The Doll's House (10 page)

I feel loose, unburdened.

‘Clodagh, can you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in a corridor.’

‘What do you see?’

‘Doors.’

‘What is on the doors?’

‘Numbers.’

‘Clodagh, look at the doors, look at the numbers.’

‘Yes.’

‘I want you to go to the door with the number five on it. Open the door and walk through to the other side.’

I hear sounds. There is laughter, little-girl laughter. I know it’s me. My curly ginger-red hair is falling across my face. I’m searching for something in the wardrobe, down at the bottom.

‘Where are you, Clodagh?’

‘I’m in my parents’ room.’

‘What age are you?’

‘Five.’

‘What do you see?’

‘I see shoes, high shoes, sandals, shiny gold sandals.’

‘Can you hear anything?’

‘I’m giggling. I’m pulling out the gold sandals, putting them on my feet. When I stand up, I feel tall, wobbly. Dominic is downstairs with someone, a friend. They don’t want me playing with them. Girls are silly, they say.’

‘Dominic?’

‘My brother.’

‘Does this upset you?’

‘No. They’re boring, wanting to play their stupid boy games.’

‘What are you doing now?’

‘I’m sitting at my mum’s dressing table. It’s full of perfumes, lipsticks. There is a golden lipstick case with a pretty rose design in the middle. I touch it. It feels cool, and I like the colour, rose pink like Sandy wears.’

‘Who is Sandy?’

‘She’s one of my dolls.’

‘Where is your doll, Clodagh? The one called Sandy?’

‘I’ve left her in my bedroom, sitting by the doll’s house. My mother’s lipstick smells sweet. It’s sticky on my lips.’

‘What do you feel?’

‘I can hear footsteps – clickety-click, clickety-click.’ My voice is more excited.

‘Do you recognise the footsteps?’

‘They’re my mother’s. We’re going out. We’re going to a party at my friend’s house.’

‘What do you see now, Clodagh?’

‘I see my mother. She’s smiling at me. I’m still giggling. She’s holding a dress in her hands. It’s purple taffeta, with silver beads on the collar. It’s my party dress.’

Again he asks, ‘What do you feel?’

‘I feel happy. I want to go to the party.’

‘And your mother?’

‘She’s happy too. She’s laughing as she cleans my face. The wet cloth makes me giggle even more. My dress feels nice against my skin. My mother is brushing out my curls – putting a purple hairband with a tiny silver rose in my hair. I don’t want to take off the high sandals. I want to wear them to the party. My mother laughs again.’

‘What’s happening now?’

‘She’s picking me up, putting me on her lap. She kisses my face. She wriggles off the gold high heels. My new shoes are flat, shiny black patent. They have silver buckles. They’re nice, but not as nice as the high sandals.’

‘Is it just the two of you in the room?’

‘Yes, and the sun is shining. I think it could be summer.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Soon I’ll be starting big school. I’ve never been there before. Mum tells me I’ll love it, but I don’t think she’s telling me the truth. Dominic goes to school, and when he comes home, he never looks happy.’

‘What do you feel now? What does the adult Clodagh feel?’

‘I don’t know. I’m looking down at the two of them, my little-girl self sitting on my mother’s lap.’

‘Do you know what the little girl is feeling?’

‘She’s still smiling, so she must be happy, but there’s something else.’

‘What is that, Clodagh?’

‘I think … No, I’m nearly sure of it.’

‘You’re nearly sure of what, Clodagh?’

‘The little girl …’

‘What about her?’

‘I think she feels loved.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just do …’ My voice trails away.

‘Are you ready to come back, Clodagh?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘I want you to close your eyes again. Start counting forward. As the numbers change, you will leave the room, and walk out through the door, the one you opened with the number five on it.’

I keep counting forward, one, two, three …

‘Down the corridor, Clodagh, you will see a staircase. I want you to begin walking up the stairs. Are you walking up the stairs?’

‘Yes.’

The counting is continuing inside my head, but I can still hear his voice.

‘Soon you will be near the garden again. Do you remember the garden, and how good it made you feel?’

‘Yes.’

‘I want you to keep breathing in and out, slowly, deeply, counting upwards. Are you in the garden, Clodagh?’

‘I’m in the garden.’

‘Now look for the staircase that will lead you out. Can you see it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Count forward again, from one to ten.’

I feel different, but I’m still relaxed.

‘As you count, Clodagh, you will climb the stairs. When you reach the top, you will be aware that you are back in this room. You will hear sounds from outside the window. You will hear my voice easing you back to the present. When I tell you, Clodagh, you will be able to open your eyes and I want you to keep your breathing steady.’

‘Okay.’

‘Now open your eyes. Stay resting on the bed. Keep relaxed. Whenever you’re ready, you can sit up.’

I smell the vanilla-scented candles. I hear cars driving past. Gerard Hayden is sitting on the chair waiting for me to wake. I feel as if something has changed, although I’m not sure what.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘You did very well.’

‘How long was I out for?’

He looks at his watch. ‘About an hour.’

‘Really? It felt like minutes.’

‘Do you remember anything?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you remember, Clodagh?’

‘I was a little girl. I was going to a party. I was happy.’

‘Anything else?’

‘My mother.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘She …’ But the words won’t come out.

‘It’s okay, Clodagh. Take your time.’

I know the words. They hang inside my brain for the longest time, as if they’re imagined or they belong to someone else, but then I say them, almost in a whisper, ‘She loved me.’

Gerard says nothing. Despite a sense of disbelief, the recall has brought up something I least expected: a feeling of loss. For the first time since my mother’s death, with the noise of traffic coming in from outside and the strong smell of vanilla candle wax, I cry, loud, uncontrollable sobs, while Gerard Hayden remains seated on the chair, looking as if he has experienced this scene many times before.

Stevie McDaid wasn’t one for being overly energetic on a Sunday morning, unless he had someone nice in the bed beside him. But Keith Jenkins’s murder had spiked his interest. Seeing Clodagh the other night had got him thinking too. He had stopped following her once she’d turned away from the strand. He already knew where she lived, her and good old Martin – a guy not to be underestimated. Even as a kid, the bastard had had another side to him. It’s been a while since Stevie’s thought about the old gang, Martin, Dominic and himself. After that baby died, everything had changed. The whole lot of them had such high and mighty ideas about themselves. Yet none of them ever moved from Sandymount. Laughable, if it wasn’t so fucking predictable.

Looking around his flat, he smirked. That had probably been predictable too: 38C Seville Place was the latest in a very long line of fuck-ups in his accommodation choices. Spending money on women, and generally having a good time, cost a guy. Something had to give. His priorities were hot water and a comfy bed, but 38C Seville Place was bang in the middle of flats supported by welfare. He hadn’t known it moving in, thinking, with the flat being in Ringsend and close enough to Sandymount, he would avoid most of the scumbags. The landlord knew people in high places, people who’d got him on the approved-landlord list, a list that guaranteed him a thousand smackers a month for his shit boxes.

Stevie’s shit box had a bedroom with a double bed, a fitted wardrobe without doors, a kitchen the size of a small lift, and a sitting room with a view of the backyard. It housed a black leather couch, a lamp
without a shade, cream-painted woodchip wallpaper, only surpassed by the barred windows and a cracked mirror above the fireplace – one that, hopefully, had given all the bad luck to the previous tenant. Stevie could hear everything through the walls: crying babies, couples shagging, toilets flushing. It wasn’t until he realised he lived near to Clodagh Hamilton that he began to look on the shit box as some warped twist of Fate. But it was the wayward daughter who had first attracted his attention. Her, and the old man crawling all over pretty Ruby. Another face Stevie wouldn’t forget in a hurry.

Crappy accommodation was nothing new to him. He had lived in it from childhood. At first he hadn’t known it was crappy. He’d thought it was the way things were. People living in shacks in Africa didn’t dream about living in semi-detached houses. They dreamed of having food, and not bleedin’ dying. It was only ever him and his ma. She used to tell him that, with the absence of a father, they were like the Immaculate Conception. It was their private joke. If anyone else mentioned it, it wasn’t funny.

The array of boyfriends was an education too. There was one arsehole in particular, one of those ‘new age, save the planet’ types, dressed in his neat jumper and jeans. It was the backpack that really got Stevie going, green and pink, like the bit of pink said something about the arsehole breaking down stereotypical gender bias. Once Stevie knew the guy’s cover, well, he was there for the taking. He was only ten at the time, and his ma told him to behave, but she was a softie. He knew how far he could push her before he’d get a clip around the ear.

‘You do much hiking with that backpack of yours, Mister?’

‘Sure do. Maybe we could do some hiking together, Stevie.’

‘Stevie would love that, wouldn’t you, Stevie?’ his ma had piped up.

‘I ain’t going up no poxy hill with him.’

‘Stevie, watch your language.’ His ma had given him the evils. Stevie’s ma could give the evils better than Marlon Brando in
The Godfather
, and Stevie knew this guy was getting the whole nine yards
when it came to his ma wanting to make a good impression. Mr Save the World had lasted longer than most. He wasn’t even put off when Stevie asked him how he thought the Pope did a piss with all those bleedin’ clothes on. But he lost interest in the end. His type always did, just like the bloody Hamiltons.

Stevie’s ma never went to Mass, and she didn’t send him to a religious school either. He’d figured out a long time back that she and the clergy had crossed swords more than once, and his ma wasn’t in the mind of forgiving them. But she still made him go, and it was at Mass that he met the people who didn’t live in crappy houses. He would see a girl he liked and follow her home. Every one of the good ones lived in big fancy houses to go with their silky hair and pretty faces.

Back then he didn’t have the charisma he has now. That was something he’d had to develop. If any of them smelt a hint of crappiness off him, they’d bloody leg it. The accent was the hardest to shift, but the telly was great for that, movies especially. Some people used to think he was from the States. He took to calling streets ‘blocks’ and presses ‘cupboards’. But it was better than school learning. School learning was all right as far as it went, but real life required something a whole lot different. It was all about judging your mark. If he had a rich punter in the garage, he would lean on the Dublin accent, helping the eejit think they were more intelligent. Being thought stupid had its advantages, once you knew things were the other way around.

Girls, they were different. They liked the Sandymount accent, or every now and again, he would pretend to be American, but never to an American: that would have been plain stupid. Seeing Clodagh Hamilton had brought back the old days, like the grime he’d felt under his skin when he was younger. The kind no showering ever washed off. Clodagh and Dominic Hamilton might as well have lived on a different planet, with their big house and nice clothes. Neither of them knew anything about shit. Born into Cosy Land, and a bit like Stevie not knowing he lived a life of crap, they didn’t know they lived a life of luxury either.

Following Clodagh last night had brought back some of the old resentment. Stevie was smart. As a kid, he’d known more about the world than Dominic, Clodagh and even Martin McKay rolled into one. When you started off with nothing, you learned to fight for what you wanted. It was the only battleground that put you one step ahead of the likes of them.

That idiot Jenkins turning up dead meant something, but Stevie had no intention of meddling with the bigger fish first. Better to rattle Ruby McKay’s cage. You can get so much more out of the mouths of babes.

When the phone rang at lunchtime on Sunday, Kate thought it would be Declan, but she was wrong. Charlie had asked to go to Shane’s again, and she hadn’t the heart to say no. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when she heard Miriam’s voice.

‘Hi, Kate.’

Kate could hear both boys playing in the background. ‘Is everything okay, Miriam?’

‘Oh, yes. Perfect. The boys are in great form. They want to stay together for another while. I’m hearing “sleepover” but I’ll see how they go. You know what they’re like when they get overtired. You don’t mind, do you, Kate? If you drop Charlie’s stuff over later, I can take them both to school in the morning.’

‘Miriam, you’re very kind, but I’d prefer if Charlie didn’t stay overnight.’ Kate knew Miriam wouldn’t be happy. Her refusal indicated a lack of trust. But she wasn’t going to share information about Charlie’s bedwetting, fearing Miriam would say something out of turn in front of Shane, and Charlie would end up the butt end of it. ‘He’s overtired already and his dad will be phoning him tonight.’

‘Well, if you’re sure. It’s no bother.’

‘No, honestly, you’re too kind. Let me know when I’m to pick him up, and phone me if World War Three breaks out beforehand.’ Kate let out a short laugh, hoping to lighten things.