Grace After Henry

by Eithne Shortall

  ‘Yes!’ I said, before he’d finished asking. I stood from the chair, my bones heavy with tiredness, and I turned to face him.

  ‘Like this?’ he said, and went to wrestle me.

  ‘No,’ I laughed. ‘On your back, you dope. A piggyback.’

  ‘All right then; one, two, three, hup! All aboard! Watch your head.’ And I ducked as we left the kitchen, though it wasn’t quite necessary. ‘If our passengers want to look to the left, they will see one of Ikea’s finest couches. Oooo! To the right we have: The Television. Ahhhh! No flash photography now please, ladies and gents.’

  I laughed the whole way into the hallway. Partly because it was funny but partly because once I started, I didn’t want to stop. His back was warm and strong and though Andy began to feign exhaustion as he climbed the stairs, I knew he could have carried me for miles. I could have fallen asleep right there.

  ‘Were there always this many steps? Flaming heck!’ He plodded dramatically upwards. ‘To the right, you’ll see the mid-stairs art installation. This piece is entitled: Shampoo Half Out of the Box. Made with mixed materials.’

  He crossed the landing, me still laughing, and with his left arm holding me up, he reached forward with the right and turned the handle to my bedroom door. ‘Now, this is the last stop, folks. If you could make sure you have all your belongings with you . . .’ He lowered himself towards the bed and released me with the softest bounce. I lay there grinning, happy, looking up at him, the street lamp lighting the room like a crime noir. It made his face grainy, a digital photo that had been blown up and printed out on ordinary paper. My laughter slowed and stopped. The room was charged, like maybe there’d be thunder.

  ‘Thank you for the lift.’

  ‘All part of the service.’ He loomed large above me and it looked like he was about to say one thing when suddenly he snapped to attention: ‘Heck! I forgot! The baby.’

  ‘That I was having one? Really? That’s one hell of an attention span you’ve got,’ I teased, pushing myself into sitting.

  ‘I just flung you down there, like a sack of coal. It completely slipped my mind. Is it all right? It can’t become . . .?’

  ‘What? Angry? Bruised? Born?’

  ‘. . . dislodged?’

  ‘I think the baby can take it.’ I placed a hand over my stomach. ‘This child is made of strong stuff.’ I was enjoying this new-found sense of maternity, as if somehow I knew what I was doing. A protectiveness surged through me. Earth Mother once again. Or maybe it was just the hormones.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Andy and he moved towards the door. ‘Okay well, sleep well.’

  ‘You too,’ I said.

  ‘Goodnight, Grace.’

  ‘Night.’

  ‘Goodnight, bump.’ And he closed the door softly behind him.

  I lay back on the bed and watched shadows move across the ceiling. I was resting but I was also figuring out my next move. Nice as it was to be carried to bed, I still had to clean my teeth and use the toilet. Quite desperately, actually. I was a bi-hourly urinater now.

  This was the best I’d felt about the pregnancy since I’d found out. The problem was tomorrow when we had to step into the world. That was when it always fell apart.

  I heard the light switch flick next door and the floorboard creak as he returned to the lowdown bed that had never been slept in before. I got up, went to the bathroom and emptied my fairly empty bladder. I put toothpaste on my brush and watched myself carefully in the mirror, trying to read my own face.

  ‘Now,’ I said self-assuredly, like my dad often did, and I began to brush. Then I watched as my face crumbled. With the brush lodged in my mouth I put a hand either side of the basin and leaned over slightly to take a deep breath. I took a moment before I went back to eyeballing my frightened face, scowling at its dramatics. ‘We’ll be fine,’ I told her sternly, whispering. And I wiped the tear from my right cheek and kept on brushing.

  FIFTY-TWO

  ‘I’ll give it a try.’

  Andy looked up from the newspaper he had spread across the table to where I stood by the kitchen door in my mini-marathon T-shirt, leggings and bedhead. There was fresh bread and a pot of jam I hadn’t seen before on the counter. He had been up a while.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked, taking a slurp of tea. I was struck by the familiarity of it all.

  ‘Last night, what we discussed, I mean if you still—’

  ‘You’ll give it a try?’

  ‘Yes. If you still want to.’

  He pushed back his chair, grinning, and crossed the room to envelop me. I filled my senses with the glorious smell.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes! Of course I still want to. Ah, Grace.’ His happy words shimmied through my hair and I could have sworn I’d been here before. ‘We’ll do it our own way,’ he said. ‘No pressure.’ Then he released me and rubbed his hands together.

  ‘Now let me prepare for you my breakfast special.’

  ‘You have a breakfast special?’ I said, sitting at the table, pulling the magazine out from under the broadsheets. ‘A couple of weeks ago you couldn’t peel an onion.’

  ‘It’s a little Australian delicacy, you may or may not have heard of.’

  I watched him carving slices off the fresh loaf. ‘Is it jam on toast?’

  ‘Pffff!’ He slid the slices into the toaster and broke the seal on the jar. ‘Grace, what do you take me for? What I am preparing for you is a sophisticated meal of hot bread with sweetened forest fruits.’

  ‘My apologies,’ I said, smiling. ‘I’ll have three slices of toast. I mean, hot bread. And be generous with the sweetened forest fruits. Thanks.’

  We ate jam on toast and perused the papers. It’s possible he was reading, but I perused. I hadn’t the concentration for paragraphs. I kept looking at Andy, then glancing away when he raised his head. I felt like a pathetic teenager. On the umpteenth occasion, he was ready for me. I looked up and he was staring right back with a dollop of jam at the end of his nose. I snorted tea out of mine. I wished we could stay here, in the house, for ever.

  But the time always came to leave. This morning I was accompanying him to apply for his Irish passport. We could probably have gotten the forms online, but I think it was about doing something to mark a commitment, a joint act that said we were going to try.

  ‘Hang on!’ I said, as he went to open the front door. ‘There are two things I need to verify before we go out there.’

  ‘Okay . . .’ He took his hand off the latch. ‘What’s the first one?’

  ‘Sex.’

  He thought about this. ‘Fine, but not on any main roads.’

  ‘Are we going to have it? Is that what we’re doing here? I mean, it’d be weird if we weren’t but it would also be weird if we were. Not that I don’t find you attractive, obviously I do, it’d be like having sex with Henry, probably. And that’s the problem too. That would be weird. Good, but weird. So what’s the story with that?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Sex!’

  ‘Personally, and generally speaking, I’m in favour of it.’

  I didn’t laugh.

  ‘I don’t know, Grace. Do I find you attractive? Of course I do. Would it be weird? Probably. More for you, I’d say. You don’t look like the love of my life. Well, maybe you do but that’s . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway! We don’t have to. I didn’t presume we would. We can cohabit without copulating. Like I said, a million ways to live.’

  ‘So we don’t have to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But we could?’

  ‘Someday, sure. If you want.’

  ‘Right.’ I nodded slowly, cringing. ‘Sorry.’ I reached for the latch. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

  ‘And what was the other thing? You said there were two. Sex and . . .?’

  ‘Oh right,’ I said, thinking. ‘Yeah.’ I looked at him. ‘We’re going to have to tell people.’

  ‘Are you telling me or are you asking? Because I already know that.’
>
  ‘Just verifying,’ I said, nodding. ‘Yes. Tell people. We are going to have to tell people.’

  ‘So you said.’

  ‘Like Aoife.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And my parents.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, my head still bobbing.

  ‘Right.’

  I nodded definitively, bolstering my resolve. ‘Right,’ I said again. ‘Let’s go.’

  We walked through the city side by side, yapping and laughing. People looked at us as we passed and at first I was worried but then I realised it was only because we seemed so happy. I kept grinning. We played ‘would you rather’. I asked the questions and Andy gave decisive answers: rather lose an arm than a leg, have no sense of smell than no sense of touch, always be a little too hot than a little too cold. He followed my lead across roads and around corners as we made our way through Temple Bar. I kept forgetting this wasn’t his city.

  ‘Okay,’ I continued, ‘would you rather have the same song stuck in your head for ever or fall asleep at the end of every film you watched? And I mean every film.’

  ‘What’s the song?’

  ‘To be confirmed.’

  ‘Well, it depends, because some Beastie Boys number, awesome. But if it’s Michael Bolton, say, or Abba or something—’

  I halted on the cobblestones. ‘What’s wrong with Abba?’

  Andy began to count on his fingers. ‘Em . . . Let me see . . . Everything?’

  ‘Abba are one of the greatest bands ever created.’

  ‘That’s the problem; they were created.’

  ‘Ugh. The manufactured pop whinge. Are we not past this? Abba came from a non-English-speaking nation to dominate the English-speaking world. They had eight number ones, in a row, in the UK. They have their own museum, an entire museum dedicated to them. They’re the reason Mamma Mia! exists – a film you’d think you, Mr Who’s Your Daddy, would appreciate. They made the Eurovision Song Contest semi-credible, for Christ’s sake! What more do they have to do?’

  ‘Record a song that isn’t the same simplistic words repeated over and over?’

  ‘It’s their second language!’

  ‘You know how Abba get classified?’ he said. ‘And I mean this as the greatest insult: Family Favourites.’

  I gasped in disgust. ‘What’s your least favourite Abba song?’

  ‘“Dancing Queen”. No wait! “Money, Money, Money”. That may be the worst song ever written.’

  ‘All right then,’ I said and started walking again. ‘The song that will be eternally stuck in your head is the global number-one hit “Money, Money, Money” by the under-appreciated Swedish band Abba.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  I was having the best time. Even out on the streets our plans felt possible. There was a wedding party coming out of City Hall and all the taxis beeped as they drove by. Tourists stopped to take photos of the bride. One taxi driver rolled down his window and shouted, ‘It’s not too late, love! Quick, hop in!’ and everyone laughed.

  ‘I guess they said I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘What?’ he grinned as we strolled on down Dame Street.

  ‘Leave Abba out of your godforsaken puns.’

  ‘But that’s the Name of the Game.’

  ‘You’re basically taking the lord’s name in vain right now. You know that, don’t you?’ I glanced over at him. ‘And knowing you, you’re not done.’

  ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You?’

  ‘I will actually have you deported.’

  I was still smiling as we entered the passport office. Andy took a number from the queuing system and we sat in the plastic chairs. I didn’t even do a sweep of who else was in the vast impersonal waiting area.

  Through the large street-facing windows, I watched the people passing by. A woman with a pram – I registered so many more mothers and pregnant women now that I was ‘with child’; a young lad with headphones; a pair of older women laden with shopping bags, one of whom reminded me of Candice Sweeny, the woman from the inquest. I would like to have talked to her, if I hadn’t had to run off in search of Andy. A group of men passed by in suits and ties, and when one of them turned to speak to another I could have sworn it was Chris Walters, a college friend of Henry’s. My heart stopped. I held my breath as I waited for the group to pass only for the man to turn again just before disappearing out of view. He no longer looked a thing like Chris.

  ‘We’re 141,’ said Andy, turning the ticket over in his hand. ‘They’re on 123. At least we’re moving.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, turning away from the window, concentrating on him.

  ‘I’ll have to tell my grandma I’m staying,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking that.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tell her I met a girl.’

  I smiled.

  ‘I’ll tell Larry, and some of the guys from the sites. Should be able to pick up some more work easily enough. Isabel will be glad I’m hanging around,’ he said. ‘I almost know as many people here as back home. Not that it really feels like home anymore anyway, not like here.’

  I listened as he grew more excited and slowly I realised what was actually at stake. I had only really been considering my own position but the objective truth was that Andy had more to lose than me. I was a ticket to a whole new life, to someone else’s old life. I offered some stability, finally. I let the responsibility press down briefly then I shook it away.

  ‘I should phone Isabel. I said I would when I left yesterday evening.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said noncommittally. But he was still looking at me. ‘You want to use my phone?’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  I could hardly say no, not unless I wanted to admit to some irrational, pseudo-Greek jealousy. I took my mobile from my bag, unlocked it and handed it over.

  ‘She’s listed under Isabel W,’ I told him as he stood from the plastic chairs, leaving the queue ticket with me.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, already pressing the keypad. ‘I know the number.’

  FIFTY-THREE

  Some people are numbers people, I knew that. They see a car registration plate and they can recall it two days later. It was no big deal. Andy was probably one of them. I watched him through the large window as he stood on the path outside with one hand stuffed in the front pocket of his cargo shorts and the other holding my phone to his ear. I knew my parents’ phone numbers off the top of my head. But then they were actually my parents, and I had known them for more than a week.

  ‘Grace!’

  I turned in my plastic chair to see my neighbour strolling down the row of seats, heading in my direction.

  ‘Larry,’ I said, caught completely off guard. And behind him, was it? Oh God. ‘Aoife.’

  I glanced to the window where Andy was listening intently to whatever Isabel was saying, then I turned back quickly. I didn’t want to draw anyone else’s eye.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, standing as they came closer.

  Larry had his usual easy smile but Aoife kept looking around her, towards the window it seemed. Had she clocked Andy? Did she know something was up? Was she worried she’d seen a ghost, that she was hallucinating?

  ‘I’m off to Mallorca for my brother’s wedding in two weeks,’ said Larry. ‘Only realised yesterday my passport was out of date.’

  ‘Right, right . . .’ I shifted my position, coaxing them to move with me so they were the ones with their backs to the window. I kept my eye focused on the automatic doors behind them.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Oh yeah, same!’

  ‘You’re going to a wedding?’

  ‘Yeah. No. No no,’ I said, laughing far too loudly as I put a hand on Larry’s arm, gently rotating him a little further. ‘Sorry, no. Just yeah, didn’t realise my passport was out of date either. So’ – I held up the 141 ticket – ‘just waiting to get it renewed.’

>   ‘Where are you going?’ asked Aoife, who still looked shifty.

  ‘Me? Nowhere.’

  ‘What do you need an emergency passport renewal for so?’

  ‘Oh I . . .’ I turned my head to the side as I pretended to cough. Andy was still there, on the phone, chatting away happily. He saw the woman yesterday. How much was there to say? ‘You know me, just like to be prepared.’

  Aoife did know me and so she also knew ‘be prepared’ had never been a particular mantra of mine, and definitely not to the point of spending a hundred quid fast-tracking a passport for absolutely no reason. That she didn’t challenge this admittedly pathetic cover story only made me more nervous. She knew something was up. She had seen him. She must have.

  ‘How’s it going, anyway?’ asked Larry, taking a seat on one of the plastic chairs as he settled in for a chat. Then he arched his forehead. ‘How’s Andy?’

  ‘Who?’ said Aoife, still standing.

  ‘The plumber,’ Larry told her. ‘Remember I told you about him?’

  ‘Oh yeah. The Australian.’ She made eye contact now, finally. ‘You never told me about this lad, Grace. I hear he’s been hanging around your house, doing the washing-up. Are you seeing him?’

  I scrunched up my face and shook my head fervently. ‘No! I mean, it’s only been a few months since . . .’ I turned my head and cleared my throat again. Andy was no longer there. I turned back and looked past them towards the double doors. Nothing, and then there he was, outside, approaching. ‘I have to go!’ I barked, grabbing my bag and Andy’s newspaper.

  ‘But you’re only three from the top!’

  ‘Here,’ I said, and shoved the queuing ticket into Larry’s hand. ‘I left the oven on.’

  I legged it down the row of chairs and out the front of the building before Andy could make it inside. I collided with him in the hallway between the two sets of sliding doors and shoved him back outside.

  ‘Fuck!!!’

  ‘What are you—’

  ‘Larry’s in there,’ I said, keeping my hand on his chest so he moved backwards and I pushed forward. ‘And Aoife. I mean, Jesus! Aoife. This bloody city. It’s too small! No, not that way. We have to go this way, away from the window.’