Aoife being Aoife, she embellished widely. Although we soon told Dan that we’d only been winding him up I’m not sure he believed us and any time I suggested a trip back to see Aoife’s family he would shrug his shoulders and say he was busy.