‘You don’t mind if I go, do you, Joyce? I’ll stay if you want, I really don’t mind, it’s not important.’
‘Of course it’s important. You haven’t missed a Monday night for twenty years.’
‘Apart from bank holidays!’ He lifts a crooked finger and his eyes dance.
‘Apart from bank holidays,’ I smile, and grab his finger.
‘Well,’ he takes my hand, ‘you’re more important than a few pints and a singsong.’
‘What would I do without you?’ My eyes fill again.
‘You’d be just fine, love. Besides …’ he looks at me warily, ‘you have Conor.’
I let go of his hand and look away. What if I don’t want Conor any more?
‘I tried to call him last night on the hand phone but there was no answer. But maybe I tried the numbers wrong,’ he adds quickly. ‘There are so many more numbers on the hand phones.’
‘Mobiles, Dad,’ I say distractedly.
‘Ah, yes. The mobiles. He keeps calling when you’re asleep. He’s going to come home as soon as he can get a flight. He’s very worried.’
‘That’s nice of him. Then we can get down to the business of spening the next ten years of our married life trying to have babies.’ Back to business. A nice little distraction to give our relationship some sort of meaning.
‘Ah now, love …’
The first day of the rest of my life and I’m not sure I want to be here. I know I should be thanking somebody for this but I really don’t feel like it. Instead I wish they hadn’t bothered.
I watch the three children playing together on the floor of the hospital, little fingers and toes, chubby cheeks and plump lips – the faces of their parents clearly etched on theirs. My heart drops into my stomach and it twists. My eyes fill again and I have to look away.
‘Mind if I have a grape?’ Dad chirps. He’s like a little canary swinging in a cage beside me.
‘Of course you can. Dad, you should go home now, go get something to eat. You need your energy.’
He picks up a banana. ‘Potassium,’ he smiles, and moves his arms rigorously. ‘I’ll be jogging home tonight.’
‘How did you get here?’ It suddenly occurs to me that he hasn’t been into the city for years. It all became too fast for him, buildings suddenly sprouting up where there weren’t any, roads with traffic going in different directions from before. With great sadness he sold his car too, his failing eyesight too much of a danger for him and others on the roads. Seventy-five years old, his wife dead ten years. Now he has a routine of his own, content to stay around the local area, chatting to his neighbours, church every Sunday and Wednesday, Monday Club every Monday (apart from the bank holidays when it’s on a Tuesday), butchers on a Tuesday, his crosswords, puzzles and TV shows during the days, his garden all the moments in between.
‘Fran from next door drove me in.’ He puts the banana down, still laughing to himself about his jogging joke, and pops another grape into his mouth. ‘Almost had me killed two or three times. Enough to let me know there is a God if ever there was a time I doubted. I asked for seedless grapes; these aren’t seedless,’ he frowns. Liver-spotted hands put the bunch back on the side cabinet. He takes seeds out of his mouth and looks around for a bin.
‘Do you still believe in your God now, Dad?’ It comes out crueller than I mean to but the anger is almost unbearable.
‘I do believe, Joyce.’ As always, no offence taken. He puts the pips in his handkerchief and places it back in his pocket. ‘The Lord acts in mysterious ways, in ways we often can neither explain nor understand, tolerate nor bear. I understand how you can question Him now – we all do at times. When your mother died I …’ he trails off and abandons the sentence as always, the furthest he will go to being disloyal about his God, the furthest he will go to discussing the loss of his wife. ‘But this time God answered all my prayers. He sat up and heard me calling last night. He said to me,’ Dad puts on a broad Cavan accent, the accent he had as a child before moving to Dublin in his teens, ‘“No problem, Henry. I hear you loud and clear. It’s all in hand so don’t you be worrying. I’ll do this for you, no bother at all.” He saved you. He kept my girl alive and for that I’ll be forever grateful to Him, sad as we may be about the passing of another.’
I have no response to that, but I soften.
He pulls his chair closer to my bedside and it screeches along the floor.
‘And I believe in an afterlife,’ he says a little quieter now. ‘That I do. I believe in the paradise of heaven, up there in the clouds, and everyone that was once here is up there. Including the sinners, for God’s a forgiver, that I believe.’
‘Everyone?’ I fight the tears. I fight them from falling. If I start I know I will never stop. ‘What about my baby, Dad? Is my baby there?’
He looks pained. We hadn’t spoken much about my pregnancy. Early days and we were all worried, nobody more than he. Only days ago we’d had a minor falling-out over my asking him to store our spare bed in his garage. I had started to prepare the nursery, you see … Oh dear, the nursery. The spare bed and junk just cleared out. The cot already purchased. Pretty yellow on the walls. ‘Buttercup Dream’ with a little duckie border.
Five months to go. Some people, my father included, would think preparing the nursery at four months is premature but we’d been waiting six years for a baby, for this baby. Nothing premature about that.
‘Ah, love, you know I don’t know …’
‘I was going to call him Sean if it was a boy,’ I hear myself finally say aloud. I have been saying these things in my head all day, over and over, and here they are, spilling out of me instead of the tears.
‘Ah, that’s a nice name. Sean.’
‘Grace, if it was a girl. After Mum. She would have liked that.’
His jaw sets at this and he looks away. Anyone who doesn’t know him would think this has angered him. I know this is not the case. I know it’s the emotion gathering in his jaw, like a giant reservoir, storing and locking it all away until absolutely necessary, waiting for those rare moments when the drought within him calls for those walls to break and for the emotions to gush.
‘But for some reason I thought it was a boy. I don’t know why but I just felt it somehow. I could have been wrong. I was going to call him Sean,’ I repeat.
Dad nods. ‘That’s right. A fine name.’
‘I used to talk to him. Sing to him. I wonder if he heard.’ My voice is far away. I feel like I’m calling out from the hollow of a tree, where I hide.
Silence while I imagine a future that will never be with little imaginary Sean. Of singing to him every night, of marshmallow skin and splashes at bath time. Of kicking legs and bicycle rides. Of sandcastle architecture and football-related hot-headed tantrums. Anger at a missed life – no, worse – a lost life, overrides my thoughts.
‘I wonder if he even knew.’
‘Knew what, love?’
‘What was happening. What he would be missing. Did he think I was sending him away? I hope he doesn’t blame me. I was all he had and—’ I stop. Torture over for now. I feel seconds away from screaming with such terror, I must stop. If I start my tears now I know I will never stop.
‘Where is he now, Dad? How can you even die when you haven’t even been born yet?’
‘Ah, love.’ He takes my hand and squeezes it again.
‘Tell