I try, more sweetly. I know better than to annoy him; I’m not stupid. And although he smiles at me, he says,
‘John Moore isn’t going to wait until you’re settled.’
This obsession with John Moore. This obsession with all the strangers of Ballycrea. At his best, Tom is an insecure people pleaser. At his best. But he is also the oldest, and so he makes the rules. I don’t know why I bothered objecting. I suppose it isn’t often a woman gets a gleaming new chance. I might as well use it.
‘One of us better stay here and look after Peg.’
Jack pipes up from the corner.
‘Sure can’t she come with us? It isn’t a human sacrifice we’re going to.’
Tom laughs, trying to get us to laugh along with him. Jack tries to hide the look of defeat on his face. I know Tom is only trying to make the best of things, but it feels like he’s trying to distance himself from us. From me.
‘Where are we going? Is it tonight?’
Peggy asks, and I let Jack take all of her questions.
I wish he would try to see things my way. If he would take in the view from the window and realise that it’s a lovely place to spend every day, watching all the acres of the headland, the fields dotted with farmhouse roofs, and the little blossom of light from the town in the evenings. Trying to trace the road we took from the square all the way back home to Kilmarra. When Tom was a little boy, Mammy always knew exactly what to say to put him in his place. But then Tom grew up, and whatever way I angle my ears, I can’t seem to hear Mammy.
‘Will there be other girls my age there? Will the girls from school be there?’
He doesn’t know. Sure he doesn’t know anything.
None of this would be happening if Mammy was here. I miss her. I miss the time when she had all the authority. I even miss the time when she had less authority than me. She would let me stay at home if I wanted to. She would have told me to pack more jars and stockings and thread. All of those little things that didn’t seem important when I was trying to fit my life into a suitcase. When I had cramps in the cart, she would have made Tom stop and get me aspirin from the chemist shop. Instead, I had to sit in a long, awkward fear; afraid to mention it, afraid to move in case cramping had turned to bleeding.
See, Tom says he is doing so much for the family, but he doesn’t take very good care of me at all. He is doing all this for himself. Iwonder would he be happier if we didn’t come with him to John Moore’s tonight.
‘We won’t be out late, Peg.’
Jack tells her, and I take this as a promise. He sends her back outside to see if the chicken has laid any eggs. Tom sits at the table and opens the newspaper, and I take it as my sign to start making the tea. I move without thinking, cutting the veg and boiling the water. All the time, I am trying to get back to you in the bath. But I can’t get there. I am in the cottage, without escape.
One summer’s day, months from now, everything will be better. Today will just be a piece of a past I can hardly remember. I know it will, because I have felt the hardest time in my life fade to nothing but a little fog beneath my eyelids. One day, you will be nothing but a smear across the back of my mind. Jack will stand up straight and seize his life again. We will be happier than we ever were before, one day. When I can’t get quiet, when I can’t get myself back to your bath, I think of this.
When Jack gets quiet, he thinks of you. A soft drizzle of rain on your eyelashes in the spring. A drizzle of honey on your fingertips while baking. A drizzle of blood on the banisters. Lillian, I am pained to know this.
Dropping the carrots into the pot, I scarcely feel the boiling water splash on my arm. I scarcely realise I am speaking when I call out,
‘Shake a leg, Jack! We’re all going out tonight.’
Jack
IT POURS WITH RAIN THEentire walk to John and Ciara Moore’s house. Let’s see is it enough to put a dent in Tom’s determination.
‘Such a bad impression, to all land on soaked.’
Anna muttered, as we left the house, even though I gave the one umbrella we have to herself and Peggy. I don’t know what kind of weather she was hoping for in January. Doesn’t she realise that if we land on soaked, everybody else will land on soaked?
‘Should we not turn back?’
She calls out through the rain, the umbrella struggling against the wind. But Tom only throws his hand up to her, shrugging her off. Then she pulls Peggy’s arm along, so that it doesn’t seem like she is the one who is slowing us down. It must be exhausting to think the way she does.
And as expected, we arrive drenched, the smell of the rain soaking through our clothes. I can see the steam coming off Tom, raging that this is how his family is to be debuted to the parish. Anna did warn him.
Too late, I am worried that Peggy may well be the only child here. Tom said it would be fine. I wish I hadn’t listened to him. The poor child will be exhausted by the time we’re done. And Anna will look like an unfit mother for bringing her out so late. How humiliating forher. All I can hope for now is that there will be an old woman here that we can put Peggy with. Someone whose mind has gone to water, who is just dying for something small to dote on. Perhaps she would have room on her lap for all four of us.
‘No getting pissed tonight.’
He points at both myself and Anna, but only really means for me to take it in. Years ago, I might have gotten carried away with the lads, drinking and messing. I might have overshadowed him. Better able to make conversation and be told I was so like our father. Tonight, I know he isn’t warning me out of jealousy, but because I have become a different class of drunk: unsettling and sad, hellbent on flushing you out of my system. Better to avoid those sorts of antics for the evening.
