She remembers unwrapping him, gazing down at the tiny perfect creature she and Leo had created. She remembers the miracle of Leo’s eyes looking back at her, the Darling genes being carried on through their firstborn son.
She wanted more babies, of course she did. She wanted to fill their tiny place with children, but Finn was the only one she got to hold in her arms. On five more occasions she conceived, and one after another they slipped from her hostile womb before their time. Five tiny lost ghosts, each one adding another layer to her rage, each one making her sicker with loneliness. Sharpening her tongue, hardening her heart, pulling all the softness out of her.
But whenever the anger and heartbreak threatened to overpower her, she would remind herself that she had Leo and Finn; she had a lot more than some women. Her little family brought her happiness, undoubtedly it did, even if it was a more brittle joy than it might otherwise have been.
And when Finn met and married Susan, and Una became part of their lives, Mo found herself torn. Finn’s choice of wife, it had to be said, dismayed her initially: why couldn’t he have found someone less … tainted? And while of course Susan turned out to be a perfectly adequate wife, and while it was certainly pleasant to have a child about the place again – Una was a personable little creature, despite her inauspicious start – what Mo hungered for was her own flesh-and-blood grandchild, a baby who would truly belong to Finn.
It would happen. She just had to be patient. And as she waited to become a grandmother she found herself smiling again at babies in buggies, like she used to when she was a young bride. She watched Finn’s face for news each time he came to visit her and Leo, impatient for the small, satisfying weight of a newborn in her arms again. She’d turned sixty the January after his wedding; most women that age had at least a couple of grandchildren – but months turned into years, and no announcement was made.
In time Mo had to adjust her expectations and remind herself, once again, to be content with what she’d been given. She and Leo did their bit with Una, helped out with the babysitting, turned up for the birthday parties. Life shifted track, and eventually found its new momentum, and turned them into a family of sorts.
And in due course, as is the way in life, contentment morphed once again into tragedy. Susan died shortly before Una’s seventh birthday – and later that terrible week, the discovery by Mo of Leo’s wallet in the fridge marked the beginning of his decline.
The months that followed were heartbreaking in the extreme. While Finn was struggling to come to terms with his bereavement, Leo was slipping away from Mo like her lost babies; almost every day she saw fresh evidence of his crumbling mind, and she was gripped once again by rage and terror and helplessness. She felt pulled in every direction, doing what she could for Finn and Una, needing also to tend her husband.
She had plenty of energy though, and being busy was therapy in itself. She kept a grip on the accounts in the shop, looked after Una when school finished, cared as best she could for her disappearing husband. She even had Finn and Una around to dinner several times a week – as easy to cook for four as for two, and they all had to eat, regardless of whatever else was happening. They managed, after a fashion.
But time continued its usual relentless march. Within two years Leo’s disintegration was complete, and he was entirely lost to them. If they’d been close before, she and Finn became closer as they supported one another through the aftermath of this loss and inched together towards a fresh, sadder equilibrium.
Despite her grief, Mo forced herself to remain as indispensable to Finn as she could, looking ahead to the time when she would no longer be able to manage on her own, and he would take her in to live with him, Una by then presumably having left to live her own life. As long as she and Finn had each other, they’d cope with anything.
And then Daphne had come along.
Mo recalls the day Finn limped into the bicycle shop with a buckled front wheel, a bloody nose and a face full of cuts. I’m grand, he insisted, as she clucked around him. She didn’t mean it, it’s easily done – but Mo was furious. Pure carelessness, some featherheaded driver not bothering to look behind her before she swung her door open. Easily done, maybe – but just as easily avoided if you had an ounce of wit about you.
So when Daphne showed up the following day – bringing a cake, if you please, as if that made everything all right – Mo was strongly tempted to give her a piece of her mind. Would have too, if Finn hadn’t appeared with his ruined face. He opened the box, all smiles, said as long as she’d gone to the trouble of making him a cake he’d better introduce himself – and, of course, Mo was introduced too, so she’d had to be civil.
They’d already taken to one another: that very first day Mo could see it in their faces, in the soft smiles they gave to one another. Daphne was a lot younger than him – sixteen years younger, it turned out – but that didn’t seem to bother either of them. Finn walked her to the door that first day and they stood talking on the path outside for several minutes. Out of earshot, none of their conversation reaching Mo, but she’d had a fair idea that another meeting was being arranged and of course she was right.
It wasn’t long before Finn was rushing off to meet her at lunchtime, leaving Mo to eat her sandwich alone in the back room. They went out in the evenings a bit too, with Una dropped around to Mo’s house or Mo making her way to Finn’s to babysit.
The more they got to know one another, the happier Finn became, and while of course Mo wanted him to be happy – of course she did – she found it hard to warm to Daphne. Not Daphne exactly, she was harmless enough once you got to know her, but the idea of her.
Everything had changed when she’d come on the scene. Finn didn’t need Mo anymore; that was the stark truth of it. Daphne took him away from her; that was the ugly truth of it. Oh, she knew she shouldn’t let it get to her – she was still his mother; there was nothing Daphne, or anyone else, could do about that – but she couldn’t help feeling resentful.
When they told her within six months of their meeting that they were getting married, she genuinely tried to look on the positive side, tried to focus on the fact that it was a second chance for Finn, another chance to hold his own child in his arms – but all she could see was him being snatched out of her reach; all she could see was the future she’d envisaged being wiped away.
Of course she went along with it; she didn’t have much choice. She made the best of it, wished them well, bought a hat (second-hand) and clapped along with the others when the priest pronounced them man and wife. Then she sat back and waited for Daphne at least to provide her with a grandchild.
There was no reason why it shouldn’t happen. Daphne was a young woman, still in the prime of her childbearing years. Surely it was only a matter of time – but once again Mo’s hopes were to come to nothing. She watched the months go by with increasing frustration, each one bringing no good news at all.
Daphne had her career, that was it. Despite her rush to the altar, she was in no hurry to have babies, and she must have persuaded Finn to wait a few more years.
But of course he hadn’t had a few more years. When he died, all Mo’s hopes died with him. And it was Daphne who had stolen him away, who had claimed him as hers for his last few precious years on earth, and given Mo nothing at all in return.
She tries not to dwell on it – what use are regrets, what good will come of grudges? – but sometimes it’s all she can do to be civil to her daughter-in-law.
She reaches the park and turns in through the gate. She walks slowly along the path until she reaches the lake. The water is slate grey, the swans huddled in a mass by the little island in the centre. Not too many people around, not exactly strolling-in-the-park weather, and today Mo is glad of the solitude.
She sits on a bench and unwraps her cheese and tomato sandwich – but at the first bite her appetite deserts her, and she feeds most of it to the swans that glide across at the sight of the bread floating on the water. She watches them bum
ping gently together, long necks curving, tail feathers twitching, heads swooping towards the food – descendants, she imagines, of the ones that lived here when she and Leo strolled past, newly engaged and then newly married.
She gets to her feet, brushing crumbs from her lap. She’ll do the cemetery, then head home. Her knees ache in the cold: they’ve been at her all morning. ‘You’re doing too much,’ her doctor tells her. ‘Slow down, take it easy.’ But she’s never been one to take things easy, and she’s not about to start now. Always better to keep busy; always safer to keep busy.
The walk from the park to the cemetery takes her forty-five minutes: when she was younger she’d have done it in thirty, no bother. The faster the years are slipping by, the slower she’s becoming.
The sky darkens: she wonders how long it will be before the heavens open. She never brings an umbrella – would only lose it – but she keeps a plastic rain bonnet in her pocket in case she’s caught. She’ll take the bus home afterwards: enough walking done today.
There are flowers on Finn’s grave. Yellow roses; cost a bit by the look of them. No card that she can see, but it must have been Daphne. She must have been in already. Mo should have brought flowers, never thought of it. Never thought beyond coming to say hello to him.
She rests a hip against his headstone. ‘Still here, my darling,’ she tells him. ‘Still barging my way along, upsetting everyone. Nothing much has changed. Still miss you,’ she says, ‘as much as ever. Still wish you were here, that’ll never change.’
There’s nobody around; it’s as deserted as the park was. Bleak here always, a wind whistling just now past the gravestones. She rubs her arms, trying to coax some heat into her, the padded jacket not nearly warm enough despite the cashmere layer beneath it. She’ll wear her good coat tonight – it’s like a blanket.
She shifts her weight from hip to hip. ‘Getting old,’ she says to him. ‘Few aches and pains, not as much energy as before. Keeping busy, though. Not giving up, not till I have to. Three mornings a week at the charity shop, same old few coming in. Not exactly a laugh a minute, but it’s something.’
She traces the shapes of the letters hewn into the stone. Hard to believe poor Susan is dead over ten years. Time rushing onwards, stopping for nobody.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ she tells Finn, ‘about the bicycle shop. It’s time something was done. I’m ashamed we’ve let it go this long. It’s just … I couldn’t face it up to now, couldn’t face going in and not seeing—’
She breaks off, overwhelmed without warning by a wave of sadness, a familiar sensation of utter bleakness draping itself over her. What’s the point? What’s the point of any of it? Why is she still insisting on carrying on? Why is she so determined to keep going when the two people she loved most have been taken from her?
She regards Finn’s headstone again, his name chiselled under Susan’s into the granite. What’s she doing here, talking to a ghost? He’s gone, he can’t hear her. He’ll never hear her again.
The darkness settles around her, extends its claws and sinks them deep into her. She lifts her head, tries to push it away, but it refuses to leave. Give up, it urges her. It’s easy: just let go. You have nothing to live for, nothing—
No. NO. With an effort she straightens her back, tightens her grip on the handle of her shopping bag. She will not give up, she will not do that. She will never give up.
‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow,’ she murmurs to Finn. ‘I’ll be here again tomorrow, son.’
She turns and walks away, fighting the urge to throw back her head and howl like an animal. She knows where she must go.
The best thing about him, she has decided, is that he never tells her it’s going to get easier. He never talks about time healing all wounds, or any of that rubbish. He never says anything much really, which suits her fine, because she has plenty to say. She saves them up, all the things she can’t talk about with Daphne or Una, and out they spill as soon as she sits on the brown leather armchair in his butterscotch-coloured little room that always smells of cooking meat, and mint.
He’s good at listening. He’d want to be, in his line of work. The things he must have heard over the years, the regrets and the anger and the frustration that must have been dumped at his feet. He listens when she talks, and occasionally he nods, and sometimes he tilts his head a bit as if he’s trying to figure her out, and mostly that’s about it.
That’s as much as she wants.
He seems unfazed by the awful things she says sometimes, when she can’t stop the fury escaping. The language that comes out of her then, she who never curses normally, swearing like a fishwife sometimes in that poky little place, her rage when it blooms seeming to demand that kind of frowned-upon language.
He never objects, hardly seems to notice the obscenities she sends flying around. He doesn’t mind either when words fail her, and she can only glare at him with particular ferocity. He gives no sign of being put out today as she sits bawling her eyes out yet again, yanking tissues from the box on the table between them, soaking them with her grief.
Today isn’t even her day. Her day is Tuesday. It’s been two o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon for the past eight months, ever since she met him, literally went barrelling into him as he stood on the street ahead of her, about to push a key into a lock. Would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her.
Sorry, he said immediately, even though it was her fault. Not looking where she was going, mind a thousand miles away. Are you all right? he asked, a strong hand cradling her elbow, steadying her. Did you hurt yourself? His voice deep, his words measured, despite the abruptness of their encounter. Are you sure you’re OK?
Mo found herself leaning into his supporting arm, wanting to be looked after, craving the sensation of someone taking over after four months of being the one who coped, four months of never letting a crack show. Four months of trying to be strong for Daphne and Una when they collapsed.
The following day she walked again along that street until she came to the door he’d been about to open, right next to a Greek restaurant. She saw a brass plaque with a man’s name on it, and underneath, Counselling Services.
Counselling. Telling your troubles to a stranger who sent you back to your childhood and raked up more muck, often left you worse off than you were at the start. She wanted help, she knew that, but it wasn’t advice she was after. She carried on walking.
Three days later she returned and stood before the door again. It wouldn’t commit her to anything; she would say she was just making an enquiry. She’d know in a minute if he could help her.
She pressed the brass button above the plaque and waited. Thirty seconds later she pressed it again, and again it went unanswered. She left.
Two days after that she was back again, and this time he was in.
I’d like a word, she said, if you have a minute – and he led her upstairs and into the little room she’s come to know so well.
She met his eye. I’m not looking for counselling, she told him. I know what your sign says, but I don’t want anyone trying to fix me. I just need someone to listen to me, that’s all I’m after. I need a place where I can talk, without anyone talking back.
I see. He regarded her politely, his face revealing nothing. If he remembered her from their collision of five days earlier he didn’t let on. If he thought she had a screw loose he kept that quiet too.
So what do you say? she asked.
I’m a good listener, he replied.
No hypnosis, or any of that nonsense? No sending me back to my childhood?
Absolutely not.
Just listening, nothing else.
If that’s what you want.
His voice was as calm and steady as she remembered from their first encounter. Some instinct, the same one that had brought her back to his door, told her that she could believe him. They made an appointment, and the following Tuesday afternoon he brought her into his office for the second time – and as soon as she sat down
she began to cry.
For over half of her allotted hour she sat hunched in a ball as four months of tears rolled out, and all he did was push the box of tissues closer to her. Without saying a word, he had given her permission to stop holding everything in, and out it came.
And when she finally managed to stop she blew her nose and began in a rusty voice to tell him about Finn and Leo, and true to his word he listened, and never once interrupted.
The relief was immense. Every word she uttered made her feel lighter. The tears came back once or twice, but she talked around them, kept on telling him about the husband and son she had lost.
When the clock on the wall told her the hour was up she stopped talking and got to her feet, although he had given no sign that he needed her to finish. She wasn’t one to take advantage.
She’s been seeing him ever since, every Tuesday without fail. She wouldn’t miss it: he’s her safety valve. Today was the first time she’d turned up without an appointment.
He was on his way out when she arrived. About to pull the street door closed behind him, car keys in hand, umbrella under an arm.
You’re off home, she said, but her face must have given her away, because he shook his head – No, no, come on in – and brought her upstairs, and excused himself to make a phone call. Cancelling or postponing whatever appointment she’d interrupted.
I won’t stay long, she said when he reappeared – and that was the last thing she was able to say before words deserted her and the tears came flooding out, just like the first time with him.
Now, finally, she wipes her eyes.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Sorry for barging in.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘I don’t know why that happened. I was fine this morning.’ And though he surely recognises this for the lie it is, he doesn’t contradict her.
Two Fridays in April Page 9