He's Got to Go

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  “What’s the point in fussing?” Bree picked a cherry from her muffin. “Losing your cool doesn’t change anything.” She ate the cherry and looked at him ruefully. “I got pretty fussed about my dinner date with Michael, you know. I even bought a new outfit because I wanted to look different. And see where fussing got me? The outfit was ruined in the crash—I’d have been better off in my leathers.”

  “Allow me to compensate you for your clothes,” said Declan hurriedly. “That’s the least I can do.”

  “Declan! If you try and give me money one more time I will shove these muffins down your throat!” cried Bree. “Please, please, please stop!” To her horror she could feel her eyes filling up with tears. Not again, she thought. She’d imagined she was over the crying by now. She hadn’t cried in two days.

  “Bree, I’m sorry.” Declan looked horrified at the sight of the tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. “I really am. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She shook her head. “You didn’t. Honestly. I’m just a bit—you know, shaky or something. Shock and everything, I suppose.”

  “Here.” He took a cotton handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her.

  “A hanky?” She sniffed and looked at him through her tears. “I didn’t think there were such things anymore.”

  “I still get them from my Spanish in-laws every Christmas,” he told her. “They don’t know what else to get me. Dry your eyes and blow your nose. It’s perfectly clean, Bree. I promise you.”

  She sniffed again. “I hope so.”

  She wished he’d go away. He was so kind and so concerned that he made her feel shakier than she already was. She wasn’t used to feeling vulnerable in front of men. She was used to showing them that she was as strong as them, as good as them, a match for any of them. Crying into freshly laundered hankies was not the way of the modern woman.

  She tried to blow her nose discreetly but it came out like a foghorn. He smiled at her and she shrugged.

  “Another cup of coffee?” he asked.

  “No thanks.”

  He looked at his watch. “I’d better get going,” he told her. “I’m not entirely popular for coming out tonight. I have a feeling that Marta wanted to be out herself not sitting in looking after her younger sister.”

  “I know that one.” She laughed. “Nessa, that’s the oldest—”

  “The firebrand,” interrupted Declan, “not the torcher.”

  “Exactly.” She smiled. “Nessa would sometimes have to baby-sit me while Mum and Dad went out and she used to go mental over it. From the age of eighteen I think she regarded any night that she wasn’t scouring for a potential husband as a night wasted.”

  “I hope she didn’t have to scour for too long,” said Declan.

  “Oh, she found one all right,” Bree told him. “She has a lovely house in Malahide and a gorgeous kid and everything she ever wanted in soft furnishings.”

  “You sound somewhat cynical.”

  “They’re going through a bad patch at the moment.” She frowned as she remembered that she’d apparently said something about it in front of him when she’d been in hospital. But he’d obviously forgotten and she certainly wasn’t going to tell him that Adam was suspected of snogging stray women and that Nessa was thinking of employing a detective to find out how true this might be.

  “People do,” said Declan. “But sometimes that only makes the relationship stronger.”

  “Did you and Monica ever go through a bad patch?” asked Bree.

  He nodded. “Before she was sick. Even when she was sick.” He sighed. “I resented her illness. I know that sounds awful—she was the one who was dying and I resented it. Sometimes I wasn’t even nice to her which I’m ashamed of now. Because it wasn’t what I’d expected. I never thought I’d be spending my thirties looking after a dying woman.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Bree.

  “It changed me,” Declan told her. “It made me a stronger person and a better person. But I think I would’ve preferred to be the man I was and still have her with me.”

  Bree bit her lip. “I think you’re great,” she told him. “And I love your son.”

  He smiled at her. “He’s very young.”

  “I know,” said Bree.

  “Don’t expect too much of him,” said Declan. “Not yet.”

  “I won’t.” Bree leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

  Declan watched her. The cut on her forehead was beginning to heal but was now surrounded by an enormous bruise. Yet it didn’t make her any less attractive. She wasn’t, he mused, a pretty girl. But her face had character and determination. Now, though, that determination had given way to a more peaceful look. She snored slightly and he looked at his watch. Nearly eleven. He wondered whether he should wake her and say goodnight but he felt sure that she was exhausted. He sat opposite her for another five minutes. Her breathing was steady and even. He got up and slid his hands beneath her. She yawned but didn’t open her eyes. He carried her to the bed and lay her down on it. Then he covered her with the quilt. She rolled onto her side but still didn’t waken.

  He tiptoed from the flat and pulled the door gently behind him.

  21

  Moon/Mars aspects

  Act first, ask questions afterward.

  Cate had never wondered about people at airports before. In the past, she’d collected her boarding pass and strode to the gate, usually only bothering to buy a newspaper or magazine to keep her occupied for the duration of the flight. Even on the couple of occasions when she’d gone to her company’s head office in the States instead of the European office in London she hadn’t bothered to browse around the Duty Free and buy anything. She never noticed her fellow passengers, seeing them only as obstacles on her way to her seat or people that had to be endured if they sat beside her and struck up a conversation.

  But today she found herself looking at them all, wondering why they were on the flight to London, what reason they had to be sitting at Gate A9 waiting for the flight to be called. There were a number of business travelers, easily recognizable because of their suits and their briefcases and the way they took out their mobile phones and anxiously punched at the numbers, clearly unhappy at being away from their office for any length of time. She was dressed like a business traveler too, although for the first time she realized that the waistband on her skirt was uncomfortably tight and that her stomach was beginning to swell very slightly. She was amazed that Finn, who loved to run his fingers up and down the front of her body, didn’t seem to have noticed. Or maybe he has, she thought, but he doesn’t want to upset me by telling me I’m getting fat.

  She’d told him that she was going to the U.K. office on business. She’d told them in the Dublin office that she was going to the U.K. for the weekend. She felt guilty about lying to people but she didn’t have a choice.

  The girl sitting opposite her was nervously folding and refolding her boarding card. Cate wouldn’t have given it a second thought before but today she wondered why the girl was nervous. Fear of flying? Fear of what she was going to? Fear of what she was leaving behind?

  She was about twenty, Cate decided, with long straw-colored hair which fell in front of her face. She was dressed in faded blue denim jeans and an equally faded jacket. She wore a ring on every finger, the same kind of ring on each one, thin bands of silver with the ankh sign shaped on the top. Cate was suddenly sure that this girl, too, was going to London for an abortion. That she’d also had to wrestle with the gut-wrenching decision to terminate her pregnancy. That she, too, knew what it was like to be terrified about the whole baby thing.

  Every so often the girl looked up and scanned the crowd anxiously. Afraid, thought Cate, that she’ll see someone she knows. Someone who’ll recognize her and judge her and make her wonder about her decision.

  She looked at her watch. Boarding in twenty minutes. She opened her newspaper at the crossword page. Normally she could finish the crossword in five minutes, bu
t today the words meant nothing to her. She colored in the empty squares instead, shading them with her blue Biro, sometimes leaning heavily, sometimes barely touching the page.

  “Brian!” The nervous girl opposite her suddenly jumped out of her seat. Her nervousness had disappeared, her face was joyful.

  The man, in his early twenties thought Cate, hugged her. “Sorry I’m so late,” he said. “You must have been doing your nut. But the traffic was terrible.”

  “I thought you’d miss it and then we’d miss the connection.” She beamed at him. “Can you imagine? Missing our connection to Antigua? Fine start to our holiday that would’ve been!”

  He kissed her and sat down beside her, his arm around her shoulders.

  Cate looked at her crossword again and blanked out the final empty box.

  The view from her bedroom window was of the back of the hotel. She’d asked for a room near the back of the hotel where it was unlikely that anyone would overlook her. She sat on the edge of the bed and slid her shoes from her feet. She was almost certain that her feet were starting to swell too. Then she went into the bathroom and turned on the taps. A cloud of steam fogged up the mirror. She tipped the hotel bath gel into the water.

  So what was she going to do now? she asked herself. What was she going to say? How was she going to explain it to Finn? She had to tell it so that everything made sense. He must never link this weekend to anything else because the most important thing in the whole world was that he must never ever find out that she’d planned to go to London and have an abortion. Not when she hadn’t had the nerve to go through with it in the end.

  She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t had the nerve to go through with it. She’d weighed up all the pros and cons, she’d made her choice, she’d rowed with Nessa over it. She’d convinced herself that she was doing the right thing. The only thing. It had been a cool, rational decision based on her lifestyle and Finn’s job and her terror of being pregnant. She’d weighed all that up against the things that Nessa had said. And the feeling inside that maybe she was being terribly selfish. But still she’d been certain that she was making the right decision. So she’d booked herself into the clinic and she’d bought her ticket and concocted her stories. And then she’d done something that wasn’t in the slightest bit cool or rational at all.

  They’d called the flight exactly on time. The nervous girl and her boyfriend were first in the queue, ready to board. She’d sat at the gate and waited for everyone else to board first, her overnight bag at her feet. She’d watched the ground staff checking the boarding cards and looking out for stragglers. Three men had come galloping to the gate, huffing and puffing and exclaiming that they’d left their drinks, that they hadn’t for a second believed that the flight would go on time. And the girls at the gate had checked the boarding cards again. One of them, effortlessly elegant with fair hair pinned back on her head, had smiled at Cate and asked her if she was leaving on this flight. “Because we have to board you now,” she said. “The flight is closing.”

  Cate had looked at her card and at the stewardess and at the plane sitting on the tarmac outside the window. She got up and walked to the desk.

  “Have a nice flight.” The stewardess’s name tag said that her name was Tanya.

  “I’m sorry.” Cate held on to the boarding card. “I’m sorry but I can’t get on the plane.”

  “There’s nothing to be worried about,” Tanya said. “It’s really a tremendously safe form of travel.”

  “I know,” said Cate. “I use it all the time.”

  “We have to board you now,” Tanya told her firmly. “You’ll delay our slot.”

  “I’m sorry,” repeated Cate. “But I can’t get on the plane.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—I—well, something’s come up, you see, and I can’t go.”

  “Have you checked in any luggage?”

  “I don’t have any luggage on the flight,” Cate said. She held up her overnighter. “This is all. You don’t have to worry about unloading anything.”

  “Let me check it out.” The girl took Cate’s boarding card and looked at it. She tapped at her computer terminal. “You really don’t have to be worried about flying,” she said again.

  “I told you, I’m not worried.” Cate was finding it difficult to talk. “I’m really not. But I can’t get on this flight because—because, I just can’t. That’s all.” She closed her eyes. She felt sick.

  Tanya was talking on her two-way radio now. Cate couldn’t hear the words but she felt sure that Tanya was annoyed with her. Causing delays. Causing trouble. She could imagine the other passengers sitting in their seats with their seat belts fastened wondering what was going on. She thought of the girl with the straw-colored hair and her boyfriend worrying, perhaps, about missing their connecting flight to Antigua if this flight was late.

  “OK,” said Tanya eventually. “It’s up to you. You have to make your own decision.”

  “I know,” said Cate. “I already have.”

  And so now she was sitting in the airport hotel because it was the only place she could think of to go. She could, of course, go home and tell Finn that something had come up and that the London weekend was off after all. He’d accept that even though he’d be angry on her behalf, that she’d had to traipse all the way out to the airport before discovering that something, anything, whatever she could think of, had meant she had to rush back to the office.

  But, she thought, as she tested the temperature of the bathwater, she wouldn’t be able to go home today and face Finn and not blurt out something about her pregnancy. Then he’d be bound to guess what she’d been intending to do in the U.K. He wasn’t thick. He’d know that she’d chickened out and she couldn’t bear the thought of his pity or his annoyance or his fury or whatever he’d feel. What will he feel, she wondered, when I eventually tell him? Will he be so mad at me that it’ll all be over between us? Or have I got him totally wrong and will he be delighted? She eased herself into the bath. He won’t be delighted? she muttered. I know he won’t be delighted. That’s why I was going for the damned abortion in the first place.

  She closed her eyes and considered her cover story. The best thing to do was to stay in the hotel until Sunday when she was due back. She could then go to the airport with her luggage and Finn would meet her as they’d planned. She might phone him and tell him that she’d managed to get an earlier flight. Then they could go home together and she wouldn’t say a single word about being pregnant until later in the week. She could tell him she was going to the doctor because she hadn’t felt well in London. She could say that she thought she’d picked up a bug or something. And, after she’d been to the doctor, she’d tell him the news. She’d act surprised and shocked herself. It wouldn’t be hard. She was still surprised and shocked.

  And then what? She sighed deeply and moved her feet in the water to circulate the warmth. He’d be surprised and shocked too. Knowing Finn, he’d rant and rave at her about their plans. About his plans. About the fact that they’d both agreed, absolutely agreed, on no children yet. And she’d cry then, probably. It’d be a kind of relief to cry in front of him.

  Would he blame her because she was the one who’d taken responsibility for their birth control? Would he ask her to have an abortion? When she refused, would he simply tell her it was over because he didn’t want children messing up his life? She exhaled slowly. Maybe that wouldn’t happen. Maybe, despite everything, he’d understand.

  She opened her eyes and drizzled water over her chest. He wouldn’t understand. There was no point in pretending that he would. But she might be able to make him accept it. She might be able to persuade him that it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Although it had seemed like the end of the world to her. And it had taken her a hell of a long time to decide that maybe it wasn’t. She hadn’t even decided that, not really. All she’d decided was that she couldn’t go through with the abortion.

  She still didn’t know why she
hadn’t gone through with it. But, sitting at the gate and waiting for the flight in her too-tight skirt, she’d suddenly had the feeling that the baby was hers and that she couldn’t get rid of it. She hadn’t thought like that before. She hadn’t wanted to think like that then. Yet she realized, with a growing sense of panic, an abortion wasn’t the answer for her, even though the reasoning part of her brain was telling her that it was still the right thing to do. If anything, she felt more weak-willed than ever now. Changing her mind had been an impulsive decision. Maybe even a hormonal decision. Cate had a horrible feeling that her body was taking over her mind and that the clarity of thought on which she once prided herself was getting lost in the weight that she was inexorably gaining day by day. She sighed deeply. She wished she knew her own mind, wished she understood her mixed-up feelings.

  Nessa would be pleased. Cate got out of the bath and wrapped a towel around herself. Nessa would think the things she’d said had influenced her. But it wasn’t anything to do with Nessa even though it was so utterly unfair that Nessa, who wanted another child, wasn’t pregnant and was going through a bad patch in her marriage even if she was trying to pretend that she wasn’t. Adam having it off with someone else definitely counted as a bad patch. And poor Nessa was too terrified to confront him about it because, in the end, she was terrified of losing him.

  And I’m terrified about confronting Finn, thought Cate as she rubbed body lotion on her arms, because I’m terrified of losing him too.

  Although she’d intended to stay in her room for the whole time, she went to the restaurant for something to eat later that evening. She couldn’t imagine that she’d meet anyone she knew and being stuck in the room was making her feel claustrophobic. She spent half an hour in front of the mirror doing her face before phoning Finn to say that everything in London was great and that she missed him. Then she went to the restaurant. She’d looked a wreck after she got out of the bath, her eyes red-rimmed, her cheeks pale and her hair limp from the steam. Now she looked good and she felt good. Not like a pregnant woman at all. More like herself again.