by Orna Ross
“Where?” He steps in close, so that my bump nudges his back.
“There, where the stream comes off the island?”
“Hmmm…Maybe.”
I move away, putting some space between us. He slings his camera over his shoulder and lifts the top rope of barbed-wire to slide through. “What are you going out there for?” I ask. “Be careful.”
“I won’t go far. I just want to get a close-up of that grass.”
It’s only ordinary marram grass but I know he sees something in it that I don’t.
I take the cloth from the basket and spread it and our rug across the sand. “Another perfect day,” I say, taking out food and utensils.
Each morning we wake and there it is again: the sun. Nobody can believe it.
He smiles. “I’ve never seen a summer like it. You’re lucky you didn’t come last year, when it rained nearly every day. We had the heating on all summer. You’d never have survived in that shed of yours.”
“That’s hard to imagine when it’s like this.”
While I lay out the food – sandwiches, fruit, cheese, chocolate – on plastic plates, and set out the cups and the knives and forks, feeling like a fifties housewife, he snaps, snaps, snaps picture after picture. Shhum. Click. Whirr. Sturdy thighs strain against denim as he leans in, rapt, every cell focused on his subject.
Just as I have the meal ready, the film reaches the end of its roll and the camera hums through its rewind. He slips back through the barbed-wire fence and joins me on the rug, stretching his legs to their full, long length.
I’m hyper-aware of those legs, their closeness to mine, the bulk of the body that tops them, but he seems blithe, pouring himself a juice and starting on some sandwiches.
“Jo, I wanted to ask you something. I wanted to ask you about” – he points to my bump – “about…the father.”
I’m taken aback. “Why? I told you before, he was nobody. A one-night stand.”
“Does he even know that you’re pregnant?”
“He wouldn’t want to.”
“How can you be so sure? How come you get to make that decision for him?”
I don’t want to talk about this. The happier I get about the idea of the baby, the less I want to remember how she came to be. That drunken coupling. That guy’s anxiety to be rid of me, almost shouldering me out of his apartment. That time of wild panic afterwards. All the broken moments that had brought me to here are best left back behind me, locked up where they can’t do any harm.
“Rory, let it go. You don’t know anything about it.”
He says, in the wary voice of one who’s aware that he’s saying something contentious, “Who would know better than me?”
“Ah. So that’s it.”
“I’m not trying to upset or annoy you, Jo. It’s just I can’t help feeling for the guy, whoever he is. I know how it feels not to be given a say.”
“That’s rubbish, Rory. You made it perfectly clear how you felt.”
“Wrong. And what if you’re just as wrong about this other guy now?”
“Rory, you made it obvious that…”
“I didn’t, Jo. I did not. We barely discussed it, then – snap! – you were gone.”
My mind leaps to the injustice of this. “You could have followed.”
“You left without a word. You didn’t want to be followed.”
“Oh, but I did. I so, so did.”
“Why didn’t you just ask? One word from you, one single sign, and I…”
“But Rory, that was the point. I needed you to do it without me having to ask.”
“Jesus!” he says. “Women!” He sits up and brushes crumbs off his T-shirt with force, as if they were our wrong turnings, our lost years. “Your entire sex should come with a mental health warning.”
I am reminded of Richard, who always said he was glad to be gay for this very reason. Desire was so much more straightforward with guys, he said, because men just want. While women want to be wanted.
So I don’t lob back any of the arguments waking inside me, the poisonous little vampires of exoneration and vindication, repeated to myself so often back then that I still know them by heart. What is the point in explaining or defending the viewpoint of that younger me? It’s all too long ago. She was somebody else, with her convoluted desire to be desired, her need to be needed.
So I try to give him something true instead. “Maybe I should have had more faith in us.”
“You should, Jo.” His voice is vehement. “You really should.”
But I was my mother’s daughter. I had seen how it felt to need, to want, to crave what the other person could not give. If I didn’t ask, I couldn’t be let down.
Is that really how it was? Which is true, this new story of now? Or the hurt and angry tale that my younger self used to tell? My head begins to ache in the old way.
“Rory, I can’t do this.”
“I know it’s hard for you, Jo. And I’m not bringing it all up just to make a point. It’s that I…I…” He sits up. “It’s that I’ve been thinking…about…about what might happen if I left my marriage.”
I stop breathing.
“Jo, I don’t want you to think…I haven’t decided anything.”
As if I’d asked him to. As if I’d said that was what I want.
“And your wife? Have you discussed it with her?”
There. That’s the first time I’ve mentioned her, this woman who has started to spend too much time in my thoughts.
“Not that exactly. We have discussed you.”
“I imagine you’d have to, with you going up to my shed each night.”
“She didn’t mind at first. But now…”
“She didn’t?” This seems astonishing.
“She thought you needed a friend.”
“Ugh!”
“Well, you were troubled, Jo. And when you moved into your shed and locked yourself away, like a hermit…”
“Oh, great. I got a pity loan of her husband.”
He looks sheepish. “If I’m honest, that’s the way I played it with her.”
“And now?”
“Last night, when I told her I was coming out here with you today…she asked me not to.”
“But you’re here.”
“I’m here.”
Out on the strand, the seabirds splash in and out of sand-puddles. The angle of the sun is making each puddle a small mirror, holding and feeling the depth of the sky.
“It’s not just about you,” he says, after a while. “We – Orla and I – we haven’t been right for a long time.”
“Arguments?”
“No. That’s not how it goes with us. Our relationship was always different to yours and mine. Never as…” He reaches for the right word.
“Intense?” I suggest.
“Yes, less intense. Less passionate, which was what I thought I wanted, then. She was attractive, clever, good at everything. She was…she is a good person. Everybody always likes Orla.”
“But?”
“Oh, Jo, I’m so confused. All of that stands and the kids of course…But our marriage is not what it was. You might say, how could it be after so many years, but really it’s that for the first time in my life, I know what I want. Not what my parents wanted, or what the world tells me I should do, or what the family need from me. What I want, for me. I fantasise about it all the time. At work, while I’m putting the kids to bed, all the time, except in the evenings when I’m with you.”
“What is it? What do you want?”
“To leave here with you when you go back to the States, and to become a photographer. To start everything over and get it right this time.”
I push down whatever thoughts I might be having about this, keep my voice even. “Does Orla know what you’re thinking?”
“She knows more than I tell her.”
That makes me laugh, I don’t know why. A small, sniggery kind of laugh that I don’t like but can’t help. He doesn’t rise to it.
“An
d, of course, there’s the kids. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to challenge you about what happened back then. What if Orla were to do that to me now? You see so many fathers get shut out when they…when a marriage breaks up.”
Another laugh spurts out of me. Then I find I can’t stop, gusts of laughter flooding up and out from I don’t know where.
“Jesus, Jo. Stop it.”
I try but I can’t. I’m laughing and laughing and laughing.
“Christ!”
“I’m…sorry…Sorry…” I make a stern effort. I breathe deep. I focus. When I’ve got control, I say: “I’m sorry Rory. It’s just that sometimes it all seems too ridiculous. All that wasted emotion, all that —”
He grabs my shoulders, kisses me on the mouth. A severe kiss, full of hard feelings and, oh yes, something in me leaps to it. My old self. We kiss and kiss and on we kiss, no other part of our bodies moving but our searching, accusing lips.
Oh, what a kiss. On it goes, all laughter wiped away now. My half-open mouth presses all I want to say onto his. You know me…you know me…I shouldn’t have let you go…I want you…I want you but I’m afraid…Afraid to let myself love you again…Afraid of what might become of me…Afraid you are not mine…not mine.
Not. Mine.
I stop.
He stops.
We look into each other’s eyes, ribs rising and falling over short panting breaths.
“Be mine,” he says, echoing my thoughts, as he always used to. “Just for one day.”
One day, in a vacuum, sealed off from his marriage and everything else. Oh I love the idea, I love the words in his mouth, I love the sound of him saying them.
Yet I’m pulling away. I’m standing up.
“Please, Jo,” he says, jumping up too, gripping my arms. “Give me something.”
That emotion in his voice, in the clutch of his hands – how can I know whether to trust it? To trust the way I thrill to it?
“I can’t, Rory.”
“Why? Why not? Don’t pretend. I felt that kiss.’
‘It’s not that. You know I have… feelings—”
“Feelings!” His upper lip curls. “Steady on there, Jo. Take it easy, don’t go overboard.”
“Look at me, Rory. Just look.” I shrug free, wave my hand across the front of my body. “I’m six months pregnant by a man who meant nothing to me. Less than nothing. I can’t be careless again.”
I step backwards, right out of his grip. When I’m at a safe distance, I look into his eyes and say, “And I can’t be careless with you.”
He stuffs his fists into his pockets, as if he is afraid he might use them. “So are you happy just to keep on playing this little game of ‘will we, won’t we’? Because I tell you, I can’t stand much more of it.”
My heart is still thudding from our kiss. It would be so easy to give in, but what I have told him is true. And it bothers me that he seems so ready to cheat. One conversation about how bad he feels and then…Bam! Never mind, let’s do it anyway.
Then again, meeting every night, the way we do: is that not cheating already? When we’re together, he makes me feel we are the love story and she is the one on the outside — but they have their own story that excludes me.
I can’t get past my imaginings. And not just — not even mainly — of her. Of two others. Two small and silent children.
It is picturing them that makes me start to clear off the plates and shake out the tablecloth, to fold up the rug and pack away our day.
Two children, lying in bed, hearing the sound of their mother, contorted with loss. Two children, feeling their house fill up with betrayal and humiliation. Two children knowing their daddy has left. Gone out, gone off, gone away from them.
1923
Freedom’s Sake
By A True Republican
* * *
State soldiers went round searching our countryside for days,
To flush out freedom fighters (or take them to their graves).
On this bright winter morning, you would have seen them creep
around the column’s hideout while they lay in their sleep.
* * *
The stern command: “Surrender!” rang out o’er Derriestown:
“Surrender now Irregulars! To Free State! And to Crown!”
Bold Barney grabbed his rifle, his fighters did the same,
All jumped to strike for freedom, for dear old Ireland’s name.
* * *
The crack of muskets broke out, a terrifying sound
of gun and bomb explosions went blasting all around.
Captain Parle was heard to call, above the piteous roar,
to rally on his comrades, as he often had before:
* * *
“Prepare yourselves to fight now, m’true born Irish boys
To make this dash for freedom, for Holy Ireland’s cause.”
Then he addressed the Staters (and made his comrades thrill):
“To falsehoods and English guns, Surrender We Never Will!”
* * *
So out they dashed to meet them, as sun rose on that day,
through shots and blasts of bullets, somehow they found their way.
Barney held the firing while the others scaled the wall.
The last one turned and witnessed the shot that saw him fall.
* * *
Sleep on, sleep on, brave Barney Parle, while we weep that you’re gone.
We know that on your courage, God’s brightest blessing shone.
On your soul His angels now bestow their kindest smile.
You’ve left and gone before us, but only for a while.
* * *
You fought the cause of freedom, like all brave Irish men.
You gave yourself to win it. God Rest Your Soul. Amen.
A Celtic cross now marks the spot where wounded body lies.
Fear not. We will remember just why you lived and died.
* * *
SURRENDER WE NEVER WILL!
* * *
Diary 12th January
They didn’t want us to wake Barney at home. The doctor at the hospital suggested he be brought direct to the chapel in a lidded coffin and, to our great surprise, Daddy recommended the same. Mammy wouldn’t hear of it. Her boy would be waked in his own home, she insisted. Her will, as usual, won the day.
The ambulance brought him out from the morgue and we had the room all ready for him, clean sheets, a candle lit at each side of the bed-head, a statue of Our Lady on the bedside table, a font of holy water. The two attendants carried him onto the bed for us on a stretcher, leaving the white sheet that covered him in place. After they had gone, we stood over him, Mammy and me, and found we weren’t able to go on. She looked at me, I looked at her, we both looked at the sheet between us, the lumps and bumps rising under it that we knew were Barney’s nose and chin and chest and feet.
And the smell. As long as I live, I won’t ever forget that smell.
I don’t know what Mammy was thinking, but to me it seemed impossible that I could ever peel back that sheet and confront the remains of what used to be my brother.
Then we heard a step on the stairs.
“Quick,” Mammy said. “That’s Lil. She’ll think we’re a right pair of cowards.”
She pulled back the sheet and, as soon as she did, I understood Daddy’s motives in wanting to have Barney coffined straight away. Identifying the body, he had seen what death had done to our boy. His face was all twisted, the eyes bulging, showing too much yellowing-white. His jaw was knocked out of line with his cheekbones but it was his mouth that was the worst of it, all curled up in one corner into a leer. What would put such a face on a boy and he on his way out of this life? He looked like a man possessed. We could do nothing but stare at him in horror.
That’s how Lil found us, stiff solid, unable to move, all sorts of dreadful thoughts flying through our heads. She took one look at him, then at us, then started barking orders, telling us what to do
and how to do it.
Pull that sheet off entirely. Strip off that coat. Get hot water and soap and a couple of cloths. We fell to obeying her and, while we carried out the tasks, she kept up a long string of talk. It was a disgrace that he was left like that. Why had no one closed the eyes, straightened the jaw? She had seen many a dead person in her day but never one left that way. It was too late now, he’d have to do.
In any other mouth, her talk would have sounded like disrespect, but from her that day, it was a strange sort of comfort. With her matter-of-fact words, she brought us back down, made us see that it was nothing but a turn of the eye, a twist of the mouth. No more than that. We began to see our boy again.
He was wearing the clothes he had on him that day of the shooting, the clothes I had given him. Under the jacket, the jumper and shirt were stuck together with blood and other excretions that were part of the stench emanating from him and getting worse as we stripped him back to the skin. I turned right red as we took off the last of his clothes and came to his naked person. It didn’t seem right that I should ever see my brother like this, though Mammy and Lil weren’t making much of it. All eyes were on the job and I suppose they had bigger things on their minds than my foolish embarrassment.
An attempt had been made to dress his stomach wound in the hospital, but it was still a raw and bloody sight. Once we cleaned all off as best we could, and bandaged the wound as if he were still alive, we dressed him. The lads had done us proud getting together as good a Republican uniform as they could muster. A proper pair of army britches. A Sam Browne belt. A tall and shiny pair of boots. How Lil cursed those boots for the difficulty of pulling them on over the stiffness of his feet.
We got the job done and he’s above there now, lying on his back, rosary beads looped around his dead hands, a couple of candles lighting either side of him. For all our efforts, he still looks tormented, like someone to fear. “Keep the light dim,” Lil said to me on the way out when Mammy was hanging back and not listening. “A clear look at him could put the heart crossways in anyone with a weakness.”
