Before the Fall

by Orna Ross

  So of course I begin to cry, with Rory watching, unable to help myself. I look for the anger with Mrs D. that I expect to be there and find only confusion.

  I'm saved by you, starting to stir, and I realise, from the snuffling you begin, that you are due a feed. Rory sits on, looking, as I lay down the letter and open my nightdress and nursing bra and distract myself from tears by fastening you on. We both watch your ears, moving as you suck.

  Rory says, "Hungry little beggar, isn't he?"

  I smile, stroke the little head that he stroked a few moments ago, feel the throb of the pulse beneath the membrane and the answering thud in myself.

  "Motherhood suits you," Rory says after a long silence.

  "Don't sound so surprised," I say, though I'm surprised myself.

  "Where did you stay before you came in?"

  "Maeve's."

  "How was that?"

  "Yeah. Fine. She's been very good to me."

  You have fallen asleep now, mid-sip. Blissed out. Your lips — lined with milk — lie open round my nipple.

  "So," Rory says. "What are the plans now?"

  I look up at him, suddenly afraid, and begin to fix up my clothing to get a moment of time. I need to be in order for this.

  "I'm going home." I use the word consciously.

  "Home?"

  "Back to San Francisco."

  "I see. You've booked a flight?"

  "Not yet. But I expect to leave in a week or ten days. As soon as we get the all clear from the doctors."

  "So...?"

  So...? Is that all he has to say? What does "So...?" mean? So...can I come with you? So...don't go? So...I've left my wife? So...what, Rory? What?

  He drops his eyes. "I'm sorry about Orla coming to see you that day in Mucknamore," he says. "I had no idea."

  "It's all right. We got on quite well, actually."

  "That's what she said." And he frowns, as if that idea doesn't quite appeal to him.

  "Are you two going to be okay?"

  He narrows his eyes, as if refocusing. "Is that what you want? Me and Orla to be okay?"

  "What do you want, Rory? Isn't that what we need to know?"

  He moves his head in something between a nod and a shake. "I'm still so confused...I wish I could be sure of the right thing to do," he says.

  And, in that moment, I find that it's okay. He doesn't need to be sure, because, finally, I am. I sit perfectly still then, letting him bring it up, all he has to say that I somehow know before him.

  "I feel I need to go away from here," he says. "And I want it to be with you. I like myself so much more when I'm with you. I feel young again, and free, when I'm with you."

  He's just the same, he'll always be the same. The younger me was right. She did what she had to do. But I can't resent him. I know how he feels, like he is splitting in two...

  "But that's not how it's going to be," I whisper. "Is it?"

  "Oh, God, Jo. I really do want to be with you."

  "I know you do, Rory. I know."

  "Then let's."

  "But it's not just you and me, is it?"

  "You mean the baby?"

  "And your kids. And Orla."

  "But people do it, people get over all that."

  I shake my head.

  "You don't want to," he says, stunned. Part of him thought all he had to do was ask. Neither of us has forgotten just how fiercely I once loved him.

  I reach for his hand, hold it. His fingers curl up inside mine.

  "Loving you ruined me for love," I say, wanting to give him something. "I never loved properly again."

  "But now you will," he says, miserably.

  "I don't think that's what I'm looking for at the moment."

  "You will."

  He sounds so glum that I laugh, and he frowns at me, offended. He wants to keep us in love-story land, but that's not how it is for me, not any more.

  I look down at your sleeping eyes. "Loving this little fellow properly will be quite enough for me for now.'"

  He opens his mouth to say something, closes it again. We sit for a long time, the three of us, in the quiet of the room, hospital noises outside.

  After a long time, he says: "You never told me the end of the story."

  "I'll send you a copy of the manuscript," I say.

  "Jo, you promised..."

  In the middle of our loss, he is still avid for narrative resolution, his questing eyes full of its hold. What happened? Who did it? Was it really Peg? Tell me, tell. Of course, it's not just a story to him, any more than it was to me. He wants the ending that was our beginning.

  "I'm almost finished," I say. "And the book will tell it better than I can."

  He shakes his head at me, resigned.

  I slip from the bed to lay the baby down in his cot beneath the window and Rory comes to stand beside me, looking in as I wrap the blanket tight around him. The little hands are curled into fists, one on either side of his closed eyes. We stand looking at him for a long time. Then Rory says, "So this is goodbye?"

  I'm afraid to look up at him while the feelings that goodbye always bring on are welling into my throat. I think of the aeroplane I will take next week, that will wing me and my son — my son! — westwards, towards yesterday.

  "You'll come back again to Mucknamore, won't you?" Rory says. "For a visit?"

  "Sure," I say, what I said to Hilde. But then I remember it's him. "Actually, I don't think so, Rory. Not soon, anyway. You come and see me instead."

  "I will. I definitely will." He is fervent, like it's a vow.

  "I'd like that," I say.

  "And you'll send me that manuscript?"

  "I promise."

  He reaches for me then and we turn to hold each other. With my bump gone I feel, for the first time this summer, the full length of him, with nothing between us. We hold each other, hard. Then our lips search the other's out and we kiss. One kiss, firm and long and deep, with eyes clenched tight. One kiss with everything in it.

  Then we let each other go.

  Break

  1932

  Child made her Confirmation yesterday, all glowing in white. Like a shiny little angel, but with the devil's eyes when she looks at Norah. Norah would have liked to go to the Confirmation, to see the bishop on his throne, his hat half the height of himself, and the white flowers and the prayers, but the devil eyes that didn't want her made her stay at home.

  Peg thinks Child is so good and Child wants to keep it that way. "Isn't little Maureen such a good girl?" says Peg, never knowing it's only like that while she's around, that behind her back it's the nasty looks and faces, and the cold hard words for Norah.

  Yesterday, when the two of us were on our own in the kitchen, Child told me I was to stop looking at her. I have the eye of a jackdaw, she said, always following her around, gawping at her, whatever she's doing. Like the eye of a dirty old crow.

  * * *

  "Is Mrs Duggan against Fianna Fáil?" Child asked Peg.

  Fianna Fáil is Mr de Valera's latest big idea, the new political party that got him back the power.

  "No, Mrs Duggan is not against Fianna Fáil," said Peg. "She's got her eye too much on the next world to care what goes on in this one. Why do you ask?"

  Child told her what wee Willie said, that his mother, the praying woman, told him to keep away. From her, from us, from all Parles. Why? Child wanted to know, and out it all came, pouring, all the people who say all the bad things.

  Miss O'Neill who is always looking at her with a frown on, as if she has done something wrong, when she's doing nothing at all.

  Young Cissie Cummins who said she was surprised that Child was allowed to do a Confirmation at all. Surprised she was even let go to Mass. And Rita Breen, trying to be kind, saying: You shut up, Cissie Cummins, hasn't she as much right as anyone else?

  And Mr White, who the other day was going to pat her on the head, but pulled himself back at the last minute.

  And most especially Father John, who'
s always picking her out on his visits to the school, saying to Miss O'Neill that there was more joy in Heaven over one lost lamb than all the rest, looking at her when he said it.

  Why is she a lost lamb? Child wants know of Peg. Why is he always telling her to keep up with her prayers? Why doesn't he say that to the others? Why is it only to her?

  And Cissie Cummins again, when they were talking in the schoolyard about the plaque going up to her Uncle Barney, said: Uncle, how are you!

  What did she mean by that, Mammy?

  Poor Peg, her face pulled tight, didn't know what to be saying. The Child was close to crying with all her questions and Peg gathered her in so tight it must have hurt her back.

  "You're not to mind that Cummins one," Peg said into Child's hair, her voice all cracked. "Do you hear me? Pay no attention whatever to the likes of her."

  "But what did she mean, Mammy?"

  "Lord above knows, child. How could anyone know what's going on in a head like that? You're not to mind her, d'you hear me? You're not to mind any of them."

  Child came out of her hug and saw Peg's face and put one hand up to touch it.

  "It's all right, Mammy," she said. "I won't mind any more."

  * * *

  Now Child goes sneaking round the house, her ear pressed to doors to see what she can hear. Or through the shivery darkness after everyone's in bed, to read the diaries that Peg thinks she's kept under lock and key. Oh, Child, Child, you'd want to watch out. You're going to find more than you want to find...

  * * *

  Coolanagh. The word hurts me too.

  Write it down, Peg says. Don't try to forget.

  Don't shy away, is what she means, don't be afraid.

  Never wondering if maybe she's too brave for her own good.

  What I want to write is the real wrong of it, which was mostly in what came after. The way he would look at me, eyes twisted up whenever they had to turn my way, as if he believed his own made-up story.

  That was the worst wrong of all. What is that made him do that? That's the only question I'm left with, and all the answer I'll ever have.

  * * *

  We went together, Peg and I, the two of us peering into the fog. Double-blindfolded, once by dark and twice by fuddling mist. Six days we'd had of it by then and the feeling that it would never again move off. Small and careful our steps, because under our feet was a road of slush, and ahead of us who knew what?

  It's hopeless, Peg said. We can't see a thing.

  But we couldn't go back to the house to sit by the fire, nerves scraping, so we kept on going and we were glad we did. For it wasn't hopeless. We found what we went looking for.

  They all think it was Peg who did the deed and they all go shrinking silent round.

  As if. Our kindly Peg? The country might have turned itself upside down, but some things are set. The sun comes up of a morning. The sea pulls in and out with the tides. Peg Parle could not kill my brother; she had too much love for him.

  And anyway, what she did to unknown Free State solders was a matter of enough remorse to her. The desire to atone for that drives her goodness to all — and always will, for all her living days

  No, it wasn't Peg who killed Dan, only Peg's old talk. Too much talking, she did, up there in the sickroom with the door well closed. I didn't know she was doing that: saying those things to her mammy. Things I never said to her. Things I never thought anyone would say.

  Mrs Parle did it for me, Peg says, but I was never asked. If I was, I'd have told her...

  But Mrs Parle wasn't a woman for asking.

  * * *

  It was I who saw her first, through the fog. Like a pile of rags she looked, all in a heap by the ditch. I nudged Peg and pulled her over.

  "Mammy!" Peg cried, a muffled cry, for who knew what might be beyond the next layer of mist. "Mammy, is it you?"

  Mrs Parle was lying still, a lump of black in the dimness. Peg went over to her, tried to lift her, and her mother roused. "Peg?"

  "Oh, Mammy, yes. Yes, I'm here."

  "I...fell..."

  But was it on the way to do the deed, the thing she had said to Peg she would do, if she only had the strength? Like a woman possessed she had been above in her room, Peg said. Her eyes glittering and her mouth saying all sorts of unspeakables. Was she on her way there, or on the way back?

  "Didn't..."

  "It's all right, Mammy. Don't talk. We're going to get you home."

  "Didn't..." She was bad for breath, very bad. "Not shot..."

  "Oh, thank God, Mammy. Thank God."

  "Yes, God. I let...God...decide..." She dribbled a bit and flopped on us, seemed to go.

  "Merciful Jesus," Peg said. "Is she . . . ?"

  But she wasn't, only passed out.

  We took her up between us, our shoulders under her arms. She was heavy, though dwindled with her sickness, and her bones felt thin, like they were almost about to snap.

  "What did she mean?" Peg asked me. "What did she mean, 'I let God decide'?"

  Between us, we hauled her home, careful at first, but after a while too muscle-sore and frightened of being found out to be gentle. In the end, we were pulling her along between us, her boots dragging behind. In the house, the light felt bright. Child was still asleep in her pram where we left her.

  Now Peg could see the state of what we had brought in: her mother, so reduced you'd want to howl, but we had no time for tears.

  "Lie her down," Peg said. "We'll have to take her up the stairs on the flat. Hurry, before Daddy comes in."

  Peg took the weight of her shoulders and chest, and I took the legs. It wasn't easy getting her round the twist in the stairs. In the bedroom, we took off the nightdress Mrs Parle had on under her coat, all mudded up and sandy at the bottom, to make her clean and dry. In the middle of it, Peg's father called up the stairs and I was left alone with the mother and the two pinpoints of red on her chalky face, like a bee stung her — once, twice — on the bones of her cheeks.

  She let God decide, she said. Decide what? The question was a scourge to us. We never thought of Coolanagh, not then, not until next morning when John Colfer came back in his boat.

  "She could do with Dr Lavin," Peg said, coming back into the room. "But I'm afraid to call him. What if he notices her wet hair?"

  She took a towel and lifted her mother's insensible head off the pillow to slip it under, and then she broke. With the worst danger past, the full knowledge of what her mother had set out to do flooded through her, and she dropped her head into her hands. I thought she was going to cry, but it was more of a wail that she let out.

  And then a vow. "I swear this, Norah. Whatever's been done this night, that child below won't suffer. No more tit-for-tat. Whatever happened dies in this room."

  Dear Peg. As if she had the giving of what flows and what will be stopped. A strange notion, inherited from her mother.

  Her mother — who did what she did for me, according to Peg — trying to pull something sweet-smelling from the mire. But I never asked for that. My brother did me wrong, the way he put it all over onto me, but I never would have wanted that.

  For what Peg and Mrs Parle and Dan himself could overlook, I never could: he was my brother. He did me wrong, but he was my brother.

  THE END

  The Prequel & Sequel

  The concluding volume of the Irish Trilogy, Book Three: In the Hour, is currently being written. Publication due 2021.

  Book One: AFTER THE RISING

  After the Rising, the first book of the Irish Trilogy introduces the Parles and O’Donovans and shows how the family relationships deteriorated, from the Truce in 1921 when they were ecstatic comrades-in-arms, to the killing of Barney Parle, just over a year later. It is also the story of Jo Devereux’s childhood in Mucknamore and Dublin, revealing just how the events of the past poisoned her unfolding passion for Rory, and culminated in her leaving home, at eighteen, vowing never to return.

  Click here to buy After the Rising, the
prequel to Before the Fall on my website OrnaRoss.com or your favorite online bookstore

  In the Hour

  In the preface to this book, I asked what new ways might await us in the 21st century and beyond ? And what value does Ireland’s experience of colonisation and diaspora have for others, especially other colonised peoples.

  I wasn’t thinking of the guerrilla war tactics of the Irish independence war that inspired other nations like India into similar actions—with all their bloody fallout and partial autonomy. Rather, that Ireland was the first colony of what went on to be the Age of Imperialism’s largest empire. That it was on the island of Ireland where colonisers first practiced the plantations and penal laws that stripped away “native” culture, language and dignity. That, refined and expanded, these tactics went on to be used against other peoples in Africa, the Americas, and beyond, and by other empires. That such misrule inevitably breeds enslavement, famine and yes, civil war.

  Countries and peoples who are devoured continue devouring themselves, and it gets fed down, generation to generation. You can draw a straight line between the Tudor plantations of Ireland in the 16th century, through the signs 20th century WASP landlords and ladies in the UK and US used to put in their windows (No dogs, no blacks, no Irish), to the “Black Lives Matter” protests that are breaking out everywhere as I write this, in response to the age old brutality of the establishment towards those it marginalises.

  Knowing the truth of this past matters: all the truths, not just one narrative. When you do, you can reclaim it.

  This is what a London couple, Richy and Taurayne, have done, setting up a thriving T-shirt business around the slogan “More dogs, More blacks, More Irish”. Know your story, the t-shirts say on the back.

  That’s what I set out to do as I wrote this book, find out more about our family story. Though I didn’t succeed in finding out who done it, I learned what I needed to know, and was able to give Jo some answers.