Bad Things Happen

by Tim Buckley

  I told her how bad she was at sport, how she could find no purpose in games, and how her short-tempered frustration often became violent, a trail of broken clubs or racquets cast aside in her oath-strewn, arm-flailing wake. How she cheated at cards and Scrabble and quiz games, not to win but to bring the hushed torture of the tedium to a quick end so that she could talk without being shushed impatiently.

  How she lived to socialise, loved a party or a night out or any gathering of her friends. She loved conversation, to simply sit with a bottle of wine or over a coffee and just talk and discuss and debate and imagine. How her eyes would widen at some exciting new plan or scheme or dream, because there was always an exciting new plan or scheme or dream. About her obsession with books, how there was always a dog-eared volume in her tow, a train ticket or a cocktail-stirring stick taken from a bar acting as a makeshift bookmark. About her discreet kindness that was never ostentatious but that always spotted a need and was always ready to quietly help.

  I tried to tell Hélène how much I loved her, but none of the clichés worked, none of them could explain how she filled my life, but completely. Describing the way we love is surely the oldest, most common form of human expression. Little wonder then that we can rarely find an original, authentic way to say it. The simplest words delivered with intensity are always the most emphatic.

  I love her.

  A tear trickled slowly down my cheek, but there was no darkness. And I think I was smiling.

  Hélène smiled at me kindly, then shrugged.

  “But you did not want her child?” she asked, gently.

  I shook my head.

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said quietly. “I don’t think we ever even had the conversation about whether we wanted a baby or not. It was beside the point. We couldn’t look after her, so there was no point even talking about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we were just so young. We didn’t have a clue. We grew up in sheltered, protected environments. We’d never had to fend for ourselves – never had to claim social welfare or go to a job centre, or get an electricity account or a phone. I didn’t even know how to cook or to wash my clothes. Stupid, simple things, but things that, combined, were as frightening as illness. Caitríona – for all her good intentions and best efforts – well, she wasn’t much better. Look after a child? We hadn’t the first idea. No jobs, no money, no prospects. What sort of a start in life could we give her?”

  “But people do, if they want to,” she pressed, her voice soft but sure. “They learn, if it’s what they want.”

  I nodded.

  “I know they do, and I take my hat off to them, I really do. But you have to want it. You have to actually want it. I think there’s a huge difference between, between…” I searched for the words in vain “… between knowing it’s what you want and just not knowing that it’s what you don’t want. Do you see what I mean?”

  She furrowed her brow and thought for a moment, then shook her head.

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  I sighed in exasperation, not with her but with myself, because this was at the heart of how I felt and I just couldn’t articulate it.

  “Look. Suppose you go to a restaurant and order a pizza. A ham and cheese pizza. And the waiter brings you a chicken and pineapple pizza. If you hated pineapple, you’d just send it back, because you don’t want it. But if you like pineapple, and it’s going to take fifteen minutes to get a new pizza, and actually it looks quite tasty, maybe you’d just take it anyway. It wasn’t what you came for, but it’s fine. It’ll be grand. That’s what I was afraid of. I never said I didn’t want a child. It just wasn’t what I came for. And that wouldn’t have been enough to get us – all three of us – through the hard times. And there would have been a lot of hard times.” I looked at her, silently begging her to understand. “Does that make any sense?”

  She said nothing, stared at me, her mind whirring behind the deep, dark eyes. At length, she took a deep breath and nodded slowly.

  “Yes, it makes sense. I just don’t understand it. Maybe you cannot understand until you are there.” She shrugged, then was silent again.

  “Every child deserves be the most precious thing in the world, at least to someone. It’s a hard world and that’s the least we owe our children – that they are at the very centre of our world. It just couldn’t be right to bring Aoife into an unhappy home, a place cobbled together that could never really be a sanctuary. We would have tried hard, I know we would, but what if we just couldn’t do it? What if we just couldn’t react with spontaneous pride and unbridled joy at the wonder and excitement that every new experience would bring? What if we never nudged each other or hugged each other tight at the first steps or the first feel of snow? You should react with real, honest joy at every new episode in a child’s life, it’s only what they deserve. No child deserves apathy. We would have tried to be a happy family. We would have taken on parenthood with the determination to do it right. But we could never have disguised the fact that it wasn’t what we wanted. And if somebody was desperate to raise a child, had gone through endless heartache and pain to find a child – wouldn’t they give her a better place? Even if it wasn’t where she came from?”

  Even as the words came out, they echoed with apology, and I hated their very sound. The sentiment was sincere, why could the words not sound the same?

  Hélène furrowed her brow, as though tackling some opaque conundrum in her head.

  “But, growing up is always hard, there is no easy way, no easy place?” she said, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders. “Nobody has all of the answers, maybe you just have to learn as you go?”

  Even though I knew our reasons were genuine and always honest, that it was in the best interests of the child somehow always sounded hollow. I could never make that argument even to myself without wincing at what sounded to me like seeping insincerity. Part of me accepted it, understood that growing up is hard and requires the dedication and love that come from a parent’s unwavering commitment to a child. But every family has its challenges and few lives follow a well-planned path. Not even the luckiest child grows up in perfect idyll, with their every emotional and physical need catered for – but doesn’t every child assume that theirs is the norm? Growing up in Howth, I accepted Lochlann’s cool distance as normal. I accepted that he didn’t come to every football match nor help me with my homework even though I knew other fathers did. Not once, even in angry adolescence, did I ever honestly wish that I had a different father. Sure, I sometimes wondered wistfully what it would be like to have a mother but, truthfully, I could scarcely wish for what I didn’t know, didn’t understand.

  She thought for a moment, and went on, almost recharged by the reflection.

  “Growing up is hard, of course it is,” she said, batting away the obvious with a dismissive wave of her hand. “ But, for most children at least, there is a confidence that comes from knowing for sure that where you are is where you belong, where you were always meant to be. It might not be perfect, but you can handle whatever life throws at you and you know –” she punched the open palm of one hand with a tightly clenched fist to ensure there was no doubt “– you know that your place in the world is no game of chance. The journey of your life begins, at least, on solid ground, not on shifting sands of never really knowing for sure, shifting sands that, every day, present new possibilities out of different realities. The journey, and the choices you have to make, would be so much harder for that, no?”

  The passion in her voice left no doubt as to her conviction, and for a moment I said nothing, trying to catch the machine-gun fire of words that came hard and fast, catch them so that I could digest them and make sense of them and understand where they had come from. It was Hélène standing in front of me, but were they Aoife’s words? Is that why she was so passionate, because she had so often heard her friend say the very same?


  “I know, Hélène,” I said, eventually. “I know, and it’s what I’m most afraid of. You told me the other day that you think Aoife is pessimistic, that she keeps her distance, that she is searching for something. Look, I don’t buy the pop psychology that claims everything we think and do has some profound hidden reason. The fat man is only jolly to hide low self esteem. The pretty girl only smokes because she’s scared of getting fat. The young man stays single because he used to listen to his parents scream at each other. But maybe the fat man’s just happy? Maybe the pretty girl is just hooked? Maybe the single guy is just having a good time. We don’t always have to find a reason. Some things just are.”

  I paused to put the words together, and the silence was broken only by the breeze that rustled in the trees outside the studio window.

  “But is she searching or distant or pessimistic because of what we did to her? I have always prayed that I would find her living a happily balanced life, doing well at school or at work, with lots of different and fascinating hobbies, surrounded by dedicated friends and loved by a devoted family.” I threw them out like trinkets tossed from a parade float. “We thought we were giving her a better chance. What if that was a mistake?”

  I paused and looked into her eyes.

  “Was it a mistake?” I whispered.

  She stared straight back at me, not breaking eye contact for even a second.

  “I cannot tell you that,” she said, quietly. “Only Aoife can tell you that.”

  I nodded.

  “I know,” I said, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to ask you to speak for her, to break her confidence. Sorry.”

  She nodded, and changed the subject.

  “It must have changed your life, too?”

  “It was like a bomb,” I said, the word dropping from my mouth like one of those dull explosions on the evening news from Belfast when I was a child. “It hurt everyone in its range. For Caitríona and for me, it changed the course of our lives completely and forever. We took it with us every day, we slept with it every night. But that was our choice and we deserved no better. It affected our parents, too. For Lochlann, it brought disappointment – I didn’t let him down by getting Caitríona pregnant, I let him down by abdicating my responsibilities and disowning the consequences. He didn’t just lose a grand-daughter, I think he lost the son he had hoped he had.”

  I think she drew a sharp but barely audible breath at that brutal truth, but she said nothing.

  “For Caitríona’s parents, it brought shame and they never forgave Caitríona for doing that to them. Ireland twenty years ago was a very different place. The Catholic church ruled everything, especially in the countryside, and to have a child outside of marriage was maybe the greatest crime.” I smiled, but bitterly. “It’s so ironic given everything else that was going on. So her parents were faced with the worst ignominy and the fear of losing everything they had worked to build up in a small country town.”

  I thought back to the rushed and hushed conversations on pay-phones that Summer, and about the blissful relief of the days together again in that tired little flat in Dublin.

  “Even for our friends, it changed things. For Oran, even. We’ve been friends since before we could even talk, and suddenly I just wasn’t around anymore. He’d say it was a blessed relief, I’m sure!”

  She smiled, and it lingered, but there was something else in her eyes.

  “Some had made the choice to be part of our lives,” I said, “and so maybe they were legitimate targets. But Aoife had no choice, she had no part in the decision. Yet she is the one who took the greatest impact, who lives with it more than even us. She was the innocent, so she deserves the best. I just wish I was able give that to her.”

  “And you met the people who adopted her?” she said, after a pause.

  I nodded.

  “Yes, we did,” I replied quietly. “They were desperate for a baby, it was what they wanted.”

  “They were older than you.”

  It was a statement, not a question, and I remembered that Hélène knew these people. She had perhaps eaten in their home, maybe she embraced them when they met and parted, they probably took an interest in her music and in her life. The anxious couple whose dreams we had held in our hands in that stuffy little room in the convent, whose trappings of modest success had so intimidated me – she knew them.

  I nodded.

  “If you had been older, do you think you would have made a different choice?”

  “Maybe,” I nodded, “probably. Yes. Yes, I think we probably would. We would have had a foundation to build on, more experience of the world, more confidence maybe. We would at least have had something to pass on to her.”

  Something to give her. I had always wished we’d had something to give her.

  “Do you ever regret what you did?”

  “No.” I shook my head emphatically. “No, I don’t ever regret what we did because it was the only thing we could do. Do I regret that we put ourselves in the position where we had to make that choice? Yes, every day. If I could change anything, it would be the choice we had, not the choice we made. I wouldn’t change what came after because I still think it was the best thing for her, I still think it gave her a better life. Jesus Christ, I hope it did.”

  Her face took on an expression that betrayed her doubt, her scepticism even.

  “It gave you a better life, perhaps.”

  And so we came to it, the natural, distasteful corollary to all of my logical, rational justifications. I sighed deeply.

  “It gave me a different life, yes. It gave me back the life I had planned and imagined. And maybe you’re right – maybe I have had a “better” life. But if we had kept her, and if my life had been a miserable struggle, then so would hers. And whether you believe my motives or not, that was what I was desperate to avoid.” I raised my voice a fraction then fought to rein in the frustration that was threatening to explode. “But better? Who can ever say? Who can say that I wouldn’t have got more from that life? Maybe Caitríona would still be here. That would be better.”

  It had been a barbed remark and left an awkwardness between us. She eventually broke the silence.

  “Do you have other children now?”

  “No, we never had another child.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged, because it was a question I had never been able to answer. I didn’t think we had made a mistake, I just couldn’t answer the question.

  “I suppose for the same reasons. We never said we didn’t want kids, but we never decided we did. I’ve seen so many people fall into the trap of having children because that is what we do. We reproduce, that’s what we do. We perpetuate the race. It’s in our blood. But too many of those people looked shell-shocked by what that choice brings. Too many of them struggle through a life that they didn’t think fully through. Maybe Aoife reminded us that it’s never a decision to take lightly. Caitríona always said that women have a natural, almost irresistible need to feel a baby growing inside them, to nurture and give birth and nurse. And Aoife somehow satisfied that need in her. And she never felt the urge again.”

  “And you? Did you feel the urge?”

  I hesitated, but the momentum carried me on.

  “Now and again, yes. But never so much that it became an obsession.”

  “Do you regret not having a part of your wife now?”

  Her candour and pragmatism had struck me since we had first met, but this was a brutally frank invasion of my darkest despairs. And yet either because this was my doing or because I needed this outlet for months or even years of pent-up emotion, I entertained it.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “I do, every day. And that’s why I’m looking for Aoife.”

  I stood up, not sure that I could bear more questioning or probing, and brought the impromptu session to an end.

  “We need
to get a move on,” I said, looking at my watch. “I’d like to make a start on your hair before we finish today.”

  She took her seat and we started again.

  By the time the almost black brown of her hair eclipsed the charcoal’s grey and her complexion had been warmed with a tinge of tan, it was time for Hélène to leave to prepare for the first of her Dublin gigs at the Arena. I walked her to the gate, and then I set about retouching strands of her hair so that they shone in the window’s sunlight. But I stopped and dropped wearily into the chair in front of the easel. I stared at the picture and she stared back.

  Her merciless, unrelenting questions had come unannounced and I had been ill-prepared for the assault. But they had afforded my first opportunity to express to another soul the thoughts that had chased each other around my head since I had started to look for Aoife, perhaps even before. I had often recited the words to myself along the towpath by the Thames or along the cliffs of Howth Head, but maybe they seemed to belie my sincere assertion that leaving her behind was best for her. But whether or not we were too young or too feckless to look after her, that is how the world looked to us and that was therefore our reality.

  My mobile phone’s shrill, pointlessly cheerful ring tone wrenched me abruptly from my thoughts.

  “Hello, this is Aengus.”

  “Hi, Aengus, it’s Niamh. How’s it going?”

  “Hi, Niamh. Good thanks. How’re you?”

  “Ah sure, grand. Listen, I’m going down to the village later and I was wondering if you fancied a coffee?”