The Fall Girl Read online

  I drag my soles along the grass and stop the swing. ‘What’s a French tart?’

  ‘Quit earwigging, you,’ my mother says.

  Aunty Lily is bent over coughing, laughing and struggling for breath.

  ‘Take it easy there, Lily.’ My mother rubs her sister’s back. ‘Don’t you know you shouldn’t be getting yourself all worked up like that?’

  ‘Ah Jesus,’ Aunty Lily gasps, ‘if I can’t have a laugh now and again, what’s the point?’

  A couple of weeks later, my mother drops me off at my dance class and says my father will collect me at midday. She’s going to spend the whole morning with Aunty Lily.

  ‘Go on outside and play with the others, child of grace,’ Miss Jackson says, ‘and don’t be sitting there all on your owney-o.’

  I can’t believe she’s letting me go out. She knows very well my mother wouldn’t approve. I keep looking back at her as I edge my way over to the door, half expecting her to change her mind. But she’s busy showing a young lad how to point his toes. When I open the door, I can hear the other children playing. I walk down the steps, unsure of what I’m going to do with myself when I get to the bottom.

  Lesley has everyone lined up against the back wall. She’s skipping in front of them and singing:

  My sister Jane was far too young

  to marry a man of a hundred and one …

  I sidle over to the adjacent wall and sit on an empty beer keg from the pub next door. Lesley is the only one who notices me. She smiles, gesturing me over to her line. I can feel my face turning red as I walk across to join the others. Lesley has to pick someone from the row to have a go and chooses me.

  ‘I don’t know how to play the game,’ I tell her.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says, taking my hand. ‘Just follow my steps and I’ll do the singing.’

  25 September 1999 (bedtime)

  I’m not sure about all this reminiscing. Where is it going to get me? It might do more harm than good. Earlier on today, when I was thinking about the first time I met Lesley, I almost felt normal. But I’m not normal. Normal people don’t kidnap babies, do they?

  Her eighteenth birthday

  I stand beside the pram, facing the mannequins in the shop window. Inside I see the baby’s mother rummaging through the bargain rail. She doesn’t even look over her shoulder to check on her child. What the hell is wrong with her? Why is she being so irresponsible? How come she gets to be a mother and I don’t? I would never have left my baby unattended. It’s not fair. This shouldn’t be happening. Everything’s arseways. I could scream.

  The security guard steps inside the shop and starts chatting with one of the assistants. The only eyes on the baby now are mine. It’s a split-second decision – I stretch out my leg, release the brake with my foot and grab the handle.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say, pushing the pram in front of me towards O’Connell Street.

  A path opens up as pedestrians step out of my way. I don’t feel crazy and I don’t feel wrong. I just want to protect this child. I want to be … should be her mother.

  I’m at the top of Henry Street in less than a minute. There’s no hysteria; no screaming, delirious mother howling to the heavens, ‘Where’s my baby?’

  Taking a left turn, I walk down to the traffic lights and around Parnell Square. When I see my car in the distance, I quicken my pace. The sooner we get away from the city, the better.

  At the car, I try to remove the carrycot from the frame of the pram, but the blasted thing won’t budge. I get down on my hunkers and start fumbling with the pram’s undercarriage.

  ‘Are you OK there, missus?’ a man says. He has an inner-city accent, black loafers and white socks.

  ‘Fine,’ I snap, without looking up at him.

  ‘Bleedin’ hell, keep your fuckin’ wig on, will ya?’ he says, stomping on his cigarette butt. ‘Oi was only askin’.’

  When I finally manage to release the four clamps that secure the carrycot to the frame of the pram, I lift it off, put it into the back seat and fasten the seatbelt around it. The baby’s eyes are flickering underneath her spongy eyelids. Aching to kiss her, I bend down to pick her up, but then think better of it: I don’t want to waken her. Besides, there’ll be plenty of time for kisses later. I take the baby bag from the carrier basket and put it on the passenger seat. Then I fold down the frame and shove it into the boot.

  I turn the key in the ignition. Gerry Ryan is still on the radio, so I know it’s not yet twelve o’clock. At the first red light I turn to check on the baby. All I can see is the back of her head – wisps of downy white hair – and I remember how my father once told me that when I was born my hair was as white as snow.

  Several minutes later, I find myself on a roundabout. I drive around it three times wondering where to go, before taking the exit for the Naas dual carriageway: the farther away from Crosslea, the better. There’s no way I can bring her home yet: maybe in a week or two. Then I could tell my father that she’s mine. Women do it from time to time – disappear for a couple of weeks and arrive back home with their babies.

  She begins to stir and moan.

  ‘Ssh, little baby, ssh, ssh.’

  When she quietens, I’m sure she’s comforted by the sound of my voice and I’m chuffed.

  On hearing the news come on, I bless myself and turn up the volume. I can’t believe it’s one o’clock. How did I manage to miss the twelve o’clock news? There is no mention of a missing baby in the headlines. It doesn’t make sense. I can’t understand it. Why aren’t they looking for her? I should be relieved, and part of me is, but I’m angry too, because if it hadn’t been me who had taken her, she could’ve ended up in the arms of some nutter; in danger, dead even. Thank God it was me, I think, my eyes filling up at the thought of what might have happened to her otherwise.

  She begins to stir again. This time she makes little kissy sounds that tell me she’s hungry. When she starts to cry, I sing to her:

  Hush little baby don’t say a word

  Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird …

  It’s getting hot inside the car. I roll down the window.

  And if that mockingbird won’t sing

  Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring …

  A couple of miles outside Naas, I get stuck in a traffic jam. The baby is wailing now, stopping only to draw breath. Afraid that someone in the surrounding cars might hear her cry and become suspicious, I roll up the window again.

  ‘Oh God, please help me.’

  I can see a service station about a hundred yards away, but at the rate we’re moving, it could take me another ten minutes to get there. I cannot wait. Indicating, I pull over on to the hard shoulder and drive up into the courtyard. My hands are trembling as I lift the baby out of the carrycot and hold her close to my chest. She nestles into me, urgently searching with her mouth. Her impatient lips try to latch on to my breast. She’s moving back and forth on me, as if she’s blowing on a mouth organ. I want to rip open my blouse and feel the softness of her head on my naked breast. If only I could quench her thirst.

  A bottle, I think, puffing and panting to keep myself calm. I put my free hand into the baby bag, pulling out nappies, a bib, a bottle. The flipping thing is empty! I root around the inside of the bag again, this time finding a soother. When I put it in her mouth, she sucks furiously. I turn the baby bag upside down and shake out the rest of its contents on to the passenger seat, but there’s no formula, just a packet of baby wipes and a baby-gro. As I lift the bag to throw it into the back seat, I feel something rectangular and solid in the front pocket. Undoing the zip, I pull it out. Yes! Thank you, God. It’s a carton of Cow and Gate milk.

  ‘It’s OK, baby,’ I pant, wiping my brow. ‘It’s OK.’

  She cries and kicks, banging her feet on the steering wheel. I try to open the carton of formula, but my nails are too short to make a slit: I have to use my teeth. Outside, people are getting in and out of cars, I can hear doors slamming, but I don’
t look out. The baby spits out the soother and throws back her head, flexing her limbs and squalling as if she’s in terrible pain. She’s frightening me now. Pushing back my seat, I lay her down on my knees. I need to fill her bottle quickly. As I loosen the top, I become aware of two children staring in the window. The baby jolts again, this time kicking my elbow. Milk spills over the side of the bottle and soaks my skirt. I don’t care as long as I can manage to get enough into the bottle to satisfy her, to shut her up.

  ‘OK, baby, here it comes,’ I say, screwing on the top. ‘Ssh ssh ssh.’

  Holding her in the crook of my arm, I put the teat to her mouth.

  There. There. There.

  She’s drinking now, fast and furious. I sense her relief in the sound of her breathing. Beads of sweat are trickling down the small of my back, making me itchy. I haven’t time to scratch myself. I don’t have a free hand either.

  Looking down at her, I find it impossible not to feel moved by her big, blue, dependent eyes gazing back up at me and scanning my face.

  I listen to the one-thirty news headlines. There’s still no mention of a missing baby. It doesn’t make sense. It must be two hours now since I found her. Unless, of course, she’d been abandoned. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility. I’ve heard of several cases of mothers abandoning their babies in Ireland. And this child’s mother did look very young: too young. Perhaps she couldn’t cope. She could be on her own, without a man, without support, without money. She could be depressed, on drugs; at the end of her tether. Who knows?

  ‘Did your mother abandon you, sweetheart?’ I look at her helpless face. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after you.’

  Maybe it’s fate. I’ve never really believed in fate, not since … not for eighteen years. But why me? And why now? Today on her eighteenth birthday. Fate – it’s the only explanation.

  26 September 1999 (middle of the night)

  Fate is only an explanation, a watery excuse. And, as I’ve said, there are no excuses for what I’ve done.

  27 September 1999 (afternoon)

  Fate reminds me of that song: ‘Que sera sera’. My Aunty Lily used to sing it. I can still see her sitting in the armchair, singing and swaying, her eyes dancing in her head, her face flushed from brandy. Oblivious to her fate. Not a worry in the world that I could see.

  ‘Come on, Frances, sing along with your Aunty Lily,’ she’d say, taking me on her knee. ‘You have a lovely sweet voice just like me.’

  Aunty who?

  We’re having a visitor – my Aunty Lily. She’s from London, no less. I can hardly wait. I look at the clock for the hundredth time since morning. Though I can’t yet read the time, I can tell it’s after two o’clock, but not yet three.

  ‘A watched kettle never boils,’ my mother says.

  ‘I’m not watching the kettle,’ I tell her. ‘I’m watching the clock.’

  ‘Here, make yourself useful.’ She hands me a plate, a doily and a packet of assorted biscuits.

  ‘What’s she like?’ I ask, as I arrange the biscuits around the plate – plain, fancy, plain, fancy, plain, fancy.

  ‘You’ll see for yourself,’ she says with a sigh.

  Tearing off wads of tinfoil, she covers the plate of sandwiches, the biscuits and the apple tart. Then she checks her watch.

  ‘They should be leaving the airport about now,’ she says, wringing her hands nervously. ‘Run upstairs and get my beads from under my pillow. We’ll say a decade of the rosary that your father and Aunty Lily will have a safe journey home.’

  Prayers said, I kneel up on the armchair next to the window in the front room to watch out for them. The Reilly twins, who are in my class, are playing out on the street. I lean across the back of the armchair, knock on the windowpane and shout out to them that I’m waiting for my aunty who’s coming over from London. When I realize that they can’t hear me, I climb across the top of the armchair and on to the windowsill. As I reach up to open the top window, my mother comes in and scolds me for being so noisy. I don’t think she quite understands how excited I’m feeling. Up until this day, apart, of course, from my parents, I haven’t met any of the few relatives I have. Both my grandmothers and my maternal grandfather are dead. My paternal grandfather lives in Australia with my father’s sister, Aunty Philomena. I didn’t even know Aunty Lily existed until last week. My mother never said she had a younger sister.

  ‘Aunty who?’ I asked her, when she’d told me about our visitor.

  ‘Your Aunty Lily. From London.’

  ‘I didn’t know about her.’

  My mother said of course I did, but that I must have forgotten, and that she’s not surprised because I’ve a head like a sieve.

  Everyone else at school has sisters, brothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunties, uncles, first cousins, second cousins, third cousins once removed. They’re all part of big families, local families. They all have the usual surnames – Maguire, Reilly, Cusack, Kelly. No one ever asks – Which of the Falls would that be?

  Through the net curtain, I see the car coming and I call out to my mother. She shoos me away from the window and reminds me once again to be on my best behaviour. The key turns in the front door.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ my mother says, patting her hair as she steps into the hall.

  ‘Rita!’ my aunty whoops. ‘Ah Jesus, it’s great to see you.’

  ‘Hello, Lily,’ my mother says. ‘It’s good to see you too. Eh … and who have we here?’

  ‘That’s my old man,’ my aunty tells her.

  ‘Your … pardon me?’

  ‘My husband.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘Rita, Xavier. Xavier, Rita.’

  ‘It’s very nice to meet you,’ the man says.

  ‘Holy Immaculate Mother, when did all this happen?’ my mother asks.

  ‘Arragh, I’ll tell you all about that later,’ my aunty says. ‘First things first. Where’s Frances?’

  The door swings open and a lady, whom I can’t believe to be my mother’s sister, throws open her arms to me. I’m standing facing her, staring at her tangerine blouse, her brown bell-bottoms and her crocodile boots, not quite knowing what I’m supposed to do.

  ‘Hello,’ I say.

  ‘Come ’ere and give me a hug, love,’ she says, her arms still outstretched.

  I try to catch my mother’s eye for her approval, but I can’t see her face; she’s standing behind my aunty’s husband, who has the cut of a grandfather about him. As I walk towards Aunty Lily, I see tears in her eyes. She bends down and squeezes me so tight my ribs hurt. For a moment, everyone is silent.

  ‘Sit down, why don’t ye,’ my father says, and I’m relieved to be released from my aunty’s embrace.

  My mother shows her sister round the house. My father and my new uncle, Xavier, have a drink. I like the whiskey smell and the crystal glasses. Xavier tells my father about meeting Lily two years after his first wife had passed away. He has two daughters – Madeleine and Linda – in their late teens, working lassies, one a nurse, the other a telephonist.

  ‘Nice steady jobs,’ my father says. ‘I’m in the post office myself – a postman.’

  ‘A good, honest job,’ Xavier says.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘The women have a lot of catching up to do.’

  ‘They have indeed. It’s been a while.’

  ‘Almost seven years, I take it.’

  ‘Aye, that’d be about right.’

  ‘I think Lily misses having family around her.’

  ‘I suppose she would,’ my father says, shifting in his seat like he’s sitting on something lumpy.

  ‘Twenty-five years I’ve been in London and I still don’t call it home.’

  ‘Do you not?’

  ‘No. Armagh is still home to me, and will be till the day I die.’

  ‘But your girls are settled in London, aren’t they?’

  ‘Oh aye; they were born and reared in it.’

  ‘Sure, they’re the most
important family you have now. And Lily, of course.’

  ‘The girls will move on, get married and set up homes of their own. That’s the way it goes,’ Xavier says, pulling a pipe and a box of matches from his sports-jacket pocket.

  Aunty Lily peeps in the door and tells her husband that she needs help to take the luggage up to their room.

  ‘Will you let the man finish his drink first?’ my father says.

  But my uncle is already on his feet.

  ‘She keeps me on my toes, does this one,’ he says, putting down his pipe on the mantelpiece. There’s something about the way he says it that makes me think he could stay on his toes for ever.

  While they’re upstairs, my mother slips back into the room and says in a loud whisper, ‘Has that girl lost leave of her senses altogether?’

  ‘As far as I can gather,’ my father says, ‘she’s just the same old Lily – full of surprises.’

  ‘I think I’d class marrying a white-haired publican as more of a shock than a surprise. And did you know he’s a widower and has two daughters in their late teens?’

  ‘Aye, so he was telling me.’

  ‘What in God’s name possessed her? Why couldn’t she have just waited? A fine-looking woman like her – she could’ve had her pick of husbands if she’d played her cards right.’

  ‘They seem right happy to me.’

  ‘Yeah, but for how long? That man will be collecting the pension before Lily hits thirty.’ She lifts back the fire screen and pokes the coals. ‘And she’ll be spoon-feeding him before she hits forty. If my poor mother could see her now, she’d turn in her grave, God rest her.’ She hangs the poker back on its hook and blesses herself.

  ‘Will you not be worrying about Lily, Rita? She’ll be grand.’

  ‘Living in the upstairs of a public house! I can’t see them getting a rosary said of an evening in that kind of seedy atmosphere, can you?’

  As if in response to my mother’s remarks, we hear an outburst of laughter from upstairs.