‘She’s an alcoholic?’ Tara said.
‘No!’ said Martha, quickly. ‘She just has ... an uneasy relationship with alcohol.’
‘Is it fiction?’
‘Of course it’s fiction. It has a happy ending, for starters.’
They went on to discuss other matters but, later, when Martha hung up, she felt relief. That she had said it out loud. To herself as much as to Tara. That’s what she was spending the winter doing. She was writing a novel. And not drinking. Those two things seemed unlikely bedfellows. And, since she had said it out loud to Tara, credibility had grabbed hold of the idea, held it up to the light.
The car’s headlights cut a narrow gorge through the road ahead, and in the shadows the hedgerows appeared grotesque and misshapen, like some hideous, relentless creature. You could drive for hours along the network of winding, narrow roads threaded through north County Dublin beyond the airport and never get anywhere. At one point, the twisting road Martha was on seemed familiar and it took her a moment to realise she was driving towards Cillian’s house. She turned left at the next crossroads, then left again so that she was moving in the opposite direction now.
She often did this. Drove. Since she had stopped drinking, her life had become smaller and, in many ways, that was a relief. Sobriety had brought clarity. Not at first – of course not. But later. She knew what she wanted to do now. She wanted to stop talking about writing and write. She knew who her friends were now. Tara, mostly. And Dan, still.
The others turned out to be just people she had drank with. People she had worked with. And after work, drank with. Now, she went to her orchestra practices. Most weeks. Sunday mornings had been something of a revelation. How quiet the world was on Sunday mornings, in her new, small life. Something almost precious about them. She thought it might have something to do with the realisation of how many she had wasted.
But now, the dark, endless roads seemed to be mocking her, and the smallness of her life seemed as narrow as the light thrown by the headlamps.
She could call in to Dan. He was one of the few people Martha knew who did not mind people calling in without prior arrangement. ‘Although you’re the only person I know who actually does it,’ he clarified. Dan lived in a pretty little mews in Sandymount, all high-ceilings and bright, spacious elegance, with a secluded terrace at the back where he could drink pints of Creme de Menthe and parade naked, if he felt like it, which he sometimes did.
And it would take ages to drive to Sandymount and that was a good thing; she was safe in the car. Driving. Distracted.
But then she remembered that Dan was at an exhibition opening in Berlin tonight. By now, he would have drunk his body weight in schnapps and swelled his German Twitter followers by about a gazillion.
She would ask him to go and see Tara when he got back tomorrow. Tara, despite herself, had liked Dan. Right from the start. It was Martha and Dan – the couple – she harboured grave misgivings about and, of course, her observation – along the lines of this will end in disaster – was, in the main, accurate.
The urge to somehow fix Tara was compelling and childish. To stamp her feet and say, Stop it, and cross her arms and frown until Tara agreed to be her old self once again. Martha needed her to be her old self. She relied on her in a way that she hadn’t quite understood until now.
She had looked for contact details for Mathilde but she didn’t know her surname or the name of her cafe. She had typed a string of words into her search engine – Mathilde, French, cafe, London, Tara, knitting, lesbian – but had so far come up with nothing.
How good is it? That’s what Tara had said about the book Martha was writing. The quietness of her conviction. It was nearly better than a crystal glass of Scottish single malt. Martha remembered feeling something close to elation. Yes, elation, she didn’t think that was too strong a word, even for her.
And then today, in that mean, antiseptic hospital room. Tara talking to her mother as if Martha wasn’t even there. You have to tell Martha to go.
And Joan. The nodding certainty of her smile. Everything worked out for the best in the end.
Martha ended up parked outside her parents’ house. The lights were off so she knew her mother wasn’t there. She checked her watch. Seven o’clock. She was probably at one of her fundraising committee meetings at Sunshine House.
She fumbled for the set of keys she still had, let herself in, closed the front door and leaned against it, savouring the familiar smell, the habitual weight of the house settling around her. Even after all this time, she still thought of it as her father’s place. Still felt his absence there. It was in the quietness of the kitchen now, the missing piles of papers and books strewn about the place no matter how many times her mother told him to keep his stuff in the office. It was in the yawning emptiness of the huge chair that still sat at his desk, the stuffing oozing along the seams as if the chair was in the process of giving up the ghost.
Her mother had wanted to throw the chair out last year, when the skip was there, after the landscaping job. Martha had told her she’d take it but, the truth was, there was no room for it in her living room because of the couch.
In the end, her mother kept the chair. Said nothing as the skip was hauled onto the back of a truck and driven away, even though there was more than enough room in the skip to accommodate the chair.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ Martha had said that day.
Her mother shook her head, folded her arms tight across her chest. ‘You’ll have to get rid of that ridiculous couch of yours if you want the chair, Martha. I can’t have it cluttering up the house indefinitely.’
The bar in the basement had been dismantled, removed, a few short weeks after he’d died, although, at the time, those weeks had seemed longer than Milton’s Paradise Lost.
That’s where Martha wrote, on these nights when she stole into the empty house. In the room where the bar used to be. Perhaps she felt his ghost there. Or was it the ghost of the drinks he had drunk there?
Memory was a strange beast, separating the father you had adored as a child from the man you observed from more distant, adult shores.
Martha turned on her laptop, checked her mails. One from the editor of the Irish Times Magazine asking her to do a piece on regret. Just 1,000 words. I need it in a week. I know you can turn it around.
Martha could have done with the commission but regret was bad enough without having to write about it. She wrote a one-word reply – No – then added a Thank you at the end. Pressed Send.
A memory sliced through Martha’s head then, sharp enough to cut. This often happened here. In her father’s house. ‘Stay in the moment,’ the instructor had said at the first – and last – mindfulness class that Martha had attended last year. It was a difficult thing to achieve in this place. This house. The past had the upper hand here.
It was her first piece of writing. The first piece she could remember, at any rate. Martha was seven years old. The piece was entitled ‘My News’.
Today is Wednesday. It is a snoey day. I like sno. My friend’s name is Tara. I have two brothers. When I grow up, I’m going to be a writer like my daddy. I like my daddy. He is fun. I like playing chasing at school cos I never get caught.
Martha had written it in pencil with her left hand although she could write just as well with her right. Her teacher – a sweet fossil of a lady who lied about her age so she could avoid retirement – stuck a gold star on top of the page and told her to keep up the good work. Martha knew that Olly Clyde would chase her home after school that day. He hated anyone getting gold stars. He hated people with red hair. He hated girls who were taller than him. Even at seven, Martha was the tallest in the class. She had hair the colour of a spring carrot and a father who was sometimes on the telly. Olly Clyde – who lived with his grandparents – took particular exception to Martha Wilder. She wasn’t scared of him even though her best friend Tara’s big sister said that he had strangled a cat and had made a knife out of wood, sharpened to a
point with flint. But no amount of knives and dead cats could make up for the fact that his legs were short and pudgy and no match for Martha’s long, strong stride. She reached her front door a full minute before he rounded the corner at the top of her road, red-faced and out of breath. She’d waited until she was sure he could see her before she gave him the fingers.
Her mother was not having a lie-down that day. Instead, she was in the kitchen chopping vegetables for dinner. She didn’t look up when Martha entered the kitchen. ‘How was school?’
‘Fine.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Same as usual.’
‘Who did you play with in the yard?’
‘Tara.’
‘Get changed out of your uniform, like a good girl.’
Martha liked the name of the road where she lived. Yellow Walls Road. It had something to do with sailors, in the olden days, draping their yellow sheets over the walls along the street to dry. She had her own room and her dad had let her choose whatever paint colour she wanted. She chose blue. She said, ‘Blue is not just for boys,’ when her brothers challenged her on it. Her father had pushed his fingers through her blunt fringe. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said. She did her homework standing at the whitewashed desk at the window of her bedroom. Sums, reading and spelling. Her teacher said they should ask their mothers to listen to their spellings. Instead, Martha covered the words with her hand, spelled the word out loud, then took her hand away to check if she was right. She had her homework done in less than ten minutes. She took her uniform off and hid it on the floor of her wardrobe because her mother liked her bedroom to look tidy. Her brothers – who shared a room not because they had to but because they wanted to – were four years older than Martha and had a sign on their bedroom door that said ‘No Girls Allowed’, which Martha ignored. Not that she wanted to go into their bedroom. She just wanted them to know that she could and she would, any time she wanted.
Her father had swayed a little as he stepped into the house that evening. ‘I bring glad tidings,’ he bellowed.
‘Did you bring sweets too?’ her brother Mark shouted from the floor of the den where James had wrestled him to the floor and was sitting on him.
‘You’re late,’ said her mother.
‘If you kiss me, I’ll tell you my news,’ he told her, sweeping her dark hair from her neck and kissing the lobe of her ear.
‘Would you stop that,’ she said, moving away from him and opening the oven door to haul out a chicken. ‘Look, it’s dried up now. After all my effort.’
‘Why didn’t you eat it? When it was ready?’ He reached into the fridge, got one of his beers out. He drank half of it out of the bottle, standing at the open fridge, then tipped the rest into a glass.
‘We were waiting for you. You’d said you’d be home hours ago.’
‘What’s your news, Dad?’ asked Martha, picking a roast parsnip off a dish. He grinned at her.
‘Only the best, Mo.’ Her father was the only one who called her Mo, no matter how many times her mother told him not to. Martha didn’t mind.
‘The newspaper want me to cover the election in America.’ He burped loudly, then caught Martha’s eye and the two of them giggled.
‘You’re going to America? Again?’
‘It’s work, baby. Good work. A bit of reporting for RTÉ as well. It’s a great opportunity.’
‘How long?’
‘A few weeks, maybe. Definitely not longer than a month.’
‘A month!’
‘I’ll be the man of the house when you’re gone,’ said Mark, crawling into the kitchen as best he could with James sprawled on his back. He was alluding to the fact that he was born twenty-two minutes before James which meant that, in this contest at least, he had won.
‘Sit at the table,’ her mother demanded, and everyone did. Her father lit a cigarette. Her mother moved her food around her plate with a fork in the absent-minded, lethargic way she had.
Martha was starving and roast chicken was her favourite, dried up or not. She asked for seconds. ‘No,’ said her mother. ‘The leftovers are for tomorrow. I don’t want to be stuck cooking again.’
‘Dad, I got a gold star for my news today,’ said Martha when she had finished. ‘Do you want to read it?’
‘Sure I do, Mo.’
‘Her name is Martha.’ Her mother got up from the table and gathered the empty plates, scraping the remains of the food into the bin. The noise made Martha’s teeth shudder. She thrust her copybook towards her father and he read it out loud, raising his voice to be heard over the terrible scraping sound.
Her mother swung around when he’d finished. ‘What do you mean, you have two brothers? What about your sister? Why didn’t you say you have a sister?’
Martha didn’t think her mother would mention Amelia today. She had seemed fine. Downstairs chopping vegetables instead of having one of her lie-downs. In her clothes instead of her pyjamas and dressing gown. Her hair brushed and neat today. Shiny even. Like she’d washed it earlier.
‘Ah, leave her alone, Miriam, she’s only a kid.’
Her mother turned on him then and Martha wished she had one of those teleporters they had on Star Trek that could beam you to another place.
‘And so was Amelia. Just a kid. You remember, don’t you, Gerry? You remember Amelia? Martha’s twin sister.’
‘Of course I do, love.’ He reached for her, covered her hand with his own. She snatched it away as if he had burnt her. Martha could see that her eyes were bright and that she would cry soon. ‘She might have been with us for only four years but that does not mean we can forget her.’
Her father walked towards her again, his arms outstretched. ‘Don’t come near me,’ her mother said, dumping the plates on the counter and opening the kitchen door. She glared at Martha. ‘Snow has a W at the end. And you have two brothers and one sister. Don’t ever forget that.’
Martha sometimes wondered what it would have been like to have a twin. A proper twin, like Mark had James. Instead of having one who was born with spina bifida and who died in a place called Sunshine House on the day before she was supposed to be four. Martha didn’t think Sunshine House sounded like a place where people could die. Her only clear memory of Amelia was the day of her funeral, when she lay in a box in the sitting room. Amelia looked like she was asleep so Martha poked her skinny little arm with her finger to wake her up and her mother had slapped her hand away and said, Stop that, in a low hiss that made Martha feel like crying except she didn’t. Her father took her out to the garden and pushed her so high on the swing she could see the walls along the street that used to be draped with yellow sheets but were not anymore because the sailors had all sailed away.
After dinner, her mother went to bed and her father took a bottle of whiskey into his office and closed the door. Martha could hear him pouring the whiskey and lighting a cigarette before thumping his fingers against the keys on his typewriter. Her brothers were watching Dr Who on the telly in the den. They told her to get out when she sat on the couch because it was too scary for a baby like her. She stayed until it was over then put herself to bed. She brushed her teeth but didn’t say her prayers like her mother told her to because her father said that heaven and God were like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus for adults. Martha wasn’t quite sure if her dad believed in the tooth fairy or in Santa Claus. She was pretty sure he didn’t believe in God or heaven. He never said it when her mother was around because her mother often said she would see Amelia again in heaven and that she couldn’t wait. Martha wondered when she would go and see Amelia in heaven and if she would come back. She didn’t think so because Amelia never came back. She was sure that if Amelia did come back – even for a day – her mother would be happy and smile and be glad when Martha got a gold star in school. Through the bedroom wall, she could hear the strike of a match along the bumpy side of the box and knew that her mother was lighting the candle on the table where all the photographs were. There was one with Mar
tha in it as well, near the back of the table. Martha and Amelia were dressed in matching green skirts and polo necks. They looked the same in the picture except that Amelia was smaller.
In the photo, they stood together on the couch in the den and there was a hand, right at the edge of the photograph. Martha knew it was her mother’s hand because of the rings and because of the way it stretched towards Amelia in case she fell.
Martha read a chapter of Well Done Secret Seven. Her father had bought her all fifteen books in the series on his way back from London last week. Her mother said it was too much for one little girl and her father said a girl could never have too many books.
When she turned off the lamp beside her bed, she pulled the duvet over her head and shut her eyes tight. Even so, she was sure she could hear the Daleks rattling along the landing, looking for her. She knew if she told her father he would carry her on his hip around the house, looking behind every door and in every cupboard until they were certain there were no Daleks lurking in the shadows. But she knew he wouldn’t hear her calling him through the doors of her bedroom and all the way down the stairs, into his office. And she didn’t want to get out of bed in case the Daleks heard the creak of the floor beneath her foot and came to exterminate her. So she stayed under the duvet with her eyes shut tight and told herself that if there were no such thing as God or tooth fairies or Santa Claus, then there was probably no such thing as Daleks and that maybe there was no such thing as Amelia anymore because she was supposed to be in heaven but if there was no such thing as heaven, then where could she be?
Martha left the house before her mother arrived home. Easier that way. No need for explanations about the bruises on her face. Her mother was a worrier. Also a pessimist. She would assume the worst before Martha got a chance to explain.
Martha supposed she couldn’t blame her. She had been an accident-prone drinker.
Eleven
‘Take off your watch. Do you have a phone?’
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