She stopped in the doorframe. Strips of light and shadow fell across the white material of her blouse. Her head drooped forward, her shoulders rounded. And all at once she straightened and walked off down the hall. His body was overcome by a sensation then, like the rattling of an engine. His face was in his hands and his chest heaved, forcing great gasps into his mouth – but whatever mechanism existed within him was so worn and out of use, it could not be called upon to produce tears.
Chapter 22
Colette had put her coat on to go for a walk but was distracted by the page again. She sat back down at the table and re-examined the words. The poem in front of her was titled ‘Solace’. She’d always loved this word, how it at once spoke of peace and complete desolation. And it sounded so much like the Irish word for ‘light’. She wanted there to be some hope. The word was a light at the top of the page to guide the reader through the darkest moment of her life. She’d laid out the details in blank verse – it was important for her to state these words as baldly as possible. Twelve lines in iambic pentameter and a full stop, blunt as a tiny fist, at the end of each one. To wake, and walk to your son’s cot and find he was no longer there, that he had been replaced in the night by something cold and unyielding – there was no real way to soften that.
Two days ago she had visited his grave and laid an arrangement of white roses beside a wreath of white roses, which she guessed had been left by Shaun. They had visited the grave together almost every week in the first year after Patrick died. Then they went at Christmas or on his birthday and eventually they stopped going altogether. She’d thought it strange they had both visited so recently, had chosen the same flower. And then, not for the first time in the past few months, she’d wondered where her own body would be laid to rest when that time came. She’d cast aside this thought, focused on the words on the stone: PATRICK CROWLEY – DIED 9 MONTHS – 4 JUNE 1976 – BELOVED SON AND BROTHER. That was it. And she wanted the poem she wrote to be as stark and unforgiving as the words engraved there.
The kitchen table was strewn with handwritten pages. She swept them together and the page that came to the top was covered in numbers. She’d written down her incomings and outgoings, but whatever way she’d tabulated and calculated, the simple fact was there was more going out than coming in. The £474 in her account was what remained of the money she’d borrowed from her mother. Under ‘options’ she’d written ‘sell car, get more teaching work’, and finally, ‘begin the process of legal separation’. The fact that Shaun had not been in contact via solicitors had given her hope – but Shaun had not paid any money to her since before Christmas, and she knew now that keeping her poor and beholden was part of the protracted punishment he was intent on exercising upon her. And he’d refused to forward her post, which, she was sure, contained invites to readings and festivals that might have provided her with some source of income. There was still £40 a week coming in from her writing workshops but that was barely enough for groceries and petrol.
But she was surprised at how much further her money stretched now that she’d stopped drinking, and at how easy it was to stop once she discovered her body was set to serve a different purpose. But most astonishing was the discovery that at the age of forty-four she was pregnant with her fifth child. She’d thought that her period might be late or that she was beginning early menopause. She’d only ever suffered mild morning sickness, and as it was, she was hungover so consistently that she expected to feel lousy when she woke. And sometimes when Donal had shown up at the cottage, she’d had a lot to drink already. She’d be quiet and listless, pretending to be overcome with desire when really she was incapable of standing up straight. At that point she didn’t care what became of her, and Donal had cared even less.
When two weeks had passed with no sign of her period she drove to a chemist in Donegal Town. She didn’t have the nerve to walk into the chemist’s in Ardglas and purchase a pregnancy test. Even in Donegal Town, where she was far less likely to see someone she knew, she cowered before the white-coated, bespectacled chemist who refused to look at her, instead focusing on taking her money and placing the test in a brown paper bag that she scrunched closed in her fist.
Colette crossed the diamond to the Central Hotel, hurried through the foyer, and went straight upstairs to the ladies, where she pissed on a plastic stick. Over the next few minutes the outline of a child’s cherubic face slowly revealed itself. She marched back over and bought a second test from the same mousy chemist, this time standing before her with her arms folded, determined and affronted, as though it was the chemist who had been responsible for the result. She drove back to the cottage and followed the same procedure and saw the cherubic face taunting her once again.
For days she walked around with the knowledge of it sounding in her head, and no matter where she was and what she was doing, that note ringing clear and true was all she could hear. She was alert, yet numb to anything but the possibility of danger – and what that danger was she could not identify. After a few days passed like this, of not being able to articulate a single coherent thought regarding the predicament she found herself in, she’d sat down and tried to write about it.
‘I am pregnant,’ she wrote. ‘At forty-four years old I am pregnant.’ But it did not matter how plainly she stated the facts of her living situation and her financial circumstances, she knew that if she wanted to keep her child, there was a way through this. The worst thing that she could have ever imagined had already happened to her, and she’d survived it. Discovering she was pregnant with Barry was what had kept her alive the last time. And what if this was her daughter, what if after four sons she would finally have the little girl she’d always wanted? She was ready to love this child and take responsibility for it, and in so doing retake control of her life.
But when she thought of the child’s father – a coward who had taken what he wanted and retreated. He’d told her they needed to cool things for a while. He’d been spooked by Izzy Keaveney’s arrival at the cottage that night, had come to see her only twice after and on both occasions wanted reassurance that Izzy knew nothing of their affair. Cruel too – to make a fool of his wife in the way he had – and pinch-faced and belligerent as Dolores was, Colette knew she did not deserve an ounce of the pain they’d inflicted upon her. And the show she’d made of herself, sick with desire, dragging her tired body down to that man’s front door time after time, to complain about the central heating. She could not stay under Donal’s roof, she knew that. She could go to her mother’s house, stay there, and while her mother would despair over Colette’s situation, she would never kick her out on the street.
And finally she had written, with little enthusiasm or conviction, ‘Go to England and get an abortion. Tell no one. You know other women who have done this. All possible scenarios require money.’
She heard a sound and looked up. The kitchen window was open and the noise was coming from outside. It was like a siren sounding from a very great distance away. But then the noise turned into notes and those notes turned into words, low and sweet. ‘Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?’ She shot up from the chair. It was a child – she could hear a child singing. She placed her hands on the table to steady herself. The sound disappeared and then a few seconds later it seemed to renew itself, to return louder and more insistent like it was summoning her. ‘Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.’ She stepped towards the window and peered out. Standing by the wall was Jessica Mullen. The child was wearing a little sleep suit made up of a patchwork of colours, like the motley coat of a jester. She held a stuffed toy that she seemed to be serenading. The breeze was tossing wisps of her pageboy haircut back and forth. Colette placed her hand upon her breast and waited for the beating of her heart to slow.
She went to the door, grabbed her scarf off the hook, and twirled it around her neck. She stepped outside and the child looked up at her.
‘Jessica Mullen, what in the name of God are you doing all the way up here?’
Jessica returned her attention to the toy and began singing again. Colette could see now that it was a black horse with a red bridle. She walked over to the child.
‘That’s not a sheep, you silly billy – it’s a horse.’
‘Sheep,’ Jessica said, shaking the toy by its hind leg.
She bent closer to her. ‘Will I take you home to your mammy and daddy?’
Jessica nodded and offered her hand to Colette. The road was stony and the child was wearing no shoes, her feet just covered by the leggings of the sleep suit. She thought about carrying Jessica, but she seemed content to amble along, and so they made their way down the drive slowly, Colette holding the child’s tiny hand between her thumb and forefinger. ‘Your mammy’ll be wondering where you got to. You shouldn’t be running out of the house like that,’ she said. At the end of the road they turned the corner into the neighbouring drive. There was a small incline leading up to the house and the child seemed to grow weary until she almost came to a complete stop. Colette gathered her up into her arms and began to walk more quickly. She could feel the child’s warm breath against her neck.
And then Dolores sprang out the front door – really there was something comical about the way she appeared, like she’d been shot out of a cannon. She landed feline on her feet, and when she fixed her eyes on Colette and Jessica every inch of her body seemed to stiffen. Colette wrapped her arms more tightly around the child. Dolores bounded towards them.
‘Dolores, you won’t believe where I found—’
‘What the fuck are you doing with my daughter?’ Dolores stopped a few feet away from them, her hands trembling. ‘Give her to me,’ Dolores said, and Colette realised she’d been withholding the child in fear. She passed Jessica to her mother and Dolores took her carefully into her arms.
‘Dolores, I found her up at the cottage. I have no idea how she got there but you must have left the front door open.’
Colette saw the way Dolores stared at her, the pure disbelief, like she couldn’t understand a word she was saying.
‘Just stop,’ Dolores screamed. Her eyes were red from crying, her face wretched with exhaustion.
Colette opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.
‘Just stop,’ Dolores said again. ‘Don’t come down to my house, and don’t come anywhere near my children.’
Colette saw Donal step out the front door. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stood there watching them, like some casual observer.
‘She’s safe,’ Colette said, and was surprised by how spiteful she sounded. She stepped back and turned on her heel. She tried to keep her head up, to walk at a steady, even pace as she headed down the drive, to not look back at the scene of the family reunited on the doorstep. And the next thing she was conscious of was the crunch of sand beneath her shoes as she moved off the road and the stone pathway became the beach.
Witch, witch, witch, she thought as she moved along the sand, the wind pulling loose strands of her hair. Witch, witch, witch. The mad woman in the cottage, the witch on the hill – she stole husbands and children. You placed a protective arm across the shoulder of whoever was in your company, drew them closer. She’d seen the way people avoided her on the main street of the town, crossed to the other side of the road, or lowered their gaze, smiling to themselves.
At the end of the strand was an enormous hunk of black rock that looked like it had broken free of the coastline. Sometimes she liked to climb right to the top of it and sit there and look out at the sea. In the summer months she’d bathe her feet in one of the pools that skirted its edges. Today, she reached out and placed her palm against its cold, wet surface. Surrounding her hand were patches of yellow and white lichen, neat spiralling patterns like crepe flowers. She turned and sat down on the rock and looked back in the direction she’d come from. The only other person on the beach was a stout little woman in a red headscarf walking a black Labrador almost the same size as her. But then another figure emerged from the Coast Road and despite the distance between them she knew it was Donal, would recognise the shape of him anywhere.
When he was closer, she could see he was wearing a black windbreaker, unzipped so the ends flapped around his waist as he marched towards her. A few feet away he slowed down. He placed his hands in his pockets. His demeanour changed, became sheepish almost. He took half steps in a sort of semicircle. He lowered his eyes then cast curious glances at her like she was something dangerous to be navigated.
‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ he said at last.
She bent forward, placed her elbows on her knees. She looked into the little pool of water near her feet. She could hear him stepping closer.
‘Are you listening to me?’ he asked.
‘I heard you, Donal.’ She refused to look up at him, to meet his eye. ‘I looked out my kitchen window and saw your three-year-old daughter standing there. I thought it was a good idea to bring her home. But your wife seems to think—’
‘She thinks you’re gone in the fucking head and I’m beginning to think the same. Can you not leave well enough alone? Coming down to my house asking stupid questions every other day. Do you think my wife’s thick, that she doesn’t know there’s something going on with you sniffing around the whole time?’
‘Believe me, Donal, I’m done trying to get your attention. And I’m fully aware that anything there once was between us is done.’
It was so brief, just a moment, a page turning and falling into place, but she saw that her words had hurt him.
