All That I Leave Behind (2 page)

I run my hand over their faces, their hair, and I kiss them, one by one, kiss them goodnight, as if I’m tucking them up in bed again, that tattered Ladybird copy of
Rapunzel
in my hand, their noses peeking above the blankets of Mammy and Daddy’s bed, where they always had their night-time story. I don’t kiss the adults they will have since become, because to me they are forever children. I kiss them and I pray for them in my own way, and then I go to sleep and they are in my dreams
.

R
osie
stood at the door for a few moments, the summer breeze coming in through the open window lifting her hair around her face, tendrils of bright red wafting across her eyes. The breeze was warm and on it she could hear the constant caw-caw of the rooks in the trees near the Protestant church. She’d forgotten how loud they were, the rooks. She used to pass them every day on her way to school, ducking underneath the oak tree and running so that one of them wouldn’t crap on her, hands over her ears so that the sudden crack of the bird-scarer wouldn’t make her jump out of her skin, terrified that one of the birds would fix her with a beady eye and swoop, like in
The Birds
.

She closed her eyes for a second, clutching her handbag to her, feeling the red leather slick from her sweaty hand. She looked down at her feet and wondered if the espadrilles were
a bit disrespectful in a place like this, as if she were dressed for the beach? But then she shook her head. For God’s sake, it wasn’t Mass, and Daddy wouldn’t give a shit about what she wore. He’d consider it highly entertaining that she was fretting about dress codes, she who had hardly worn a stitch of clothing for the first five years of her life. Mary-Pat had had to threaten to take away her collection of stag beetles before she agreed to wear the scratchy jumper and skirt that was her school uniform. ‘But I’m a free spirit,’ she’d protested, as her sister had shoved her arms into the horrible blue nylon-wool mix. ‘Daddy said so.’

‘Daddy doesn’t have to go to school,’ Mary-Pat had barked. ‘Daddy doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to, for that matter. It’s easy for some of us to be free spirits. Now, shut up and get dressed, will you, and give me a break?’

A free spirit. That’s who I used to be, Rosie thought as she tiptoed into the room, inhaling the smell of disinfectant and something else sickly sweet. Her stomach churned and she remembered that she hadn’t eaten since they’d landed six hours ago, a greasy fry under the hot lights of the airport café. She felt her chest tighten again. She reached into her handbag and pulled out her inhaler, taking two deep puffs, clutching it in her hand as she walked over to the bed.

‘Daddy?’ The man in the bed didn’t respond because he was fast asleep, his mouth open, revealing an expanse of pink gum. Oh, she thought, it’s not him. It’s not Daddy. This man looked like a mummy, shrunken and wizened, his cheeks hollow because they’d taken his teeth out: they were floating in a glass by the side of the bed. Daddy didn’t have false teeth, she was sure of it.

‘Daddy?’ she said again. She went to the end of the bed and saw the medical chart clipped to the frame. She lifted the
chart up and examined the name on the top line, a scrawl in blue biro. John-Joe O’Connor. Daddy’s date of birth. She swallowed hard then looked at the man in the bed again. His cheeks had collapsed, making his nose even more prominent. She knew that nose, the bump on the bridge of it from when he’d broken it playing football. And she knew the mole on his right cheek. His hair was fully white now, but it still curled around his ears, one of which had a hole in it for a piercing but no silver earring. He wouldn’t like that, she thought, being without his lucky earring.

He gave a little snore, a short one, followed by a long silence, and for a second Rosie thought he’d stopped breathing, but then he exhaled loudly. She suppressed the scream which had risen to her throat and instead lifted the inhaler to her mouth and took another long breath in, holding it for a few seconds and then breathing out. She turned around, as if checking to see if there was anyone nearby, and then she tried, ‘Daddy, it’s me, Rosie.’ Silence. ‘Ehm, I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you in a while. I was away, but you know that, of course.’ She blushed as she heard her silly words in the silence. ‘Away.’ As if that could sum up all those years and all those miles she’d put between herself and this place, her home. If Pius hadn’t written to her about Daddy, she knew that she would probably never have returned. It was a mistake – she’d been here five minutes, and she already knew that. But she’d had to come home, because if she never saw Daddy again before - well, she’d never forgive herself.

She pulled up a big red chair and sat right on the edge of it, feeling the plastic stick to the back of her thighs. She pushed her legs underneath, wincing as her calf bashed against the hard commode below the seat. ‘How are you, Daddy?’ she tried, feeling even more foolish. Then she reached out and took one of his hands in hers and gave it a little squeeze. ‘It’s good to see you.’ She turned his hand over in hers, those long, slender hands with the lovely fingers that he’d used to say were made to play piano at the Wigmore Hall, not dig big bushels of spuds in the arse end of nowhere. When she saw his nails, she swore out loud. ‘For God’s sake, Daddy.’ They were filthy, the cuticles ragged. ‘It’s a good job you’re asleep,’ she said, ‘that way you can’t see the state of your hands.’ He’d always been so careful about his appearance. He’d been delighted to discover V05 hair gel, which he’d nicked from Pius, smoothing down his silvery-black curls in the bathroom mirror, smacking his lips and baring his beautiful white teeth, which no amount of smoking and drinking seemed to have dulled. Then he’d take his brown-leather manicure case out of the drawer in the medicine cabinet and begin his work of filing and shaping. That must be where June got it, that love of making herself look nice. June would have exactly the same expression on her face when she looked into the mirror, one of total absorption, mixed with a fair bit of self-admiration. Rosie wondered what June would look like now. She’d be forty-one and Rosie couldn’t imagine her growing older. Maybe she’d have Botox or fillers. June was made for that kind of stuff. The thought made her giggle, before she covered her mouth with her hand.

Still holding Daddy’s hand in one of hers, with the other, trembling, Rosie opened the cabinet beside the bed, hoping that she’d spot it now. Sure enough, it was in a blue washbag, sure to have been packed by Mary-Pat, along with a bottle of Blue Stratos, a bar of soap, a toothbrush and a packet of cigarettes, a cheap plastic lighter shoved into a corner of the packet. ‘I thought you’d given up the fags,’ Rosie said out loud as she opened the manicure set. ‘God, I’d kill for a fag, do you know that? But I gave them up, Daddy, would you believe? Yep. Two years and six months ago, but who’s counting?’ And anyway, she thought now as she looked longingly at the cigarettes, Craig would smell it off her breath. He was like a bloodhound when it came to that kind of thing, could sniff out cigarette smoke and alcohol at a hundred yards. He wouldn’t say a word, she knew, but a look would be enough. She’d seen that look once, and she never wanted to see it again.

She extracted a tiny silver nail file from the case and, turning his left hand gently in hers, began to clean under the nails, paring away all the dirt, which she wiped onto a tissue which she’d spread on the bed. She filed away for a bit and then she said, ‘Do you remember what you used to say to me at the gate, Daddy?’ rubbing a little of the hand cream she’d found at the bottom of his washbag into his hands, smoothing the cream along his fingers, once slender, now distorted by arthritis, which had made his joints swell. ‘“Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” Handy.’ She smiled as she turned his hand and rubbed cream over the palm, which was cracked. ‘You knew what they could be like. Small town,’ she continued. ‘Small minds.’ She could see him then as she stood at the school gate, tipping his invisible hat and announcing, ‘Time to head to the office, Doodlebug. See you after school,’ and then he’d be gone, a little saunter up over the bridge, Colleen the dog trying to keep up, before the two of them would make a quick right turn, as if Daddy had only just thought of it and not planned it carefully, into Prendergast’s. There, Daddy would drink one pint of Guinness and smoke one cigarette and read the
Irish Independent
. He never drank more than one pint in the morning and one in the afternoon: the benders, he kept for Friday and Saturday nights. He regarded it as a sign that he was a man of discipline. Could control himself. Just like any other man, he’d use routine to structure his day, except instead of car and office and home for dinner, his was pub and bookies and only then home to do a few jobs around the house.

Of course, she hadn’t seen it then, that this routine wasn’t quite like other fathers’, wasn’t something to be proud of, she supposed. She’d heard it more than once, the slightly-too-loud comment from one of the teachers or one of the girls in the minimarket about ‘that fellow, dossing around the town. Sure he’s a good for nothing, so he is.’ Rosie’s cheeks would burn, but with indignation, not shame. How dare they say things like that about her daddy. She knew her daddy. And he was always there for her. Always. How she’d missed him, even though he’d never once written. ‘Ah, sure, I’m no good at that kind of thing,’ he’d said when she’d pushed him once. ‘I’m hopeless with words, you know that, Rosie-boo.’ Instead, he’d made a ‘trunk call’ as he still called it, every second Sunday, never forgetting to reverse the charges, the roar of the punters at Prendergast’s in the background, the clink of pint glasses as he brought her up to date with the going at Kempton Park, the favourite for the 3.45 at Leopardstown racecourse – never anything personal, just ‘
ráiméis
’, as he called it. He probably felt safe with that, with nonsense, and she did too – the two of them carefully skirting any difficult subjects.

Rosie had made sure to hide the phone bills from Craig, paying them every month from her credit card. He was very careful about expenditure. And then, just after Christmas this year, the calls had stopped, and when she’d rung Pi, he’d told her that Daddy was ‘tired’, and then he was ‘in for a few tests’. Why had she not guessed? Maybe all the wedding stuff had distracted her, made her forget what was really important. ‘You’re here now,’ Pi had said to her earlier, but that didn’t make her feel any less guilty.

‘I didn’t know Prendergast’s had closed,’ she said now. ‘Although I suppose you haven’t had cause to go there for a while anyway. Pi tells me that Blazers on the Dublin Road is the place now. Might try it some time.’ She grinned. ‘Sounds like my kind of place. Not.’ She paused. ‘Not now that I’m a reformed character anyway. You’ll be glad to know that I don’t drink any more, can you believe it? I’m very well behaved, Daddy. I know I led you all a merry dance, didn’t I? Mary-Pat used to say I had her heart broken. That’s why she pushed me onto that bus to Dublin. I suppose I can’t really blame her.’

She could see herself still, looking out the window of the bus, in that big hairy coat she’d found at the back of Daddy’s wardrobe, the one that smelled godawful but that she wore to annoy Mary-Pat because her sister had taken one look at her the first time she’d appeared in it and had screamed, ‘Take that bloody thing off, or I will personally rip it off your back, do you hear me?’ It had been an invitation: Rosie had made a point of wearing it to breakfast, dinner and tea, ignoring her sister’s look of disgust, because she was so pleased to have rubbed her up the wrong way. That was her mission in life then: to cause Mary-Pat as much hassle as she possibly could, because she knew she could get away with it. Because she thought her sister would love her anyway, no matter what she did. She’d been wrong about that.

Which was why she’d said not one word to her about coming home. The only person she’d told was Pius, because she knew he’d keep his mouth shut. To his credit, he’d said he wouldn’t breathe a word, even though he’d written that her two sisters would be ‘surprised’. That was one word for it. ‘They’ll be thrilled to see you,’ he’d added at the bottom of the postcard he’d sent her of St Munchin’s Cistercian Abbey. He sent a postcard every week, often with nothing more than a scribbled line in his spidery handwriting, or some silly quote from the local newspaper that had caught his eye, but now, he’d written a full paragraph, ending with: ‘They miss you, Rosie.’ Rosie knew that her brother was just being kind. If they missed her that much, why had neither of them visited, even once? Pi, she could understand, what with his … illness, but Mary-Pat and June? Apart from the polite letters at Christmas and on her birthday, she’d heard hardly a word from either of them. But then, she hadn’t left them on the best of terms, had she?

She could still remember that June had pulled her aside during one of her sister’s visits home. Rosie had been wearing the coat for a few weeks, and Mary-Pat had more or less stopped speaking to her. She’d said gently, ‘Rosie, love, will you take the coat off? It’s upsetting everyone.’

‘Why?’ Rosie’s chin had jutted out stubbornly, her hand on her hips. Truthfully, she was only dying to get rid of the awful coat – it made her itch like mad – but she wasn’t about to give in to Mary-Pat.

‘It was Mammy’s,’ June explained patiently. ‘It makes people remember her, you see, every time they see you in it. It’s … awkward,’ she finished.

Rosie had wanted to pull the coat off then and hurl it as far away from her as she possibly could, but because she was young and stubborn, she continued to wear it, shuffling in and out of the sitting room, making sure that she walked in front of the TV when Mary-Pat was trying to watch
Coronation Street
, making a point of brushing her teeth in the bathroom at night in her T-shirt and shorts and that coat, even though it made her feel sick to wear it. Sick and sorry and embarrassed. But she wouldn’t give in, she’d decided, no matter how much it cost.