‘It’s called Whitehouse this one,’ said Rory O’Connor, one elbow denting the stack of newspapers on the counter, touching his fingertip to his tongue and turning the pages of a magazine.
Kathleen was up at the paper shop on the Upper Springfield, taking a look through the dirty magazines, having a laugh with the fellow who ran the place.
She snatched it from him. ‘Rory that’s a midwives’ instruction book!’ The door went. Kathleen gave the magazine to Rory and he rolled it up, put it under the counter.
It was Aine. ‘There y’are. I knew you’d be here.’
‘What about ye love.’
‘Aine,’ said Rory.
She stood in her pale purple anorak, hood up, so that you could just see her nose and the shape of her sulk, lips almost inside out.
Kathleen was disappointed to see her daughter there, where she was having a joke around, being the laugh. And when she recognized her dismay, it cut deeper. Often, her daughter had this brooding, head-down way with her; she was guilt on the move.
‘Mummy, I’ve only got five pence and it’s not enough for anything I want.’
‘Not a hello, not a kiss, just I want . . .’
‘Glad mine have left home,’ Rory said. ‘Couldn’t make a living with them in and out of here. Them and all the other kids, in and out, the doorbell going, hands everywhere.’
‘You should have a big sign up on the door saying “No kids”,’ said Aine.
The man looked taken aback. ‘There’s no need to get yourself worked up, Aine.’
‘All of yous are always moaning on about the kids, well we didn’t ask to live.’
Kathleen put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘You ought to go down to the press centre, they could use you there to write some pamphlets up.’
‘We didn’t ask for any of this mess, yous’re the ones who made it. There you are standing about joking all the while kids are getting shot dead.’
Kathleen took her daughter by the arm, gripped it too tight. A sort of white heat seared through her brain. She could have killed, and yet she managed to say goodbye to Rory, holding, shaking, pushing Aine through the doorway on to the street. She took her round the corner of the newsagent’s and shouted at her.
‘What the hell have I done for you to be so bloody rude? God help me but I’ve a good mind to give you a smacked arse.’
Kathleen had been laughing, she’d been happy, it had been a good day, she’d got a lot done. Now it was ruined.
Aine’s nose went long and narrow, her teeth bunched on the inside of her lips, her eyes were on the ground.
‘I can’t wait for the day you leave home, I can’t take any more of you and your moods.’ How far could she go? Could she destroy something inside of her daughter to leave her submissive? She took her cigarette packet out of her bag and fumbled for a lighter. ‘We should think about you going to live elsewhere, with your auntie. For a while.’
Aine’s shoulders rounded, and her hood came slowly further forward until Kathleen could not see her face at all. She was just a pale purple anorak, with legs and feet. White socks, grey from the foot up, in the summer’s sandals.
Kathleen lit her cigarette, took a drag and sorrow went through her; a gut-tearing feeling like the first day of her period, a falling away, an irrevocable loss. She put her hand beneath her daughter’s chin to lift it to see her face.
‘Well?’
‘Why do you always smoke in front of me if you say I shouldn’t do it? It will kill me you say, so why do you do it, when you know I’ll do the same things as you?’
‘What the hell are you going on about now?’
‘You want me to go away. You and Auntie Eileen say that Granny was all for the boys. Well and so are you. I miss Mary, we used to talk. You don’t even see me! I might as well be dead!’
Kathleen sat down on a small mound of dirt by the side of the pavement, feeling the damp land seep through the arse of her jeans. She took another drag and looked down the hill into the estate in which they lived, grey and white, and beyond the red-brick estates in rows that went all the way down to the slug of a river that didn’t bother to make its way out to the ocean but lay stagnant in marshes, with the round industrial gas works and warehouses about it.
‘Sit down on the anorak; it’s me who’ll wash it. Sit down.’ The hood dropped back.
‘Look Aine, I’m not asking you to respect me, but these are hard times for all of us. We’re all busy, we’re all worried and you don’t know the half of it. You’ve got to think about what others are going through.’
‘And that’s what you do?’ Aine looked at her mother with her blonde lashed eyes, heavy-lidded, the face that reflected more of her father’s side.
‘You don’t really know enough about me to judge. That’s the job of Him up there, Him alone. Yes as a matter of fact, I do try to do that. Else I would have gone off a long time ago.’
‘Not with Sean or Mary here. Not with them at home you wouldn’t have.’
‘I love Sean and Mary, but no more than either of you.’
‘That’s not true. Sometimes I think you’re good and sometimes I think you’re a bad person. Let’s go home.’
Kathleen was stunned.
‘Listen, Aine, maybe I’m not the best mother in the world. But I’m all you’ve got, so I am.’
Her daughter looked away, considering this. She didn’t answer.
‘Come on love. Let’s be friends.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Aine, getting up and putting her hands back in her pockets, facing the city. She was starting to build the boundaries of her life, choosing the areas of silence.
As they went to cross the road to go into their own street, Kathleen put her own hand in Aine’s pocket and felt the cold strength of the girl’s fingers, so alien to her.
‘I love you so much, Aine,’ she said, suddenly in great need of her daughter.
They stopped outside of a house, to look in at the tall white Christmas tree in the window with its blinking fairy lights. The girl’s teeth were chattering as she withdrew her hand, crossed her arms and fixed her eyes upon the Christmas scene.
‘If there’s one thing I could do for you, Aine, what would it be?’
‘Love my Daddy,’ said Aine, and her eyes and her mouth fell, and Kathleen saw the habit of sadness in her daughter that ought only to have been acquired, not accepted. She had no need to think of breaking something in her daughter. It was already done.
The Christmas scene stirred. The door to the house opened, there was music and an old pinkish-haired lady came out saying her goodbyes, and with the rain abating, it all fell into place. Kathleen saw clearly.
Whether it was Sean Moran or anybody she was married to, she’d be the same, she’d need to be loved by other men. It was her who was wrong. She ought to tell Sean, let him off the hook.