Chapter One
A summer morning, early May, the sky blue, the air still. Ireland at its most beautiful. Driving back from the supermarket, I took the coast road, through Sandycove, past the Forty Foot, worrying about my daughter. Rosie was all I really thought about now, anyway. For the last two years, she had done nothing but revise. The Leaving Cert are the set of tough, gruelling exams at theend of your school days that you fervently believe will dictate the rest of your life. They wreak such havoc on the psyche of every Irish citizen, instilling such fear and horror, no one ever quite recovers. Your whole life hangs in the balance of knowing particularly difficult Irish grammatical tenses, impenetrable maths equations and the exact movements of Padraig Pearse during the Easter Rising.I still remember that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, the dread… and then, when they are over, you do miraculously move on with your life but like traumatised elephants, you never forget.
But we were so close to Rosie’s liberation from all this tension and pressure. She was pale and seemed to be fading fast. She just had to cling on and the old Rosie, the confident happy girl, would return.As I indicated to turn left to continue on to home, in Dalkey, I spotted my mother on the road ahead, creakily, rustily, slowly pedalling home from her swim, dressed in her usual charity-shop purchases. Her old men’s sandals and knitted socks, her legs bare under her long skirt, her trusty battered Barbour and an old cloth bag slung over her shoulder. Her long hair, damp from her dip, hangingover her shoulders to dry. Instinctively I thought of my husband Michael and what he would make of her and mentally cheered her on. She stood for everything he didn’t and Nora was the part of me which he found most difficult to accept. She didn’t fit in with his idea of an acceptable extended family. She would cheerily tackle him on any issue, good-naturedly holding him personally accountable foreverything from homelessness to the closure of the Dun Laoghaire bowls club.
He believed in the individual, that anyone can make it if given the right support. She believed in welfare and community. But when I decided to marry him, it seemed, to be the most rebellious thing I could do and I don’t regret it – I wouldn’t change a thing about Rosie, after all – but it had been rash, not a love matchbut what I had thought was a pragmatic and sensible choice.
As I passed Nora’s bike, I slowed down and tooted my horn. ‘That’s it!’ I called through the open window. ‘Keep it up! Nice to see you getting a bit of exercise!’
‘Thank you, Tabitha,’ she said, ‘You’re very kind. But your encouragement is unnecessary.’ But she was smiling. ‘How’s Rosie? Not still at those books?’
‘You know what’sshe’s like, takes after you. Never gives up!’
There was a car behind me. ‘See you later, Mum.’ I said, pressing on the accelerator and moving forwards. But her face suddenly lifted as though she’d just remembered something.
‘The trees!’ I think she shouted. In my rear-view mirror, she waved again, mouthing something. ‘The trees!’
*
The black ministerial car was parked outside the house, whichmeant Michael was home. Terry, his driver, reading a paper in the front seat of the Mercedes. Michael rarely made domestic appearances these days, arriving unexpectedly and disappearing just as quickly, shunting daily life out of its rhythm and he often asserted himself into the household in some way. Usually it was that the garden needed tidying at the front or he had been shocked to see a deadcheese plant in the hall.
After hopping through the ranks from local councillor to member of the Progressive Conservatives and a front-bench position, Michael had now made it to the giddy heights of Europe. He spent more time in Brussels than Dublin and all his talk, when he did come home, was about EU directives, policies and late-night votes and dining on steak and red wine and crème brûlée.He was good at the mechanics of politics, remembering every name of anyone he had ever shaken hands with, able to differentiate between constituents, who had the brother in hospital and who had the issue with the damp. And after being submerged in Bill Clinton’s autobiography, he emerged pale and drawn but excited by all the new techniques he had absorbed, such as finding a face in the crowd andwaving, the double handshake and the disconcerting never breaking eye contact.
Politics was his passion; the deal making, the risk taking, the prestige, power and perks, along with a flat in Brussels and a studio in Dublin city centre. His was important work. Themostimportant work, changing the world, one EU directive at a time.
Michael had grown up in the shadow of his father, Michael Sr,also a politician. He never watched children’s television, only the news, had never worn jeans, and saw politics as the family business. And he wanted Rosie to continue the family dynasty and do exactly what he did. Go to Trinity to do Law, get into local politics and then… well, next stop Brussels.
I harboured secret and treasonous thoughts that Law in Trinity was too much like hard work (andfar too boring) and that no one – and definitely not my daughter - should be subjected to it. But then I wasn’t a Fogarty. After giving up her dreams of acting, Rosaleen, my grandmother had been front of house manager at the Gaiety Theatre all her life. Nora gave no credence to academic qualifications but everything to the ability to chain oneself to railings in protest. The only time I can rememberfeeling she wasreallyproud of me was when I won first prize for my poster in a competition against Sellafield when I was twelve.
Unministerially, Michael was eating Weetabix. ‘Morning Mammy!’ he said. ‘Cold milk on cereal! Breakfast of champions. It’s the milk, thoughIrishmilk from Irish farmers that makes it! Am I right?’
‘Hi Michael,’ I said, not bothering to tell him for the billionthtime to call me Tabitha, rather than Mammy, and that he already had his own mother and didn’t need another one. ‘Um…’ I tried to formulate an opinion on milk.
‘Caught the red-eye from Brussels and needed my farmers’ association tie for the meeting in Dundalk,’ he went on blithely. ‘You need…’ he spooned the last drops of milk from his bowl into his mouth, ‘the right tie. Bill Clinton says it’sthe killer move. Get it wrong and no one will trust you. Get it right, and putty in the hand!’
‘I suppose the same could be said for the handbag,’ I said, putting away the shopping, ‘too expensive and everyone mistrusts you…’
‘It’s an art,’ he said, as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘You have to think of who you are meeting and with farmers, it can’t be too flashy. It has to be just right. I’m thinkingof a Donegal tweed. Well, that’s what Lucy has decreed.’
Michael’s best perk was Lucy, his secretary. Over the last two years she’d made it her life’s work to overhaul not just his office but also his image. There is now a more contemporary look to his hair and the cut of his suit. His fringe pushed up, lapels more city slicker than fusty politico. And his teeth have undergone a bleaching morethorough than any toilet and now gleam brighter than those of Tom Cruise’s.
‘I’m sure Lucy’s right,’ I said, trying to keep a facetious tone out of my voice. ‘She always is, isn’t she? That’s what you say.’
‘She’s a marvel,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘Yes, yes, quite the marvel.’ His eyes went misty for a moment as we both contemplated the myriad ways Lucy was a marvel.
‘Now,’ he said, breakingfocus, ‘where’s herself?’ He meant Rosie.
‘Upstairs. You know, Michael, the exams,’ I said, ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it. If there’s anything we could do, anything we should be doing to make it easier for her. They’re so awful. I think they might even be worse than when we did them. I mean, they seem to be even harder these days …’
‘She’ll be grand,’ he said, dismissing me. ‘UsFogartys always are. I sailed through mine. She’s got a good brain, that’s all you need.’ Rosie, he believed, was more Fogarty than Thomas – the politics, the clear head, the methodical way of doing things. Chip off the old block. He’d been talking about Rosie going to Trinity, his alma mater, since before she was born, and as Rosie had done exceptionally well in her mock exams and had been offereda place, it was a case of just passing the finals and she’d be in.
‘Trinity College! She’s on her way.’ Michael put down the cereal bowl andactuallyrubbed his hands with sheer excitement. ‘I was just onto my old professor yesterday and we had a good chat about Trinity and how it’s changed. He said to bring Rosie in one of these days for a look round the place. Thought I would show her a fewsights. The library. The old lecture hall, that kind of thing.’
‘She’s already been round…’
‘Ah, but not with me. An old boy, so to speak. Not that I’m old. Justolderthan I was.’ Michael was the same age as me, 42, but gave what he might think was a boyish grin and ruffled his own hair. Which he then quickly smoothed back in place.
‘Michael, it was more than twenty years since you were there.’
