‘Young people,’ Miriam had sighed then, ‘so reckless with their happiness.’ For a while after Joey’s birth, Corrie O’Sullivan and David had tried to make their relationship work, she explained, but their son was all they had left in common. Corrine had recently become engaged to a local carpenter and they planned to settle in Canada. Miriam hinted at custodial battles, lost before they would even reach the courts; a single father in his early twenties, no chance.
David’s expression when he had returned from handing Joey over to Corrine had been hard and angry. I recognised what lay behind it. Loss. I understood, as only I could, how he felt as he watched his son being lifted away from him. But at least he and Corrine O’Sullivan could lay claim to their son’s identity.
I’d no idea who had fathered my baby during that crazy year after my mother died. Cervical cancer, the symptoms diagnosed too late. For months afterwards, my father had wandered around in a daze, twitching at sudden noises, as if he expected her to emerge from dark corners or behind closed doors and shriek at him.
I escaped into the arms of Shane Dillon, then Liam Maguire, then Jason Jackson. Dark lanes, the back seats of cars, my bedroom when my father was out. I didn’t enjoy these furtive encounters, the impatient fumbling and tumbling, the brief satisfaction gained by them, not me. Yet my need seemed insatiable. I understand it now. The need to be loved unthinkingly, unconditionally. Such a demanding, primal need. Why else do we perpetuate our race? Why else would we subject our bodies to such grotesque manoeuvrings, the animal grunts and heaves, the savage satisfaction that is instantly forgettable and, in my own case, always dispensable?
‘Slut,’ my father said, when Tessa brought the strain of my stomach against my school shirt to his attention. Five months gone by then, too late for an abortion, which was his first intention. ‘Off to London on the next flight,’ he said. ‘Quick fix.’
But Tessa was determined that he was not going to export my problem. ‘Too late,’ she insisted, ‘and even if your daughter wasn’t five months gone, it’s against the laws of the state and the law of God.’ The country was not yet riven by abortion referenda and opposing views, but Tessa knew which side she was on. Actively pro-life, she’d decided that adoption would be the perfect solution and that’s what probably would have happened in the end.
I’d argued loudly against either option. How I hated them, him and her, smug with happiness, and my mother hardly cold in her grave. None of us realised that it was my boy who would decide whether or not he would make that hazardous journey towards the light.
I didn’t see David again until it was time for the official opening of Miriam’s new studio. A lively occasion compared to the usual formal launches I’d once organised. No muted and strained conversations as strangers sipped tepid wine and struggled to find common ground. The people who crowded her new studio were loud and boisterous. They had gathered to celebrate her seahorses, those gentle males with their protruding bellies who mate for life and sing their love songs under the silver rays of the full moon. David had just qualified as a geologist. No surprises there. He’d grown up with sand and fire, flint and oxides, and was familiar with the melting and moulding of brittle substances. Petroleum exploration and oilfield development were his fields of expertise. Soon afterwards he left on contract for the oilfields of Saudi Arabia.
I settled into Miriam’s Glasshouse and was soon travelling across Ireland, meeting customers and building up her market base. I rented one of the new townhouses being built in Market Square and she invited me regularly to Rockrose. In David’s room I browsed through his music collection. The Chieftains and Horse Lips sat uneasily beside Alice Cooper, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. I was familiar with the Chieftains but heavy metal was not a taste I’d acquired. I was repelled yet fascinated by the lyrics: death, pain, anger, loss. I absorbed his presence and thought about his absent father.
By then I knew Miriam’s story. I asked her if she felt any animosity towards her ex-husband, who had walked out on his family when David was six years old.
She shrugged and admitted her only emotion was in difference. ‘And David,’ I asked, imagining him as a young boy, alone in his room, playing his harsh angry music, giving the finger to the man who had deserted him. ‘At first they used to meet,’ she said. ‘But not any more, not since he was thirteen and stopped mentioning his father’s name.’
David arrived home from Saudi Arabia six months later. In Molloy’s, the local pub where set dancing was a tradition, he stood out from the crowd, a tanned, mature man with a new firmness about his mouth that suggested authority. He was immediately whisked to the floor by an impetuous young woman.
‘Imelda Morris,’ Miriam nudged me. ‘She’s been friends with David since their pram days.’
More than friends, I thought, watching her heels flashing.
Miriam nudged me again when another young woman danced past. ‘Corrine O’Sullivan,’ she whispered.
Up close, Corrine was pretty in a blowsy way that would, I suspected, soon turn to flesh. Her boyfriend was sturdy and straight-backed, a squared-off chin that would brook no arguments. I watched David dancing with Imelda and Corrine dancing with her husband-to-be. They seemed oblivious of each other, yet I sensed the tensions that could be released by an inadvertent glance. I thought of Nina, my mother, cold and silent in her grave, and wondered where all that angry energy went when it could no longer be contained within the body. But the night passed off without incident. David asked me to dance. I suspect a hint from Miriam sent him in my direction. I shook my head, having no wish to compete against the fleet-footed Imelda, who claimed him once again.
When he came home on leave again I’d learned to set dance. In Molloy’s, I wore a sundress with a discreetly plunging neckline and my toenails were painted red as sin. What was ten years between a man and woman, I asked myself. Nothing…if it was the man who carried the years. But for a woman, trapped by time, by a biological clock, it was different. I had squandered my time with too many men and had no more to waste.
Imelda had youth to flaunt but I was skilled in the art of pleasure. I knew how to give, if not to receive. How to stroke and caress a man’s flesh, to apply firm or gentle pressure, to moan deeply, to breathe urgently, to gasp, as if pain and pleasure had clashed then melded. I often wondered if the sour coupling that led to my conception was responsible for my inability to experience pleasure; but David, on our first night together, had no reason to doubt my satisfaction. No condoms. I reassured him. Everything was under control.
We were together every night until it was time to start his next contract. I didn’t write and tell him I was pregnant. Time enough when I was sure. Two months later, I was in Dublin, attending a meeting with a department store buyer, when a cramping pain forced the breath from my lips.
‘It happens,’ said the doctor in the family planning clinic. ‘First babies, it’s tricky. No reason why it should ever happen again.’
Miriam, busily crafting glass, did not notice my shadowed eyes when I returned to the studio, and David never knew.
Six months later, when he came home again, I’d chilled white wine in the fridge and red wine was breathing on the hearth. I served beef roulades with blue cheese and walnuts, a blackberry crumble for dessert. He carried me to the bedroom. Afterwards, I brushed his hair from his eyes and whispered endearments. Sweat beaded his chest. I leaned my palm against the beat of his heart and, for once, I wished I could experience that hot, racing sensation where nothing else exists outside the boundaries of our desire.
We slept and awakened, made love again. Three times he came inside me and when he finally left my side, his eyes dark with spent passion, I lay still and sensed his strong determined sperm shouldering each other in the rush to create something wonderful between us.
Three months passed before I wrote and told him I was pregnant. I assured him he’d no reason to worry. Nothing would be demanded from him, no commitment, no support, no strings. I imagined him reading my letter, surrounded by the scorching sands. He would be alarmed at first, then reassured, then wincing, thinking,