Freckles(43)
Confused, Pauline had said on another day.
Complicated. Her English wasn’t great. Disturbed. Confused.
She was holed up in the master suite for six weeks, only opening the door for breakfast, lunch and dinner. What did she do in there all day, I’d asked. She watched television but back then they only had four TV channels. Three of them were in English, one of them was in Irish. She watched videos but they were in short supply, my cousin Dara would get them from the local video store – it sounded like the Stone Age – and she didn’t read the books that Pauline left for her on the food tray. I asked my cousin John about Carmencita too.
Bitch, he said.
Complicated. Her English wasn’t great. Disturbed. Confused. Bitch.
I tried, Pauline had said once, exhausted from the retelling of it, as if there was a concealed accusation beneath my questions, that if Pauline had done something differently then Carmencita would have stayed, she wouldn’t have given me up. No one thinks she and Pops would have gotten together and I’m glad she and Pops didn’t stay together. I’m glad she gave me up. I’m maybe not so glad that she left me completely. But she did always sound like a bitch.
I see Pauline’s side. Fifty years old, two sons, a business, a husband, minding a stranger night and day, waiting on her hand and foot, a young woman carrying her brother’s child. Her brother’s student, who regularly lashed out and wanted nothing to do with Pops or the baby. I can feel her stress, the pressure. She said she was terrified. She’d accused Pauline one time of holding her captive in the house. Pauline had told her she was welcome to leave if she wanted, that she was helping her because she said she had no place else to go. She left for two weeks and then came back.
She was dramatic, Pauline said.
Complicated. Her English wasn’t great. Disturbed. Confused. Bitch. Dramatic.
Carmencita stayed until she had me. Pauline said Carmencita never talked about her hospital appointments. No one ever knew if the baby was healthy or not, if I kicked or not; Carmencita wouldn’t tell anyone anything. Apart from Dara, my cousin, the weirdo with bad wiring. He didn’t think she was a bitch. He must have felt he’d met his spirit animal. Someone who was wired the same way as him and despised my family just as much as he did. He was the one who drove her to hospital appointments and to wherever she was hiding for two weeks. I’d like to think she and him didn’t have a thing going. She would have been over six months pregnant, but Dara was always a bit weird. Still is.
Of course I’ve thought about it from Pops’ perspective too. Especially when Katie said that pervert thing, I had to process it. Lonely but convivial music lecturer. Single man living in Dublin. A beautiful woman who just so happens to be a student meets his eye, wants him. He’s not used to being wanted. Not like that. Not from someone like her. He’s older and he’s lonely; quite frankly, is the kind of man who looked old even as a teenager. Only it’s not to be. She discovers she’s pregnant, wants nothing to do with him. She wants to get rid of the baby but he wants it. Maybe she’s scared to get rid of it, maybe she thinks it’s wrong, who knows, but she doesn’t. He’ll do anything for her, to help her, and he wants to keep the baby. Because he knows he’ll never be lonely again. He leaves his job, whispers and rumours have broken out. He’s not the first lecturer to sleep with a student, not his own student, but still people talk. Just as well he’s gone far away. He raises the baby alone but knows happily he’ll never be lonely again.
He never loves again. Not as far as I can see.
How can I be angry with him for loving me and wanting me.
When I was five years old and started boarding school, he was able to take on a big job again. He got the job in Limerick University. I came home on the weekends. The teaching job was ideal because he was free in the summers when I was off school so he taught classes from the house or at summer schools. If he had to travel for those then I stayed with Pauline, which I loved because a B&B in the summertime was always so exciting. Different people from different countries travelling through, bikers on cycling tours, or hikers and golfers. Artists, crafts people looking for inspiration in our beautiful landscape. American golfers, Danish artists, French cyclists. Coaches bursting with Japanese tourists blocking narrow cliffside roads, trying to pass coaches filled with Germans. Our little patch welcomed people from all over the world.
I’d help Pauline bake apple tarts and pavlovas for dessert, brown bread, Guinness stew and buttery cabbage for the tourists. We’d eat the fresh fish that Mossie caught. The cockles, mussels and clams. Even better, I used to take off on my own into the back garden, acres of Wild Atlantic Way land that rose and fell, rocky and dangerous enough for my imagination, detective on investigations, while I waited for Pops to return.
I don’t ever remember feeling any more lost or empty than any other child. I had my moments, I was only human, but not because of Carmencita, not because I didn’t have a mother. Not even when I had to explain it at the first week of school or the first time I’d meet someone, which was rare because who ever really cares. My mam’s not around, I’d say most of the time. I never knew her, if I wanted to offer more. My Pops raised me. I loved saying that. I loved the sound of it. If I’m honest, it made me feel special. Different. Anyone can have two boring parents, that’s easy. And I certainly wasn’t the only one at secondary school with a different homelife. There were separations, divorces, deaths, two mams, two dads, all kinds of goings-on. We used to joke about whose parents would be next to split up, some girls actually wanted it to happen, and those with single or separated parents would discuss how gross it would actually be to have parents living in a house together.