My mother gave out when she saw my hair, which got up my nose because she was never done telling me to tie it back and stop it from flying away out like a flag. I said there was no pleasing her. She said to keep a civil tongue or I wasn’t welcome in her home.
“It’s my home too,” I said.
“It is not,” she said. “You’ve a home of your own in Belfast, in case you’d forgotten. A husband as well, and it’s time you were thinking of going back to him.”
So there it was, out on the table. She wasn’t blind—no phone calls, no sign of Robbie, no talk of me going away.
I saw the stiff line of her shoulders, and my heart sank inside me, for I’d backed myself into a corner and I knew that I’d have to tell her the truth or go.
Not right away though. Instead I got the bus to the Waterside, tramped up the hill to Brian and Anne’s, and stood ringing their bell in the pouring rain, desperate for someone to talk to.
“Merciful God, Ellen,” Anne said when she opened the door, “whatever have you done to yourself? You look like a scalded fox with a dose of the flu.”
That was better than a rat, but only marginally. I decided there was no way I was going to tell her anything, not even the amended version I’d worked out on the way over. In this version I’d thought I might say I was maybe thinking of leaving Robbie, and Liam wasn’t going to appear at all. Anne was no fool though—I knew she might spot that there was someone else lurking—so I had a contingency plan prepared with Liam’s name changed to Fred. That way I’d only have to deal with the leaving-Robbie issue; I could leave the Southern Catholic bit till later or not at all.
But Anne knew more than I thought. She took me in to the fire and brought me a glass of wine and a towel to dry what was left of my hair.
“Brian’s away out at a meeting, and the weans are in their beds,” she said. “We’ll have a nice wee talk, so we will, you can tell me all about it.”
She was friendly and sister-in-lawish and fishing for information, but the harder she tried the more I shut tight as a clam. In the end she told me out straight that my mother had phoned while I was on my way over. It seemed Robbie had rung up looking for me. He’d asked her if we were back from Achill.
“I needed to get away from Robbie,” I said, “so I told him I’d gone with you and Brian and the weans to Achill. He knows you can’t stand him. I knew if I said I was going with you he wouldn’t want to come.”
That stopped her in her tracks. In Anne’s world the more you disliked someone related to you the more they weren’t supposed to know that was the way you felt.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that in a city the size of Derry there’d have been somebody I could have talked to, but there wasn’t. I was always too awkward and shy, could never join in the way I saw other girls do, couldn’t whisper and confide. So I’d kept myself to myself and spent my time waiting for when I might leave.
It was the same now. I sat there, saying less and less, getting lower as each minute passed. And the longer I sat on Anne’s good settee in her clean and tidy living room with her clean and tidy life all around me, the surer I was that I had to find the courage in me to walk through the door and out into the storm. And the surer I was that I had to, the surer I was that I couldn’t. Suddenly I understood that the life I had with Robbie was all about getting away from this. Then I knew that I hadn’t gone far enough, that I had to leave the life I was living and travel further and make another one over again. I saw the seal heading down into black water, and I knew I had to learn how to drown.
And fear of it stopped my throat, so I choked on the glass of wine Anne had poured for me, sending it flying all over her sofa, and me flying out of the door.
When I got home I apologised to my mother for giving her lip. She nodded her head without looking at me, but I saw her mouth tighten with satisfaction and I had to clamp my own shut or I’d have been out on my ear.
I lasted another three days with her then I took the deepest breath of my life, phoned the number Liam had given me, left a message for him, then got on a bus that was headed down South.
It was dark when the bus pulled into Kilkenny city. There were people waiting on the pavement, but I kept my eyes in front. I’d been worrying myself sick all the way down. Would Liam meet me when I got there? Would I still want to see him if he did? Could I even remember what he looked like? I closed my eyes tight and pictured as hard as I could, but all I got was Robbie. I stared out at the lights and the darkness because it was better than staring in at Robbie’s face, which wouldn’t go away. I tried again for Liam, but the harder I tried the more completely I’d forgotten. Kilkenny was coming up on every signpost, so I knew we were near. By the time we’d swung off the ring road, I was wound up tight as a scream.
The bus drove into the station yard and stopped. I reached up and took my things from the rack, then walked slowly, slowly down the centre aisle. I climbed down the steps, my eyes on my feet. I lifted my head and there he was, and I knew him right away.
He took my bag and pulled me to the side so the girl behind me could get past. Then he stood there, looking down at me, smiling like an idiot.
“You’ve no hair.”
“Not much. Anne says I look like a scalded fox with a dose of the flu.”
“Who’s Anne?”
“Brian’s wife.”
“Ah. The sister-in-law. Is this all the luggage you have?”
“There’s another one in the hold.”
We went round to the side of the bus where the driver was unloading. I pointed to a small blue suitcase.
Liam lifted it out, set it down on the pavement, folded me into his arms and that was that. Or it was till we reached the house and we had a row over nothing at all on account of the state of our nerves. Then we went to bed and that was that again.
Liam is a stonemason and a sculptor. He went to art college in Dublin, spent a couple of years in a stonemason’s yard in Cork, then moved himself here because he’d had about enough of cities. Liam comes from Tipperary—that’s the next county—a place called Graigmoyla, forty-odd miles to the west of here.
“Kilkenny seemed a good compromise,” he’d told me on Achill. “Close enough to home but not too close. People I knew around the place to give me a start.”
By that he meant near enough to see his family when he wanted to, but not so near that they’re forever dropping in. Liam is one of five, and he’s slap in the middle. Connor’s the oldest; he lives in the home-place with Kathleen, his wife, and they work the family farm. His father still lives there, and he keeps his hand in, though these days he does less and less. Then there’s Eileen and Liam, and after him, Carmel and Tom. Liam thinks a lot of his family, especially Connor and Kathleen, but he has to have a bit of a distance from them or he feels like he needs to come up for air.
Which suits me as well. I like the Kielys now that I’m used to them, I do my bit in the family-thing, but I wouldn’t want to live in the midst of the nest. Liam comes and goes, and they’re tactful enough to keep their distance and give us a bit of space. We have his mother to thank for that. She laid down the rules in the early days—without her, it might not have entered their heads to hold back.
We’re not one of these couples