The door from the theatre swung open.
‘Your turn now,’ the nurse said, pulling her mask down and smiling. Margaret’s heart began to beat quickly. ‘Are you feeling all right? You look a bit flushed.’
Of course I’m not feeling all right, Margaret thought. I’m feeling worse than I’ve ever felt before. She got back up on the trolley and allowed herself to be wheeled into the operating theatre. No one spoke. She tried to detach herself, look at it from a medical point of view. She had no principled view on abortion. I am a practical person, she had always said when the subject came up. People make decisions based on what’s right for them at the time. And that was what she had done. She had looked at the situation and made a practical decision. Patrick had rejected her. Her father had rejected her. She couldn’t tell her mother. She would never be able to work and support herself as a doctor with a tiny baby. It was all very simple, very straightforward.
The nurse bent over and picked up her left hand. She smoothed down the skin.
‘Tiny veins,’ she said, sighing, ‘oh dear.’
She slapped Margaret’s skin, as she slid the needle into her left wrist.
The anaesthetist stood beside her. He was wearing square black-rimmed glasses. She could see herself reflected in the lenses, her face swollen, egg-shaped. She looked at the tube in his hand. Ten mls of sodium thiopentone, she thought. For such a short and simple procedure. To put me out. Then he’ll probably follow it up with scopalomine, maybe atropine. Then he’ll put the laryngoscope into my mouth, pull down my tongue, so he can see my vocal cords, and intubate me. Or maybe he won’t bother. Ten minutes or so? Hardly worth it.
The doctor leaned forward towards the i/v, which was now hanging from her wrist. He was humming. The Beatles. ‘Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four.’
‘No,’ she said. She sat up, pushing him out of the way. She pulled the needle out. Blood spurted onto the floor. She put the thumb of her right hand firmly over it and pressed hard. She swung her legs over the side of the trolley.
‘No,’ she said again. ‘I don’t want this.’ She walked out of the theatre, back the way she had come, grabbing her clothes from the chair where she had left them, past the woman lying waiting, past the others sitting, tense, frightened. There had to be another way, something else she could do.
The blackbird was still singing as she walked out of the clinic. Shafts of sunlight angling between the November clouds brightened up the dreary road. She craned her head and shielded her eyes as she searched for the bird. Finally she found him, high in the tree, orange beak open and his song, lilting up and down the scale. She sat down on a concrete bench beside a bus stop. I will listen, she thought, I will listen and I will wait.
43
‘I will rise now until two-thirty this afternoon.’
Judge Hanratty stood and all stood with him. He gathered together his papers and followed the tipstaff out through the oak door. Patrick stood too, and stretched, easing out his long back. Around him continued the business of 1he court. The comings and goings, relating to this case and to others that would be held next week, next month, next year. There was laughter and loud talk as the crowd flooded through the doors to the Round Hall, leaving behind, like cockle shells at low tide, a couple of figures still seated on the hard wooden seats.
Margaret sat still. Her head was bowed. One of the guards had sat down beside her, and was speaking urgently to her, putting out his hand to touch her shoulder. But she got up, quickly, and left the room, her movements stiff and automatic.
Patrick had watched her today whenever he could. Watched her face, a perfect oval, alert, responsive, alive. Remembered how he had felt about her before. Felt all morning that he was still in that room in front of that fire. Listening as she told him what she wanted from him. What she wanted him to do. Tried to understand her. And began to see the world from her point of view. Listened to her as she talked about Mary. Felt her love and her grief in equal amounts.
He had wondered, from time to time over the years, if they would ever meet again. And when he had dropped the handful of coins on the polished counter, reached to grab the errant ten-pence piece, sliding his hand along the marble, and looked up to see who was watching, his first reaction had not been surprise or shock. It had been relief that now he could stop waiting.
He had watched her last night in front of the fire. The way she curled herself into that old armchair, her legs in smooth velvet leggings, a soft sweater falling from her shoulders, her hands fluttering like birds’ wings, always moving, stroking her hair, fiddling with the fire, playing with a twist of silver on one small wrist, and a bracelet made of plaited material on the other. When she leaned into the fire’s amber glow he could see the lines around her eyes and mouth, the strands of grey in her hair. They were new. But when she stood and stretched and walked about the room she seemed the same woman she had been twenty years ago.
There had been others since her. But he had never loved them. After she left he dreamed about her. Often. It was a dangerous dream and his awakening was always swift and brutal. Once Crea woke too, just at that moment. He turned his body away from her and buried his face in the pillow. Struggling to gain control. She didn’t ask. He didn’t tell her.
Last night the room had been quiet. Neither had spoken. The open curtains stirred gently in a draught from the window. Outside in the hall the grandfather clock ticked. And then came the sound of scratching from the other side of the door. She uncurled herself from the chair and padded across the worn carpet. He could hear her voice low and soothing, and when she came back a large black cat kept pace, rubbing himself against her legs, jumping up beside her onto the arm of the chair.
‘So,’ his voice sounded unnaturally loud, ‘what did you do next? Where did you go?’
She picked up another piece of apple wood and placed it carefully on the fire. She prodded it with the poker, holding the hot metal against it until a small curl of smoke twisted and turned and the air was filled with the crisp smell of burning.
‘You’re asking me now, but didn’t you wonder at the time where I was, if I was all right?’
‘Of course I wondered.’
‘But you didn’t do anything about it.’
‘I asked Joe Macken, and he said he’d heard that you’d gone to England and got a great job there.’
‘But you knew that. You knew where I’d gone.’
‘Yes, I knew that, because you told me that was what you were going to do, but I thought you’d come back afterwards. And when you didn’t I asked Joe again and he told me you’d got married.’
‘And he heard it from my father, I presume.’
‘That’s right. He’d rung here, and your father had been most forthcoming, he said. Joe was pretty upset about it.’
‘Joe was upset?’
‘Well, you know the way Joe felt about you.’
‘The way Joe felt about me.’ She prodded the fire again. ‘So that was that. I was conveniently out of the way.’
He looked at her, the lines deepening between his eyebrows and around his mouth. ‘Bitterness doesn’t suit you.’
‘What?’ Incredulity almost made her laugh.
‘You’re behaving as if I was the only one with a choice to make. What about your choice?’
‘What choice?’
‘You know, Margaret. I did wonder why you left, took yourself off like that. You could have stayed and made things very difficult for me. But now I realize. You didn’t leave Dublin because of me. You left because of your father. It was his disapproval you couldn’t face, his rejection you couldn’t deal with. Not mine. Wasn’t it?’
She wanted to deny it, but even as she opened her mouth to speak, tears came slipping silently from her eyes.
‘My mother didn’t tell me he was dead until after his funeral. She wrote to me and sent the letter sea mail. I couldn’t believe it. I used to think about him a lot. And I couldn’t believe that he could h
ave died and I didn’t know. Mary was twelve when it happened, and she was going through a phase where she had this little routine. She’d get up before me in the morning and bring me tea in bed. And this particular morning she brought me the tea and the post. And I remember when I read the letter I actually dropped the mug right there, scalding hot, all over me and the sheets and the mattress. And I didn’t feel a thing. I just sat there, reading and rereading the letter and crying. And do you know he never ever referred once to what had happened between us. I created this fiction, the husband, and the accident that left me a widow and all that, and he just played right along with it.’
‘And did you ever see him again?’
‘After that dreadful night, you mean? No, never. I spoke to him on the phone. He was quite kind in some ways. He sent me money. At first I wouldn’t take it, I used to send it back, but he opened a bank account for me so finally, I caved in.’
‘But didn’t your mother think it was odd?’
She sighed, a long shuddering sound, her back heaving.
‘My mother, I’m afraid, tried very hard never to think about anything that wasn’t directly to do with her. And, for some reason, that included me.’
‘So, what did you do that day, after you didn’t go through with the abortion?’
Sitting in the winter sun, listening to the blackbird. Hungry, thirsty. Nothing to eat since the night before because of the anaesthetic. Feeling sick. Light-headed. Lifting my eyes up to the blue of the sky. A milk float comes down the road. Its electric motor purrs, the bottles shake and rattle. It stops at the clinic. The milkman lifts a crate and walks around to the back. I get up and follow him. Down steps to the basement. Into a kitchen. It’s warm. They are all there. The receptionist. The doctors, the nurses. Sitting at a long table. Having breakfast. Plates of rashers, scrambled eggs, hot buttered toast. The smell of fresh coffee. The receptionist pulls out a chair. I sit. They give me food. I eat. They ask me questions in that disinterested English way. I tell them what, who, why.
‘A doctor, fully qualified?’
I nod. They talk quietly for a few moments. Then. ‘We’re looking for an extra pair of hands here, we’re swamped with work. Night duty, weekends.’
Gave me a room, in the little mews behind the house. And when the shape of the baby began to burst through my clothes, they put me to work in the office. They were friendly, kind, proud of me in a funny kind of way.
He looked at her, at the droop of her head. ‘So you survived it?’
Routine was the answer. Get up at the same time every morning. Go to bed at the same time every night. Structure the day around meals. Keep busy. Take hot baths. Go for a walk whenever possible. Put one foot in front of the other and keep your eyes firmly fixed on the ground. If you can’t sleep take a pill. Don’t drink alcohol. Be wary of intense feelings. Don’t daydream. Don’t desire. Don’t want or need.
The black cat rubbed its head against her hand and purred loudly. She cupped his large triangular face in her hands and smoothed down the shining pelt above his gleaming gold eyes.
‘Why New Zealand?’
‘It’s a long way away.’
‘You’d a job? A place to live?’
‘Not much of a job to begin with. Out in the middle of what they call the bush. But it was a beginning.’
Loneliness eating you up. The baby waking at three, at four, at five. Screams that sounded like pain, like fear, so loud from that small round mouth. What to do. How to stop them. Hold her to your breast. She clings on, sucking. Milk gushes into her mouth. Fast, too fast. She gags and chokes. Milk dribbles out of her mouth and down your breast. She cries and sucks. Air fills her stomach. It hurts. She pulls away. Twisting, kicking. Her body contorts. She doubles up with pain, screaming louder. You hold her up against your body, rubbing her back. Banging her back. Stop. Be careful. Not too hard. She’s so small. You could hurt her. Still she cries. You’re so tired. The light from the single bulb is too bright. Outside it’s quiet. The stars in the sky look different, upside down. The night is full of strange noises, animals and insects. Nothing smells the same. At last she’s sleeping. You tiptoe over to her cradle. You bend over carefully, slowly. You put her down. But instantly, as soon as she leaves the warmth of your body, she begins to cry. Again. And again. And again. And now you’re crying too. Please, someone, help me.
‘And did she ask about her father?’
She sat back and looked at him. ‘She had a father. Created by me, for me. And he satisfied her, he was enough for her.’
‘Was he?’
Sitting on the verandah at the back of the house. A summer’s night. The cicadas chirruping, an enormous choir, ceaseless, until you didn’t hear them any more. Mary, aged five. Holding the telescope awkwardly up to her eye.
‘Can’t see, Mummy.’
‘Here.’ She fiddled with the focus and held one hand over Mary’s little face. ‘Look. What’s up there?’
‘Lots of twinkle, twinkle little stars.’
‘And can you see three twinkles in a row?’
‘Mmm.’
‘And what’s that called?’
‘ ’Rion’s Belt, like the ones on my leg and on my daddy’s leg too.’
‘That’s right, my little love.’ Burying her face in the child’s curls. Holding her small, warm body close. Rocking her until she was asleep. Carrying her inside and tucking her into bed. Putting her favourite teddy under the sheet beside her. Switching off the overhead light and leaving the night-light, shaped like a white cat, glowing. Standing at the window. Wanting, thinking, longing.
‘But you’ve done well, haven’t you?’
She poured more whiskey into her glass.
‘Yes, I have. I’m considered something of an expert there on women and their mental health. I’ve written a number of books. I write a regular column in the New Zealand Herald and I’ve made three television series on the subject.’
‘I thought you wanted to specialize in surgery. Joe always said you were streets ahead of everyone else in your year.’
She shrugged, and held out her small hands towards the fire. ‘Another thing I lost when I had Mary.’
‘And now she’s dead.’
She looked up at him. ‘I don’t care about any of that now. And I haven’t for a long time. Surgery’s the grand opera of medicine. It’s full of monster egos, packed with prima donnas and divas. No, what I care about is making someone pay for Mary’s death.’
‘You mean you want justice.’
‘You’d know more about justice than I would.’
‘You think so?’
‘Well, you tell me.’
‘What you’re talking about is revenge. Retribution. Something that will make you feel better. But the law isn’t concerned with that. The law doesn’t feel. Barristers slog it out like prizefighters. Looking for the holes in the case, the inconsistencies in the evidence. Analysing the text, finding the comma missing or the full stop in the wrong place.’
‘Don’t you approve?’
‘Approval or disapproval doesn’t come into it. It is just the way it is.’
He leaned forward and pulled the poker from the embers. He scrutinized its glowing tip.
‘I used to love playing with the poker when I was a kid. Seeing how long it would take for the heat to travel up the rod. I nearly set fire to the house once. It had got so hot that I couldn’t hold it. I dropped it onto the hearthrug and immediately it began to burn. I stamped on the flames but when my mother found out what had happened, there was no pocket money for weeks. I didn’t think it was fair. I hadn’t meant to burn the rug.’
‘But the law assumes that we all intend the consequences of our actions.’
He smiled. ‘Who taught you that?’
‘So.’ She took the poker from his hand and pushed it into the back of the hearth. ‘Am I going to get justice?’
44
It was the handcuffs that he hated more than anything else. After all, he had heard the ju
dge say, time after time, that he was innocent until proven guilty. So why the need for them? He had said as much to the guards. The big fat one, who farted the stench of rancid Guinness, just raised an eyebrow at him and said nothing. The younger of the two, who always gave him his copy of the Star to read, was more forthcoming. ‘It’s the regulations, Jimmy. Nothing we can do about it. In the interests of public safety.’
Fuck public safety. He hated it most when he was walking across the Round Hall back to the courtroom after the lunch break. They gave him his meals in the rat-hole of a cell in the basement. Chips, beans, sausages swimming in their own grease, eggs fried hours ago and kept lukewarm in the oven, stewed tea with long-life milk. He hated long-life milk. It left a scum all over his mouth and even though he carried his toothbrush with him and a small tube of toothpaste he could still feel it clinging in the little spaces between his teeth and coating his tongue.
They let his mother come in and sit with him while he was eating. He wished she’d stay away. They had nothing to say to each other. And she kept on watching him, looking at his hands as he speared chips with his fork and at his mouth as he shovelled in the food, and then sitting back in her chair, a mug of tea going cold on the table in front of her. The break for lunch was far too long. Over an hour. Sometimes an hour and a half. He’d finish eating in less than thirty minutes and then there was nothing to do but sit in the Round Hall and watch what was happening. It would have been all right if it hadn’t been for the cuffs. Without them he could have pretended that he was just any other casual observer. It was funny sometimes, people’s responses. Especially women. They would look at his face first, in that sneaky way that women have. Not openly admitting interest or attraction. And he’d see them thinking, not bad, or quite nice, or whatever. Then they’d slide their eyes down his body, to see what the rest of him was like. The way that men do. And then they’d spot the cuffs, and instantly they’d jerk back up to his face again. As if to say, ‘I don’t believe it, he couldn’t have.’ He’d see them, watch them do a double-take. Like a comedian on the telly. Sometimes he’d smile at them then. His biggest, best, poor-little-boy grin. And as they walked away he would see them whisper to their friends, turning back for another look and now, because they were suddenly in a position of power and superiority, they’d stare openly, without any sense of shame.
Mary, Mary Page 27
