Eager to Please

by Julie Parsons

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I was wondering. I used to live in this house a number of years ago. I’ve been away for a long time and I was just curious. Would you mind if I had a quick look around?’

  She was kind, she was polite. She stood back and let them in. Rachel looked down the hall towards the kitchen.

  ‘Go ahead,’ the woman said. ‘It’s a bit of a mess. Sunday, you know?’

  Rachel walked with Laura into the sitting room. She could feel the sweat breaking out on her forehead, on her back. She looked towards the garden, towards the conservatory. She put her hand up to her mouth.

  ‘It’s gone,’ she said. ‘It’s all different.’

  ‘Yes.’ The woman bent down and picked up a pair of runners and a baseball cap from the shiny parquet floor. ‘Yes, I think it’s changed a lot over the years. It had a bit of a history, this house. Did you know about it? Was it before your time?’

  ‘A history?’

  ‘Someone was murdered here. Oh, ages and ages ago. But a lot of work was done to the house afterwards. Not by us, but by the people who bought it next. We got it cheap, in fact, because of that. We used to get a lot of people coming just to have a gawk. Because of what had happened.’

  Rachel walked to the door to the garden. It was all gone. Her careful planting, her pond, her border. Now there was just a lawn with a gang of boys playing football on it. She felt Laura’s hand clutching her jacket and heard her begin to whimper. She bent down and picked her up.

  ‘She’s tired,’ she said. ‘She’s had a long day.’

  ‘She’s lovely. I’ve always wanted a daughter, but it’s boys all the way with me.’ She patted her round stomach. ‘This one too, another little David Beckham.’

  Rachel smiled and stroked Laura’s silky hair.

  ‘Her older sister was a baby here. Her room was upstairs. Can I show her?’

  ‘Of course, why not? Just don’t mind the mess.’

  She took her time, walking from room to room, explaining it all to the child, who rested now sleepily on her shoulder. The woman was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Thank you,’ Rachel said, ‘you’ve been very kind. I appreciate this. It means a lot to me.’

  ‘Does it? I’m surprised.’ The woman’s expression was curious. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you would want to come back. After what you did.’

  Rachel looked at her. She tried to speak, but no words would come.

  ‘You’re her, aren’t you? I thought it was you as soon as I saw you. Revisiting the scene of the crime, is that it? I’m amazed. I thought they only did that in the movies.’

  Rachel put her hand on the latch.

  ‘It’s OK. I don’t mind. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I thought you were in prison.’

  ‘Please.’ Rachel put out her hand. ‘Please, don’t say anything else.’

  The woman smiled. ‘You’d better go. My husband wouldn’t be so keen on you being here. But me, well,’ she shrugged her shoulders, ‘it was a long time ago. Live and let live, that’s what I say. But the child, she’s hardly yours, is she?’

  It wasn’t far from the quiet cul-de-sac to the house on the cliff. Three or four miles, that was all. She drove quickly down the hill from the village. The tyres squeaked on the hot surface of the road. The baby had fallen asleep, and he rocked from side to side in his chair. Laura was drowsing beside him. Jonathan’s eyes were closed. There was a bend in the road. Beyond it she could see the bracken and gorse of the cliff and the sea beyond. She put her foot on the accelerator. The car shot forward. Jonathan’s eyes opened. He sat up.

  ‘Fast,’ he said. ‘It’s too fast. Slow down.’

  The house was silent as she carefully carried the sleeping baby to his cot and laid him down. She paused at Ursula’s bedroom door and looked in. She too was fast asleep. She heard the television go on downstairs and then the phone ring. She could hear Jonathan’s voice as she walked past the sitting-room door.

  ‘Yes, Daddy, we’ve all been out with the lady. Mummy’s sick. She’s got a bad headache. She’s in bed. Are you coming home soon? Good. Bye.’

  ‘What did he say?’ She felt her heart begin to beat faster.

  ‘He’s on his way. He’ll be here in an hour.’

  She put the keys back on the ring by the kitchen door. She looked around once more. Everything was as it had been. She made the children sandwiches and brought them glasses of milk.

  ‘I’m going now. I’ll see you again.’

  They lifted their heads and looked at her. Laura stood up. She walked over to her and put her arms up. Rachel bent down and kissed her.

  ‘Bye-bye, my little girl. See you soon.’

  She walked quickly across the lawn towards the clifftop. It would be easier to leave this way. She didn’t want to risk meeting his car on the road. She felt the keys jingle in her pocket as she moved. And she thought of all she had left behind. Fingerprints on every imaginable surface. Hairs on the pillows and the mattress of the bed where Daniel and Ursula slept and a pair of bead earrings hidden in the dust beneath it. Fibres from her clothes left on the furniture and a button from her jacket underneath the cushions on the sofa. Everything was in place. Everything was ready. And soon she would be too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  NOW THERE WAS another map pinned up beside the first one above her bed. Rachel had drawn it herself, when she got back from the house on the cliff. The house named Spindrift. The spray that blows along the surface of the sea. Whipped up by the wind, twisting and turning, a layer of white that obscures the tops of the waves, making it impossible to see their height. But now she could see everything in her mind’s eye. She had sat down with a large sheet of paper, a pencil and a ruler, and she had drawn it all out. The plan of the house, floor by floor. Put in all the rooms, the windows, the doors. Marked out the boundary to the garden and coloured it with different pens. The vegetable patch, the herbaceous border, the lawn, the trees. Then put in the family. Drew the figures, stick-like, but recognizable. Daniel with his dark hair and beard. Ursula with her long fair plait. And the children. Finished it off and sat back to admire it. Then stuck it up beside the other one. It was good. It was done.

  And now there was something else she must do. She must meet her daughter once more. This time she had gone through the proper channels. She had asked Andrew Bowen to arrange it. He had spoken to Amy’s social worker. They had agreed between themselves. Rachel and Amy would meet in what they called a neutral venue, as they had so many times in the past, when she was still in prison. She would have liked it if, just once, they could have met in the open air. Perhaps at the end of the west pier, where the huge blocks of granite, which kept the sea at bay, were warmed by the sun. Or even in the one of the city’s parks. St Stephen’s Green where Rachel used to take her when she was small to feed the clamouring mallards. Or Merrion Square to sit on the grass between the formal beds, bright with fleshy begonias. Or best of all in the Iveagh Gardens, hidden behind the long grey buildings of the Concert Hall and the National University, overgrown and wild, its statuary half broken, fallen down among the shrubbery. A place she used to visit, when she was a student, to lie in the sun and dream.

  But it was not to be. Andrew Bowen had told her. She was to go to the headquarters of the Probation and Welfare Service.

  ‘They’re in Smithfield, where the old cattle market used to be. But you wouldn’t recognize the place now, it has so many fancy new buildings. Do you remember how to get there? Would you like me to come with you, or would you prefer to go on your own?’

  She had chosen to go by herself. To walk up the Quays, passing with sudden dread the Four Courts, feeling the heavy bulk of the pillared building, with its green copper dome, leaning over towards her, threatening to topple into her path. She remembered those two weeks, twelve years ago, walking in from the street every morning, pushing through the crowds of reporters and photographers, who squawked at her. ‘Look here, Rachel. Give us a smile, Ra
chel. How’s it going, Rachel? What do you have to say, Rachel?’

  With her father by her side, his face tightening, despair cutting deep grooves in the flesh of his forehead, in the space between his eyebrows and on either side of his mouth. And making his eyes hooded and blank. And on the last day, Amy in her arms as she tried to find a way to bring her into the Round Hall, looking for the entrance at the side of the building, through the swing doors where the barristers passed, hearing the sudden shout as one of the photographers saw her and called out to his friends: ‘Here, look, she’s here, with the kid.’

  And then when the jury had delivered their verdict, she had been so sorry that she had brought her. It had been selfish and foolish. Not the sort of thing that a decent, proper mother does, to expose her child in that manner. How could she have done it? The desire to see her child before she was sent away, that was understandable, wasn’t it? Any mother would have felt like that, wouldn’t she?

  She had begun to doubt herself immediately. And now she had no sense of her own rightness. Had she ever had any real maternal instinct? Was there such a thing, she wondered as she turned away from the river, towards the large cobbled square, and stopped to look at the row of modern office buildings where once had been an uneven, irregular skyline of houses, shops and pubs. And why was she choosing now of all times to test it? Why had she asked to see Amy, when Amy had made it so plain that she did not want her back in her life? She walked across the open space and leaned against the railings. She closed her eyes and turned her face up towards the sun, calming for a moment the sense of panic that was beginning to take hold of her body. All she wanted, she thought, was to be in the same room with her. No, she corrected herself, that wasn’t strictly true. She wanted more. She wanted to stand close, put her arms around her, fold her young supple body into her own. Lean her cheek against the soft skin of her daughter’s cheek. Breathe in her warm scent. Soap and newly washed hair and that indescribable smell of child. Feel the weight of her daughter’s head as she let it droop on to her shoulder. Whisper in her ear that she, Rachel, was in spite of everything still her mother. That she, Amy, was after all that had happened, still her daughter. That they were bound together by the nine months that Amy had spent inside her mother’s body. By the five years of nurturing and loving that they had spent together. And as she stood with her face to the sun, her eyes closed, she could feel her lips part in a sudden involuntary smile.

  She opened her eyes and looked around, blinking rapidly, dazzled for a moment by the brightness that flooded in and saw the car that had stopped outside the largest of the buildings. The one with the long plate-glass windows at street level and the lettering across its glass doors. Department of Justice. Probation and Welfare Service. She stood up. A man and woman were seated in the front. The girl was in the back. She watched as the woman got out of the passenger seat and held open the door behind her. She saw her daughter, close-cropped black hair, row of earrings in her right lobe, tight jeans, short top which revealed a tanned stomach, runners with thick wedge soles and a cigarette dangling between the fingers of one hand. She watched as the woman put an arm around her shoulders for a moment, squeezed her tightly and kissed her quickly on her cheek. Saw the expression on her daughter’s face. The resentment that twisted her features so she looked sulky, angry, unattractive. She flung the cigarette down on the footpath and ground it with her toe, before dragging open the heavy glass doors and slamming them behind her. The woman turned back to the car, shrugging her shoulders, an expression of hurt resignation on her face. She saw Rachel, stared at her for a moment, a grimace of distaste tightening her mouth into a narrow line, then opened the car door and got inside. As they moved slowly away, the tyres reverberating over the cobbles, their two faces peered out at her. And then they were gone.

  It was a bright room, the one into which she was shown. Its large windows faced west, and the rays of the afternoon sun lit up the specks of dust that floated above the long polished table. Rachel stood by herself just inside the door and waited. Amy was seated in a chair in the corner. A small blonde woman was standing beside her. Her hand was on Amy’s shoulder. She smiled at Rachel and began to speak. She introduced herself. Her name, she said, was Alison White. She was Amy’s social worker. Perhaps Rachel remembered her? They had met once or twice before, some years ago.

  Rachel nodded, then said softly, ‘It was twice, we met twice.’

  The woman smiled and looked down at the notebook in her hand. Then she continued. This was, she said, a difficult occasion. As they all knew, Amy had been very reluctant to meet with her mother since she was released from prison. And of course Rachel hadn’t made things any better by attempting to see Amy in what could best be described as an ad-hoc manner. Amy had been very upset by this and had felt threatened by Rachel’s behaviour, which was, the woman said, unacceptable. However, Rachel had obviously learned from her mistake, and this time she had put her request through the proper channels.

  Rachel looked towards where Amy was sitting. As Amy felt her gaze fall upon her, she shifted in her seat, twisting her upper body so her head was turned completely away. An awkward position, uncomfortable for any length of time, hard to maintain. Rachel could see the bones, the knobs of the vertebrae at the back of her neck, stand out in the space between her hairline and the stretchy material of her lipstick-pink blouse.

  ‘It is my opinion,’ the woman said, ‘that it would be a good thing if Amy was to re-establish some kind of contact with her natural mother. Although Amy is extremely fond of and close to her foster-mother, and the rest of her foster-family who have made huge efforts to care for her in every possible way, still the natural bond between birth mother and child cannot be ignored, and in my experience there always comes a time when it reasserts itself.’

  She paused.

  ‘And it is my experience that it is better if this can be handled properly, that guidance can be given to both mother and child to see them through this difficult period of adjustment. And now, before I leave you two alone, shall I pour the tea?’

  She pointed to the tray with a metal teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl, two cups and saucers and a plate of chocolate biscuits, which was sitting in the middle of the table.

  It tasted the way all institutional tea tasted. Stale and stewed, bitter and brackish. Rachel drank, forcing the liquid into her stomach. She put down her cup. She looked across the table at Amy. The girl had disdained the drink that Alison White had offered. Instead she had pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit up, despite the no-smoking signs stuck on the back of the door. But then she obviously wasn’t the first to smoke here in this room, Rachel thought, looking at the large round ashtray that Amy had dragged from its place on the table to a position from where she could comfortably flick her ash.

  ‘Well, I’ll go now. I’ll be next door if you want me.’ Alison White looked at her watch. ‘You have an hour or so before this room is needed. But if you want longer there are other rooms down the corridor.’ She smiled, a look of apprehension flickering across her pretty face, just for a moment, then she backed away.

  The door clicked loudly behind her. Rachel sat down. She leaned across and picked up the teapot. It was heavy. She could feel her wrist bending, as if at any moment it would give way. The brown liquid gushed from the metal spout, splashing into both cup and saucer and casting drops in an arc on the table. She put the pot back on the tray and felt in her jeans pocket for a tissue, hastily wiping up the spilt tea. She scrunched the soggy paper up into a ball and leaned over towards the ashtray.

  ‘Do you mind?’ she said, and dropped it in.

  Amy shrugged and drew heavily on her cigarette. Rachel watched the yellow-tinged smoke as the girl funnelled it out of her mouth, her lips forming a tight ‘o’ as she blew neat little smoke rings, which floated slowly up towards the ceiling tiles.

  ‘Not bad,’ Rachel said. ‘Not bad at all. Some of the women I was in prison with could blow the most amazing shapes. Circles within circ
les within circles. They were absolute experts at it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, nothing, nothing in particular. I could never do it, that’s all. Even when I was a heavy smoker, before I got pregnant with you, of course, when I was a student. When smoking seemed to be the coolest thing in the world.’

  There was silence. Rachel leaned across the table and picked up the plate of biscuits. She held them out.

  ‘Would you like one? They’re chocolate digestives. You used to love them when you were little. You couldn’t get enough of them. I used to have to pretend they were all gone, otherwise you’d have driven me mad trying to get at them.’

  All gone, all gone, Amy.

  All gone, all gone, Mumma. Bikkys all gone.

  Amy stared at her blankly, then took another cigarette from her packet and lit it from the butt of the first.

  ‘Lying to me even then, were you? Not telling me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Rachel started back, feeling suddenly cold here in this warm sunny room.

  ‘Sorry. Are you?’ For the first time Amy looked at her. Directly. Meeting her eye, holding her gaze.

  ‘I am sorry, of course I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about everything that has happened between us. To you and to me. To us. And I want an opportunity to try to put things right.’

  ‘Put things right. I see. And how do you propose to do that?’ Amy leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other and resting the tips of her runners on the tabletop. She began to push herself backwards and forwards.

  Rachel cleared her throat. She thought of the words that she had practised, rehearsed. All the things she had wanted to say. The explanations, the reasons, the justifications. It had seemed so simple and straightforward, all those nights when she had lain in her bed in her room in Clarinda Park, looking at the map on the wall beside her. Remembering. And Amy’s reaction had been so wonderful. She had heard her return the words of love and sorrow. Of regret. Of sympathy. And her resolution that now they would be able to go forward together into a new life.