Eventually she heaved herself off the sofa and squatted beside it, hanging on to the arm, looking down into herself. She was huffing and grunting, the hair plastered to her skull. Somewhere in the middle of it she turned her head and looked at the window, looked right through him.
He remembered the awful streaks of blood on her haunches as something bulged and slithered from them and onto the heaped blanket she had put beneath her. She was bent over the mite, arse in the air, pulling at the cord that joined them. He saw a puny arm rise from the rug – trembling with anger was what it looked like, shaking its little knot of fist in the air – and he felt exultant, something bursting in his chest, coming from nothing and filling him full.
9
When Ali got to the bus stop outside the television studio there was a group of people already gathered there. Several turned to look at her.
‘Don’t they drop you home in a limo?’ said one woman.
They were from the audience. Ali looked at her watch and walked away from the bus stop as if she simply didn’t have the time to wait. Maybe there really was a limo – she hadn’t stuck around to find out. Now she’d have to walk home.
She could hardly believe how her mouth had run away with her. Imagine talking about sex like she knew what she was on about. She had had sex. A couple of times, with the flirtatious brother of a school friend, but it wasn’t what she thought it would be; it was clumsy and mystifying.
Ali walked up Eglinton Road, limping in her high heels now, but halfway home. A car drove by slowly and came to a halt in front of her, brake lights glowing. She moved closer to the houses on her left and looked away from the car as she passed it. It slid into motion and kept pace with her for an awful minute before suddenly accelerating off. She remembered the heavy make-up she was still wearing, the heels, no coat – she must look a sight. She stopped and unbuckled the straps of her shoes. Better barefoot than hobbled. She kept her eyes on the pavement ahead for streams of liquid or glints of glass.
Why had her mother never discussed the first baby with her, never tried to explain things, let her believe it was in her head? Her aunt and uncle, they’d seen it too, but no one ever spoke of it. Someone must know who that baby was, where it came from. She suddenly recalled her mother lying in bed all those winter days, crying and crying.
‘You okay?’
Ali was standing at the edge of a road crossing. She might have been standing there for some time. A girl had drawn level to wait for the light, hand-in-hand with a sullen man. She craned her neck to look into Ali’s face.
‘Okay?’ she asked again, but her boyfriend tugged her onwards, away from involvement.
‘Fine …’ Ali managed and trotted across behind them.
She was glad to see the pool of light that fell on the pavement from the all-night shop called The Cottage. Her home was behind the shop. After her father died, Ma sold their little bungalow and bought a tall terraced house full of sitting tenants, and a shop built in the former front garden. It was the practical thing to do, she explained.
Ali walked up the narrow passage beside the shop and through a small yard filled with bread trays and stacks of flattened boxes. The house rose like a cliff in front of her, stone steps leading up to the front door. Above it, her mother’s bedroom light shone through the gap in her curtains.
Ali opened and shut the front door quietly. There were no signs of life downstairs, but she could hear the muffled sound of the television above. She went up and knocked as she entered.
Her mother’s unerring eye went straight to the shoes in her hand, then took in her grimy bare feet. ‘Did you not get a taxi, like I said?’
Ali pretended she hadn’t heard.
Her mother’s room was large, stretching across the front of the house. It functioned as a workroom as well as a bedroom, now that her mother had taken up mending china as another way to make a bit of money. An old dining table filled one side of the room, covered with broken things – dishes, vases, a massive soup tureen decorated with pink scallop shells, and dozens of ornaments missing vital pieces. Saucers of glue and paint sat along the edge, and jam jars stuffed with wooden sticks and brushes.
On the other side was her mother’s ornate bed, hemmed in by draped chairs and small tables toppling with books and lamps. In the middle of this jumble, like a hen on her nest, her hair loose over her shoulders, her mother waited. The awful topic to be broached hanging in the air.
Ali sat on the edge of the bed. A film with subtitles was playing on the TV; a beautiful woman in a tight dress leaned, smoking, against a wall while a man remonstrated with her. Ali promised herself a cigarette once she’d got this over with.
‘You watched it, I presume.’
‘Your dress looked nice …’ said her mother.
‘Jesus, my dress?’
Ma looked away, blinked quickly. Ali took a breath, tried to keep her voice steady.
‘You told Seán O’Loan, didn’t you? About what happened in Buleen.’
‘I was upset that night. It just came out. I’m sorry. And I should have stopped you going on that.’ Her mother pointed at the television.
‘You have to explain it to me, Ma.’
‘I wasn’t even sure you remembered – you never mention it.’
After all these years they were
