FREYA WAKES TO THE frantic light of an SMS alert:
Freya if u don’t drop those papers back within 24 hrs u can expect a court summons if that is really my son like u claim then i want access half and half
It’s three in the morning. She pushes the power button until the phone dies, and places it screen down on the bedside table. She takes a mouthful of water from the glass by her bed, lies back, turns to face the velvet curtains – plush black in the dark. Her mouth is already dry again. She can hear the workings of herself; tongue unsticking from her palate, the even beat of her blood.
As she falls back asleep, she has the sensation of tripping forward, hurling into some unknown. Her foot gives a sudden twitch, and she turns onto her other side.
She is not going to vomit again. She is not going to take another shower. She is not going to give that skinny prick any more weight than he deserves.
But she notices she is hugging herself, stroking her own shoulder, her nose in her armpit. She’ll need to cop on. She’s a big girl now and she won’t let a blowjob change her life.
Jem is fine. He’s right there in the room next to her, just the other side of the wall. If she listens closely, she can hear him breathe – or is she imagining that? Did she check on him before she went to bed? No harm to peek in on him.
*
Seeping through the curtains, a haze of orange streetlight traces the shape of her boy. There he is – of course he is, bony limbs all heaped up at the pillow. There is always a scent of lavender in Jem’s little room. She moves quietly to the bedside, feeling for the switch to his LED globe – a flimsy plastic sphere mapped with shapes of yellow and green and white-blue for the sea. When it lights up it sends a cool glow over Jem’s nose and the sharp, moist peak of his upper lip. She turns it off quickly, letting the cosy darkness wrap him safe.
Across the landing, Grandma’s door is standing open, and Freya can see a chair where her skirt and blouse and her sturdy beige bra have been laid out for the morning. There is a streak of white lamplight reflected in the mirror of the wardrobe.
‘Grandma?’
A wire-frame bedside lamp with frayed golden tassels casts fuzzy curves over the ceiling and walls and turned-down sheets, and the head-shaped dip in the big pillow.
‘Grandma?’
She’s not in the toilet. She must be downstairs. Knitting maybe, or cooking. That’s what Grandma does when she can’t sleep.
Wary of startling her, Freya whispers as she moves down the stairs – ‘Grandma? Grandma?’
She knew Grandma wasn’t right this evening; creases chewing her forehead, her voice quick and her eyes bleary with a kind of bewilderment.
It was nearly nine when Freya got in with Jem. Just as she was lifting him to the bell to herald their arrival, Grandma opened the door, her throat wobbly with panic, ‘Oh, oh Freya, thanks be to God, I was worried!’
‘I told you, Grandma. I told you we’d be late…’ When she rubbed Grandma’s shoulders the bones felt close and tight under the crunchy shoulder pads and straight-cut blouse.
There was a small pot of leek-and-potato soup on the stove, a leathery skin on its surface. Grandma ladled some into a bowl before realising it was cold. She looked like she might cry as she poured it back into the pot to reheat – ‘Stupid old goose!’ She had already buttered two stacks of bread: one brown, one white.
*
The hall is dark, but there’s light coming from the good room.
‘Grandma? Hello?’
The moment she opens the door Freya is hit by the metallic coldness of the room. Grandma is sitting at the big mahogany dining table, her back to the door.
‘Grandma?’
The good room is huge and rarely used. It smells of furniture polish and chemical-cleaned upholstery. A big Turkish carpet covers one half of it, and the walls are furnished with matching pieces – a display cabinet and a big, tall unit with locked doors and a locked drawer. In the bay window, a sunken velvet couch and armchairs; a granite fireplace, and a tall grandfather clock. The family only uses this room when there’s company, or for big gatherings, like Easter and Christmas dinner, when they light the fire and switch on the heaters, and Grandma covers the table with a lace tablecloth and silver trivets.
‘Grandma?’
‘Oh!’ Grandma’s hands flurry up to her mouth. She moves her whole body around stiffly, turning the chair with her, and the hands land on her chest. ‘Oh Freya, it’s you!’ She taps her breast bone hard with hooked fingers, as though to dislodge her panic.
‘What are you doing up, Grandma?’
Grandma is wearing only her faded floral nightdress, so thin that the straps of her thermal slip show through.
‘Come and sit down, darling.’
‘Grandma, are you not freezing? Let me get you your cardigan, it’s just in the hall…’
Freya fetches the soft primrose cardigan from the newel and Grandma allows herself to be helped into it. ‘Thanks darling. Aren’t you very good. Great girl.’
‘What’s up, Grandma? Why aren’t you asleep?’
‘Sit down here, darling. Now look here at this.’
There’s a big book on the table – thick chocolate-brown pages with sheets of parchment between them.
‘Now look. Weren’t we thrilled with ourselves?’
It’s a picture of a couple, taken indoors. Freya recognises her grandad from his slender neck and straight gaze, but Grandma – Grandma looks so different, brazenly tall, and a closed, triumphant smile. She looks no more than a teenager, wearing a woman’s tailored skirt and blazer, and a blouse with a lace collar. She’s taller and broader than Grandad, who has hollowing cheeks and dark eyes.
‘Weren’t we two silly young things, really…’ There’s something girlish about the way Grandma pushes her hands into her lap, as though afraid to touch the picture. ‘Delighted with ourselves so we were.’ She nods at the picture: ‘That was a wool suit I had my Aunty Dolly make. She was a spinster, Mam’s big sister, but she had lots of friends, you know… She was a wonderful seamstress. And she could make pancakes. No one really made pancakes, but a French neighbour taught Aunty Dolly to make them like the way they do in Paris. That’s how I learned to make pancakes – my Aunty Dolly. But I’ve told you that, haven’t I? I’ve told you about my Aunty Dolly. I was her favourite…’
Then, as though it takes great daring, Grandma lifts a finger and touches one corner of the picture.
‘It was a beautiful suit. Navy blue wool. A nice shade, like, not too dark. I changed into it in the hotel after work and the girls all came up from the kitchen to have a look at me and help me with a bit of powder for my face – your grandad never liked perfume or makeup, you know, so I only let them dab on a little rouge and some Vaseline on my mouth and lashes. Even the girls from reception came to see. And off I went, walking up the road on my own, to get married – wasn’t I a little madam?’
There is something fragile about being here, and hearing this, and Freya is afraid of her own clumsiness. She doesn’t know what to do with her face, or her hands, or what to say. But Grandma is looking at the book, asking nothing of her.
‘They went berserk at home you know, when I said I was marrying Dinny. Well no, now that I say that, no – Dada was quiet, “Has he a house to take you to?” that’s all, real quiet and worried like, “You’re not going to those lodgings with him, are you?” But it was Mam who didn’t approve at all – “And you who loves to dance and is asked everywhere,” she said. She was suspicious of Dinny, you know, “And what’s he been doing the last ten years child? He’s not been waiting for you in a glass box I’ll tell you that much.” But they didn’t know Dinny. You know what’s funny, Freya? He was. He was waiting in a glass box. You know what I’m saying now don’t you? You know what I mean? He hadn’t a clue about women or the world – all he knew was books and pictures. He spent his time in the gallery, and he spent his money on postcards of paintings. He collected them in a photo album. I knew more than he did, and that wasn’t much… He’d never been to Dublin before he came up for the CIE job.
‘But Dada was right, we had no home to go to. Dinny’s people had more than us like, but he was the youngest of eight boys… There was a bit of money left to Dinny by an uncle – a Protestant uncle, mind, but I didn’t tell Mam that. A little tin of cash, but it came to a lot – it seemed a lot to us, anyway. Dinny got a piece shown in the annual RHA, and well – we thought that was it! We were made! Off we were to make our fortune by Dinny’s paintings! Weren’t we foolish little things? And selfish, really. That’s what my sister Kat said, and we were. We were. I knew it then, even, but I didn’t care. That’s the truth of it. The bigger girls were sending money home from America, and passages for the younger ones and for cousins and everything, and I was off to London to be a painter’s wife. I suppose, you know, I didn’t think Mam needed me all that much by then… thought I’d done my time, maybe.’
She taps the page. ‘Yeah. Well… and bold. Brave and bold little things, and selfish. Thought we were the first in the world to fall in love.’
She frowns at the picture. Then, after a few moments she says, ‘You can turn the page, Freya. Turn over the page there now, good girl.’ She places the sheet of parchment over her wedding photo, and waits.
‘You know, we would have been married anyway, Freya. It was a foregone conclusion. But we were in a hurry for a reason. You know what I mean, do you Freya? My Aunty Dolly knew. I don’t know how she knew, but she knew, and I think she went and talked to Mam because all of a sudden Mam fell very quiet on the subject. They came to the wedding in the end – Dada in his good coat and the lot, and there was a little party back at the house – but there were none of Dinny’s people there. We never saw much of Dinny’s people, really. His father was a cruel man. You can turn the page, Freya. Turn the page.’
They look older already on the next page, and very happy – standing on a street outside a dingy-looking door. They are wearing winter coats and both of them are smiling, like they can’t believe their luck. Grandad looks even skinnier, and Grandma’s face is a little thinner too. On Grandad’s arm, a round-faced baby of – what, four months? Six? Below, on a white strip of paper, someone has written in fountain pen ‘Molly and Dinny and Dinny Óg. Soho, 1956’.
‘That’s him,’ says Grandma slowly, and her eyes widen, as if something is just dawning on her. ‘Our little boy. That’s him exactly.’
She runs her finger around the edge of the picture, touching only the cream mount and not the photo itself. A gravel sound comes from her throat. She looks at Freya and nods, takes a breath, makes a smacking sound with her lips, and breathes out. ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘that was him. That was. Yes.’ Her mouth stretches into a brave, wet smile that doesn’t match her eyes, and she nods again, blinks slowly, takes a breath to speak, and swallows instead.
*
It was from her cousin Valerie that Freya had first learned about the little boy who died. They were down at the end of the garden, picking raspberries for Grandad. Valerie was a bully of a child, and she insisted on being the only one to pick the berries. Because she was younger, Freya had to hold the bucket; but she ate fistfuls every time Valerie turned her back, and told Grandad on her afterwards.
‘Do you want to know a secret?’ said Valerie.
‘Okay.’
‘There was another child, before our mammies. There was a little boy who died. He died when he was three. But we’re not allowed to talk about it. Don’t ever say it. Swear!’
She never said it, except to Cara, who knew already and warned her again never to mention it. But after Jem was born, Grandma sat by the hospital bed, ‘Now you know, Freya. Now you know. You know now, don’t you? What it was like when he was born, my first baby; our little boy; and why I would sit up all night beside the basket, knitting him booties and hats and more booties and waiting for him to wake again… Now you know, Freya. You know what that was…’
*
Grandma taps the page again, slides a finger in under the next one, as though to turn it. But she seems to change her mind suddenly, and she takes the rest of the book in her hand – all the thick pages and the parchment paper and the stiff back cover – and smacks it closed on its face. She rubs a hand up and down the faux leather on the back of the book, then takes it between both hands and turns it the right way around.
‘I think probably that’s the last time I will look at those pictures Freya. You know, I don’t often look at them.’
She slides the book towards Freya. ‘Put it with your private things, Freya, will you? Keep it. I don’t want anybody else to touch the pages or that. Keep it safe, will you, and take it with you whenever you get your own house, okay? It’s not for showing people, really. I don’t want it mauled. Just keep it with you.’
Freya takes the album and puts it on her lap. ‘Okay, Grandma.’
From the other side of the house, the carriage clock chimes gladly. Grandma looks to the far corner of the good room, at the tall, stern grandfather clock, its pendulum silently swinging. ‘What time does it say, Freya?’
‘It’s four o’clock, Grandma. It’s Tuesday morning already. You should try to sleep.’
‘Well, what are you doing mooching around at this hour?’
‘I was restless too. Couldn’t sleep. Will I make some camomile, Grandma?’
‘Well, you know. If you twist my arm, just this once I think I’ll have a little cup of cocoa. I think I’ll make us both some cocoa and then we’ll go up to bed and have a good sleep. Maybe we should drop a bit of whiskey into it. I should have a sleep.’
She pushes herself up off the table. Freya straightens her cardigan for her, and fastens the top button, and the two women make their way to the good-room door. As they enter the hallway, Grandma reaches for Freya’s shoulder, as though to steady herself, and Freya puts her hand around her grandmother’s waist. Grandma still has a figure that curves into a crease at the waist, and Freya can feel the hard cleave; the density and sureness of the flesh there.
‘But you weren’t foolish Grandma, were you? You did make a life from Grandad’s paintings.’
Grandma frowns for a moment. Freya has said the wrong thing.
‘We’ll lie in in the morning, darling, will we?’ Grandma gives Freya a forgiving pat on the small of her back. ‘For as long as the little fellow will let us.’