RULE OUT

Mary decided against Wicklow Town, and instead headed north by way of Avoca and Rathdrum in search of a chemist she’d never stopped in to that would have pregnancy tests on display, and there was no chance that a customer would know her. She could not at all be pregnant. It had been weeks since she had seen that fecker Ted. She’d had that horrific period the night the sister arrived. She could not possibly be. A demented mother and a defective child messing with her in the same week. She’d thought there was more than one place in Gorey where there’d be no one to recognize her, but it was Tuesday and they’d be closed before she got down that way. There wasn’t a place to pull over in Avoca, and by the time she was in Rathdrum, the Medical Hall was shuttered, and so she left it for another day.

She’d a text from Liam to ring him and she was sure it was the mam and dreaded ringing back. The call could wait. Or he could ring back. She supposed she’d have to ring yer man to get the straight story anyway, and she did have his mobile. It was a shame he’d gone for the Pakistani registrar in oncology , but she couldn’t blame him, in a way. He had the most amazing way of moving his hands. It was as if they were whispering to you along with him when he talked in that soothing sing-song cadence. They were both of them gorgeous and doctors and they’d found each the other, more’s the pity.

Mary did not want to call her brother, nor did she want to call her old flame. She wanted to drink a bottle of Chilean wine and go to sleep for a week. Sleep. If she could come to an agreement with sleep....

START OF TERM

“He’s very good, your boy.”

Finnbarr’s words were clear but his head was turned, so Mary suspected she’d imagined it. The child had said naught but single words to her up until now, and wasn’t echolalic as far as she knew. She’d ask Cherry had anyone said those same words in front of Finn about the child. That would be it, that a stranger’d told the mother “He’s very good, your boy,” in just that same strange cadence and Finn’d committed it to memory. These children often collected overheard phrases to communicate with others, and they were notorious for speaking of themselves in the third person.

“You are, Finn, you’re very good indeed,” Mary responded, just in case the child was trying to engage her. The child turned and shone his bright eyes at hers. She saw the same speckled eyes of his mother. “YOUR boy. He’s VERY good.” The child said emphatically. “I haven’t a boy,” Mary blurted back just as sharply.

“That one,” said Finn, reaching toward her abdomen and furrowing his brow.

Mary fell back as if he’d pelted her with a stone. It was nonsense, but unnerving, none the less, after her mother’s rant just days before. The metallic taste rose up in Mary’s mouth again and she gritted her teeth against it.

Mary turned her attention to the knobs on her amplifier and kept them there, waiting for the boy to disappear under the pale blue sheet. He did not. He sat on the rickety chair with his legs twisted twice round the legs and trained his eyes on her.

The two of them stayed motionless for the rest of the session. Mary softened the focus of her eyes to take in the whole room and nothingness at the very same time. She counted each of her own inhalations and exhalations to keep herself from thinking any thought, especially thoughts of the boy saying “your boy….” “your boy……” “He’s very good, your boy.” “He’s very good.”

SATURDAY WEEK

The day was not the best for traveling, but Monday was the August bank holiday, so the whole of her weekend would not be spoiled by the overdue visit to her mam. Since her da’s passing, Mary’s visits home were more in demand and equally dreaded. Mary hadn’t minded sitting quietly with her father, stroking his papery hand, but now that he was gone, her mother was not content to sit quietly with a cup of tea and intermittent non sequitors. In the presence of her only daughter, last of seven, only to visit, Aine Clooney of Ballaghaderreen in the County Rosscommon, would rail against the injustices visited upon herself by her offspring. She would cluck at Mary sharply, calling her Cathleen, the name of Aine’s favorite sister, Mary’s aunt who had not seen her eighteenth year. Aunt Kitty was said to have died from a fall and was buried in the cemetery in the next parish because it was much more beautiful there. Mary’s mother had never gotten around to showing her daughter the grave. And in parts of Ballaghadereen the version told was that the black-haired sister, Cathleen Clooney had died in childbirth, or with child, in any case, unmarried. And she was the sister to whom Mary’s mother denounced her own living children, while looking through Mary and prodding her knee. It was no use Mary correcting her mother about her own identity, or the fact that her aunt was long dead, and her father was no longer snoring in the next room. Nor was there a point to collecting all the bottles her mother hid under the bed or in the press or the toilet tank.

Something fairly large and important broke in her mother when her father died. Mary didn’t remember a time when her mother wasn’t slightly addled, but in the past year Aine had chosen to wander deeper into corners of her memory than one would care to follow her. She was still at shouting distance and was still able to keep herself clean enough and fed, so there was nothing to do but humour her for now. Mary herself knew a bit of the fracture her mother sustained, for she still sometimes dreamt of her father and woke up frightened of the dark.

Being the only daughter, Mary was obliged to do certain things. She wasn’t sure which, but knew the weight of the expectation. There had been no hand-me-down clothes for her as there were for all the others, even Sean had them got from an older cousin on the father’s side. Being the youngest, so the lads believed, the least was expected of her, and the oldest brothers had never made an effort to hide their resentment. She could see their side of it. She was the only one to attend university and the expense of sending her off to Trinity left less for the others.

And this is how they fell from their mother’s womb:

Sean -- whose wife is Ooonaugh with a swan’s neck and shiny black eyes

Eamonn -- away in America and not coming back. In the infrequent letters he’d signed off as Ed

Michael -- away in America and back once but not again.

Thomas -- partnered with Bried with cloddish twins who may or may not be his.

Francis -- who might have been a priest, but might have disappointed.

And nine years later, eleven months apart

Liam

and

Mary

Aine was an old 22 when Sean arrived and was 40 before she had the daughter at last. “Holy Mother of God, it’s a girl this time,” her father was reported to have said, and so she was christened Mary Regina. There were uncles who joked that they disbelieved the paternity after all the boys and Aine would glare at them fiercely.

Now they were grown, Mary was more patient with her mother than the brothers who had remained behind, or their women. Especially so since her father had passed. Her brothers wanted none of the strangeness that had trebled in their mother in the past year. She, however, had studied related cases in her coursework, after all. She even suspected an underlying illness, perhaps ischemia or other vascular episodes, but she did not press her mother to get it checked. Despite promising herself she would carefully monitor her mother and keep her safe, the time between the visits was becoming greater and greater and she was loathe to admit the steepness of her mother’s decline.

Mary’d gotten into a pattern of taking Buseirann to the West to keep her visits short. When she drove it was harder to excuse herself from staying the night. She could catch the only bus out on the Saturday morning and take the only return that evening. It was a bone-ache to be sitting that long in one day, and today the stink from the damp on the grimy plush upholstery on top of the fragrance of the bus-riding fare would make it worse still, but she’d only have to stay a few hours, and would have the two days to mend before she was back to work.

The rain had lashed down in the night and Mary’d hoped it would have flushed the dog shite from the broken-down footpaths to the bus stop. But the clouds had retreated just enough at the crack of the dawn that the dogs and their owners had outed to deposit another layer of their wares. What wasn’t piled was puddled. What wasn’t laid out in hard ropes was streaked-through by pram or bike tyres. It was just cool enough at the minute that the stink hung in a cloud below waist height, but there were reams of it forcing Mary to mince her way down the path as the heavens prepared to reopen above her.

The wait at the shelter was not so long as Mary expected, what with the rain now lashing down again. She leapt back just in time to avoid getting a shin-drenching from the spray of the bus’ tyres and congratulated herself for her reflexes. Boarding the bus, she picked her way past the soggy umbrellas and bundles that already littered the aisle. Wishing she had bought a paper or brought a book for the ride, she settled gingerly into the first relatively clean looking seat. The rain was increasing steadily and Mary cheered herself with the thought that had she stayed home it would have probably been a wasted day as well.

As she scooched herself closer to the window she felt a sharp jab by the heel of her hand. Poking out from the crease in the grimey plush between the seat and the back was a bit of metal. Mary tugged on it and out came a bit of what looked like a necklace. In fact, it was a fragment of a rosary, One decade and the bit of the medal that holds the circle of five decades to the strand with the crucifix. She thought better of poking her fingers into the gap to see if the rest was left behind. Who knows what might gore her next? She checked the heel of her hand to see that there was neither blood nor broken skin. The Virgin Mary was in high relief on the medal, and her face had left a faint impression, but broke no skin. Mary laid the strand of beads out beside her for want of knowing what to do with it. With a sigh, she tucked herself into her coat and shut her eyes against the prospects of the day. The ssshhhhhuuuussshhh of the water under the thick bus tyres mingled with the wind and rain pummeling the coach as it lumbered onto the motorway and picked up speed.

Sleep was not a simple state for Mary. It was as much a friend as a foe. She could say the same for the dark. For, growing up, there were long stretches where Mary would slip happily into slumber with covers over her head and extra quilts weighing her down to block out the damp and air and stray light. But, there were also the times Mary would dare not close her eyes unless she could see the light through cracked lids, and on those occasions, she’d keep one foot on the floor, ready to scoot from under the covers and down between her bed and the wall.She’d heard, somewhere once, she thought, that someone called sleep a little death, or was that right at all? Was it sleep, or something else entirely? When she was small, and her heart would pound and thrash in her chest in the dark, especially those times she was sinking unwilling into sleep, she hoped to die. She wondered sometimes, was that odd of her. Her therapist had said, earnestly, yes, it was. But Mary rarely thought of death any longer, and her affair with sleep was constant in its inconstancy.

For often, sleep was so kind, so safe, so still. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” And once she’d made her first communion, when the panic welled up with the descent, she took comfort in the offering of her soul to Holy God for safekeeping.

Her first winter away from home, there were days the sixteen year old would stay snug-a-bed until tea instead of plodding through the grey and the rain, past the Davenport Hotel and Pearse Street Station to the back side of Trinity College. Then, the sleep was so sweet and soft and kind.

The bus lurched to a stop outside Portlaiose, Mary awoke with a start, finding the decade tucked into her fist. She had the unsettling impression someone had just closed her hand around the beads. No one was beside her, but the shade of a warm body lingered.

Looking up, Mary glimpsed a figure slip off the bus before several young Spaniards climbed aboard shaking their sheepdog locks as they bounced down the aisle. Mary fingered the decade and stuffed it in her pocket to join her return ticket and tissues. She pulled out her mobile to let her brother Liam know she’d be in Roscommon by 11. He’d have to sort which of the brothers or sisters-in-law would be taking her the last bit to mam’s and who would be collecting her at 3.

The time in the car was always sufficient for the siblings or their partners to fill Mary in on their lives and Mary to fill them in on hers. Once in a while Sean’s wife Oonagh would insist she and Mary stop for tea. Oonagh had a sweet disposition and was obviously good for Sean, who was always the highest strung of the brothers. She once sat with Mary and Aine, but couldn’t hold back the tears listening to the way Aine spoke of her children to the two of them. Aine turned her grey eyes at Oonagh and stared her down until she stopped watering. Turning back to Mary, “as I was saying,” Aine continued caustically, and Oonagh covered her mouth to stifle a sob. From then on Oonaugh would drop Mary at the door and have someone else collect Mary at 3. Oonagh did not understand why Mary was so patient with her mother. Unlike most of Mary’s brothers and Bried, she did not believe Mary was trying to show up her brothers or that she was judging them all for neglecting the mam. She did ask once whether Aine might be less trouble in a home, but Mary shook her head and Oonagh did not ask again.

Mary hoped that Liam would call Thomas this time, because she wasn’t in the mood to see Oonagh’s gentle face, she’d somehow prefer blousy Bried and the foul mouthed twins on this rainy August day.

When she turned on her mobile, there were four unread messages. All from the Yank. Mary deleted them without reading one. She got Liam’s service and left a message. She didn’t try to reach anyone else, but refolded her arms around herself and shut her eyes to the rest of the journey.

There was something important she needed to do. It meant untangling herself from the ropes and cords that bound her about her thighs and chest. Her face was covered in a scarf, but she could see and breathe through it, so she left it be. The tunnel was shallow and narrow, so Mary kept her head tucked as she pulled her way deeper into the dark dampness. And the world shook suddenly and she fell.

Humiliation mingled with fury as Mary collected herself from the floor of the bus and found her way back to her seat. The others clucked and looked away once they saw she was uninjured. Had there been a way off the bus and a way to turn back, she would have, but it was now too late. Liam would be expecting her and the only return was the one she had already planned to take after her visit with her mother. Mary searched her mobile for the after hours number of her counselor, she had deleted it a few months ago, willing there would be no need for it any longer. Calculating the length of time left among these strangers, she decided to pace herself through the relaxation exercises she had been taught to both calm herself and to chunk away at the many minutes of humiliation that she had yet to endure.

Mary imagined a glowing ball, the size of a fist, warm, and spinning in the center of her body. As she had been taught, she spun the ball slowly, clockwise, and imagined it expanding slowly with each measured silent breath she exhaled. Inhale, exhale. She had been taught to think the words as she produced the actions inhale, exhale. “Hail,” she heard herself whisper as she exhaled, “hail.” She stopped. She concentrated. “Inhale, Exhale,” silently, but it kept transforming in her head to ‘hail.’ Nothing was right. She tasted panic, metallic, electric and bitter. Pushed it down. Pulling out her phone, she rang her brother again. This time he answered and said he would collect her himself. They needed to talk about their mother and what should be done. It was off-putting that he was so eager, suddenly, to discuss their mother. Had something happened? Yes, in fact something had, but they would talk when she got there.

Liam was the ebullient one, the easiest of the brothers and closest in age to Mary. He was her only sibling, really. The others had left the two of them to their own devices, their brothers and their old and tired parents alike. Had there been older sisters instead, their lives would have been quite different, Mary expected. Neither Mary nor Liam had been subjected to the punishment of ‘practice mothering’ older sisters were known to visit upon younger siblings with the complicity of the elders.

Today Liam sounded lost and panicky. He didn’t wait for her to step off the bus, but grabbed at her arm and pulled her toward the car without meeting her eye. His head wagged back and forth like it was fastened on with a coiled wire. He pushed the flyers for the new development off her seat before she got into the car. The Hyundai was new, but he’d spilt something sticky on the console already. He had interviewed with an American real estate company and was shocked when he’d gotten the job. Once he’d gotten over the shock, he had done quite well for himself, better than all the rest of them, thank you very much. But he was still the baby brother, even to her, the youngest of the lot.

Today, in his state, he reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t place who. His stammer had returned, she noticed, but not so most would notice. “I ca-an’t be innn charge, you know,” he muttered. “It’s nnnot my remit.”

“Did something happen?”

“Wwait ‘til I show you.”

They drove in silence the rest of the way to the house. Her brother, she noticed had the exact same jaw as herself. Almost bare of whiskers, smooth as marble. And she realized then who it was that he reminded her of. It was the man whose wife had a stroke during labour at Hollis Street. How he looked as it dawned that she could well be the addled shell he was looking at from here and forever.

Liam stood with his hands cupping his crotch and sighing as he watched Mary talk to her mother and poke through the house. To Mary, it wasn’t as bad as all that. She’d seen worse. But, yes something had to be done, and of course the weight of it would fall on her. Aine had been storing raw meat in the hot press and her fresh veg in the hamper with the wash and it was all a bit smelly and mouldy, but they could hire someone in to give the place a scrub and the smell would go with a good airing. Today Aine seemed lucid enough, so it may have just been an episode, and yes, Mary would make some calls and see if she could short-list her mother for a CT or an MRI in Limerick, but Liam or Sean would have to get her there and collect her.

While Mary was on the phone calling in a favour from the radiologist she had dated in Trinity before he discovered men, her mother started on her.

“CathLEEn, CathLEEN you hoor you, you HOOR. I see it. I see it. On your smug face and in your ….., you dirty HOOR.” And her mother pulled off her slipper and struck Mary on her belly with all her might. As the slipper landed, the phone fell from Mary’s hand and clattered on the floor. Stooping to pick it up, Mary snatched up the slipper and flung it back at her mother. “Feck ye, ye worthless bitch,” Mary shouted, “I’m trying to feckin’ help ye.” And she redialed the number, and butter wouldn’t melt as she apologized for being cut off just then.

Liam stood useless and glum.

Mary managed to get her old beau to promise to ring him back on Tuesday with an appointment date. She sent her brother off to the shop with a list of foods that wouldn’t spoil and she set about binning the spoilt meat and veg.

Since she’d shouted at her mother the old woman hadn’t said a word, but glowered at the daughter, watching her every move. “Y’re a nasty old magpie,” Mary thought as she felt her mother’s gaze burn her back. “And I’m not a bit sorry for your troubles.” And it somehow made the chore of setting things to right easier, not harder, for her.

FECK YE

Her text would be:

Abc 441/1

Feck ye ye feck

Options Clear

Not a word from him for a week, not until the sister and the other were gone but neither had she’d one for him. His first text was:

What’s up?

Options Back

She didn’t reply. The next:

My sister's left. I’ll see

you monday night?

Options Back

Which prompted the:

Abc 441/1

Feck ye ye feck

Options Clear

Which she didn’t send. Instead she sent:

Abc 442/1

Busy mon

Options Clear

And she hadn’t a text or a peep from him since.

In a story, he’d have sent flowers. A single rose maybe. Peach-coloured because red or yellow are common. Then, when she didn’t warm, he’d send a posy of freesia or bouquet of fragrant lilies. Which would start to mend her heart, but which still would not be sufficient. Finally he would appear wild and tossled at her door with an arm full of pilfered daisies, hollyhock, poppies, and foxgloves, torn from neighbors’ gardens on the way. Then she would take him in and they’d crush the bouquet between them as they kissed madly.

In a story -- written, every word, by the taoiseach's daughter, or so Cecelia'd claim.

THE ROAD HOME FROM ARKLOW

Zero of the two scheduled children had arrived at Begnachar so Mary had sat the whole of the afternoon watching Antje look busy. The computer was an ancient model with only floppy drives and a Windows 3.1 platform. The current virus caused a delightful cascade of documents before freezing the screen, so Mary couldn’t write reports or send e mails while she waited for ‘those who would not arrive.’

If Antje hadn’t been there, Mary would have left a note that she’d gone down the town to the Buttery, and to call down to her if they had come to see her, but Antje would have felt bound to tell Clíodhna, who would tell Gizelle, who would use that to deny her promotion to Senior in October.

Heading up the coast road, Mary’s gaze flicked over to the sparkling above the waters of the Irish Sea. She’d never really studied the wind farm that was being constructed off the coast of Arklow before. Largest in the world, she’d heard, but she was not sure from where the claim had come. Now the towers seemed quite present, arms turning slowly like those of Chinese ribbon dancers waiting in the wings. And soon they would be churning out power for the people of Dublin, clean and renewable, or so they say. And further off, too far to see is the Sellafield nuclear plant that has made the Irish Sea the most radioactive body in the world. Ted disbelieved her until she made him google it. He was delightfully appalled and she regretted telling him. It became another verse in his party piece about the Irish. Mary smiled cynically, wondering whether the brilliant Irish wind farm might leak electricity into the nuclear soup and turn the bay into a fluorescing advert for she couldn’t think what……It was different when she was disgusted with her people, but she couldn’t say how.

And then past the wall with the STOP THE INCINERATOR whitewashed on it and spelt correctly, too. And the billboard with the wistful matron and the Breastcheck logo reminding all of the free mammograms for every woman over 50 in the Republic. Another honour that, the highest incidence of breast cancer in the EU, higher by far than even Northern Ireland. And maybe that was what Eilis was on about, and maybe that was the visits to London. God knows anyone working in the health sector would know enough not to check into any hospital on this side of the pond. That must be it. Mary felt no pity, nor urge to share her speculation. She felt settled somehow, and at peace.

The Drive with Eilis

There wasn’t silence on the drive, at least on Eilis’s part. She chirped and warbled along as they headed south. Eilis was off to see a specialist who, she feared, would tell her she needed to go to London again. Eilis’s sidelong gaze as she spoke registered the shadow that flickered across Mary’s face at the word “again.” It was enough to tell Eilis that Mary had not known about the previous visit, and therefore must have confirmed two things for Eilis.

One: there wasn’t any gossip circulating the clinic about Eilis’s condition and

two: Eilis could confess all to Mary in safety.

“I was in a such a panic yesterday when I had that pain. It was all I could do to keep myself of a piece. You see, the daughter has had such a time and if this should go wrong now, it would be the end of all of us.”

Mary kept her eyes on the road, driving silently, but wearing the mask that they all learned to don when working with grieving and frightened people whose circumstances would seem to be too much to bear. The mask was called “positive regard.” It was a shabby substitute for compassion, but compassion and empathy are both exhausting virtues, as Mary’s least favorite professor, Dr. Sinclair emphatically pointed out to her students. She also reveled in the opportunity to instruct all her students to master the fine art of substituting the mask of “positive regard” for compassion and empathy. She’d warble, “once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” And though Mary thought Sinclair a disgusting and venal bitch, she agreed with her on this particular issue though she would be loathe to admit it. She found other peoples’ pain and fear so exhausting and she did not abide sharing it at all. Mary nodded as Eilis spoke, but she did not attend to the words. She was thinking again about the sleep-walking and whether she should call her counselor or wait to see if it was just a one-off incident this time.

“Would you look at the light on it!?” Eilis’s voice brought Mary up so short she swerved the car, just missing the lamp post that leaned into the narrow lane. They were at the turn of The Statue and as always it was suffused in a light that came from nowhere apparent. The car had stalled and before Mary could turn the key Eilis had the door open and was out the car. Mary let the Megane roll back out of the lane and grudgingly climbed out herself.

There was a sweetness to the odor of the damp and fleshy overgrowth that intensified with each of Mary’s steps into the grotto. Eilis was stone-still in front of the statue as Mary joined her. Up close, the statue looked nothing like it did from a distance. From afar it looked complete, whole. In fact there was little detail to the bits that were left of it. There was not quite a face, the arms ended somewhere between elbow and wrist. It was neither male nor female, saint nor cherub. It was, though, even up close, suffused with light that seemed to emanate as far as Mary’s companion. When Eilis turned her chin to Mary, the older woman’s face was awash with tears. “Is it wrong what I am doing? How is it that we could ever know?”

“I’m sure it isn’t. It isn’t wrong,” Mary answered, not knowing what it was Eilis was speaking of, but somehow sure she was saying the right thing. Standing so near it now, Mary found the statue more unsettling, but seductive rather than repulsive. The two women stood in the pool of light, each in her own thoughts as a cloud tumbled by the sun and, in the sudden shadow, Mary shivered so hard and abruptly she almost lost her balance.

“I’ll drop you at the surgery door,” Mary told Eilis and she turned and walked briskly back to the car. Tears spilled from Mary’s eyes for no reason and she thumped herself in the chest three times in anger to make herself stop.

Breezes

BREEZES

Mary woke to morning light and the sound of the shades chattering against the open windows. Rising to stop the noise and the breeze, she cast her mind back to her last bout of sleep-walking. The open windows signified it had started again, as she could not abide a breeze across her face when she slept. Another reason to lock the door after her each night. She’d never unlocked a door in her sleep. She would remember to lock the windows as well, and put away the key.

She threw water on her face, tossed on her father's massive flannel robe and charged down the stairs to shake the worry from her mind.

The kitchen sink was filled just as she had imagined the night before, but she had the fry pans scrubbed and out of the way before the kettle was hot. The milk she poured into her Nescafé was curdled, so she dumped the cup and made black tea. She did not toss the rest of the milk, but set it aside.

Pulling a sack of flour from the press she dragged a few hands full out of it into the largest bowl on the counter. She rubbed a lump of salted butter into the flour until it became a mealy crumble. She dumped in a palm of demerera sugar from the chipped bowl on the table and tossed in a fist full of sultanas and another of caraway seed before wetting it all with the soured milk. Pushing it together in the bowl she cast her mind back to the last time her hands were sticky with dough. It was in her mother’s house in the west and her father was still alive. He told her those scones were grand. The memory caught in her throat but it made her smile through hot tears. With each drag on the dough, the cords contracting the back of her neck began to release and her breathing became more even and full.

Separating the dough into two mounds she patted the first between her hands and felt pleasure in the damp weight of it. She flopped it onto a tray and gave it the smack you’d give a bold baby’s behind. Two perpendicular thwaps to each loaf with the carving knife to score them and they were in the oven and ready to come out in the time it took her to dress.

She tucked into the one and left it on the board for the flatmates. The other she wrapped in a tea towel dropping it into a SuperQuinn tote to carry to work with her. Heading into the day Mary had not yet one thought of her Yank or any more thoughts of the clattering blinds and what they might portend.

The Resource Meeting

Late for the meeting, Mary slid the bread onto the counter in the staff room, tucked her bag under her desk and grabbed the review file she had wisely sorted out the morning before. There was a bit of sniggering, she noticed, when she entered the meeting with apologies. Padriag hadn’t yet arrived either, but that was as expected. Mary was never late and the others would remind her no end about this time.

They started with those in attendance and Belinda was merciless in the red lines she was striking through the items on each department’s wish list. Eilis wanted three more ball pits and two therapy tables. She would get one of each. Niamh expected a laptop for each therapist as well as touch screens for the two desktop computers. Belinda would allow for one laptop or one touch screen. Niamh tossed back her head and rolled her eyes. Mary would have been able to take Belinda aside and convince her to give them two laptops, but now it was pointless. Niamh wasn’t suited to the position of manager, and everyone knew it, but no one else would take the job.

Padraig made a grand entrance with the tea tray loaded with mugs and Mary’s scone. He’d already made a dent in it, crumbs speckling his scraggly beard. “I come with apologies, bearing gifts.” And, as always, he was forgiven.

“Right, then,” Belinda barked. “Get your tea and get settled. There’s more to do.” Padriag had already poured out the correct selections for each of them: Eilis’s camomile, Niamh’s coffee, Belinda’s licorice tea….. And they all tucked into the scone, remarking that it was the best Nora’d made in a long time. Nora being the cook for the school attached to the clinic, and she sent breads and cakes to the staff room with some regularity. Mary didn’t mention it had come by her hand, but pocketed the compliments none the less.

“You look particularly well today, Mary,” Eilis offered when they were heading out of the over-long meeting. “Sorry? Oh, ta.” Meeting Eilis’s gaze as she thanked her, Mary noticed the older woman’s eyes were younger than the rest of her, and kind. “Ta very much,” she repeated the thanks, feeling oddly guilty about the vile thoughts she’d had about the woman the day before.

“Would you be going to Begnachgar, then?” Eilis asked. Mary nodded absently.

“If I could come along with you? I have an appointment on the Castle road and my husband’s to collect me there. Belinda won’t be going south today after all and so I’m in a fix.”

Eilis sounded as breathless as a schoolgirl.

“No bother.” (Though it was.) “I’ll be ten minutes before I’m ready.”

“You’re grand, you’re grand,” and Eilis waddled off on her purply pegs to collect her things.

Mary sorted quickly through the f*ckin’ curses she might f*ckin’ mutter under her breath.

The Early Hours The Friday

Mary pushed her slides under the hall bench and fingered up her mail before she headed up the unlit stairway to her room in the semi-d. The dusky lanolin smell of lamb mixed with cumin and onion and garlic cobwebbed before her, so the kitchen sink was sure to be choc-a-bloc with pans and plates waxed with grease and slippery, translucent slivers of onion. Mary hadn't drunk so much that the smell would affect her, but she noticed it before making the mistake of passing through to the kitchen for a glass of water. She could drink from the tap in her en-suite sink. She reminded herself to be thankful for her decision to move into the pricier room when the Hollander left last month. She was still paying off her Easter hols and the extra expense of the larger room would extend her payments through Christmas, but at least she could imagine she had some privacy. She much preferred a bath to a shower, but at least the shower was hers alone. She could always stay on at Begnachgar when she was desperate for a long soak. The tub in the house was now so grimy she wouldn't want to be sharing it in any case.
After this evening her search for the elderly billionaire might as well begin again, she supposed. She was disappointed, rather than surprised that she wasn’t feeling anywhere near as offended or cross as she aught. The cheek, after all. She unlocked her door.
The "locking-of-the-door" royally waxed her flatmates. “Why is this locking of the door Miss Mary?” Sami would whine. He was a ‘cousin’ of the landlord who used an Irish surname for his business, but was of Middle Eastern origin. “Why is this locking of the door without my cousin to have a key? If there should be emergency of some kind….” The more he fretted, the more reason she had to keep it locked.

And this night she locked it behind her. Leaving the shades up, but pulling to both windows, she fell onto the bed, supine, undressing where she lay, then sliding the duvet over her naked body. A weighted darkness pressed gradually down on her and wakefulness streamed gently out through the soles of her feet, pooling on the floor at the foot of the bed. A sigh, asleep.

Lavender, a bed of crumpled lavender, and pungent rosemary with a whisper of vanilla. Lungs filling with the soothing, mingled frangances. Two hands, large, warm, softly, stroking upwards along the side of her face, cupping over her ears, stroking her brow, cradling her head. Her eyes, open, she saw the sky, a deep blue but filled with stars. She was adrift.

“Mary, you are loved with abiding love. You know this and are unafraid.” Mary, in her sleep, was exquisitely awake to the dreamness of the dream and she opened herself to it. He was behind her, or below her, for she could not tell which way was up, she could not see his face, she could not name him, but knew she knew him.

“Yes.” A soundless yes…….. Go on.

“There is a gift.”

“Yes,” aloud this time, waiting.

His hands slid down her thick, straight, silken hair and under her naked shoulders, warm hands on cooled soft skin. Curving up under her arms his hands floated beneath her breasts, his thumbs looped down to the back of her ribcage. Huge, gentle hands encasing her iin protective armour. Barely touching, yet effortlessly, he slid her up against him, still with her back to him. She was weightless and taut and breathless, filled with fragrances of peace, remembrance and refuge. And in her ear:

“It is yes, Mary? You say yes?”

“Yes. I say yes. Yes”

And the dark was light and the night day and the tears joy and joy tears in a rush, a rush, a rush, a rush, a rush.

“Oh,” a sigh. And another, and "No.”

Mary said, "no."