One by one my sons went back to their lives. Their father was not coming home. He had told them not to wait, he wasn’t going to change his mind.
You should get out more, says Number One son. You shouldn’t fret so much, Ma, says Number Two son. You’re too sweet for this world, says son Number Three. Daniel thought he might as well sign on with Darragh Magee who was thinking of starting up a taxi business. I was back on my feet and able to work, after all. He would be home every night to keep me company. Ma, I’ll not be leaving you for months, he says.
The little house emptied out and the range went cold. I left it like that for days ’til I was pig sick of waiting for an electric kettle to boil. John didn’t come home, he didn’t call, he stayed true to his word as always. Serena tells me she’d never experienced him so tight-lipped. Your mother and me chose silence over sense, he told her, that’s all there is to tell. Her and the boys aren’t showing any signs of distress over the fact that we’ve parted company. Auntie Eileen just broke out laughing when I wondered aloud why they weren’t at least shocked. For God’s sake, Mary, she says, those waynes were brought up in a house on fire!
The greenery outside mocked my blackest blues. I pulled myself together and went back to the fields. There’s nothing like having no choice to focus the mind.
John Johns had left the hospital after about ten days and had moved into a Catholic retreat run by nuns. I was summoned by post after another month, given very little information other than the address and the date that would suit him, so I headed up the long lane once more to get the bus to town. He was determined to make me come to him, one last time.
I changed to the Belfast bus in Omagh and rolled through the hills and motorways and got snared in traffic a few times before it rolled into the grimy Europa Bus Centre. My first thought was how dearly I wanted to be back in Johns Farm, with its high hedges throwing out the scent of honeysuckle and whinbush, its vast piece of sky draped over the green fields, its animals and life. My second thought was how much I didn’t want to go back without John Johns, but he might, just might, take the opportunity to come home with me?
The sanctuary of Froughlagh smelt exactly like the convent: floor polish and stale dinner mingling unpleasantly with a huge display of lilies on the desk where a nun was waiting to direct people. I asked for John and the Sister sent me along the corridor where he’d be outside. He’d been a dream come true for the roses!
I found him where she said, in the big formal gardens at the back of the house. He seemed even bigger than usual as he’d picked up a little bit of weight and looked ridiculously hale and handsome. He didn’t stand up but sat and waited for me to make my way to him.
– Hello.
– Hello, Mary. You’ve finally made it, I see …
– I’m sorry I wasn’t here before!
He just laughed. The boys were right: he was different, lighter. He was a man who had halved his troubles when he shared them; the frown line between his eyebrows was smoother, his black eyes clear. He was still smiling when he confirmed he was leaving me for good.
– Mary, I’m going to miss you, believe it or not. I’ve plans to go abroad for a while at the end of the year. I’ve not told the boys yet.
– You’re really leaving me?
– To be fair, I’ve never really been with you. You were never mine. And getting away from me is all you have ever wanted, so chin up, Mary darlin’! All your dreams have come true at once.
He looked sad but not sad enough to change his mind. Why won’t my stupid mouth for once let me say the right thing at the right time? I want you, only beautiful you – such a simple thing to say. But because I’m me, things don’t trip off my tongue easily and I start to cry. Salt water is always going to be the bane of my life.
– Why the tears, Mary? Is it relief?
– No, it’s not relief! Why would you give up on me now? Now, when we’ve come so far? We could be … happy?
– You can’t allow yourself to be happy! And what about me? Did you ever think about what you did to me? I waited five years for you to love me, Mary, and every day you looked at me like I was the bogeyman!
– What did you expect?
– I expected that you’d come to understand that you were well off!
John sat still in front of me, a rock. He needed to hear from me but I had built too many walls, they wouldn’t all come down in a short afternoon. I was dumb. When I opened my mouth only a sob sailed out. In the end, he gave in to his exasperation.
– I know you think I robbed your life, Mary, but what would you have done? You were only sixteen, but you were only sixteen and pregnant. Bridie’d had a terrible time in Carncloon and she was more than twice your age and married before. What do you think would have happened if I hadn’t stepped in? I never demanded to know whose child I was rearing at the time – is she Joe Loughrey’s?
– No. She’s not Joe Loughrey’s. She belongs to a French teacher we had at the convent and, before you ask, he didn’t force me. I wanted to make love!
John nodded, he understood, he understood me and perhaps he’s understood me all along without the use of words. He’d never talked to me because he knew I wouldn’t grace him with my interest. I never talked to him because I was busy holding myself together, holding myself as far away from him as possible. I had been holding in the damage gifted by Mammy and its toleration by Daddy forever, from even before I had got myself into trouble, and I was tired, so tired with the burden of it, it threatened to crush me.
– I have to go to sleep, I haven’t been well. I need to sleep right now.
– You can sleep here. It’s early yet.
We followed a long cool corridor to a priest’s cell. His bed was made, a brown coverlet folded back to show the starched white sheets underneath. A crucifix with an accepting Jesus hung above. John’s bags were new, brown leather, very smart, suitable for going overseas. I took off my jacket and shucked off my shoes to discover that I had mismatched socks on: one yellow, one green. Jesus, I couldn’t even pair socks! I climbed into the bed fully clothed. I had time to register the slight chill of the linen and my husband’s familiar mossy smell before I fell into a black sleep.
He was in the chair beside me when I woke up, dozing too. Would that he had climbed in beside me and kissed it better! I could feel the life of the retreat carrying on outside, the shadows of nuns moved as if on casters across beneath the bottom of the door. It was cosy, so I snuggled down in the bed a bit further and stretched like a cat before I could get off to sleep again.
– Oh no, you don’t, Mrs Johns! I’m starvin’ and thanks to your ability to pass out for hours at a time we’ve missed lunch with the good Sisters. Get up, I’ll get us a taxi!
He was immaculate – every stitch he had on was new and had been laundered and ironed by nuns eager to please, his leather shoes gleamed as he walked; aside from a slight limp in his left leg he was every inch the man I knew. His dark head was closely shaved and his lips were red enough to make me swallow.
I had a pillow mark the length of my right cheek, juicy eyes from all the wailing I’d done, hair that had a bit of water flicked at it and it still only managed to set off how rumpled the rest of me was. We ventured forth anyway, two people with nothing in common except for five children, two little angels, a farm, a mother, a lifetime and a pair of plain gold bands.
I looked at the Victorian buildings flashing by and smiled like a tourist. The city looked lovely and grand in the muted light of afternoon. We sat in the window of a restaurant called Arancia so that I could look some more.
Now I was with my husband of twenty-five years who was about to walk away and leave me in the place I dreaded, alone with myself. I felt giddy; the wave of pain that would dump me on to the beach was getting closer and closer and I knew I couldn’t outrun it. My legs were twitching under the table as I struggled to keep my feet still on the floor. I ignored the list of lovely things to eat and ordered chips and a bottle of champagne, hoping it wasn’t going to be too dear when the bill came.
I had never sat across from him alone in a restaurant; it was difficult to avoid his icy stare. I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t feel that bringing up the detailed horror of the years with yards of red gingham between us was appropriate, but I had to say something, anything, before I froze to death!
– Serena told me about poor Catherine and the little baby. I’m sorry. It must have been desperate.
– First love always leaves its mark. First loss, too.
– I’ll take your word for it. I think you could easily substitute it with chewing razor blades while someone was reversing over your head in a bus!
– Ah! I take it your reunion with Joe Loughrey did not go well?
Of course he knew I would trail my sorry carcass back to Joe Loughrey, looking for forgiveness, when I finally had a chance to put my teenage heart to bed. I would never tell him how much that had cost me, how the disgrace rotted my guts.
I had to get back to my life at Johns Farm. Being away from the street and the sound of the river was making me homesick for myself, for the woman that I had become: the wife, the mother, maybe even the daughter I had always wanted to be. I had to get him to understand that I knew where I belonged.
– Why did you do it?
– Do what?
– Marry me? You could have had anybody! What possessed you to pick me?
– I knew you and I knew you had a rough road ahead. You had a smile that could break any heart. I latched on to that smile when I couldn’t see anything else. It was such a shock when I realised that I loved you. I never thought I’d feel like that again after Catherine. The loss of her and the baby was an open wound. I thought for a while it was just Serena but the truth is I fell for you the night she was born. When I came home and saw her in your arms I thought my heart would burst. You were lit up! You had no idea how exquisite you were – still are, for that matter, though you’ve always been blind to the fact and a thousand others.
The word ‘loved’ landed on me like a slap that I didn’t see coming. He made it sound so simple. He was telling me he had wanted me all along, stupid me. He had looked out for me, he had found me. His was no silly schoolboy crush; his was a feeling as constant as the Cloon flowing past our house.
I had made a fool of my precious time with him. You never miss the water until the well runs dry, says Auntie Eileen when she’s sad but needs to say something as she fires up the cigarette that will make it better. I tried to open my mouth but a decades-old fear of just not being good enough squeezed my throat like a vice. John had no such troubles.
– I understood how young you were, how unformed, how naive. But at least try to imagine what my life was like? Please tell me that you at least thought about me? Once? I had another man’s child under my roof and you looking at me like I was the Devil himself? I was in a pit again just after I’d managed to get myself out of one. Every day I thought it would get better but every day I was wrong. Can you imagine being locked out by the person you love? What would you have had me do?
– I don’t know. And stop shoutin’, you’re making people look!
– Well, Jesus! We don’t want to risk something so terrible, Sadie!
He was angry, fed up dealing with an idiot, an idiot with my mother. My head was light. The last few days and weeks had pulled everything I thought I had buried up by the roots and it left me feeling exposed, displaced. I was sitting with a man I could talk to, one who would understand my life if only I could find the words and time to tell him. I was sitting with the man I loved.
I considered the lie I had spun myself all these years that I had given in to his love-making with a martyr’s grace, when in truth I had longed for the moments he had made me feel alive over and over and over again in the pitch-dark of Johns Farm. Right this minute I would give anything to be back in his priest’s cell with him and the cold linen sheets on my naked skin. He touched my arm but it was my heart that leapt.
– Mary, are you going to mention the fact that I’ve told you I love you?
– Stay with me then!
– It’s too late!
– Give me a chance, I’ll stop being scared!
– You came to me scared! Christ alive, you were a wreck – not that I blame you when you had that bloody auld bitch to deal with! You were determined to hate me, you never gave me a chance, not one! But remember, Mary, it wasn’t me who stunted your life, it was you. When are you going to realise that? When are you going to grow up?
He was clenching his jaw, willing me to give voice to the words that might save me. Nothing happened, I didn’t even manage a whimper.
– It’s time we put this marriage out of its misery. That way we’ll both find some peace. Let’s go …
The urban daylight was blinding, the few flowers all growing to their death in sad little plastic pots and baskets. He raised his arm to stop a taxi and I knew it was for me. I was being set free. I grabbed at a street light to slow the horror of it down but he yanked me away from it by the arm.
– Get in the taxi, Mary! Now!
– I’m not going back to Johns Farm on my own, I’m not!
– You can go where you like! I’m past caring.
– Don’t say that! Say you’ll stay!
– I can’t stay! I need to get away from you before you drown me! You’re a miracle of self-pity! Do you know that? No one could feel sorrier for you than you do for yourself!
That shut me up at last. As he pushed me into the back of the car, he only had one thing to add before his voice broke.
– I’ve had the living of a dog from you, Mary Rattigan!
He didn’t wait to see me go. His big back was turned to me forever. I’m Mary Johns now, I said but there was no one left to hear me.