Woman to Woman (17 page)

“Was it my fault? I didn’t mean to keep asking for rollerblades.”

“No, no, darling. It’s nothing to do with you. Dad loves both of you, he’s just… he needs to be on his own for a while. He wants you to be strong and understand that he loves you very much.”

“But why’s he gone then?” Paul was looking at her with so much confusion in his eyes, that she didn’t know whether to hug him or cry

“Dad and I don’t always get on,” she said slowly.

“Sometimes adults fight and need some time on their own, and that’s what Dad wants. Time on his own. You’ll still see him,” she added, trying to sound reassuring.

“Why, Mum?”

For once, Paul was asking all the questions. Phillip just stood there, head bent, his thick, dark hair falling over his forehead.

Aisling reached out to stroke it, but he wrenched away from her hand.

“I’ll tell you what, let’s go to McDonald’s for lunch. Does that sound

like a good idea?” “OK.” Paul looked as if he might cry.

“We went to McDonald’s yesterday. I thought we weren’t supposed to eat burgers all the time?” said Phillip sullenly.

“Not all the time, no answered Aisling.

“Sometimes we can break the rules, can’t we? Where are your socks, boys? I’ll give you five minutes to be ready to go, OK?”

Paul sprinted up the stairs in search of his missing socks, while Phillip stared at the floor. Aisling put her arms around him and hugged him tightly, feeling the tension and misery in his body.

“Darling, I’m so sorry about this. It’s not your fault, it had nothing to do with you or rollerblades, or anything like that.

This is between Dad and me …”

“It doesn’t matter he said suddenly. He pulled away from her and picked his socks up off the floor.

“I’m not hungry.”

Aisling sat on the edge of the bed, talking quietly on the phone so the boys wouldn’t hear her and wake up. It was nearly half nine but it was still bright outside. A man and woman were walking a dog on the other side of the road, holding hands as their brown and white terrier ran eagerly in and out of gardens.

“It’s so unfair. The boys are so upset. I feel as if it’s my fault, as if I’m ruining their childhood.”

“Don’t be silly, you’re doing all you can Fiona answered.

“What else can you do?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Aisling sighed heavily, thinking about the day’s events. Lunch had been a disaster. Phillip refused to eat anything. Paul had followed suit, leaving a half-eaten quarter-pounder and most of his chips to Aisling. Normally, she’d have wolfed them down. But today she didn’t feel remotely hungry.

“What do you think about the term ping job Pat suggested?”

Fiona asked.

“Bloody terrified, that’s what I think. I don’t know what scares me most, actually going back to work or finding out that I can’t remember

anything after twelve years. I’d hate to let Pat down when he’s been so good giving me this chance.”

“Rubbish, of course you’ll be fine. It’s nothing demanding, honestly. You’ve got a week to think about it, anyway,” Fiona pointed out.

“Elizabeth isn’t going on maternity leave for another three weeks, so you’ve lots of time to get used to the job. It’ll be a doddle for

“Thank you, Fiona. Thanks for everything, cheering me up, getting me a job and oh … just for being there,” Aisling said gratefully.

“I don’t know what I’d have done without you or Jo.”

“How is she?”

“Actually, she’s doing pretty well. I was talking to her earlier and she’d just come in from a long walk in Portmarnock. Said she wanted to tire herself out so she’d sleep tonight. Poor thing.”

“What was the boyfriend like?” Fiona asked.

“I don’t really know, I only met him a couple of times and we didn’t exactly talk. Michael wasn’t too keen on him, but then,” Aisling gave a little hollow laugh, “Michael’s judgement has been a little faulty lately Or maybe it’s my judgement that’s been faulty.”

She paused for a moment.

“Stop moping ordered Fiona, ‘and give me the lowdown on this horrible man. Is he gorgeous or a complete scumbag?”

“He’s very handsome, all blond hair, blue eyes and white teeth. He could advertise toothpaste.”

“But still a scumbag?”

“I think so. Actually, most of Jo’s boyfriends have had some fatal flaw or another, like not wanting to settle down. Which is odd, really,” Aisling said reflectively.

“I’ve read that women who’ve been abused or hurt as children automatically go for the type of men who’ll abuse their kids, it’s a vicious circle.”

“She wasn’t abused, was she?” Fiona asked in amazement.

“Lord no. But her father died when she was young and I often think she unconsciously picks men who are going to leave eventually, sort of like her father left added Aisling.

“Strangers meeting Jo would probably think she has everything, a great

career and great looks. In reality, she has as many problems as anyone else, more maybe.”

“I know what that’s like,” remarked Fiona.

“Before my mother and father split up, they were always fighting, at each other’s throats like pit bulls. But because we had the big house, the Jag, the housekeeper, etc.” everyone assumed we had the life of Riley. Everything looked so different from the inside,” she added.

“We all pretended everything was perfect, but I never brought girls home from school in case they witnessed one of Mummy’s rages. Daddy had given her these china figurines over the years and when she got really vexed she’d fling them at him. By the time she left, there wasn’t a china ornament in the house, she’d smashed them all.” Fiona gave a little laugh.

“So I know all about covering up, I’m an expert at it.”

“I’m sorry, Fiona,” said Aisling sympathetically.

“I never knew.”

“Oh, I just don’t talk about it any more. It took me ages to get it out of my system, but I’m fine now. The point is,” Fiona said emphatically, ‘that things would have been a lot better if they’d just split up, instead of carrying on a bloody charade for years.”

“What went wrong?” asked Aisling, unable to conceal her curiosity. She’d never heard Fiona talk about her mother before, except to say that they rarely met up because her mother lived in Arizona.

“Drink,” Fiona said abruptly.

“She drank like a fish, all her family did. That’s why you’ll never see me drinking too much, I’m too bloody terrified to. It runs in families and I don’t want it to run in mine any more.”

Christ, thought Aisling, remembering the nearly empty bottle of gin in the drinks cupboard. She’d been drinking far too much all weekend.

“I’d better be going, Ash,” Fiona said.

“Pat was off playing snooker all afternoon and wants to have a cosy family night in to make up for it. I’ll be over tomorrow to discuss your working wardrobe,” she added.

“We’ll have to find something drop-dead gorgeous to give you confidence on the first day.”

“Something drop-dead gorgeous from my wardrobe?”

exclaimed Aisling.

“If we can’t find something, we’ll just have to go shopping continued Fiona gleefully.

“Fun, fun, fun!”

“Goodbye, you irrepressible shopper laughed Aisling, hanging up.

Right, she decided. No gin tonight. Just think of Fiona’s mother.

The next morning she brought the boys to school and waved them in like she did every other Monday morning.

It just didn’t feel like every other Monday. Last week, she’d been a reasonably contented, well, not totally discontented woman. Now he was separated and broke.

With her finances very much in mind, she headed for Roches Stores in the Frascati Centre and took a basket instead of a trolley. Walking around aisles scented with the delicious smell of freshly baked bread, Aisling shopped carefully, adding up the prices in her head.

Twenty pounds seemed so much to pay for such a small amount of shopping. That expensive conditioner would have to go back, there was a much cheaper generic one. And one-fifty for those little pots of from age frais? Ridiculous.

At home, she put everything away and sat down with a cup of coffee and a pen and paper. She listed the various household bills, working out how much money she needed every week. The total seemed huge, especially compared to the money she had in the bank. One and a half thousand wouldn’t go very far. What would Michael pay for the boys’ keep, she wondered?

The phone rang as she was hanging out the washing. Damn.

She raced in, nearly tripping over a raised slab on the patio in the process.

“Hello.” she said breathlessly.

“Hello, Aisling,” said her mother.

“I’ve been wondering if you were all sick or something since I haven’t

heard from you all weekend. Are the boys OK? “Only a mother knew how to ask questions that were loaded with meaning, thought Aisling, wondering where to start. She had been expecting the call. Or rather, dreading it.

It was a rare weekend when Aisling didn’t ring her mother at some point or another. She usually waited until Sunday afternoon to ring because her father was invariably having a little nap over the newspapers and wouldn’t answer the phone.

There was always something for Sean Maguire to complain about. These days, twenty-two-year-old Nicola was the bane of his life, constantly on the phone talking to ‘that boyfriend of hers’ or going out in unsuitable clothes.

Enduring one of his five-minute moans was a waste of her time, Aisling thought. It didn’t surprise her that Nicola’s twin brother, Nicholas, was never in trouble with his father, Sean had always wanted a son, something he’d never let Aisling forget.

“I was worried, Aisling,” her mother was saying.

The boys are fine, Mum.” It was time to bite the bullet.

“I’m afraid the problem is Michael…”

“Oh Lord, what’s wrong with him? I just knew there was something wrong!”

There’s nothing wrong with him, Mum.” Aisling said.

Nothing a slap on the face wouldn’t cure, anyway.

“He’s … er, we’ve split up.”

“What! I can’t believe it, Aisling, that’s terrible, just terrible.”

Aisling had never heard her mother so shocked. This was so difficult. Please God don’t let Mum figure out everything. I couldn’t face discussing the whole bloody thing again.

Aisling could hear her mother pulling up a kitchen chair to sit down on. The phone in the Maguire home was in the kitchen, making it impossible to have any sort of private conversation at all, Nicola constantly complained to her older sister. Eithne Maguire’s voice quavered as she spoke again.

“But why, Aisling? What happened? Have you been having problems and why didn’t you tell me? And what about the boys, poor lambs?”

Aisling felt a lump in her throat. Why did all this have to be so hard? Why didn’t stationary companies print separation cards, like the change of address ones. It would be so much easier.

“Mrs. and Mrs. Moran have split up and henceforth Mr. Moran will be residing at Number 10 Primrose Avenue with a Cindy Crawford lookalike while Mrs. soon-to-be-ex Moran will be remaining in the family pad fielding telephone calls from curious relatives.”

The boys are doing all right, Mum. Michael and I haven’t been getting on and we had a fight. He’s moved out for a while, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” demanded her mother.

“What do you mean, “that’s all”? Is this serious? Is he gone for good, Aisling? Tell me.”

Aisling gave up. There was no point trying to pretend that she and Michael were in the middle of an amicable separation.

She might as well tell the truth even though it hurt like hell.

“Listen Mum, I’ll tell you the truth, but I don’t want Father to know, right?” she said fiercely.

“You can tell him that we’ve grown apart and are perfectly happy with the situation, I just don’t want him knowing.”

All right, love,” Mum said softly.

“Just tell me everything.”

Everything took three-quarters of an hour and two cups of tea. Father would undoubtedly have a seizure when he got the itemised phone bill itemised so that Nicola ‘… couldn’t ruin me ringing that lout…”

While her mother was making the second cup of tea, Aisling idly mused that Telecom Eireann should have a special ‘disaster’ phone-call rate, a once-a-month reduction so that people with problems could ring their relatives and receive family counselling. They’d make a fortune.

“Are you not having a cup yourself, love?” Her mother asked in concern when she picked up the receiver again.

“No. I’ve gone off tea and coffee. Weird, isn’t it? And I haven’t so much as looked at a chocolate biscuit all weekend!”

“Well, that’s good, darling,” answered her mother, sounding unsure as to the benefits of a chocolate biscuit aversion in the middle of a crisis.

“It’s just that I’ve always tried so hard to stop myself eating biscuits,” explained Aisling.

“I wanted to be slim and a size ten, like the woman Michael married. But I couldn’t help myself, I kept eating and kept hating myself for eating. It was a vicious circle I couldn’t escape. And now I’m not hungry at all and he isn’t here to see it…” Her voice broke for the first time since they’d started talking.

“Oh Mum, what’s going to happen?

What went wrong?”

“I don’t know, love,” her mother answered.

“I don’t think it’s that simple or that black and white. When your father and I were married, we knew it was for keeps, no matter what happened. And Lord knows, I’ve felt like getting a divorce myself more often than I’d care to admit. Your father hasn’t been easy, you know that,” she added.

“But it’s different now. Everyone expects more from life, everyone wants to be happy. They demand it. Nobody wants to try any more.”

“I wanted to try,” sobbed Aisling.

“He didn’t. He’s a bastard, isn’t he?”

Her mother said nothing.

“Well he is, isn’t he? Don’t you think so? Or is it all my fault?”

“It’s not your fault, Aisling. I just don’t want to start criticising Michael. I made that mistake once with your father when he and your grandmother had a big row. By the time they were great pals again, he’d remembered the things I’d said about her and I don’t think he ever forgave me for it.”