Winterwood (3 page)

—Catherine Courtney, will you marry me?

I hadn't given her any warning at all.

—Yes, she said. Yes, Redmond, I will, leaning forward and taking my hand.

I couldn't believe my luck. I just sat there staring in silence — like a simpleton. Then she laughed and kissed me on the
cheek. She was wearing a silver necklace which she fingered a little nervously, abstractedly playing with the dangling charm,
a shining initial, the letter 'C.

—Look at you! she said and laughed again, a tincture of pink appearing on her cheek.

We were married exactly six months after that, in 1981. I was forty and she was twenty-two but the age difference didn't matter
one whit. That was what she had said and that was what I knew.

It was the greatest day of my life. No question.

We rented a basement flat in Dublin, in the south city suburb of leafy Rathmines, in an old rambling rundown Georgian house
in Cowper Road. It wasn't much but it was all we could afford. It didn't matter, we told ourselves - it wouldn't always be
like this. Sooner or later our ship would come in.

—And who knows, maybe we'll be able to afford a mansion, she used to say, tossing her scarf back, with a kind of impish devil-may-care
laugh.

At weekends we used to visit houses that were for sale — just for amusement and something to do. There was one she took a
special shine to. It was situated in the suburb of Rathfarnham, on Ballyroan Road. It had a lovely little apple orchard out
the back. I could tell by her expression that she really loved that house.

—Maybe one day, love, I remember saying, squeezing her arm as we strode towards the bus stop.

You'd hear her humming and it would do your heart good. She was humming it on the bus that day going home.

It's just that sweet little mystery that's here in your heart It's just that sweet little mystery makes me cry.

I continued working for the
Leinster News,
serialising my articles and going down to visit Ned. Rathmines then was a lovely place to live and Catherine got work in the
various bars, frequented in the main by students. I used to meet her in the Sunset Grill after work, a little place not far
from the library. Our treats at that time were Knickerbocker Glories.

It was stupid, I know. Love makes you like that.

We continued living in Cowper Road. Then our firstborn, a girl, arrived two years later, in March 1983. We decided to call
her Imogen, after Catherine's grandmother. She was a wonder, really. To look at, to listen to, everything. Every day I woke
up she filled my heart with pride. Catherine Courtney had been given to me as a gift. And now there was Imogen. She had her
mother's looks - the green-blue eyes and the very same laugh. I used to take her in the evenings and wheel her buggy through
the streets of Rathmines, before we'd meet her mother in the Sunset Grill, after her shift had ended in the pub.

You looked at Imogen's curls and felt guilty — why, you thought, should you be so privileged? Occasionally I'd receive a bonus
and I'd arrive home unexpectedly with a present — an album or a book for Catherine, maybe, and something from the Early Learning
Centre for Immy. That was what I called her now. The odd time we'd get down to Slattery's for a pint - if the girl upstairs
offered to babysit. But generally we didn't bother. We didn't want to, to tell the honest truth. We were just as happy to
sit and listen to John Martyn or watch
Dallas
on the telly.
Dallas -
we were crazy about that.

—I lawrv you
Jay-Awl
Catherine used to say.

It became a kind of catchphrase of ours.

—I lawrv
yon Jay-Awl
we'd laugh, as Immy gurgled and Catherine sat in the firelight, reading, wiggling her toes as she serenely turned the pages.

On my way into work, I would find myself lapsing into a daydream, unable to understand what it was I had done to deserve such
bounteous, unmitigated good fortune. But then nothing, of course, nothing, is ever as simple as that.

You should never really expect it to be.

We had been in Rathmines for almost four years and fully intended to carry on doing just that when, in March 1985, the
Leinster News
unexpectedly went into liquidation and, after months of looking around the city with little or no success, I was on the verge
of becoming really worried when — quite out of the blue — I was offered a position with a small newspaper in London: the
North London Chronicle.
Which, at first - I won't pretend otherwise - I was quite hesitant about. It seemed such a big step with a young child and
everything. And details of the salary were vague, to say the least. But after some time talking it over, Catherine suggested
that I ought to take it. She had been toying with the idea of going back to college, she said, for some time. And London would
provide lots of opportunities - perhaps it was time for us to broaden our horizons.

To make a long story short, I called them and accepted.

We moved to London some weeks later and initially things, I have to say, they looked really positive. But then, unfortunately,
fate intervened and we encountered, I suppose, what you might call another small piece of misfortune. The
North London Chronicle
was bought out by a rival and the core staff— including me — were let go without a settlement. Initially, there was a lot
of bellicose talk in the pub, with the union official pledging retribution and vengeance. But in the end, as I had anticipated,
his passionate belligerence all came to nothing.

But even then, Catherine Courtney and I remained undaunted, picking up pieces of work here and there. I spent a while on a
freesheet in Cricklewood and Catherine did stretches in an off-licence called Victoria Wine and various cafes and bars. Then
we discovered that if one of us didn't work we would actually be better off, qualifying both for income support and housing
benefit. We debated it for a while but then I decided that I could work from home, submitting articles on a freelance basis.
It worked like a dream - dropping Immy to the nursery every day, before coming home to sit down at my typewriter. With the
result being that, against all the odds, we found ourselves now attaining an altogether new level of happiness. Something
neither of us would have ever considered possible. Considering how contented we had been to begin with. It really was quite
remarkable. And it made me feel so — why, just so proud. All I kept thinking was: the miraculous things that, in adversity,
can happen to an ordinary man and woman. Just so long as they're fortunate enough to be in love. There is no happiness or
joy that can come close to the feelings you experience in such a blessed situation. I picked up Imogen every day at the same
time, chatting to her the whole way home. Such a chatterbox she was becoming!

We always had great fun walking through Queen's Park, with her sucking her lollipop and me singing the theme tune from
My Little Pony,
shouting 'Kimono!' and 'Pinky Pie!', the names of all the characters she loved. Sometimes we'd just stop and sit there in
the park, telling stories - but that often wasn't such a good idea. For no sooner would you have finished than she'd want
you to start all over again. Of course it would irritate you sometimes, if you'd been having articles rejected or whatever.
But nonetheless you always did. Once we were in the little cafe and she started sobbing.

—What's wrong, pet? I asked her, alarmed.

She pointed to the ground where a great stag beetle was lying on its back, as a column of ants made off with its innards.

—Don't let the mini-beasts
get
me, Daddy! she wept.

—I won't! I assured her and took her in my arms.

She was still sobbing a little bit.

—Miss Greene says the mini-beasts are our friends. But if they were, they wouldn't do that!

—Mummy! she would squeal when Catherine was with us. Daddy tells stories - about the Snowman!

She couldn't get enough of that Raymond Briggs story. She watched the video over and over. She'd just sit there, rapt, with
her tense shoulders up, as off he went, the little snowman waltzing, right out across the rooftops of the world.

The new Kilburn flat we got off the housing association - it really looked fantastic now. The things that woman Catherine
could do with interiors — she had completely and utterly transformed the place. And Imogen, by all accounts, was the playgroup
star. They were always telling me what a character she was. They really were such beautiful times. All the more reason I was
completely unprepared for it when I came home one day after buying a present, a polly pocket for Imogen's birthday, and discovered
Catherine in our bedroom with a man.

Once, having been mugged outside a pub in Hackney, I had realised, to my astonishment, that in such situations the anger you
expect is not what you feel. In its place this banal and bewildering
numbness.
That was what I felt as I stood there, turning the polly pocket around in my hand.

I had no idea who he was. I had never laid eyes on him before. I remember thinking he looked Greek or perhaps Turkish. In
fact he was Maltese.

We had these pink roses Catherine had planted in the garden: twining away there, so delicate and fragile. All I could see
were those baby-pink roses, spreading right out across the neatly tonsured grass.

I continued to write my articles, regularly submitting them to various magazines. But I didn't, unfortunately, have very much
success. Which isn't all that surprising. They were hopelessly digressive and quite badly written, in retrospect. I just couldn't
seem to keep my mind on the subject. Sometimes the pen would literally fall from my hand. Once, sitting at my typewriter,
I could have sworn I saw Imogen, naked and blue, shivering with the cold, trying to catch my attention outside the window.
It seemed so real I almost cried out. Before realising, at the last moment, that she was safe and asleep upstairs in bed,
with her favourite duvet tucked up to her chin - the one with Zippy and Bungle, her friends out of
Rainbow.
It was stress that was making me think like that. I knew it was. That was what I told myself. You could hardly expect to experience
marital difficulties without there being some outward manifestation of your inner anxieties, I reasoned.

I decided to work harder at keeping us together. We'd been through too much to let it slip now. That was my state of mind,
essentially, at the time. That was how I viewed our situation.

Then one day I came home and the house was deserted. There was a note on the mantelpiece saying Catherine's solicitor would
be in touch. You should never lift your hand to your wife. It's wrong, pure and simple. It's like something a throwback from
the mountain might do, and nothing can excuse it in any circumstances.

The hearing took place in early 1989, and after that, they returned to Dublin for good. Now on my own, London began to seem
quite threatening and disorientating. It seemed, quite wilfully, to slide back its once-genial mask, coldly disavowing its
formerly benign past. I was taken aback. I hadn't been expecting that. And it distressed me deeply — I won't deny it.

I'd wake in the night, in the iron grip of unease. Having sensed this chilling
presence
in the room.

I could feel it standing stock-still beside me. It was a horrible time.

But spending my days drinking wasn't going to help things. I knew that. But nonetheless it didn't stop me doing it. I'd promise
myself I would reform my ways. I'd wake up and say: 'Today I'm going to make the effort.' Then, almost immediately after this
welcome and invigorating surge of new strength, I'd find myself helplessly thinking: They're gone.

And, before I knew it, would be sitting, as before, in some anonymous poorly lit pub. Some half-forgotten Irish labourers'
bar where the curtains hadn't been washed in years, where Enya music played on a loop and old men wilted in corners, doing
their best to anaesthetise themselves. I think I gravitated towards those pubs because just by sitting in them I could construct
a pretty accurate picture of my future. A facsimile of the past the old men were defeated in - an outlands waste where all
hope falls on stony ground.

A desolate void where no roses grow.

For a while after that, I found myself drifting from job to job — nothing to do with journalism, just casual labour to keep
me in booze. I stacked shelves for a while, did a couple of months on the buildings. But I always kept thinking of them walking
through Dublin city, Imogen's face growing older every day. She would be seven next year, I would find myself thinking, as
my stomach turned over violently. In the end I could bear it no longer. I woke up one day and knew I had no choice — I had
to return. But, before I did that, I took myself on a trip to the seaside — down the coast to Bournemouth, to be precise.

When the woman on the coach asked me sympathetically:

—Why are you crying? Is there anything I can do to help?

I just shook my head and recounted to her what it had been like that first day we'd gone there. We'd brought Imogen to Bournemouth
on a picnic.

—On the way home, I explained, she was so tired. But she said it was the best day of her life.

I looked away. My eyes were red-rimmed.

—I don't think I can go on without them, I said.

I made sure to say it to the hotel barman too, pretending to be drunker than I actually was.

—I'm glad you remember me, I said, for you won't be seeing me around again. It gets to the stage where life isn't worth it.

I didn't labour the point. Just gave enough information in order for him to remember when the police came inquiring.

At about four-thirty that morning I went down to the seafront. There wasn't a soul around - just this great big empty, impassive
moon.

I deposited my pile of folded clothes at the water's edge, then turned around and simply walked away. In my head I could see
the barman explaining, touchingly empathetic.

—His wife had just left him. Pity, that. They seemed such a happy couple the first time.