by Maeve Binchy
'And Cathy, I'm very, very sorry. It could sound a little hollow, but I know it's a huge loss, and I am sorry that this should happen.'
'Thank you, Neil,' she said.
He stroked her forehead over and over saying, 'Poor Cathy. You'll be fine.' Eventually she closed her eyes and he thought she was asleep. He kissed her and she heard him speaking to the nurse, saying he'd come back before he went to work the next morning.
'How many days will you keep her here?' he asked.
The nurse thought it might be two nights, but she couldn't say definitely. Neil said that was great, because he didn't have to go out of town for another few days.
'Very considerate man, your husband, some fellows who come in are all over the place,' the nurse said.
'That's right,' said Cathy who realised that some fellows who came in here were heartbroken that they had lost an unborn child.
Cathy was adamant. She didn't want anyone else to know where she was. No point in telling four people that what might have been their grandchild had been lost. She knew too that she would have had to face the accusations that she had worked too hard, pushed herself too far. In other words, brought all this upon herself. Neil had been entirely supportive about this. It was her right to decide, he said, and only hers. Tom brought in a box of little home-made cakes for the nurses to have with their morning coffee.
Geraldine was also wonderful, she actually brought a file of work to Cathy's bed. 'Try to sleep, but I'm here if you want a chat,' she said.
It was very restful. Cathy dozed off several times, happy that Geraldine had plenty to do and didn't need to be entertained. Occasionally she would open her eyes and ask a question.
'Does Doctor Said like Ireland, do you think? When I'm better, Tom and I will make her a meal as a thank-you.'
'Was it a boy or a girl? In my mind I'll call the baby Pat, that could be either.'
'Do you really think I'm like you, Geraldine? You used to say I was once, but you haven't said it for ages.'
And finally, 'What would you do if you met that guy again, you know the first guy, the one you really loved?'
She never stayed awake enough to hear the bland, soothing answers that Geraldine murmured at her. But Geraldine thought about all the questions, and sat looking into the distance as Cathy lay there, white and weak, in the bed.
Neil drove her back to Waterview. He suggested that she go to bed; he would work and then bring her supper later. 'It's all right,' he reassured her. 'Tom brought round four little meals for two with instructions on them, so you won't be poisoned.'
The telephone rang. Cathy heard him telling someone that she wasn't there. They must work out a cover story for the next few days. She'd be on her feet again next week and back to work. But in the meantime, they must all say the same thing. Flu, virus or whatever.
'It was only Simon and Maud, some grouse, some whinge,' he said. 'I told them we'd ring in a couple of days.'
'Did that satisfy them?' Cathy asked.
'Satisfy those two? You must be joking, but I headed them off,' he said proudly.
'She has gone off us,' Maud said.
'But why? We haven't done anything. Not recently,' Simon said.
They went back over everything. Cathy had been great at the wedding, and had even said she was proud of them.Muttie and his wife Lizzie couldn't have told any tales. They washed all their own clothes, they kept their rooms tidy. They never complained when there was no meat or fish, only vegetables and rice. Sara had got them the money for school books. All they wanted to ask Cathy was could they do some more polishing for her at the premises because they wanted to earn some money for bus fares. Father had said that old Barty hadn't given him money that was owing, so there could be no pocket money this month.
'Miss Burke has booked a table for two,' James Byrne said as he came into Quentin's.
'This way, Mr Byrne.' Brenda Brennan was always amazed by the strange way people in Dublin turned up with the most unlikely companions. Whoever would have thought that these two would have known each other?
'I thought we'd be less likely to get emotional and shout at each other here,' Shona said.
'Not a restaurant known for its shouting, I agree,' James Byrne said.
They chose from the set lunch menu, and ordered a glass of wine each.
'I shouldn't have said that you taught me never to love again, that was going too far,' Shona began.
If it was what you felt, and I pray God it will not always be this way, then you were perfectly right to say it,' he replied.
'Can you tell me exactly what happened? I won't interrupt.'
And in a soft voice, without looking for pity, he told her the story. How he and Una couldn't have children. They had been for every kind of test. All the fertility treatment they had thirty years ago wasn't like it is nowadays. Nothing worked. And then this was the time that more and more girls who had babies outside marriage were keeping them, which, though very admirable and right, did mean that there was no pool of children for those who wanted to adopt them. However, the social services were always willing to help, and there was fostering. You were always told that your foster child was on loan. You had to understand that you were minding her until it was possible for her to be returned to her parents. There had been a problem in Shona's home. Her parents had come from Dublin to the West to make a fresh start, but it hadn't worked. Her mother had found suppliers and dealers there as well as in Dublin, and in many ways it was worse for her because now she had no extended family to fall back on. Shona's father had not been a tower of strength. The Byrnes had been given the toddler Shona, aged three and a half. Other relations had taken her sisters and brother. They had loved her, no one could have asked for a more wonderful child. They had always told her about her real mother and father. But they had seemed shadowy figures to her, people much less real and exciting than Goldilocks or the Turf-cutter's Donkey or the other stories they told her. And the years went on, Shona went to school and made lots of friends.
'Carrie and Bebe,' Shona said. Remembering.
And she turned out to be very bright at school.
'You sat for hours and taught me,' Shona said. 'I was never bright, Carrie and Bebe weren't, my sisters weren't either in the homes they were in; it was only because you spent such a time there, looking things up for me, explaining over and over.'
'You remember?' He was pleased.
'Some of it, yes indeed,' she said.
The waiter arrived with their first course. They stopped talking to smile their thanks at him, and when he had gone they continued. He told her of the shopping trips, how they often went out intending to buy a winter coat for Una or a pair of shoes for himself, and they saw something for Shona which they bought instead.
I'm not trying to tell you how much we spent as if I want to be thanked for it; we had plenty of money. Just want you to know that you were the centre of our lives, and no decision in that house, from what kind of cornflakes we ate right up to where we would go on holidays, was made without thinking of you. It's not looking for thanks; we wished we could have done more… I just wanted to know what a great hole you left in our lives when you had to go.'
The year they had to give her back, they had planned to take her to London to go to the Science Museum.
'I didn't know that,' she said. 'I've never been there.'
'It was to be a surprise, and well, obviously, when you had to go back we didn't tell you.'
'Did I really have to go back, James?'
'Oh, Shona, you did, and they told us that the best thing we could do for you was not to cry and tell you we'd miss you. They told us that you'd be with your family, and that it would be hard after ten years without us weeping and wailing and making it worse for you, so we were very strong and pretended that this was great news.'
'And I thought, always thought that you were relieved to be rid of me.' Her voice was flat.
'Ah, Shona, child, you couldn't have thought that. Not seriously?'<
br />
'What else could I think? No letters, I looked every day. You were both so good at writing to people, I couldn't believe you didn't write to me.'
'We were told not to, so as not to unsettle you.'
'I couldn't have been more unsettled than I was. I played it over and over in my mind that day. There were no tears when I went. I cried. I remember I said I wanted to stay, and you stood there like two stones saying that this was what we all wanted, and I was to tell my mother and sisters that I was delighted to see them.'
'I'll tell you about that day, and then you tell me. The car drove off and we watched it go down the drive. You never looked back.'
'I hated you so much for handing me over.'
'And we went back into the house, and I wondered would we have a cup of tea and Una said, "What for?". And the words hung there. What was the point of putting the kettle on, or indeed getting up in the morning, when you weren't there to share it? So the day went on, and Una sat in the kitchen looking out in the garden, and I sat in the hall looking at the door, for I suppose half an hour. Then she came out to the hall to me and said, "James, something odd has happened, all the clocks have stopped. They stopped at a quarter to six." And I said, but that is the time, it is a quarter to six. And then she wanted to know was that the morning or the evening. And that was the beginning of it, Shona, her mind started to go that afternoon, she thought you had been gone for five or six hours, she thought it must be nearly midnight. I brought her out and showed her the sky, I turned on the radio. She said you had left hours ago, you weren't forty minutes out of the house, and her mind started to go.'
'And she was so clever, so well read and everything,' Shona sighed.
'The last conversation we had was the night before you left. She wanted us to run away with you, change our names, go to England maybe, start again. I had to tell her that we couldn't, we would have nothing, we'd be on the run and we'd have to give you up eventually.'
'She wanted to do that?'
'So did I, Shona, but how could I sell the house, get another job, do anything to provide for you if we had to take false names? They'd be looking for us everywhere, people that stole a child. And since we couldn't do it, what we wanted to do, that's why it seemed right to go along with what had to be done.'
'I see,' she said.
'And we were allowed to write back if you wrote to us, but you never did. Tell me how the day turned out for you,' he asked.
She paused for a while and he didn't hurry her. She remembered that from the past, too. Dad would always wait until you got your thoughts together.
'It was a summer day, and the light was behind us all the way as we drove to Dublin because the sun was settting in the west. And I was in the back of the car and they talked to each other, the two women, I didn't know who they were, or that they were social workers. I suppose they were nice enough. We stopped in a town on the way and they bought me a burger and chips, and even though I was hungry I threw it away. Anyway, I got back to the house and the woman they said was my mother looked desperate. She had long, straggley hair that she hadn't washed for weeks, and she smoked all the time. She looked at me and said, "Will you look at the cut of you". That's all she said, she hadn't seen me for ten years and that was her greeting.'
'What did you say to her?' James asked.
'I was fourteen. I said nothing.'
The silence rested there between them, but it wasn't awkward. He simply waited for her to speak again.
'And then in a few days I knew what I had to do, I had to get out, you didn't want me… I thought, so I couldn't go back to you, I had to make my own way and maybe I could do it through school. So I began the life that I still lead, the life of a workaholic. My sisters were dossers, they did nothing except tell me I was full of airs and graces and I didn't like the milk carton on the table. "She wants a milk jug," they used to mock me. But I had great teachers. I told one, a Mrs Ryan, that things were bad at home, she was so nice. She said that things are always bad at home, that is the way the world runs, so I thought she had a lousy time too. It was only years later I learned that she had a great life. She taught me to type in lunch hours, and used to let me use the school machine to practise on. And there were others, too; it was a tough city school, so they loved someone who was making an effort to do something rather than shoplift or get pregnant at sixteen.'
'And when you left?'
'Ah, but before that I had to fight to stay and finish. They wanted me to work in the factory. I refused. I was sixteen. I wanted to get my Leaving Cert, and a life. My mother was using again, I didn't care any more. All I needed was somewhere to work, and I had my own room because the others left. I used to take a small amount of the welfare money every week, and tried to make an evening meal every night, potatoes, lentils, and you could get cheap, squashy tomatoes. Sometimes she was able to take a mug of soup, but mainly she didn't bother. And I'd love to have gone to university. I had enough points and everything, but the only way that I could get out of there was to get a job, so I went to work the day I finished my exams.'
'What did you do?'
'I moved out of home and worked in a travel agency as a junior. I learned everything I could in six months. I got a proper job in another travel agency. I got two holidays, one in Italy, one in Spain. The only holidays I ever had in my whole life. I've been to London on work a few times, but I never had another holiday. I remember the excitement of getting a passport. Then I worked in a dress shop, then a hotel and by the time the job came up at Haywards I was ready for it.'
'And your… mother?'
'I went to see her every week… You see, you did teach me manners after all. And how to behave. Sometimes she was so stoned she hardly knew who I was; other times she was depressed. I used to take her soup, some weeks she drank it, others I used to find it with mould on it. I wasn't the only martyr, my sisters went in too. We didn't fight, ever. They just sneered at me. Lady Muck, they called me in those early days. I said nothing; as time passed they got indifferent to me, as I to them. Now it's like meeting strangers. At the funeral I looked at them and I realised I knew nothing about them at all, or they about me.'
James took out a paper tissue and wiped his eyes.
'You finally realised you don't have to wash hankies. Mum and I used to say that you were the last of the folded-linen variety…'
She stopped suddenly. She realised that she had called his dead wife Mum after all these years. She held out her hand at the same time as he did.
'What a waste,' he said.
'Of so many lives,' she agreed.
'We must make very sure it doesn't happen any more, Shona.'
I'm more grateful than I can say that you got in touch,' she said.
'Well. I learned how to cook three dinners; you've only had one, there are still two to go,' he said, wondering had he gone too far.
'Saturday?' Shona suggested. 'I don't know when I last had something to look forward to on a Saturday night.'
'I'm going back to work tomorrow' Cathy said. She sat in her dressing gown at the kitchen table in Waterview.
'No, it's too soon.'
'But they said when I felt well, and I feel well now.'
'No, it's too dangerous… You're not fully better.'
'I've lost all I can lose. There are no bits of the baby left in there to lose any more.'
He winced at the phrase, the image. But she didn't mind. She wasn't going to pretend that this child had not existed.
'I still think you're not fully better,' he protested.
'I'm not fully better in my mind because I'm upset, but my body is fine and it needs to get back to working rather than sitting here all day on my own.'
'I'll be home early,' he promised.
'No, it's not that.'
'I know it's possibly not the right thing to say but there many ways—'
'Then don't say it.'
'You don't know what I'm going to say.'
'I do, and please don't say it,' she
begged.
He laughed at her. 'You wouldn't get away with that kind of argument in court,' he said.
'We're not in court.'
'Please let me finish. I only wanted to say that in many ways all this sad business has shaken us up, made us have a proper look at ourselves and realise where we are going.'
'Yes.'
'And I will never assume again that you are willing to drop everything and follow me wherever my career takes me. Now that's all I was going to say. Is it all right?' He looked at her expectantly, waiting for a response.
'It's fine.'
'So after all you didn't know what I was going to say.' Again looking for the warm answer.
'Not precisely, no.'
'What do you mean?'
'I thought when you began you'd say it's all for the best, but you didn't, not in so many words.'
'I didn't say anything at all like that, and if you remember I called it a sad business. Where did I say it was all for the best?'
'But that's what you think, Neil,' she said sadly.
'So first I'm on trial for what I'm going to say and then when I don't say it, I'm on trial for what you believe I think.' He looked wounded.
'I'm sorry, Neil, when you put it like that, it sounds very harsh. I didn't mean to be that.
'And neither do I mean to be insensitive. Rest more,' he said from the door.
Cathy wished things could get back to normal, but there seemed to be no way that she and Neil could talk about what had happened without her wanting to scream and rail. His cool, logical, lawyer's way of approaching it was driving her mad. She wanted them both to cry over the dead baby, to admit that it was a tragedy. But there was Neil going out purposefully to deal with other people's misfortunes, not realising that the biggest one was in his own home. If he could only give a tenth of that care and concern to the fact that they had lost a child, then it would be fine.
She mustn't sit around here indefinitely going over the same thing again and again. The only place things might be normal was back at work. She wouldn't even wait until tomorrow, she'd go today.
