Ma, I've Reached for the Moon an I'm Hittin the Stars

by Martha Long

  ‘Yeah, maybe another time,’ he said, looking hopeful, trying to give himself a lift.

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said. ‘So, what are you up to?’ I asked, feeling more at ease now we got that one out of the way.

  ‘Oh, I work for a state body, a well-known organisation,’ he said, saying the name and grinning at me. ‘I try to convince foreign investors to set up business in Ireland,’ he said, looking at me and smiling.

  ‘So, are you successful?’

  ‘Moderately. It’s a long drawn-out process, working out package incentives. You know, offering them capital inducements. It’s all to try and bring employment into the country. So, that’s the way it is,’ he said.

  Then he said, looking at me more hopeful, ‘What time is your train? Maybe we can have time for a quickie!’

  ‘WHAT?’ I said, dropping my mouth, ready to box him in the choppers.

  ‘Oh, my God, sorry! No, no, that’s not what I meant at all!’ he said, burying his head in his hands, then looking up at me, saying, ‘I meant lunch! I was thinking we could have a quick lunch together, somewhere close to the Gare de Lyon.’

  ‘I know what you meant,’ I said. ‘You and your quickie. You must think you are bloody down along the Rue Pigalle already!’

  ‘What! You know about that place?’ he said.

  ‘Of course! I am not a virgin tourist to Paris, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I do like your turn of phrase,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, not intended as a double entendre!’ I said, letting him see the smile in my eyes but keeping my face straight.

  ‘Listen, how about giving me your phone number at home? Maybe we can get together and have a meal out some night?’ he said, moving in closer, getting more hopeful again.

  ‘Sure, will you be bringing the wife? You forgot to take the wedding ring off,’ I said, pointing at the gold band on his finger.

  ‘No point in telling you I’m a widower, is there?’ he laughed, looking at me.

  I shook my head, smiling at him.

  ‘Or it was willed to me by the granny?’

  ‘No! Bring the wife! I’ll bring myself, and you can entertain the pair of us. How’s that?’

  ‘Jesus, no, she would kill me,’ he said, thinking I was serious.

  ‘Oh, well then, pity, because I am bisexual! In fact, I prefer women to men,’ I said, keeping my face very serious.

  ‘Nooo!’ he breathed, letting his eyes bulge out of his head.

  ‘Oh, yes! Nothing like three in a bed,’ I said, sounding like a Reverend Mother giving a lecture.

  ‘Tell us,’ he said, letting the eyes spin and the head fly while he got pictures and millions of sudden questions to ask.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, smiling as I stood up, not giving him a chance to ask his questions.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, looking confused as I waltzed off to the toilet, giving him time to work it out.

  I came out and headed back to my seat, seeing his was now empty. I looked over, seeing him sitting back in his own seat, pretending to look out the window, ignoring me. I sat down, making myself comfortable, and grinned over, seeing him with the nose pressed to the window, finding the clouds suddenly very interesting. Ha, that put a stop to his gallop, I laughed, looking out the window.

  ‘This is your captain speaking. We are now coming in to land. Please fasten your seatbelt. I must warn you we may experience some stiff turbulence. Winds have increased and the torrential rain has now deepened.’

  I put on my belt and looked out, seeing nothing but black clouds. After a while, nothing happened. We didn’t land and I had the idea I had seen some of them black clouds before.

  ‘This is your captain speaking. We are awaiting clearance from the air-traffic control. Please remain in your seats and keep your safety belts fastened.’

  Fuck, I knew it, I thought, looking out at the same black cloud I had seen at least five times before. ‘Do you think we might run out of petrol?’ I said, half-joking but really meaning it.

  He looked, wanting to pull his head away, but I kept my eyes fixed on him. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I know nothing about these things,’ he said, whipping his head back to the window, looking like I had frightened the life out of him.

  I tore me head to the window, snorting out a laugh. Jaysus, Martha, I think you went a bit too far with that one. You should have gone easy on him.

  ‘This is your captain speaking. We are now coming in to land.’

  Suddenly the plane bounced, fell, lifted and rattled. I watched the air stewardesses. They sat with their belts fastened, keeping their heads down. Uh oh, if they’re nervous, then this might be more than a few bumps, I thought, suddenly thinking we wouldn’t be the first plane to crash.

  ‘Hope you made a good confession,’ I said, looking over to your man, seeing him hanging on with both hands pressed to the armrests.

  He looked over, blowing out his cheeks, saying, ‘That might not have been a bad idea,’ then he shut his eyes as suddenly we dipped and the engine gave a whirring sound.

  Ah, Mammy! It’s diving out of control! I hope that pilot can see where he’s going. Maybe his window wipers might have seized up! Shut the fuck up, Martha. It runs on autopilot! Oh, Jaysus, the very thing that can go wrong! Oh, dear God, don’t let us crash. You know you can’t, it’s me! Remember? I’m only unlucky in love. I always come up smelling of roses for everything else. I’ll be content with that, God, so you can keep the love. Now! Just let this plane land in one piece!

  Suddenly the plane lifted again and the engine sounded more normal as it died down to a hum.

  ‘This is your captain speaking. We are going to abort our landing at Charles De Gaulle, and we will now be landing at Orly airport. Remain seated and please keep your seatbelts fastened.’

  There was a groan from the other passengers. This was supposed to be business class. Get going early and get there on time. Bloody hell! I hope I don’t miss my train connection. Anyway, nothing I can do now. So sit back and just take it easy.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. Please fasten your safety belts. We are now preparing to land at Orly airport. We hope you enjoyed your flight with us and may choose to travel with Aer Lingus again. We are the safest airline, with a long track record to prove it,’ he chirped, making it sound like an American country and western singer about to burst into song.

  We all looked out, seeing the runway coming into view. I held my breath as the plane dipped then looked like it was nose-diving as it aimed for the ground. We landed with a bump, then hopped and we were back rushing along the ground. I looked out, holding me breath. Oh! We’re coming in too fast. Jaysus! I wonder if the brakes are still working. You can’t tell, what with all that rain after getting at them.

  I let me breath go as the plane eased off, finally coming to a standstill as I listened to the silence. Then people were on their feet, rushing to grab their stuff out of the luggage racks. I stood up, seeing your man turn his back, burying himself in the luggage, getting his hands on his coat and briefcase. When he turned around, I was waiting.

  ‘Please would you mind getting my coat down? Ta, you’re very good. Pity, but I’m not lovely and tall like you,’ I said, letting my lips purse and giving a sniff like it was all very sad.

  He snapped his eyes then flew them up and grabbed my coat, landing it on top of me, covering my head.

  ‘Oh, you are good,’ I purred. ‘Such a gentleman. Listen,’ I whispered, ‘why don’t you give me your office phone number, then we can discuss terms on the telephone. I do a cut rate for wives! . . . Fuck, such rudeness!’ I snorted after getting pushed outa the way while he was already flying down the steps, looking like someone had set fire to his arse. I grinned and passed the stewardesses, smiling, saying, ‘Thank you for the wonderful service. I do indeed, yes, most indeed will be sure to travel with Aer Lingus when I next travel.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ they gushed, with me knowing full well they probably thought I was tuppence ha’pen
ny short of a shilling. Come to think of it, no! With the fur coat they would just say ‘Eccentric’. You’re only mad when you are a pauper. But it works – you can get away with murder! Nobody takes you seriously. Then you can wrong-foot them. Catch them on the hop! Walk off with the goodies! Nah, they didn’t see that coming. They were too busy thinking what an eejit you are.

  ‘Oh, happy days,’ I sang, muttering to myself coming through passport control. They waved me on. Oh, the curse on them! The good-for-nothing shiftless wonders. Now I’ve no stamp in me passport to show where I travelled. Lazy fuckers!

  I leapt into the station with the hounds of hell lapping at my feet. ‘Jaysus!’ I said, shaking my head, seeing stars of raindrops flying in all directions. I stopped to get my bearings and take a breath. ‘Here at last,’ I gasped, taking in the noise, the sounds, the smell and the rush of people in all directions. Then I heard another boom of thunder at my back as I looked out, seeing the coal-black morning as the rain and wind lashed, with lighting streaking across the glass doors, then hearing the roar of thunder.

  God, it’s great to be in out of that, I thought, seeing the water dripping off my fur coat. Bloody hell, I look like a drowned brown rat. Never mind, I will have more than enough time to dry off in the train. It is going to be a very long journey.

  OK, tickets? I looked around, seeing the queue of people standing waiting to buy their train tickets. Right, on you go, Martha, keep moving.

  ‘Bonjour, monsieur, express Paris à this,’ I said, giving him the destination I had written down.

  ‘Oui, madame!’ he said, nodding and handing me a ticket, after writing down how much. ‘Platform 11,’ he said in English.

  ‘Merci, monsieur. Au revoir!’

  I stood up as the train moved off and took off my wet coat, shaking the hell out of it, sending drops of water spraying around me, catching my face. Then I laid it out on the seat in front, hoping nobody would want to sit there. The train looked empty enough, with only a few people scattered, sitting by themselves or in pairs. Then I sat back and looked out the window, seeing Paris flying past and now we were heading into the country. The train fled Paris so fast it looked like we had the devil on our tail. Good, at least the trains here are fast and on time. So I should arrive tonight around ten o’clock, then make me way to where he lives using the omnibus, the local trains.

  God knows what time I will arrive there, but it won’t be the first time in my life I have been stranded in the late hours of the night, stuck in the middle of nowhere. But I don’t mind. I don’t care how long it takes, or how far I have to travel, I would go to the ends of the earth knowing Ralph is there. Only thing is, he doesn’t know I am coming.

  My heart started to hammer in my chest at the thought I will be seeing him so very soon. Jesus, after all this time, all these years. I was only eighteen the last time I ever saw or heard from him. Now here I am, a fully grown woman with a grown-up child of my own and a whole lifetime behind me. Now at last we will finally meet again.

  2

  God, when I think back on the first time I ever met him, I was only sixteen – so young, so desperate. I had nothing and nobody. Nowhere to lay down my head and not a penny in my pocket. In a way, I knew no better. I had no expectation that someone would help me. I only wanted to help myself. I knew there was nothing for nothing; you had to earn it. I didn’t miss anybody, and nobody missed me.

  Somehow my life had been simpler then. I needed to get above and beyond who and what I was. A nobody. The bastard of an unmarried mother, a fallen woman – we were outcasts in a Catholic, God-fearing little island that should have been called the ‘Isle of the Squinting Windows’. Everybody knew everyone, and everyone looked down on everybody else. God help you if you stepped out of line. Everybody had their place, and there’s a place for everyone. Mine was at the bottom of the heap. I was the scum nobody wanted. I grew up with it. I had been well taught by the world around me. Even among the poorest of the poor I was at the bottom of the heap. Scabby head, filthy dirty, barefoot, lice-ridden, no knickers. Don’t come near us, we don’t want to catch your disease. Men can do what they like with you; you can be sold for a few Woodbines.

  But when I was sixteen, I was free and away. Yet I still lacked the resources. I was too young to earn enough to survive in lodgings – not enough pay. I wasn’t qualified for a job, except what the nuns trained me for. A skivvy. Fuck that! I had ideas of my own. I just needed to get a way in. But how? I had ended up on the streets because I wouldn’t take their guff. To hell with the middle classes when they got you as a skivvy. You gave them your labour but they thought they bought you as a slave. No, I had an innate sense of my own worth. I knew I was as good as them. But they didn’t accept that. Ireland, the land of peasants. They didn’t know how to treat the lesser off with respect. Because it was accepted that if you were poor, then you were dirt. You couldn’t do much about it because you were dependent on them. So it was a vicious circle.

  But I had put all that pain and misery it caused me into a dream. I used the energy to burn a fire in my belly to climb up there alongside them and say, ‘Fuck you, now tell me you are better!’ I even knew by then I would not waste my time with them, one way or the other. I would be simply proving to myself I had achieved my dream. I could say, ‘Look, Ma, I am standing on top of the world! See! We are not at the bottom of the heap any more. Now we are someone, Ma. We get respect!’

  Yeah, that is what it was all about for me back then. Respect. I had dignity. I was a human being. I wanted to be treated as one.

  When I met Ralph, he showed me such respect, such dignity, at a time when I was at my lowest. I was on the streets, a tramp. He even gave me more. He looked at me like I was special, someone who could not just be liked but someone who could be loved. He made me feel lovely. Like I was wanted, I was somebody, I was special. Ralph, the man who had taken me, a lonely young waif wandering in a cold, uncaring, dark world, who had never felt the warmth of a mother’s arms, or rarely glimpsed the human side of kindness. It was he who picked me up and carried me, showing me the wonders and magic of life. To me, he was a god. The only man who had ever sent me soaring to the heavens with his gentle love for me, giving me a glimpse of a hidden magic. It was the wonderful world of life and love and just being alive, and how precious we are, just to be born.

  Yes, he was the only man I had ever felt safe with and I very quickly became addicted to it. I couldn’t get enough of him. He was the father and mother I never had. He was the cure for the kids at school and on the street, and the neighbours and the strangers who never thought much of me. They had shunned me, but he had made up for all that. He had enough love for me to fill up all the empty places they had left.

  But everything comes at a price. I had to pay very heavily for that bit of happiness. I often wondered since, was it worth it? The awful memory of that last time I ever saw him still remained vividly clear in my mind. The bittersweet memory of that awful day when he let me down and walked away, thinking he had put me standing on my feet. He had tenderly nurtured the child, then fell in love with the young woman I suddenly became. A young girl who was forbidden to him. Then it all ended. He had walked away because he thought he truly loved me. But it broke my heart, leaving me only a shadow. I very quickly took a wrong turning, ending up in a nightmare that cost me dearly. But nightmares were familiar to me and nothing kills us if we don’t let it.

  From then on, I was left to fly through life on a broken wing. I had to adapt, because the pain never healed. I was left to wander through my days, searching the faces of strangers, looking for another him. But I never did find him again. No, nobody ever came close to filling up the hole he left in my heart. A huge gaping hole that pained me for years. It only settled into a wound that got covered up by a big thick scab. Then it eased and I was able to forget and carry on. Now I thought I had found him in Sergei when I looked into his deeply penetrating, bright-green eyes. I thought he was hidden in the spiritual Sergei, the monk. B
ut, no, I never did find Ralph. The only man I have ever loved.

  It had all happened so very long ago but now he is back in Europe, right here in France. Home after years spent thousands of miles away, working as a missionary doctor. Yes, my incredibly handsome, majestic Ralph. The caring doctor, the loving man, the priest forbidden to me. But he doesn’t say if he is still a priest.

  I opened my bag, took out the letter and read it again, then I held it gripped in my hand, not wanting to let it go. This is part of him, something of himself poured into this letter. It happened when he held it in his two very own hands. He breathed over it as he was writing it. Then he let it rest against him, making contact with his body. He had been thinking about me when he wrote it, and now, yes, this letter is my way back to him.

  Jesus, I’m still stunned, it’s knocked me clean off my feet. I can’t think or feel about anything else but him. All my senses are filled up with him. He’s in my head and in my heart, and I can even sense him in my skin. Oh, but it does frighten me, that does. What will I do if something goes wrong?

  God almighty, here I am sitting on this train, and with every passing minute now it’s taking me closer to him. I can feel my heart thudding away in my chest, sensing him closer as the train thunders on through the dark night. But how will I take it if he doesn’t really want to know me? What if he has changed? Of course he’s changed. He could be someone with only a vague memory of me. A person moved on so far now he is well beyond what was once important to him then. I could be looking up into the face of someone who barely remembers me. Time could have changed him from the man he was to someone who is a stranger. Then what, Martha? I don’t know. I can’t look that far or even think that way.

  I have written to Sergei. I told him I need time to think, we both need to adjust. Especially him. It’s a huge step for him to leave a monastery after so many years, then try to adjust to life in the world without the back-up of a big organisation behind him. He will have to earn his own living. No, asking him to wait was the best decision I’ve made. One way or the other, even without Ralph, it would have been madness to jump into a decision to just get married out of the blue. No, I will be all right. Whatever happens, I am on my feet. My troubles are behind me. I had fallen as low as I could get, hitting rock bottom when I nearly succeeded in taking my own life. Now I am definitely growing stronger every day.