‘I was expecting a field with maybe a toilet block,’ I say. ‘Colour me impressed.’
‘It’s got a spa, thermal baths, pools, restaurants! It’s lush!’ Evie says.
‘Okay, eat up, we’re leaving in five minutes,’ I joke. ‘I’ve a date with a hot bath!’
Knowing what awaits us makes us all eager to get there, so we don’t delay and take to the road again, towards Kiskunmajsa.
‘I don’t know what was in that salt bath, but I feel ten years younger,’ I say.
‘Salt,’ Evie says, without looking up from her book.
‘See, all that money we’ve spent on her education, not gone to waste at all,’ I joke to Olly, but he ignores me again.
For weeks we have skirted around the issue of our marriage. I know our reluctance to sit and talk is fear-driven. It’s a scary thing taking off a plaster, especially when that plaster seems to be doing an admirable job of keeping us together. But either way, Olly’s obvious annoyance with me just shows me that it’s time to rip it off.
The kids fall asleep quickly, both exhausted from the aqua park and long drive. So I follow Olly outside and open a bottle of wine.
Before I have the chance to speak, he turns to me, anger and hurt glistening in his eyes and demands, ‘Who is Philip?’
I want to die.
‘I was going to tell you about him,’ I say.
‘Yeah, right,’ he replies, obviously not believing a word of it.
‘I was. You saw his text last night,’ I say.
He nods, but won’t look me in the eye.
‘Well, first of all, you need to know that it’s not what you think it is,’ I say. I’m surprised my voice sounds so calm. Inside I’m dying.
‘I have no idea what I think,’ he hisses at me. ‘Who is he?’
‘I met him at that conference I was at a few weeks ago. The one in Dublin,’ I reply. ‘He’s another teacher.’
‘Are you in love with him?’ he asks in a quiet voice and I feel like the biggest bitch in the world when I see how every word is slicing him up into little pieces.
‘No!’ I cry. ‘I swear to you, I am not having an affair. I’ve not slept with him.’
He closes his eyes for a moment. In what? Relief maybe? Disbelief?
‘So what exactly is this guy missing about you? Your startling wit? Your thoughts on sixth-year curriculum?’
I take a deep breath. This is harder than I ever thought it would be. When I made our vows I never dreamt that I’d ever even consider cheating on Olly. How did I ever allow it to happen? I can’t justify it in my own head. I’m not sure how I’ll explain it to Olly. ‘We got on well at that conference. He made me laugh. I’d not done much of that for a long time.’ Okay, that sounds lame – even to me.
‘Because I’ve been such a drag to live with,’ Olly says. Hurt all over his face.
I ignore that. ‘We were both in Connolly station waiting for our trains home, he kissed me goodbye. It didn’t last long. But longer than it should have.’ I don’t want to hurt Olly any more, but I know I have to be completely honest.
‘And that’s it?’ Olly asks.
‘No. The night that Evie drank too much, when you called me, I was with him.’
‘Where?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘YES!’
‘In a bar. Having a drink.’
And now, as I remember his hand caressing my thigh, I don’t feel flushed with passion at the memory, I feel flushed with guilt and shame.
‘If I hadn’t called, what would have happened?’ Olly asks.
‘I wouldn’t have come home that night,’ I reveal myself, in all its ugly naked truth, to Olly.
I wait for the shouting, the accusations, the natural fall-out of my confession. But I’m met with silence instead.
Olly refills both our glasses and we drink in silence, save for the sound of other campers as they go about their evening business.
‘I don’t think I’ve been a good husband this past year,’ he says.
I’m startled by the admission. My immediate reaction is to start contradicting him, but I hold my tongue and remain still, waiting to hear what he has to say.
‘Spending time with you these past few weeks, I’ve realised something. I took you, I took us, for granted. I was careless with us, Mae. I became so fixated with being the perfect stay-at-home dad, I forgot that I was a husband too. I’m sorry.’ Olly puts his glass down.
‘Thank you for acknowledging that. I needed to hear that. I’m sorry too,’ I answer. ‘Because I am not without blame. I was jealous of you and the children. I felt sidelined. And that made me bitter and I’m pretty sure not pleasant to live with.’
We both let the apologies hang for a few minutes. The air feels charged with honesty and the raw open wounds of confession.
‘Can you forgive me? The kiss?’
‘It’s over, whatever it was?’
I nod. ‘I give you my word.’
‘Then, yes, I forgive it. I think that there are bigger issues we need to sort out. Maybe it’s time I stopped running and took a deeper look at my life. I’ve not been happy, Mae.’
‘I know. I felt so helpless watching you this past year. I tried to help, but it was hard. You kept pushing me away.’
‘I know. I felt such a fucking failure when I lost that job. And it clouded everything. I knew things were falling apart at home.’
‘Why did you ignore it, then?’ I ask.
‘I think because I was reeling from the redundancy, I felt useless. A failure.’ He stops and looks at me. ‘Was it because I couldn’t … you know … because I was impotent, is that why you and Philip had whatever you had?’
‘No!’ I exclaim. ‘No, Olly. Do you think that our marriage is that shallow, that it’s only about sex?’
He shrugs.
‘It was part of it, of course. But more how you reacted to me when I tried to talk to you. You didn’t just push me away in the bedroom, Olly. You pushed me away in every part of our life. In the end, I suppose I gave up trying. It was easier to stay away.’
‘I wish I could go back … do things differently.’
And that, right there, brings me right to the very question that’s been plaguing me for weeks. It can’t be avoided any longer. ‘How do we know that it will be different when we get home? I can’t do this dance any more. I’m not strong enough to go through that again, feel like that again.’
‘I don’t want to lose what we have here, you and me and the kids. We’ve got to find a way to bring that home with us,’ Olly says.
The fact that we both want the same thing gives me hope that we can find a way out. I feel like we are at a junction in the road. And we can very easily take the wrong turning and then there would be no way back.
‘Pops was right. It is easier here, less complicated. But when we get back to Wexford, all those issues we left behind will still be waiting for us.’
He nods in agreement. ‘It was just that with Pops being ill, I was thinking a lot about Mam and him, my childhood. She was such an incredible mother, so selfless and devoted to me. I figured that if I couldn’t work, I could at least finally give our children the same childhood I’d had. I could do that much at least.’
I feel like he’s turned around and soccer-punched me with that statement. ‘Do you know how insulting that is? You make it sound like the children were neglected up until you stepped in.’ I try to keep my voice calm, but I’m dangerously close to crying. ‘I was a good mother. I am a good mother. I might not bake every day, but the kids are loved and taken care of. It’s so hard constantly hearing about your saintly mother and it’s impossible for me to compete with a dead woman.’
There, I said it out loud. All the anger and resentment of the past year spills out. All the moments where I felt sidelined explode within me.
‘The children have a good childhood, courtesy of both of us, I’ll have you know. They have a mother who loves them!’ I say.
Damn it, I can’t stop the tears. I’m furious that I am getting so emotional.
‘I never meant that you were a bad mother!’ Olly shouts back. ‘Of course you are a good mother. The best.’
‘But you did mean that, Olly. Nobody can ever compete with the perfect image you have in your head of your mam. I’ll always fall short. You’ve just said it. You wanted them to have the same as you had with your mother. Therefore inferring that I don’t give them that,’ I say, the anger now gone from me.
He looks horrified by my words, but he doesn’t deny them and I can see in his eyes that he knows I’m right.
‘I am so sorry your mother died when she did. My heart breaks thinking about it. But your ode to your mother this past year was a slap in the face to me. You changed everything at home, constantly telling me how much better it was now that you were in charge. You eliminated all my roles, till I no longer felt that I was needed!’ I say.
‘I didn’t mean to do that,’ he says. ‘I had no idea, Mae. I’m so sorry.’
‘Well you did,’ I reply. ‘While you were trying to reenact your idyllic childhood, you stomped all over my role as a mother. Every day telling me when I came home about the things you’d done with the house, with the kids, that had never been done before. If I heard the phrase, we don’t do it like that any more once, I heard it a million times. You made me feel shit as a mother, as a wife, as a woman.’
Olly’s eyes are wide with shock. I don’t think he had any clue how upsetting it had been for me, to lose my sense of identity at home.
‘I had no idea of the extent of your feelings. I guessed some of it, but fuck, Mae. I’ve been a gobshite,’ Olly says.
‘The crazy thing is, I would have given anything to meet her. But I can’t live in the shadow of a saint; it’s too hard. What don’t I get here, Olly? What am I missing?’ I say.
He is quiet for a long time before he turns to me with such sorrow stamped on his face. ‘It’s my fault she died.’
‘I don’t understand.’ The hairs on the back of my neck stand up in fear.
‘The day she died. It should have been me, Mae. I should be dead and Mam should be alive,’ Olly repeats.
‘It was an accident. A lorry killed your mother. It was speeding, it couldn’t stop. How is that your fault?’ I say.
‘I turned the bend and she was standing at our gate waiting for me. Just like she did every day. She was smiling and I started to run towards her, because there was going to be cake. She’d promised me cake,’ Olly says, his body rocking back and forth. ‘I saw a stone in the middle of the road. A big one and I couldn’t resist. I ran over to kick it.’
Olly’s voice is flat and my heart breaks for him as he remembers that awful day.
‘I wasn’t expecting the lorry to come around the bend and it was hurtling towards me. I heard Mam shouting my name. But I froze. I couldn’t move,’ Olly continues. ‘The next thing I knew she was pushing me to the ditch, out of the lorry’s path.’
‘Oh, Olly,’ I say, reaching for his hand, wishing with my every fibre that I could find a way to stop this.
‘But the lorry couldn’t swerve in time and he hit her. So you see, it was my fault she died. I should have been the one, not her,’ Olly says, looking at me with such unwarranted shame.
‘And you’ve thought that all these years? You’ve carried that with you? That you were somehow responsible?’
He nods.
One life lost and another spent feeling a guilt that isn’t warranted. I want to cry at the injustice of it.
‘She saved you. There’s a difference. She chose to save her son’s life. You didn’t kill her. She died happy knowing you lived.’
I continue, ‘Listen to me. If Jamie ran out in front of a lorry, I would die to save his life in a heartbeat. That’s what parents do. They sacrifice everything for their children. That’s what your mother did. Willingly.’
Olly looks at me and I see in his eyes the child that he was, so much like our Jamie now.
‘You were the same age as Jamie when your mam died. A child. You were kicking a stone on the road, as boys do. That’s all. You didn’t kill your mam. It was a horrific accident,’ I say again. ‘You have got to let this go, Olly. You cannot carry this burden of guilt around with you any more.’
I walk over and sit in my husband’s lap, pulling his head into my breast and we rock together for a long time.
‘I’ve never really spoken about any of this to anyone before, except Pops,’ Olly says.
‘Well, you’ve told me now.’ And so many things begin to make sense now that I know the full story. Olly’s constant guilt at not being a good enough son or father. The times where he looks haunted whenever his mother’s name comes up. ‘That day, when your mother died, she was happy wasn’t she?’
Olly’s face is contorted in pain as he recalls that last day. ‘Every day, even when it was raining, she’d stand there with an umbrella over her head, unfaltering, watching for me to saunter up the road. No doubt with me kicking a stone as I went, imagining I was Ian Rush, striking gold.’
I smile at this and gently stroke his cheek, as he remembers. ‘She was a beautiful woman, I recognise that now. She was wearing a blue tea dress and I can still see it rustling against her legs in the early-morning breeze. She loved that dress. Just before I turned the bend, I looked back and she was blowing kisses at me. Her face was alight with humour as she did so, thinking I’d be all embarrassed. I knew that I might have been seen by one of the Murphys who lived next door to us. They were awful slaggers. But I didn’t mind and I chanced blowing a few kisses back to her. It was almost as if she danced in mid air as she caught them in her hands, pulling them in close to her heart.’
‘Oh, Olly.’
‘I’m so glad I blew those kisses to her now,’ Olly says and my heart splinters into a million pieces for his pain.
The air now changed, tension gone and in its place a sense of peace.
We talk for hours, about our marriage, our hopes and dreams for the future, our love for each other and the children.
‘I need you to know that I never thought you were a bad mother. The kids adore you. You’ve earned their love, because you have given them nothing but love since the moment they were born. And Evie, well, the reason she’s doing so great now is because of you,’ Olly says.
‘Because of both of us. We’re a good team,’ I say. ‘Most of the time, anyhow. It’s so good seeing Evie smile again. Even if it’s just at her phone, rather than at us! She’s making new friends, getting back her spark again.’
‘I know. And Jamie is …’
‘Starving most likely,’ I say, making Olly laugh. ‘Jamie is just joy. Simple as.’
With our second bottle of wine we excavate deeper, maybe feeling brave because of the wine, maybe because we are on this road to truth and now that we are baring all, there’s nothing that can remain hidden.
‘So what’s going to happen when we get home?’
‘I wasn’t happy in that job. I don’t even know how I ended up working there for so long. I mean, the plan was that when I studied accountancy I’d open my own firm. Instead, I spent twenty years working for a company that tossed me out without even a backward glance,’ Olly says. ‘Not that I’m bitter!’ He raises his glass in a mock salute.
‘At least you got some redundancy. That will help put the kids through college,’ I say. ‘Plus we paid off some debt and the car loan. But it’s clearly not working as it is at home. You need to figure out what you want to do. If you want to be a stay-at-home dad, that’s fine. But I can’t go back to the way it was. I mean, I was afraid to bring up the subject of money for fear of you going into a meltdown.’
‘Every time you said how tight things were, how we needed to work on a household budget, I felt like you were giving me a dig.’
‘I’m sorry I made you feel like that. It wasn’t my intention.’ I hope he realises that now.
‘I thought that I wanted to be a stay-at-hom
e dad. I’d convinced myself that it was the right thing to do. Up until this trip, I had it all figured out,’ Olly sighs.
‘And now?’ I say to him.
‘Now I think that I’ve wasted a lot of years playing it safe. I feel different now. These past few weeks, this trip, embracing the unknown, spending so much time with you and the children. It’s changed me.’
‘In what way?’ I ask.
‘Well, I want more from life, Mae,’ he states. ‘I want to do bigger and better things. See more of the world. Make a bigger contribution than I am right now. I don’t think I can truly be the real authentic Olly Guinness, whatever or whoever the fuck that is, until I am true to myself. So I’ve got to find a way to be who I really am.’
He looks at me with such intensity the hairs on the back of my neck rise once more.
‘Wow. So who do you want to be?’
‘I want to be your husband. I want to be the children’s father. I want to work, have a new career. I just haven’t worked out what that is going to be yet.’
‘I want to be your wife too,’ I whisper and he kisses me. ‘What don’t you want?’
‘I don’t want to go back to sitting in a cubicle again. I know that much. And I know that I’ve made mistakes with the kids, but I’ve loved spending so much time with them. I don’t want to lose that,’ he answers.
‘Okay, well that’s a start,’ I reply. ‘We can work on the rest – together.’
We go to bed, emotionally and physically drained from our talk. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt so close to him in all our years together. I swing my legs over him and with my lips trace every inch of his face, his torso. We make love and, in every touch and kiss, I think we are on the right road to finding our way back home to each other.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
MAE
‘I know the motorways are handy for clocking up the miles, but we could have been driving anywhere in the world this morning. It was like one long grey carpet stretched empty for miles in front of us,’ I say, then point to the view in front of us. ‘But this – look at the landscape now!’
We are driving through a small village. A mix of whitewashed and pastel-painted cottages sit prettily on the road’s edge. Residents look up with interest as Olly drives Nomad at a snail’s pace past their houses. I wave and smile and in return see only grinning, warm faces waving back at me.
The Things I Should Have Told You Page 27
