Solace (21 page)

She was doing wonderfully. Those were the nurse’s words. The nurse came once a week, and when she was in the house the baby somehow seemed to know it, seemed to put on her best show: her
quiet gaze, her gorgeous yawn, her delicate, almost fey little squirm in your arms. The nurse said she was strong, she was healthy, she was growing at exactly the right rate, that the formula
seemed to be suiting her, although it would be even better, of course, if the milk could be coming from Mom.

‘I have to go back to work in a month,’ said Joanne, once again. She had told the nurse this already; she had told her several times. She had told her mother, too, and Mark’s
mother, and the nurses in Holles Street. Everybody seemed to be very concerned about the benefits of breastfeeding. Everybody seemed to think that surely something could be done about the terrible
shortness of Joanne’s maternity leave. Everybody had a solution, but nobody, as far as Joanne could see, had breasts throbbing and leaking with milk. And nobody had case files building up on
a desk on Ormond Quay. She knew that the work she had to do was mounting, that Eoin and Imelda had not hired anyone to replace her during her leave; for the sake of less than two months, said
Imelda, it would not have been worth their while.

She had worked in the office until the weekend before the birth. The narrow stairs with the rickety steps made sure that she started and finished each long, grinding day with the awareness of
how responsible she was for the life curled up inside her beneath a layer of skin. Mark’s mother had lost a baby at the bottom of the staircase in Dorvaragh, she had told Joanne. She would
not wish the pain or the shock or the guilt of it on anyone, she had said. This had been while Joanne was growing bigger, growing slower, around the eight-month mark. Mark’s mother had been
full of the kind of advice that had made Joanne wary of even stepping outside the door.

Now it was about Mark’s mother and Joanne’s mother that the nurse was asking, about how far away they lived, about the great help they must be, about what a godsend they would prove
to be in the months ahead. As she spoke, the nurse lifted one and then the other of the baby’s legs, pulling each one gently, as if to stretch it out. What was that for? Was that meant to be
some method for encouraging limbs to grow? Much of what the nurse did on her visits seemed mysterious. There was a lot of pressing and listening, tapping and weighing, and there was very little of
the nurse telling them the things they had to do. They never felt, after one of her visits, that they were any closer to knowing what the trick to all of this might be.

‘You’ll need your mom on the other end of the phone when this mom goes back to work,’ the nurse said to Mark.

‘Yeah,’ said Mark, in a tone as close as he could manage to the sheepishness that, he felt sure, the nurse wanted to hear. But he didn’t want to sound sheepish. He resented
feeling as though he had to. And if she said ‘mom’ in that mid-Atlantic twang one more time, he would snatch Aoife right out of her arms.

‘Oh, it’ll be a right land for your daddy,’ the nurse said to Aoife, dipping her low so that her gaze roamed around the room. ‘But he’ll get used to it, won’t
he? He’ll just have to, won’t he, pet?’

Beside him, Joanne sighed. He looked at her; she looked away. She was sighing not out of irritation at what the nurse was saying about him, he knew, but out of misery at what she was reminding
them of: the fact that, very shortly, Joanne would be going back to work. This was not something Joanne wanted to talk about. Every time Mark tried to bring up the subject, she started to cry. She
seemed unable to bear the idea of returning to the office, and of being away from Aoife, and of starting up again with those twelve-hour days of slaving away for Imelda and Eoin, and of coming back
in the evenings at a time when the baby would long since have gone down. He could understand it. The truth was, he would have hated to leave the baby too, even for a day. But how he was going to
manage by himself was something he could barely imagine. He could give Joanne a run for her money when it came to anxiety and paranoia. The things that could go wrong. The damage you could
accidentally do. The things that it could take you ages to spot, and by then it would be too late. And the madness. The slow, creeping madness. He could feel it already quite firmly beginning to
take hold. It was sleep deprivation, he knew that. But it was also the lack of what used to be reality: adult conversation, meaningless diversion, normal everyday crap. He missed it. No, that was
not true; he did not have time to miss it. He could barely even remember it. But he was going demented without it. He was a worker at a conveyor-belt. He was a horse with a thousand acres to
plough. He was a rat in a lab.

‘You are a useless, self-pitying, fucking arsehole, and I wish to God I’d never set eyes on you.’ That was Joanne’s take on what he was. It was not
constant, this perspective of hers; it was not always that she felt this way, but it seemed to be most of the time now. She was just tired, he knew. Was the word ‘harried’? He thought
so. But that word seemed tied to ‘harridan’, which was something, he knew, he was absolutely not to call her. But, Jesus, if it wasn’t tempting sometimes. She was still sore, he
was aware of that, and she was shattered, and she was as scared of the baby as she was infatuated with her. And Mark knew, from what he was feeling himself, how these states of mind fed on and
compounded each other, how the fear rendered the adoration the most terrifying thing you could feel, how the adoration warped and whittled the fear. You were afraid, half of the time, even to
move.

But still. This was his baby too. This was his daughter. And it was hard to hear Joanne talking to him like that. It made everything even more exhausting. And part of the trouble was that he was
certain, now, that he loved her. Loved Joanne. There hadn’t been time for it to happen the way it usually did. There hadn’t been that sinking from lusting to liking to loving. They had
been seeing each other, and fucking each other, and getting on with each other, and suddenly they had been staring at each other in the kitchen of her house in Stoneybatter, Mark holding a bottle
of champagne, Joanne holding a pink thing that looked like a pen, and then Joanne was crying her eyes out and Mark was hearing the blood thump in his ears. They had gone back and forth for hours
– would she keep it, would she have it, would they stay together, would they forget this had ever happened, would they have any money, would they have any future, would he please put down
that fucking champagne. And, apart from the detail about the champagne, that had been the pattern of their conversation for days afterwards. For weeks.

He had not pressured her either way. He had not told her what to do. He had not told her what he wanted – not that he knew what that was. It was only when Joanne made her decision that he
realized what he had wanted: when she told him she was keeping the baby, he was stunned by the relief that coursed through him. It was ludicrous, wanting it so much. He had no proper job. He had no
money. No way of providing for a child. And with Joanne, he barely even had a relationship. They had been sleeping together for not much more than a month: how could she be pregnant? But she was.
And, yes, she told him, yes, it was definitely his. ‘I knew that,’ he said, but what he was thinking was that it had not even occurred to him to ask the question. How good could he
possibly be at planning for the future – for somebody else’s future – if he wasn’t quick enough, even, to think of that? But there was no time to dwell on anything: soon she
was showing, and soon she was growing big with the child. And there had been arrangements to make, and their parents to deal with, and a house to get in order, and a birth for which to prepare. And
of course there had been talk of love. Professions of love. Moments of love. But Mark had never been really sure that he could feel it.

But now he was sure. And it made no sense. Because she was like someone else. Since the last weeks of the pregnancy, really, she had not been herself, what with the fearfulness and the
tearfulness and the preoccupation and the panic. And the irritability. And the anger. He knew it had to pass. He knew it had to be normal. It was fear that something would happen to the baby, that
she would somehow be neglected, or damaged, or lost. And that was a fear Mark understood.

In the hours after she was born they were both dazed, struck incoherent and disbelieving as though by a sudden loss rather than a gain. They had sat together on the bed in Holles Street, the
plastic curtain drawn around the tiny space that had become charged with the shock of their now being three: Mark on the edge of the mattress, Joanne, flushed and wet-haired, propped up against the
pillows. And the baby. For over a day, the baby without a name. Then, Aoife Luisne Casey, named after nobody, named for nobody but herself.

Aoife came to them at six in the morning. She had spent a whole night in the struggle towards them. Or away from them. Which was it? Which had she wanted? When they slopped her on to
Joanne’s chest, Mark had stared at her and tried to steel himself into feeling whatever it was he was supposed, at that moment, to be feeling. This being, this screaming little being, she was
his. She was theirs. What were they supposed to do with her? What were they supposed to do for her? Were they supposed to show her how to live?

Now she was quiet in her mother’s arms, sucking steadily and intently on her bottle. It was a Sunday morning. What Sunday morning, what month, what time of year? Nothing
came quickly enough to his mind any more. It took a minute to work it out. It was June, it was summertime. The blinds of the sitting room were still closed. It could be any kind of day out there.
At the window, he pulled the cord to reveal a pale blue sky, a dazzle of sunlight, puddles of water on the cement of the back yard. The feral cats that gathered there scattered at the rattling of
the blinds. White plastic garden furniture lay around the place, old potted plants that had long since withered and died. Two bicycles were propped up against the red-brick wall, rusted now,
tangled with overgrown ivy and with each other.

‘We should bring her for a walk today,’ he said, turning to Joanne, who looked at him with puffed and wary eyes.

‘Bring her where?’

‘To the Phoenix Park. Or into town, along the quays.’

Joanne shrugged. ‘Maybe, after her nap.’

He began to get the pram ready. A bag with her nappies, with wipes, with all the things they would need if she got hungry or cold, or if it rained. Another bag with bottles, something to keep
them warm, an extra soother, Sudocrem. Deep inside the pram’s hood, his mother had pinned a religious medal. Some saint. He didn’t know which one. He didn’t know his saints. He
knew that Anthony was for lost things, and Jude was for lost causes, and Dymphna was for the mad. But it couldn’t be any of those. He put a hand into the hood and searched for the medal;
finding it, he leaned towards it, squinted to see who it was. Brigid. Of course. Brigid of the chubby little crosses made from rushes. St Mel, growing confused in his old age, had accidentally
ordained her a bishop instead of an abbess. It was weird, Mark thought, the useless things you remembered from school.

‘No,’ Joanne said suddenly, from the couch. ‘Forget the park. I couldn’t be bothered. Anyway, it’s probably going to rain.’

‘I’ll take her,’ Mark said, but Joanne shook her head.

‘Leave it,’ she said. ‘It’s too much hassle. If you want to be helpful, go out and get something for dinner.’

In Centra he bought steaks and potatoes and a bag of frozen peas, and nappies and baby powder and baby formula and baby shampoo, and a box of cereal for the morning, and a bottle of wine for
whenever they would ever again get to sit down together and drink a bottle of wine. And walking back up Arbour Hill he saw that Mossy was at the door. He called up to him, shouted to him not to
ring the doorbell. By some miracle of St Brigid and St Jude and St Dymphna, Aoife might have gone to sleep, and if Mossy woke her, Joanne would go mad. But then he realized that in his pocket his
phone was ringing, and it was Mossy: Mossy, who’d worked out already that it might not be such a good idea to make a racket at the door. Mark waved, and in a minute he was hugging Mossy, like
a drowning man being pulled from the sea.

*

The summer passed. It was only a clutch of weeks, seeming longer and more beautiful before it began. Soon what sunshine came was not warm but autumnal, and the light lasted each
evening for a shorter and shorter time.

Joanne had been back at work since early July. The hours were long, as she had known they would be, and as winter began to draw in, she woke up every morning wishing it was night and that she
was walking up Arbour Hill, looking at the crooked number 4 on their front door, coming into the house to the smell of food and to the light on in the hall and to the fire lit in the sitting room.
There was so much that she wanted to do with this house now. It had hardly been a home at all before Mark and the baby. It had been somewhere she inhabited, like a student flat. Now she saw it
differently. She wanted to paint the hall a bright colour and to put down new floorboards. To rip up the ugly old carpet in the sitting room. A room had to be made for Aoife; the whole house needed
light and air and space. For years before she had moved in, her father had rented the place to students, and it still had that look to it. She had not had the money to do it up when she inherited
it, and she did not know where that money would come from now. But she would find it. She would have to. Soon, Aoife would be old enough to see this place with her own eyes. Joanne did not want her
to see it the way it was now.

If she got home before seven, Aoife would still be up. She was a joy at that hour, cheerful, affectionate, loving the sight of her mother come home. She smiled in huge gales of happiness and
grasped at the strands of Joanne’s hair. In a corner by the sofa they had laid a soft mat on the floor and scattered soft toys and other things around. She was still too young to play with
them, but she seemed to like being surrounded by them, seemed to like being there on her back, taking slow account of them.