Where the Rain Gets In (16 page)

 On a personal level Margaret had
taken a gamble on Mike and placed herself in a vulnerable position in a foreign
city. Although she was a fully trained nurse, she was pregnant in Manchester
before she could find a job. Mike didn’t seem to know what he was doing –
forever dreaming up new schemes, talking of computers and other crazy ideas he
knew little about. So yes, that made her hard too. But she also changed
politically; viewing the North from a distance was not like having to live
there. The indifference in Britain, the ignorance of what was happening in a
part of what they called the United Kingdom. That stupid, heartless fucking
bitch Thatcher – Margaret hated sharing her name, and watched as Thatcher moved
on from one confrontation to the next. The miners must have been easy after
standing by to watch ten men die on hunger strike – but then, they were only
miners, they were only common criminals. Margaret saw a lot of things on
television and heard a lot of things on the radio – you do when you’re stuck in
the house with a young baby and another on the way.

Mike pulled through with the help of his
friend Eugene from college.

He was right about computers after all,
and he and Eugene went into business together as training consultants. There
were a lot of companies out there, keen to implement the new technology, but
without a clue as to how to go about it. Mike understood very little of what
actually went on inside a computer – he had Eugene for that – but his ignorance
helped him win over customers. He was also very good at seeing potential uses
for the innovations Eugene enthused about; Eugene thought something was
wonderful in itself, while Mike thought something was wonderful because of what
it could do. They were the saving of each other – Mike made enough money to
support his family, and Eugene enjoyed playing the boffin to Mike’s salesman.

Margaret knew that Mike kept at least an
eye on the financial markets and that he earned a certain amount from the
investments he’d made, but she was surprised that he didn’t make more. Mike
missed for example the huge amounts of money to be made on IBM and Apple,
despite having Eugene as an ear to the ground when it came to computing. When
the stock values crashed in these companies, it was strange to Margaret that
Mike hadn’t made a fortune and got out in time – that would have been the Mike
of old. When she asked him about it, he just said you had to be at it full-time
to stay ahead of the markets. Besides, everybody was into the stock market now
that Thatcher was offering shares in every nationalised industry she could sell
off.

Mike did accurately predict when
Thatcher would go.

“The men in grey suits have had enough
of her,” he said.

Margaret couldn’t understand how they
could just get rid of Thatcher – couldn’t picture life without her actually.

“She is still the Prime Minister,” she
said. “She won’t let go that easily.”

“You just watch,” said Mike. “She’s only
had the power because they allowed her the power, and now she’s become a
liability.”

Mike was so confident of his prediction that
he broke a promise to himself and placed a bet on Thatcher being gone by a
certain date. He didn’t win that much money, but he enjoyed being right. One of
Margaret’s happiest memories was of the three of them – herself, Mike and
Eugene – quietly cracking open a bottle of champagne to celebrate Thatcher’s
defeat. The children were upstairs in bed and Margaret had told Mike that
evening that she was going to return to work within the next year. She felt
good about her decision and it was somehow tied in to the fact that Thatcher
was finally gone. She stood huddled together with Mike and Eugene in the corner
of the living room. Mike had rolled a joint and they passed it one to the
other, three friends together, smoking and drinking the champagne. Eugene had
set up a video loop of Thatcher’s tears, and it was playing over and over on
the television screen. Eugene had told them he had a girlfriend he was seeing –
Eugene! Even though they had the whole of the room to themselves, it seemed
important to be so close and that they should have their arms around each
other. Margaret kissed first Mike and then Eugene.

That was a good day.

So, would Mike leave her? Margaret
thought not, on the whole.

In the past year or so, Margaret had
noticed a change in Mike, and she knew he’d decided to try again. Of the two of
them, it was Mike who was trying the hardest to move on and to get over what
had happened. She watched as he eventually got a hold on his early anger and
rage, and suspected this was his reason for working away from Manchester more
frequently than in the past – to avoid her, and to avoid going off on another
rant. They both hated losing control, especially when the children were around
to pick up a vibe, and when it hit Mike, it hit him hard. Margaret knew that
absenting himself from the family home was just about Mike’s only defence
mechanism

She told Mike once that she’d never have
done it if she’d known he’d take it so badly.

“How the fuck did you think I would take
it?” asked Mike. “That I would understand?”

“I didn’t think you were that bothered,”
said Margaret.

Of course, Mike’s screaming years didn’t
do much to help Margaret’s guilt, and now he’d changed it seemed too late. She
listened as he told her that the only solution he could see was to simply love
her again. He was sorry for everything that had happened, and he was sorry if
it was because of something he had done – or hadn’t done. He hoped things never
got that bad between them again.

But in the five years since Margaret had
been unfaithful – five years, half a decade, gone by just like that – she still
couldn’t forgive herself. She just felt so guilty, all the time, all day, every
day, every place she went and everything she tried to do. She just felt sick
when Mike came on to her. They’d be getting along fine, things almost like
normal – whatever that might be – and Mike would go to put his arms around her,
or kiss her on the lips, and Margaret would just freeze and the moment would be
lost. And then Mike would be angry again, and a few more months would go by. If
Margaret couldn’t get over what she’d done, there was little hope that Mike
could do it alone. They had to move on together; if not, then perhaps Mike
would have to leave after all.

Margaret dreaded Mike talking to her
about it, dreaded being on her own with him because it was all he ever talked
about, and so she gradually just shut herself down. She hated being this way
and she could see what she was doing was making Mike pay, in a way, all over
again, for something she had done in the first place. She knew what he was
saying – loving each other was the only way out of this mess – but she couldn’t
give herself to him in that way any more. She might in the future, she didn’t
know, but right now, she hated herself too much, hated her body too much and
hated the thought of intimacy more than anything. Or perhaps it was just her
age and a physical thing she was going through?

Whichever, this was why she was lying
alone in her bed. Not that they slept together at all these days – again,
Margaret couldn’t. They’d tried to continue sharing their bed but sometimes
Mike got so agitated in the night that he prevented them both from sleeping. It
made sense on nights like this for Mike to move into Jack’s vacated room. Then,
one time when Mike returned from being away, he didn’t even try to share the
bed with Margaret and had slept on his own ever since. At least this way they
could both sleep through the night. God knows what the kids thought. Margaret
had watched her own parents grow apart and yet maintain a workable
understanding in front of the children – she’d sworn never to be like her
mother but here she was, more alike her than ever. It was even stranger when
Mike and she were the only ones left in the house, but even this wasn’t enough
of a prompt for them to sleep together again. Margaret couldn’t see how they
could ever be close like that again – even if she got over what was happening
to her, there was too much history to ever go back to the way things were.
Mike's simple solution of just loving each other again irritated the hell out
of her.

“I don’t know why you think we can just
go back to how we were twenty years ago,” she said.

She knew Mike didn’t mean that, but he
didn’t bother to argue the point. She guessed that by now he just accepted it –
if she didn’t want him, she didn’t want him.

And Margaret, she could either lay in
bed going over and over the same old shit or she could get on with her day, and
this was what she chose to do. She was surprised when Mike said he was going to
Dublin for the day but she didn’t think it was another defensive manoeuvre; she
guessed he had business there after all. Now that she was awake, with little
chance of getting back to sleep, she planned the day.

She wasn’t working today – she operated
a three-day job share at Withington Hospital – but she had more than enough
things to do. She was coming to the end of a professional course in counselling
and for the past few months she’d been holding sessions with a handful of
clients each week. She had two booked for today, one at eleven and one at two.
These were part of her course work and had to be written up in full afterwards.
She also had some project work to complete and she hoped to get this done first
thing before she went out for the day. She also volunteered at the Rape Crisis
Centre when she wasn’t working or at college, mostly afternoons and evenings
but with the occasional night shift every few weeks. If Mike wasn’t going to be
back until quite late, Margaret could extend her afternoon shift at the Centre
and possibly complete her project work there.

The counselling course had finally given
Margaret the sense of self-esteem she’d been missing as a nurse. Whatever Mike
said about nursing, however hard he’d tried to make her see the worth of what
she was doing, Margaret had never valued it as she would, say, studying for a
law degree. She’d gone straight into nursing from school, and had always felt
in awe of Mike’s education.

“But that’s because you’ve never been to
university,” said Mike. “You learn more on the ward in one week than I did in a
whole term of college – and it’s a lot more use, believe me.”

“So why do they have degree courses in
nursing then?”

“I don’t know,” said Mike. “You’ve said
yourself that college nurses have to relearn everything they think they know.
And besides, you’ve actually passed all those same exams – you just didn’t go
to college to do it.”

There was no telling Margaret. It wasn’t
exactly an inferiority thing, because she knew she was a better nurse than any
college graduate; it was more a respect for something that she’d never
experienced herself. It was very easy for Mike to talk about the idiots and
fools he met in college; he was there – studying for a law degree, no less. No
amount of talk about drink and drugs and easy-to-pass exams could convince
Margaret otherwise. Just as when Mike first came back to Belfast on vacation
from college in Manchester; nothing he could say would convince her they’d ever
be together. Margaret was in Belfast and Mike was in Manchester; she was from
the Falls and he might as well have been from another planet.

But the counselling course was
different; it was a natural progression on from nursing and something Margaret
could call her own. Her days on the course, away from the job-share at the
hospital, really felt like going to college; the exams and course-work were
certainly real enough and she was good at it, she knew. Perhaps she’d just
needed to be at a certain age to be ready for this? She couldn’t imagine her
younger self as having the confidence to embark on a new career.

It wasn’t entirely how Margaret had
imagined it – a lot of the newer theory was directed towards the patient
working things through alone. As a counsellor, Margaret had to accompany the
patient, rather than lead them down the path to recovery. But even if it wasn’t
always quite what she’d expected, Margaret was proud of her studies; she liked
the discipline of applying what she’d learnt and she was going to stick at it.

She pushed back the covers and stepped
down from the bed. It was seven thirty-seven. She went through to the bathroom
to take her shower.

Margaret had taken to shaving herself
between her legs every day. For years she’d had an ambivalent attitude to
shaving under her arms – she liked it when she did and she liked it when she
didn’t. Mike said it was very European not to shave under her arms and seemed
not to mind – seemed to quite like it in fact. She did her legs every few days
and had only never bothered when she was feeling particularly down, when the
kids were growing up and it didn’t matter one way or the other. It was always a
part of her coming out of a depression, a part of feeling better about herself,
and making the effort for her own sake as much as for Mike’s. But these days it
was an integral part of her shower. She started shaving between her legs about
a year ago after reading how healthy and clean it was meant to be. She
continued because she liked how it felt – it felt clean but it also felt a
little sexy; a little bit of wild that only Margaret knew about. She knew Mike
would like it but they were a long way from that – this had to be for herself.

One of the joys of being alone in the
house was walking naked with her towel from the bathroom back to her bedroom;
the house was too old to have an en-suite built in and they liked the bedroom
too much to ever change it. Margaret picked out her underwear. The older she’d
become, the more expensive was her underwear; again, it would have been nice to
share how good she looked, but these days she made do with how good she felt.
She tended to dress up for her counselling sessions, or dress smartly at least.
She had a long skirt that she favoured, and a silk blouse and a suit jacket.
Margaret’s clothes were an essential part of her preparation for the day. She
checked herself in the mirror and, satisfied with how she looked, she took off
her jacket and replaced it with an old sweatshirt. She still had a couple of
hours’ project work to do before she left the house. She returned the towel to
the bathroom and carried her jacket downstairs.