Together Forever

by Siân O'Gorman

  And then there was me again speaking to Barry. I couldn’t for the life of me remember saying any of it. ‘We are all under tremendous pressure,’ I said, slightly breathlessly, my eyes wild, ‘and we need to give ourselves the space to reflect. Time out, if you will.’ Rosie squeezed my hand. ‘Our children,’ I went on, ‘know that they have not only the academic support and good teaching in our school but also the emotional support. We are a school which is not just chasing good exam results but happy and contented children. Mental health, happiness, pleasure and joy and the simple things in life have always been a part of our ethos, but today I am saying that it is the core of who we are as a school. I say to all our parents, that they are welcome to use the Peace Garden whenever they wish. They are part of our community too.’

  ‘As to the domestic drama, all seemed to be resolved…’ said Barry, cueing a shot of my mother and me hugging.

  ‘I can’t remember hugging her,’ I said to Rosie. ‘We don’t hug. We’re not huggers.’

  ‘Well, apparently you are. The camera doesn’t lie.’

  I tried to think. Nellie and I had definitely hugged, and Arthur had gone in for one. Robbo had practically squeezed my insides out, the opposite to Leaf’s limpid but well-meaning hug.

  It was coming back to me now. ‘Come here.’ Nora was standing there. ‘Just come over here.’

  And we hugged, tears in my eyes, tears in her eyes – the woman who never cried. A swirling dream, the noise of the children cheering.

  ‘You did it,’ said Nora. ‘I knew you would. That’s my girl.’

  ‘It still would have been far easier if you hadn’t been protesting, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but it wouldn’t have been half as much fun.’

  ‘I thought I was doing the right thing,’ I said. ‘I really did. I thought I was being the best teacher I could be, giving the children something we all thought they needed.’

  ‘Fresh air and exercise. The best medicine there is,’ she said, smiling, delighted with another triumphant protest. ‘We’ve all discussed the summer, helping get the Copse ready. Robbo’s even cancelling going to some music festival so he can help out. We’ll have it bramble-free in no time.’

  ‘Thanks Mum.’

  ‘Now, one thing I need to say. Rosie is a credit to you. You’re a natural mother. I wish I was more like you.’

  ‘Really?’ This was my mother. Being nice to me. Tears prickled in my eyes.

  ‘And another thing…’ she said.

  ‘Please stop. I’m more comfortable when you are being rude and dismissive.’

  ‘It’s just that… Rosaleen would have been so proud of you. And you’re just like her, you know that. You remind me of her every day. And you know that cutting, the one you took from Rosaleen’s cherry tree. Well, once it grows a bit, it’s going to be planted in the Peace Garden. What do you think about that?’

  ‘That’s a perfect idea.’

  On television, we were back to the studio now and Clodagh was smiling. ‘What a great story,’ she said. ‘Good things do happen to the best people.’ And she winked.

  ‘Did she just wink?’ said Rosie.

  ‘I think so…’

  ‘And now,’ said Clodagh, on screen, ‘with the weather is the ever-lovely Bridget O’Flaherty…’

  And there was Bridget, looking sexier than ever. Her dress was leather – or pleather, it was hard to tell under the studio lights – with a zip that went all the way from top to bottom.

  ‘Clodagh… thank you…’ She smiled at the camera. ‘But I’m not going to do the weather right now. You all know what it has been like where you are. Let’s just say that it will be more of the same tomorrow. But what I do want to do is pay tribute to Clodagh Cassidy who has been presenting this very news bulletin for the last ten years. And, guess what folks, today is her last day…’

  The camera panned to Clodagh who was holding her earpiece with one hand, as though someone was shouting into it, and also trying to remember she was on camera and that it was a good idea to smile. So she did.

  ‘And I’ll be taking over from Clodagh. From Monday, I’ll be your new news reader and I’m going to make sure that all of you get your fix of the headlines and that we have a bit of fun too. Life isn’t all doom and gloom, is it?’ She smiled broadly at the camera, giving it a cheeky wink. ‘See you all here at six o’clock on Monday.’

  Panning out, we saw Clodagh who was gesturing to someone off-camera. ‘Thank you, Bridget,’ she said recovering herself. ‘And I wish you the best in your new role.’

  My phone beeped. Red.

  Are you watching? She’s some mover.

  I texted back:

  And she was interested in you. You could have been Mr Bridget O’Flaherty.

  And then it beeped again.

  You’re my type. Meet me at the bandstand at 8 p.m.?

  Another beep.

  Forgot to say, I love you.

  Before

  Waiting for Red at the bandstand on the pier in Dun Laoghaire. I am twenty-one years old. I’m wearing jeans and his jacket that I’d been wearing for months now. And there he is, wearing an old navy fisherman’s jumper, his hands in his pockets and he is looking around, at the boats bobbing beside the pier, tied to their buoys, the seagulls ahead, the skittering clouds. It’s a beautiful evening. And then he sees me, and his face breaks into the most beautiful smile, and I can feel it inside, happiness exploding like a firework in my chest. Red Power. The man I love, the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. And he begins to run towards me. And that’s all I want, everything I love. As the great seer Johnny Logan would say, ‘we’ll always be together, forever in love…’

  *

  And here I am eighteen years later, older and not particularly wiser. But as soon as I see him, I feel the same. It has never gone away, those feelings, I never stopped loving him. I just learned to pack them up and not to look at them.

  He’s sitting on the steps of the bandstand and when he sees me, it’s the same smile and I smile too and he stands up and waits for me and I break into an awkward little skip and then next minute his arms are around me and it’s him. It’s Red Power and we’re us again and there are fireworks. We never went away. We just… we just had some other stuff we needed to sort out. But it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, because nothing has changed, we are still the same.

  ‘I wish I’d known that you and Michael weren’t happy,’ he said, holding my hand. ‘I would have rescued you from Fuck Me Foggy, ridden up on a white horse. Or my bicycle or whatever, and taken you away.’

  ‘It was so stupid. All of it. But I have Rosie and I wouldn’t change an ounce of her. Not one thing. I would do it all again, just to have her exactly the same as she is. She’s been the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.’

  ‘I’m going to apply for the position to be the number two best thing.’

  ‘You don’t have to apply.’

  He smiled at me. ‘Let’s never let that happen again, all right. Let’s always be Red and Tab or Tab and Red. Let’s be us forever. Deal?’

  ‘Deal. So, I heard from the department that if you want, you can stay another year in Star of the Sea. We’d love to have you, if you stay… Or maybe you’d like to go to the other school. It did sound like a good offer.’

  ‘They wrote to me too,’ he said. ‘And I would like to have another year being around you. I’d like a lifetime of being around you. So, I’m going to stay.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’ We grinned at each other.

  ‘You’re the reason I stayed away for so long. I came back because Dad had been ill… but I hadn’t ever stopped thinking about you. I hadn’t ever moved on...’

  ‘Nor me...’

  ‘I was curious, you know. I wondered how your story, your life was turning out. The one that got away. Or ran away.’

  ‘And then you came to the school. Was that a coincidence?’

  He shrugged. ‘Kin
d of. Who knows? I saw it advertised and I knew it was your school. I had known that by a very rudimentary Google search. And something made me apply… and then I was in. I think… I think I just wanted to make sure you were all right, that life was working out for you. I needed to know you were happy and I would have been fine with that. Wished you well and then maybe I would have settled down with someone. But…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘You didn’t seem happy, deeply happy. Not really. That first day we met in your office, it was like a light had gone out… I wanted to be there for you, sort it out. I didn’t know what to do… But as far as I knew, you were happily married.’

  ‘And then my life began imploding,’ I said. ‘Did you, by chance, have anything to do with that?’

  ‘What? Your husband running off with his secretary, your mother organising a protest outside your school?’ He shook his head. ‘If only I had such powers, I would have put them to better use.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like the two of us flying on a magic carpet to the terrace of a palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice to drink Bellinis.’

  ‘The last one’s possible,’ I said. ‘Rosie’s even saying she thinks she will be able to go away with her friends in a couple of weeks. She’s even thinking of getting a summer job and…’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘I think she’ll be okay,’ I said. ‘I’m so proud of her.’

  He smiled. ‘So Venice?’

  I nodded. ‘Oh God yes!’

  ‘However,’ he said, ‘I can’t do the magic carpet. Would Ryanair be an adequate substitution? I’ll book it tonight and find a palazzo fit for you.’

  ‘On one condition,’ I said.

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘That you don’t do any Johnny Logan songs in Venice.’

  ‘What? But that was going to be the big moment, when I get dressed up in a white suit and be Johnny. I thought that would clinch the deal.’

  ‘Deal?’

  ‘I’ll just have to think of another way to get you to marry me.’ He smiled at me. ‘But we can talk about that another time.’ He took my hand again and kissed it. ‘Oh Tabitha Thomas, what a spell you cast on me.’ He held me tightly and I clung on.

  ‘Dad’s poetry was reviewed in the New York Times yesterday,’ said Red. ‘He’s delighted. Peggy and the poetry gang are going to have a special party. You’ll have to come.’

  ‘Of course. What did the review say?’

  ‘A talented voice singing new songs of Irish freedom… something like that anyway. Dad has it cut out. The book should do well.’

  ‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘When can I buy a copy?’

  ‘It’s being launched next month. Now, you know he is giving every penny in royalties to the school…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He doesn’t want it. For the school coffers, he said. Tab,’ he laughed at my shocked face. ‘He’s an old communist He doesn’t want to make money out of art. He wants the school to have it.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say…’

  ‘Allow an old man the feeling that he might be doing some good.’

  The full-length of the pier, we walked with arms around each other, as though we were one person, and talked and talked and talked. Just like we used to, as though nothing had happened except for a couple of weeks away. And the seagulls soared along with our hearts and love and life was in the air

  *

  I woke really early, thinking of all the people in my life that meant so much. Rosie, Rosaleen, Red… and Nora.

  She’d be on her way to the Forty Foot right now for her daily dip. The early morning sun predicted a hot summer’s day. The sky was Aegean blue, there was a warmth already to the developing day. The rare, perfect Irish summer weather.

  What was she always saying, that I should join her? And I thought I never would again. But suddenly I wanted to. Now, it seemed like the very rightest thing to do. Quickly, I gathered some things together. My suitcase was at the end of the bed packed for Venice. Red and I were flying off for two nights that afternoon, and Nora was going to be looking after Rosie. She’d promised me she was going to be all right. And later in the summer, Rosie and I were going to Paris. Just the two of us. I couldn’t wait.

  But as I tiptoed past Rosie’s room, her door suddenly opened. She was standing there in her pyjamas, yawning. She eyed by bag with my swimming things in. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘The Forty Foot. For a swim.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, I thought it would be nice.’ I tried to sound as though it was the most normal thing in the world. But I was scared. What if it was too cold? What if I had forgotten how to swim? But really, deep down, I was worried, afraid for myself. Would it bring back memories I’d rather forget or should I just feel the fear and swim anyway? ‘Would you like to come?’

  She suddenly smiled. ‘Why not? I’ll just grab my things.’

  We drove to the Forty Foot, through the quiet and silent streets, only a few hard-working early birds on their way to the Dart or retired folk coming back from the newsagents, papers under their arms. We saw Nellie Noonan and I tooted my horn and waved to her out of the open window. She peered at us and then waved back. ‘Beautiful day!’ we heard her shout.

  ‘Did you hear about Clodagh?’ I said. ‘She’s been offered a new presenting gig. It’s called Clodagh! with an exclamation mark. It’s a serious political interview programme.’

  ‘Even though it’s got an exclamation mark in the title?’

  ‘Viewers love them, apparently. According to Clodagh. The person not the programme with an exclamation mark. Nicky, her agent, got her a massive wodge for it. Apparently, some people value brains and experience.’

  We parked beside the beach at Sandycove, just close to the Forty Foot. There were other daily dippers at the swimming hole.

  ‘And I forgot to tell you about Bridget,’ said Rosie as we began walking. ‘It’s not going well. She froze last night when she was interviewing the Minister for finance and didn’t know what to say. It was in all the papers this morning. She’s sacked her mother as her agent. And she says she wants to leave broadcasting and become a dog groomer.’

  We had reached the Forty Foot and found a space in one of the changing areas. Rosie stood, looking out to sea, her hands shading her eyes.

  ‘Can you see her?’ I said as I struggled into my swimsuit.

  ‘That’s her.’ Rosie pointed to the red dot far out and began to get undressed. ‘There she is. Do you see her, all the way out there?’

  ‘Actually, you go in. I’ll stay and watch. I’m not feeling too well.’ I had decided that I was going to sit this one out. I’d confront my phobia of the sea another day.

  ‘Mum,’ said Rosie, firmly. ‘We’re both going in. It’ll do us good. My counsellor said I should do more exercise, be outdoors more often. So here I am. I haven’t swum in the Forty Foot for years and I’m not going in without you…’

  Rosie was my inspiration, I realised. Without her, I was nothing. She’d been through so much and if she could face her life head on, so could I. We held hands as we walked down the steps roughly carved out of rock and into the icy water. ‘Jesus!’ I yelped.

  ‘Don’t be a baby,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m going in.’ She plunged in, diving down into the water, so I could see her shape under the surface, like a mermaid, her long hair streaming out behind her. ‘Come on,’ she said, when she re-emerged, ‘just dive in.’

  And I did, not as gracefully as Rosie, but I swam down until I could touch the bottom and submerged by the water, seaweed and rocks clipping my toes. For a moment, I opened my eyes and all I could sense was peace and gentleness and that I was safe. To my spirit guides, Rosaleen and the baby I had lost, I said, thank you. Thank you for everything. And I pushed my way back to the surface.

  ‘That’s better.’ Rosie was treading water. ‘Now let’s swim to Granny.’ She was so brave, my daughter. So strong. You could learn just as mu
ch from your child – if not more – that they learn from you.

  And I had forgotten what swimming in the sea was like, even on a still day like this, the water felt powerful, the bump-bump of the undulations stronger and the peaceful feeling was still with me, as though it alone was keeping me afloat. On we went until I could see that Nora had spotted us. She was floating on her back but squinting at the two of us.

  ‘Granny!’ shouted Rosie. ‘It’s us!’

  She narrowed her eyes even further, trying to see us and then she realised who it was. And a huge smile broke over her face, her arm stretched up in a wave.

  ‘What took you so long?’ she said when we were closer. ‘I’ve been waiting ages.’

  ‘Your invitation never arrived,’ said Rosie, paddling up to her. ‘Must have got lost in the post.’ The two of them had the same grin, I noticed. I’d never realised that before, how much Rosie looked like Mum. And like Rosaleen. And like me.

  ‘Finally, you made it,’ Nora said to me when I reached them. The three of us doggy-paddled around in the water. ‘I never thought I’d see the day.’

  And there was something about Nora or maybe it was always there and I had never seen it, or maybe I had chosen not to see it, but she looked, dare I say it pleased to see me.

  ‘I’ve been watching Howth Head,’ she said, pointing to the headland on the other side of Dublin bay, and I was wondering if they still had the goats.’

  ‘The goats?’ Rosie doggy-paddled herself around so she was looking out to see past the little fishing trawler that was chugging in the distant, past the ferry that was bringing people either home or away.

  ‘Goats, that’s right. They have goats on Howth Head and your great-grandmother brought me to see them once when I was a little girl. And there they were. A herd of them. Nibbled my cardigan they did. Did you ever see them, Tabitha?’