That was how he had been every time she’d seen him here, she realised. Blending into the background, even when chatting to somebody. If he hadn’t stared at her so blatantly, Alison knew she might never have been aware of his presence. Few people would notice his absence now if he simply kept walking after his ball, over the wall onto the roadway and back to Dublin. People were too preoccupied with their own lives, with growing families or growing old. Twenty years ago Chris stood out by perpetually alternating between manic exuberance and awkward shyness. Now she realised he had finally learnt the art of anonymously blending in.
‘We should ask him to have a drink.’ Peadar broke into her thoughts.
‘Why?’ She was suddenly defensive, unsure if Peadar had been watching Chris or observing her.
‘Why not?’ Peadar was puzzled. ‘The poor guy is alone on holidays. He’s obviously trying to rebuild his life but it can’t be easy.’
‘Maybe he wants to be left in peace.’
‘This isn’t like you,’ Peadar probed. ‘Normally you’re full of concern for people. I mean at one time I half thought there was something going on between you.’
Alison laughed carefully. ‘Sure, we were all only kids back then.’
‘We were old enough.’
She knew what Peadar was thinking from his tone, even though they never discussed the child any more. She felt touched that the loss was still an ache inside him as well. Alison sensed his desire to take her hand, but he was afraid of being too blatant, in case he had mistaken her mood. He knew her too well though, knew how news of any child’s death still upset her. It seemed crazy to draw comparisons though: Chris had lost the two children around whom he must have built his entire life. Years of caring and all his future hopes turning to dust before his eyes. Alison had only been eighteen and her feelings towards Peadar’s baby inside her were mainly of fear at being thrust into motherhood when little more than a child herself. There was so much to deal with – her mother’s disappointment, her father’s resolute concern which couldn’t disguise his hurt. She still remembered his bewilderment the evening they broke the news, like he was confronted by the second Immaculate Conception.
That was even before having to confront Peadar’s mother who, when she was twenty–two, had received the gold medal in Greek when women students were rare in University College Dublin, and Peadar’s father for whom she gave up her own ambitions to become the local headmaster’s wife in Oughterard. Not that Alison had gone to Oughterard with Peadar when he told them the news, but she had sensed their reaction from his silence on his return.
Yet neither family ever tried to push herself and Peadar into marriage. From the start her parents’ advice was selfless, encouraging them to rush into nothing and let the child be born first. They had insisted that Alison would return to Waterford when eight months gone so they could mind her, and to hell with what the neighbours said. That night, crying in her old childhood bed (with Peadar bedded down on the sofa and her father and the dog asleep with one ear open), her pride in her parents’ reaction only made her feel worse about herself. She was proud of Peadar too, who never thought of doing a runner, or at least gave no indication of thinking so.
It was Peadar who had insisted they tell her parents immediately, the evening they got the results from the clinic in Cathal Brugha Street. Otherwise Alison would have put it off, hiding in her bedsit to avoid going home until her father was forced to come and look for her. Peadar had travelled to Waterford with her when he could easily have stayed in Dublin. Her parents had never even heard about him before then. He took her hand when she was unable to find words and explained the situation himself, putting all blame firmly on his own shoulder.
The biggest shock was hearing her father address Peadar man to man: ‘If I could get my hands on things in Waterford in the sixties I can’t see why you couldn’t have got them in Dublin now.’ Alison had glanced at her mother who looked away. Back then she had been as shocked by the notion of her parents using condoms as if they had told her they had once been abducted by aliens. Condoms were still illegal in Dublin and she was never sure how Peadar obtained them in St Patrick’s Teacher Training College where he had impressed his tutors so much that he was being paid to teach foreign students there for the summer. For a horrified second she had thought that Peadar, in his defence, would describe how the condom burst inside her, but he had simply shaken his head and replied, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t undo what’s done.’
Maybe she had still been unsure of Peadar before then, or infatuated with him in an adolescent way. But during that evening she grew to depend on him to take control. Any thoughts she still harboured about Chris Conway vanished. Pregnancy overwhelmed her, turning her into a vulnerable child again. But it seemed to alter Peadar totally into an adult. She saw her parents grow to respect him, despite their anger. God knows how Chris Conway might have handled the situation.
Even when her diary confirmed that she was five days overdue, she still hadn’t thought of Peadar or any man as her future husband back then. Certainly she was possessive of Peadar during that carefree summer, enjoying the status of going steady and fighting, often vainly, for his company and attention. But she had imagined years of freedom before the need for any full commitment. She had been her own woman and a free one. This was what had made her so angry with Chris, the fact that – from the moment he saw her in Peadar’s company – he regarded her as somebody else’s property. But she had belonged to nobody except herself. She was still there to be lost or won if Chris’s shyness – or his notion of fundamental male decency – hadn’t prevented him from crossing Peadar.
Chris came back into view, apparently bored of his solitary golf. He stood on the windswept boardwalk, staring out to sea. She decided it wasn’t fair to say her loss was nothing compared to his. It had been different, a minor tragedy, unnoticed, with no public mourning. Her child was seven weeks away from being born when Alison miscarried. That’s what the doctor termed it, but in reality she had given birth to a stillborn girl. Nobody seemed to know exactly what to feel or how to behave. Of course there were displays of grief. Her mother had held her, both of them weeping. Peadar had wept too, saying she would have other children when the time was right. But all around she had sensed an overriding and unspoken feeling of relief.
The most frightening moment had been Peadar’s mother visiting her unannounced in the hospital after the miscarriage. They had never met before, but the woman’s very presence had cowed the nurses into leaving them alone even though visiting time was over. The headmaster’s wife. The classical scholar. Alison knew the woman was reaching out to her, but the gulf was too great.
It was the first time Alison became aware that Peadar had had an elder brother, stillborn two years before him, and therefore unbaptised and buried – as was then the custom – in an unconsecrated strip of stony land near the sea. The woman had spoken for an hour about him, knowing perhaps that Alison was too intimidated to discuss her own feelings. Yet, even at that age, Alison sensed that Peadar’s mother had probably never talked so openly about the stillbirth to anyone before. The image which haunted Alison was of Peadar as a child scrambling over rocks with his mother to reach that unmarked plot. So much weight cutting into his shoulders that they had been married for five years before Peadar ever told her the same story himself.
Alison had gone on to study nursing after the miscarriage – her mother having never taken her name off the list – mixing with new friends who knew nothing of her past. At the eleventh hour they had been reprieved, able to rebuild their lives, away from one another during the three years when she tried to escape from everything that brought back memories – before finding each other for the second time.
Yet none of that could explain why for years afterwards she broke into tears at the most unlikely moments. Watching a mother soothe a child at a bus stop or glimpsing an ad for nappies silently displayed on nine different screens in a television shop. It took her over a decade to
make that one solitary visit to the Little Angels plot in Glasnevin Cemetery.
She had wheeled Danny past rows of white tombstones with the names of six children carved down each one, their ages listed in weeks and days, except for those born dead like her daughter. It had felt wrong to bring the child there, yet she had needed somebody with her and knew she could never ask Peadar. Instead of a reconciliation the visit had been more terrible than she could have imagined. Rows of sellotaped birthday cards along with teddies and toy cars littered each grave. Danny had started screaming, straining to reach the toy cars, while people tending other graves stared across, attracted by his cries. She had pushed the buggy on, starting to run before she ever located her daughter’s name.
Alison fought against those memories now but couldn’t prevent tears from welling up. Sheila touched her wet cheeks in alarm.
‘Where do you hurt, Mammy?’
Alison passed the child across to Peadar. She stood up, knocking over cups as he called after her. She ignored him and ignored Shane who appeared in the doorway, being led back to them by Geraldine. She heard the boy call her and Peadar’s voice coaxing Shane over to him instead. Alison opened the gate and walked quickly down onto the beach. She put her hand out to touch the rock. A virgin kiss at twelve. The brief blur of another six years and she had no longer been a virgin. A few months later she had been familiar with the aftertaste of death. It all seemed to happen in such a short space, yet the years since were an eternity. Why had Chris Conway to come and disturb her memories, here of all places?
Alison dried her eyes with her sleeve but tears came again. She stumbled over the sand, thankful the beach was empty. The tide was going out and soon this strand would be littered with teams of children building sandcastles as Geraldine laughed with the parents who came to watch. Evelyn, that was the name she’d chosen for her daughter. She would be eighteen now, perpetually rowing with her mother over clothes and make–up and boys, always ready to stick the knife in: ‘You can’t talk. At least I won’t get banged up like you did at my age.’ Alison could see her ghost daughter clearly, her skin, her teeth when she laughed, the very sheen of her black hair.
She hadn’t felt the blues this badly since Sheila was born and Alison had toyed with the notion of calling her Evelyn. She swallowed hard, fighting for control. She was a grown woman on holidays, responsible for three children. Alison turned and saw Chris Conway on the boardwalk, watching. She raised her hand, in some small gesture, although even she didn’t understand what she wanted to convey.
You would swear Peadar was paying somebody to get their name known, Alison thought, as twice during the children’s mealtime announcements came that he was wanted on the phone. On the first occasion he looked across the table and shrugged sheepishly.
‘That has to be McCann,’ she said, absolving him from his duty of pressurising Shane into finishing his sausages. ‘You must have had the old buzzard time–locked in the safe until five o’clock so he can’t call you every time the wall grows by another centimetre.’
She watched Peadar negotiate his way through children being fed on rows of straight–backed chairs that were far too grand for them. She loved this room with its 1930s landscapes and long tables laid out with party hats and napkins. This was where you met the other mothers properly, united in the effort of coercing children into tasting food when they were too excited to think of anything except playing. The mothers ranged from veterans with twelve–year–olds down to the flustered young woman beside Alison who introduced herself as Sally and whose baby kept screaming in his high chair. More food covered his bib than was reaching his mouth. Alison smiled to reassure Sally that everyone here had known far worse tantrums.
Joan waved from the far table. Alison smiled back. Monday night was free Irish coffee night, with dancing in the Slaney Room while Joan dissected the pretensions of any over–dressed woman who passed. Alison walked across to Joan. She needed a laugh, even though she was over her fit of blues. Joan’s kids ate everything before them, while their mother smoked, oblivious to any disapproval. Alison was still laughing at some story of hers when Peadar returned, worried–looking.
‘What is it, pet?’ she asked, going back to him. He shook his head.
‘I’ll tell you again.’ He disappeared, taking Shane and Danny out for desserts while Sheila tentatively toyed with a homemade yoghurt. But before the boys even returned with their toffee crunch ice creams Peadar’s name was called again on the PA system. This time he was gone much longer and the children’s disco had started in the Slaney Room before he returned.
Danny was too big to still be jumping around with the tiny tots, falling down to wave his feet when the music stopped. But he did so automatically and unselfconsciously, lured by the prospect of medals on Thursday evening – even though he knew by now that every child got one, regardless of what they did. Sheila was too young to be self–conscious. She danced away, imitating her elder brother, while Shane sat stubbornly beside Alison, content to watch but refusing to join in.
Peadar touched her shoulder and she turned in her armchair, startled.
‘You look worried,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing to do with the house or anyone ill, is it?’
‘It’s the extension,’ Peadar replied. ‘Look, I need to slip off and have a think. I might take a sauna even. Is that okay?’
She nodded and watched him walk towards the leisure centre. If Peadar wasn’t willing to talk about something, then it must be bad. She knew he was upset. The sauna and steam room would be quiet now, with just a few parents skipping off or older couples. She didn’t like to think of him lying on a towel, with sweat pouring from his body as he tried to solve whatever problem McCann had now landed on him.
Sheila had grown tired of dancing and wandered off to play among empty tables at the edge of the dance floor. Alison glanced around to keep an eye on her and spotted Chris Conway alone on a stool at the bar. He summoned the barman with a flick of his finger to pour another Irish Mist liqueur, then lit a cigar from a packet on the counter and watched the lithe bodies of the dancing children. He seemed unaware of being stared at. Nobody paid him any heed but she wished he would stop looking at Danny. Shane had slipped away to watch the dancers from beside the stage, like a child afraid of water but tentatively dipping one toe in a pool. She willed him to find the courage to dance, but he seemed trapped by his inhibition, unable to move.
That was how Chris Conway had frequently looked during that distant summer when his feelings became obvious towards her. The jester caged by self–doubt and shyness. She glanced back again. It was impossible to know what he was thinking. His eyes had a resigned calmness with a half smile on his lips. Maybe it was something primeval and superstitious within her, but she felt the sight of these joyous children was a private one for parents only and he had now ceased to be one. He had no cause to be here, no one left to watch over. If he had an ounce of natural feeling then how could he bear to calmly sit here like a Jonah, she wondered?
Chris noticed her. He smiled and nodded. Alison looked back at the dancers, embarrassed at being caught. She would have to go over and apologise for what she’d said in the steam room. Geraldine stopped the music and arranged the children around her for their nightly renditions of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and The Barney Song. Alison knew she was being unfair, but how could Chris listen to those voices and watch their bright eyes as they held the mike? Surely he would leave once the singing started. But she refused to turn and check. A young father knelt to photograph his daughter who sang with a faltering voice. A mother stretched her arms out towards her son who had finished. Alison wondered what the hell could be so bad as to make McCann telephone the hotel twice.
The songs ended. Geraldine called on Danny to lead the train of children parading down to the video room. Shane ran to be second in line, then made room for Sheila to squeeze between them as other children formed carriages. Danny glanced at Alison warningly, making sure she knew that she was expected to fo
llow. She indicated she would do so shortly, then glanced behind. Chris was in conversation with the barman, seemingly oblivious to the children now. She had five minutes’ grace before Danny started searching for her. Alison slipped down the passage into the leisure centre. Both pools were empty and the jacuzzi deserted when she looked in through the glass. She wondered whether Peadar was in the steam room or sauna or maybe back in their room. Alison waited for as long as possible, hoping he would come out. She couldn’t explain this sudden desperate need to catch a glimpse of him.
Peadar was on the phone when she brought the kids back to get ready for the babysitter. He looked up when she came in, muttered, ‘I’ll get back to you,’ and put the receiver down.
‘What the hell is happening?’ she asked. ‘Are you on holidays with us or still running that school? Surely whatever it is can wait till we get home?’
‘That might be sooner than you think,’ Peadar replied, quietly so that none of the children overheard. They were too preoccupied anyway, trying to find the in–house video channel on television to watch the end of their film.
‘What do you mean?’ she whispered, noticing his shoulders stooped like an old man’s. ‘What’s wrong with that bloody extension now?’
‘There won’t be a bloody extension,’ Peadar said, ‘or at least not for a long time yet. The builder has gone bust. I knew Nolan was juggling three or four jobs but I didn’t know how badly over–stretched he was.’
‘Oh, poor Peadar.’ Alison sat on the bed beside him, longing to take him in her arms, yet not wanting the children to sense anything was amiss. All his years of work, of fundraising and loans, and some bastard could simply cheat him out of it.
‘His workmen walked off the site at half–four, leaving the place a mess,’ Peadar said. ‘Cement literally stiffening in the wheelbarrows where they abandoned them. It wasn’t just that they realised their wages weren’t going to be paid, I think half of them were illegal and didn’t wait around to answer questions. McCann says there isn’t even a security man to watch over the scaffolding tonight and suppliers keep arriving, trying to remove materials they claim weren’t paid for.’
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