Serena walked early and was such a strong little thing. She was determined from the top of her black curls to the tips of her pink toes. She wasn’t quite a year old when she hung off the back of the half-door, her treat being swung backwards when John came in. When she was older still, he pretended not to have seen her and would ask Bridie and me, Where’s my girl? I can’t find her! And we’d all play the game ’til she came rushing at him, grabbing him by the knees and shouting ‘Dada, Dada’ before he whooshed her up in the air and brought her down squealing for a kiss. He was her whole world and she was his. In this way, with her to glue us together, we limped on, a three-legged race.
The seasons flew by and the sky stayed put, full of clouds by day and stars by night. My work at Johns Farm was endless and I fell into bed by eight o’clock every night hoping I’d brought in enough water and wood to get us up and going in the morning without having to brave the cold. John let me know my efforts were not going unnoticed by letting me know they were also not quite good enough. Make sure you tie the hill-field gate properly. The chicken coop could do with a clean. Did you not notice that the new Friesian heifer was lame? Are you listening to me, Mary? I nodded and apologised and lifted my daughter out of his arms and carried her away from him to the Lower Room and darkness. The rats took turns to watch my wonderful life from the holes in the ceiling.
But Kathleen called every time she was home and it was through her that I eventually got back in touch with Lizzie Magee. I was eighteen, no phone, no car and no money. The bold Lizzie Magee had a driving licence and was roarin’ about in an old banger that Dessie had fixed up for her before she went off to university and England. She was away to London in September. She caught up with Kathleen in town one day and asked if she could see if I still wanted to see her. Wanted! I would have given an arm and a leg to lay my eyes and ears on Lizzie Magee.
Matthew had never managed to run into her. She’d not had a single reply to several letters. When she phoned The Hill, she’d been told in no uncertain terms by Mammy that she was not wanted. I was a happily married woman now, I didn’t require the company of a silly schoolgirl. She’d be best to not forget that; better still, she was not to dial the number ever again: no messages would be passed on.
Kathleen rolled her eyes when I burst into tears: why hadn’t I just asked her to carry a message? Or why hadn’t I asked Auntie Eileen? The two of them were better bets than Matthew who could hardly speak? Did I have tapioca in my head in place of a brain? I laughed along with her so she wouldn’t see how embarrassed I was. Kathleen had told Lizzie how to find me. She couldn’t get lost as I was at the end of the road.
Lizzie showed up one day not long after. I was standing by the half-door with Serena on my hip because I’d heard the sound of her car coming on the river. She braked hard because she was driving too fast and jumped out of the car screaming and ready to hug before it had stopped. She had to jump back in as it rolled towards the river field; she’d forgotten to pull on the handbrake!
– Jesus Holy Christ in a chicken basket! It’s the Virgin Mary and Child!
– Lizzie Magee! Go easy, will you? Don’t swear in front of the wayne!
– God, look at you! Look at you! You haven’t changed an inch!
– You have! What in God’s name have you done to your hair?
– Fuck off! Perms are in! Not that you’ll ever need one with that wig! It’s pure fashionable! Oh cripes … sorry … erm … Mrs …
– Lizzie, this is Bridie. Bridie, this is Lizzie Magee.
– Very nice to meet you, Lizzie. Sure, I’ll take this little one and you two girls can run on down to the river or somewhere for a chat, eh? You must have some catchin’ up to do!
And we did run! Like children, whooping and screaming and pushing each other around! We were like cows let out after the winter: half-mad and blinded by the light but still determined to kick up our heels. The downy seed heads of the dandelions danced in our wake. When we came to a stop, breathless and laughing, I just held her for an age; she was soft and warm and I drew the softness and warmth deep down into my marrow. There was too much to say and no words to say it with. But Lizzie made a stab at it anyway as she dragged me on a whistle-stop tour of the past two years.
She’d actually studied, a near-miracle brought on by losing me to mess about with in classes. Sister Pious was still a dragon. My name had never been mentioned after the first week or so, when the thirty-three other girls in our class were desperate to know if it was true that the brainbox Mary Rattigan had got herself pregnant. Then they all got bored, especially as Lizzie had been ‘absolutely loyal’ and wouldn’t even grace them with a ‘fuck off’.
Sheila and her had found out about my wedding when it was a week old. They’d both laughed about the fact that I’d ended up with the most gorgeous man in town; it seemed appropriate somehow. I was a dark horse but then they’d always known that! Had they? It was news to me. Had she no problem with me getting married at sixteen at all? Had she forgotten that once upon a time I had other plans? What was so appropriate about me marrying him?
Lizzie had woke up one morning and her boobs had grown two cup sizes. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing and had a total sense-of-humour bypass over it and bloody Dessie had told her to cool it: at least her arse had grown at the same time and to the same size so she wouldn’t trip over. Sheila had fetched him a good hard slap across the back of the head for his lack of understanding. I lapped up the words and the teenage drama and never felt more isolated.
– But hang on a cotton-pickin’ minute. Are you going to tell me what went on exactly? We had a deal, Mary Rattigan: NO SECRETS.
– It’s the oldest story in the book. Girl meets boy, girl falls under boy, boy marries her. What did you think happened?
– Noooooooooooo! So all along it was him you fancied and not poor auld Joe Loughrey at all? But what John Johns McJohns-boy? I thought he gave you the heebie-jeebies? I don’t know why, though, he’s fuckin’ gorgeous! So you love him then or what?
– Well, I married him.
– But what NOW? You’re not goin’ to stay out in this countrified hellhole with a sprog and an old dear and a farmer and no runnin’ water for much longer, are you, surely?
Trust Lizzie Magee to reduce my life to a sentence. I had nothing to say for myself. I started spouting about how Serena meant the world to me and that Bridie was like an angel at my back. I couldn’t tell her that I never went into town because I couldn’t face the thought of Serena seeing soldiers and RUC with guns standing outside the sweet shop and thinking it was normal. I couldn’t tell her that every penny I had held for two years had come from John Johns and I didn’t feel I deserved to spend it. I wasn’t able to scrutinise myself in the mirror. I didn’t want to lock eyes with the startled pale face trapped there.
I only left this patch of land to go to Mass and I walked with Bridie and Serena right up to the front seat. I wanted to make sure that Father O’Brien couldn’t forget Father Martin O’Hara. I blocked out the sounds of tongues clicking in the pews. My priest always had the decency to avert his eyes after the most cursory of cursory acknowledgements and he still just looked as if he was being forgiving rather than friendly.
I didn’t tell Lizzie Magee that technically I wasn’t married; she had no problem believing that John was the daddy. She didn’t need to know that I had actually managed to fall pregnant the very first time I made love when she was sleeping not two hundred feet away. She wouldn’t believe me. That it happened with her super-crush, Jacques Bernier, on a gravestone? She would KILL me. That I retired each night with my daughter in what should have been the Good Room, with a torch beside my single bed. That sometimes I could hardly sleep for thinking about when I would be kissed again and knowing it would be no time soon.
I didn’t tell her that I knew escape was not an option. I hadn’t acquired a husband as much as a new owner. I didn’t tell her that most of my days felt like I had fallen down a deep well and had only the certainty of sleep to keep me from going bonkers. Any of the words I needed to explain my sad little life would have stuck in my throat like dry bread.
She got distracted then – luckily – by my girl toddling towards us, her baby bunches bouncing around on her head. Bridie waved from the entrance of the river field in defeat: she couldn’t keep up. Serena was playing peek-a-boo by putting her hands over her eyes and shouting boo-boo-boo. Lizzie scooped her into the air and spun her round and round. That made me smile with my very heart, my two best girls getting acquainted.
They giggled and jostled and played tag ’til Lizzie had to get off. Dessie was still nervous of her at the wheel, she had to drive past the garage and honk every time she was on her way home to prove that she hadn’t wrapped herself around a tree or ploughed into an RUC roadblock.
She pulled some stuff from the back seat of the car: a whole tin of Quality Street for me and a jigsaw and blowing-bubbles set for Serena. The jigsaw was far too complicated for a two-year-old. It was five hundred pieces and had a picture of Paris on it showing the river reflecting the city. Lizzie said Paris was where she was going the first time she felt filthy rich. Jacques Bernier might still be there pining for her at last; he was only human, after all. I grinned, secure in the knowledge she was holding the only bit of Jacques Bernier that she would ever get her randy hands on.
She was coming back and soon. How magical to be able to come and go as you pleased. It made Johns Farm seem even more like a prison, a prison with trees and hills and velvet fields as far as the eye could see. I stood in front of the half-door with the widest, brightest smile I could muster and waved and waved, bye, bye, bye, bye. Lizzie’s tail lights disappeared up the narrow lane, dragging another fingernail of meat from my heart.
I had missed out on everything: all I had to my name was my daughter. My days were filled with wondering how it would be remotely possible to slap her beautiful little face, to light it up with stripes and tell her it was for her own good. It would never happen, never. If I was not going to be anything else, I was going to be a good mother. I would buck every child-rearing trend I’d learned at Sadie Rattigan’s hands.
Lizzie’d be going home to a bit of craic, probably beans and chips and all the love she could handle. Any time she wanted to nip out and go to the shops she didn’t have to think about how dangerous it was, how anything could happen to a little girl. She had university and London in her sights and her whole life ahead of her. She was out in the bars of Carncloon having a drink and a dance now that she was all grown up, all grown up and managing just fine without me.
I roared in at Bridie to put the kettle on. Poor wee Serena nearly jumped out of her skin! I needed tea to keep my stomach from twisting and my mouth from letting out the howl that was travelling from my toes. I wouldn’t be letting it past my lips: someone might hear it and call an ambulance. Only someone close to losing their mind would be able to produce such a pitiful sound.