All That I Leave Behind (28 page)

Maeve was talking now, looking down at her hands. ‘Well …’ she added. ‘Not as far as I know. Your mother didn’t tell me everything, you know. We weren’t that close,’ she said.

Well, that was a lie, so what else was Maeve lying about. June remembered the smile of satisfaction, the look of self-importance in Maeve’s eyes every time she’d hand over a letter. I’m the secret-keeper, it said. Without me, where would you be? And June remembered then why she found it so hard to trust her, because she thought she could control her, doling out access to Mammy like it was a bag of sweets. Well, not any more.

‘Tell me the truth,’ she ordered, shocked as the words came out of her mouth like bullets. She wasn’t normally like that, so aggressive. Maeve recoiled, a frightened look on her face.

‘That
is
the truth,’ Maeve whispered. ‘As far as I know, June. Your mother was at a low ebb. Your father’s drinking was getting out of control and the smallholding wasn’t working out and,
well, there were your father’s … indiscretions; but an affair … I don’t know …’

For God’s sake. June didn’t know which of them was worse. Mind you, not that she was anyone to talk. She gripped the handles of her handbag so tightly her knuckles were white. She could feel the two bright spots of red on her cheeks. ‘Maeve, if you know something, can you just tell me? Rosie deserves it. She deserves to know who she is. Please.’ She almost choked on the word ‘please’.

Maeve nodded without speaking. There was a long silence, while the house around them shifted and groaned, like a creaky ship, and June felt that herself and Maeve were floating along on it, the two of them the only people alive.

‘I can still see your mother standing on the doorstep, you know, with Rosie beside her. It was an awful day, just awful. Grey and dreary and the rain hadn’t let up all morning,’ Maeve began. ‘Oh, she was in such a state, your poor mother. I was worried about her, I really was. She’d been under so much strain for the previous few months,’ and here Maeve blinked and looked down at her hands before taking a deep breath. ‘I think all the years of hardship had just worn her down. All those years of trying to live a life that just put so many demands on her, and, well, she just stood there, soaking wet, little Rosie standing there beside her in a little coat and knitted bonnet, and all she said was “help”. I can still remember it as if it were yesterday,’ Maeve said softly. ‘Just that word, “help” – it has such a finality to it. I could see that she was finished, just hollowed out.’ She sighed. ‘And so, that’s what I did. I rang the mailboat company and I booked a ticket and then Alan took her to Dun Laoghaire …’ Maeve stopped. ‘So help me, June, I still think I did the right thing.’

‘But
why
, Maeve?’ June didn’t know what question she was really asking. Why did she have an affair, if she did, why did she leave, why did she marry Daddy? All of that. There were so many whys.

‘You know, it takes a lot for a mother to leave her children, June. And to be honest, I probably didn’t understand myself. Alan and me weren’t blessed with children …’ Here, she paused for a second, clearing her throat. She put a hand to the small gold crucifix that hung around her neck, her bottom lip trembling. For a second, June felt sorry for her. She said nothing, just looked at Maeve expectantly. ‘I couldn’t see how …’ Maeve hesitated. ‘Well, I think she counted the cost of that every single day.’

I’ve had enough, June thought. I don’t want to think about how Mammy felt, I really don’t. She stood up from the sofa so quickly she felt giddy for a second and had to steady herself as she pulled the strap of her handbag over her shoulder. She looked down at Maeve, at the little collection of bones in the too-big cardigan, the shapeless skirt, and she almost felt sorry for her. ‘Thanks for seeing me, Maeve,’ she said blankly. ‘Don’t get up. I’ll see myself out,’ and she turned towards the door, trying not to bolt.

‘But that’s not everything …’ Maeve protested.

‘I’ve heard enough,’ was June’s only reply. She tried not to run to the front door, tap-tapping down the hall with its parquet flooring and carefully opening the door, a gust of wind pushing into her, sending her hair flying around her head. She almost didn’t hear Maeve’s reedy voice following her. ‘Talk to Mary-Pat. She knows.’

***

I hate her, I hate her, I hate her, the mantra kept spinning in June’s head as she drove towards the seafront, a line of silver-grey on the horizon, then turned left again in the direction of Dublin. The mantra stayed in her head all the way home, and it took her a while to understand who she was ranting about. It wasn’t Maeve at all. It was Mammy. All these years. All that time spent protecting her memory and keeping that bloody secret – for what? Who on earth gained from it – not Rosie, not Mary-Pat and certainly not her. Look at what she’d done, trying to wreck her own life. June thumped the steering wheel, screaming at Lyric FM, which was warbling away in the background. As if classical music could give her a bit of class.

By the time she got home, she’d burnt herself out. She pulled up the gravel drive and switched the car off, wearily getting out and clambering down, opening the front door and stepping inside, the cool air of the hall enveloping her. She could barely put one foot in front of the other and had no idea how she’d get through the evening. Maybe she could cancel – say she had a migraine, but no, she couldn’t do that to him, she thought. She looked around the hall, taking in the silence in the house. Gerry mustn’t be back yet. God, she hoped the board meeting hadn’t gone on for too long or he’d be in a terrible mood. At least, she’d have time to shower and change, to wash the smell off her now. She threw her handbag on the table and went to climb the stairs, and then she let out a little scream. Gerry was sitting on the top step in the semi-darkness, a glass of whiskey in his hand.

‘Where have you been?’

T
he
sun is beating down through the open windows of the car and I can feel the seats sticky underneath me. I’m in the front seat and Bob’s driving, and Mary-Pat and June are in the back, bickering over who gets to sit closest to the tinny stereo that’s blasting out the charts into the car. I’ve let John-Joe go with Melody and Pi in the other car. Serves him right, she can bore him to death. She’d probably be just about the only woman in the world he wouldn’t make a pass at. And besides, I can’t bear to look at him. Every time I do, I see him, his hands on that girl.

I close my eyes for a few seconds and just feel the sun on my face, the heat of it, warming me to my bones. And it feels good, the warm breeze in my hair; I feel myself relax, my shoulders drop, my muscles soften. Mary-Pat and June are singing along to ‘My Sharona’, the two of them miming, then yelling out the chorus, ‘Muh-muh, muh, My Sharona.’ And I can hear them both laugh, and Bob cracks a joke and they giggle and Mary-Pat says that he’s quite funny for an old man. She’s such a funny girl, Mary-Pat, so forthright, so cheeky – she can make anyone laugh, and yet she’s more sensible than any of us. It was she who walked the goats over to Sean this morning and asked him if he’d mind them for the couple of days.

If anyone ever asked me what the final straw was, I’d have to say, ‘the goats’. It seems laughable, the notion that once I thought they were our salvation; that if only we could get hold of a pair of goats, all our problems would be solved – the goats would be a symbol of our lifestyle, of our choices, and all that lovely, creamy milk and cheese an emblem of our success in the life we’d chosen, a sign of richness, of completeness. What a joke.

I lean back against the headrest and I find myself nodding off, and as I do, I can feel it wash over me, the exhaustion, the feeling that I could sleep forever. Just then, as if she read my mind, June begins to tap me, her fingers sharp in the flesh of my upper arm, little jabs. My eyes shoot open and, before I can stop myself, I’m reaching around into the back seat and slapping her hard on the top of her legs, one, two, three times. I can see my hand moving, the marks of my fingers bright red on her little brown legs. Her mouth opens in shock, a little ‘o’, and then she’s wailing, a long, almost silent howl, and Bob is saying, ‘Michelle, take it easy, they were only messing.’ And I turn around and face forwards again and look out the windscreen at the green trees flashing by, hear the tiny snatches of birdsong, the hum of a tractor in the distance, and my hand is shaking. Did I just do that? I wonder. Did I just hit my child? And it’s all I can do to stop myself opening the door of the car and throwing myself into the ditch.

***

The campsite at Carnsore is a riot of orange canvas and cars, all jumbled up behind the sand dunes, the large white catering tents in the distance, and already I can hear the music floating across the hot, dry grass. People are sprawled out on the dunes, sunbathing and smoking, their placards on the grass beside them: ‘No to Nuclear’, ‘Nuclear Power, Nein Danke’. We clamber out of the car and I try not to look at June, and we gaze around us at the sea of tents. ‘That man’s not wearing any clothes, Mammy,’ Mary-Pat pipes up, as a naked man dives into the sea with a whoop.

‘I can see that,’ I say. ‘Let’s see if we can find Dad, will we?’

The two girls are subdued as we walk towards the stalls at the corner of the site, a long row of white canvas. In one, a German couple is cooking sausages and the aroma, along with the rich stew of frying onion, makes my stomach rumble. I desperately want to eat one, but I know that we’ll have to make do with the rations we brought: a few eggs from the hens, a big bag of potatoes and, the
pièce de résistance
, a big slab of ham donated by Bridie. What would I do without Bridie? Just the thought of the food makes my mouth water.

The girls know better than to ask for something I can’t afford, but I say it anyway. ‘We’ll get our eggs and ham as soon as we find Daddy and set up the stove.’ But they’re distracted by the sight of a naked man in what looks like a large cage, a beard down to his ankles, the bones in his shoulders sticking out, his cheeks hollow. A hand-painted sign stuck to the front of the cage says ‘Blanket Protest’.

The girls start to giggle and I find myself joining in, the three of us with our hands over our mouths. ‘Why is he protesting about a blanket, Mammy?’ Mary-Pat asks.

‘I think it’s to do with the Troubles,’ I say vaguely. ‘The prisoners are protesting about their rights. At least I think they are.’ The Troubles seem a million miles away right now.

‘Oh, yes, Sister Fidelma makes us pray for all the poor people in the North,’ June says, talking for the first time since we’d arrived. When I look at her, she doesn’t meet my eye but looks down at the ground instead, the toe of her sandal scuffing along the sandy ground.

‘Well, that’s a lovely thing,’ I say. ‘I’m sure they can hear your prayers.’

She gives me the look then that I deserve.

‘C’mon, let’s go down to the water,’ I say, and the two girls scream in delight. They haven’t been to the sea, not really, and the size of it, the flat blueness, intrigues them. They are used to the warm brownness of the canal and Mary-Pat shrieks as she dips a toe in the water. ‘It’s freezing. Mammy, can we swim?’

I nod and they strip to their little red knickers and hop up and down in the tiny waves, letting out little screams of delight. And I remember that Mummy used to take me to Sandycove every day during the summer and I’d watch her swim out to the buoy about a hundred yards away, a firm, ladylike breaststroke, her head high above the water in her frilly rubber swimming hat. She’d get out of the water then in her black swimsuit, her thighs heavy and mottled, her toes turning in with bunions and she’d sit down beside me and reach a damp hand into her purse and pull out two sixpence pieces. ‘Off you go,’ she’d command and I’d run up to the ice-cream van, returning with two 99s to see her in her tent, a big circle of blue towelling with an elasticated top, under which I could see her arms move, her knees lifting to pull off her togs and pull on her roll-on. She’d send me for ice-creams so that she could preserve her privacy, her dignity, and as I watched the girls, I wondered what dignity
I had to preserve. What sense of myself I still had left, what kind of a mother I could be to my children.

And then I see it, the shell. It’s hard to miss because it’s about four times the size of the other shells on the beach. This one is big and black and has a bumpy matt surface, a bit like the surface of the moon, and when I hold it in my hand, it feels warm. I hold it up to my ear and I hear the hiss of the sea, and then I think of my childhood swims with Mummy and it’s all I can do not to let out a bellow of pain, right here on the beach.

When Mary-Pat comes up to me, shivering, water dripping off her hair, I give it to her and tell her to hold it up to her ear, and when she does, her mouth opens in wonder. ‘Every time you listen to it, think of me, will you?’ I say.

She doesn’t reply because she has no idea what I mean, and so I just shake my head and tell her not to take any notice of my nonsense. ‘Let’s go and find Daddy, shall we, and we’ll have our tea,’ I say, rubbing the girls dry with the small hand towel I’ve brought, then watching them run off together up the dunes. They’d be all right, I think, if I wasn’t there. They have each other. It’s Pius I’d worry about. He’d miss me more than any of them.

I can’t believe I’m even imagining this, I think, as I tilt my face up to the hot sun, that it’s even entered my mind. But more and more these days, I find myself wondering what it would feel like not to live this life any more. Not to have to face another day of disappointment, of looking at John-Joe over the kitchen table and thinking about just how much I’ve come to hate him. You’ve let me down, I think. You’ve let us all down. You’re not the man I thought you were. Maybe you never were.

I pull myself up to a standing position, and my bones ache; they feel stiff and tired, as if the years of damp and cold have lodged in them permanently. I trudge off up the dunes to find the girls, wandering through the sea of orange until I see the yellow tent that Bob brought with him. It’s not hard to pick out because it’s decorated with huge Tibetan prayer flags that he brought back from his ‘pilgrimage’ to that country. That and a tendency to preach about spirituality and being at one with the universe.