Ruby's Tuesday

by Gillian Binchy

  I wanted him to understand, to forgive me for keeping the truth from him. I wanted him to tell me that it was all okay now – that we were okay and that he would have done the same thing too if faced with similar circumstances. Unlikely, I thought.

  But, most of all, I wanted him to understand that I was trying to protect him from our new reality, that I needed to protect him from himself, from his own sadness.

  I was now afraid that the nightmares would reveal to him my total heartache.

  I had just one day to work out how to tell him – so he understood. I felt almost criminal, as though it was my fault, as if I had caused our loss and pain. That it was my fault that our daughter was imperfect.

  I looked down at my bloated belly. “Ruby, are you there, are you listening to me?” I had momentarily forgotten that my belly was empty. I looked from my belly to the ceiling of the bathroom.

  “Ruby, how will I explain it to your dad? One of your dad’s many great qualities is his attention to detail. You know, that is why he is so successful – because he reads the fine print, all the fine print – and when it comes to his dead daughter, he will want to know what every inch of her body was like – I will have to describe it all – relive all your imperfections for him.

  “Ruby, do you think that he will blame me for it all? Will I be on the stand, on trial for our dead daughter’s imperfections? I don’t think that I have the guts for that. I could not now go through all that, all the blame. I think that my batteries have finally run out. So I will need to explain it all – properly and calmly – to your dad. He will want more of the detail and less of the emotions, so that logically he can understand all the different reasons that I did not tell him the truth. He will then assess the situation in a rational manner. And then with time – lots and lots of time – he can accept it too – someday – that we created a flawed child.

  “Ruby, when I found out you were terminally ill, I decided that there was no room for anger or blame in my heart. So, what it is about is acceptance, grieving, and trying to stay strong. Then some time in the future, who knows when but eventually, it is about moving on. One day, eventually, we will get back to reality. Of course, Ruby, reality will be a different version from before, and that is fine too – I can accept a different version – but please, Ruby, send me some type of reality soon – some version for Luke and me to work with.”

  I stripped the bed of the sheets. In the low light I fumbled through the bed-linen press and located a clean crisp double sheet to sleep on.

  I got back into bed, switched off the light. Maybe the nightmares might cut me some slack, I might get a few uninterrupted hours of rest, and I badly needed to rest. I drifted off to sleep.

  My phone pinged and left a message from Swift Delivery: Consignment Number AER33456/9 for overnight delivery has been successfully dispatched from NHS Royal Merseyside Women’s Hospital via London Heathrow, final destination to: Apt 1, Coliemore Road, Dalkey, County Dublin, Ireland. Please log onto our website to track your consignment.

  By now I was fast asleep; the nightmares had taken the rest of the night off.

  Chapter 17

  A Friday in June, 2013

  Today my little girl would come home; she was due home at the latest by four o’clock. Her dad was also due home today. I would have a full house this evening. I was looking forward to both their arrivals.

  At two minutes past four I logged on to the Swift Delivery website and inserted AER33456/9 into the large white box on the right-hand side of the screen. I then pressed the smaller blue button that sat just below the consignment number. The website asked me to please wait, which I did patiently.

  Very patiently. I stared at the screen.

  Then in large black bold text a message appeared that read: Consignment delivery complete. Consignment number closed off.

  My heart sank and I felt a sick sensation in my stomach. My head spun, I felt as though I would fall off the seat and crash to the floor. Where was my daughter? Had somebody taken her by accident? Had she got lost on the way home? Maybe she got lost coming off the boat or the plane? Maybe she fell off the side of a pallet and no one noticed? They must have made a mistake. They promised me she would be home today, before her dad got back. I dialled the Swift Delivery number in their Dublin depot; the nurse in NHS Royal Merseyside Women’s Hospital had given me their direct line together with the consignment number. The Swift Delivery number rang out. Very slowly I punched in the numbers once again; maybe I had hit a wrong digit. It rang and rang and after what felt like a lifetime a clear-spoken male voice announced: ‘Our office is now closed. Opening hours are from 9 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. Monday to Friday and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.’

  There was no mention of any after-hours number or what to do in the event of an emergency. I googled out-of-office hours and Swift Delivery. Nothing of any use popped up on my screen. I could understand that the actual office was closed but surely the depot was open to receive and dispatch goods? If the office was closed, how then was I to receive Express Delivery service? That made no sense. I re-entered the dispatch number. I rechecked each digit. I was right – it was same as the number on my phone, the same number I entered the first time.

  Again the screen read: Consignment delivery complete. Consignment number closed off.

  I grabbed my pink-and-cream handbag, my phone and my keys and dashed down the stairs, out through the yellow door and the black creaky gate.

  I opened the car door and sat into the driver seat. I punched Tallaght Industrial Estate into the sat nav. It took a few seconds to compute and then it said: ‘Twenty-one minutes, in current traffic thirty-eight minutes.’

  I spoke aloud to myself, hoping to soothe myself with a composed tone. “Afric, stay calm. In just forty minutes you will be reunited with your daughter. It’s just that there is a glitch in the system, some stupid random error. It’s very simple. All that has happened is that your daughter has been delivered to the depot instead of our home, a very simple error. Now, Afric, we are going to drive to the depot and bring her home.”

  The sound of my own voice had a calming effect on me. I pulled myself together, then turned on the ignition. The radio blared as if screaming at me. Quickly I turned it off; I needed to concentrate on the task ahead.

  I drove off in search of my little girl. I began to think how I might greet my daughter when I met her again, three days later. What should I say to my little angel, Ruby? I was passing time, trying to distract myself from the reality, repressing the fear that I would never find her again.

  Well, I would start by telling her that I was happy to have her home, obviously. But that was not entirely true. I would be hugely relieved to have her home, but not happy to have her home like this, on someone else’s terms and conditions. She was meant to be in a buggy with solid wheels so that we could jog up and down the East and West Piers, she was meant to peep out of the buggy and listen to me telling her stories about why the piers have two different-coloured lighthouses, one green and one red.

  Where would I put her when I collected her? It was not like she was going to hop into the car and ask me how my day had been. She was, after all, in a freight package, so maybe it should go in the boot?

  “You cannot put your daughter in the boot, don’t be so ridiculous,” I told myself. “Of course she won’t go in the boot – you should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking that.”

  I looked at the passenger seat; I would put her there for the journey home. I tried to imagine her there, beside me in the front seat. I looked down on the passenger seat, back to the road, back to the empty seat and towards the oncoming traffic.

  I would strap her in with the safety belt, and then she would be secure so that nothing more could happen to her. She would be safe there. She would be a little small for the seat, way too small in fact.

  “Aren’t there regulations about having kids in front seats?” I said.

  Now that I didn’t have Angel to talk to, I was beginning to
find comfort in the sound of my own voice – it was like there was someone else there, someone talking me through the decisions.

  You see, I was afraid with her being so tiny that she might slide off the seat onto the floor and hurt herself. I would take the towel from Luke’s swim bag, the one he always left in the boot. I would wrap her in it so that she was secure and safe for her journey home. Otherwise she would look so ridiculously tiny, there on her own on the front seat. I would tell her that her dad would be glad that I had chosen his nice posh car to take her home in. I would say wasn’t she lucky that she didn’t have to travel home in her mum’s car, her mum’s crock?

  Very soon my own daughter would be sitting beside me on that seat. According to the sat nav I was only fifteen minutes from the Industrial Estate where she would be waiting for me. I would have to ask one of the guys at the depot where they had her, because the reception area would be closed. I would take her in my arms and carry her to the car, I would concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, I would count one two one two, and that would get me from the cargo pick-up area to the car.

  In the car, she would not be in a child’s car seat like she was meant to be. Instead she would be all wrapped up. I wondered how she would look. Would she have a huge label with a vulgar consignment number on her? How many times would they have written the code AER33456/9? Surely the box would be marked ‘Fragile, handle with care’? I imagined that it would be. Of course, I told myself, it must be. I mean, if you didn’t describe someone’s charred body as fragile, what would you classify as delicate goods? I hoped that they would handle her with care, that they would not just toss her around or bang her off things. Of course they wouldn’t mean to hurt her – it was just that they wouldn’t know what she was. You see, if they tossed her about, she would stick to the inside of the box. I thought it better if all the ashes were together in a pile. It would be more organised like that. Otherwise she would be as disorganised in death as in life, with all the bits mixed up, and I didn’t want that. I wanted her to now be at peace.

  Maybe when she first got in I would say nothing for a while. I would just look at her. I would want her to feel very comfortable, at ease, to relax after her long journey. Sure there was plenty time to settle in, there was no rush. We would have a lifetime to talk, to work it all out, and to explain things.

  After a while I would ask her was she angry at me for leaving her all alone in Liverpool? I hoped that she didn’t disapprove of me for going away and leaving her with the lovely nurses with the kind faces.

  I would ask her daddy if he was angry with me for leaving her all alone, because maybe he too would be cross with me. That would be two people that I loved cross with me, my daughter and my husband, and right now that was two too many.

  I would ask her: ‘Were they kind to you, sweetheart? Did they treat you well?’ Well, of course all the lovely nurses with the kind faces would have treated her well! ‘I am so sorry that you had to come home on your own.’ I would tell her that it was not what I wanted either but that there was no other option. ‘I hope that you weren’t too lonely on your own, were you? Were you scared, were you? Was it very dark inside the box?’

  Then I realised that I had no idea how she had got back to Ireland. What a terrible mother I was, not knowing how my baby got home – how utterly careless of me. Maybe fate was right – maybe I was not good and kind enough to be a mother.

  “But, Ruby,” I said to the vacant black passenger seat, “it’s not important how you got here. This time it is not about the journey, it is more about the arriving. All that is important is that you’re safe with me now. Ruby and Afric together now and soon Luke will be here too. He’ll be happy too to have you home, even though he won’t really understand it all at the beginning. Later he will, though – I am pretty sure.”

  Other commuters had perfect kids sitting in their compliant child seats. They looked at me sympathetically as the tears poured down my face and onto the steering wheel. I could barely make out the road through the tears. How nuts must I have looked, sobbing uncontrollably and talking at an empty passenger seat?

  I looked from the road to the empty seat, and then back to the road. Yes, on the way home I would definitely lock the door of the passenger seat. I mean, just in case – what if someone tried to steal her? Not meaning to take her, of course. They would not mean to steal my dead baby, but they might think that the package was an iPad or an expensive smart phone that had come from the States. God, what a shock they would get, to have robbed a parcel and to find it was a box with a pile of ashes!

  I slammed on the brakes. “Oh Jesus!” I spluttered out. “Jesus, Afric, that was a pedestrian crossing! How the hell could you not have seen the large white markings on the road?” I spoke to myself aloud, hoping to shock myself back to reality, to the here and now.

  A very heavily pregnant woman waddled out onto the road. I glared at her, wondering how I would have looked if I had ever got to full term with my tiny angel, Ruby. Would I have had a rounder bump, or would it have been flatter? Maybe it might have been smaller, more compact, than this woman’s? Would I have carried the bump higher up or lower down my stomach?

  Some women suit pregnancy, I told myself, they wear it well – others just don’t get it, it doesn’t suit them, and they don’t suit it – it’s as if they’re not getting along with their bump, like it gets in their way so they never look terribly happy about it. I most definitely had come under this category, the uncomfortable group. The lady with the bulging stomach didn’t look anything, neither ecstatically happy nor dreadfully sad – she just looked pregnant and going through the motions.

  She looked at me as she continued on her way across the road. Now she was directly in front of me, only the windscreen of my car between the two of us.

  I stared at her with envy. Suddenly, I wanted to be her – bloated and pregnant.

  The tears welled up in my eyes. I was sure that she could feel my piercing eyes on her plump body. No doubt she thought me some crazy creepy weepy lesbian ogling at her bump. I put on my pink sunglasses so that she could not see my watery eyes.

  I would discuss with Ruby what room she would like to sleep in. I would ask her ‘Would you like to be in your own room? The room that your dad painted for you?’ I would tell her that he painted it white because we didn’t know if she was going to be a boy or a girl. I wouldn’t say that I told him it was a really boring colour for a baby. He had insisted, and when Luke insists it’s best to let him have his way. Anyway, I didn’t really mind, but if our little girl didn’t like the colour we could change it to any colour she liked – well, I mean, within reason.

  Then it struck me that I was being silly, because I had forgotten that my baby would be asleep all the time, so she wouldn’t need to be in a bedroom – she’d just need to be somewhere nice, where she’d be happy. Some safe place so she didn’t get lost any more.

  “Anyway, Ruby, I don’t think that we should put you in the baby’s room. I think that it might be too lonely for you there – you probably wouldn’t like it there. You might be lonely there in the dark, though I guess it doesn’t get much lonelier than it is in that package.”

  Yes, I mustn't forget to ask her was she scared in there, on her own on the way home.

  Would my little girl like to be able to see the sea? “Ruby, would you like to look out over Dublin Bay, onto the lighthouse in Howth? If you were at the window then you could see all the boats passing, you could see the ferries bringing all the tourists in – you would have a great view from the window. Yes, the window with the sea view would be the best place for you – that is Mum and Dad’s room and that way you would be with us. Well, kind of with us anyway, safe behind the large bright yellow door in the apartment with the high ceilings and cherry-coloured walls.

  I would ask her what she thought. Of course, I would tell her that there was no pressure and she could wait until we got home to decide then – when she saw the place – that there was no
huge urgency to decide now.

  A big blue-and-yellow truck quickly brought me back to reality. He had overtaken me on the outside lane and then cut in ahead of me, forcing me to slam on the brakes. I hooted at him but he paid no attention to me.

  “Jesus, Afric, honestly you are going to kill yourself and probably someone else today unless you bloody concentrate. Cop yourself on.” This time my tone was a lot firmer.

  If she came as Express Delivery, then she most likely came by plane, she most likely came as cargo. She would have come in the belly of the plane, with all the suitcases and with all the happy people coming home from their holidays. I was not happy with the notion of my daughter being flung around an aircraft, bumping into suitcases and boxes and sticking to the inside of the box.

  I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t asked one of the many ladies with the kind faces how my daughter would get home to me. It had completely escaped my mind that Wednesday morning.

  Ruby must have come in over Dublin Bay – she would have been like contraband in the belly of the plane – not allowed in this country.

  She would have passed all the swimming places that Luke and I never got to take her to. I would tell her again that I did take her to those swimming places, when she was alive, when I was pregnant. I would tell her again that I used to swim from the Forty Foot to Bullock Harbour and that I would talk to her on the way, dreaming about her swimming with her dad and me – a little girl dressed in a coloured wetsuit, swimming between her mum and dad.

  Those dreams had now become my nightmares. I had lost my dream, my dream of a little daughter.

  “Please, Ruby, I am begging you to tell them to take away the nightmares, to take them away forever, and to give your mum some peace.”