All That I Leave Behind (6 page)

He gave the box a little shake. It felt quite heavy, and whatever was inside it gave a little thud. It, too, had a catch, an ornate one in the shape of a Chinese symbol, and it only took a little push to open it. He placed it on the floor underneath the light to get a closer look, because he couldn’t see properly in anything but the brightest light these days, and he scanned the box’s contents.

It took a while for him to understand. He could see what each item was, but his brain just didn’t register. It should have done, because he knew the writing so well, but he just couldn’t understand what it was doing, their names neatly printed on the brown card luggage labels with their string ties and carefully Sellotaped to the objects. Pius picked the book up first, the weight of it too heavy for one hand. The smell of old book hit his nostrils and it was all he could do not to retch as he opened it, the title engraved on the second of the mottled brown pages.
Gone with the Wind
, Margaret Mitchell. The name on the top read ‘June Spencer’. Must have been one of Mammy’s family. Pius shook his head and closed the book, pulling the luggage label into the light so that he could decipher the name on it. ‘June O’Connor’.

He blinked for a few minutes then put the book down. His wrist ached from the weight of it. He looked at the label again, at Mammy’s handwriting. His mouth felt dry and he swallowed, pushing the lump in his throat back down a little bit and he could hear the blood pumping in his ears, a steady whump-whump. He only thought for a second about shoving the things back into the box: the desire to hold them, to examine them, to understand them was too strong. His hand shook as he picked up the scroll of rolled-up paper. It had his name on it. Hands shaking, he pulled at the little bit of Sellotape that held the scroll together and rolled it out, squinting in the light. ‘A French Potager’ read the title at the top, and beneath it, a map of rows of broad beans, cabbages, potatoes, nasturtiums, pansies. A miniature apple tree shaded rows of primula and a raised bed with ‘turnips’ marked on it.

It was like a voice from the dead. As if she were standing beside him, showing him the map, pointing out the shady spots where the ferns would thrive and the well-drained soil that would be needed for the root veg. If he closed his eyes, he could see her, could hear her voice. ‘See here, Pi, wouldn’t a climbing rose look just fantastic over the trellis in front of the gazebo, or maybe a vine, what do you think?’ Her hands were on her hips, her blonde hair frizzy around her head, tied back with a piece of gardening twine because she didn’t care one jot about how she looked. She was smiling at him, the wrinkles fanning out from her grey eyes. ‘Well, Pi, what do you think? Will you do it?’

He opened his eyes, blinking in the dim light. He was talking to a ghost. She was gone, had been for nearly thirty years. He’d counted the years like that: the first year after Mammy left, the second, the fifth and so on, until now, more than a quarter of a century, and the pain inside of him was as raw as it had been the day she left. All this time, her message had been lying here, hidden away from him, a message that he’d thought she’d never left him. Never left any of them. Seeing it made her alive for him in a way she hadn’t been since she’d walked out the door that summer day.

‘Yes, Mammy,’ he said into the silence. ‘Of course I’ll do it.’

He read the other labels, the one with Mary-Pat’s name on it stuck on the shell that looked as if it had come from Africa, with its beautiful mother-of-pearl inside, the roar of the sea when he held it up to his ear, the tight wad of Sellotape that held Rosie’s name in place around the chunky silver ring. Daddy wore that ring, he thought, but this wasn’t his. It was too small. And then he felt bad, because the objects weren’t his to see. He’d have to give them to the girls and let them do with them as they saw fit. But then, the thought of what might happen if he did made him panic. He shoved the things back in the box and slammed the lid down, as if by closing them inside they’d just cease to exist. As if he could just erase the last few moments from his mind, could pretend they’d never happened. He put the box back in the steamer trunk and sat down on it, staring into space.

‘Pi, you up there?’ Rosie’s voice floated up to him through the open hatch. ‘I thought I’d give you a hand to find the paint.’

He had to clear his throat with a loud coughing noise. ‘No need. It’s not here.’

‘Oh.’ There was a long silence and then Rosie’s head appeared through the hatch, her tiny face with its scattering of freckles.
A deep line split her forehead as she frowned. ‘Is everything all right?’

And even as he said everything was grand, just grand, and that he needed to have a look in the shed, turning off the attic light and practically shoving her down the steps onto the landing, he was thinking, of course it’s not fucking all right. Everything’s changed, can’t you see that? Nothing will ever be the same again. And then the thought came to him: and it’s all your fault. Mary-Pat was right. If you hadn’t come back, none of this would have happened. And then, he gave out to himself for even having thought such a thing – how was it Rosie’s fault exactly?

When she came into the kitchen later and offered to make lunch, he felt so guilty for his disloyal thoughts that he made an extra effort to be nice. Yes, he’d love some carrot and coriander soup, thanks – yes, he knew that it was fantastic to have your own veg and, yes, he really should use them more, instead of that awful packet tomato stuff. And all the time his head was spinning, mind filling with thoughts, one jumbling on top of the other.

He was so preoccupied, he didn’t notice the noise of the knife slamming through the onion onto the board, making a loud rapping sound on the wood, but then it grew louder and louder, until she yelled, ‘Ow, crap,’ and held up her finger, which instantly began to pour blood, a long trail of it dripping onto the board.

Pi was beside her. ‘Here, let me,’ he said, holding her hand in his and leading her over to the sink, running the cold tap and holding her finger under it, a stream of pink flowing down to the plughole. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we’ll wrap it in a bit of kitchen paper while I hunt down the plasters,’ and he pushed a wad around her finger. ‘Hold onto that for a second,’ and he went into the living room, where he rummaged around under a pile of yellowing newspapers until he found what he was looking for.

‘I knew I had some somewhere,’ he said, returning to the kitchen clutching the tin of Elastoplast. ‘Let’s have a look,’ he said, and placed one gently around her finger, the thin blob of blood on the cut flattening down under the plaster. ‘Pius will make it all better. Just like when you were eight and you fell over the water barrel in the yard and you needed ten stitches.’

‘Oh, God, yes.’ Rosie smiled at the memory. ‘And you distracted me at the hospital by telling me some big long story about a pike eating someone’s toes.’

‘That wasn’t a story,’ Pius joked.

‘Very funny.’ Rosie attempted a smile, but her face had gone a milky shade of white, and her teeth chattered in shock. There was a pause, and then Rosie said, ‘Pi, if I tell you something, will you promise not to tell Mary-Pat? Or June?’

Pius sighed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. ‘You can tell your old brother anything, you know that, hmm?’

‘I know, Pi. I always could.’ She paused. ‘I’m not sure I want any of this.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Any of
this
–’ Rosie gestured to the garden, the house. ‘It’s all Craig’s idea – it’s his dream and it’s what he wants, but I think it’s a mistake.’

‘Getting married, is that what you mean?’ Pius said, thinking about the Yank and what a long drink of water he was. ‘Or coming back?’

‘I don’t know.’ There was a long pause.

‘You’ve been gone a long time, Rosie. It’ll take time to settle back in, to get to know everyone again. And Daddy—’ Pius tried to reassure her, but she interrupted, ‘I got fired, well, made redundant, but it amounts to the same thing.’

‘Oh? Oh,’ was all Pius could manage. He knew she had some do-gooding job, working with kids – he hadn’t been able to see it somehow, but maybe he was thinking of the old Rosie, barely more than a kid herself. This new Rosie, all grown up. Yes, he could see that.

‘I worked in a centre with disturbed teenagers – please, no comments about the irony of it,’ she added. ‘And I got the boot when one of the lads went mad with a snooker cue and smashed the place up.’

‘Sounds as if it wasn’t your fault, Rosie-boo.’

‘It was, because I was really, really crap at it. It turns out that having once been a disturbed teenager is no preparation for dealing with them.’ She couldn’t help it – she had to laugh.

‘Ah, Rosie, I’d say you’re being hard on yourself.’

‘Not hard enough.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m at a bit of a … juncture, I suppose you could call it. I’ve always just got along, ever since I left. I managed to find work in Dublin and then I met Craig and went to the States, and it just seemed that life would go along like that for ever, but now …’ Her voice trailed away. ‘Have you ever found that, that you’ve just come to a stop and you’ve no idea where to go next?’

No, Pius thought to himself, because I’ve never really got started.

She blushed then. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t very tactful.’

He shrugged. He supposed she was talking about what had happened to him – but he wasn’t going to go there. Not now.

‘Are you better now?’

‘Ah, sure, I’m all right.’ He gave her a little squeeze. ‘And you’ll be all right, Rosie-boo.’

She shook her head impatiently. ‘None of you want me here, do you?’

No, we probably don’t, Pi thought to himself, while understanding that this was not the answer his sister was looking for. Because she was right, in a way – about coming home – it had shaken them all.

He had no idea how to reassure her. What to say. And then it came to him. Without another word, he left the room and climbed the stairs to his bedroom, where he’d smuggled the box, holding it behind him as he’d ushered her down the attic stairs to the landing. When he came back into the kitchen, he had a small brown-paper package in his hand. He cleared his throat. ‘Ehm, I thought you might like to have this.’

‘What is it?’ Rosie eyed it warily.

‘Open it.’

She took it from him and looked at it, at the crumpled brown paper and the tight wad of Sellotape. ‘It has my name on it,’ she said.

He nodded.

‘Whose handwriting is this?’ She looked at the immaculate hand, the ‘R’ in Rosie an elaborate flourish.

‘It’s Mammy’s.’

Rosie looked up at him and then back at the tiny package, examining it, turning it over in her hand. He’d wrapped it well, burying it hastily under several layers of brown paper, which he’d found under the bed, but he hadn’t been able to get the label to stick on properly and it hung off at a funny angle. Eventually, she pulled at a bit of Sellotape, and when it came away, she pulled at another bit, until there was a hole in the paper through which they could see a flash of silver. She pushed back the nest of paper to reveal the silver ring, rough-hewn, with a knobbly purple stone in the middle. When she tilted it towards the light, it took on a muted glow.

Pius nodded then. ‘I think he had a friend make them, one for each of them. He still wears his,’ Pius added. ‘I know, the irony.’

‘Why did she leave it for me?’

‘I don’t know, Rosie-boo. Maybe she wanted you to make the right choice.’

There was a long silence while Rosie slipped the ring on her ring finger, where it wobbled around, far too big for it.

‘Do you love him?’

Her head shot up. ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

‘Well, then.’ And they both looked at the ring. ‘Pius’s marriage guidance,’ he added, ‘from the benefit of my vast experience.’

She managed a laugh, and he took his chance then to change the subject. He cleared his throat and asked the question that had been on his mind all afternoon. ‘Ehm, your friend Daphne.’

‘Yes?’ Rosie looked mystified.

‘Is she, I mean … is there a Mr Daphne?’

If she was surprised, she hid it well, Pius thought. ‘Oh. Yeah, Kevin. He’s an idiot.’

‘Oh.’ He tried to conceal it, but he couldn’t help feeling pleased. ‘Let’s finish chopping that onion, shall we?’

‘Right,’ Rosie said, punching him playfully on the arm. ‘And thanks,’ she said, looking thoughtfully at the ring.

J
ohn-Joe
has just given me a ring, and I don’t quite know what to make of it. I don’t even know if I like it, or even if I like him. There’s something about him that’s so … powerful, like standing too close to the sun, but do I like him? I haven’t decided yet.

It’s quite an ugly ring, a battered-looking silver thing with a huge knobbly purple stone in it; I’m holding it between my thumb and forefinger, examining it, while I try to work out quite what to say. It’s hard, when you feel that a tidal wave has swept over you, when you feel that someone has come into your life and whipped it up into a whirlwind and the only thing you can do is just give in to it. It’s frightening, but then I remind myself that this is what I’ve always wanted, that sense that life could go anywhere at all, that it wasn’t just one dreary day following another, my whole future stretching out in front of me.

How often have I pictured myself in this new life, imagined myself sitting at a long table filled with exotic food that I have to eat with my fingers, drinking wine out of chipped mugs, the sun on my face. I’ll be wearing something long and loose, and I will have thrown away the girdle that cuts into my tummy and leaves angry red stripes on my skin. And my hair will be falling around my shoulders, not squashed to my face in those horrible heated rollers. And there’ll be a man there too, tall and handsome and brown from the sun – and bare-chested. I have to giggle at that part of the fantasy, because sleeveless jumpers, shirts and ties are also banned in my new world. And shoes! There’ll be no more Sunday afternoons in the drawing room, the fire hissing in the grate, listening to the rain beating on the window, the rustle of Pa’s newspaper and the tick-tock of the French clock on the mantelpiece as I wait for Mummy to look up and ask, as if she’s never asked the question before, ‘Sherry, Pa?’ And for Pa to reply, ‘Is it time, dear?’ When I want to scream at the top of my voice, ‘Of course it’s bloody time. It’s been the same every single Sunday that I can remember.’ Until just this moment, I thought this other life could never be, that my whole future was mapped out for me, and now I sit here with this man, and for the first time, I dare to think that things just might be different.