I’ll be home for Christmas

by Roisin Meaney

  ‘But Mum—’

  ‘Eat,’ she commanded, and they gave up and grabbed spoons and plunged them in. How many more years, she wondered, leaning against the sink to watch them, would they submit to her? How long before one of them – or more likely, both of them simultaneously – simply refused to do as they were asked? Three years away from teenagers, new territory for her. Cross that bridge when she came to it.

  She turned to look out the window. She spotted footprints in the snow and followed them until she found him, wheeling a barrow of blocks from the fallen shed across to the far side. No sign of the animals: he must be leaving them in Donal’s shed until the weather softened, or until the field was back to normal.

  That wasn’t his wheelbarrow – Ben had painted ladybirds on his – and then she remembered that he’d kept it in the shed. Flattened, it must have been, not able to flee to safety like the animals. He must have borrowed this one, from Donal probably.

  She waited until he had dumped his load and was on the way back before rapping on the window. He looked across and waved, nose and cheeks pink above the new navy scarf Gladys had finished knitting for him the day before, his breath fogging in the still air.

  She kept forgetting to thank him for the necklace. She must do it, the very next time they spoke.

  ‘Finished!’ Ben pushed back his chair and darted out to the hall for his jacket, leaving a good third of his cereal behind in the bowl. Laura remained silent, not having the energy to argue.

  ‘Finished!’ Seamus clattered down his spoon and followed suit. Not to be outdone, the girls scrambled from their chairs and clamoured for freedom. Laura wiped hands and faces and bundled them into jackets, hats, scarves and gloves.

  ‘Stay where Dad can see you,’ she instructed, ‘and keep your gloves on’ – and out the four of them rushed, Charlie scampering after them, barking delightedly, leaving Laura to catch her breath and eat something.

  She put an egg on to boil. She took a slice of bread from the loaf and slotted it into the toaster and pressed down the lever, but it refused to engage. She’d forgotten again about the electricity being out. She transferred the bread to the grill of the cooker, and boiled the kettle and made green tea.

  She ate standing up out of habit, listening to her children’s high-pitched squeals carrying clearly across the blanketed field, and hoping that her various guests didn’t hear them too. Not much she could do about it if they did: asking excited children not to make noise was like asking the tide not to come in twice a day.

  She finished her breakfast and added a shovel of coal to the stove. She cleared the table and mopped up the milk splashes and set three new places. She boiled the kettle again and washed and dried the dishes. She made a fresh cup of green tea and sank into the chair by the stove with it.

  No sound yet from upstairs. Twenty minutes until she needed to make Gladys’s morning cuppa. Check on Poppy then too: she’d be due to wake.

  She set her untouched tea on the floor. She let her head tip back and closed her eyes. Not sleeping, just taking a breather. Just gathering her energy for the next bit.

  She slept with the abandon of a child, surrendering herself completely. Head tilted to the left, mouth dropped open. Hands resting loosely on her thighs, palms up, fingers curling inwards. Legs in navy trousers jutting in a straight line from beneath her loose grey sweater, pink-slippered toes aimed at the ceiling.

  In her sleep she looked defenceless, and as young as Tilly. Each of her exhalations slid out like a sigh of relief.

  The kitchen was warm, a fire glowing in the stove by Laura’s chair. The red tablecloth of last evening had been removed. This morning the table held three place settings, a huddle of cereal boxes, a milk jug, a sugar bowl and a butter dish. Tilly wondered where the children were – not still asleep, surely?

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered, ‘let’s find you some breakfast.’ She knew from last evening that Poppy was bottle-fed – already weaned, or maybe Laura not a fan of breastfeeding.

  Ma hadn’t breastfed either of her babies – Tilly had no idea why not. She’d been nine when Robbie was born, too young to be privy to that kind of information. But even with Jemima, five years later, Tilly hadn’t asked, and the subject had never come up. It wasn’t the kind of thing you talked about with Ma.

  She remembered being told about menstruation. Her monthly visitor, Ma called it. Instructions are on the pack, she said, presenting eleven-year-old Tilly with a brown-paper bag of sanitary napkins, warning her never to leave it around where her father might see it, and always to dispose of used ones discreetly.

  The exchange had left Tilly feeling vaguely ashamed, and more than a little confused. She assumed that the phenomenon was peculiar to their family, or at least limited to certain unfortunate female souls. She awaited her first monthly visitor with apprehension, terrified that her awful secret might be discovered. When the topic was more comprehensively covered a few months later by the school’s sex-education programme, and she learned that every female in the world experienced periods, the relief was immense, even if the periods themselves weren’t exactly welcome.

  Until they stopped coming.

  She tiptoed with the baby around the kitchen, opening haphazardly filled cupboards in search of the tin of baby formula that Gavin had used. She pushed aside cans of spaghetti and rice pudding and packets of biscuits until she eventually found it. The instructions were pretty much the same as at home.

  As she was filling the kettle she became aware of high-pitched voices outside. She looked out and there the four of them were, piling snow into a little mound, building what she assumed would be a snowman. And there was Gavin, wheeling a barrow across the field.

  ‘Look,’ she whispered, ‘snow’ – but Poppy was more interested in trying to grab at the blind cord. ‘Snow,’ Tilly repeated, gazing at the scene that had so mesmerised her when she’d seen it for the first time upstairs.

  A voice, she’d thought, had woken her, someone speaking in the corridor outside – but by the time she’d surfaced fully from sleep it was gone, and there was nothing to be heard but the faint cries of gulls outside the window.

  She’d lain in bed, going back over the events of the previous day, reliving them one by one. A day full of firsts, it had been. Her first time in a Catholic church, her first boat trip, her first time to step on Roone soil, her first encounter with her sister.

  It must be late: the curtains were edged all around with light. She reached for her watch and squinted, but it was still too dim to read the hands. She pushed back the duvet and got up, and walked in bare feet to the window.

  She parted the curtains.

  The sight was breathtaking. Snow everywhere she looked, her first sight of real snow. The hills cloaked in it, not an inch of colour to be seen on them. Hedges and trees capped, fields hidden beneath a white coating. It was magnificent, it was enthralling. She stood there, ignoring the cold floor, and drank it in.

  The roof of the henhouse was topped with snow. Two hens wandered about, the rest presumably staying indoors. Someone had already paid them a visit – a mess of footprints churned up the snow about the gate, and more were evident in the enclosure. The old man of yesterday maybe, coming around to see them again.

  The window was an old-style sash one. She undid the catch and pushed up the bottom half until she could poke her head and shoulders out. The crisp air was as shocking as splashing her face with icy water. She scooped snow from the ledge and touched it with the tip of her tongue. She got her phone from the bedside locker, shivering now, and took photos – wondering even as she clicked who would see them, or when.

  Don’t think about that now. Not yet.

  She had to get out in the snow, she had to walk in it. She had to discover how it felt under her feet. She pulled clothes from the suitcase she had yet to unpack, and dressed hurriedly. As she was brushing her teeth she heard a sound nearby that she recognised. She lifted her head and listened for several seconds. It dipped an
d fell, and didn’t stop.

  She spat and rinsed. She left the en-suite and opened her bedroom door gingerly and made her way along the corridor, following the sound. The door of the room it was coming from was ajar: she pushed it open slowly and stuck her head inside.

  ‘Shush, shush—’

  Laura and Gavin’s room, it had to be. The curtains still drawn, just a tiny gap letting in a chink of light. She crossed to the cot and stooped over it. ‘Shush, Poppy,’ she whispered, but Poppy wept on.

  She felt about among the tangle of blankets and located a blue soother and inserted it between the parted lips. Poppy latched on immediately, whimpering still, her tearful eyes fixed on Tilly’s face.

  She crossed to the window and pulled the curtains apart. A wicker basket in a corner held the supplies she needed: she lifted Poppy from the cot and lowered her onto the unmade bed, pushing aside a grey tracksuit that had been flung across it.

  She undid and wiped and powdered and replaced, her movements practised and confident. Jemima had been a smaller baby, her limbs more slender, her cry less robust than Poppy’s – but a baby was a baby, and changing a nappy was the same the world over.

  She took fresh clothes from a bundle that sat on the chest of drawers. She wrapped the damp nappy in a bag and retrieved the brown rabbit from the cot and they made their way downstairs, encountering nobody in the process, and found Laura asleep in the kitchen.

  The kettle boiled. Tilly found a bottle on the draining board and made up the formula – just over four months old, Gavin had told her – all the while humming softly as Poppy sat on her hip, sucking steadily on the soother and making occasional grabs at Tilly’s hair. She’d forgotten that about babies, their fascination with anything that dangled. She’d had to tie up her hair around Robbie and Jemima for about six months.

  She filled a mug with cold water and sat the bottle in it. Maybe that was why Laura wore her hair so short, surrounded by small children as she’d been for several years.

  She glanced at her sleeping sister again. My parents separated when I was twelve, Laura had said the day before. Diane Potter had walked away, had kept going until she got to Australia. How could a mother leave her child just like that? What must it have been like for Laura? At least Tilly had never had to cope with a vanishing parent; she’d had Ma and Pa all her life.

  She lifted the bottle from the water and wiped it dry. She tested the milk on her wrist, like Ma had taught her. She moved to the window seat and eased the dummy from the baby’s mouth and inserted the bottle’s teat – and immediately felt the little body relax and settle into the serious business of feeding. The same basic instinct the world over.

  They gazed at one another as Poppy drank. ‘Hello,’ Tilly whispered. ‘Remember me? We met yesterday. I’m Auntie Tilly.’

  She’d forgotten how she used to love this, how she used to look forward to the feeds almost as much as Jemima had. She loved everything about babies: the solid warm weight of them as they lay cradled in your arms, the trusting way their eyes would fix on you as they drank, the indefinable, irresistible smell from the top of a baby’s head when you pressed your nose to it and inhaled. She did it now: Poppy’s head smelt precisely the same as Jemima’s.

  She wondered how she’d feel about her own. She hoped she’d love it, this creature she hadn’t planned, hadn’t anticipated. She wondered what kind of a mother she’d make. She couldn’t think about having a baby for long: it made her too scared.

  ‘Morning.’

  She looked up quickly to find Laura awake and watching them. She felt suddenly flustered. ‘I hope it’s OK,’ she said, ‘that I brought her down. She was crying – I heard her. I didn’t want to just leave her.’

  Laura hid a yawn behind her hand. ‘Of course it’s OK. And you’ve made up a bottle: I’m impressed.’

  ‘I found the formula in that cupboard.’ Her words were tripping over one another. ‘I boiled the kettle. I let it cool.’

  ‘Sounds like you did everything right then,’ Laura said mildly. ‘And I see you’ve dressed her too.’

  ‘I got the clothes on the chest of drawers.’

  ‘And the nappy?’

  ‘I changed it upstairs. I found the things in the basket—’ She stopped. Was she overstepping the mark? Barging in on them yesterday, taking over today. Going where she hadn’t been invited. ‘I forgot to bring down the used one,’ she said, ‘but I did put it in a bag.’

  Laura didn’t seem concerned. ‘You’ve done this before,’ was all she said.

  ‘I used to help look after Jemima, when she was a baby. My sister, she’s three now.’ My sister: for the first time it sounded not quite right. ‘My adoptive parents’ daughter, I mean. Their real daughter.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Laura said. ‘You told me about her yesterday – I’d forgotten. Thanks for helping out, I appreciate it.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I love babies.’ She opened her mouth to say more, and closed it without a word. Too soon.

  Silence fell. Poppy lifted a languid hand, let it drop: Jemima all over again. Tilly couldn’t shake a feeling of self-consciousness. Despite Laura’s declaration of the night before, despite Tilly being acknowledged as an official family member, she still felt like a visitor. But that was bound to happen, wasn’t it? It would take a while, that was all.

  More shouts from outside. ‘You saw the snow,’ Laura remarked.

  ‘I did – it’s wonderful.’

  ‘Your first time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The girls’ too. They were so excited.’ Laura got to her feet. ‘Bet you’re keen to get out in it. We’ve been told it’s not going to last.’

  ‘I was thinking I might take a walk – and I’d love to go to the sea.’

  ‘There’s a beach not ten minutes down the road: turn right when you go out. Have something to eat first.’ Laura opened the fridge. ‘You like eggs? We have lots of eggs, piles of them, our ladies never stop laying. You could have scrambled egg on toast. And there are sausages and rashers to go with them.’ She rummaged about, her face hidden. ‘Yogurt, strawberry or cherry, and there’s pudding, black only, I’m afraid. Oh, and we have cheese. You like cheese? Cheddar and feta.’

  Was she talking too much? Was she ill at ease too? Were they both feeling their way? Tilly found this possibility somewhat comforting.

  ‘Toast is fine,’ she said. ‘It’s all I usually have at home. And I can do it myself – you don’t have to look after me.’

  But Laura took a wrapped loaf of bread from a metal bin and pulled out two slices. ‘You stay where you are: I can pretend I have a nanny.’

  ‘I love babies,’ Tilly said, remembering as soon as the words were out that she’d already said it.

  ‘I can see that.’ Laura pulled out the grill pan and laid the bread on it. She came to sit on the bench next to Tilly. There were dark shadows under her eyes.

  ‘You’re tired,’ Tilly said.

  ‘I’m always tired,’ Laura replied lightly, reaching out to encircle Poppy’s fat ankle with her hand. ‘Aren’t I?’ she asked the baby. ‘Mama’s always tired, isn’t she?’ She ran a finger along Poppy’s cheek while the baby pumped her legs.

  ‘You must let me help,’ Tilly said. ‘While I’m here. I’d like to help.’

  Laura turned to her. Their eyes met. Outside in the field, someone shrieked.

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ Laura said. A second passed, and a few more. ‘This will take some getting used to,’ she said. ‘Won’t it?’

  Tilly didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Us, I mean.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘But you’re staying such a short time. Wednesday you said you’re going home?’

  Here was her chance. Now she should say it, she should tell Laura what she was planning, what she was hoping would happen. She should tell her everything right now, while nobody was there, while she had the chance.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t say it. The words wou
ldn’t come.

  ‘Wednesday,’ she said. ‘The thirtieth.’

  A nine-day trip was what she’d booked. The question hadn’t been whether to buy a one-way or a return ticket – with a holiday visa a return ticket was mandatory. She’d settled on nine days, which was short enough not to have Ma and Pa asking questions, and long enough to get to know the lie of the land in Ireland, and to gauge whether her plan was going to work.

  ‘I wasn’t sure how long to book for,’ she said, ‘when I hadn’t told you I was coming, I mean.’

  ‘You thought I might send you packing,’ Laura said.

  ‘No.’ The colour rose in Tilly’s face. ‘I thought … you mightn’t be here, or something—’

  Laura smiled. ‘Relax, I’m teasing. Just seems an awfully long way to come for such a short time, that’s all.’

  ‘I know. It is.’

  Laura yawned again. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Tired.’

  In the short silence that followed, Tilly smelt burning. ‘The toast,’ she said, and Laura leaped to her feet and pulled out the grill pan.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Tilly said, ‘I can scrape it’ – but Laura threw it into a battered plastic basin that sat next to the draining board.

  ‘Caesar will eat it,’ she said, placing two fresh slices under the grill. ‘He’s not a bit fussy.’

  ‘Caesar?’ Tilly had thought the dog was called Charlie.

  ‘Our pot-bellied pig. You’ll meet him soon – he’s away at the moment. Here, pass over that child, you’ve done enough. And put the kettle on for tea. I forgot it.’

  Tilly surrendered Poppy and got to her feet. As she brought the kettle to the sink the baby burped loudly.

  ‘Oops,’ Laura said. ‘Watch your manners, missy, in front of Auntie Tilly.’

  Auntie Tilly: already it was starting to sound familiar. She wondered what Ma would say if she knew that Tilly was an auntie to three girls and two boys. She lit the gas ring under the kettle and kept an eye on the bread until it was toasted. The butter was a deep yellow.