Eager to Please

by Julie Parsons

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT HAD BEEN so cold, the day that Martin died. Early March, daffodils everywhere, glowing with the promise of spring sunshine still to come, but ice on the roads in the early mornings and a lowering grey sky which had been threatening snow all week. She remembered the chill in the air, how it had been, as she walked now along the road by the sea, towards the DART station. Today there was an easterly wind, so even though the May sun was warm on her face and hands, she could feel a shiver running up her spine, gooseflesh rising on the skin of her upper arms, her nipples tightening.

  All that week, all those years ago. She remembered the red of Amy’s cheeks as she hopped and skipped on the doorstep, waiting for Rachel to come outside to unlock the car door. She was going to stay the night with her friend from playschool. The child’s name, Rachel remembered, was Lulu. Her parents were English. It was Lulu’s birthday and her mother was going to take them to see a film. Which one was it? A Disney cartoon or something like ET? She couldn’t remember, but she did remember how excited Amy had been. The child couldn’t keep still. She had hopped and skipped up and down, swinging her patchwork bag from side to side. The one that Rachel had made her for Christmas, just big enough to hold her nightie, and her teddy, and her hairbrush and toothbrush.

  ‘Come on, Mummy. Hurry up. I’m waiting, I’m waiting.’ Rachel could hear Amy’s voice, sing-song now as she repeated the same phrases over and over again, running backwards and forwards from the front door to the gate, while Rachel fiddled with the lock, checked in her bag that she had her purse and the letters she wanted to post, then remembered that Amy needed her woolly hat, and went back into the house to look for it. And all the while hearing Amy’s voice.

  ‘I’m waiting, I’m waiting. Come on, Mummy, silly Mummy, slow coach Mummy. I’m waiting, I’m waiting.’

  But Amy needed her hat because she’d just had another ear infection. She hated wearing it. Rachel knew what she would say.

  ‘No, Mummy, I don’t like it, it makes my head itchy.’

  But she’d have to insist, even if it meant putting up with tears and tantrums. Otherwise the cold wind would make her ears sore again.

  And just as Rachel had finally got everything together and had closed the door and checked that she had locked it, she heard the phone ring. And she turned, hesitated, waited, wondered. Perhaps it was Martin? He had said he would phone last night but he didn’t. He was away again. He was always away these days. This time it was Los Angeles. Some kind of international conference of forensic scientists, she thought that was what it was. She was angry. He’d said he’d phone and he hadn’t. She was sure it was him now. She turned back to the door.

  ‘Hold on, love, I won’t be a minute. It might be Daddy, don’t you want to say hallo to him?’ And she had her keys out and unlocked the Chubb and then the Yale and pushed open the door and ran down the hall to the kitchen. And just as she reached it, just as she picked up the receiver, it stopped ringing, and there was nothing but the dial tone vibrating in her ear. And then another sound. Louder, terribly loud. A screech of brakes, like a sound effect from a TV movie, and a scream, and a thump. And another scream. A howl. And she turned. Could see down the hall, the front door open, the cold bright light falling on the polished floorboards, and outside the flagged path to the gate, the gate open, a car stopped just beyond. And now there was silence.

  All that week it was so cold. She remembered that she never seemed able to get warm. Sitting in the ambulance beside Amy as they rushed her to hospital. She looked perfect. There was hardly a mark on her, a graze on her cheek and a small bruise above her right eye. And then Rachel heard the ambulance man swear beneath his breath and she saw Amy’s face change colour, suddenly very pale, her breathing shallow and very fast. She began to whimper, looking up at her mother. She was frightened. Rachel saw the ambulance man reach for her wrist, feeling for her pulse. Quickly strapping the tight black band around her upper arm, listening with his stethoscope.

  ‘What is it, what’s happening to her?’ Rachel’s voice bounced off the shiny surfaces on the inside of the ambulance, competing with the high-pitched wail of the siren. He didn’t answer. His fingers rested on Amy’s wrist, then moved to feel for the pulse in her neck. And all the while the child’s face grew whiter and whiter, until Rachel began to feel that she would disappear in front of her eyes.

  So cold too sitting in the waiting room after they had taken Amy away, and every time the swing doors opened a blast of chilled air enveloped her and inched open the other doors, the ones that led into the emergency cubicles where she knew Amy was lying. And every time the doors creaked open she thought that someone was coming out to tell her Amy was all right, Amy was fine. It was nothing serious. But if that was so she would have been there, at her bedside, holding her hand, instead of waiting here in the cold. And then a young doctor was standing in front of her. There was blood on his green scrubs and dark circles under his eyes. She felt his hand on her shoulder as he told her that Amy’s spleen had been ruptured. She was bleeding internally. They were going to have to operate. She’d already lost a lot of blood. Would she sign the consent form? He handed her a piece of paper and a pen. Her hand shook as she wrote, and looking down she saw that she had used her maiden name, Jennings, she had called herself Rachel Jennings. She crossed it out quickly, put Beckett. How stupid of me, how silly, she said as she handed it back to him.

  But already the young doctor had left, gone back through the heavy swing doors, the draught blowing just for a moment as Rachel tried to think. Where was Martin and how could she tell him?

  And still so cold four days later, huddling in the garage, waiting for Martin to fall asleep, for the alcohol in his bloodstream to travel to his brain. Listening to the sound of his voice, shouting at her, screaming abuse. Waiting until there was silence, when she would know that he had lain down, his eyelids drooping, his body relaxing, that he had finally drifted off, so she could come back into the house and phone for help. But she couldn’t be sure what he was doing in there. Every time she was just about to unlock the door that led into the kitchen she would hear a sound, a noise that might be him. She couldn’t chance it. He had already hurt her. Punched her in the stomach, then kicked her as she lay on the ground, so that when she breathed in and out she felt as if one of her ribs was piercing her lungs. And as she had begun to crawl away he had tried to stamp on her ankle, but the sudden movement had upset his balance and he too had fallen. And as he lay on the ground, bellowing with anger, she had staggered to her feet and hurried into the kitchen, unlocking the connecting door into the garage, then hurriedly turning the key in the lock so when he followed behind her and hammered and banged the door would not budge.

  She sat on the cement floor, huddled shivering against the lawnmower in the corner. Her feet were bare, her nightie pulled tightly around her knees. She had been in bed when he arrived home, trying to catch up on some of the sleep she had missed during those three days and nights when Amy had lain in intensive care, surrounded by tubes and wires and machines and blood had dripped from the bag on the stand into her arm. Rachel had been with her when she opened her eyes for the first time, asked for water, smiled, then slept again. And she had at last allowed herself to listen to the urgings of the nurses, to go home. She had crawled into bed and closed her eyes. And when she had opened them again Martin was standing beside her. She reached out her hand to him. But he stepped back and she saw the look on his face. The expression that she knew so well. That transformed him. Turned his face dark, pinched his lips, made the bright blue of his eyes a murky grey. Balled his hands into fists as he said, ‘Blood? Whose blood? Not mine. It couldn’t be mine.’

  As he told her, explained very carefully to her as the doctor had explained it to him.

  ‘So you’re a blood donor, Mr Beckett. That’s great. We really appreciate people like you. And you’re O negative? Even better. We always need O negative. The universal blood group, as you know, of course. Compatib
le with practically every other blood type.’ He looked down at Amy’s chart. ‘But your daughter, now she’s group A. So her mother must be group A too, because A is always dominant. Did you know that?’

  He smiled in that know-it-all way that doctors have.

  ‘But you aren’t, are you, Rachel? Remember how we were worried, all that stuff about rhesus negative and positive when you were pregnant. You remember, of course you remember. And we found out that you were O positive. Isn’t that right? So there I was, sitting by Amy’s bed, watching her and wondering, thinking about it all, wondering if it was the jet lag that was confusing me. So do you know what I did, Rachel? I made a phone call. I called my old friend Peter Browne – you remember Peter, the pathologist? And I said, I’ve a case that’s worrying me. And I asked him about blood groups. And do you know what he said to me, Rachel?’

  He leaned over and pulled her from the bed by her hair.

  ‘My old friend Peter Browne, he said to me. Father O negative, mother O positive, child’s blood group O. Child’s blood group A, then either father or mother must be blood group A, because A is always dominant. Did you know that, Rachel? I bet you didn’t.’ He dragged her across the floor.

  ‘So next time you’re thinking about fucking around with someone else, watch your fucking blood group, do you hear me, you bitch?’

  Now she heard him outside trying to open the metal roll-down door at the front of the garage. But she had locked that from the inside too. He banged a couple of times, but she knew he wouldn’t want to make too much noise, that he wouldn’t want to attract the attention of the neighbours in the quiet cul-de-sac where they had lived since they married six years ago. In the two-storey house with the red-tiled roof and the small garden at the front and the long stretch of lawn and shrubs at the back. The pond which she had dug herself and lined with thick black plastic and filled with oxygenating plants and water lilies and fish. And the beautiful conservatory that she had designed and which Daniel had built, that first year when she and Martin had just got married and Martin had been transferred to Letterkenny, to border duty.

  She waited and waited until there was silence, then she opened the boot of the car and took out Martin’s gun. He shouldn’t leave it there, she was always telling him. It’s dangerous. He of all people should know that. But he had laughed and said, ‘Only when it’s loaded, for God’s sake. A gun without ammunition is as harmless as a dog without teeth. Didn’t your father tell you that when he was teaching you to shoot?’

  If she could just get to the cupboard in his study where he kept the cartridges. If she could just load the gun and keep him quiet and still, while she explained. While she told him what had happened. That it didn’t matter. It would never happen again. It didn’t mean anything. That they could have other children. That anyway he loved Amy and she loved him. He was her father, no matter what. If she could just keep him there, keep him still, hold him at bay, while she begged him to listen, begged him to forgive her. Waited for his expression to change. The way it always did, eventually. Whenever she had done something wrong, made a mistake, given him cause to be angry. Whenever she hadn’t pleased him, she could always make him come round, eventually.

  But he was awake when she crept from the garage, through the kitchen into the hall. Lying back on the sofa, in the sitting room, a glass of whiskey in his hand. And he called out to her, and laughed at her as she stood in front of him with the gun in her hands. And said, ‘You stupid bitch, what do you think you’re doing with that? You couldn’t shoot me to save your life. Not you, a liar and a cheat and a coward. Come on, tell me. Who was it? Spit it out. I’ve a right to know. After all these years of playing daddy to a kid who isn’t mine. Tell me.’

  So she told him. Blurted it out. Thinking that somehow it would be better that it wasn’t just anyone. That it was someone who he knew. Thinking that he might feel he could forgive her. He could accept what had happened. That it might be all right again. The way things used to be. But she had forgotten. For some reason she could never understand, she had forgotten the way he felt about Daniel.

  ‘That bastard who calls himself my brother. You and him, together. Where? Here in this house? Here in my bed, in my room? Here, under this roof? My roof? You and him? Of all people. How could you? If I had known that he had touched you, you know, don’t you, that I would never have touched you again. Ever. You know, don’t you, that he’s literally a bastard, don’t you? My mother told me about his mother. A fifteen-year-old somewhere in the sticks who got into trouble. But we know nothing about his father. Some lucky bollocks who had a bit of fun, then buggered off before he had to face the consequences. Just what I should have done with you, Rachel. I don’t know what I was thinking about, marrying you. I must have been crazy.’

  He reached out and took hold of the barrel of the gun, pulling it towards himself, pulling her with it.

  ‘Here, let me give you a hand. Let me show you what to do with this. What I would do with this.’

  They moved together, out of the kitchen, along the passage to the small room at the front of the house. His room, where he kept his books and his papers, his private possessions as he always said.

  ‘Here.’ He pulled open the top drawer of the desk. He took out a box of cartridges. He opened it. He jerked the gun from her grasp. He broke it open, pushed the cartridges into the chamber. He snapped it shut. He held it out to her.

  ‘Here.’ He smiled at her. ‘Now, that’s what I call a weapon.’

  The cars were rushing past her now as she stood at the junction of Merrion Square and Clare Street. She tried to judge their distance but it was hopeless. For twelve years she had never looked further than the walls of the prison yard. Nothing within their confines moved at a speed that wasn’t human. How to know how far a moving object was from her, how to determine its relative speed? She put one foot on to the road, then hesitated. Lurched forward, drew back. Remembered the sound of the car as it had hit Amy. And the elderly man who was driving, who had wept as he saw the child on the ground and kept on saying, over and over again, ‘She just ran out in front of me, there was nothing I could do.’

  Now Rachel hung back, waiting. There must be something wrong with the lights. They didn’t change. All around her other pedestrians passed her out, passed her by. Occasionally someone would look back at her, curiously. She wanted to reach out and tug at a sleeve, a coat, ask for help. It was getting late. Amy would be walking down Leeson Street to school, any minute now. She had to make a move or else she’d miss her. And then she’d have to wait until she came out at lunchtime.

  Tears dripped down her cheeks. She twisted and turned. How stupid she must look, she thought. A mad woman with grey hair and a grey face, making a fool of herself in a busy city street. The cars streamed past, then slowed and stopped. A buzzer sounded, a high-pitched shriek. The green man flashed up. She took a deep breath and ran, dodging through the traffic. She kept on running, holding her denim jacket, hearing her keys jangling together in her pocket. The laces from her runners flopped from side to side. She stared at her feet as she ran and saw shoes of all shapes and sizes pass by. Black leather, shiny, expensive. Buckles, decorative punching, heels stacked and stiletto. Toes squared off, narrow, tapered. Once she had worn shoes like these. Presents from Martin. Elegant, sophisticated. Now she saw herself reflected in a large mirror in the window of the chemist on the corner of Merrion Row, framed by photographs of beautiful women advertising make-up and perfume, and her own face, lined and drawn, staring out at her.

  What had she done all those years ago on that cold day in March when Martin had died? She had thrown away her own life when she pointed the shotgun at him and pulled the trigger. Why had she done it? What had possessed her? The doorbell had rung as they moved together into the hall. She could see the shape of a man through the frosted glass.

  ‘Oh,’ Martin jerked his head dismissively, ‘I see. You couldn’t handle this on your own. You had to call in the cavalry. Well, what are yo
u waiting for? Let the bastard in.’

  She put her hand out to the lock. Hesitated. Heard Martin walk away towards the kitchen. Heard the sound of crockery and glass breaking. Turned back, saw that he was taking everything from the cupboards. Dropping the plates, the bowls, the dishes. Dropping them on to the tiled floor. Stamping on the shards of china and glass with his shoes. She turned and opened the door and stood back to let Daniel pass her by. She heard the shouts of anger, the screams of abuse. Heard the rage of years pour out from both of them. She walked into the sitting room, the gun in her hands. Heard her husband’s voice, the disgust, the revulsion, the bitterness. Felt shame like she had never felt before. Heard him say, ‘The cuckoo in the nest, a neat trick that one was, wasn’t it? Laying your egg in another man’s basket, getting that man to raise your foundling chick for you. Pretty fucking neat. But then you know all about that, don’t you, Daniel, or whatever your name really is? Do you realize,’ and here he paused and looked towards Rachel, ‘do you realize just how much you owe this family? If my mother hadn’t been so desperate for a baby and she hadn’t convinced my father that any old leftover bit of rubbish was worth it, what would have happened to you, I wonder? Answer me that if you can. Well, I think we all know, don’t we? You’d have been brought up in that children’s home, wouldn’t you? The one where the priests beat the little boys, bugger them when they’re bold and turn them into little perverts. And what kind of a future would you have had?’