by Faith Hogan
‘Well, he’s either in or out,’ Anna said with her usual no-nonsense attitude. ‘He can’t have his cake and eat it. He’s either with you or he’s not.’
‘It’s not like that. Besides, you know how I feel about getting married.’
‘Grace, don’t be such a dunce. You’re pregnant. In some ways, it doesn’t matter if he’s married to you or not. What matters is if he’s married to her. He has to choose.’ The words hung in the air long after Grace ended the call.
Once the thought was planted, like a seed in her brain, it took root and she couldn’t let it go. It was in a leafy suburb in Drumcondra that she broke the news to him. He took her to see a red-brick, four-bedroom house.
‘I can’t live with you, Paul, not like this.’
‘We can look at other houses,’ he said, clearly thinking the fault was with the property. ‘I can look at taking out a mortgage, if that’s what you want.’
‘No.’ Grace moved towards a bay window. ‘No, Paul. I can’t live with you while you’re married to Evie. It doesn’t seem right, not with a baby.’
‘But Evie won’t mind. She’ll be happy for me.’ He reminded her of a wounded Setter. ‘We can set up here, I’ll support you, Grace, you know I will. Nappies, bills, the lot. I’m ready for this, really up for it.’
‘You don’t understand, Paul. For me, for the baby, it has to be all or nothing. I love you, but you need to cut the ties with Evie before we can have a future together.’ This was harder than she thought. She knew she was taking an almighty gamble. What if he chose Evie? On the other hand, she had to know the spectre of his first wife could be in the past.
‘I see,’ he said.
‘You will have to tell her, anyway. That will be the worst. The rest, well, it’s probably not going to be so bad.’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll tell her tonight.’
‘And, then we’ll see…’ Grace bit her lip, didn’t want him to see how much it really meant to her.
‘Are you proposing to me?’ The sadness was replaced for just a moment by that lingering joke they shared since they first met.
‘I might do that some day, when you’re free to accept – or maybe you’ll propose to me? Properly.’ When he put his arms around her, she knew she had nothing to worry about.
*
Evie was sorted within the month; a quickie divorce, the upside of marrying abroad. Paul wasn’t even sure how legal their union had been all these years.
‘Why didn’t you ever tell me?’ Grace knew there was much he’d never get around to telling her. She had a feeling he knew what he was doing. There was a time when the mention of marriage, good or bad, would have scared her off. ‘You’re a very wise man; have I mentioned that before?’
‘No, but we have a lifetime ahead of us and I suppose it’s the kind of thing I’ll never tire of hearing.’ He pulled her close and they made plans for a simple ceremony. He didn’t want anything splashed across the celebrity magazines, it wouldn’t be fair to Evie. Grace agreed although it set her teeth on edge a little, the idea that Evie Considine might still dictate her future. ‘Don’t be like that, we have so much to look forward to and she…’ Would it always bother her that his sentences never ended when he spoke of Evie, as though there was still unfinished business between them?
*
Malta was perfect. If she’d been the kind of girl to think about a white dress and the man of her dreams, she couldn’t have come up with anything better. Paul booked the best hotel on the island. It was off-season; and the small church, which Grace couldn’t be sure was Catholic, was idyllic. ‘Does it really matter?’ he asked her, and in that moment, it hadn’t mattered. Whitewashed stone, aged timbers and soft tones from Debussy filled the air as they exchanged their handwritten vows. She hoped Paul forgot about Evie for the day. Maybe, a small sliver of guilt raised its head after he said, ‘I do.’ Grace wondered if the other woman realized that Paul was no longer hers. Had he felt for her what he now felt for Grace? She quickly cast aside the lingering whispers, drank in the clear blue skies, and lightly scented breeze. He was hers. Everything had subtly changed between them in a way she hadn’t imagined it would. Sure, that was just stupid, wasn’t it?
*
The weeks seemed to rush past her then. They settled on a house, not too big, but close enough for Paul to get in and out of work easily. It was probably no more than a stone’s throw from where he lived with Evie, but they both liked the area and Grace never mentioned it. It wasn’t a permanent home. ‘Plenty of time for all that when we’re a family,’ he told her, so for now they rented and it felt temporary despite the paintings she hung about the rooms to make them feel like hers. Paul was only interested in one room. In her second trimester, the morning sickness got worse instead of better.
‘You might well be expecting an elephant calf,’ Patrick told her drily one morning. He dropped chocolate-covered Kimberley biscuits into his steaming mocha; even the smell of mocha made Grace feel wretched these days.
‘I’m certainly big enough.’ It was true; she had morphed into one of those enormous pregnant women you saw on seventies American TV series. She was, she knew, living proof that they actually existed.
Then, out of nowhere, it struck her. Had their childlessness been the cause of Paul and Evie’s break-up? He wouldn’t be drawn on any details. Nothing. She cast aside the thought quickly. Hormones? Within a few short weeks, Grace Kennedy-Starr had become a stranger to herself.
‘It’s easier to mind the little one now,’ one of the midwives told her on her final visit to the clinic. As though lumbering about with permanent heartburn could be better than having it all over with. Grace knew she was trying to comfort her, perhaps she knew what it was to feel so overwhelmed by pregnancy. ‘Any day soon and it will all be worth it.’ She’d been trying to console her about being bigger than Meatloaf. She resolved on the journey back from the hospital that this was her first and last pregnancy; never again. Marriage and children had never been part of the plan anyway, but then, she hadn’t met Paul Starr when she promised herself that. Sometimes she wondered if she’d change her mind so totally when the baby arrived too.
At about four the following morning, she ran out of time. Her labour pains came hard and fast. Luckily Paul was home; he soothed and steadied her until they got to the hospital. There, it hit her, as immediately and forcibly as the smell of disinfectant and the squeak of rubber shoes on shined floors – panic. She was not ready for this, not for labour, motherhood, or any of it, and it didn’t matter if her body thought different. The fear consumed her, seemed to swallow her whole. She felt her breath constrict in her chest and then those awful pains would blow it out of her. A marionette, scared and vulnerable, she kept her expression neutral while she could. ‘You won’t leave me, will you?’ she asked, her eyes pinned on him.
‘Of course not, darling.’ He gathered her hair back from her face and whispered, ‘never. I’ll never leave you or the baby.’ He drew her close and held her until she couldn’t breathe and needed to pull away. She had a feeling he didn’t understand her; this time she was on her own.
‘First one?’ the midwife said soothingly; she was nice, motherly, born to make babies. ‘You could be here a while. It takes time for everything to get up and running first time round. Second time’s a charm though.’ She left them in a private room with a TV and an uninspiring view of the car park.
‘So this is where it all happens.’ Paul smiled at Grace.
‘I guess so,’ she said weakly.
‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see.’
‘I suppose.’ Grace was terrified. It was all well and dandy for him to sit there and tell her she’d be fine. He just had to hold her hand while she did all the work.
‘When this is over, we’ll do something nice.’ He took her face in his hands. ‘Maybe go somewhere, just get away, the three of us together.’
‘The three of us?’ She felt a pulverizing contraction and cursed silently as he nodded
at her, assuming she was confirming his plans. But of course, she hadn’t been counting the baby as one of them. Even with her body wracked with pain that felt as if it might tear her in two, she wasn’t thinking of the baby as real. He’d furnished the spare room – the nursery, as he insisted on calling it. It was the only room he’d taken any time over. She shivered every time he said it, as though there would be an endless stream of babies coming from her.
The baby, a little girl they agreed to call Delilah, arrived late the following afternoon. ‘A good length of time, for the first,’ according to the midwife. Grace took her in her arms and admired her, remotely, as though she was someone else’s. Paul slipped into the role of father with ease and suddenly seemed almost unfamiliar to Grace, so animated, alive, and content. They stole two days from her in that room. Two days, where they slept, washed and ate. She lay in a state of begrudging exhaustion as Paul expertly handled her daughter, and smiled and sang to the child as though they had already formed some kind of secret bond.
*
‘You’ll have to take her, I’m afraid.’ She dreaded those words for months. It didn’t take long to get a routine of sorts going. Most days, she tried to get Delilah out for long bracing walks, fed her, changed her and hoped she slept. Sometimes, when she cried, Grace would just sit there, watching her, not really hearing her at all. It was as though she was watching television, or someone else’s child, someone else’s life. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, sometimes she felt as if she couldn’t move, but she had to. Paul, on the other hand took to it like oil to canvas. ‘You’re just tired, darling, go and rest. It must be exhaustion, that’s all, let me,’ and he’d whip Delilah out of her crib and whirl her about the floor, singing Frank Sinatra songs she never heard him sing otherwise. Grace could swear that the baby actually knew the difference. She had a terrible feeling. What if Delilah wouldn’t, maybe couldn’t, love her because she knew how Grace felt? Sometimes the grip of anxiousness tightened in her gut and her thoughts turned to a dark place that she knew she couldn’t go. She wondered if she should tell someone, but what could she say? That her thoughts had taken on the personality of a bystander or that her emotions seemed to be spilling over so they were more real than the baby was? Was this what her father felt before he took his life?
‘Post-natal depression. It’s just a touch of the baby blues,’ Paul said one morning when she could hardly look at the child. ‘You need to get it sorted.’ So he dropped her at the doctors and, sure enough, she returned with a prescription for antidepressants. ‘Ah well, there goes the breast-feeding, maybe it’s for luck,’ he said with a shrug. The breast-feeding had all but gone out the window weeks ago; Paul knew it, maybe it bothered him, but he hadn’t mentioned it before. She couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear any of it. She hated the forced intimacy, the wretchedness of the baby’s cries because one way or another she was failing. Worst of all was the feeling that she was being slowly, purposefully trapped. There was no sign of her ever getting back to work, and even if she did, she wasn’t sure that she had anything left to put into paint. She felt emptied from the inside out, as though a vacuum had opened up deep inside her and she would never be a whole person again. This growing, living thing that was part of her and part of Paul had managed to steal a huge slice of her. She felt a bubbling resentment. Each day, it seemed to grow. A small shadow at first, it started as a tendril of smoke, just creeping into her life.
‘I need to get back to the studio.’ She said it one morning while Paul ate his toast and cooed at the baby from behind his hands.
‘Not yet, surely not yet. We haven’t even talked about what we’re going to do,’ he soothed, but he wasn’t really speaking to her. It felt as though he never did anymore. He said the words all right, but his focus was the baby. Always the baby.
‘Well, then we need to start talking about it sooner rather than later.’ She dumped her plate and knife noisily into the sink and walked from the room. Behind her, she heard the baby begin to cry and Paul comforting her gently, just as he did if she woke in the night, or stirred in her pram.
That was the day when everything changed. The world, as Grace knew it, took one more peg on its axis to bring it just a little closer to where it was meant to be.
*
‘It’s a gift,’ Patrick said, but his voice was playful. ‘You know I can’t keep a secret, so I’m hanging up before you wheedle it out of me. Just meet me at the studio.’ She could almost imagine his bottom lip, curling petulantly. Damn it, she was intrigued. She peered at Delilah, sleeping soundly in her car seat. The midwife said she should be lying in her basket during the day, but it was impossible to get her to sleep, unless you sung or rocked her, as Paul had a habit of doing, until she drifted off. She checked her watch. One hour. That was all it would take. One hour and she’d be back. No-one would ever be any the wiser. Delilah slept most days until after four, why would today be any different? Grace grabbed the spare car keys from the hook, her own set were nowhere to be found. She threw a coat about her shoulders and pulled the door quietly behind her.
‘You took your time,’ Patrick said, but his eyes were laughing. ‘Have you got someone to mind Delilah?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘So?’ He squinted behind her; he had fallen under Delilah’s spell, instantly and irretrievably. She’d parked a bit away; the Liberties was bumper to bumper. Commuters were making their way from one side of the city to another. There was more chance of Picasso painting a mural here than there was of getting parking outside the door of the studio. ‘You can’t leave her in the car.’
‘She’s at home.’ She searched the set of keys for a door key to the studio, felt his eyes upon her. ‘Don’t look at me that way; you have no idea what it’s like, being cooped up there all day, with no sign of escape anywhere on the horizon.’ She hated that she sounded like a sullen adolescent. Delilah had done this. She’d twisted everything about disarmingly and imperceptibly, or so it seemed to Grace.
‘You left her at home on her own?’ He pulled long fingers through his carefully tousled hair, an anxious reaction.
‘It’s only for a short while, and she was fast asleep. She sleeps for hours every day. Seriously, I sit there looking at her sleeping.’ It was true, she would sit staring at her, as though she were a jigsaw puzzle she couldn’t figure out and then later feel guilty for not having worked when she had that small chance. ‘It’s not as if she knows she’s on her own. Not like she’s going to hit the drinks cabinet or take up smoking when I’m gone.’ She tried to laugh at her own attempt at humour, but there wasn’t much point, it wasn’t that funny. ‘Damn these keys.’
‘For God’s sake, Grace, what’s wrong with you?’ The surprise had gone flat for Patrick; whatever he’d been planning had lost its lustre.
‘These are the spare keys; I’ve no key for the studio on them.’ She shoved the keys into her pocket unable to meet his eyes. ‘So, tell me – you might as well – what’s this great surprise?’ She rarely got excited these days; must be the antidepressants.
‘I’m sorry I dragged you out, now. We should go back and check on Delilah. I just thought…’ An unfamiliar urgency stalked his words, his expression was anxious. ‘It’s that ultramarine paint you’ve been on about for years.’ He thrust a brown parcel at her. ‘Knock yourself out with it, when you get sorted. Come on, let’s get back to Delilah.’
‘Patrick. I’ll see to Delilah; I am her mother after all.’ She didn’t need Patrick making her feel worse. It felt as if she couldn’t do anything right these days. The paint was one of the best gifts ever. They’d talked about this so often, a colour her father used to give his paintings texture, he started with the base coat and then built it up from there. She’d tried to track it down for so long. This should have been a happy moment, a moment for two friends to share over their usual co-conspiratorial cup of coffee; instead, he’d made her feel terrible.
By the time she got back to her own driveway, she felt truly mis
erable. Then the day got even worse than she could have imagined. She pulled the keys from the ignition, locked the car and realized there was no house key on this set. She walked futilely to the front door first, gave it a tentative shove, hoping she hadn’t fully closed it; it wouldn’t be the first time. When that didn’t work, she tried each of the keys contained on the set. Of course, they belonged to Paul – his spare work keys, held here in case he needed to pop into his consultancy rooms at odd hours. Each key stood stubbornly in the door before the next. She could break a window. But then she’d have to admit to Paul that she’d left the baby here alone. If only they’d left an extra set somewhere outside. She walked round the side of the house, thought she could hear Delilah. It had to be her imagination. Delilah rarely cried, and when she did, she sounded more like a small kitten, helpless, ineffective. To be fair, she never had to cry, not when Paul was around, and during the day Grace kept everything moving along, each day had its own busy but predictable routine, so she didn’t need to. At the back of the house, there was no mistaking it: a baby was crying and not just the little mewling sounds that Delilah normally made. This was full crescendo, rescue me, I need help.
Grace felt a rotten gnawing deep inside her. It was fear of what was in store for her. She leant her face against the damp kitchen window, squinted against the darkness within and terror gripped her hard. Where was Delilah? The kitchen seemed the same as it did when she left – there had been no fire, no flood, no break-in, no gas explosion – except one small detail. The carry chair was no longer on the table. Grace pushed closer to the window, cold and grimy against her face. Her breath held. She made out the familiar in what suddenly seemed strange. This was her kitchen, as seen through the eyes of a voyeur. Her life suddenly held up in clear view. Amazing, she thought, the clarity of a dirty window. The car seat was on the floor. The baby was no longer securely strapped in. She too was on the floor, a small pink bundle, scrabbling wildly. Her hands and legs flailed high in the air, fighting some invisible attacker, while her voice cut through not just the window, but Grace’s numb heart. She ran across to the back door. Shouldered it hard, once, twice; it was no good. She was not strong enough, at five foot and less than eight stone; she’d never do it, not like this. She searched wildly about the garden. A rake the previous owners left behind caught her eye. She moved to the small utility window, whacked it hard, just the once. It was all it took. The glass cracked. Then, after what seemed to take forever, it shattered, deliberately, a spider’s web creeping slowly across its surface, making her wait for spite. She pulled herself up, reached down far and opened out the panel. She slipped in easily. Once inside she ran to Delilah. The child was hysterical, her cries breaking into hiccupping sobs. For a moment, just a moment, Grace held her close. She thought then that her heart might break in two with an unfamiliar cocktail of love, guilt and anguish. Thoughts of the window and the explanations obliterated. It didn’t matter. What was a broken window? What was anything compared to Delilah? She bundled the child into the offending car seat, secured her in the front of the car and sped to the nearest accident and emergency department.
