Grace After Henry

by Eithne Shortall

  Aoife battled her way into the Gardening section and I manoeuvred the trolley around a couple of teenagers running in the opposite direction to everyone else, hunting loudly for someone named Stu.

  I’d tried to unpack some things the night before but gave up almost immediately and started flicking through A Christmas Carol instead. I never went past the bookmark, that was as far as we’d gotten this time and I couldn’t bring myself to read on without Henry.

  Aoife held up two pots. I pointed to the dark blue one, and on her way back to the trolley she narrowly avoided colliding with a woman distracted by her rapidly growing disdain for her partner.

  ‘Do you even know what our kitchen table looks like? It’s green, Paul. Green! These chairs are teal.’

  The plant pot made a clanging sound as it landed on top of the one casserole dish Aoife had managed to sneak into the trolley. She blew her fringe off her face.

  ‘They missed a trick not putting a pub halfway through this place.’

  The first time I realised Henry could die was a Thursday night not long after we’d moved in together. I was reading on the sofa, waiting for him to return from football. I had checked my phone and thought, ‘He’s usually home by now.’ At almost the same time, it occurred to me that something might have happened. It was completely irrational but it was also true: whenever he wasn’t with me it was possible something had happened. I’d never thought like that before. I was shocked I’d left myself so vulnerable. Of course I knew Henry would die one day, just as we all would, but that was the first time I realised he might die on me.

  The crowd thinned when we got to Ikea’s warehouse section and I waited for Aoife to find the bed, couch and shelving units we had selected. Or rather, she had selected. I watched as a man helped her to take a flat pack from a ledge and slide it onto a flat trolley. Aoife gestured that she had to get something else, and I stood, drumming my fingers on the trolley handle, staring in the direction she’d gone. My neck was stiff and I realised then that I was refusing to move it. All these echoing corridors, shadows and recesses, I was afraid that if I turned my head, I’d see a ghost.

  It was ridiculous, of course, but even as I realised it I kept right on staring at the point where Aoife had disappeared. Footsteps sounded like his, throats being cleared, even the jangle of coins in a pocket. It didn’t take much. Aoife reappeared and I felt my shoulders relax. I quickly pushed the trolley towards her. Life was moving forward, I reminded myself, and Henry Walsh wasn’t in it.

  In the checkout queue, I worried about the cost again. The trolley was almost as tall as me now and I wished I’d paid more attention to what Aoife had put in there. In another ten months or so I’d have to figure out how to pay the mortgage on my own. And what if there was a problem with the roof before then, or the oven stopped working? I could not afford novelty aprons.

  ‘This is not a hand cloth. It. Is. A. FUCKING. TEA. TOWEL.’

  We’d come to a halt beside the pizza-cutter couple, who had acquired more purchases and apparently lost both their children. The man was waving a baby-blue towel in the woman’s face.

  ‘How would you know what a FUCKING TEA TOWEL looks like?’ she retorted, taking a spatula into her own hand. ‘Hmm? I’d have to draw you a map to our kitchen!’

  ‘I swear to Christ, Diane, if I could afford to divorce you I would. What – I don’t believe – what is this? Four, five, six. SIX saucepans? What exactly are you going to do with six IDENTICAL saucepans, Diane? ’Cause Christ knows it’s not cooking.’

  ‘I don’t know, dear. I thought I might try lobbing them at your head and see where we go from there.’

  EIGHT

  ‘Take.’ WHACK. ‘That.’ WHACK. ‘Rowan Kearns!’WHACK WHACK. ‘Don’t.’ WHACK. ‘Want.’WHACK. ‘Your shrivelled ball sack anyway!’ WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK.

  ‘I think that shelving unit’s done, Aoife.’

  ‘Just! Want! To! Make! SURE!’ She threw the mini hammer down. ‘Phew. This is good therapy, actually.’

  I dragged my attention away from my own shelving unit. A third reading of the instructions did not explain why it looked a lot less like Aoife’s than it should. ‘When’s the last time you, eh, saw him?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘That often? Aoife. Oh no.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the bathroom of the wine bar.’

  ‘Oh, Aoife.’

  WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK.

  ‘Well, we could hardly go to my place. Don’t let me disturb your tea there, Dad, just going upstairs for a quick ride with my ex.’ WHACK. ‘And his mam’s always at his place so that’s— What the feck is that supposed to be? Picasso’s answer to a shelving unit?’

  Aoife’s dad was a retired builder and, of his nine offspring, she was his greatest protégée. My own dad liked to bring this up regularly and usually in the same breath as how he was a driving instructor and I still hadn’t learnt to drive. It only took Aoife a few minutes to fix my mess and she was impressed by how far I’d managed to get without opening the packet of tiny wooden screw yokes that had apparently been there all along but were news to me.

  ‘So Rowan’s back home now too?’

  ‘He couldn’t afford the rent on the apartment on his own. He quit the bookshop.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cause he didn’t have a book on its shelf? I dunno. What did I have to go and shag him for?’

  ‘Maybe it was just break-up sex?’ I offered.

  ‘We already did that. A few times. Oh, and I forgot the worst bit. He wouldn’t let me sit on him.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘When we were in the cubicle. I closed over the toilet seat and told him to sit and I’d sit on him.’

  ‘Only way to fit.’

  ‘Exactly. But he wanted to know why he had to be on bottom. Said it made him feel inferior.’

  ‘Oh Christ.’

  ‘Like, if you’re that insecure, then don’t quit your poxy job!’ WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK. Aoife cocked her head to one side. ‘What was that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The knocking.’

  ‘You,’ I said. ‘With that poor hammer. And watch my shelves, you’re going to break them.’

  ‘No, it came from the wall . . . In the hall.’

  ‘Maybe I’ve a ghost.’ And though I was joking, I thought of Old Marley dragging his chains through Scrooge’s house and, in spite of myself, I shivered.

  ‘Listen! There it is again.’

  I followed her gaze towards the hallway but didn’t hear anything. ‘And I thought I was the one imagining things—’

  Ding-dong!

  Aoife threw me a triumphant smirk. ‘I think your ghost is at the front door.’

  In the hallway, through the stained glass, I saw a silhouette. It was too short to be either of my parents and Aoife was already here. I opened the front door to a woman, about eighty years of age, dressed in a heavy navy dressing gown with a scowl almost as long.

  ‘So you haven’t been mauled to death by bears.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘What with living across the road from Dublin Zoo and a racket coming from your house that surely no human could make, I put two and two together and presumed you had been mauled to death by bears. But you’re still alive. That’s good, I suppose.’

  ‘You must be my new neighbour.’

  ‘You’re the new one, missy. I’ve been here fifty-six years.’

  ‘Were we making too much noise?’

  ‘Does Our Saviour sit on the right hand of the Father?’ The woman’s dressing gown opened slightly and I spied a heavy-duty nightdress. It was 7 p.m. She went on: ‘I thought the wall was going to fall in on top of me. I only caught about three gongs of the angelus through all the commotion. Are you on your own?’ She peered in behind me. ‘I heard it was a couple buying this place.’

  ‘I . . . it was. My partner died a month and a half ago.’ Partner. Like we had ru
n a law firm together. I hadn’t anticipated calling Henry that until we had kids, but then I hadn’t anticipated him dying either.

  I expected the words to hang in the air – an awkward pause to acknowledge the death – but she just motored on like I’d said nothing of significance.

  ‘If you need work doing, then Larry’s your man,’ she said, still peering into my hallway. ‘He’s down the end of the road. Last house, this side. You’ve seen the van.’

  ‘I think so. The white one.’

  ‘Terrible driver, couldn’t park an arse on a sofa, but he knows what he’s at. You need to keep an eye on him or he’ll sell you a glass hammer and some rubber nails, but he made my hall table and it’s still standing after that earthquake you just set off.’

  ‘I’m sorry if we were making too much noise. I’ll keep it down.’

  ‘You can call into me tomorrow to apologise.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Just like that, but with biscuits. No not tomorrow, actually, I’ll be out tomorrow. You can do your banging then. After eleven. I’m going out at eleven. I have Mass, then bridge. Call into me on Tuesday. You don’t seem to go to work.’

  ‘I’ve been on compassionate leave, actually.’

  ‘So you’re at home Tuesday.’ She was already heading back down the garden path.

  ‘I’m actually back at work now,’ I called after her. ‘As it happens I’m not rostered on Tuesday but I have other—’

  ‘Good. Noon on Tuesday and bring digestives. Chocolate ones. And two Telly Bingos.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Lotto tickets. You can get them from Pat, in the shop around the corner. You know Pat? Foreign lad. Funny accent.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And make sure you get them before eleven,’ she said, walking out my gate and through her own. ‘They won’t sell them to you after eleven on the Tuesday. Do you think you can manage to remember that?’

  ‘I don’t—’

  Her door slammed and I heard various bolts and chains being secured. I closed my own door to find Aoife standing in the doorway between the sitting room and hallway.

  ‘Nice old lady.’ Aoife raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ll be off. I’ll see you next weekend for some proper work, yeah? We need to buy paint. And sorry if I was going on earlier. I really need to stop sleeping with that waster.’ She sighed as she scooped up her bag from the hallway floor. ‘But there are bigger problems in the world.’

  ‘Like grouchy neighbours?’

  Aoife smiled as she pulled me in for a hug. ‘Exactly. You’re going to be okay, Gracie. Call me if you need me.’

  NINE

  Imade it to bed that night. Or more accurately, I made it to mattress. The bed base was still in its saran wrap in the hallway and the sheets still packed away. ‘You’ve gone this far,’ I told myself as I stood beside the bedroom window and ripped the black tape off the top box, the one marked ‘Linen’. You’d know Dad had done the packing.

  The tape came away from the cardboard and I rolled it into a sticky misshapen ball.

  Would I forget his face?

  I closed my eyes and Henry was right there. I saw him handsome in that navy Aran jumper we bought in Dingle; I saw the cheeky smile when he was convincing me to do something reckless; I saw him during sex, serious and lost in concentration.

  How could I forget his face when I was haunted by it? I saw him everywhere. I was not ready to let go.

  It was warm and the air in the house was oppressive. I forced the bedroom window up. For once the streets outside were quiet. Dublin had finally fallen asleep. I tucked the sheet in at the side and slowly I lowered myself down. I closed my eyes to see Henry lying on his side, watching. I hadn’t slept on this mattress since he left me. I spread my hand out to the right, where he always was. I left A Christmas Carol on his side of the bed and the water on mine; as it was in the beginning . . . I will buy a newspaper tomorrow, I decided, and I will spread it all over the floor on his side. I missed the ink on my feet. I curled up on my right to face him and let my mind wander to my favourite memory. The memory I tried to ration. The one I savoured.

  So many of our first dates were in the Phoenix Park. His favourite place, and full of favourite sub-places: his favourite tree, his favourite valley, his favourite café. I enjoyed all those guided tours of Henry. I wish I’d told him that.

  Eyes closed, arm stretched to the right, I floated up and over until I was looking down on the park. I sailed over the zoo – no depressed-looking lions tonight – past the tearooms and, just in front of the president’s residence, over the cycle path, I hovered. I loved this bit.

  I was using his spare bike and Henry, cycling slightly ahead, had slowed to my cautious pace. It was January but it wasn’t cold. It was January 20, though I never told him I remembered the date. I wished I had told him that. It was January 20, it was our seventh date, and I was madly in love. I watched him cycling slightly ahead of me and I sent subliminal messages through the back of his green cord shirt. I love you, I love you. I want to write your name on pencil cases and whisper it to myself at night. I love you, I love you. And even before Henry turned around, I knew that this was a day. This was one of the best days. We cycled further still and the wind in my ears matched the humming in my heart. And I loved him.

  ‘Hey!’ you shout, turning your head, still pedalling.

  I can’t help but grin, your hair all blown to the side like a bad comb-over. You look like my dentist. ‘Hey yourself!’ I shout back.

  Your head flicks forward to check the path and then back again: ‘I love you!’

  The wind pushes the words towards me, snapping against my ears, sending volts around my body. ‘Well, that’s convenient!’ I shout back, the edges of my smile tickling my earlobes. ‘Because I love you too.’

  And that is it. A new reality established and the pedals never stop moving. For a moment I am worried my bicycle might actually start to levitate. And the bit that concerns me the most is not that I will have developed magic powers but that you’ll suddenly know just how much you mean to me. Madly in love. I laugh but the wind is blowing against us and you do not hear.

  Outside the Heritage Centre I throw my bike on top of yours and, once you have locked them, I throw myself on top of you. You take me in your arms like I am a weight you need to bear, like this is how you balance yourself now. I will hold you up, I think. And you kiss me fiercely on the mouth. This is a day, and that is so much more than a kiss.

  Your face in my hair, the moisture of your lips and breath as you open your mouth to speak into the crown of my head. ‘But I do.’

  Half asleep I heard your deep baritone voice, and I gave an involuntary shiver from the breeze on my neck. But I didn’t allow it to wake me. I drifted off and it was easy, us cycling and me telling you, somewhere in my sleep, not to go ahead. Let’s stay together. And a wave of regret then because I was sorry. Yes, for that too. But also. I should have told you. I should have told you I remembered the date.

  TEN

  ‘Can I borrow your moss scraper yoke?’ I asked Billy. ‘I was going to do the edges today.’

  ‘Knock yourself out.’

  Although I’d been there an hour, I was only now getting down to some work. It was a Saturday and sunny so the cemetery’s visitor count was up. ‘Fair-weather mourners,’ the wise men called them with no small amount of contempt. Patsy had been up and down like a yoyo, importantly directing people to where they needed to go and informing the newly bereaved that yes, actually, the watering can was supposed to be put back exactly where they found it.

  It quietened down after a while and the four of us returned to our separate posts. Today I was tackling moss, or what little of it there was. Henry’s stone had not been still long enough to gather it.

  I had barely gotten started when a fresh wave of voices carried on the wind and we all turned to look.

  ‘Here comes another one!’ shouted Billy. ‘They really need to signpost this place bette
r.’

  I stood to get a better look at the approaching tour group. The other side of Glasnevin Cemetery was populated by the great and good of Irish history, but occasionally some group of American ancestor-searchers or Spanish students here to learn English would take a wrong turn and end up in our patch where the only notable burial was a county councillor famous for having the worst attendance record in the country.

  This group of Americans – the loud enthusiastic voices, bumbags and unnecessary sunhats gave the game away – stopped inside the gate and examined their map. Patsy sighed and rose from his newspaper. ‘Right.’

  I watched as he talked to the tourists, gesturing back the way they’d come. Though I couldn’t make out what he was saying, I recognised the tone. It was the one he used when telling us about the local history book he’d been working on since before Maureen passed away. (‘It was hearing about the book that done her in,’ Billy whispered when Patsy was out of earshot.)

  A young boy in the group caught my eye. I waved at him and he waved back. I used to imagine what our children would look like, a funny mixture of Henry’s genes and mine. His dark brown hair, my freckles, and cheeks that could have belonged to either of us.

  The group turned to make their way back and I went to resume scraping barely decipherable moss from the edges of Henry’s grave when something – someone – caught my eye. He was at the back of the group, walking in the opposite direction.

  The air left me.

  I closed my eyes and opened them again. But he was still there. He was hard to make out, heading away from the others, but it was him. It was Henry. I moved forward, just about, and started to make my way towards the entrance.

  ‘You done with the trowel, Grace? Grace? Grace!’

  I turned to see Billy coming towards me.

  ‘Sorry, yes.’ I reached down to pick up the trowel, failing to get a grip on it the first few times. ‘Here,’ I said, throwing it gently into his lap. Then I started to run, watching my feet as I skirted a few graves, mumbling a ‘sorry’ when I trampled on the late Pauline Russell. I ignored Martin’s shouts and arrived at the entrance just as Patsy was heading back.