Finding Alison

by Deirdre Eustace

  May opened her mouth to speak but closed it just as quickly, as Kathleen rose from her chair and stood leaning in to her over the table.

  ‘Now, if that’s all, I’m on my way out.’ She whipped the mugs from the table and poured the tea down the sink. May turned at the door. ‘Tell Alison, if there’s anything I can do . . . ’

  ‘She’s managed long and hard on her own, I think she’ll survive this one without you.’ Kathleen grabbed her bag and keys and led the way out the hall, knowing that a big part of the anger she directed at May was due to her own suffocating guilt. No matter what she did for Alison now, it would never be enough to purge those feelings.

  * * *

  Alison didn’t want to admit how quickly he was slipping away from her. The wheelchair sat folded inside the hall door. How William had bucked against it when he’d seen it at first, but he had quickly put his objections to bed when Alison pointed out how much easier it would make things for her. It had given William the chance to see the beach again, and Tra na Leon, and it had allowed her to bring him back to the pier in town, back to where they’d first kissed, to remember the fireworks. And maybe, who knows, she urged herself, if this change in medication works, maybe there’ll be more trips . . .

  Maria had arrived at ten and the doctor followed quickly after. They would adjust his medication again, hopefully put an end to the frightening pain she had watched him endure the night before. While she had accepted his dying, Alison hadn’t been prepared for how his suffering would tear the very heart out of her. She had taken to sleeping in his room so that she could be there, at all times, if he needed her. She knew her closeness comforted him, took away some of the loneliness, the fear. She knew too that she couldn’t bear to be anywhere but next to him. Right next to him.

  Exhausted, emotionally and physically, she had come to look forward to Maria’s visits. Maria’s time with William gave her a little space, a little time to be alone and just sit with her feelings. And Kathleen had been great. She called in each morning and evening without fail, offering to sit with William so that Alison could take a walk on the beach or cliff, to get some air, clear her head. But Alison refused. She hadn’t left the house now in over a week, afraid that the very moment she stepped outside would be the moment William would look for her – or, God forbid, go from her forever.

  May had called at the beginning of the week with a bouquet of flowers as extravagant as her soft words. Alison hadn’t let her past the door. She had come to consider the house as her and William’s sacred place and wanted no one except the doctor, the nurse and Kathleen to enter it.

  She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, moved to the kitchen window. The sky blushed over the setting sun, a light breeze combing the overgrown grass in the garden. She hugged herself tighter, turned around at the soft knock on the kitchen door. His smile filled with compassion, Dr Clarke walked slowly towards her, rested his hand gently on her shoulder. Alison felt the hot tears threaten.

  ‘That should make him much more comfortable. And don’t hesitate to call me, day or night, you have my mobile number.’

  Alison bit back the tears and nodded. ‘Thanks, Doctor. What else can I do for him?’

  ‘Nothing more than you’re doing already. He’s very lucky to have you, Alison. You should be proud of yourself.’

  Sixteen

  ‘Of course I knew what I was doing.’ Kathleen rubbed the heel of her hand under her nose, across her eyes, her head bent in exhaustion, shame. She hadn’t been able to meet Rob’s eyes since she had opened the door to him. ‘I wasn’t some foolish teenager, I was a grown woman. She was my friend, Rob, and there was little Hannah. But I put all that out of my mind, fooled myself that what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, that it was between him and me, and no one else came into it.’ If it was details he came for, then she would give him every last gritty one. Nothing could make her feel worse than she did already.

  His back to Kathleen, Rob stared out the kitchen window. His eyes, fixed on the football net at the end of the garden, were heavy and scorched, reminding him that he hadn’t slept a wink the previous night. After she had told him, after she had burst those words out like gunfire, each one striking his heart with the accuracy of a marksman, she had begged him to leave, begged him to spare her his anger, his judgement, his disappointment.

  He remembered now how he had walked from the house in a stupor, allowing himself no feelings, no thoughts. He didn’t remember the drive home. But he could still feel the burn of his anger, his jealousy, the black rage that shook his hands as he tore up the house plans and slammed his fists into the table; how that same storm of rage had stalked him, hour upon hour, shadowing his every step as he paced his apartment and fought to order his thoughts. And later, in the small hours when he lay exhausted on his bed, the dead weight of loneliness that crushed his chest.

  He had been right after all. He had known something had changed in Kathleen since that night he had found her in the bathroom. The spark had gone out of her. She’d been short with Jamie, with him too – especially when he mentioned anything about the new house. He had put it down to her distress over Alison and her friend’s illness, and although he didn’t like himself for it, a part of him resented Alison and her timing, resented her stealing the light from Kathleen, from both of them, and he’d had to remind himself that that very selflessness in Kathleen, that ability to put her own feelings aside to help someone else, was one of the things that set her apart, and he admired and loved it so much in her.

  He had known by her tone when she said they needed to talk that it was going to be something he didn’t particularly want to hear. He had figured that she probably wanted to postpone the wedding for a bit out of respect for Alison and her circumstances, and although he was disappointed he was willing to go along with her. But he had never for one second considered that there might be a chance he would lose her.

  ‘Did you love him?’ His own voice sounded distant to him, foreign.

  ‘Then?’ Kathleen raised her head, took a deep breath. She had lost everything now, she may as well be honest with him, honest with herself for once. ‘Yes, I loved him,’ she sighed, ‘and I loved that he came to me, loved that I could fix him when no one else could, stupid and pathetic as it all might sound now.’

  ‘And now?’ Rob didn’t turn from the window, didn’t move his eyes from the net rippling in the goal mouth. He held his breath, his fingers turning the coins in his pocket. He knew as he showered this morning that this question was the only one that mattered, knew that his whole world hung on her answer.

  ‘Now my stomach turns when I think of him, of me, of what we . . . what I did.’ She stretched back her neck, closed her eyes to ease their sting. Almost eight years she had spent paying for her mistake. Eight long, hard years. Shouldn’t that have been enough? ‘It wasn’t love, or anything approaching it. I know that now.’ Her tears pressed again, hot and impatient behind her closed lids. ‘It wasn’t love, not like you’ve shown me.’ Her teeth pressed down on her lip, bit into it. She swallowed hard against her tears. ‘You’d better go, I don’t want Jamie arriving in to see . . . I’m so sorry, Rob.’ She clasped her hand over her mouth.

  He turned from the window, felt her shoulders shake beneath his hands. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said, bending to kiss the crown of her head. Never again did he want to experience the utter desolation he had felt the previous night, the feeling that all the light and energy had been cut from his world. Whatever this Sean or the future would bring, they would face it together, because without her – without her smile, her laughter, her touch – without those eyes lit with love, meeting his, without that, there was nothing. ‘You’re still the woman I fell in love with.’ His arms stole around her. ‘The past is the past, Kath. This is about us now, you and me and Jamie. Nothing, no one else matters.’

  * * *

  Kathleen arrived at six o’clock, a large cardboard box of groceries in her arms.

  ‘Ka
thleen, you shouldn’t have.’

  ‘I didn’t. These are from Joan at the shop – with the message that if there’s anything you need at any time you’re just to ring and Jim will drop it up.’

  ‘Joan?’

  ‘There’s goodness in their hearts, Alison, really.’ She dropped the box on the kitchen table. ‘They care about you.’

  ‘I know. Look what I found on the doorstep this morning.’ Alison motioned to a basket of freshly baked scones and homemade jam on the counter. She handed the small note to Kathleen: ‘Dear Alison – Sorry for your troubles. Ye’re in my prayers. Theresa Doyle.’

  ‘Ah, God love her. You know, they’d drive you to drink around here, but there’s none better when you’re in a real fix.’

  ‘How is Maryanne? Did you see her, did you tell her . . .’ Alison hadn’t visited in over a week, not wanting to leave William’s side, not wanting Maryanne to see the state she was in.

  ‘Will you quit about Maryanne, she’s fine. I was in with her this morning and I told her you had a bug and you weren’t allowed to visit. Maryanne’s well taken care of and you have enough on your plate. Now, sit down and I’ll make us some coffee. How is he?’

  Alison sighed and shook her head. She placed her elbows on the table, her hands supporting her chin. ‘At least he’s comfortable now and he sleeps better. But I know he hates it. Hates having trouble stringing a sentence together, being cared for. He—’ She burst into uncontrollable sobs.

  ‘Oh, come here.’ Kathleen gathered her in her arms and held her tightly.

  ‘Oh, Kathleen, I don’t even know what I’m feeling! One minute I feel totally peaceful and like I’m accepting the whole thing, and the next I just go to pieces.’

  ‘Come on, that’s it, let it out,’ Kathleen soothed. ‘You’re exhausted, on top of everything else. God knows when you last had a full night’s sleep. And you love him. Of course you don’t want to see him like . . . Oh Alison, I know, I know.’ Kathleen allowed her own tears to fall, knowing that the heartbreak she had felt at almost losing Rob could only be a shadow of what Alison was going through.

  Alison wept like a child until it seemed she had drained every last tear from her body.

  ‘That’s better,’ Kathleen said, rubbing her back, ‘you needed that. And now there’s something else you need. Coffee’s off,’ she instructed, bending to the cupboard where she knew the Jameson was housed. She poured two generous measures.

  ‘To love!’ Kathleen raised her glass.

  ‘Love and friendship,’ Alison smiled, clinking hers. ‘I don’t know what I’d ever have done without you, Kathleen,’ she continued, her lip trembling. ‘Through Sean, now this, everything – you’ve always been there for me and I can never thank you enough.’ Kathleen’s smile was forced and fixed, the darkness of her secret pulling on her heart like an anchor, threatening to drown her.

  When Hannah phoned two hours later, Kathleen had just left and Alison was sitting, preparing to write, in William’s lamp-lit room. She soft-stepped into the hall.

  ‘Not long now, Mum, I’m so excited!’

  ‘Me too, sweetheart, I’ll hardly know you!’ Alison fought to match the enthusiasm in her daughter’s voice. When she had taken William home, she hadn’t stopped to consider that Hannah might be home before – before the end. She had discussed it with Kathleen and they had decided to take it day by day and, as the time got nearer, Kathleen had offered, if necessary, to fly to London and meet up with Hannah a few days before she was due to return, to prepare her.

  ‘Ah, Mum, it’s only been three months.’

  ‘Sometimes it seems so much longer.’

  ‘I knew you’d miss me!’ The youthful energy in Hannah’s voice brought a smile to her face and underneath everything Alison could feel an excitement budding inside her at the thought of her daughter’s return.

  ‘And I’ll finally get to meet your man?’

  ‘Oh Hannah, he’s not . . . ’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve dumped him already?’

  ‘No, Hannah, but he’ll be leaving – I told you he was just visiting.’

  ‘Yeah well, tell him to hang on a little bit longer – tell him I’ve got some questions for him,’ she laughed.

  ‘What about you? Bet you’ll be leaving some broken hearts behind in London!’ Alison knew she couldn’t keep up the jolly pretence about William much longer and she didn’t want to break down on Hannah. ‘Oh Han, sorry to cut you short but Kathleen’s just arrived. We’re heading out and I’m not even dressed. I’ll give you a ring at the weekend, okay?’

  ‘Kathleen my arse!’ Hannah laughed and hung up.

  * * *

  ‘Open it!’ A slow smile played on William’s lips as he motioned with his head to the folder he had asked Alison to collect from the camper earlier that evening. Resting the folder on her knees, she fiddled nervously with the twine binding it.

  ‘You know I don’t like surprises,’ she began, her eyes and mouth widening in disbelief as she opened back the cover and began leafing through the pages. The sketches were all dated. The first was a dark charcoal of Alison on the beach, the driftwood held to her breast. The next captured her leaning against the tall rock, her feet in the water. There she was standing in the moon’s beam, the water measuring her waist. Then in her dressing gown, head tilted to one side, lips parted, arms outstretched in movement; smiling, hunkered down in the heather; head thrown back in laughter at a candlelit table. It was all there. The story of her summer, the loneliness and pain of the first heavy charcoals lifting to lighter strokes, the light of the candle catching the birth of light and love in her eyes.

  ‘Oh, William, I . . . ’ Words wouldn’t come.

  ‘You like them?’ he whispered

  ‘It’s like . . . it’s like looking at a tape of myself – from the inside.’ She bent her head and brushed his lips. ‘Oh, William, thank you.’ She lay on the bed beside him, nestling his head to her breast.

  ‘It doesn’t end there. When we . . . when we first . . . made love, Alison . . . ’

  She held him, waited till his words found order.

  ‘I knew then, felt a part of something . . . something bigger, much bigger than this world.’ His breath was short, shallow. ‘It was like I was lifted to somewhere else, somewhere beyond me . . . The place I’m going to, it’s not so far away, it’s part of here, of us.’

  ‘I felt it too.’ She kissed the top of his head, her fingers brushing his cheek.

  ‘I don’t want to leave you, Alison. I wish you . . . were coming with me.’

  ‘I am, in a way. And you’re not leaving me, Will. We’re part of each other. Part of each of us will live in both places.’

  ‘I . . . love you, Ali.’

  ‘And I will always love you.’ She closed her eyes and listened to his breathing, felt the warm pressure of his head melting into her aching heart.

  * * *

  Coffee in hand, Kathleen sat again at the kitchen table, unfolded the pages of the letter and, for what seemed the umpteenth time, she read:

  Dear Alison,

  I know you’ll think I’m nothing but a gutless coward for writing this and you’d be right. If I had any decency in me I would have come to you with this, in person, years ago. I can make all kinds of excuses – I can say that I didn’t want to hurt you; that you were suffering enough; that telling you would have destroyed your memory of Sean. I can say all those things and they’re all true, but I have to be brutally honest now, with you and with myself. I know I also held my tongue because of my shame. I tried to be your friend, to support you, yes because I loved you but equally to fix myself, to try to feel less of a total fraud, to ease my self-hatred. I am so sorry, Alison, for what I am about to tell you, for all the years of what you will now see as deception and false friendship. But please believe me, it was never that. I will never expect you to forgive me. All I ask is that you please try to understand and to know that my friendship and support were one hundred per cent genuine.
I never intended to hurt you, but I did and I will live with the guilt and regret of that for the rest of my days.

  There is no easy way of saying this, no way of softening it, so I’ll just come straight out with it. Sean was Jamie’s dad. The man I told you about, who already had a family of his own, it was Sean. Your Sean. I loved him, Alison – at least I thought I did and through those short months that it lasted before Jamie was conceived I tried to persuade myself that he loved me too and that somehow you and Hannah wouldn’t get hurt. I woke up fairly sharply when I discovered I was pregnant. When I told him, he was out of control with rage. He loved you so much and he despised me for having put your marriage in jeopardy. I hope it will be some comfort to you to know that, after all, I was nothing to him. He never cared for me and that has been my punishment, to have that driven home so cruelly to me. It was always you. You and Hannah.

  Remember the day I wheeled Jamie to your house shortly after he was born? I still loved him, Alison, and I thought that when he saw his son he would soften. But he never even looked at Jamie, just snatched Hannah up and left the room. I finally got the message loud and clear and I steeled myself to forget about him, to put all my energies into Jamie. And I vowed that Sean wasn’t going to break our friendship. I was going to make it up to you, make everything as right as I could. I was damned if I was going to be broken by him.

  I counted on him feeling guilty as he watched Jamie grow but he would pass us in the street like we were strangers. As time went by my resentment grew. God, I was so bitter! And that led to me making my next big mistake. About six weeks before Sean went missing I called him, told him that either he acknowledge Jamie and tell you the truth or I would tell you myself. And now you know the guilt I have been carrying for the last three years. I thought he had done it because of the pressure I had put him under. I believed I had taken him from you again, only this time so absolutely. But I should have known better. I should have known the real Sean Delaney.