All That I Leave Behind (32 page)

June’s lips were pressed tightly together, as if to keep any more words from escaping. Her hands were clasped together on the table, the huge emerald in her engagement ring glittering. ‘Yes, well, he didn’t like me much either. He really only liked Mary-Pat because she looked after him, and even then not as much as Rosie. You were the one he really loved, Rosie,’ June said, stretching her hand out to cover Rosie’s, who pulled it away and said in a tight voice, ‘Please stop. All of you.’ She was standing beside him and he could feel her whole body trembling. He put out an arm to steady her, but she gently pushed it away. ‘I’ve heard enough. I’m sure you all meant well, but I wish you hadn’t treated me like I didn’t matter. I’m not a child any more.’ And then she turned and walked out the kitchen door, leaving them all staring after her.

‘I’d better go find her,’ Pius said after a few minutes. It took all his self-control to quietly pull on his jacket and push his chair under the kitchen table, taking his tea mug to the sink and carefully washing it out. And then he turned to his two sisters, the two women to whom he’d been closest for his whole life, and he said, ‘You’re right about me. I am a coward. I know it. The dogs on the street know it, but at least I can tell myself that I’ve never lived a lie. I haven’t used someone else’s pain to feel better about myself.’ At this, June sat back in her chair, stunned, as if someone had physically assaulted her and Pius felt a flicker of regret, just for a second, but then he reminded himself of what she’d done. ‘I don’t care what she said in her letters or where she is or what she’s doing. She’s dead to me. Dead. Please don’t ever bring up her name again.’ And he turned and walked out the kitchen door.

He thought she’d be halfway to Dublin at this stage, but instead Rosie was standing quietly by the Beetle, shivering. ‘I forgot the keys,’ she said, teeth chattering. She must be freezing, he thought, standing outside in November in just a sweatshirt, and he hurried around to the driver’s door, turning the key in the lock. ‘Hop in.’

She stood there on the pavement, swaying, and he realised that she couldn’t hop anywhere. She was in shock. He ran around to the passenger side and opened the door, gently easing her into the front seat and strapping the seatbelt across her. She didn’t protest, just sitting back in the red vinyl seat, her head resting against the back, eyes closed. Her eyelids were blue and her lips almost grey. She looked so unwell, Pius wondered if he should call a doctor. He’d get her home first, he decided, and then he’d see how she was.

He had to stifle the urge to ram June’s Jeep on the way out, although it took every ounce of his self-control not to do so. They drove in silence up Main Street, which was festooned with bunting for the Monasterard Arts Festival, and over the humpback bridge over the canal. The trees had nearly lost all their leaves now, just a few scraps of rust hanging onto the branches, and a thick, silvery mist hung low over the water, which was like a long shiny mirror, not a ripple breaking its surface.

He pulled up in front of the house, turning the key in the ignition so that there was a deafening silence after the roar of the engine. The two of them sat there for a bit, and then he turned to her to say that it was time they went inside, when Rosie said, ‘I knew anyway.’ Her voice was tiny, like a child’s, her face chalk white.

‘Rosie, please don’t … she didn’t mean it to come out that way … it’s all crap, it really is.’

But Rosie interrupted. ‘It’s OK, Pi, I know you’re trying to help, but it’s all right, really. I knew the minute Daddy said. At least, I knew there was
something
. I think I’ve always known.’

Pius was mystified. ‘But how, Rosie, no one ever said anything, did they, at least, not before now. I didn’t know anything –’ he added hastily, ‘or I would have said, honest.’ And then he thought of Mammy and Daddy in the car on the way to Rosie’s christening and the thought occurred to him that he had known something after all. He’d sat there in the back seat, Rosie’s carrycot balanced on his knee, looking at the little red-head inside, at the way her tiny fingers curled over as she lay there fast asleep, and he’d known, somewhere inside him. It was in the set of his parents’ shoulders as they sat in front of him, staring straight ahead, in complete silence, until Daddy had turned to Mammy and said, ‘Thank you, Michelle.’ And his mother, without looking at him, had said, ‘I will never forgive you. Ever.’

He’d known. And like his sisters, he’d said nothing at all.

‘I know, Pi. But they didn’t have to say anything. It’s funny, because I’ve always felt a part of the family, but there was
something
. You were all too nice to me, that’s what it was.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I was just your annoying baby sister, but each one of you looked after me like parents and taught me all the things I’d need to know. I wonder if you all did that because you knew I wasn’t one of you, not really.’

‘Jesus, we were your
family
, Rosie,’ Pius said, mystified. ‘That’s what families do. And when Mammy left, it just seemed important. We looked after you because you were our sister and we loved you. It wasn’t any more complicated than that. And nothing about that has changed, love, no matter what your sisters have said, you have to understand that.’

He’d expected her to nod, to say that, of course, she understood, but instead she just looked out the window, a faraway look in her eye. ‘I went up with Mammy to Dublin … the day she left.’

Pius shook his head. ‘No, Rosie, you couldn’t have. June and Mary-Pat took you to the agricultural show in Mullingar. I remember, because it was the hottest day of the year and Mary-Pat had you in a big frilly bonnet to keep the sun off. I remember,’ he said again, as if trying to reassure himself. He
did
remember, he was sure of it.

Rosie shook her head, sadly. ‘No … I know I was with her because we went on the train and we came out somewhere big and noisy. It must have been Dublin. I remember lots of traffic and seagulls. We had to walk for ages and ages and my feet were sore, and then we got on a bus. I don’t remember much else except that the bus was really smelly. And then I was sitting high up on someone’s shoulders on a beach. I wasn’t very happy about it because it wasn’t Mammy.’ She half-smiled. ‘It must have been Maeve, that friend of Mammy’s. Then later, Mammy was talking to Maeve. I remember because she was pouring coffee from a tall white coffee pot with bright yellow daisies on it and I thought it was really pretty, and Maeve said something like, “Are you going to put up with it, Michelle?” Something like that anyway, and then Mammy said, “She may not be my flesh and blood but that only makes me love her more.”’

Pius didn’t know what to say. Instead, he just sat there, his mouth hanging open. Say something, you big eejit, he told himself. Say bloody something.

‘Ah, Rosie,’ Pius managed to find his voice, ‘I don’t know. It was such a long time ago and, sure, you were only a baby. Mammy could have been talking about anything at all.’

But Rosie interrupted, ‘You see, Pi, she looks so like me, even in those awful power suits and that big hair. But it’s not just that, it’s the way she stands. It took me a while to work out, but we both stand the same way.’

Pius felt bewildered now, and then the penny dropped. Of course. How had he never guessed. ‘Who are we talking about here, Rosie?’ he said carefully. ‘Is it that woman … Frances O’Brien?’ When she nodded slowly, he shook his head. Frances O’Brien, with her shiny teeth and nut-brown skin, whom he’d lusted after as a kid. How had he been such a fool to miss that, and her living in the house with them. Jesus, they’d probably done it right under Mammy’s nose.

He turned to her in the car and said carefully, ‘Have you spoken to her?’

Rosie nodded. ‘But I don’t think she wants to know, to be honest, and it’s OK, I don’t mind, Pi. She’s not family, I know she isn’t. She’s … she might be my mother, but she’s not my family. I have a family, or at least, I had.’ She wiped a tear away with the back of her hand.

‘Come here,’ Pius said, pulling her towards him, the pair of them stretched awkwardly across the gear stick. He squeezed her tightly, feeling the sharp bones of her shoulder blades. ‘You have a family. We’re your family and we always will be, even if we’ve made a holy mess of things. Your two sisters love you, you need to know that.’

She attempted a weak smile, which Pius didn’t have the heart to return. The two of them were probably sitting hunched over the kitchen table, drinking their umpteenth cup of tea, trading more secrets like currency at a market. Secrets weren’t like that, though. They couldn’t be revealed to win power or to score points – the two of them had got the wrong end of the stick there altogether. He’d never forgive them both. Never.

I
see the cot out of the corner of my eye, a small white carrycot, covered in padded plastic with a pattern of pink bunnies on it. It’s in a corner of the hall, and as I stand there, holding onto the door, I see it move a little, a little vibration, and a tiny mewling sound, like a kitten, comes out of it. I don’t move for a long time, just stand there, until a blast of wind blows the door against the back of my legs and the pain of it shakes me into moving across the hall, slowly, towards the carrycot.

I see her hands first, or hand. A little, tightly curled fist, which pushes the pink blanket away, followed by a leg, and then the blanket is a wriggling mass of pink as she moves, her cheeks rosy above her babygro. I gasp when I see her hair, a little tuft of it, a pale golden red, sticking up from her forehead. Her tongue is sticking out of her mouth, just the tip of it, as if to show how much she’s exerting herself to push the blanket off. ‘It’s hard work being a baby,’ I find myself saying. ‘Isn’t it?’

At the sound of my voice, she stops dead, her little fist still in the air, and her eyes move from side to side as she listens, and then she gives a little kick and a grunt of exertion, and I find myself laughing. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ She responds by giving a little gurgle.

‘Are you talking to me?’ I coo. ‘Is that it?’ Another gurgle and I think how like Junie she is. June was always on the move, wriggling and shuffling in her cot, a little blur of movement as she tried to kick her blankets off, soft ‘ehs’ of effort coming from her, followed by a satisfied ‘ah’, as she succeeded. But then I catch myself. For goodness’ sake, Michelle, how can she be like Junie? You fool.

‘She’s a lovely wee thing, isn’t she?’ His voice is tender and I find myself nodding, almost as an instinct, as we both peer into the cot and, for a second, we are the child’s parents, admiring our lovely newborn, looking down at her filled with love and awe at what we’ve produced. But so quickly, I see that it’s a horrible parody, an awful sham, and I stumble backwards, and he has to shoot a hand out to grab my elbow. ‘Easy. Easy, love.’

I close my eyes. ‘Don’t touch me,’ I hiss. ‘Do not put a finger on me ever again.’

He says nothing, but I can tell by the look in his eyes that he feels it, the defeat. He’s given up. His grip on my arm loosens and beside me I can feel him, can sense his shoulders slumping, his head tilting forward, can almost see him bite his lip like a naughty boy.

‘I’ll give her a bottle,’ he says. I feel like laughing out loud at the idea of John-Joe giving this little mite a bottle, he who has sung and played and bounced babies on his knee but never so much as changed a nappy in his entire life.

‘I’ll do it,’ I say, and I lean into the cot and pick her up and she’s soft and milky and warm in my arms. I hold her there for a minute. I don’t expect to feel it, not for a second, that surge, that rush of love to my heart that I felt when I first held Mary-Pat and Pius and Junie in my arms. That sense that they were nobody else’s but mine. Nobody’s. But I do. I feel it, and it’s so strong I have to steady myself, the little bundle in my arms, her tiny round shoulders, her soft little bottom, as she bumps her head off my shoulder and gives a little whine. That ‘where’s my food?’ whine that I recognise so well.

‘We’ll have a little bottle, won’t we?’ I coo. ‘Won’t we?’ And I carry her into the kitchen, humming a little song, and we sit down together in the old armchair by the fire.

From that day on, the baby and I are hardly ever parted. She sleeps in a cot at the end of my bed and I take her everywhere with me, pushing that huge ugly pram that Bridie gave me all those years ago up the canal and into the village, where I try to ignore the tuts and murmurs as I head up the main street, into the minimarket and around all the shelves, taking my time. I overheard Dympna O’Brien behind the meat counter say it, speak out loud the words everybody was thinking. ‘I don’t know how she can do that, you know. Pass that baby off as her own.’ Until Paddy Deely told her to whisht, that it was none of her damn business. And I felt like saying, but I’m not passing her off. I know she’s not mine. God knows, I know, but I feel it all the same, that we’re two lost souls, that we need each other. She needs my love and I need hers.

And I do love her. Every day, that love grows, and if sometimes I wonder where it will all end, I try to push the thought out of my mind. I try not to think of the damage this is all doing to Mary-Pat and Pius and June. Mary-Pat came up to me the other day when I was sitting on the bed, the baby in front of me, waving her little arms and legs in the air while I sang her a song. I was so lost in my own world that I didn’t see her until she cleared her throat. ‘Mammy?’

I looked up at her and it was as if I was seeing a stranger, and I felt suddenly ashamed. How long had it been since I’d been a mother to her, since we’d talked like we always used to?

‘Will the baby be staying much longer, or, ehm,’ she looked down at her feet, before blurting, ‘will we be keeping her?’ Poor love; she’d clearly been plucking up the courage to ask.

I didn’t answer for a moment but took Rosie’s soft little foot in my hand, feeling the tiny little toes, the wrinkles on the sole, like cracks in a riverbed. I reminded myself to rub olive oil on them later, to stop her skin drying out. ‘It’s just until my sister gets her strength back, that’s all,’ I said quietly, not daring to look at Mary-Pat, because we both knew that I wasn’t speaking the truth. My ‘sister’ whom I had never once mentioned, who, until a few months ago, hadn’t existed.