The Closet of Savage Mementos (18 page)

Chapter Eight

I
take out the envelope containing the pictures of Malachy. I flick through the photographs of my bump to get to the one where I am holding him. It is not a great picture, the angle is skewed and the midwife didn’t zoom in, so we are far away on the bed. Malachy is a little yellow bundle, tilted towards the camera. I look at the ones I took of him myself: his face is a bunched up red, bruised from the forceps and pickled from being so long inside me. His hair is black and plastered to his head in little streaks; I can remember the smell of him.

I look at the one of us together again: I am in a navy striped nightie and underneath the blanket, out of sight, it is patched with blossoms of blood. My hand is a mess of wires where an antibiotic drips into me to bring down a high temperature. I am so young in the photograph, a bit fat-faced, and my eyes are wary and exhausted.

Even though I think of him every day, at some point I stopped believing the story that these photographs tell: that I gave birth to a baby boy once. That I have a real, live, grown-up son. I slip the pictures back into the envelope and put it into the bottom of my jewellery box. I stand over Nessa in her Moses basket; she is awake, twisting her head and sucking her fingers.

‘Hello, baba,’ I say, ‘hello, my gorgeous girl.’

Nessa smiles, a shy quirk of her mouth that ends in a gaping, gummy grin. She coos. I lift her out of the basket, which she is getting too big for now, and lie onto my bed and put her to my breast. The very smell of her is addictive: the heat of new skin and slightly unclean hair.

Margaret came to see me one last time in Glasgow. I was back in my bedsit off the Great Western Road, resting after the birth, and feeling curiously calm. I put on clothes for her visit, shedding the nightdress that was like a comfort blanket, the one I had given birth in. I put on blusher and lipstick to brighten me up. I didn’t want her to think that I had been defeated. The air in the bedsit was stale, I knew. It was an autumnal April, blowy and cold and wet. I kept the window closed because I needed to trap all the heat that I could in the cocoon of my room. I knew the place smelt of mildew because I caught a whiff of it every time I opened the door after being outside. But it also held other smells: the chips I had eaten the night before; the human smell of my sheets and, possibly, the tang of the blood that still seeped from me. I had sprayed deodorant around before she came, but it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, I was sure.

Margaret brought me Gordon and Charlie’s love, and a bag of presents: dream rings from the bakery on Shore Street in Kinlochbrack; a statue of an angel made of soapstone; bubble bath; a bunch of white tulips; and a card with ‘It’s a boy!’ written on it.

‘I wasn’t sure about the card but, one way or another, you’re a mum now.’

‘Thank you, Margaret.’

I stuck the tulips into a pint glass from the kitchenette and placed them on the mantelpiece above the boarded-up fireplace. Margaret told me news from Kinlochbrack. Sam had left the Strathcorry Inn suddenly and no one knew where she had gone, but there were rumours about stolen money and a bruising row with Struan. One of the fish farms in the bay had been sabotaged and all the salmon smolts were lost. Gordon had organised a pub quiz in The Windhorse and Struan’s team won.

She glanced at me when she mentioned Struan, but I didn’t ask anything about him.

‘What weight was the baby?’

‘Ten pounds, four and a half ounces.’

‘My goodness! A bonny lad.’ She combed her fingers through the fringe of her scarf. ‘And the birth?’

‘Forceps.’

‘Ouch. You poor pet. Did you name him?’

‘I called him Malachy. Malachy Dónal.’

‘And how are you doing?’

I yawned. ‘I’m OK.’

Margaret stayed for another hour or so and, when she was leaving, she hugged me tight, then held me away from her. ‘Stay in touch, Lillis. Promise?’

I nodded and when I heard the front door close behind her, I went to my window and watched her walk down the road away from me, knowing I would probably never see her again.

Glasgow sang me to sleep during my last two weeks there: the police sirens and endless traffic became my lullaby. Though I was hollow and listless, somehow I slept not just at night but during the day too. These were heavy sleeps, ripe with dreams that I couldn’t pin down when I woke; dreams that dragged off me through each morning though they were formless. By the time I left I was ready to go home; I couldn’t wait to put the Irish Sea between me and Malachy, so that it would all be properly done, with no possibility of going back.

After feeding Nessa, I stand at my open bedroom window and watch a swallow loop and belly-flop, glide and flip above the toilet-brush trees that edge the green opposite our house. The swallow flies excitedly, as if taking part in a game. Soon another swallow starts the same ritual and the two birds sail past each other, up, around and over, before stopping on a telephone wire, their tails twitching. Then they are off again, too restless to sit for long. The evening is hot but still there is the smell of turf smoke; some people cannot give up the comfort of the fireplace, even in high summer.

Cormac comes home from work and, after dinner, I watch him read his paper on the sofa – this is when I desire him most, when he is a small bit out of reach. He folds the newspaper, lifts Nessa onto his lap and gazes at her. She stares back at him, her face serious.

‘How was she today? Were you good for Mammy?’

‘Babies can only be good; it’s all they know.’

‘I mean did she cry much?’

‘She was an angel.’

‘Good girl, Nessa. Are you Daddy’s girl? Are you? Are you my angel?’

Cormac has a
ragù
lipstick from dinner; I point to my own mouth and rub. He looks at me quizzically, so I take one of Nessa’s wipes and clean around his lips.

‘Now, all nice and fresh.’ I kiss him, long and deep, and he pulls me onto the sofa beside him.

‘I love you, Mrs Spain.’

‘And I love you, Cormac.’

We sit, the three of us, late into the evening, letting the room grow dark around us, listening to one neighbour’s lawnmower, and smelling the charred meat of the other neighbour’s barbeque. Nessa falls asleep in Cormac’s arms so we go up to our room and place her in the Moses basket. Then, for the first time in months, we undress each other and make love. His body is like home to me, an extension of myself. Cormac falls asleep first and I lie against his chest, listening to the babumph of his heart, feeling the sweat dry into our skin.

Chapter Nine

W
e go to Galway for my birthday, shooting down the motorway’s treacle-smooth surface, passing the Eddie Stobart trucks and the camper vans with identikit couples perched up the front, staring ahead. It is a grey midsummer’s day, wet and drab, but I am in high spirits, for the first time in ages, it feels.

‘I’m having wine tonight, nothing can stop me,’ I say, and Cormac glances at me in the rear-view and smiles.

‘You can have champagne if you want.’

‘I’ll pump and dump. Nessa can have some of the milk from the cooler bag. Can’t you, Ness? Hey?’

I lean forward to talk to her; she is strapped into her baby seat in the front, content as a miniature Buddha. She lifts her head to peer around the side of the chair at Cormac.

‘Hello, Missus,’ he says, ‘hello, Pooch.’

Nessa smiles and flops her head back; she grabs at her feet and makes coodling noises. The fields on either side of the road are filthy with buttercups, and shorn lambs shadow their mothers across the grass. I watch calves gambolling around the legs of static cattle, as if they are playing a game of chasing. A brown calf stops to suckle a black cow and his friend runs on, kicking his heels. Young animals, in all their happy vulnerability, always remind me of babies. The further west we go, the more burgundy bogland straddles the motorway; the bogs stretch to the horizon and are rimmed now and then with conifers. I see the word ‘LOVE’ painted in huge red letters on the strut of a bridge and, as we pass, I silently applaud the optimism of the graffiti artist.

We are going to stay with Anthony and India, and I am looking forward to the sound of the sea at their front door. We will talk about my father’s retirement and how he fills his days with walks, food, reading and little else. We will talk about their sons: Tim’s life as an oboe player in a London orchestra; Alex’s as an accountant in New York. India will sigh because her children choose to live so far away. Anthony will rant about the latest inaccurate research on seaweed that he has read in some magazine or on the Internet. He will expect me to understand and share his rage over a minor mistake. Seaweed is all; he won’t have it messed with. I will play along.

Cormac pulls off the motorway at Ballinasloe so we can eat. He brings Nessa into a hotel to change her nappy and I wait outside. The town is quiet and many of the shops are vacant, their windows whited-out. I watch a young mother push a buggy with a lumpen three-year-old in it; the child is swilling on a bottle of fizzy orange and her fringe is cut that little bit too short. Cormac steps out of the hotel and we cross the road to the café my family always used to stop at when Anthony and Verity brought us to Galway on holidays. It is on the square and the same people are in it, drinking pint glasses of milk and eating big Irish dinners at noon: spuds, beef and turnip; slabs of gammon topped with pineapple; generous shepherd’s pies.

‘It even smells the same,’ I say to Cormac, as we take our seats, ‘like a farmer’s kitchen.’ I inspect the glass cabinet of cakes. ‘Me and Robin were always allowed to have black forest gâteau here – the pinnacle of luxury.’

Three staff separately try to take our order before we have decided what we want. The café is under renovation and it is cold. At intervals, the sound of hammering is as noisy as set dancers thumping across the floor. A framed GAA shirt in bumblebee colours is the only decoration on the walls. People know each other here; they shout greetings across the room. An old woman limps towards the exit, gripping each table she passes; a younger woman comes behind her, saying, ‘Are you OK, Mammy? Can you manage?’

‘You can fuckin’ bury me before I’ll use a stick,’ the elderly woman says to me. The daughter rolls her eyes and grins.

We eat BLTs and, under a shawl, I feed Nessa. Her arm, the only visible part of her, pokes upwards every so often in a victory salute. When she is finished feeding, I lift the shawl off her face and she smiles like someone returned after a long trip. Cormac flicks through a discarded copy of
The Star
and I watch a waitress carefully fold cutlery into paper napkins. The woman behind the counter hands a chocolate bun to every child in the place, just as she did when I was a kid. It makes me wonder when Nessa will be deemed big enough to accept her free treat.

‘Would you like something nice with your tea?’ the waiter asks, when he clears our plates.

‘Oh, I might have a dessert, yes.’

‘Sure why wouldn’t you?’ he says, petting Nessa’s cheek as if she is his own and going to get menus for us.

I look around at the well-filled women and men, stuffed behind their tables, eating alone and in pairs. I feel, suddenly, like I am making the slow trip back to myself and I grab Cormac’s hand across the table and kiss it.

‘I love you, babe,’ he says, something he does aloud, unabashed and often.

‘I love you too.’

The waiter brings me an oblong doughnut, bulky with piped cream and topped with a slick of red.

‘Wow,’ Cormac says, ‘it’s like someone cut their finger and dripped blood onto the cake.’

‘Mmm, let me at it.’

Cormac has a coffee slice with tan icing. We gobble our way through the cakes, marvelling with stuffed mouths at how good they taste.

‘So retro,’ he says, picking gluey pastry from his teeth.

‘I’ll be Bessie Bunter after this.’

‘It’s your birthday, Lil – anything goes.’

When we step outside the café the sun is shining; Cormac carries Nessa and we stroll across the square to explore a tat and toy shop. Cormac shoves a white sun hat with a floral ribbon onto my head, then goes to the till to pay for it. The owner of the shop is from Dublin too and Cormac flirts with her in that unconscious, low-key way he has, asking what part she is from and how long she has lived in Ballinasloe. The woman tickles Nessa and grins at Cormac; I step in to claim my place with them.

‘Are you going to say hello, Nessa?’ I say, leaning in to look at her face. She gives a wet, gummy grin and sticks one fist in her mouth.

‘She’s a pet. Gorgeous,’ the shopkeeper says, and we all smile. ‘Enjoy yourselves inside in the city now.’

We leave, me with the sun hat still on and, this being Galway, by the time we get back to our car it is raining again.

We pull up at my father’s virgin blue door; the sun is back, fighting to shrug off clouds. I see Anthony at the window and he is soon outside with India, the pair of them crowding around the passenger door to get a hold of Nessa. Anthony unstraps the baby and cradles her. He and India have their backs to us while they fuss over her; we take our luggage from the boot. Remembering themselves, they turn around; India embraces Cormac, while Anthony kisses my cheek.

‘All right, darling?’ Anthony says.

‘Grand. How are you both?’

‘Tipping away. You brought the good weather.’

‘We try,’ Cormac says, hefting our bags through the door.

They wish me a happy birthday and I slip into the window seat and look at the river; a yellow traffic cone bobs past, chasing a mallard who looks very addled and put out. The swans are over the other side of the basin, flocking to where people throw food for them. A green boat called
Cú na Mara
sits by the end of Nimmo’s Pier.

‘Let’s go for a pint,’ Anthony says, rubbing his hands together.

‘It’s too early for me, Dad. Cormac would have a pint though, right?’

‘Sure.’

They head off, Anthony delighted to have a man to drink with, giddy because India is letting him go to the pub in the afternoon. He says they will only have the one.

India stands in the middle of the floor, holding Nessa, rocking her. We are easier now than we used to be, but there is something residual still – the whiff of the other woman off her that refuses to budge, even after twenty-five years. We are less inclined to long silences but, with the baby to goo over, there is little reason to talk. Nessa smiles and drools; she wiggles her legs and India grabs at her feet and admires her striped tights. The baby grips India’s dark finger in her pink fist and tries to suck her nail; India offers her a knuckle instead.

‘I would have loved to have had a baby girl,’ she says.

‘Boys are brilliant too.’

I blush fiercely and India notices it; she cocks her head. ‘Maybe you will have a boy next.’

‘Ah, no; I won’t be having any more babies, I’m too old. Too old, too tired, too broke.’

I turn away, hoping my scalding face will right itself. An image of Malachy floats across my vision and I put my palm against my handbag, where I now carry the picture of the two of us from the hospital in Glasgow.

‘How is your mother?’

‘Great. She’s getting ready for a new exhibition at The Rubicon.’

‘And Robin?’

‘Well, according to his Facebook page, he’s in Spain.’

‘And Verity likes being a grandmother, does she?’

‘She’s perfecting the art. Slowly.’

India laughs and perches on the arm of the sofa. ‘Nessa, you are such a good baby. Your uncles cried and cried and cried when they were little.’

‘Did they? Poor you.’ The workings of other people’s children interest me now like they never did.

‘We called my grandmother “Grammy”. Might Nessa call me “Grammy India”?’

She looks anxious and I can see this means something to her; a lot, maybe.

‘Of course.’ I smile. ‘Grammy India, it is. She’s very content in your arms, I must say.’

She holds Nessa up and whooshes her through the air in a way that alarms me. I want to tell her to stop but I remember her doing the same with Tim and Alex when they were small and they turned out all right.

‘Whee-shah,’ India sings, sailing the baby up and down, ‘wheeeee-shah.’

Nessa laughs in a way I have never heard before, a sustained rolling gurgle – it is pure glee. I watch India and think what a good mother she has always been to her boys. I remember how she tried her best with Robin and me though I, at least, resented her with an outrage that bordered on hatred. While she is playing with Nessa, I sneak a look at the picture of Malachy and me, half-sliding it out of my handbag, smiling at it, then stuffing it back in.

When I look up, India is watching me, with that same questioning stare she wore when she noticed me blush.

‘Let’s have coffee,’ she says. ‘Anthony got me a ridiculous cappuccino machine. Why don’t you help me get it going?’

I can’t sleep; I am not used to wine anymore and my throbbing head keeps me awake. I slip from the bed and roll up the bamboo blind. The water in the Claddagh basin is dark and the moon is shy, lifting her hem to flash only a slice of brightness. A streetlight throws its sodium fuzz onto the slates of the church on the other side of the pier. I crane my neck to see if I can see the swans; I wonder where they go at night.

Cormac stirs and comes to stand behind me. He slips his arms around my waist and softly sings a line from a song we like into my ear, telling me to look up and he’ll meet me at the moon. We sway together at the window, my back flush to his chest. I feel his cock harden; he cups my breasts and kisses my neck. I turn to him and we kiss, slow and long. Soon, we are back under the covers.

‘I’ll be listening to the moon song when you’re in Scotland,’ Cormac whispers. ‘I’ll miss you.’

His hand moves over my hips and into my knickers; he catches his thumb into the side and slips them off. We kiss, gliding our tongues over each other’s lips and then plunging deeper. He slides on top of me and slowly, slowly enters me. I gasp and we move together, giggling when the headboard thumps and the bed whines rhythmically under us. Cormac rams the headboard against the wall with one hand to keep it quiet. And on we go.