When All Is Said(25)
‘Molly,’ she said, ‘that’s who she is. Our beautiful Molly.’
I had to take her from your mother’s arms. May you never, son, never have to do that. It felt as if someone had my insides in their hands and was squeezing them as tightly as possible, trying to drain the life and will from me. I felt the physical pain of it, as I gently took Sadie’s hand away, cradling the bundle of our making in the crock of my arm. She was magnificent, that little thing, our magnificent Molly. I lay my lips against her soft cheek and let my body convulse in the grief of never having known her and of never being afforded the opportunity.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered into her ear, into the crisp cotton smell of the blanket. Sorry for not having whisked her and her mother away to the hospital the minute I walked in the door the previous night, giving the mite the chance she’d deserved.
Despite her closed eyes and the anguish of my guilt, I smiled for her, showing her my endless, hopeless unquestionable love before giving her away to the midwife. I grabbed your mother’s hand as our daughter left the room in the arms of a stranger. I knelt by her side and laid my head on her lap. She ran her fingers back and forth through my hair, before I felt the weight of her head on mine.
The funeral was small. We stood beside Molly in her tiny white coffin. Your mother closest, then me with my arm around her, giving support should she fall. There was my mother, your aunt May – the only one of my sisters who could make it back in time, although Jenny did come back a month later to have a few days with us – your granny Mary and grandfather Michael and your Auntie Noreen. Doctor McRory, and Robert Timoney senior, the solicitor from home. The chapel in the basement of the hospital smelled clinical, despite the best efforts of the flowers and aromatic candles. Three rectangular windows up high, let in the only light there was. It was a bright, crisp winter’s day – blue sky and the whitest of wispy clouds skitting across it like they were in a race to something good beyond that I couldn’t see. I remember watching them as the hum of the prayers and cars passing in the street above held the room. The hospital chaplain led the small service alongside Father Forrester, the parish priest from Rainsford. We brought Molly home to be buried. The same grave in which your mother now lies, five rows down from Tony and my father. I don’t think I opened my mouth once, not in homage to the Lord nor to those who shook my hand as I stood by the graveside. Molly’s loss had all but taken the will out of me.
During the year that followed, I returned to spending as much time as I could away from the house and Sadie. Me and my guilt stayed out until after midnight and rose before the dawn. Avoiding her eyes, her accusation, that she had every right to level. What a fool I’d been, what a damned stupid fool, allowing a piece of land and a handshake to rule me. The ‘if onlys’ tore at me in the day and in the suffocation of the night. Dragging on my breath and haunting my dreams. I watched Sadie from the corner of my eye, when I thought she couldn’t see me. I saw her pale skin grow old before me. The worry-lines, digging deeper, taking hold. I was powerless, to stop the silver sneaking into her hair. I closed my eyes to it and left. It seemed those months were full of closing doors – me, always on the other side, running away from what I’d done.
Did she watch me too, I wonder? And if she did, what did she see? I couldn’t even look in the mirror for fear of what I’d find there. So convinced was I, that greed dripped out of every pore, into the dark shadows under my eyes and the crevice of my scar. It felt as if my voice had lost its magic, and in its place, I croaked.
‘We’ll be grand, Doctor,’ I said, the first day Doctor McRory called by, waylaying me in the yard, his case in his hand. It must have been a couple of weeks, maybe a month after the funeral. I didn’t lift my head to him. But concentrated on the stick I held. Tapping it against the side of my boot. Waiting until he got the hint to leave.
‘I’d like to see her, Maurice. To check she’s OK. I take it you’ll not object if I go on in.’
The stick tapped out its rhythm louder and longer, as we waited. Of course, I objected. Jesus, could the man not leave us to the awfulness before he came ’round, poking his nose in. But in the end, I lifted the stick towards the house, giving the permission he was looking for, and off I went down to the fields, saying nothing.
To be fair to him, his intentions were good and he never let up. If he hadn’t, God knows how things might have ended up. I found evidence of his visits around the house when there was nothing further to distract me and keep me from going home. Pamphlets lay beside the kettle or on the little table beside my armchair where I put my tea and the handful of biscuits. They remained unread, covered in crumbs and teacup stains. But the more I ignored them the more they seemed to multiply. Eventually, one found its way into my jacket pocket. I pulled it out in the tractor one day, looking for a rag: Working Through Your Grief. She had put nothing in there about working through your culpability. I crumpled it up. Crumpled loads of them in fact, whenever I found one in the house.
‘I want to try for another,’ Sadie said, into the darkness after I’d crept into our bed one night some weeks later. Late it was, about two in the morning. It’d been past midnight when I came in. I’d fallen asleep in front of the telly and had woken to that awful hum they used to have on back when there was no such thing as all-night TV.
‘Fine,’ I replied, like it was nothing. It was anything but. Truthfully, I didn’t want another, may God forgive me. I didn’t want you. What madness had come over her, I wondered, as I stared above me into the darkness? Did she not know who slept beside her? A man whose greed was put before his child’s life. Is this who she wanted to father another, if by some miracle it made it to us?