Eager to Please

by Julie Parsons

  Her father was seated at a long table. A nurse was beside him. She lifted a double-handled cup to his mouth, coaxing him, urging him on, until he sipped tentatively, as if, Rachel thought, this was the newest experience in the world for him.

  ‘Good boy, there’s a good boy,’ the nurse muttered, holding up a small square of toast, placing it against his lips. Again the pause, again the encouragement, the urging on, until eventually he opened his mouth and accepted the offering.

  ‘It’s the memory,’ the nurse said, looking up at Rachel. ‘They forget how to eat.’ Forget how to eat and drink, how to dress and wash, how to read and listen. Forget how to be human in the world.

  ‘But there’s one thing they don’t forget,’ the nurse said as she led him into the large room which looked out on to the garden. Double doors opened on to a sunny lawn. Inside it was dark. A young man sat at an old upright piano. He was playing a tune that Rachel recognized. Her father and the others took their seats in a large semicircle around him. Their grey heads were bowed, their arms hanging passively by their sides. Rachel stood in the doorway, uncertain. The man at the piano smiled a big broad grin.

  ‘Come on, lads and lassies. Take your partners for the waltz. Quick about it now.’

  Rachel watched her father. He began to sway from side to side on the chair, his feet in their slippers moved backwards and forwards in a familiar pattern. The nurse looked at Rachel. She gestured to the old man. Rachel took his hands and drew him up to standing. His hands felt so soft now, and small and withered, in hers. She remembered the way they had been in the years before. Large and strong, callused and capable. She thought of all the things he had taught her. To shoot and fish. To sail a boat. To grow vegetables and fruit. To drive. She could see his hands on the steering wheel. The veins stood up, blue ridges against the skin, brown, always brown, winter and summer. Now his hands were white and flecked with pale brown marks. Once he had always seemed to fill the space around him, now he seemed so small. Once he had been substantial, rock-solid in his uniform with his stiff peaked cap and his shoes that squeaked as he walked. Now his wrists were so thin she could have joined her finger and thumb around them, and his back was bent so his head was, for the first time ever, at the same level as hers.

  They shuffled slowly around the room.

  ‘Sing, everyone.’ The man at the piano stood and waved encouragingly with one arm. The nurses clapped in time. Rachel opened her mouth and the familiar words poured out. Her father sang too. Around and around they turned together. His hands grew warm in her grasp and his voice grew louder. She listened to the words he was singing. He knew them all, verse after verse.

  ‘Dada,’ she said, ‘it’s me. It’s Rachel. I’m here. It’s been such a long time, but I’m here now.’ He didn’t answer. He just kept on singing.

  Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight,

  Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene

  I’ll see you in my dreams.

  Round and around they waltzed. Rachel watched her father’s face. His expression had begun to soften and relax. He was losing that look of frozen immobility, the ‘lion face’ as she had heard it called. The man at the piano increased the pace, and the dancers spun more and more quickly. And then she saw her father smile, that same open, joyous expression that she had carried with her in her memory for so many years. Unseen all the time that she was in prison, when he had come to visit her, reluctantly, once a month. The prison surroundings filling him with revulsion, so he had drawn away, unable to engage in anything but the smallest of small talk. Once, she remembered, she had leaned across the table to touch him, but he had flinched and looked in the direction of the watching prison officer and quickly pulled back, out of her reach. It was shame, she knew. Of her betrayal of her husband, her infidelity, her public humiliation. And she could barely bring herself to look at him and see her shame reflected back at her from his watery-blue eyes. And then he told her, six months or so after she began her sentence, that they couldn’t keep Amy any longer. It was too much. They were too old. And besides, she was difficult. Her behaviour was disturbed.

  ‘She has nightmares. She wets the bed. She’s cheeky. Your mother can’t cope. We thought maybe the Becketts might take her. But it’s impossible. We can’t bring ourselves to speak to them.’

  And she said no, she didn’t want her going there, and please, please could they not just hold on for a bit longer. She’d be out of here soon, she knew she would. But he said no. He had spoken to the social worker. They would find Amy a foster-family. It was common practice. It would be better in the long run.

  But now the music had stopped and the man at the piano had closed the lid. There was a sudden silence, then a sob as one of the old ladies began to cry. She stood by herself in the middle of the floor, her hands reaching out, her feet still moving, taking delicate little steps from side to side. One of the nurses stepped forward and took her by the arm, leading her away, hushing her sobs, distracting her with offers of chocolate biscuits. The others followed without protest. Rachel’s father dropped her hands. He turned away from her, his head bowed. His feet in their slippers shuffled forward.

  ‘Dada.’ Rachel tried to take his arm but he pulled himself away. ‘Dada, please, won’t you stay with me for a bit longer?’

  He paused. He looked at her. His pale blue eyes met her own. For an instant there was recognition. She smiled and held out her arms to him. She stepped towards him again, but he moved away.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not you, you’re not my girl. You made me feel bad. Your shame brought me shame. My girl was good. You were bad. You did a bad thing.’

  ‘No.’ She took hold of his sleeve. ‘No, I didn’t. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my fault. Please, you must believe me.’

  But already he had joined the line of bowed grey heads moving towards the double doors that led back to the bedrooms. She made as if to go with him, but the nurse turned to her and blocked her way.

  ‘He’s tired now. They’re all tired. They’ll want to rest for a while. Come back tomorrow if you like. Oh, and before I forget,’ she paused and Rachel waited for the familiar expression of curiosity to spread across her face, ‘Matron said would you drop into the office on your way out.’

  It was late when she got back to her room and she was very hungry. She felt so weak that she wasn’t sure she was going to make it up the last steep flight of stairs. Her hands shook as she fitted the key into the door, her stomach cramped, waves of pain and nausea that reminded her of childbirth. She kicked the door closed behind her and frantically jerked open the cupboard above the sink. She pulled out a small loaf of bread and began to tear at it, ripping off hunks and shoving them into her mouth, until at last her panic began to subside. Then she sat down on the floor beside the wide bay window, rested her head against a cushion, folded her arms tightly, slipping her hands underneath her armpits and closed her eyes.

  It was almost dark when she opened them again. Below her on the busy road from Glenageary to Dun Laoghaire the street lights glowed, bright points of orange like candles on a birthday cake. She felt stiff and cold. She pushed herself up to sitting. Beside her on the floor was the small leather suitcase that she had brought with her from the old people’s home. The one that the Matron had told her that her father had wanted her to have.

  ‘He said to me when he came here first – after your mother died and he couldn’t manage by himself any longer – he said to me over and over again, when he was still lucid. He said that one day you would come to see him, and when you did I was to give you this.’ She turned back from the large locked cupboard in the corner of her office, with the brown case held out in front of her like a votive offering.

  Rachel picked it up and rested it on her knees. The remains of a tattered label clung to the lid. She read aloud the words printed in faded blue-black ink. Kathleen Simpson, Belacorick House, Co. Mayo. Her mother’s name, her mother’s home. Long forgotten that she had come from that place by the river. Run away with Gerry
Jennings, the young guard who came to the village. Changed her religion, brought her children up in the ways of their father. Punished for years by her own people. Denied her birthright.

  Rachel put her thumbs to the metal locks and pushed hard. They clicked open. She lifted the lid. Inside was a large brown envelope and a piece of lined paper. The crabbed writing, recognizably her father’s, said: From your mother. She wanted you to have this. Something to help you get back on your feet.

  Rachel lifted out the envelope. It was heavy, bulky. She turned it upside down. Wads of money, five- and ten-pound notes dropped out and scattered on the floor. She sat up quickly and began to gather them up, smoothing out the stiff, waxy paper, placing them in piles, counting them. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty thousand pounds all together. More than enough to make a difference.

  She stood up and rummaged beneath the sink. She found a supermarket plastic bag and bundled the money into it. Then she knelt down beside her bed and carefully, with the point of a knife, unpicked the stitching around one corner of the base. She pulled back the stained fabric and squeezed the plastic bag and its precious contents inside, pushing it down between the springs, then threaded a needle and quickly and neatly restitched it. She had never been the best at hiding precious belongings when she was in prison. There were others whose skills were legendary, spoken of with awe by both prisoners and screws. But this would do, for the time being, until she could find somewhere more secure, more permanent.

  She lay down on the bed and wrapped a blanket around her. Beside her hung her map. She looked at the coloured shapes she had marked out on it and lifted up her hand to touch them. Soon, it would be time. She turned her head away and closed her eyes. She slept.

  CHAPTER TEN

  OUT NOW. OUT for a month. Every day it was easier. To walk by herself through the streets. To take longer and longer strides. To know that she could go further than a hundred yards without stopping to wait for a gate to be unlocked, for a door to be opened, for the commands that would tell her she could come or she could go.

  Out now. Out for a month. Every day something new to learn and discover. The supermarket was her favourite place. She liked to wander with her basket. Watching the lights bounce off every shiny surface, making all the packets and tins and parcels glow and sparkle. She was getting better about food now. Every day she would try something different. Cheeses that dripped and smelt. Herbs that were new and unfamiliar, like coriander and basil. Feathery dill and bunches of peppery rocket. Black olives. New breads. Rolls with poppy seeds and sesame seeds. Hot spicy sauces and relishes that she ate with a spoon from the jar. And fish. Hake and brill, wild salmon and thick slices of tuna and swordfish. But not meat. She never wanted to eat meat again. Not since that night when she had seen Martin’s body torn apart, bleeding. Now when she saw meat hung from butchers’ hooks or swathed in plastic, the flesh so red, the fat so white, she could feel the bile rise in her mouth. It smelled, even in the air-conditioned coolness of the supermarket counter, of decay and rot and misery. It smelled of prison.

  She had looked at herself in the mirror. Caught sight of herself in shop windows. Seen how she looked now. Strong and healthy, the prison demeanour gone from her. Her head lifted, smooth confidence in her step. She was nearly ready. Almost. And now she wanted to see, to test herself.

  She had begun to go further away from her bedsit, the shopping centre, and the grid of streets in the town centre that she knew. Walking to the station, deciding. Which way today? South to Bray, along the coastline. Looking up from the window to the houses on the cliff above. Looking out for the one with the bell tower, the red-tiled roof just visible through the dark green of the pine trees. Thinking of the photographs she had seen of it on the society pages of the magazines that had found their way into the prison. The parties given, fund-raising for charities. Paper lanterns slung around the terrace. Gardens stretching off towards the sea. A marquee, a string quartet. The gracious, generous host with his beautiful wife and perfect children at his side. The pictures she had torn out and kept, pasted into her scrapbook. The details of their life that she had memorized.

  Or north to the city and beyond to Howth. Watching, waiting, looking out for just the right person. Like the man who was lying beside her now with one arm flung over her waist. She lay quite still for a moment, then she opened her eyes. She was lying on her side facing a window. The light from the street filtered through the slats of a wooden Venetian blind which was lowered but not closed. Her head throbbed and there was a foul taste in her mouth. Her neck felt sore and stiff as if she had slept with it twisted. She shifted carefully, moving her legs, trying not to disturb him. She rolled on to her back. As she turned so did he, away from her, gathering his arms and legs together and lying on his other side with his hands tucked neatly between his thighs. She pulled herself up and leaned over him. In the half-light the fair stubble on his face gleamed. His mouth was open and a bubble of saliva rested on his full red lips. His skin was smooth, unblemished, unmarked. Unlike her own body, which seemed wrinkled and weathered, soiled and stained. Not that he had said that as he watched her undress. Or could she remember what he had said? Or who he was or where she was now?

  She turned away and reached over to the bedside table, picking up a glass of water. She drank. The water tasted stale, chlorinated. City water, like the water in prison, she thought. She rested the cold glass against her cheek and let her eyes drift around the room. It was bare apart from the bed and an upright chair by the window. There was a framed print on the wall opposite, one of Gustav Klimt’s bejewelled Viennese ladies. She seemed to remember that he had said, last night, that it had been on the wall when he rented the apartment.

  ‘They’re all like that, you know, all these apartments on the Quays. They’re all furnished exactly the same way. Same sofas and chairs, same wallpaper, probably the same people in each one.’

  And he’d laughed. She didn’t like his laugh. It was hooting, far too loud. Drew attention to him. Made people turn around and look. And she didn’t like that. She’d been surprised by the laugh. It didn’t go with the rest of him. The rest of him was smooth and pretty. She’d picked him out immediately. To follow. Just for fun. To see where he was going and what he was doing.

  A game, that’s what it was. The girls inside used to play it when they were let out. They’d tell her all about it.

  ‘What you do,’ they’d say, ‘is you spot someone. In the street, or in a bar, or maybe even on a bus or a train. And you watch them. And then you go wherever they go. And after a while they notice you. But they don’t notice that you’ve been following them, they just think you look familiar. And then it’s dead easy, fucking ridiculously simple.’

  ‘What is,’ she asked, the first time they told her. ‘What’s simple?’

  ‘To do what you want with them. Fuck them, rob them, have fun with them. It’s the best game.’

  And she had told them they were crazy. It was stupid. It would get you into trouble, big bad trouble.

  ‘After all,’ she said, ‘they’ll recognize you, they’ll know what you’re like, they’ll go to the police, and they’ll be able to identify you. Won’t they?’

  And the girls had giggled and sniggered and nudged each other. And told her she didn’t understand.

  ‘For all your brains and fucking degrees and that kind of crap, you don’t have a clue. About people, that is. They don’t do anything about it, because they feel guilty, responsible, stupid. They’ve let you in, they’ve opened themselves up to you, they’ve judged that you’re OK, and they can see how crazy they’ve been. And you know, Rachel, specially men. They’ve such huge fucking egos, they can’t stand admitting that they’ve been wrong. So you’re made.’

  They were right. She wished she could tell them. They were right and she was wrong. It had worked just the way they said it would. And she had done it. She had spotted him on the train. He was young, good-looking. A tourist, perhaps, or a visiting businessman. He had a guideb
ook open on his lap, and he was tracing his route with one well-manicured fingertip. She moved her seat so she was sitting diagonally across from him. She stared out of her window, watching him in the reflection that played like a wide-screen movie in front of her eyes. He was wearing an open-necked shirt and a pair of light-coloured trousers. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, showing tanned forearms, covered with fine fair hair that gleamed as the sun fell upon it. She glanced over towards him, making sure not to catch his eye as he stood and stretched up to open the top part of the window. She watched the way the muscles in his back and buttocks tensed and moved as he struggled with the catch. She looked away and waited. Not for long.

  ‘Excuse me, I can’t seem to get the hang of this.’ His accent was North American. His voice was low. She didn’t respond immediately.

  ‘Sorry. Miss?’ He had that quaint, old-fashioned courtesy, like something from an old American TV series. ‘Could you give me a hand?’ He took a step towards her, moving awkwardly as the train gathered speed.

  She had shown him how to open the window, answered a couple of questions about the passing scenery, then retreated to her own seat again. And when he got off the train at Pearse Station she had followed him. It was surprisingly easy. She had never followed anyone before, but maybe it was because she could tell that he had no purpose to his wanderings that she could easily keep him within her sights. He rambled along Nassau Street, then turned left up Kildare Street, heading towards the museum. She walked on the other side of the road, her heart leaping suddenly as she saw the uniformed guards on duty outside the Dáil. Felt the sight of their blue shirts, their silver buttons, their peaked caps take her breath away with anxiety. So she waited until her breath had slowed, her pulse had calmed, before she followed him through the ornate wrought-iron gate, and stepped into the cool dimness inside.