The Playground (25 page)

‘Oh, don't worry about that,' my aunt said, leaning over me with a platter of crackers and cheese. ‘When Jonathan and Florrie were dating, they slept in that room and on Sunday mornings, while we were having breakfast, we'd hear this bang, bang, banging. We couldn't for the life of us work out what it was. Of course it was them all along, going at it like the hammers,' she said, sending a little droplet of spit across the table. Her daughter looked stunned, then embarrassed, then annoyed.

‘Now, this is a rennet-free cheese from Ardagh,' she continued, oblivious of her daughter's mortification. She was showing off, giving everyone information about the expensive cheeses she was proffering around the table, dangling her arthritic finger and berry-coloured fingernail above each one as she went.

‘And this is a wonderful burgundy brie.'

‘What's this one?' I asked, when she reached me, pointing my own grubby-looking finger, which I'd forgotten to paint, at a cheddar type one with red veins running through it. I'd thought I heard her say it was a red Windsor. I wasn't really in the mood for cheese. I was just being polite. Instead of showing off her knowledge as she did in front of all the other guests, she snapped at me as if I were not a guest at all but an irritating teenager.

‘Oh, for goodness sake, Eve. I can't remember.'

‘I'd go easy on the ice cream,' my cousin said, as I stood over by the sideboard, helping Addie to her second bowl. ‘Too much dairy is bad.'

Really, you don't say, I wanted to respond. Oh, but I was told to
give her plenty of it, too little calcium will make her bones brittle. And she's on the lower percentile of growth for her age to begin with. But then you're a short arse too, aren't you? What height is your husband? Oh no, that's right, I forgot. He's not your husband. Never was. And now he's gone. Such a shame. Very damaging for the child, very damaging indeed. What she needs is some stability in her life. What that child needs is a firm hand, it's for her own good. For her own happiness. She's far too soft on that little girl. And she needs more clothes on. Shorts in October, I mean what was she thinking? And do you know what I saw her do the other day, she let that child drag her sucky blanket through the grass in the playground, I mean dogs do their business there! Not safe at all. Reckless, I'd say. Well I'm not saying anything, I'm not one to judge but if it were my child I wouldn't let her sleep like that. She'll get a crick in her neck. Raisins? Absolutely not, they rot their teeth, you know. Now be sure to remind her to go to the loo, every twenty minutes. Whatever you do don't ask her if she needs to go, she needs to tell you herself. Ah don't make her say thank you, that puts pressure on her, she doesn't have to if she doesn't want to. Well, I don't know how she is bringing up that child, no manners at all. Too much attention, that's the problem with that child. Spoilt rotten, so she is.

‘How are we all doing?' This was my mother, popping her head around the door to check on the young people. The adults were restless a little earlier than usual this year, perhaps it was more fun to be in the kitchen with us because there were so few of them left in the dining room. Mum often didn't notice me on social occasions. I was too familiar to be fussed over, gushed about, and she was too busy being social and helpful, but this Christmas Eve, she seemed slower, quieter, more clear-headed and watchful than usual. She came over and sat down beside me.

‘You're looking lovely,' she said, touching my shoulder. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?'

I nodded and smiled. ‘Not particularly.'

‘Where's Addie?' We did this all the time in our family, kept a constant tally of who at any moment was where.

‘Under the table, biting my leg. It hasn't been a good day in our four-year relationship.'

‘You little rascal,' Mum said, scissoring her legs about, then lifting the table cloth and lowering her head to look under at my beaming child.

‘And how are you, little monkey?'

‘I'll be cross in a few minutes but right now I'm happy.'

She sat up again, somewhat flushed, and looked back at me.

I told her about the gift and Ben. She didn't want to know.

‘Oh, pet, your life will always be full of drama,' she said in a detached, weary sort of way, as if she no longer had the energy or the duty to fix it.

She gazed for a long time at the candlelight. She seemed uncharacteristically pensive. She picked at some wax that was about to drop onto the mahogany table. Then she turned to face me again.

‘So, we've said brunch at eleven tomorrow, presents after that and then I'll be going to the Kennedys' up the road if you want to come and we'll eat around five – I have a vegetarian thing for you from M&S – it just needs to be defrosted.'

‘OK, Mum. And I'll see you at Midnight Mass.'

‘Of course you will, I'd forgotten that,' she said, yawning at the prospect of having to stay awake for another eight hours. ‘Oh now, listen, sweetheart, are you going on the McDermott's walk this year? I've promised to let them know how many for numbers.' This was an
annual five-mile walk over the Wicklow mountains to a sleepy old man's pub.

‘I will, if you do?'

‘I'll be in the Galapagos by then,' she said, with some glee.

I'd forgotten all about that trip. ‘I can't keep up with you. Will I see you before I go?'

‘Of course, if you want to, though you don't really need to and I'm having my old school pal, Bunty, to stay all next week, so I'll be pretty busy, do you remember her at all? Bunty's great, she's big and bouncy.'

All I remembered about this faceless friend were those three adjectives; the ones Mum always used to describe her.

‘I'll send you a postcard, love, though it will probably never arrive.'

She pulled me towards her, gave me a kiss on the forehead, got up and left the room.

*

The first guests were leaving – something to do with picking up or delivering a child – before the adults had even finished their mince pies.

My uncle was telling everyone to ‘shush!' in quite an abrupt way while he tried to organise taxis, further addled by people interrupting him in the background with times and locations and routes.

‘Oh, for pity's sake, Bruce. Why don't you take the ruddy thing into the hall?' his wife said, pushing past him with a tray of empties.

The front door brought in a rush of icy air; there was confusion over coats and belongings and wiped clean bowls, which unsettled everyone else and soon others were looking at their watches and feeling for their phones.

One of the old women's bowls was missing. She had used it to carry the Caesar salad and now it was gone.

‘It's a square, Waterford Crystal one, with a nice pineapple design on it,' she said, describing it half a dozen times to anyone who would listen.

‘I don't see why she's so keen on that square bowl,' one muttered to another, while making a half-hearted attempt to locate the missing bowl herself, by scanning her eyes around the room. ‘I'm perfectly happy with my round one.'

Mum was too busy reassuring her sister to help with the search for the bowl.

She had given Mum her Christmas present. Always quite mean about her own clothes, she wasn't confident about her ability to buy gifts for others either and even as she handed it over she began making excuses about it. ‘It's very plain. It's nothing really. It's a bit creased. But it's quite a good colour, I suppose. And didn't cost much. I hope you like it. You mightn't like the colour and it might be the wrong size. It's just a plain round-neck sweater from M&S, nothing too exciting. You can change it if you like. It mightn't fit.'

And then I made a little girl cry. She had taken Addie's place at the table and was happily dribbling Addie's chocolate ice cream over her pink satin dress. Addie started whimpering and pulling off me and I just didn't have the stamina for another row. All I said was that she was sitting in my child's place and could she please move. She slid off the seat, looking horrified – how dare an adult give her an order – and sought out her mother, a larger, fish-mouthed version of her child with the same horrible ringlety hair. She buried herself in her mother's arms telling her about the cruel and evil thing I'd done. The mother seemed quite unimpressed with my excuses and explanations
and her little brat was still shooting me filthy glances. Ten minutes later, both miserable, they left the party and went home.

An hour after beginning my goodbyes, I was out in the open air of Herbert Park.

The moustached boy helped by carrying Addie and strapping her into her seat, before giving me an alarming kiss on the mouth goodbye. In the refuge of my car, I wriggled my Spanx down to below my stomach and breathed out for the first time that day. I kicked off my heels, shoved on my Rocket Dogs. The noise of the party was still ringing in my ears, I was light-headed from all the chatter and gushing.

The windows were frosted up; I rolled them down and breathed in the beautiful crisp winter air. I looked at the road in front of me, at the arch of evergreens as far as the eye could see, and at the frost-covered grass of the park. The old band stand, the Victorian railings, the solid red-brick homes around me all seemed perfectly unreal that evening, like something out of
Mary Poppins
. The day, the party, the weather was making me nostalgic and weepy. This traditional party would one day end, after my mother and the rest of her generation had gone and all of those characters would become mere memories of people, that would in time dissipate and fade. I would talk about my parents to Addie, the way my parents spoke to me about theirs and she might not listen, might not be all that interested in these vague, distant people who she never knew, who were so vivid and animated now but would one day be summed up in several adjectives.

‘When the snow's here, can I be an ice-skater?' Addie said, jolting me back to the present.

‘OK, sweetie.' I said, turning the keys in the ignition and pulling out.

‘Maybe I'll be a good ice-skater. Maybe I'll be bad.'

‘Maybe, sweetie,' I said, distracted, looking in the overhead mirror.

‘What's your favourite colour?'

‘You know what it is. You ask me every day. Blue.'

‘Dark blue or light blue?'

‘Christ, Addie. I don't know. Just blue, OK. I'm trying to concentrate!'

‘Dus tell me! Dark blue or light blue?'

‘Light blue.'

‘I'm going to make you a surprise card.'

I chose the coast road home because I wanted to see the sea. I needed some air and some space. By Sandycove, Addie was gone and I couldn't reach the toy she'd been given from her godmother to turn it off:

I fell into a sort of nonchalant daze. In hold-ups or at lights I glanced at the tired, preoccupied drivers around me who just wanted to be home and felt happy to be sitting, idling and out of danger for another few seconds. I had a dangerous problem. My left indicator was broken so whenever I was approaching a turn, I had to accelerate to create space between me and the car behind, then swerve at speed around the corner.

I slowed down. The sea by the Forty Foot was milky still under the moonlight. The road through Dalkey village was quiet, fairytale-like with its white lights linked above all the shop fronts and the yellowy glow coming from the steamed-up windows of Finnegan's. People were spilling out onto the streets, leaving Christmas presents in bags beneath tables just waiting to be knocked into – full pints,
packets of crisps – as they huddled in messy groups in the cold night air for a smoke. I saw a man who looked like Lars, the gentle alcoholic, who used to drink in the park. He hadn't been around for months. What had happened to him? How come no one mentioned him? How lonely to disappear from a community and for no one to even notice.

I drove on through dark, quiet neighbourhoods, past the graveyard where my father was buried and Addie liked to play, wheeling her baby and buggy between the plots, not understanding why she couldn't have the tiny teddy bear sitting on one of them, or the windmill in a jar.

‘You don't need to explain graveyards to her just yet,' Joe used to say.

Bray High Street was a riot of lights: a flashing kaleidoscope of lanterns and reindeers and polar bears and Santa Clauses racing through the sky. I wished my little angel could see them. At the traffic lights at the top of the road, I turned and watched neon shapes pour across her sleeping face. I looked at her soft lips and fluttering eyelashes, her mouth covered in chocolate, her little pigtails askew.

Dylan and Juliette were curled up on the sofa; Addie was sitting cross-legged beside them and Juliette was painting her fingernails. They unfurled when I came in, Juliette stood up, tugged her jumper over her bum and blew her fringe out of her eyes. She turned towards Dylan, exposing a large purple love bite on her neck. I didn't think they existed any more. The sight of it made me nostalgic. It was the sort of thing you used to see on cross-water ferries, on the necks of the female staff serving fried eggs in the morning, after a night of grubby sex, putting you off your breakfast.

‘Look, Mama, orange and sparkly.'

‘Lovely. Now, pyjamas on this minute. Let's go! Santa Claus won't come unless you're asleep.'

‘I'd love to help you, Mama, but I've just had my nails done,' Addie said, spreading out her tiny wrinkled fingers as I pulled her tights off and put her pyjama bottoms on.

Dylan hopped up and stretched. ‘May I use your loo please?'

‘Of course, let me just check that there's toilet roll.'

He followed me down the corridor towards the frosted door of the bathroom.

‘You're looking pretty foxy,' he said to my back in the darkness.

‘Oh, thank you,' I said, both delighted and disgusted.

‘You shine like a jewel compared to all the other mums around here. You're the best looking by far,' he said, standing too close to me, pupils dilated.

‘I'm sure that's not true, but thank you,' I said, flattered, flustered, appalled, moving to get myself free. I shouted goodbye to Juliette, told her to call me if there were any problems or to drop down to Irenka, forgetting that she had gone home to Poland to spend Christmas with her family.

*

The church was fuller than it had been all year, the chatter louder, its ageing congregation up late in silk scarves, fur stoles and camel coats. Even the monsignor in his gold robes had a spring in his step as he took his place behind the ivy-and-poinsettia arrangement at the pulpit to welcome his parishioners to Midnight Mass. Drunk teenagers tried to hold it together in the presence of their parents as the choir sang ‘Silent Night'.

‘There's Kevin Gallagher,' Mum whispered, on her knees beside me in our pew, peeping up from cupped hands to see whom she recognised amongst the queue of bowed heads taking their seats. ‘Oh and that's poor old Stephanie Smith's mother; she's had a terribly tough time.' She tried to remain penitent but found it impossible, being both naturally social and nosey. She was well in with the church, doing readings at the ten o'clock service once monthly and helping to arrange flowers before funerals; she felt on home ground and therefore somewhat entitled to keep an eye on proceedings.

Bella was sitting on the other side of me on the bunched up end of her best coat, with her bag, a missalette and her mobile phone in a tumbling pile on her knee. She seemed to have surrendered to a life
of discomfort since having a husband and children. Her own needs were at the very bottom of her priorities. She smelt of ‘Paris', a perfume she used to wear as a teenager and which her husband still bought her for every birthday and anniversary, though she now found it a bit cloying.

All three of us were flush-faced from an afternoon of socialising; bloated from too much food and mulled wine, made up again over old makeup, perfumed over perfume. There was a long, curly blonde hair on the back of Bella's top that couldn't belong to her. Mum's neck was mottled red beneath her pearls. Nuala McMenamin was leaning over our pew, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the bench. She was a skinny drip of a woman – sharp nose, warm onion breath – always energised by incidents, accidents, emergencies, dramas of any sort, always happy to be the first with bad news. Someone had had a very nasty fall, the O'Sheas were burgled the night before last, Joe Lawlor had lost his mind. Mum was nodding too much and looking towards the altar, in that slightly cross-eyed way that she had, willing this woman to stop talking, to go away, not wanting to hear any more. ‘Yop, yop' Mum said, tutting and shaking her head as Nuala indulged in the details.

Mum reeled off the Gloria, the introduction to the Gospel, running her thumb from forehead to lip, down to chest, and then the Creed, as if demonstrating to me how it should be done. She'd been saying the same prayers for fifty years and her voice had taken on a sort of weary familiarity, sounding loud at the beginning of each new sentence, then trailing away into something tiny and thin.

With a cacophony of nose-blowing and throat–clearing, the congregation sat. An altar boy rang a bell, his frayed jeans and tennis
shoes visible from where he knelt. Then everyone else knelt, lowering their eyes in the solemnity of prayer and covering their faces with their hands. Mum sat forward instead of getting to her knees, she was tired and uncomfortable in her heels. She wanted to be at home, wanted to be up in bed, with her mug of hot milk and her new P. D. James. She fell asleep beside me during the sermon, gently snoring and woke startled at communion, determined to appear as though she hadn't missed a thing.

Everyone stood for ‘Adeste Fideles', murmurs, creased coat tails, more coughs. And we boomed it out like Protestants, showing off our Latin, the women all upright, puffing out their chests, their husbands beside them giving it everything, the bald patches on their heads reddening with each note. On the final verse, we started softly like professionals and grew louder as we sang on, the sopranos in the gallery in perfect harmony.
Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus, VENITE ADOREMUS! Dominum
. We were communally moved by how good we sounded, by our unexpected tunefulness and energy.

*

I saw the ambulance first, and as I got nearer, the police car half up on the kerb. There were people in white overalls in our front garden and yellow tape stretched across the front door. Juliette was sitting on the roadside, hugging her knees, chewing on the cuff of her hoodie, wiping her nose with her sleeve.

I pulled in, ran to her, my heart whacking against my ribs.

‘What's happened? Is it Addie?' Juliette was red-eyed, trembling.

‘No, it's Dylan. Oh Eve, Billy and him had the worst fight. I tried to stop them but I couldn't.' She sank to the kerb; I knelt down beside her and put my arm around her shoulder.

‘He's dead, Eve,' she said, looking up at me with bloodshot,
mascara-stained eyes. ‘He's over in the playground. He killed him, Eve. Billy killed Dylan.'

There, in the foggy early Christmas morning light, framed by the fairy lights trailed around the railings of the park was Dylan's body, beside the see-saw, covered in white tarpaulin. There were three policemen around him, one crouched by his side.