Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
‘The sheep, of course.’ She sighs. I try not to sigh myself. Every
time I visit Aggie the sheep turn up. In fact, according to her they’re here all the time. Sometimes they get on her bed and try to eat her duvet. She feels sorry for them because they’d be happier in a field. I’ve tried to tell her there are no sheep, but it makes no difference.
She closes her eyes again, so I just sit beside her. I’m not here
out of duty. I do a lot of things mainly out of duty, but this isn’t one of them. In these silences, while Aggie is dozing and the
nurses are laughing about something and the thick smell of stew
is drifting from the kitchen, I remember what it was like when we
could have proper conversations. How I loved visiting her
rambling old house. How her dog, Scamp, used to throw himself
on top of me as soon as I was in the hallway, with its gumboots
and sensible coats and dog leads. Aggie always had something in
her hand – a geranium cutting or a recipe book or a garden
trowel. She would lower her head and peer at me warmly over her
glasses, and then we would go into her untidy, cheerful kitchen
and she would make us both some tea and give me some freshly
baked cake. There was an enveloping sense of welcome and
warmth. It was the same whether I was eight or thirty. I’d help her
in the garden, and when we were tired she’d make pancakes and
we’d watch TV – maybe an afternoon Western. What I knew
most about her was that she loved me. ‘If I’d ever had a daughter,
Sally, I’d have wanted her to be like you,’ she once told me. It was
the biggest compliment I’d ever received in my life.
Aggie was the happiest person at my wedding. She was
beaming – glowing, almost. She always wanted me to settle down
and start a family. She didn’t have children herself. She married
Great-Uncle Joseph in her mid-forties, though she had known him for years – it must have been the longest engagement in
history. I’ve never quite understood why they didn’t marry earlier, since she has often said she would have liked to have children, but
naturally this isn’t something I mention – especially now, since
Joseph is dead, and so are many of the people who attended their
wedding. I remember the wedding photos: Joseph and Aggie standing together outside the church with Aggie’s parents. They
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ere all beaming, of course; beaming so much it looked like they
might burst…
I remember my wedding to Diarmuid, and sigh. It was on the wedding day that my doubts started. I thought they came later, after the mice, but I suddenly remember that as I was about to walk up the aisle I had this really strong feeling that I still had time to make a run for it. But then I got caught up in all the
excitement again. My doubts evaporated. I truly thought they had
gone for ever.
What makes people feel alone, when they so clearly aren’t –
when they’re surrounded by friends and relatives and husbands?
Maybe there is another kind of alone, the kind that your soul feels
when it longs for a kindred spirit – someone who understands.
Someone who knows what it feels like. Someone whose eyes meet
yours across a crowded room.
That’s the person I talk about when I tell Aggie about my happy marriage to Diarmuid. I talk about how I sometimes look up to find him watching me, tenderly. How we walk along the
beach and make squiggly marks on the sand with our bare feet. I
talk about how we sometimes laugh at nothing; how he teases me
when I get ‘too serious’; how we munch bowls of corn chips and watch really stupid television programmes. I tell her how, on our
honeymoon, we drank too much champagne one night and
decided to skinny-dip in the pool at midnight. I describe how warm the water was against our naked skin.
Only when I talk like this I’m not describing Diarmuid. I wanted Diarmuid to skinny-dip in the pool on our honeymoon, but he wouldn’t. Even though it was in the wee small hours, he was sure that someone from Dublin would see us – probably someone who knew his mother.
I don’t tell Aggie this, of course. She really likes this other Diarmuid, the one I make up. The one who tenderly traced his fingers over my naked skin by a blossom-scented pool. The one
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ho kissed me under the golden, star-filled sky.
‘Sally…’
‘Yes, Aunt Aggie?’
‘Sally, that thing that happened with your parents… It wasn’t
your fault.’ Aggie is looking at me like a bird. She is thin-faced; her
mouth was once full and soft, but now it’s a sort of crevice. Her
wispy grey hair still has its curls. They lie limply on her forehead.
‘Sally, I’m talking to you.’
I look down. That’s the thing I can’t stand about visiting Aggie
these days: she says things like this. She reminds me of stuff I don’t want to remember. She seems to have formed opinions about certain things, and they leap out of her suddenly. It’s as if part of her has travelled ahead, seen the big picture. But I don’t want to see the big picture. I don’t want to know what was my fault and what wasn’t. I just want to sit with her and love her while I can.
‘Thank you, Aggie.’ I say it because I know she thinks I’ll be
pleased to hear her pardon. Her amnesty. Her exoneration.
‘It’s true.’ She studies me earnestly. She looks as though she expects me to keep talking. Her scrawny hands clasp the top of
the duvet. They look so sweet and sad and lost, somehow, on the
bright-orange fabric. Why did she have to mention something I try so hard to forget?
Mum gave birth to April around the time we discovered she’d
been having an affair with one of Dad’s best friends. He was called Al, and, like Dad, he was a musician. They played in the same orchestra when we lived in California. Al played the oboe and Dad played the cello.
I’m the one who discovered the affair, actually. I was on my
way home, and I was wearing loads of mascara. I’d been playing make-up with a pal called Astrid; this involved sneaking into her
parents’ room and trying on her mum’s eyeshadow and lipstick and eyeliner. I decided to walk home along a lonely dirt track,
b
ecause I wanted to look for raccoons. Instead, I saw a couple kissing in a parked car. I was interested in the techniques of
kissing, so I had a closer look. That’s when I realised the woman
was my mother.
I just stood there, and she must have felt me watching; she
looked up. I ran home, my mascara streaming in black lines down
my face because of the tears, and phoned Astrid. I tried to make
my voice a whisper, but I was so upset I didn’t hear Dad coming
into the room. He was barefoot. I think he listened closely
because
I was almost whispering. He’d been sort of watchful and
suspicious for months.
When I saw him and got off the phone, he just looked at me
blankly. I felt that his face should be contorted in misery, that he
should cry and wail, but all he said was, ‘What’s that stuff on your face, Sally? Go and wash it off immediately.’
There was a terrible row that night, and the night after and the
one after that. They probably would have been more dramatic if
Mum hadn’t been pregnant. As it was, Dad shouted for a bit and then just left the house, and Mum used to go up to her room and
cry. I’d hear her sobbing as I stood outside the door. Sometimes I
went in and offered to brush her hair; she always used to like that
before, but now she had this distant, miserable look on her face as she said, ‘Thanks, darling,’ and patted my arm.
April sprang into the world a week later, and we all had a good
look at her as soon as she was cleaned up. Frankly, for more than
a year she could have been anybody’s baby; it was only when she
was going on two that her nose began to look like Dad’s, and we
could see that her eyebrows had a similar configuration and her smile was almost identical. Deep down, I think it must have affected her. Few babies have been stared at quite so hard or so cautiously. She developed the technique of staring back just as
intensely. ‘So what?’ her big baby eyes seemed to be saying. ‘This
is your problem, not mine.’
Somehow Mum and Dad worked it out and stayed together. Only it wasn’t like before. Sometimes you could see they really wanted to be somewhere else. They went out a lot. Dad spent
hours hiking in the dry brown Californian hills. Mum went over to her friend Veronica’s a lot, with April, and sat on the wooden deck beside the wind-chimes and the hummingbird-feeders. She
always came back with puffy eyes, walking slowly. I used to make
them cups of tea when they got back from wherever they’d gone
to. Mum liked Earl Grey, not too strong and not too weak, with
a splash of milk and half a spoon of sugar. Dad liked ordinary tea
with no sugar and lots of milk.
Diarmuid takes his with half a spoon of sugar. Since then I have
had a mental database about how people like their tea.
‘Marie’s going to have another of her big family get-togethers
in September,’ I tell Aggie, mainly just for something to say. Then
I wish I hadn’t mentioned it, because Aggie actually likes Marie’s
gatherings and I doubt if she’ll be able to attend this one. It’s still
months away – it’s only May now; Aggie mightn’t even be here. I
must get off the subject.
I’m about to mention that Diarmuid wants to take me to a
Thai restaurant when Aggie says, ‘Marie who?’
I look at her sadly. ‘Aunt Marie. She’s… she’s married to Bob.’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Aggie says. ‘Poor dear Marie. Always asking questions, always wanting to know exactly what one’s plans are. As if life’s like that. As if one always knows exactly what one wants.’
I stare at Aggie. When she is with it, she is as bright as a
button. That’s it, exactly: Marie always wants to know the
details. If you’re separated, she wants to know why, and where
you plan to live, and if there’s a financial settlement, and what’s
happened to her wedding present (a frightful set of table-mats
that has to be retrieved from the attic any time she visits). One of
these days I think she may ask me for a five-year plan.
‘Aggie…’ I draw the chair closer and touch her cheek softly. ‘Aggie, I love you. I always have. You understand things. You understand me.’ I stare at her dear, familiar face. It looks like
someone has been at it with a chisel – whittling away the curves,
diminishing the features, making deep lines just for effect.
She hasn’t heard. She’s staring at the wall; she does that when
she’s tired. It’s time to go. I lean forwards and kiss her.
‘Are you going?’ She looks towards me, wide-eyed.
‘Yes.’
‘Say you’ll try to find DeeDee for me.’
I look at her warily.
‘Say it… please…’ Aggie is leaning towards me earnestly. I’m
afraid she’ll fall out of the bed.
‘I… suppose I could do some… research,’ I mumble.
She leans back. ‘Oh, good. Thank you.’ She clasps my hand. ‘Thank you so much.’
I suspect that on my next visit she will have forgotten all about
this conversation. I certainly hope so, because knowing that
someone likes hats and Rio de Janeiro and marble cake isn’t quite
enough to establish her exact location. DeeDee may not even be
alive – and, if she is, she may not want to be found. I store the
whole thing in the ‘too difficult’ file and start the ritual I always
go through before I leave Aggie’s room. I make shooing noises towards a corner cupboard, like a shepherd directing my flock.
‘Go on, sheep,’ I say. ‘Go on towards the field. It’s bedtime.’ As I
get nearer to the cupboard, I pretend to open a gate. ‘That’s right,
on you go – out into the field.’ I clap to get them going faster.
Aunt Aggie watches. ‘Bye, Sally, dear,’ she says. ‘Give my love
to Diarmuid. I’m so glad you found yourself such a nice, sensible
young man.’