A Small Part of Me Read online

  His granny wouldn’t answer him then, and instead she gave him five euro to spend in Sheila’s shop. He hadn’t forgotten, though. He wanted to know why.

  He said to his daddy that he wanted to live with Mammy, but his daddy told him the judge said no, and you always have to do what the judge says.

  Daddy is running around. He’s talking on his phone and pulling clothes off the hanger over the stove, smoking at the same time. Like a juggler, Cian thinks. My daddy is like a clown. That’s what he wants to be when he grows up. But Daddy’s job is very important – he buys and sells horses and he’s always on the phone. Everyone has a phone except him. He showed Daddy his new coat, which has a special pocket inside it just for your mobile, and told him he had to have a phone now. But Daddy just laughed at him. It’s not fair, Cian had said, Johnny has one. And Daddy said that when he was seventeen and doing his Leaving Cert, he could have one too. That was ages away. He was only six. He wasn’t even sure how many years that was.

  Johnny is out the door now. He has a lift to school. Daddy shouts out good luck as he gets into the big blue car. Johnny has an exam. Daddy said that if Johnny did well he would buy tickets for them all to go to the next Meath match. Football’s boring, but Daddy and Johnny think it’s great. Daddy says he has to do the GAA summer camp this year, but he’d rather stay at home, watch telly and play with his toys.

  Cian goes back into his room to get dressed. He used to let Daddy do it, but he got so angry and shouted at him if he moved that he does it himself now. Mammy used to dress him while he watched telly. One moment he was in his jammies and the next all ready for school. That was great.

  How many weeks was it since she had gone? It felt like ages.

  Daddy is calling to him. ‘Come on, Cian, we’d better go.’

  He places Paddington back under the covers – poor Paddington is sick today – and picks up his school bag. Daddy is standing by the back door. His hair is sticking up like a hedgehog and his skin is all prickly on his face.

  ‘What day is it, Daddy?’ Cian asks.

  ‘It’s Friday.’

  ‘Is that the day before the weekend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So am I seeing Mammy tonight? Am I staying with her? Does the judge say I can?’

  ‘Yes, you are. And I say you can. It’s up to me now.’ Daddy sounds cross.

  Cian is smiling because he knows that Mammy will be meeting him after school. He tries to hide his face from Daddy. He looks down and sees a little green thing on the road.

  ‘A frog!’ he squeals, bending down and picking it up. ‘Can I bring it to school? Please, please, please? Can I show my friends? Please, Daddy?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Cian, of course you can’t. Come on, throw it away, you’re going to be late.’

  Throw it away! Mammy wouldn’t say that. She wouldn’t let him keep it either, but she’d make him find a little leaf somewhere and put him down, gently, very slowly. He looks around, hunting for a leaf.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Daddy is in the car, hollering from the window. Cian panics and throws his little friend. He sees the small green thing flying through the air, and says, ‘Oh sorry, sorry, sorry!’, hoping he doesn’t break his bones.

  CHRISTINA

  It was a beautiful article, her mother’s sewing box.

  Made out of mahogany with little brass handles on each side, the box was a perfect cube. Christina opened the little door. There were four rows of drawers, two drawers to each row, except the bottom one, which was one big drawer. She had never used it. Angeline gave it to her years ago, just after she got married. But she had been so caught up in her new life as a young wife that she had completely forgotten about it and shoved it in the attic. At the time she hadn’t wanted to think about her mother or be reminded of her in any way, even if it was only through her sewing box.

  The box probably hadn’t been opened since her mother had last used it, because Angeline certainly never sewed – she had always sent stuff out to Mae Cassidy, from socks to curtains.

  Christina nervously fingered the outside of the box. To think that her mother had probably been the last person to touch its contents. She shook herself angrily.

  What did she expect, for her to come popping out?

  She impatiently pulled open the first drawer to find several packets of ancient snap fasteners, one of them with War Time Pack/Guaranteed Rustless written on the back. The sewing box was older than she thought. It must have belonged to her mother’s mother.

  In the next drawer was a little doll made out of tiny coloured beads. Mainie. Christina remembered that little doll. Her mother had made it for her. She picked it up and twisted it between her fingers, letting it drop on the floor.

  In the third drawer there was a thick plastic needle case with a picture of a yellow rose on it and the lettering Rose of England Needlecase. She opened it up and pulled out one long needle.

  The fourth, fifth and sixth drawers were full of reels of cotton, some really old wooden reels and some more recent plastic ones. Each drawer was a spectrum of colour, with bits and bobs of elastic, tiny pin cushions and one or two thimbles.

  One reel was strange. It was wooden, not plastic, and the biggest by far. Wound around it was hair, not thread – human hair. And it wasn’t just from one head. There was a strong black shiny strand like horsehair, a delicate line of red hair and then a soft brown piece. They were all knotted together to make one long multi-coloured thread. Christina pulled it through her fingers. A part of her wanted to snap it off.

  There was only one drawer left – the large one at the bottom. Christina opened it. It was empty apart from a round metal box. She pulled it out and flipped up the lid. A hundred buttons came cascading out, none of them matching. She remembered playing with these, the exotic buttons made from shells and pearls, and then the treasure trove ones, small round coins of silver. She fingered each one and then slowly put them back in the box.

  That was it then. But as she pushed the button box back into the drawer, she could see something else right at the back: a curl of thick paper.

  It was a photograph. Christina pulled it out. It was creased, as if someone had held it many times. Some of the black and white detail was lost in the folds, but the image was still strong. It was a picture of her as a little girl. She was standing next to a large snowman, grinning broadly, with a wool hat on her head and mittens on her hands. And next to her wasn’t her father or Angeline – next to her was her mother. She was a tall, thin woman with long ginger hair. She was smiling too. She was holding her hand.

  Christina started. A pulse passed through her body and she fell back on her heels, knocking her bag over. She had never seen a photograph of her mother. She turned the picture over.

  Greta and Christina, January 1976

  It was written in her father’s handwriting. She flipped the image over again and stared at the stranger in the snow, her own flesh and blood. She let the picture drop, brushed the tears from her eyes and looked up at the skylight in the attic. The wind was chasing clouds across the sky, hiding the sun. She pulled herself straight, and leaned over in the near-dark. The roof of the attic pressed in on top of her head, the wooden boards pounded in her ears, as she picked the photograph up off the dusty floor. It was then that she noticed the needle sticking out of the top of her middle finger. She had felt nothing. A tiny bead of red dripped onto the white print.

  Greta and Christina, January 1976

  That was the year she’d left.

  GRETA

  It’s another sparkling winter morning, so bright it almost hurts the eyes, and I’m in conversation with my tree. He’s so bare now, hardly a leaf on him. He looks like a big shaggy mound of twigs. I’m sitting huddled beneath him. It’s so very chilly here and I shan’t stay too long, but I have come to tell him something.

  I’m pregnant.

  Yes, it’s official. I went to Doctor Marsh on Monday and he told me I’m pregnant! At last, after trying for six ye
ars, I’m expecting again!

  Tomás is very pleased. I haven’t seen him this happy in a long time. He didn’t have to say anything. It was what he did that told me. He drove me home from the surgery, holding my hand the whole way, one hand on the steering wheel, humming a little song.

  We’ve decided not to tell Christina yet, just in case anything goes wrong, which, please God, it won’t. She asked Santa for a baby brother so now, hopefully, her wish will come true. I know Tomás would like to have a son, but as long as the baby is healthy I don’t care. Just as long as everything is as it should be.

  I can see a red fox darting across the field, a flash of colour against the white sky. Last night I heard her howl, making her love call. I could recognise that desperation, its piercing shrill, the need to create, to be a mother again.

  I had begun to think that we would never have another child.

  CHRISTINA

  Christina stumbled back down the lane. The sewing box was heavy and she had to carry it with both hands, her carrier bag slung on one of her wrists. By the time she shoved the box onto the back seat of the car she was out of breath and her shoulders hurt.

  As she drove around the potholes she prayed that no one would be coming the other way. She could see one of the Healy boys on a tractor on the far side of the bog, but he was too far away to mind her. Back on the main road she relaxed a little, then sped up. She went past the old cemetery and small green fields undulated by her, the odd one marked by a fairy hawthorn tree or a single standing stone, each small patch separated by soft grey walls.

  She was on the lake road when she suddenly pulled in. She leaned back, stared at the sewing box, then whipped around again as if stung, looking out at the sheer blue lake. The sun had come back out and the light was almost blinding. The sky was white and glaring.

  Only last summer – it seemed an age ago now – they’d had a barbeque here. Declan had organised it for her birthday; it had been a surprise. And she had been surprised. He had never done anything like that before.

  Although it had been July, they had all shivered by the side of the lake as a cold wind whipped about them. Quite a few had turned up, mostly Declan’s friends, but still, it had been nice. She remembered that, and feeling vaguely guilty that she wasn’t more thrilled, that she didn’t talk enough. In the end she had sat on a log, gazing into the fire, drinking beer and listening to all the others singing songs.

  She had got drunk.

  And when they got home that night, she had laid down on the hall floor sobbing, accusing Declan of letting her drink when he shouldn’t have. He had begged her with urgent whispers to get up, be quiet, saying the children would hear her. But she had been unable to move and continued to berate him until in the end he had given up, put a blanket over her and gone to bed. She woke the next morning with her eldest, Johnny, staring down at her, his lips curled in distaste.

  It was hot in the car and she suddenly yearned to get into the water. She got out, climbed the gate and walked down the gravel path, passing grazing horses, smelling the crisp morning air.

  Down by the water’s edge, the flies buzzed around her. The brambles were thick, the gorse yellow and prickly. Light bounced off the lake’s surface, dappling a metal water barrel half sunk on the shore. Beside it a large twisted white stick protruded out of the water, looking like a solitary ghost heron. She crouched down behind a large ash tree, took off her dress and sandals, folded it neatly and then, in her underwear, waddled towards the lake over the parched stones.

  The water was low. It had been a dry spring. She avoided the sticky shore and followed a path of paving slabs until icy water lapped around her ankles. She let herself fall forwards then, straight in.

  The water soothed the ache in her heart, the desperate pull she felt as a mother. She swam in a circle, plunging her head beneath the surface again and again, as if she needed to wake up. When she tried to put her feet down there was nothing solid to stand on, just a swirl of muddy bed and weeds, so she immersed herself in the freezing water and swam further, out by the diving board. She was tempted to go out even further, but knew she couldn’t. There were currents out there that could suck you down in an instant.

  Losing her children was like drowning. Sometimes she would find herself gagging, as if she was being suffocated, her throat dry right to the back of it. It felt unnatural to be on her own after being a mother for seventeen years. It wasn’t right.

  Yet her own mother had done it to her. She had only been six when she left one day, not a word to her, just gone.

  Christina shivered in the water and slowly turned towards the shore. The stones were smooth and slippery beneath her feet as she tried to keep her balance, stumbling onto the grass verge. She could hear the hum of a distant car, but apart from that there was no one about. A lumpy hill faced her – they called it the Noggin – and she could see a lone cow stuck on its top. The lake was an oval pool of blue, a drop of silence, pure space in the place where she lived, where the hills were so low they could hardly pull you skyward and the small, uneven fields closed in around you. She sighed, shook out her wet hair and walked up the bank a small way, sitting down to let herself drip onto the grass.

  She just wanted to come home to herself, even if it meant she would have to go on the longest journey of her life.

  GRETA

  I remember now how you change when you’re pregnant. The dreams that come in the night, like dense fog, so hard to lift the next day that I could sit for hours here, on the windowsill in the landing, staring at the brown river, swollen and churning beneath me, listening to the sound of the water cascade, the rhythm of the mill. I slow down and nothing is urgent any more. I can hardly believe it as I look out at the view: the wooden bridge across the river, the stretch of garden, the ditch with the stream and the fields beyond. Even the woods at the top – all this I am mistress of.

  We never owned our own land, not even a house. Daddy thought it was more important to spend money on our education. Maureen always said it was my fault that we were sent away to boarding school. I was father’s favourite and she said he always did what I asked. I don’t remember asking for that, though. Grateful as I am, I would rather have been at home with my precious father.

  Dear Lord, keep my father safe and by your side, and my mother too. Forgive their sins, and let them rest in heaven. Guide me. Show me their souls, two twin stars on a winter’s night, watching over me and my family, my unborn child. In the name of the father, the son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

  I like to make up my own prayers. It’s my poetry, my way of not feeling lonely.

  And it can be lonely here sometimes at The Mill. When I was at school I was surrounded by other girls. There was always someone about to sit and have a talk with. But when you’re a wife, there’s no time for talking. You have to look after your family, and they are your priority.

  Oh, but to be part of a family again! When I lost Mummy and Daddy, I felt so alone. Even though Maureen was there, it didn’t make us any closer. I used to spend hours trying to make sense of it all. How could they be taken away so suddenly? But maybe that happens when people are special. And I’m glad they went together, that one wasn’t left without the other.

  I like the animals here, and I think that Tomás is pleased at the way I look after the chickens. We have good eggs, and always plenty of them. And I can understand him when he talks about the cattle and we discuss whether we should move into pigs, but I told him that I didn’t like the idea of that, not at all. It’s not just the smell of them, but whenever I see those poor pigs crushed into the lorries on the way to the knacker’s yard, I can’t help feeling awfully sorry for them. I don’t think I could live with such accusation! Tomás says there’s money in it, but he listens to me, and for the moment he’s not changing anything.

  I’ve learned to make jam. Well, a sticky, runny mess at least. But I do think that my cooking is improving. Tomás scratches his head sometimes and can’t work out why it takes me so long t
o do anything in the house. I suppose, he says, smiling, it’s because I’ve had the fortune to marry one of nature’s ladies! You’re living in the wrong century, my darling, and should have a couple of servants. I look at him uncertainly then, because I’m worried that this is a criticism, but he always takes me in his arms and touches my hands delicately and says he’s sorry about the life I have to live, and how it’s making my hands rough. It was your hands I fell in love with first, he says.

  He reminds me of that day in the church. My parents were dead just two weeks and I had come to live with Aunt Shirley. It was Saint Blaise’s day, the first week in February, and the church was freezing. I didn’t know that I was standing next to Tomás, shivering, as the priest went along the line, blessing our throats, two candles in his hands, crossed beneath each chin. I didn’t see Tomás, but he saw me, or my hands, that is. Pressed together in prayer and then opening, fluttering with cold, like a tiny white butterfly, he says.

  He pursued me, and I was happy for the attention. It distracted me from my grief. My Aunt Shirley was constantly criticising me, calling me a plain Jane, like my mother, she said, which of course upset me, and then Maureen went to America. I didn’t want to go with her. What would I be doing in America? But mostly I didn’t want to go because someone had to stay behind to look after the graves.

  At first I didn’t notice Tomás. I was too preoccupied by my loss. But then, sometimes after church, I would see this young man with curly hair that refused to stay down although you could see a gallon of grease on it! He had kind eyes and he was very tall. To me he felt nearly as tall as a tree. And then one week he came up to me and held out his hand to introduce himself – Tomás Comyn, he said. He sounded like a character in a book by Thomas Hardy, and I squirmed with pleasure as Aunt Shirley looked stiffly on. The next week he did the same thing, then on the third week he asked me if I was going out on Friday night, as there was a dinner dance in aid of the hunt. I had said nothing and felt the colour rising in my cheeks. He rephrased his sentence and asked me if I would like to go to the dance with him, and I whispered yes, still looking at the ground.