You forget the pain of childbirth. But you forget other kinds of pain, too.
Shay is going to Cork for the first time. The sisters up in Derry are so used to new babies that, who cares, right? But for Mum and Dad, and Chris and Kev, this is new. The boys have both stayed in Cork, graduating just in time for the money to come back, and they both have jobs in tech. Kev is now gruffly bisexual, and has never come out to my parents. Nor has he hidden it. Everyone just seems to get it without being told, and, to be fair to my parents, I think they would cringe at having to discuss any of their children’s sex lives.
I file a column about what to dress your baby in to meet your parents—do you resist the temptation to put a strange hat on him, or does that feel like you’re compensating for something?—and we head to our flight, weighed down by plastic.
Dad meets us at the airport, and he cries when he sees Shay, saying, “Sure, God, would you look at him, look at the little fella, bold as brass, my God, Rachel, who would have thought?” He informs us that Mum has put out a big spread at home, and she’s been to Dunnes, the posh bit of Dunnes, because wouldn’t you get great stuff at Dunnes, these days?
They managed to keep the practice going in the end. They have done a great line in Botox, filler, Invisalign and tooth-whitening retainers that I should really consider getting into. “Wear it to bed, two weeks, Rachel,” Dad says. “You won’t believe the difference.”
There is indeed a big spread at home. Mum cries when she sees Shay. Kev and Chris are emotional, too. For some reason they are still allowed to call my husband Carey, whereas I must only call him James. He was serious about it, from the beginning.
“We can’t do this,” he said, “unless it’s a completely new relationship. We need to get to know each other all over again, Rachel. We’re different now.”
“I’m not different. I don’t think you are, either.”
“You’re very different, don’t kid yourself. You’ll only be disappointed.”
“How am I different?”
He pointed to my scatter cushions, currently on the floor. “The Rachel Murray I knew did not have throw pillows.”
“I won’t be disappointed.”
That worried look again. “This isn’t a walk down memory lane, Rache. For me, anyway.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“James is very insecure. Carey was quite a cool customer, you know.”
“You’re so glamorous now, you see, I’ll never keep up.”
“Stop!” I said, then snuggled down into the sheets. “Go on.”
I could not understand why he was single. At the same time, I could completely understand why he was single. He still had no concept of time. He was still filthy, deep down, though better at maintaining a front. He was still bad at sustaining interest in anything that he found remotely boring. He would suddenly leave parties, or conversations, sometimes conversations that I was still having with him. “Why did you walk away?” I would call after him. “Oh,” he’d respond, “it sounded like you already knew what you thought.”
He still has deep convictions on what love is, and how it functions.
We moved in together quickly, renting a place in Chalk Farm. We were better as live-in lovers than we ever were as daters. We were beans on toast people, two joints on a Saturday night people, keeping watch while the other person took a wild piss on a country walk people. It was instantly cosy, even if he could still be infuriating. One evening he didn’t come home after work, and his phone was off. It was the kind of summer evening that should have been spent drinking wine in a pub garden, and he was spoiling it. I brimmed with anxiety that he had lost interest and was right now making a mockery of my fidelity. I walked miserably to the shop, ready to drown my sorrow in a bottle of Australian wine, and found Carey sitting on the street next to a free book box with an open can of Bulmers. It was almost 9 p.m.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked.
“Reading?” he said simply, looking up from a book about octopuses.
“Just bring the books home, then? They’re free? I’ve been worried!”
“We have enough books at home,” he said. He lifted a black plastic bag of corner-shop cans. “Do you want one?”
So we sat on the pavement and drank cider and looked at the books from the free book box until it was too dark to read. Carey could be spacey and unreliable, but he didn’t live with secrets. Not the way I did.
I told him the full story: the exile from Cork, the whole scenario with the Harrington-Byrnes, the abortion money we kept to emigrate. We were living together for six months before I found the courage to talk about it. Not because I thought he would leave me, but because I didn’t want him to hate James.
“Christ,” he said, marvelling, as if I were describing the finale of a TV show he had given up on watching. And then: “I wish I had known.”
“I never really let you know anything.”
“No,” he agreed, pulling me close. “No, you didn’t.”
We are home for a week. We go out with the buggy, and we bump into all sorts of people. People who moved away and came back, people who insist that Ireland has the best primary schools and would not subject their children to the schools in England. What with the horrendous eleven plus exam, which is a surprisingly common talking point among the Irish.
It is my first trip home that I have not worried about running into the Harrington-Byrnes. He is sick. He is possibly even dead. Deenie will not be wandering the Cork streets. She is the wife of a sick person. They do different things.
Two days before we are due to leave for London, I receive an email.
Dear Rachel,
I hope you don’t mind my getting in contact. I realise it has been a very long time, and the last time we saw each other it was not on pleasant terms. I also realise that this is an understatement.
You may already know that Fred has not been well the past year. It has been a harrowing time for us both, and while I have been extremely busy with his care, there has been a lot of time—decidedly too much time—for reflection.
I do not want to worry or bother you, but I would love to find a way to speak. I saw from your （very funny） column this week that you are planning a trip home—perhaps you would like to meet then?
Congratulations on your career, which looks like it has been exciting. I read a lot of your pieces during the referendum. I feel proud to have known you.
Hope this email finds you well,
Deenie Byrne
When I first extorted the Harrington-Byrnes, I did so with the conviction that it was the only thing to do. Dr. Byrne had betrayed me and James terribly, and I needed the money for the abortion. But then I didn’t need the money for the abortion. I just needed it, period.
It was this fundamental dishonesty that led me to believe that I deserved the weird looks on the street, the girls coming up to me in bars, the incident at my graduation. That I deserved the hate of the Harrington-Byrnes. And so I crawled out of the country with my head down. I avoided people from Cork and, just to be safe, from all of Munster. For years, there was no one in my circle who was Irish, and I believed this to be appropriate punishment for the way I had acted as a twenty-one-year-old girl in 2010.