All That I Leave Behind

by Alison Walsh

  I think to myself before responding, ‘Nzuri.’ It always amuses me that the word means ‘fine’ and ‘terrible’ at the same time, which just about covers it.

  ‘Aha.’ He nods sagely and guns the car into first, the engine rumbling as we take off into the traffic without indicating or looking to see if there’s anything coming, and we are rewarded by an angry honking of horns. ‘Twende,’ Joseph says quietly, turning the radio on, a loud tinny blast of music filling the car.

  ‘Yes, let’s go,’ I agree, and he rewards me with a flash of white teeth and I want to reach out and hug him, because I know that he won’t ask me another question, not unless I speak first. And I can’t speak right now. I can’t say a single word. My tongue feels swollen and dry in my mouth.

  Sure enough, we are silent for most of the five-hour journey home through the red dirt, watching it gradually cover the windscreen in a fine red sheen. I look out the window at the wide, flat green trees whose branches stretch out along the horizon, at the patches of dark green so carefully tended by the local women, bent over the earth, working it into submission. I smile when I see them, because it reminds me of my younger self, bent over my hoe in front of that old cottage, wondering at how I was managing to produce cabbage and potatoes and carrots out of the soil simply by looking after it. I miss that, that closeness to the soil. When I first came here, I dreamt about it. I dreamt that I was picking up great dark handfuls of it, clogging my fingers, the pinky-silver outline of a worm weaving its way through, instead of the dry red dust pouring through my hands. For me, that soil was life itself. It was a miracle, a symbol of the future that seemed to lie before me. But I’ve thought enough about that over the years, circled over and over the same terrain, wondering ‘what if’. I suppose I can let go of that now.

  The girls are waiting when I get back, and they swarm around the Land Rover like bees, laughing and waving. I flatter myself that they’re here for me, but I know they’re after the sweets I packed into my bag: the tropical mints and lollipops – ‘my heart beats for mixed fruit drops’ reads the slogan on the yellow packets of boiled sweets that the girls love. They are so beautiful, that blue-black sheen on their skin, the coils of hair tight on their heads, their long, bare legs sticking out of the end of those old-fashioned pinafores, their little cotton shirts pressed so neatly. My girls. I was wrong when I said I had no family to Dr Abdallah. I have a family. This is my family. I know I don’t really deserve them, after everything I’ve done, but I’m blessed to have found them. Caring for them has helped me to wear away at my guilt, to rub it away so that it’s now just a little hard pebble inside of me.

  I climb out of the car and, even though my heart is like lead, I hug them and kiss them and let myself be carried to the dining hall by my swarm of laughing bees.

  Only later do I manage to get away, to drag a plastic lawn chair out in front of my flat and sit there in the dusk, watching the sun drop low on the horizon. It happens so quickly here, you can almost see it move, then ‘plop’, it disappears and a blackness descends that’s sudden and total. How unlike the silvery, pale sunsets of home. I sit in front of my hut and I listen to the crickets in the trees and I balance the letter on my knee. I’ve read it so many times that the words are burned on my brain, as if they’d been branded there. The urge to soak it all in, to examine every line, was hard to resist. At first, I didn’t really register what she was saying. Oh, her meaning was plain, but I couldn’t grasp it, and when I did, when I understood, I needed to process it for a while. I needed to go through the pain, the resentment, the anger at her rejection of me. I’m her mother, I thought as I scanned the lines. Does that count for nothing at all? But I suppose I lost the right to that name many years ago.

  I know that June is right. I thought it was the right thing to do, to write to her, to ask her to write to me, but now I see that we’ve kept each other prisoner in the past. I wanted them to remain as they always were, never to grow up, and I can see now how selfish that was. June sent me a picture of Rosie’s wedding, a portrait of the whole wedding party jumping high into the air, the house behind them looking a lot smarter than I remember it. I gasped in shock when I pulled it out of the envelope and it took me a while to understand: they aren’t as I remember them, sitting on that little ladder in front of the house. They’ve lived their whole lives, have loved and worked and had children, all without me. They have got on with the business of living somehow, in spite of the pain. The thought felt almost hurtful to me. How dare they, I thought, scanning the photo to see if I could pick out my own children. How dare they live without me. But now I understand. June is right, of course, even though her words still sting. I don’t have the right to contact them any more, to hold them back. The burden is really mine to carry, not theirs. They have done nothing. Nothing at all.

  It’s time. Time to let them go.

  Oh, I need a drink, I think as I shift in my seat, chilly now that the sun has gone. I begin to get up and I jump when I hear a small, polite cough. I look up and Theo, the post boy, is standing in front of me in a pair of denim shorts and a T-shirt with ‘Nerdies Sunglasses’ written on it. He smiles at me and nods at the letter on my lap. ‘Please, miss.’

  I look at it and then up at him. ‘It’s from my daughter. She lives a long way away in Ireland, where it rains all the time.’ Because of the missionaries, many of the local people here have been told about Ireland, but the only thing they seem to latch onto is the rain. When I tell them I come from Ireland, they mimic great clouds above their heads and say, ‘Always raining.’

  He smiles at me again, and I see that he’s humouring me, that he wants something else but is too polite to ask. I look down again and see what he’s looking at. ‘Is it the stamp? Is that what you want?’

  He shakes his head, as if nothing could be further from his mind, which I take to mean ‘yes’. ‘Here.’ I hand him the letter. ‘I won’t be needing it any more.’

  If he’s wondering why I’m giving him the whole letter instead of tearing the stamp off the envelope, he doesn’t say. Instead he grins and says, ‘Asante,’ and puts the letter carefully into the red satchel he has over his shoulder, the faint outline of Royal Mail still visible on the plastic. And then he walks away.

  I lean back against the warm wall of the house and I close my eyes. I think of what John-Joe told me that time, about the last words his mother said when she lay on her bed in the upstairs room in Donegal, her family gathered around her. ‘My work is done,’ that’s what she said at the end of her long and busy life, surrounded by everyone who was dear to her. And I know that when I die I’ll be alone and that it’s my choice. It has all been my choice, all along. I have to accept that now, that and the fact that I’ll never see my children again. It’s finished now. I’m tired. My work is done.

  AUTHOR Q&A

  The title of the book is quite emotive, and it could refer to Michelle or to her children, all of whom are leaving something behind in their own way. How did you come to decide on the title?

  I came to the title, All That I Leave Behind, quite late, and really, because I only belatedly realised how much of the novel belonged to Michelle. In an earlier draft, she wasn’t actually as present, because I wanted to explore how a mother’s leaving might affect her children, rather than herself. I think I was possibly a bit angry with Michelle myself, for having left them! But then I came to understand that it was as much her story as theirs – the impact of leaving was as profound on her as it was on them. She was heartbroken, but felt that she had no other choice. And so it became ‘All That I Leave Behind’ – meaning the whole of her life, really. And the children, too, end up leaving things behind – the past, in particular. They really all live in the past in so many ways – none of them has moved on, at least, not inside themselves, since Michelle left. Mary-Pat has made a life for herself with PJ and her children, but inside, she’s still in a rage with her mother for having left, and for having burdened her with the responsibility of the others
; Pi is literally stuck, refusing to move outside the narrow world he’s created for himself; June is stuck with the image she has of herself as a perfect, middle-class mum, and yet, she’s bent on self-destruction; and Rosie hasn’t really begun to find herself yet, to understand who she really is.

  The ‘children’ are understandably very angry at their mother throughout the book and in the end start to come to terms with the fact that she’s never coming back. Yet, Michelle remains a sympathetic character throughout – did you find this difficult to balance?

  Yes, I did. It was a tricky balance, because how do you make someone who abandons her children sympathetic? It goes against nature, doesn’t it, to leave your children, and yet I wanted to explore how that might actually happen and what might drive a woman to making that choice. I remember reading a newspaper article while I was thinking about the story early on, profiling women who left their children and why. I found the piece revelatory, not least because some of the reasons weren’t that profound. One lady, I remember, simply felt that she should have been a writer, but that her children prevented her from doing so, which I found particularly interesting, because for me, it was the opposite, but I could understand how that might be – how some women might find having children could somehow squash their true nature. Motherhood is such a complex state, and raises difficult emotions, I think.

  Would you say that motherhood is something of a theme for you in your writing?

  Yes, most definitely. I’m interested in motherhood as a subject – it never really grows old! I’m interested in how women who choose motherhood become mothers, good and bad, what emotions come to the surface, what ‘tapes’ from childhood still play, and what patterns are repeated through generations. I tackled the subject in non-fiction terms in In My Mother’s Shoes, and now I’m looking at it in novel form – which allows me more freedom to get to the heart of it, I think. I believe fiction can touch on truths that are universal, and if I want to understand a subject, I find novels are more helpful than non-fiction.

  Michelle’s chapters are set in the early 1970s and 80s. Was this period important to you and how did it shape her character?

  Michelle was very much a child of the 60s. She’d grown up in a rigid, old-fashioned household, the only child of two doting, but overpowering, parents, and she wanted to rebel against that. I think many people in that generation did – they wanted to push against the old order and create something new. I think they were the first generation to feel that they really could change the world. And then, of course, it all fell apart, politically and personally, for many people. For Michelle, John-Joe was the perfect vehicle for that rebellion – the kind of man her parents would just hate! Unfortunately, that spark that Michelle saw in her partner wasn’t anything more than being a bit of a chancer, which is why she felt so let down by him and alone in pursuing her ideals. I was also interested in how children can unwittingly pay for their parents’ choices, as these four children did, both materially and emotionally. So much of growing up involves the death of idealism, and yet, for Michelle, she never really did grow up.

  It’s interesting the way each of the children sees Michelle and John-Joe differently. Pi hated his father, but Rosie adored him. Do you think this is true to life?

  I’ve always been interested in the notion of ‘favourites’ in a family. Parents insist they don’t have any such thing, but I think it’s part of family life – and children can see it. I think most parents love their children equally (although some don’t, it has to be said), but they may have an easier relationship with one child than with another. It’s complicated – some parents might struggle with one child because they see so much of themselves in them, or might bond with another because their personalities gel. Family dynamics are always interesting. Pius loathed John-Joe and yet in so many ways, he was like him and was certainly pursuing the same, aimless life. Mary-Pat was essential to Michelle as a helper and support and yet, she felt the burden of that role, and June, as she said herself, was the ‘overlooked’ one, who didn’t have a strong relationship with either parent, which left her at sea. I think it’s also interesting that children can carry that childhood self on into their adult relationships with their parents, so Mary-Pat still brought Daddy his Racing Post and his chocolate – because that was her role.

  There was a parallel drawn between Michelle and Rosie throughout – both of them left home, both of them ‘married’ a man unsuited for them and the life they wanted to lead, both of them tried to change/hide their true selves to fit into a different kind of life. Did you think about their similarities as you wrote the book?

  Not consciously, but I’m very interested in how children repeat the patterns of their parents in many ways. As a parent myself, I see that! Often, I think we’re not aware that we are doing the same things as our parents did – creating the same marriage, family patterns, etc. I don’t want to be overly deterministic about it, because I think people can create something new for themselves – Rosie could have repeated Michelle’s mistakes, but she was aware of that and steered a new path for herself. She became aware, when she was pregnant, that she was about to repeat the past, in not inviting Mark to be a father, and that awareness helped her to change.

  What gave you the idea for the book?

  A few things came together at a particular time. First, Michelle’s voice came out one day, when I was on holiday, and I wrote the prologue to the book, but it seemed to be detached for a while from any kind of story. I couldn’t work out who she was or how she’d connect to something greater. And then I read Mary Lawson’s Crow Lake, which is a wonderful novel about family life, and felt a frisson of excitement – here was the story I was trying to tell, albeit differently. And then, I happened to take a walk with my husband along the canal in Co. Kildare, because he likes to fish it, and something about that still, silent landscape really appealed to me. It took me a little while longer to locate Mary-Pat, Pius, Rosie and June, but eventually, it all came together. Writing a novel is a bit like unravelling a knot of twine or solving a puzzle – it’s about pulling clarity out of what initially seems to be a muddle, distilling it until eventually, clarity emerges.

  How do you make time for writing?

  Well, I do read about other writers who spend entire days writing, but that’s actually never been part of my life, because I have a ‘day job’ as an editor and a family. Writing, for me, was and still is an oasis carved out of a busy day, two hours of peace and quiet, bedroom door shut, earplugs in, trying to ignore the punch-up in the boys’ bedroom. My children feel the urge to communicate with me once the door is shut! I’ve always written like that – it’s my time and I try to make the most of it. I also find that as long as I commit to that regularly – six days a week in general, that it works for me. Although I did read about a successful author who spends twenty minutes a day writing and felt a slight twinge of envy …

  When did you start writing?

  Writing is in the family, so to speak. My great-grandfather, Maurice Walsh, was a writer, and very popular in his day, and when I was a child, I’d often be asked if I was going to be a writer like him! An impossible question to answer when you’re nine. However, it’s true that I always did love reading and writing. I’d always written bits and pieces: stories about gymnastics when I was in primary school, adventure yarns, an essay on the Crusades (about which I knew nothing) in secondary school, but I never thought writing was for me – I think it was a confidence thing, really. I’d read huge amounts, particularly in college, but never thought I could actually write. Instead, I went into publishing and worked as an editor. And then I found myself at a loose end during my first pregnancy and went to a creative writing class in London, where I then lived. And I wrote something which just seemed to emerge onto the page from some part of me I didn’t know existed – and that’s where I realised that I might have a voice somewhere. It took me another ten years or so, and three children, to fully tune into that, but it’s all part of the pro
cess.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to my family: to Colm, for everything, not least for listening to me moan for two years, and to Eoin, Niamh and Cian for constant interruptions/entertainment. I thank my agent, Marianne Gunn O’Connor, for her persistence and support and many hours of chat, Pat Lynch and also Vicki Satlow for her reading and feedback; to my editor, Ciara Doorley at Hachette Books Ireland, sincere thanks for her enthusiasm and guidance, and to Joanna Smyth, Breda Purdue, Jim Binchy, Ciara Considine, Ruth Shern, Siobhan Tierney and Bernard Hoban. A note of thanks also goes to Emma Dunne for her helpful suggestions, particularly with the timeline and to Aonghus Meaney for his excellent proofreading. Finally, I thank Mary Behan for her help when most needed.