This ritual puts me back in your house, something I know I’m better off avoiding. Praying the rosary or the angelus, with one of your sistersleading and your father taking it all at a different pace to the rest of us. Ivory candle lit and dripping. White rosary beads from Knock Shrine passing through your fingers. Cream walls. Yellow flame. All leading me back to blonde.
I open my eyes and find myself very much in Ballycrea. Anna grits her teeth. The sky behind her churns. Peggy quickly closes her eyes and lowers her head, hoping I didn’t catch her. Praying every word so carefully. I wish you hadn’t taught her that. Lately, Tom has her saying extra prayers every night, trying somehow to wash away the guilt of her birth.
I wish that I had something else worth teaching her. A shame I never took on a hobby or a trade. But I never needed anything like that before. It was always enough to go out in the van with Tom, and down to the pub with the boys, and call into you in the evenings. I didn’t need to know anything when my life was perfect.
You were the one who knew everything. Happily teaching Peggy to play the fiddle, and keeping Anna in the group with your friends, always calming her down. Indulging Tom in his deep conversations, making him feel clever. And giving my small life meaning.
We reach the end of the rosary, and while Tom remains in silent prayer, Peggy opens her eyes again and looks to me. She wants to be told that it’s over.
The poor child is exhausted, but she won’t go to bed without the rest of us. I suppose she might be afraid in the new house. When I nod at her, she rushes off her knees and to the sink, where she strokes the chicken.
‘How about that drink?’
Anna says, reaching for her handbag. I forgot that I offered to go to the pub.
‘There’s a bottle of something behind the oats, I’m sure.’
Now that I don’t need to get out of praying, going to the pub is the last thing I want. Somebody has to bring Peggy to bed and clear up after the dinner. I know Anna never asked to be a mother, but she is the nearest thing that Peggy has to one. I wish she would act like it. It’s disappointing that she hasn’t taken to the role better. It’s a shame that I cannot be everything that Peggy needs. She deserves a proper mother, not Anna’s cold indifference, not my male shortcomings. Little Peggy, my Peigín. She deserves an awful lot more than she gets.
Anna sighs, seemingly upset we aren’t going out. Since when does she want to be out and about? I can’t keep track of her. All I want to do for the evening is think of you. It’s terrible, and I’m sure you’d hate it, but all I do is think of you, darling. Of you in the morning, and you in the afternoon. You in your black dress, that used to move like water around you. You sprawled across the sofa, your knees apart, forgetting your manners. Of where you are now, and where you are not. To tell the truth, I think of you far more than I ever did when you were still here. So much that sometimes, it’s like you never left. If I put my hand out in the air, I swear I almost feel the swell of you against it. I remember you so, so well.
Or rather, I remember you often. And I worry sometimes, because I can’t be sure which of my memories are true to life, and which are just lovely exaggerations that I have conjured up to keep myself going.
Let me say something awful. Sometimes I wonder if I love you more now than I would if you were still here. If your memory is a better woman to me than you ever really could be. Because a memory is a very easy-going thing, you know? A memory can’t be let down, and it can’t let me down. I loved you, sure you know I loved you, I just wonder if I love you better now.
You’d kill me, but if you were here now, I’m sure that I’d forget to appreciate you. I would probably have my head turned by prettygirls now and again. I’d probably stay out drinking with the boys and leave you at home, alone. I’d spend money where I shouldn’t, and I would disappoint you. What had we, two summers together? Two years. Long enough to know you were my soulmate, not long enough to make a mess of things. Oh, all the beautiful ways we would have let each other down. Isn’t it silly? I want so much to have the chance to disappoint you.
Anna
A LACE CURTAIN OF FOGis pulled over the town. It makes it hard to know what time it is. It must be about two weeks since we arrived in Ballycrea, because we’ve been to confession twice and the market twice.
Tom puts a bowl of veg down for me to wash, humming to himself. He seems to get happier every day. I wonder how happy he will get before he bursts.
While waiting for his enthusiasm to infect me, I pass the time watching the way the light changes on the fields and feeding oats to the pony. It doesn’t really make me happy, but it keeps me going.
I’ve started walking down to the town with him; to pass the time, to stop him from asking. I’ve come to accept that we are in Ballycrea to stay. At least until we get a car, because the only way I’d go back over the Healy Pass on the pony and cart again would be in my coffin. But sure I haven’t even a bed at home, I’ve no hope of seeing a car pull up anytime soon.
I haven’t let Tom take the pony out again. ’Tis all cars now, he knows that. Everybody else has one. Why shouldn’t we have the fine things that everyone else has? Why shouldn’t we have the life that Tom pretends we have? He better get a bit of work soon, so that he can buyus things, and stop humming around the house with all his happiness, and leave me alone.
As deeply as I dreaded it, being in town is okay. I don’t mind it. There isn’t a great deal in the town to mind, to be honest. A few pubs, a few shops, a tailor and a little library, all of which double up as people’s homes. The convent on the hill, thick, broad walls that you couldn’t penetrate with a cannonball; each window a dark eye, watching. A lot of grey and white houses with colourful doors and windowsills. A man fixes some eroded bricks with cement. A woman waters pink flowers in hanging baskets outside her door. They’re keen on improvement, it seems. I could find reasons to dislike it, but really it’s no different from any other place. Wherever we ended up, I would have felt this way, homesick for a place that is no longer home. This is home now.
Something I cannot get used to is the fish. Boats with chipped paint and half worn names bringing it into Ballycrea every day. Big crates of it on the pier, lofted raw through the town, wafting their sea smell all around. Imagine how bad it looks when I gag as the fishermen walk by. I’m meant to be blending in here, assimilating with the locals and their ways, not bringing up bile as they pass.
It’s just that I’m not used to fish, that’s all. We usen’t ever have fish in Kilmarra, not even on a Friday. Mammy was allergic to the scales, or so she said. I never questioned it. I never questioned her; not about anything. But it’s what’s popular here, and so Tom insists that we buy fish today.
‘When in Ballycrea, do as the locals do.’
My god, he is incessant. I let him into the fishmonger on his own. I can’t imagine how well I’d fare in there. It strikes me that I never walk around the town; I always wait outside whatever building Tom is in. They will think there is something wrong with my legs.
The fish is wrapped in paper and landed in my hands, and I can do nothing to get rid of it. I wonder how much he spent on it. This reeking dead thing, heavy in my arms, no doubt leaving a smell on the sleeves of my coat. And even though this is a fish town, and they are all eating it every day, I’m embarrassed by it. They’ll all think the smell is off me. Imperfections aren’t charming on me the way that they were on you. A dirty face or sweat stains were things that you somehow managed to make endearing. I’m sure if you were here now, smelling of uncooked fish, it would only add to your appeal.
Just when I think it’s time to go home, Tom stops us, insisting that he introduces himself to Brendan O’Donovan, who he wishes he had spoken to the other night.
A flock of pretty women pass me by, as I am suddenly left alone in the street. And I feel each of their eyes move over me. Strawberry blondes and brunettes, all a little bit younger than me. I want to go where they are going. I want to be one in a two, and I want to know what they think of me. Let’s not bother with all of the reasons that I’m one on my own. As they pass me by, in their perfect, shiny pairs, I feel more lonely, more embarrassed, than I have for a long time.
It reminds me of you and all your countless friends. It was so rare to catch you on your own. Wherever I saw you, at the window of the butcher’s, in the doorway of the pub, from the field behind your house, there was a sister or friend in your shadow. I was so embarrassingly insecure to see you in constant company, and to be a solitary thing, viewing it all from a distance. I can admit that now.
Those passing, pretty women remind me of all the friendships that I’ve misplaced. Those close connections that always fell short of lasting. Where are all of those girls now? Do they remember me ever?
