The birthdays are the worst. I tend to walk through them in a daze. Mind you, Roisín, it’s a daze for which I’m glad – and not the type of daze I suffered from when I was taking all that medication. I hated the foggy feeling that stuff used to give me. For your birthdays, on the fifteenth of May – although of course it’s not just your birthday, is it? – I spend a lot of time in the back garden, even if it’s raining. There’s always something to do that time of year, thank God. The weeds are flying up, and the first chrysanths are out, and the delphiniums and the irises near the hedge, and the lilies and the poppies – it’s all go. I bring the small radio with me to distract myself. I couldn’t go out in case I’d meet somebody. Tim tends to rise early and go straight in to work and come home late after one of his meetings. It’s better if we’re not around each other on those days; we’d probably tear strips off each other. Or I’d tear strips off him – he was never any good at fighting with me. He never was any good at hating; even in his hurling heyday when he’d knock the block off some lad from Tipp or Kilkenny, it was never personal. But I can hate. Oh yes, I can hate very well indeed.
The only person your father ever hated was himself, and he’s still good at that – though not as good as when he was drinking. I think it’s mainly because he never fought back against my father over Sean. He was only eighteen and my father was a piece of work, but of course Tim blames himself.
You’d be twenty now, if you’d lived. Sean – who I still think of as James, the name we gave him, the name he’d still have if he’d stayed ours – he’ll be twenty-nine before we know it.
Twenty-nine years.
So that’s forty-eight birthdays between the two of ye and another in a few months. That’s a lot of birthdays without a party.
When I think about it now, I have gone through three main phases of reaction to the question: And do you have children yourself, Evelyn? My first, when I was younger and frail (I was sick for a long time after you died, love), was to redden and fluster and blurt out a no – which embarrassed the life out of the questioner because it wasn’t just a no, not yet, or a no, I’ve no interest, it was (and I’m sure this was very obvious, too), it was a no, no I don’t and it’s all I want in the world and now it’s never going to happen kind of a no.
Later on, when I had no hope of a reunion with Sean (and I was angry about that for a long time), and when, if I’m honest (and I’m a bit ashamed of this), I had gone into a kind of denial about you too – about ever having had you at all; then I used to give a cold no, a curt no, a this is the end of the conversation, what a rude question, what kind of person are you even to ask it, kind of a no. And the person (it’s nearly always a woman, though Tim probably gets it from men), sure she just wanted to chat and talk about her own children. There’d be a terrible silence after I spoke, a frightful thing altogether that froze the air around me, and even seemed to block out the light, and all I’d want to do is run away and hide.
And now? Now I give a smiling no, or a matter of fact, almost casual no, or a no maybe with a hint of regret. But it’s a measured kind of regret, poles apart from the raging guilt that almost consumed me when I had to be admitted to St Pat’s – a place I thought at one time I’d never be leaving. I always say back: And what about yourself? So then she has permission to talk about her own children and I can pretend to be interested, and ask some of the usual types of questions back. Or maybe she had already been talking about her children, in which case I’ll say something like: And what age are yours now? or So is it only the two you have? Something like that. It’s mostly when I’m golfing with people who don’t know me that the question arises these days, and I’m always on guard, ready for it.
I don’t think golf would really be you, Roisín. Definitely not, at twenty – that would be all wrong.
Now I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I gave another answer too, for a while. Not often, but I did it and I’m a bit ashamed – I never told anyone about it. Sometimes I used to say yes. When somebody asked me if I had children, I used to say, yes, I’ve two, James and Roisín and I’d give whatever ages you were at the time. I’d say that James was in college and you were in such-and-such a year in secondary school, or that he was in secondary and you were in primary, and I used to say that you were a handful (sorry about that, love) and that James was quiet and studious and a hurler like his father. But I’d feel terrible afterwards and I’d be afraid that the person might say something to somebody who knew me, and people would talk about me and think I was queer in the head. So I stopped doing that. I haven’t said yes to the question for years, now, and I don’t think I’ll ever do it again.
Tim tried to hide his nerves this morning before he headed off to the match with Pat. Neither of us slept, of course, but that’s nothing new. I don’t know how he can stand watching Sean on the pitch at all. It’s a terrible rough game. I couldn’t bear to watch your father play, either, even when we were going out first. I suppose losing a final must be hard, too. But Tim seems to think Cork will win and that gave me a little prick of hope.
I tell myself it’s never going to happen and I should just keep seeing out the days, one by one, as best I can. But Tim might mention him, or I’d hear a story about a late reunion on the radio or the television (there was a series about adoption on TV3 last year), or I’d go on the Internet and I’d think: Why not? He’s only twenty-eight and I’m only forty-six. There’s plenty of time.
So lately I’ve had this silly idea that if Cork do win, that Sean might change his mind, that something might be triggered in him that will make him want to make contact – with his father, especially. And I know, I know, I’m probably grasping at straws and I’m setting myself up for another fall and I feel so foolish whenever the phone rings and I think that might be the social worker now, or when I hear Liam’s van at the bottom of the drive.
I used to stand by the window in the front room and watch out for Liam – he always delivers just after eleven. I did it for a long time. I’d imagine all sorts of things while I was standing there, looking out through the blinds. All sorts of things, Roisín. About where we’d meet him, and how it would be, and how he’d get on with his father, and how they could talk about hurling and I could ask him about his job, or Michael and Anne, or his girlfriend. My excitement, on the days when Liam would pull up and put something in the box. I’d count to a hundred and go out the back door and slowly walk down the drive, as if I was just going down to pick up the post, maybe say hello to Mick next door, on the way. Just walking down to the gate.
Whereas in reality my heart would be pounding and I’d be praying ‘Hail Holy Queen’ all the way down. Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, hail our life, our sweetness and our hope.
And my hand shaking as I open the flap, hoping upon hope to see the Tusla stamp on a letter or some other indication that it’s Sean wanting to make contact with us, wanting us to be part of his life.
But it’s never there, Roisín. It never is. It probably never will be.
Then I’d have to turn around and walk back to the house with a bill or some brochure in my hand. Maybe chat to Mick or Helen on the way, and do a bit of cleaning around the house, or listen to the radio, or make myself a cup of tea and pretend that everything is fine.
The dahlias look nice in the vase, don’t they? The pink ones are lovely altogether. It was a great idea of Tim’s to dig a little hole on the grave so that the vase goes into it and can’t fall over. It almost seems like the dahlias are growing there above you, along with the petunias. I suppose I could plant some too. Anyway, I’ll put in fresh water tomorrow and take a little off the stems – there’s no sign of rain. That fold-up secateurs is the best thing I ever bought, and I want this place to be nice for you, pet. I do want that. For me too, being selfish.
I feel bad sometimes that I never told your father about the time I made contact with Michael and Anne all those years ago. I feel terrible guilty about it. He’s been sober for so long now that I think I could, but he’d be very hurt. If Sean ever does make contact, and he won’t now – if he was going to do it, he would have done it when he turned eighteen – but if he does, sure I can tell him then. He’ll be so happy it won’t matter. It was a kind of betrayal, I know that, but he was in and out of recovery at the time and I didn’t want to risk a relapse. At least I did something to get Sean back, seeing as how Tim did nothing. Not one single thing.
But if he knew that I told Sean who he was, that his father was the great Tim Collins; if he knew that Sean had known all along and never said anything, never approached him. I dread to think what would happen. So I keep saying nothing. I’m good at it.
Or maybe it’s my way of getting back at him, my revenge for his years of drunkenness and for our chance at adoption that we missed out on because he wouldn’t countenance it. Whenever I tried to talk to him about it, he’d storm off to get drunk somewhere and I mightn’t see him for days. Oh, I was fierce angry with him over all the drinking and him being missing all the time, and me at home on my own like a fool waiting for him, and all the awful things he’d say when he’d stagger in the door. I still am angry. I am, but I don’t want to think about it any more, what’s the point of dwelling on it? I don’t know if that’s the reason I never told him, but it could be. Like I say, I’m good at being angry and I’m very good at hiding it. When I go over to my mother and father’s graves after I leave you I’ll bottle it up tight and say a prayer for them as if I mean it.
And it was wrong too – what I told them, about the hereditary health issues and everything. It was blackmail, really. Poor Anne, the day I said that to her in the Vienna Woods. But I wasn’t in my right mind, I wasn’t, and he was my son, too. I don’t like to think about that any more, either.
When I met Sean that day in the hotel – you should have seen him, Roisín – when he walked through the door. Oh, sweet Jesus. He was perfect, he was only perfect, so tall with dark hair and brown eyes like all the Collinses, and he was frightened, trying to be brave, the poor thing, the fear in his eyes. He was only fifteen, just turned fifteen, it was December, a week after his birthday and I was going to bring him a present but the social worker wouldn’t allow me. All I wanted to do was to hold him, just to put my arms around him – if only I could have held him – but the social worker also warned me not to be tactile, so I didn’t. I’m sorry now. Tactile – what a horrible, stupid word. I wasn’t supposed to tell him who his father was, either. No identifying information, she warned me, but that just slipped out, I just blurted it out and he was entitled to know, anyway, he had every right.
And when I walked into the hotel that day, you know what I thought, Roisín? I thought it would be the end of my misery and that I’d have him back, at least in some form. I was sure of it. I knew he wouldn’t be walking out the door with me instead of Anne – I mean, I wasn’t that stupid to think we’d live happily ever after and I’d bring him home to Tim and take care of him forever the way that I was always meant to. Things don’t work like that.
But when I never heard back from him again, not a word, even after he turned eighteen – and I never found out why, I never found out, and I still don’t know why. Well, I tried to console myself: at least I’d had that meeting. At least he saw me and I saw him and I talked to him, and he knows me, he knows who I am and he knows that I exist and that I love him and that I never wanted to give him up, that my father made me and Tim was too young to fight the bully. At least he knows that, even if he never did make contact again and probably never will. At least I have that.
I suppose it’s some consolation.
I had a lovely morning today, really, despite all the nerves. After Tim left, I sat in the conservatory in my dressing gown and drank a nice cup of tea in the sun, and I listened to that beautiful music on Lyric, and thought about you and Sean. I went to nine o’clock Mass and it was Father O’Reilly and he gave a nice sermon about forgiveness, which was a kind of comfort to me because I’ve never forgiven God for what he did to me and I never will. How could I?
After Mass I drove up to the golf club to wish Jim well on the day of his President’s Prize. And Peggy too. I think the golf club saved me, in a way. It sounds stupid, I know. I didn’t want to go at first and Kitty used to have to drag me there, God bless her. But I’m so glad I stuck with it. You know, every time I hit that ball on the first tee, and I put my driver back into my bag, and I’m standing there beside one of my many friends looking down the fairway, I feel like I’m a different person. I do. That today is a new day and that this is a new round of golf and every hole is a new hole, the last one doesn’t matter. The newness of it all lifts my spirits somehow, I can’t explain it. But – and this might sound selfish – even if you were alive, and even if Tim ever did take it up (which he won’t), I wouldn’t want ye there; I’d still want it to be my thing.
Even today, when I wasn’t playing, the buzz around the place and everyone in good humour and the feeling of belonging, and chatting to people, and the sunlight pouring in through the clubhouse windows and all the shining prizes and that beautiful piece of glass that Jim bought in Waterford – it was nearly all too much. I had a lovely cup of coffee and a scone with Peggy, and she was so relieved about the weather and Jim’s decision to play Stableford and not Stroke, and they’ve had such a hard time of it, too, with his prostate, I couldn’t be happier for them. I really couldn’t.
Afterwards, I picked the flowers for you and had the bit of ham and brown bread and potato salad for lunch – Tim will finish that when he gets home. I had to be here during the match in case I’d be tempted to turn on the television or the radio. No, I knew, I just knew I couldn’t be around the house while the match was on – I’d be in bits, imagining all sorts.
But here, here by your grave – the same grave that Tim and I will share with you someday – time stands still. I do get looks with my golfing fold-up seat. God, if anyone saw me they’d think I’m cracked, sitting here hour after hour, like that madwoman in the book by Charles Dickens, covered in dust, waiting for years in her wedding dress for her husband to come. That gave me the creeps when I read it in school. As though I was waiting for you to come back from the dead, to come out of the ground like from another birth, but healthy this time, and that I had to be here to pick my little baby up from the grass and not leave you lying in the cold.
The times I’d wake Tim in the middle of the night and tell him that we had to go to the grave, that you weren’t dead, you weren’t, it was all a big mistake and that if we went to the grave, you’d be there, lying there, just waiting for us, but healthy. I’d be raving at him and he’d have to try to calm me down or get me to take another tablet, or even phone Mary Hannon, my psychiatrist, for help. Which I did a few times, God love her, and the saint of a woman that she is, she took the calls too.
I thought about bringing a book, but that wouldn’t be right, somehow. I prefer just to chat, anyway. But the looks did bother me so here’s what I do now. Whenever I hear a car pull up outside, I get up off my little seat and walk around – people never stay for long and when the graveyard is busy I brazen them out, and then I do sit down again and say the odd prayer, or just breathe like Mary taught me in the hospital, all those years ago. That wonderful woman who saved my life and whom I give thanks for every blessed day.
She had no time for closure, either, and I always admired her for that. That’s an over-rated word. As if being closed somewhere, boxed up and ready for delivery was a good thing. When I think of that word, I think of the moment they closed the little white coffin on you – it was so tiny, Roisín, and you were so small and they still closed you up in it, though I begged them not to. As if being closed is better than being open, or having no hope was better than having some – even if it’s a false hope, who knows? Who knows, anyway? I can’t hope for you any more but I know you don’t mind if I still hope for Sean.
Tim said that Sean was going out with a girl from Glanmire – childhood sweethearts, he heard. Like us? I nearly asked him, but I didn’t because that wouldn’t be a good comparison and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. If they get married, and I know you don’t have to get married to have children – if anyone knows, it should be me – but imagine holding another baby, my very own grandchild, to mind and to feed and to fuss over. You know, nobody will ever call me Mam or Mammy – they just won’t, how could they, even Sean won’t if we’re ever reunited; he’ll call me Evelyn, which is fine – but if Sean and his girlfriend (I wish I knew her name), if they had a baby, then maybe that baby, some day, might call me ‘Granny Evelyn’.
Imagine that, Roisín, wouldn’t that be something? Of course, a baby would make you an aunt, too, and you’d have been a great aunt, I just know it, and a great role model for any girl growing up. You would too. You know, for some reason I don’t see you as the marrying kind, and you’re dead bloody right.
He got the hurling from his father’s side, no doubt about that. He’s the spitting image of your Uncle Johnny. I don’t see you as a camogie player. I’m thinking something to do with art, maybe, like Gretta’s son who works with that company, in – what’s it called again? Graphic design. Something with computers, anyway, but not programming them, designing things on them. Or maybe an artist, a painter or sculptor – something in the arts, I think for sure – I was great at drawing, you know, I won prizes. You wouldn’t be in science or business, anyway. They say that art teacher in Scoil Mhuire is fantastic; she has two or three going to art college every year – you might have been one of them.
I think you’d be a bit rebellious, a bit different from the norm, and I’d be okay with that, too, but maybe not your father so much – he’s a bit old-fashioned. When I think of all the possibilities that would have been open to you, Roisín, the things that young people can do these days, girls especially, the chances we didn’t have in our time, oh, my heart breaks.
And who can blame me if I do talk to you? Who can judge me for that, even if it’s silly oul talk, and probably not good for me, can’t I even have that of you, when I’ve lost everything else? Would anybody begrudge me that? Ah, they wouldn’t, and if they do, well feck them anyway.
When Sean decides to make contact, I think he’ll phone Tim. Sure the company is in the phone book. I can picture Tim coming straight home to tell me. He wouldn’t do it over the phone. I picture myself looking out the front window thinking, God, Tim is home early, I wonder has he news? And he’ll come in through the front door and not the back door and he’ll just stand there and look at me, with tears in his eyes; he’ll hardly be able to speak, and he’ll come to me and hold me and tell me. I can see it all so clearly.
It’s nearly half-past five; he’d surely have rung by now if they won. Oh, God, maybe I should have gone to the church instead of here. But I love it here, too, and I think this is where I was meant to be. It’s so peaceful and calming somehow, especially early in the morning and late in the evening, when the birds are singing.
Someday – who knows when, nobody ever knows – I’ll be put in there beside you, pet. Forever. And my name will be written on that headstone, under yours.
Her mother Evelyn.