Twenty-three

‘You want to marry me?’ said Vincy, dumbfounded once again. Every time he met Anna now she had some new shock for him.

‘Why not? After the acceptable period of separation is over,’ said Anna.

They were in a bar too, in the middle of the day, in Blessington, as far away as they could go at lunchtime. Their meetings in Vincy’s apartment had been suspended again, ever since Anna had dropped her bombshell, two weeks earlier. Vincy had been kind, since then, but distant. She was now two and a half months gone and her sense of a slight swelling of the stomach was not imaginary. Her waist was going; her skin was clearing. She had very little sickness. It would be an easy, healthy pregnancy, just like her last one had been.

Vincy laughed a special, dry laugh that he reserved for moments of disbelief. ‘That “acceptable” period of separation, as you call it, is four years,’ he said. ‘That’s what the courts accept.’

‘I thought it was five,’ said Anna, with a toss of her head. ‘So you’re saying you don’t want to marry me, in four, or five, years’ time?’

‘I’m not saying anything of the kind,’ said Vincy, sighing. ‘But … we have to think about this. You’re married to Alex; you’ve got a child already.’

‘That’s my problem,’ she said. ‘I will get shared custody, at the very least. I might be able to make a case for complete custody.’

Vincy looked even more worried. Would he have to take in Rory as well? ‘Could you?’ he asked desperately.

‘Alex is not much of a father. He’s always at work. He hardly even sees Rory. And there are other mitigating factors.’

Vincy took her hand and squeezed it. He glanced at the clock, which took the form of a wrought-iron cartwheel on the wall over the bar.

‘It sounds good,’ he said, in a voice that made it sound like a prison sentence. ‘But let’s give it very serious thought. Don’t do anything hasty.’ He looked over his shoulder, at the window behind him. ‘You haven’t told Alex yet?’

‘No,’ said Anna. ‘And soon I won’t have to. He’s not blind. Or stupid.’

Although she often said he was both of these things, now she believed what she was saying.

‘There is still time,’ said Vincy in a tense tone, looking over his shoulder again like a spy in a thriller.

‘To have it aborted?’ She looked at him coldly.

He withdrew his hand. ‘Well, it is an option,’ he said.

‘Thank you for reminding me,’ she said.

‘Look, Anna.’ He took her hand again and spoke warmly. ‘I really do love you. You know that. But I think you are being a tiny bit unreasonable. And unrealistic.’

She shut her eyes.

‘You didn’t warn me that this might happen, you know. We were … having a wonderful time. We were so lucky, Anna. It was different. It was special.’

She saw herself in the snug of the Tower, clutching his hand when the barman wasn’t looking. She smelt the roasting beef from the carvery. The beer. Her hand in his, under cover of the tablecloth, if there was one.

She saw herself on the big tossed bed in his shadowy room.

If she had an abortion, would he let her back into that bed again? Would he let her back into that room again?

Would he?

‘We can go back there,’ she said. ‘The baby won’t make any difference.’ But babies always make a difference, she knew. ‘I love you. I adore you.’ She meant what she said.

‘Oh darling!’ He squeezed her hand again. ‘Let’s meet in a few days and talk about it again. We’ll find a way.’ He jumped up. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go. I’ve a meeting.’

Before she could say anything, he was kissing her on the forehead, he was loping across to the door, as quickly as a wolf. Her hand was still hovering over the red plush dent where until a second ago he had been sitting.

Ludmilla was the first at home to notice that Anna was pregnant.

She eyed her waistline meaningfully when Anna was handing over her money on Friday. ‘Are you well?’ she asked, in her foreign accent. Some foreign accents sound innocent and childish. Ludmilla had the kind that sounded like a scientist who does evil experiments in Batman movies. She always seemed to know more than she let on.

‘Yes thank you,’ said Anna. Ludmilla continued to smile insolently at her, even though she had got her packet and should be heading off down the hill on her rickety bicycle. Anna screwed up her eyes. ‘Considering my condition.’

‘Oh!’ said Ludmilla, taken aback.

‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘You know what it is. So now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do. Have a nice weekend!’

Ludmilla said ‘Humph’, or some version of it which required no translation, and swaggered off.

Before Anna could savour even a second of triumph, the telephone rang.

It was somebody called Sharon, who wanted to speak to the telephone account payer.

Anna said, ‘I’m sorry, there is nobody of that profession here’ – a formula she had evolved and one that left the unfortunate telesales assistant speechless, giving her a chance to replace the receiver. As always, she felt guilty for doing this – she knew the people who worked as telesales assistants were poor and underpaid and forced to do the worst job in the world, by all accounts. But she did not feel guilty enough to change her telephone company every two days, which was apparently what the employers of the telesales people believed people like her would do, if talked to persuasively enough.

As soon as she put the receiver down it rang again.

They usually did not ring twice, in the same half-hour, but perhaps there was a new tack? Telephone torture.

‘Hello,’ said Anna crossly.

‘Anna,’ said Elizabeth. Her very confident ringing voice was down a key. She did not expect authors to be cross.

‘Gosh,’ said Anna. ‘Elizabeth! Hello. How are you?’

‘That’s better!’ Elizabeth tended to be mildly patronising. ‘First of all, I’m really sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you. I have been so busy, you would not believe!’

‘I understand,’ said Anna neutrally.

‘My mother has been ill,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Anna, thinking, it’s none of my business. ‘I hope she’s all right.’

‘She died,’ said Elizabeth sadly.

‘Oh dear, I’m very sorry,’ said Anna guiltily. ‘I hadn’t heard.’

‘I only got around to reading the chapters you sent me of Sally and the Ship of Dreams last week,’ Elizabeth said in a colder tone, implying that Anna was a brute.

This is one of those liminal moments, Anna was thinking. Elizabeth could say something that will be either wonderful and make my day, make my year. Or she could do the very opposite. In a few seconds I could be ecstatic or in despair. Not could. Will be.

The strange thing was that she had no real way of predicting which it would be. You would think, at this point in her career, she should know. She had read and written enough books. She always knew very quickly what was wrong or right with everyone else’s. Oddly, this power of judgement could not be transferred to her own work.

‘Well!’ There was a fateful pause, timed to let Anna’s hopes drop slightly before anything had to be said. ‘The narrative has a lot of good aspects.’

Anna allowed herself to hope, stupidly, since she knew what was coming. But there was still a moment between having the worst news confirmed and hoping for the best news. She was, just for another second or two, on the fence separating the great from the terrible.

‘But I have to be honest.’ Why? Why do you have to be honest, you cluck? There were lots of awful books out there, the shops were full of them. Would one more do so much harm? ‘I don’t love it enough to take it on.’

Don’t love it enough? For God’s sake. Do they have to use this patronising chick-lit jargon all the time, even to writers, the people who are least likely to tolerate bullshit? I know the English language, Anna wanted to scream. Keep those dreadful clichés for the readers, or the press - although she doubted if anyone would be taken in by them, or even find it possible to hear them without wincing in pain.

‘Why?’ Anna asked, although she knew this was a word they hated.

Sure enough, Elizabeth paused again. This time the silence was more hostile than the first one. When she spoke, her tone had changed. All the warmth, insincere as it had been, had left it. She was brisk and businesslike.

‘I could have sent you a letter, but I decided it would be more considerate to talk on the phone.’

Now I’m supposed to be grateful to her for this, Anna thought. For being so considerate as to actually make a phone call. ‘Thank you,’ she said sarcastically.

Elizabeth had a professional immunity to sarcasm. Like a mother who ignores her child’s sulking, she moved right on. Eat up your cabbage.

‘You are a wonderful writer, Anna, one of the best I know.’ Exactly. ‘But this does not do you justice. It’s derivative. It’s repetitive. It’s … it’s dull … need I go on?’

‘Please do.’

In a mood even marginally better than that into which she had sunk, Anna might have liked to hear more reasons for this reaction to her work, or she might have liked to force Elizabeth to suffer the painful effort of coming up with a catalogue of synonyms for ‘bad’.

‘Listen, Anna,’ said Elizabeth, in an intimate but firm tone, indicating her intention to finish the conversation. ‘My advice is, abandon it. Throw it in the bin. Take a break and then start afresh on something else.’

‘Will you be interested in that? Will you …?’

‘Have to fly. I’ve a call waiting. Bye, Anna, bye, see you soon. Bye-ee!’

She hung up.

Call ended.

Anna put her phone back on the receiver, slowly slotting it into its cradle, as if attention to the minor routines would now save her from … screaming, crying, breaking the window.

Two years’ work. Or was it one? She’d been doing it for ages anyway.

Throw it in the bin.

It was probably good advice. But she decided not to take it.

‘So how is the novel going?’ Anita asked brightly.

They were at a launch in a very small bookshop in Temple Bar. This was one of the few independently owned bookshops left in the city. It was the kind of shop that held launches for new poets, first-time short-story writers, or people who had written an imaginative pamphlet about saving the environment. It was the sort of shop that went as far as to stock Leo Kavanagh’s publications; Kambele Ngole’s new collection was on the shelves, and a small portrait of Kambele on the wall. They didn’t charge for the use of the premises as long as they could sell the books at the launch. The hope of the owner of the shop, an idealistic woman with long black hair and pink cheeks, always dressed in a black T-shirt and purple skirt, was to develop a niche market, to make her bookshop a place of character and refinement, to supply discerning readers with the kind of shop they used to love before the international giants colonised the book trade. The shop had survived for two years and everyone hoped it was now secure.

Christine, fed up with rejection slips, had abandoned not just the conglomerates, but every commercial publisher and published her first collection of poetry herself. She had taken a desktop publishing course and here was the result: The Witches of Walkinstown. Bound in a plain yellow cover with the title and her name, and the title of the press she had ‘founded’ – Acorn Press – printed in Gothic lettering on it. The Gothic font was the only concession to decoration she had been able to afford. ‘It looks great,’ everyone said, thinking, did you ever see such a shoddy production? And it was not cheap. Fifteen euro, the price of any properly produced poetry collection. Christine hoped to cover her costs and romp home with a small profit.

That is how impractical she was.

The aisle of the little shop was crammed with women writers, and a few men (Christine’s husband, brother, and two sons, all together in a corner and looking uncomfortable). For everyone else present this was a comfortable, a pleasant, occasion, where everyone knew everyone else and felt at ease. The women liked to be amongst women. Literary women. Women who loved to write and women who loved to read. Women who had published ten books, women who had published one, women who had been working on a collection of poems or short stories for the past ten years, or who had won a prize in Listowel in 1988, or who were members of a writing group and had long ago given up on their ambition to publish, stood around sipping red wine and chatting animatedly to one another, about the books they were reading, the illnesses they were suffering, and what their children were doing with their lives. They talked about poems and novels. They gave one another tips for losing weight – ‘Don’t eat bread’ – or for storing fruit.

‘You should never put bananas on top of a fruit bowl,’ Anna had been told by a novelist, before she started talking to Anita. ‘They make the other fruit rot.’

‘I never knew that,’ she said, troubled. She always put bananas on top of everything else in the fruit bowl.

‘It’s true,’ the novelist nodded sagely. ‘You should hang them up. Or’ – noticing Anna’s consternation, as she wondered where she could hang her bananas – ‘put them in their own bowl.’

‘I must remember that,’ said Anna.

At another launch, this woman had told her that the best way to cook salmon was to put it in the dishwasher ‘in loads and loads of tinfoil. Comes out perfect.’

‘Have you read the Thomas Hardy biography?’ the woman added, without pausing.

Now that woman was engaged in conversation elsewhere and Anna was being interrogated by Anita.

‘Oh, my novel is doing fine,’ said Anna. She had no intention of revealing the sad state of her literary affairs to anyone. She was at ease, but not a fool.

‘When will it be published?’ Anita was not one to give up easily. There was a mischievous glint in her dark eyes.

‘Next year,’ Anna lied.

Lilian, who had joined them, glanced at her quickly. ‘That’s great news,’ she said. ‘I thought it was very good, the bit of it I read. You must have written a lot more by now.’

‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘It’s almost finished. I have to rewrite it and polish it off but it shouldn’t take too long.’

‘Good,’ said Lilian, although a slight furrow appeared in her forehead. ‘So it should be finished in a week or two?’

‘Well, maybe a month or two.’ Anna laughed. ‘Or ten or eleven! You know yourself.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Lilian, the frown smoothing out as she smiled.

‘So that’s three books in a year from … us!’ Anita said in an enigmatic tone, which could have been happy or irritated.

‘Three?’ asked Anna.

‘Christine’s, yours, and Lilian’s,’ said Anita.

‘Oh?’ Anna looked at Lilian questioningly. ‘I didn’t know you had one due!’

‘I have,’ Lilian said, in a somewhat apologetic tone of voice. She looked troubled, probably because she disliked revealing good news when others might not be so lucky. ‘I didn’t say much about it, I hadn’t any real hope that anything would come of it. But now …’

‘Something has,’ finished Anna. ‘That’s fantastic,’ she added. ‘What is it?’

‘Oh, just a little thing, a short novel. A sort of novella really.’

‘And who is publishing it?’ Anna asked. She could have asked a more pertinent question – the one which had passed through her mind, fleetingly, but which she had dismissed. That question was ‘What is it about?’. Anna had a bad habit of hopping over the first question that came to mind, which was usually the most crucial one, and asking the next one, which was often unimportant.

‘I don’t want to say that right now,’ said Lilian. ‘My agent is still negotiating, so it could be one of two. I’m sorry to be so mysterious but you know how it is.’ She smiled conspiratorially.

‘Of course,’ said Anna. So Lilian had an agent and her book was being auctioned. ‘It sounds as if you’ve hit the jackpot!’

Lilian smiled wanly. ‘Fingers crossed. I’ve been through the mill. But, yes, things are looking good at the minute.’

‘I will keep my fingers crossed,’ said Anna warmly.

‘I appreciate that, Anna,’ said Lilian. She smiled and moved away to join another group.

Anna enjoyed herself at the launch, and afterwards joined a group of the women for an Italian meal in a restaurant on the quays, where they chatted on in the same vein as in the shop, about their books and their children and their houses and their illnesses.

Nobody asked if she were pregnant.

But everybody noticed that she was.