Maman
I
She sits in the seat beside me, with beautiful hands, long tapering fingers and clean, almond fingernails. Before we take off, she sends a text.
‘Sorry couldn’t speak was reading a story.’
I look for kisses, but there aren’t any.
Her hair is red and falls down her back; fine hair that is slightly tangled. I would like to touch it. To know what it feels like. Although, her head bends away from me, folding her son into her. It is a world made just for them.
‘Mama,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she whispers.
‘Do you love me more than my cousins?’
‘Yes.’
‘More than Gran and Grandad?’
‘Of course.’
Surely what he’d like to know, but never asks, is does she love him more than Dad.
A curtain of hair falls across her face, and I wait. Wait for her to pull it aside, because I want to know what she looks like. Already, I am obsessed. Sharp as a cat noticing movement in long grass, I watch her slender arm reach for a sage green jumper, and pull it over her head. It slides perfectly over her soft hair, so that I am forced to consider my own hair; brittle, peroxided and cut short.
‘Why couldn’t we stay longer with Gran and Grandad?’
‘I’ve got work on Monday.’
He doesn’t reply.
‘And Dad,’ she says. ‘He’d start to miss us.’
The drinks trolley inches down the aisle, with the chink of small bottles rattling. The air hostess is asking people if they would like a drink. Most say no, but a handful would like a gin ’n’ tonic even though it’s not yet midday. I take in details like these.
The metal drawer in the trolley for the spirits is giving some trouble, sliding open and shut with difficulty. Peanuts are in the second drawer down, the wrappers crackling the same way each time the air hostess passes them into outstretched hands. Repetition is everywhere. Departure and landing, before departure again. The air hostess working the route Ireland to UK, which she has no doubt made already once today. Her plump legs pressing on the seams of her acrylic trousers. How many children does she have? What sacrifices is she making? Rent for a small apartment in Cork is €1800 a month. Her salary can’t be much more.
‘Would you like a drink,’ the air hostess asks leaning into our row of seats.
I blush at the thought of speaking out and put my hand up to act out a resolute no. The air hostess moves her attention along the seats, and the relief of invisibility passes over me.
‘Could I have tap water. Two glasses please.’ The woman holds up two fingers for emphasis. Her face is now half turned towards me, and she has one flint-grey eye. I slant my gaze back to the air hostess and watch as a raised eyebrow disappears.
‘You’ll have to wait.’
I swivel my eyes back to the woman, careful to not adjust my head, to not appear to watch. A small, hooped ring pierces her nose, this sliver of metal sharpening the edge of her cheekbone. I am reminded that years ago there was some furore over airlines not offering tap water. It was decreed illegal. I had forgotten until now, whilst this woman, much younger than me, knows her rights and remembers them.
The drinks trolley moves off.
‘Would you like a drink?’ says a voice in the distance, almost forgotten, until a short while later the air hostess returns with two plastic cups of tap water.
The woman beside me lifts them down to her fold out table. Her son beside her kicks his legs with anticipation. I watch his navy-blue sandals flap up and down, the nostalgic kind, reminiscent of when kids climbed trees, read books and looked like Christopher Robin. His mother lays her hand across his legs, signalling for them to be still, and he kicks more slowly. He begins to focus on the water. Pokes his fingers inside the cup, tries to catch the ice.
‘It’s too cold.’
Huh! Got you there, Mum. Although, instead of telling the boy ice is cold, that is just how it is, I watch as she catches it between her fingers and adds it to her own cup. She then rests her head back on the chair. Rests her head until the little boy wants the ice back. Leaning forward she now reaches for her tote bag and pulls out a packet of cashews, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear, before shaking a few nuts into her palm to give to her son. Afterwards, she rolls the top of the bag over to maintain freshness, settles herself in her seat and curls her son into her side. Their heads are once more cojoined.
During the flight the child keeps asking questions, and she responds with a stoic patience, answers designed to make him feel cleverer. I read my book. Write in my notebook. Write about them. And finally, the lights of London span out around us. A galaxy at ground level to which I barely belong.
‘Is that the river?’ the boy asks.
‘No. Those are houses.’
‘Where is the river?’
‘Look for darkness,’ she explains. ‘Then you will know you’ve found the river.’
‘There,’ he says.
Clever boy.
‘Will Daddy be on the boat?’
‘He’ll be at the airport waiting for us.’
Everything has its place; all her ducks are in a row. Even her body shape is right, it is slender. Care-giver, employed and beautiful. She ticks all the boxes. I wonder if I could have been more capable without such an
absence of support.
People begin to disembark but the woman and her child are taking their time. I hang back, unable to leave their side. The aisle starts to thin with people, and the woman has found a new preoccupation, the buckle on her son’s shoe. I don’t want to arouse suspicion by wrongly attaching myself to this pair. Appear as a fraud. The buckle is refusing to fasten. I have no choice but to stand up.
‘Excuse me,’ the woman says.
I turn to see her gesturing towards my book Mending the Broken Bond, which I have left on my seat. I hate her for seeing. Hate myself for offering her this chance to know who I am.
II
Between the ages of six and seven, I had this strange habit of clicking my tongue at the start and end of every shadow that fell across the road. I would often delay starting this business, the perpetual ordering of things into imagined compartments, because it was onerous. It would also annoy my mother, this non sensical clicking, as we drove to the shops, to school, to anywhere. So, l learnt to mark out shadows by blinking my eyes, something I felt compelled to do to instil calm.
On one particularly long car journey with my aunt, who was taking me to stay with her over the summer holidays, I set to work. It was a sunny day, so the shadows were infinite as I doggedly organised road markings, cars and lorries. I also held some sweets in my hand which my mother had given me for the journey. There were three citrus-coloured squares and one red, probably strawberry, which was my favourite. Wrapped in clear cellophane, they looked so pretty, too pretty to eat. So, I snapped with my blinking eyes, holding onto the brightly coloured sweets.
As evening fell, the car pulled into a housing estate, where the road became much smoother, tarmac taking on the consistency of syrup as it swirled around in several directions. We followed a turn that flowed like a swan’s neck before swinging left into 19–23 Chestnut Avenue. Everything glowed amber in the overhead streetlights, and the car stopped outside a line of terraced houses.
‘Here we are,’ my aunt announced. She had married a divorcee and couldn’t have a wedding or wear a wedding dress. I wondered if it also meant she had to live in this tucked away cul-de-sac.
I got out of the car, pulling the strap of my bag over my head, and made a brief check to see I had everything. The beautiful colours of my sweets looked all wrong in the amber light, but then everything felt wrong. My aunt’s husband, who I had never met; the sound of my shoes on their slate floor; even the front door, the way it clicked shut.
We ate supper at a small white table. I could hear every mouthful that my aunt and uncle took, the stainless-steel cutlery scraping across their plates, and once against the yellowing tooth of my uncle, that I glimpsed through his beard.
‘Sorry,’ he said, and my aunt smiled.
I sipped water between each forkful so I wouldn’t choke.
‘Would you like to go cycling tomorrow?’ my aunt asked.
I nodded.
After I’d finished they asked if I’d like to get down, and I instantly stood up.
‘Goodnight,’ said my uncle cheerily as he reached for his newspaper.
My aunt carried my bag for me as I followed her up the stairs. There was a bedside light that had been left on in my room, and the corner of my duvet had been turned down. As she drew the curtains, she said she hoped I’d sleep well and then turned to say goodnight.
‘Are those sweets in your hand?” she asked.
I nodded.
‘There are no sweets before bed.’ And she took them away with a light kiss on my forehead.
Lying awake in bed that night, with a new emptiness in my hand I listened to their voices.
‘She’s very quiet,’ said my aunt.
‘Shy,’ my uncle replied.
‘Tomorrow, I’m going to take her for a haircut. I was a little shocked when I first saw her, the dirty hair, and holes in her jumper.’
I laid there so quietly, not wishing to make a noise and risk further exposure. Minutes ticked by and then I could hear a door being pulled, like it was stiff.
‘Come and look at the stars,’ my aunt called, ‘and give us a hand with the rubbish.’
A chair scraped along the floor.
‘Ah look at them. So clear you can see each one.’
‘It’s a shame Deirdre can’t cope. I would have loved children, but I think it drives her mad.’
III
I walk through the airport, along a corridor with everyone else, their belongings in backpacks, handbags, and small cases on wheels. I pass adverts behind perspex for Windsor Castle, the Tower of London and then news of an art exhibition featuring Maman by Louise Bourgeois.
I need to tell you about Maman. She is a giant bronze spider, measuring thirty foot high, the average height of a three-storey house, her proportions reversing those we understand between spider and human. You can walk through her legs, under her body and gaze up at her white marble eggs glistening in the darkness of her bulging egg sac. I’ve only ever seen Maman as a photograph, but still I want to wrap myself in her spidery legs, contain myself within, forgetting they are made of hard, inanimate bronze. Louise Bourgeois loved her mother, who was a weaver, designing and making tapestries. She believed her mother could stitch and repair anything, the architect of comfort, of home. Maman stretches skywards, her tall legs, a complexity of vertical lines, a scaffold of support. At eleven years old Louise Bourgeois witnessed her father’s affair with her teenage English governess who then became her father’s live in mistress, a scenario her mother had no choice but to tolerate. At this point, in Louise’s eyes, her mother became inlayed with weakness, her acceptance of the situation a betrayal where she should have fought for the integrity of their family. Maman, at thirty foot high, is a monstrous distortion.
When I was three, I remember standing at the bottom of the stairs. There was no natural light, so everything appeared in the low relief of shadow. I had my hand on the banister, chatting to my mother, on the point of going upstairs with her. It was then she turned to me.
‘Can you stop following me.’
I went into the sitting room where I had a child’s chair and table beside a gas heater. I clicked the heater on, a small blue flame danced into view, and then took my seat at the little table, writing my name over and over. Writing myself back into existence.
The duality between comfort and abandonment instils Maman with a tension. If Maman had a sound, it would be a note precariously balanced between an analgesic hum and a high frequency scream. To maintain harmony the calibration must be regulated. If unregulated it slips.
Once, my daughter Niamh said, ‘You don’t seem to like being a mother.’
IV
At times life becomes overrun with emotion, so I search for facts, picking over the debris of life to find what I can experience as a clinical diagnosis. If this could be assigned an object, it would be a bone, a bone sheared and scrubbed of skin, the ivory white of truth.
At nine years old, I was sent to boarding school. An older girl showed me to my dormitory, whilst my parents sipped tea and waited for me, or so I thought, in the hall.
‘This is your cubicle,’ said the girl pulling back a curtain in a row of so many other curtains to show a bed against a wooden partition, a sink and cupboard. Small wooden shelves had been made to fit down one side of the cupboard for photos, and perhaps an alarm clock.
‘And now you know where you’re sleeping you can do what you like until bedtime.’
I got lost on my way back to the hall but eventually found my way following the other girls in uniform, to only discover my parents had left. And so had Lucinda’s, Stephanie’s and Billy’s (a shortened version of Belinda), and by unspoken rule, none of us allowed ourselves a moment of vulnerability.
‘What shall we do next,’ I said in the tradition of Nancy Drew, the fictional female detective we all read at the time. We found our way to the gym where all our trunks had been dropped off by a trailer and tractor. Rows and rows in black, red, green, and brown resembling an infestation of giant beetles. We briefly pointed out to each other our own trunks, flipped open their lids to pull out a teddy, a book or something that was precious to us. We kicked at our family names printed on the sides of our trunks, feigned nonchalance, in place of anxiety, upset and passion.
In the refectory we were given a glass of milk with bread and jam, before being told to make our way to our dormitory. We dawdled a bit, got halfway up the stairs before sliding back down on the brass banister. And we all agreed despite only knowing each other for a couple of hours, that we had boosted each other’s morale sky-high.
V
It is not that I want to hand over the responsibility for my life. I’m more curious about how I’ve arrived here. What small decisions, appearing insignificant at the time, have led to other decisions and eventually form a picture of my whole life. How can you ever understand the accumulating effect of decisions when you are young?
At twenty-three years old I received a Court summons for riding my bike at night without any lights. Of course, I never bothered to pay the fine, high-handedly stepping over the reminder letters on my way to work. Inevitably the law closed in, which eventually led to the summons. In the waiting area, early one morning I took in the stackable blue chairs lined against the wall of the entrance hall. A young mum was unscrewing the top off a fizzy drink to give her toddler strapped in a pushchair. He cried, as he held out his hands for the bottle, threw it to the floor the moment he grasped it. The drink pooled on the ground, a bright orange cloud yawning across greying white tiles.
These memories arrive unannounced as I wait in line at passport control. A dull ache throbs from the end of my arm, and looking down I see one hand has wrapped around the wrist of the other, my fingernails digging into skin. It takes courage to live your life, when all the while its unfolding against a lurking sense of ill ease, lack of confidence, and decomposition. How it seems to stretch shapelessly alongside tensions of recklessness and impatience. Profound inspiration and then the dissolution of all clarity. Falling in love followed by loss and despair. I want to turn back, fling my passport away and make it impossible to travel any further. I step to one side of the queue, preoccupy myself falsely with the retying of my shoelace. I take my time, glance behind me to see if the boy and his mother have caught up. I would love to catch another glimpse, even to see the father and glean a greater impression of family life, because mainly I am just a gull, wheeling in unpredictable winds.
Finally, I stand up. An old man steps aside to allow me back into the queue, and this small act of kindness warms me right through. I can’t turn back, and get into line.
Arriving at the District Court that morning I’d rung my boss.
‘Please speak after the beep.’ It was the non-judgmental tone of the answering machine.
‘I’ve food poisoning,’ I lied as I sat down in one of those stackable blue chairs. People stepped over and around the spilt drink until a cleaning lady came, and wiped with a mop with dank rope ends backwards and forwards over the mess. Then she left, trailing the mop behind her. It seemed a cycle of hopelessness, somehow reinforced by the main door to the building making a constant sucking in and out noise. It must have been the insulating brushes on the door frame, that created this noise, a tearing from one world into another. There was a further intake, this time a man, about six foot in a long black overcoat. He had dark hair, crisscrossing in all directions. The poetic type. He walked in my direction, asked if he could take the seat beside me. We looked at each other and there it was, a metaphorical flash bulb going off, that mysteriously shone right us to align our souls.
We sat next to each other for several hours, waiting for our respective turns, and all the while I was acutely conscious of him. The way he lifted a thin leg to cross it over the other. His pale white skin, between the end of his trousers and the beginning of his socks. I could smell tobacco on his breath, his breath which felt so close it became indistinguishable from my own.
In the end our turn never came.
Instead, we went to an old pub in Dame’s Court, where there was a large Stag’s head on the wall, floor to ceiling mirrors that doubled and trebled the light from a wrought iron chandelier. He told me his name was Declan, that he was up for small time drug dealing.
‘I’m not proud of it,’ he’d said and as if caught by a spell my previous life began to fade. The life where I would arrive each morning for work at nine. Open my boss’s diary to go through any meetings that day. Schedule more meetings over the phone, book his wife’s hair appointment, and stare for inestimable lengths of time at the white wall in front of my desk, wondering when my own life would start.
‘What do you do?’ he’d asked.
‘Sometimes I order microwave dinners for my boss’s teenage son.’
He’d looked down then, small laughter lines creasing around his eyes and reached out his arm to put his hand on my leg.
After last orders we went back to his place, running for a bus and laughing like teenagers. He rented a room near Clondalkin village, where his bed was made of two pallets overlaid with a mattress. An upturned box was a table and seating a couple of classroom chairs he’d found on a skip.
‘My father was a minimalist artist.’
‘I like it.’
In the morning, I’d called work to tell them I had a dental appointment and the day after that, whilst lying in the bath with Declan, a funeral.
‘You’re fired,’ said my boss, and I put down the phone.
‘I’ve got you,’ said Declan.
VI
From the very first moment, I pictured how Declan would look after me and the family we might have together. It’s difficult to admit this now, it feels like an admission of weakness. Although, truthfully, without the anchor of loving arms, financial assistance, a true partnership to unpick the entanglement of life’s problems, I wonder how anyone can get along, let alone raise a balanced family.
I did have misgivings, not least because of how he earnt money. But who I fell in love with was not a mathematical calculation, nor a strategy, not even a logical process. It was heartfelt. I loved the way he brought tenderness to a room, by switching on a light. The slow way he unravelled a story that allowed me the space to think. Shy at first, I grew comfortable with him and felt able to touch him. It was the first time I was physically close to anyone.
We ate, slept, went to parties together. He introduced me to all his friends who were artists, welders, photographers, builders and other dealers. Everybody liked him. One night, in the studio of a friend of his to watch a football match, Declan sat beside another man shouting and roaring at the TV. That was what he did. Fitted in wherever he went. I wondered around not knowing what to do, not feeling I could even pretend to watch football. I poured myself a drink. The person who owned the studio rented it out for music gigs and photo shoots, and champagne bottles flowed from a fridge. I got talking to another girl, who said she liked my coat, an astrakhan coat Declan had bought me in Liberty market. She asked if she could take some photos. I did various poses, the type where you pout at the camera. I was slim then, with long black hair and big dark eyes. People said I was striking. At one point Declan came up to pour himself a drink. As he walked past, he put his arm gently around my waist and gave me a kiss.
When I fell pregnant it was like a wish come true, the arrival point at which I would be most fulfilled. Have a family, be part of a family. Motherhood would manifest what it most meant to be me. We qualified for social housing a week before I was due to give birth and moved into a maisonette on a revamped housing estate. The little staircase made it feel like a proper home. The kitchen faced east and filled with light that morning we first ate breakfast together.
Niamh was born on 14 July; I looked up the date at the time, searching for an augury as to what her life would bring. It was Bastille Day, when the French working classes brought down the fortress and stole gunpowder for the revolution. I loved the way Niamh’s birthday was synonymous with liberty.
The first time I held Niamh in my arms I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t want to lay her in the hospital crib by my bed as it felt too far away. She cried a lot, my little fighter. Declan sat beside us in a chair, and when I could stay awake no longer, he took Niamh in his arms. In the morning a friend of his came to collect us in their car.
‘Come in,’ Declan told him when we got home. ‘Let’s have a celebratory drink.’
‘Dec,’ I said gently. ‘Not now.’
‘You’re not going to get all mumsy on me,’ he said and turned away to pull some beers from the fridge.
Into my mind now arrives that spider, clicking across my thoughts with needle point legs. Weaving that web, like the one I once wove each day as I absorbed myself in the repetitive nature of bringing up a child. The washing, feeding, and rocking as I willed her to sleep. Sometimes, the despair that I was not capable, especially when she cried, her small fists and feet striking the air, her face turning red. The physical and mental exhaustion in the effort of unvarying tasks of wiping, comforting and cleaning. Do, Undo and Redo. Declan would tell me to put her down when she began to cry, even slam the door shut so he couldn’t hear her fussing. I tried to look after her better, so she wouldn’t cry, so Declan wouldn’t go out as much. The web that I spun from the ends of my fingers, this complex webbing that became the woven texture of our family.
In the coming days and weeks that spread into months, time imperceptibly moving on, Declan went out more without me. In the evening, I would eat my dinner alone, keeping his warm in the oven. Maybe there was another woman. Or was this just how things were. When he did come back still early enough for me to be awake, I’d purse my lips together to try and hold my feelings back. But not always.
‘Do you still love me,’ I’d ask before he’d even sat down.
‘Yeah sure,’ he’d say.
‘Why are you never here? Why does it feel different to before? Is there someone else?’
He’d still have his coat on, be standing in the kitchen where we had a TV and a little sofa. He’d turn his back to me then, open the fridge for a beer.
‘Get me one,’ I’d call.
We’d get drunk together and then we’d lie down, Niamh asleep in the room beside us. He’d cradle my head, love me and kiss me. There was just enough good to prolong a sense of hope. I decided to hold on to what was left. I even got pregnant again. Our second daughter, Clarity, was born twenty-two months after Niamh.
Declan took away the TV, said we needed the money. He took away other things: the curtains, and taps from the bath. Said we could use the sink or a neighbour’s shower. Sometimes he’d leave money on the kitchen table. I would take the girls to the nearby shop to get milk, cocoa pops, sliced ham and white bread. Buy a bottle of gin. Justine, the girl who worked there, slowly became my friend. Sometimes she’d come back to the flat and see the state of the place, say she knew a way I could earn a bit of extra money. Her cousin could get clothes and make-up, sometimes other stuff like hair dryers, and fake tan. If I wanted, I could sell it.
Once a week, just before closing time, I’d put Clarity in the push chair, take Niamh’s hand in mine and go round to the shop. Justine and I would load the netted basket at the bottom of the pushchair with dresses and tops, put fake eyelashes in the space around Clarity, and those self-adhesive push up bras. Then use the inside of the pushchair hood for more clothes, anything we thought we could sell.
We’d call round to people’s homes on the Estate, sometimes wait as people got off at the bus stop. We would make a few hundred quid, mainly from teenagers, who had work as baristas or waiters. Afterwards, we’d buy a bottle of something, and Justine would come back to the flat with me and the kids. I’d get them into bed and then we’d have a session.
In more sober moments, I’d look out my bedroom window across a corridor of red brick. I’d think of all the women before me. The ones worn out by duty and care for their children. The ones who’d lost not one child but several to scarlet fever. Fight harder, I’d tell myself.
A Customs and Border Control Officer checks my passport, looks sternly into my eyes. He’s right to; I know who I am. In the end he waves me through. On the other side I walk down a blank corridor towards baggage reclaim and then, tripping through my mind with all its threatening proportions, comes Maman. Just to remind me I am flawed. Too passive. Inadequate as a protectress. Incapable as a mother. Never fought back.
‘Wouldn’t you just remember to change her nappy. She’s sore like,’ Justine had said once. At the time she’d been rubbing cream onto Clarity, before she gave her a new nappy and a clean baby grow. I’d taken her in my arms afterwards, smelt her freshness, felt her soft cheek alongside mine.
Sometimes Declan wandered in, and joined us for drinks. A few times I’d thought I’d see them exchange a look, so quiet I could have imagined it, or the brush of their hands for that moment too long as they both reached for the same glass.
Justine was the only adult company I had when my life fell apart. Several months before she’d told me someone had come into the shop saying she’d seen Niamh walking home alone from school and it just wasn’t right.
VII
It was Justine who reported me to social services, saying Niamh was left alone too often.
‘Why did you do that?’ I confronted her. ‘All the kids round here walk around on their own.’
‘I was worried.’
‘Niamh’s cheeky,’ I kept on. ‘You’ve heard me call her in. But she doesn’t listen. She likes staying out with the older kids.’
Justine just looked at me, like she felt sorry for me.
Then Justine told Social Services I squirted washing up liquid into Niamh’s mouth when she used bad language. I had to discipline her somehow, and learnt this trick from the TV. Justine even told me she’d do the same if she had children. This woman at social services said in moments when Niamh answered back, I should ask her to turn and face the wall or send her to her room until she said sorry. I tried a few times, but somehow the shouting would take over. Or Declan would walk through the door looking for cash, stripping the house of something else that he thought he could sell.
I know I should have given more time to my children. Not drunk. Then none of this would have happened. But I couldn’t manage on my own. I couldn’t stitch and repair. Mothers can’t fix everything; sometimes we can fix nothing at all.
VIII
And then Niamh went missing.
IX
The woman at social services reported that the neglect had been acute. Gardai went through the house and took photos of Niamh’s curtainless bedroom. The shoelace reaching from her bedroom door to the banister that we’d used to shut her in her room. It was Declan’s idea, but I allowed it, and then did the same. There were photos of me in the local paper. I looked gaunt, and with my hair in a ponytail, shaved around the back I looked angrier than I was. They said I took drugs. Would make Niamh run between mine and a neighbour’s house collecting wraps of speed. I swear that never happened.
X
They did not find Niamh’s killer, nor did the investigation find enough evidence to convict me. However, the judge said I must take responsibility for how my abuse and neglect played a part in Niamh’s death. I was given a five-year sentence at Dóchas, later renamed Mountjoy Female Prison. Clarity was put into care because I, her primary carer, was no longer around and Declan couldn’t be relied upon. Where was his sentence? My anger doesn’t just come from within. It is every woman who is assumed to be the caregiver, and not only this but contributor to household income. Women must excel at both. The pressure is so stacked, it only invites more failure in. If it had a smell, it would be the pungent air when a match is lit. The whiff of explosive you hadn’t expected so close. Mother and child at breaking point.
In prison I shared a bunk with another woman. She was in for bringing cocaine into Dublin from Trinidad and Tobago. It was just for the money, she told me. She never would have done it if she’d known how crazy drugs make you. Flinging chairs around is what the women did here, picking fights, shouting abuse. Where she lived there was only begging if you were poor, no welfare. And she had a sick child and needed the money for better accommodation, to better care for her child.
‘Who’s looking after your child now?’ I asked, and she started to cry.
We did our own cooking, cleaning and laundry. All magnolia walls and green linoleum. People say prison is too good for the likes of us, but it isn’t, it’s terrible. No one visited me, no one generally visits the women. It is only the women who visit the men. I kept my head down, lived among ghosts whilst taking the rubbish out, and watching daytime TV. I enrolled in an art class. Made patchwork. Smoked a lot, drank coffee, hung out in the library during free time. Pills occasionally got in, usually from a returning prisoner. All hell, like I’ve said, would kick off then.
In the solitary space of a cell, my separation from Clarity and the death of Niamh was an unbearable reality. Neither fact have ever left me alone. I have no peace.
The bone that is most worn is the one invested with the love I have for my children. They never wrote in the newspaper about the time Niamh and I fell asleep together on the sofa, and woke hours later soft from dreaming and warm in each other’s arms.
‘That was the best sleep ever,’ Niamh said.
Or the time I found a five-pound note whilst walking home with Niamh after school and then gave it to her. She bought more sweets than she ever imagined, and insisted I ate half.
The guilt I feel, the self-hate so that these memories are almost all but stolen from me.
After five years Niamh’s case was reopened and the killer, just a boy at the time, was found guilty. His face was all over the front pages. I’ve seen his image ever since, as if burnt on my retina. It lies behind my eyelids, appears each time I try to sleep. It’s often in the shadows and always it is an image that personifies evil. If I wanted to, I could conjure it now as, just before baggage reclaim, I step into the toilet, shutting the world out, closing mine in.
Once out of prison I had my liberty back, or supposedly, and was granted visiting rights to my daughter, but I had become a stranger to her. Sometimes I thought it would be best to let her get on with life without me. I moved to Cork, never heard from Justine or Declan again, tried to start over, whilst always maintaining contact with Clarity, sometimes just a little, sometimes more. She knew where I was, I always told her, if she ever needed me.
XI
I walk up to the carousel to wait for my suitcase and then notice the woman and the boy from the plane are beside me. She doesn’t look at me, but I know she sees me because she takes his hand in hers and moves away. I follow them. I want to say something to the boy. I want to hear his voice say something back to me. I must look a sight following directly behind them across baggage reclaim.
‘Let me give you some money,’ I say to the child’s back, reaching deep inside the pocket of my baggy tracksuit. My voice is grotesque, it rasps, is at odds with my forty-three years. The boy turns to face me, forcing his mother to also turn.
‘No,’ his mother says. ‘You can’t accept money from strangers.’
‘I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it,’ I tell her.
She just looks at me then and I hate her because of what I think she sees. A woman, with rounded shoulders, boobs sliding into a distended stomach. My old tracksuit and worn through trainers. A smoker’s cough that makes words difficult to understand.
‘Accept my gift. Please,’ I say, because I am still making blind pacts with this earth to exonerate myself, hide from the taunting gaze of the stars, even from over four light years away.
A quiet space opens between the boy’s mother and me. She is after all a mother. Stitch and repair. Through this space her son moves his arm and reaches out his hand to accept my money. I press it into his palm and then watch. His pale, almost bone shaped arm moves away, to count the money.
‘And what do you say?’ says his mother.
‘Thank you,’ he says.
I try to smile at the mother, at her son but I have my bad teeth to think of. It is easier to raise my hand and wave a simple goodbye. Only after they have left do I feel a tear roll down my face, as I continue to stand and stare. The mother and son blur into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually just colour through tears.
I make my way to the bus station, where I will take the A9 to Stratford, East London and then walk to Clarity’s house, who for the first time in all these years has invited me to visit. She has just had her own baby girl.
What role will I play? Will I tell her not to worry whether the baby has an organic banana. To enjoy this time as before she knows it, her baby will be a teenager drinking rum and coke. Question what future this child has, as scientists track slowly across time to measure carbon in cores of ice from the North and South Poles. Ask her what it is to be raising a child when ice shelves formed over thousands of years are disappearing.
Now that Clarity has become a mother, she says she would also like a mother. I understand, but how is it possible when I too require a mother. And if Maman was a colour, what would it be? The colour of love? Or passion? Devotion? The colour of anger? The hot mess of madness. Sacrificial blood, menstruation, childbirth, the dry rust of menopause? Marks left by fingernails holding fast to the inextinguishable instinct to survive.
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