Eager to Please (20 page)

‘Rest in peace, my sweetest heart,’ she said out loud, then stood up and walked to the water’s edge.

Today was a special day. Today there would be more than ice creams. There would be a picnic and she had prepared it as carefully as she had prepared her story. Fresh brown
bread. Smoked salmon sliced in fine slivers, with a lemon cut into quarters and wrapped in cling film. Smoked mackerel pâté and black olives from the deli in Glasthule. A piece of ripe
goat’s cheese, and Carr’s Table Water Biscuits. A carton of strawberries and a tub of whipped cream. Some grapes, a bag of nectarines. And a bottle of white wine from New Zealand,
suspended in a rock pool in a plastic bag. A book to read, and she was ready. To wait all afternoon if necessary. Until she saw the woman, the dog and the children walk down the steps cut into the
rock to the beach.

And her story? It was as flawlessly constructed to attract as her food and drink.

Age? Forty-two.

Marital status? Separated, soon to be divorced.

Number, age and sex of children? Two sons at university. Both away for the summer.

Place of birth and current place of residence? Born in Dublin, brought up in Ranelagh, moved to London when she married her husband twenty years ago. Visiting Dublin for a month, house-sitting
for a friend in Monkstown.

Occupation? School teacher. Didn’t work while her children were young, but returned to work six months ago after her husband left her for a younger woman.

Husband’s occupation? Something in the city. Something to do with the stock exchange.

Hobbies? Gardening, painting, printmaking, cooking.

State of mind? Distraught, lonely, isolated.

Needs? Friendship, someone to talk to.

It would have been almost too hot on the pebble beach, the sunlight splintering into sharp points of brightness on the tops of the waves that rolled in from the Irish sea, except for the gentle
onshore breeze that flicked at the pages of her book, turning them over with a sound like the riffling of a pack of cards as she laid it down on the rug beside her and watched, behind her glasses,
the group of children who were playing nearby with a long string of seaweed. Tugging and pulling at its fronds, whirling its whip-like tail over their heads. Flicking it out so it caught at the
back of the legs of the little ones. Licking at their salty wet skin, then stinging, so they cried out and jumped away. Not sure whether this was a game to be continued or abandoned. Someone was
going to get hurt, Rachel could see that. As she could see the two children who had appeared at the bottom of the steps cut into the cliff face, hurrying away from their mother, who was slowed down
by the baby strapped to her chest, and the weight of the large canvas bag slung over her shoulder.

Rachel sat up straight and watched. The boy was ahead of his sister. She wondered, looking at his long skinny legs, how old he might be. She had lost that easy facility that she, like all young
mothers, had once possessed. That ability to age and place every child. Before, all those years ago, she would have looked at him and thought instantly, oh yes, seven and a half, maybe going on
eight, then begun to compare and contrast the unknown boy with her own child’s abilities and progress. But now he was just small to her adult eyes. Ungainly, uncoordinated, his feet in
runners with thick wedged soles, slipping and sliding over the wet, shifting pebbles. She looked from him to the woman with the baby. They were very alike. Despite the difference in age and sex
their relationship shone out in their long limbs and high cheekbones, eyes that were narrowed against the sun, and hair that gleamed, clean and bright.

His name was Jonathan. She could hear the little girl, who straggled along behind him, burdened by a plastic bucket and spade, calling out.

‘Jonathan, Jonathan, wait for me.’

It was a long name with too many syllables. Rachel watched her, how she seemed to pause and gather breath before she used it. It must have been a struggle to master, she thought. Many attempts
at getting it right. She watched the little girl pursue him, refusing to lag behind any further, desperately wanting to catch him up, beginning to run, her voice getting more and more frantic as
she saw that her brother was nearly gone from her.

They didn’t look alike, these two. She was round and dark, her hair cut so it framed her face. Her body was strong and solid, her calves already muscled, her feet in red leather sandals
with straps and buckles, gripping the pebbles like the prehensile toes of a monkey. But her face was soft, her cheeks plump, a little roll of fat beneath her square chin and large dark eyes, which
now were filling up.

‘Wait for me, Jonathan. Please wait.’

But he had gone, disappearing into the group of other children, his fair head bobbing and dipping, lifting and falling as he too became part of the game. And she was left, standing by herself,
tears dripping down her face and Rachel watching, waiting, wondering when she should intervene.

The tall, fair woman had sat down now on a flat rock. She was busying herself with the baby, manoeuvring it out of the sling, laying it down on the blanket she had taken from her bag, unfolded
and smoothed out. She was preoccupied with her youngest. While the girl stood looking around her, the bucket and spade dropping from her hands, and bumping slowly over the tumbled pebbles towards
where the waves broke in a surge of white foam on to the beach. And then, great sobs shaking her voice from her diaphragm, she took a step towards Rachel and said, ‘I know you, don’t I?
You’re not a stranger. You gave me a peach and a yummy ice cream. I like you. You’re nice. But he’s not nice. He won’t wait for me. He never waits for me. He can run faster
than me. All the time. I hate him.’

And then suddenly the gang of children had turned, were coming back towards them. The oldest and fastest whipped the younger ones into a mass of shouts and screams, pushing and falling as they
struggled to keep together. And Jonathan, pulling his sister into the middle, reaching out to grab at her arms, then twirling the long piece of seaweed over his head, like a cowboy with a lasso,
bringing it down on her back, so she cried out and lost her balance and fell, on to the hard wet stones, with the others prancing around her as if she were a sacrificial captive.

On her feet before she realized what she was doing, Rachel pushed her way through them, reaching down to pick up the child, turning on the others, shouting that they had no right to behave in
this way, threatening them with their parents’ wrath, lifting the girl up, smoothing down her hair, picking pieces of grit, small stones and crushed shells from her skin, taking her by the
hand and leading her away from the rest. While her older brother, Jonathan, stood, unsure what to do next, turning first towards Rachel and his sister, then back to the rest of the children who
were now drifting off, some looking anxiously towards their own mothers further up the beach, others still defiant, making angry gestures, kung-fu kicks and punches in the air. While Jonathan
twisted and turned, like a dead leaf hanging from a branch. One minute defiant and angry, the next, frightened, sorry, repentant.

And then their mother was beside them too, calling out in alarm, the baby snatched up from its doze on the blanket, red-faced and yelling. And Rachel, calming, soothing, explaining, making
everything all right again, sitting them down on her rug, offering food, pulling the loosened cork from the bottle of wine, handing the woman, Ursula Beckett, a glass, sipping one herself. Watching
relief and comfort soften her body as she sat with the baby cradled on her lap, the girl melded to her side, even the older son relenting and sitting down beside them, accepting some strawberries
and cream. So that ten minutes later all was quiet and peaceful as the sunlight splintered into sharp points of brightness on the tops of the waves that rolled in from the Irish sea.

‘You’re so good with them. They really like you. I’ve been so busy since I had the baby that I just don’t seem to have had any real time to spend with
them.’

It was getting late. They had eaten and drunk. They had played hide-and-seek, and catch, and skimmed pebbles across the tops of the waves. The baby had slept, and woken, been fed and changed,
had slept again, and now he lay on Rachel’s lap, looking up at her as she angled her neck and bent her face down to his. Smiling and frowning, watching how he twisted his mouth into a
reflection of hers, contorting his upper body with delight, and waving his hands as he tried to reach out and grab hold of her hair. She stroked the top of his head with her forefinger, feeling the
gentle indentation where the bones of the fontanel had still not completely closed over. She thought of the last time she had done this. A visit in the prison. A privilege granted. A meeting in one
of the prefabs, in private. A boy baby too. Very big and strong. Already bursting out of his new towelling suit. Bottle-fed. His clothes smelling from the last time he had got sick, in the bus,
stuck in traffic on the North Circular Road on the way to the prison.

‘Jesus, Rachel, he stinks, doesn’t he? I should have brought something to change him into.’

The air thick with tobacco smoke. Her old friend Tina, early release to have the baby, sticking to the conditions of her probation. In love, Rachel could see, with motherhood. Come back to
visit, to show off her beautiful, healthy, six-month-old son.

‘Isn’t he lovely? I love him so much. I’d do anything for him, anything, Rachel.’

‘Will you stay off it all, will you do that for him?’

‘Anything, I’ll do anything. He’s so perfect and sweet. And he’s mine.’

The baby, pushing himself up on her knees, reaching out to his mother, grabbing at her hair as she pulled him from Rachel and buried her face in the folds of his neck. Laughing at the smell of
baby puke, taking delight in the daily routine.

‘Jesus, Rachel, I never knew you could do so much washing. All fucking day long, I’m washing and drying and changing. But you know what, I love it.’

Tina, the worst of them all. The scar on her face running from behind her left ear down to the corner of her mouth. Countless convictions for drug offences, robbery, assault. A surface as hard
as the metal grid on the window, but inside as soft and sweet as could be. A lover of stories.

‘Read it, again. Rachel, read the one about the princess and the frog. I love that one. Tell me another story, tell me about the children of Lir, the ones with the stepmother who
didn’t want them. Make me cry, Rachel, so I can let go. Let me feel love. Look after me, Rachel.’

‘He’ll be dark, like Laura,’ she said, smoothing down the fine, soft fuzz which covered his scalp. ‘And his eyes, what colour will they be?’

‘They’ll be grey.’ His mother stretched and rolled over on her side, lying with her head propped up on her elbow. ‘He’s going to be just like his father.
Laura’s the image of him. It’s funny that, isn’t it?’ And she sat up, taking a comb from her bag and running it through her hair, smoothing it down, and fastening it at the
nape of her neck with a large tortoiseshell clip. ‘The way children in a family can be so different. Jonathan, for instance, is so like my father. He has all his expressions and mannerisms.
It’s quite odd, because my father died five years ago. Jonathan barely knew him.’

It was beginning to get cool now. The beach was nearly deserted. Only a couple of people walking with a dog far off, their figures silhouetted against the sweep of the bay and the dark hump of
Bray Head off in the distance.

‘Your sons. Tell me, what are they like? Do they take after you or your husband?’

She would describe the two boys.

‘The older is very dark. He’s not really academic but he works hard. He loves the outdoor life. He’s a very good sailor. And a great swimmer. He had some problems when he was a
child. Reading difficulties, but he got over it all with a bit of remedial teaching. He’s very affectionate and he seems easy-going. Shy but not to be crossed. He’s not at all like his
younger brother. If you didn’t know they were related you wouldn’t think it.’

‘And the younger one, what’s he like?’

‘Oh, he’s quite a star. Very clever, always did very well at school. Good-looking too, I must say. Tall and slim, light brown hair that goes fair in the sun. Very blue eyes. But a
bit cold. Self-centred. Ambitious. And very moody. Can go from sunshine to thunder in the blink of an eye. He can be frightening when that happens. But in a funny contradictory way it makes him
very attractive. Already the girls are after him.’

‘It must have been such a shock when your husband left you. How did they take it?’

‘It’s hard to know really. They don’t say much. They keep their emotions to themselves.’

‘And you, it must have been terrible. Were you very hurt? Did you know he was having an affair?’

Rachel was silent.

‘I’m sorry.’ Ursula reached over and took the baby from Rachel’s lap. ‘I didn’t mean to pry. I’m just being nosy.’

‘No, no. It’s fine. It’s good to be able to talk about it. Most people, our friends, were so embarrassed. And they didn’t want to take sides. And no, I was your classic
stupid wife. I didn’t realize that he was involved with anyone else. And then he came home one night and said it to me straight out, and said she was pregnant and he wanted to marry
her.’

‘And your sons, were they much help to you?’

Rachel stood up and began to pack away the remains of the picnic. ‘They have their own lives to live. I don’t really want to drag them into it. You have to let them go, you know.
It’s one of the first things you learn as a mother, I think. The importance of letting them go. Doing without them.’

The girl and the boy were still down by the sea. They were playing an elaborate game. It involved building fortifications with some of the larger stones, constructing a waterway for the waves to
wash through. Rachel stood and watched. It was quiet now. Behind her the woman was busy with the baby. She was changing his nappy, making him tidy for the journey home. Rachel turned and looked at
her, then looked away. She moved quietly over the wet stones, down towards the children. The dark head and the fair head were together, concentrating on their task. They didn’t hear her feet
sliding towards them. They didn’t look up. She could hear their voices, disputing, arguing. They looked very small there, before her. The sea rushed up, around their ankles and their calves.
She could see the way it dragged back with it the smaller stones and pebbles. She saw how their bare feet dug into the soft clinging sand. She stopped and watched them. And wondered. Just for a
moment. Thought of their mother and father and how they would feel. If something should happen to their children.