Mary, Mary

The black cat rubbed the length of his body against and around Margaret’s legs. Once, twice, three times, backwards and forwards. His tail felt hard and muscular, prehensile, unfamiliar as it rolled off her calves. She reached down and ran her hand along his gleaming back. He arched under her touch, then pushed his bony head against her, nuzzling her knuckles with his sensitive nose. Then he lay down on the kitchen floor and rolled over, wriggling from side to side to attract her attention. She rubbed her foot along his soft belly. There was a little tuft of white just in front of his empty testicular sac. As her foot got near it, the cat grabbed at her toes with his claws, then followed up with his sharp teeth. She pulled away, but not before he had drawn a thin line of red on her instep.

She looked at the small beads of blood strung like tiny corals along the line of the scratch. Already the body was taking care of its defences. The blood was coagulating, the white cells rushing to repel bacteria and in a couple of hours a scab would form, providing the protective armour beneath which new skin would grow.

The coroner’s office had phoned that morning. They had suggested an undertaker. The arrangements had been made. Mary would be buried with her grandfather, the day after tomorrow. The funeral Mass would be at ten o’clock in St Patrick’s Church in Monkstown. There would be no notice in the paper. There would be no fuss. Margaret repeated the words aloud and banged her fist on the kitchen table. No fuss.

Margaret looked up. A large woman in a tight white uniform was standing in the door.

‘You’re not, of course you’re not. Please,’ Margaret gestured to a chair and cast around for a name, ‘Sinead. Sit down, have some coffee. Or would you prefer a cold drink?’

‘Coffee would be lovely.’ The nurse slumped into the offered seat, dumping a bulging leather bag on the table beside her.

Margaret handed her a cup and offered chocolate biscuits. ‘So,’ she asked, ‘how is she?’

‘Well.’ The nurse sipped slowly, then took out a tissue and wiped the beaded sweat from her forehead. ‘The morphine seems to be making a big difference. She seems much more cheerful this morning, probably because she’s sleeping a lot better. Although I’d say she’s still having a problem with constipation. It’s very common. It’s one of the unfortunate side effects of the morphine. But you know how she is. She really doesn’t like talking about it. In fact, whenever I try to raise it with her she just refuses to answer.’

Margaret nodded. ‘Yes, bodily functions were never a strong point with my mother.’

‘Nor for many of her generation. We see it all the time with older people. It’s very difficult to help them sometimes, they just don’t like talking about things that embarrass them.’

Embarrass, awaken, remind, provoke, challenge. All these and more, thought Margaret. Anything that disturbs the crust of accepted memory.

Again the nurse wiped her forehead. She spoke slowly, carefully. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It could be six months, it could be less. But it’s better not to think about the length of time. We encourage people to concentrate on the quality of the experience. We do find,’ she paused again and sipped her coffee, ‘that for some people, these weeks can be truly wonderful. They can be full of emotional discoveries, revelations, ways of developing a true understanding of each other. They can be exhilarating, packed with insight, a time for parents and children to really come together.’ She stopped abruptly, and picked up a biscuit.

The cat jumped up onto Margaret’s lap and put one paw on the table. Margaret dug her fingers into the indentations behind his ears. Loud purrs vibrated through his body. He unsheathed his claws and gripped the soft material of her skirt.

‘Dr Mitchell.’ The nurse finished her biscuit and picked up the balled tissue from the table. She wiped her fingers carefully, and dabbed around her mouth. ‘I want you to know how well we all think you’re coping with this appalling tragedy. If there’s ever anything that any of us can do to help, if you need time by yourself and someone to sit with your mother, please, you have my phone number. Please call me.’

Margaret tried to smile, to force the muscles of her face to move the skin into an acceptable shape. She opened her mouth to speak, to thank the woman for her kindness, but nothing would come out. She knew what words she should use. She could hear them in her head, but she couldn’t find the way to make the connection between thought and action. She felt suddenly as if she was locked inside a glass case. The world existed somewhere outside, but within was darkness, cold and silence.

The nurse stood up quickly. The cat jumped from Margaret’s knee, its claws pulling at the skin of her thighs.

‘I’ll answer it,’ the nurse said, ‘on my way out.’ But as she gathered up her bag and started up the steps to the hall, the phone stopped. ‘I hate that,’ she said, ‘drives you mad wondering who it was.’

‘Margaret, Margaret.’ The stick banged against the floor. Catherine was seated, propped up in the armchair by the window. The stick banged again and again.

‘The phone. Who was on the phone? Was it for me? It must have been for me. Was it John? Phoning from the office to say that he wouldn’t be home for dinner. He’s never home, these days. He’s always too busy. He works too hard. Was that it? Was it John? Why didn’t you tell me? I wanted to speak to him myself.’ Her voice rose, an hysterical whine. ‘Why do you never tell me anything?’ She had put on her makeup. Bright blue eyeshadow was smeared across her wrinkled eyelids, brown powder scattered over her sunken cheeks. Scarlet lipstick wandered up and over her thin lips. A clown’s sad Cupid’s bow.

She closed the door and stood looking at the phone. It was a new model, plastic, out of place on the Victorian side-table. It had all the latest gadgets, redial, call waiting, a stored memory, built in answering machine. And a light that flashed when the phone rang. It was flashing now. It would continue to flash until she answered. Like a tiny lighthouse, warning of dangers ahead.

‘Margaret.’ Again the anxious whingeing muffled by the closed door. ‘Answer the phone. It’s John. I know it’s John.’

She lifted the receiver. There was a pause and a click. The line hissed. Then a girl’s voice, familiar, happy, singing.

‘I’m a little tea-pot, short and stout,

Here’s my handle, here’s my spout.

When the tea is ready, hear me shout,

Lift me up and pour me out.’

A hot day. Margaret shifted uncomfortably on the hard upright chair. She had dressed up for Mary’s first end-of-term concert. Her feet were swollen and they rubbed against the leather of her shoes. She wanted to kick them off and press her toes and the ball of her foot hard down on the cool of the lino tiles.

She looked out of the big windows that lined the school hall. The cricket pitch was dust, bare earth at either wicket. The playing fields stretched away, the green of the grass burnt brown, sloping gently towards the gorse and scrub that formed their natural boundary. We’re not allowed to go in there, Mary had told her. Only the big boys when they lose their cricket ball. In the distance creeping up the other side of the hill were the neatly ordered rows of Mrs Begavitch’s vineyard. The kids called her the Begabitch. So Mary said, whispering the bad word into her ear, and giggling at her daring. Margaret could just about hear the crash and clang of Mrs Begavitch’s bird-scarers over the chatter of the children and the hum of their parents’ conversation. Yards and yards of tin cans strung above the vines and when that failed she would patrol with a shotgun, a figure of fun in her shapeless print dress and rubber gumboots, her head wrapped in a voluminous scarf covered with pink and scarlet roses. She had come to this village by the Pacific Ocean just after the Second World War had laid waste to her village in Yugoslavia. And still an outsider, Margaret thought.

Silence crept across the audience as Mr Gibson, the headmaster, introduced the school choir. They sang a Maori song, their sweet voices denying the darkness of the language. Above the stage Queen Elizabeth spread her gaze benevolently, her blue cloak decorated with a huge diamond sunburst. The applause rushed round the room, like waves breaking on the rocks at high tide. Heads crowded together, commenting, praising. A handkerchief was passed down a row, a proud grandmother wiping her eyes. Boys and girls followed each other onto the stage. Each new arrival was greeted with cheers. Good-humoured comments and words of encouragement were shouted. There were exclamations of surprise at family resemblance. Younger brothers and sisters taking the places relinquished by their older siblings. A moment of sadness when prayers were said for a child who had died of leukaemia. Simple words, plainly spoken, Margaret noticed. No ritual mention of Our Lady or the Saints. Just an appeal directly to God. Then Mary was on stage. Margaret felt a sudden apprehension. Her palms prickled. A ripple of enquiry gathered momentum around her. The little girl curtsied. Her curls bobbed in their red ribbons. She held the corners of her pinafore. One small foot, its white sock and shoe snowy perfection, pointed in front of the other. She began to sing and mime the gestures, carefully, precisely. When she opened her mouth one of her front teeth was missing. Margaret knew there was a bright shiny coin in the little pocket in the bib of her dress. The tooth fairy had left it the night before. As she finished Margaret began to clap. Her palms burned and tickled and tears filled her eyes. Mary looked suddenly the image of her father. Margaret had never seen it so clearly before. It wasn’t just the curls or the colouring. It was her composure, the set of her tiny face, the attention to detail, her awareness of every part of her body. Tears had stung her eyes, and her throat had closed over. As it did now.

Again, the voice, peevish, complaining. ‘Why do you never tell me who calls? This is still my house, you know.’

Margaret wiped the tears on the back of her hand. She pulled herself up off the floor, and opened the door again.

Margaret heard her own voice asking from somewhere in the distance, ‘Mother, tell me. Why did you not want me to come to Daddy’s funeral?’

Catherine looked up at her, lucid now, her eyes clear. ‘Because I didn’t. I looked after him. I loved him. When he was alive he only wanted me. Why should it be different when he was dead?’

Margaret stepped back, away from that voice, that anger, and turned towards the stairs. One foot in front of the other, carefully, precisely, she walked up to Mary’s room. It was as it had been left that Saturday. They had brought the bare necessities from New Zealand but Mary had squirrelled together a collection of postcards, pictures torn from magazines, dried flowers, cheap jewellery, dog-eared books. She had always been a hoarder. When she was small Margaret had regularly purged her schoolbag of its accumulated clutter, ignoring her protests as she dumped stones from the beach, chewing-gum wrappers, her beloved shells, notes from friends, dried-up apples, crusts from her sandwiches. She had also gone through her pockets from time to time, until Mary had accused her of being nosy and bossy. But she felt no guilt now as she searched her clothes. Opened all her books, shaking them by the spine, pulled cassette tapes from their boxes, ripping apart the cardboard of the labels. Clothes tumbled from the wardrobe as she dragged them from their hangers, dumping the contents of the drawers on the carpet. She ran her hands underneath the yellowed newspaper that lined the shelves. She ripped the carpet free of its tacks and tugged the curtains from the rails. She stripped the bed, tearing at the sheets and hauling the mattress onto the floor. Finally she pulled the pillow out of its cotton case. As she did so a handful of something white poured out. She knelt and gathered it up. She held it to her nose. White lavender, that was all, just white lavender.

She lay down on the tumbled bedclothes. The smell of the lavender mingled with the smell of the dust. She rolled over on her side, one hand between her thighs, the other holding the pillow. She wanted someone to hold her too. Mary’s father. She wanted him. She closed her eyes. She had known the night she had conceived. Her medical training told her this was impossible. But her medical training was wrong. Afterwards her body felt different, heavy, not her own. Every pore gave out his smell. When she looked in the mirror he looked back at her. When she looked at her hands she saw his. A blue bruise, in the shape of a butterfly, decorated her right breast. She had begun to kiss him, she remembered, from his ankles to the top of his head. She had stopped when she got to the marks on his right thigh. The three little red circles in a straight line. The same three marks that Mary had on her leg.

You know what this is, she said. It’s Orion’s Belt. After the constellation. Orion the Hunter. So beautiful in winter.

Just like you, my sweet, he said, and pulled her on top of him and cupped her breasts and kissed her, then held her above him and kissed her and licked her and breathed in her strong salty taste until neither could bear it any longer.

‘I need you.’ She said the words out loud. Why aren’t you here to help me? She tried to comfort herself, but there was no solace, no redemption, no help. Not for her. Not for Mary. Not now.

14