All That I Leave Behind Read online

  Alison Walsh works in book publishing and literary journalism. She is the author of the bestselling memoir In My Mother’s Shoes. All That I Leave Behind is her first novel.

  First published in 2015 by Hachette Books Ireland

  Copyright © Alison Walsh 2015

  The right of Alison Walsh to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters and places in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious. All events and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real life or real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 147 3612815

  “Norman Mailer, The Art of Fiction No. 32,” interview by Steven Marcus, originally published in The Paris Review, Issue 31, Winter - Spring 1964. Copyright © 1964 The Paris Review, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC

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  Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One: Summer 2012

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  July 1969

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  October 1970

  Part Two: Autumn

  Chapter 6

  September 1972

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  June 1974

  Chapter 9

  October 1978

  Chapter 10

  August 1979

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  March 1981

  Part Three: Winter

  Chapter 13

  September 1981

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Four: Spring-Summer 2013

  Chapter 17

  June 1983

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  May 2012

  Author Q&A

  Acknowledgements

  To Colm

  ‘It made me decide there’s no clear boundary between experience and imagination’

  Norman Mailer, Paris Review

  Prologue

  Michelle

  There’s no bougainvillea where I come from. There are no snakes or lizards, no sun that sits high in the sky, a hot orange ball; there’s none of the dry red earth that coats my toes, that gets into every crevice, the fine lines around my eyes. Sometimes, I’ve found it in my underwear when I’ve taken my bra or knickers off to wash. After thirty years in this place, I think it must be inside me, lining my insides, a thin layer around my heart.

  Where I come from, the earth is a thick, rich brown, the grass a vivid green and the barley a silver grey, swaying in the fields, and everywhere there is water, rushing over pebbles in a stream, pushing slowly between the reeds in the long bluey-brown of the canal that stretches on into the horizon. There are no mud huts, but two-storey farmhouses which have seen better days or modern bungalows with PVC windows, neat baskets of flowers hanging up outside the porch.

  There’s a house by the canal that I always wanted, from the moment I saw it, when I first came to Monasterard. I’d point it out to John-Joe when we went on one of our long walks, the way we always did at the beginning, when we had nothing else to distract us, when the life we’d chosen hadn’t begun to pull us apart, the dog sniffing around ahead of us, rooting in the grass at the edge of a field for the sniff of a pheasant.

  ‘That’s the one I want,’ I said to him as we both stood on the bank and peered over the hedge at its collapsing roof, the grey whitewash almost worn away from the pebble-dashed front, a raggy lace curtain hanging in one of the windows.

  ‘You must be cracked.’ He laughed, scratching his head, his eyes scanning the rusting tractor sinking down into the mud in the front yard. He had that country suspicion of ‘home’ as an affectation – of doing places up, extending them, rummaging through bric-a-brac stalls in markets in search of treasure. Homes were where you slept and ate and watched television, as far as John-Joe was concerned. But he indulged my daydream, placing a heavy arm on my shoulder as we both gazed at the house, his handsome face alert, amused. ‘Anything for you, my love.’ He smiled and, shaking his head, urged the dog on with a whistle.

  Anything for me. How funny it seemed later – ‘funny odd, not funny ha-ha’, as Mary-Pat used to say – that there was a point when John-Joe would have done anything for me, for the girl he loved. Before what happened happened.

  How often I think of it these days, that house, that place. When I first came here, months passed when I hardly thought of it at all. I pushed it out of my mind because I had other things to think about, things that made me feel as if my heart was being pulled out through my ribs. But then that was my punishment: to have left them – Mary-Pat, June, Pius and my little Rosie – and yet brought them with me in my heart, where I could never let them go.

  Now, after I use the small amount of water that remains at the bottom of the tin bowl to splash that blessed dust off my face, grumbling to myself because I can still feel the dry grit of it on my skin, after I lie down on the hard, narrow bed like an old nun, I can see it in my mind’s eye: the way the roof sags, the faded green paint on the front door. Why does the house call me back? Why does it haunt my dreams? I rail against it, knowing all the time why. Because it’s everything I once wanted for my husband and family, the life I had planned for myself. The life that I never really had.

  And then, because I can do nothing else, I pull the tattered paperback copy of Gone with the Wind out from under my pillow, the one that I bought in a flea market in Bray because it had a still from the film on it, Vivien Leigh’s feline, pixie face staring out at me, unknowable; it fascinates me, that face, the idea that it can be a mask, can betray nothing of what’s inside. If only I could have been more like Vivien Leigh. I turn to page 547, to where Scarlett comes back after the battle of Atlanta, and I think about Junie and wonder if she’s reading my mother’s copy, the huge, heavy hardback that I used to love to read. I wonder if she’s found it in the place where I left it for her, and where I left the other things: my plan for the French garden for Pius, because I know how much he loves the garden – he belongs there, just as I do. For Mary-Pat, I left a shell – a perfect whorl of silver and black. We found it on the beach that day we went to Carnsore, that day when my whole life just fell away from me. She made me promise that we’d go back, but we never did. I wonder if she has? For Rosie, I left my ring with the purple stone, the one that John-Joe’s friend had made for me, a thick band of silver with a lump of amethyst set into it, rough, but beautiful, a symbol of everything I thought we meant to each other. I hope it brings her better luck than it did me.

  I tucked them into a battered
trunk that I’d found in the attic, a huge black thing with big bands of wood set into it that, when I opened it, released a scent of mothballs and foreign travel. The kids used to like rummaging around in the attic, amongst all the debris that John-Joe’s brother had left behind: the stuffed trout mounted on a mahogany frame, the box of racing programmes from Cheltenham, the collection of men’s hats stored in a battered suitcase, which the girls used to make Pius try on, marching him around the attic, giving each other orders, their footsteps hammering on the ceiling above me as I lay on the bed, my head propped up on a pillow so that I could see the silver ribbon of the canal from my window, could feel that I was part of it, not inside in the prison I’d made for myself. I left them there, because I hoped that, sooner or later, the children would come across them, and because it’s the one place where John-Joe never strayed.

  I didn’t leave a note, because no note would explain to them why I’d left them. No words could ever cover it. Maybe I was fooling myself a little, too, telling myself that, sure, I’d be seeing them again before they’d even have time to miss me. They’d all climb onto the train in Mullingar, piling the old suitcases and bags around them, and when they got off in Heuston Station, they’d stand on the platform for a minute, lost, until they’d catch sight of me, arms open, and they’d run towards me.

  How many times have I replayed that scene in my head over the years. Even though, deep down, I probably knew that it would never happen. It just took time for me to understand, and when I did, the pain was so terrible I thought it would kill me. But even though what I did that day cost me everything, I knew that I had no other choice.

  I pick up the paperback and open it and that’s when the photo falls out. And every time I see it, it’s as if it is for the first time. The feeling is physical, like a punch to the stomach, making me wheezy, short of breath. I clutch my hand to my throat and feel the tears hot beneath my eyelids.

  They are sitting in line on an old ladder, which Pius has transformed into a boat, paddling with a sweeping brush and a mop at either end. Mary-Pat first, her hair in ringlets, her thighs dimpling under her tartan dress: my happy, plump little girl, with her tea sets and her dolls. Then June, in Mary-Pat’s hand-me-down jeans, that watchful look on her face, the one that made me feel that she knew more than she should. Pius is at the end, a half-mad grin on his face, a gap where his two front teeth should be. He’d either done, or was about to do, something naughty. It used to drive John-Joe mad, and the madder he got, the more poor Pius misbehaved. My poor, bold Pius.

  Rosie is tucked in front of him, the way she always was, a little doll in a crochet dress, her thumb in her mouth, her hair a vivid flame of red. How I loved my Rosie. It just shows you, family is family, no matter what. I shouldn’t have loved her as much as I did. I should have nursed that chip of ice in my heart: the rage against her father should, by rights, have been hers to carry. But instead I loved her more – in truth, more than the others. That’s a mother’s secret, isn’t it? We say we love them all equally, but there’s always one, isn’t there? To me, it was Rosie, because I needed her. Because she, of all people, could save me from John-Joe and what we were doing to each other.

  I run my hand over their faces, their hair, and I kiss them, one by one, kiss them goodnight, as if I’m tucking them up in bed again, that tattered Ladybird copy of Rapunzel in my hand, their noses peeking above the blankets of Mammy and Daddy’s bed, where they always had their night-time story. I don’t kiss the adults they will have since become, because to me they are forever children. I kiss them and I pray for them in my own way, and then I go to sleep and they are in my dreams.

  Part One

  Summer 2012

  1

  Rosie stood at the door for a few moments, the summer breeze coming in through the open window lifting her hair around her face, tendrils of bright red wafting across her eyes. The breeze was warm and on it she could hear the constant caw-caw of the rooks in the trees near the Protestant church. She’d forgotten how loud they were, the rooks. She used to pass them every day on her way to school, ducking underneath the oak tree and running so that one of them wouldn’t crap on her, hands over her ears so that the sudden crack of the bird-scarer wouldn’t make her jump out of her skin, terrified that one of the birds would fix her with a beady eye and swoop, like in The Birds.

  She closed her eyes for a second, clutching her handbag to her, feeling the red leather slick from her sweaty hand. She looked down at her feet and wondered if the espadrilles were a bit disrespectful in a place like this, as if she were dressed for the beach? But then she shook her head. For God’s sake, it wasn’t Mass, and Daddy wouldn’t give a shit about what she wore. He’d consider it highly entertaining that she was fretting about dress codes, she who had hardly worn a stitch of clothing for the first five years of her life. Mary-Pat had had to threaten to take away her collection of stag beetles before she agreed to wear the scratchy jumper and skirt that was her school uniform. ‘But I’m a free spirit,’ she’d protested, as her sister had shoved her arms into the horrible blue nylon-wool mix. ‘Daddy said so.’

  ‘Daddy doesn’t have to go to school,’ Mary-Pat had barked. ‘Daddy doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to, for that matter. It’s easy for some of us to be free spirits. Now, shut up and get dressed, will you, and give me a break?’

  A free spirit. That’s who I used to be, Rosie thought as she tiptoed into the room, inhaling the smell of disinfectant and something else sickly sweet. Her stomach churned and she remembered that she hadn’t eaten since they’d landed six hours ago, a greasy fry under the hot lights of the airport café. She felt her chest tighten again. She reached into her handbag and pulled out her inhaler, taking two deep puffs, clutching it in her hand as she walked over to the bed.

  ‘Daddy?’ The man in the bed didn’t respond because he was fast asleep, his mouth open, revealing an expanse of pink gum. Oh, she thought, it’s not him. It’s not Daddy. This man looked like a mummy, shrunken and wizened, his cheeks hollow because they’d taken his teeth out: they were floating in a glass by the side of the bed. Daddy didn’t have false teeth, she was sure of it.

  ‘Daddy?’ she said again. She went to the end of the bed and saw the medical chart clipped to the frame. She lifted the chart up and examined the name on the top line, a scrawl in blue biro. John-Joe O’Connor. Daddy’s date of birth. She swallowed hard then looked at the man in the bed again. His cheeks had collapsed, making his nose even more prominent. She knew that nose, the bump on the bridge of it from when he’d broken it playing football. And she knew the mole on his right cheek. His hair was fully white now, but it still curled around his ears, one of which had a hole in it for a piercing but no silver earring. He wouldn’t like that, she thought, being without his lucky earring.

  He gave a little snore, a short one, followed by a long silence, and for a second Rosie thought he’d stopped breathing, but then he exhaled loudly. She suppressed the scream which had risen to her throat and instead lifted the inhaler to her mouth and took another long breath in, holding it for a few seconds and then breathing out. She turned around, as if checking to see if there was anyone nearby, and then she tried, ‘Daddy, it’s me, Rosie.’ Silence. ‘Ehm, I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you in a while. I was away, but you know that, of course.’ She blushed as she heard her silly words in the silence. ‘Away.’ As if that could sum up all those years and all those miles she’d put between herself and this place, her home. If Pius hadn’t written to her about Daddy, she knew that she would probably never have returned. It was a mistake – she’d been here five minutes, and she already knew that. But she’d had to come home, because if she never saw Daddy again before - well, she’d never forgive herself.

  She pulled up a big red chair and sat right on the edge of it, feeling the plastic stick to the back of her thighs. She pushed her legs underneath, wincing as her calf bashed against the hard commode below the seat. ‘How are you, Daddy?’ she tried, feeling e
ven more foolish. Then she reached out and took one of his hands in hers and gave it a little squeeze. ‘It’s good to see you.’ She turned his hand over in hers, those long, slender hands with the lovely fingers that he’d used to say were made to play piano at the Wigmore Hall, not dig big bushels of spuds in the arse end of nowhere. When she saw his nails, she swore out loud. ‘For God’s sake, Daddy.’ They were filthy, the cuticles ragged. ‘It’s a good job you’re asleep,’ she said, ‘that way you can’t see the state of your hands.’ He’d always been so careful about his appearance. He’d been delighted to discover V05 hair gel, which he’d nicked from Pius, smoothing down his silvery-black curls in the bathroom mirror, smacking his lips and baring his beautiful white teeth, which no amount of smoking and drinking seemed to have dulled. Then he’d take his brown-leather manicure case out of the drawer in the medicine cabinet and begin his work of filing and shaping. That must be where June got it, that love of making herself look nice. June would have exactly the same expression on her face when she looked into the mirror, one of total absorption, mixed with a fair bit of self-admiration. Rosie wondered what June would look like now. She’d be forty-one and Rosie couldn’t imagine her growing older. Maybe she’d have Botox or fillers. June was made for that kind of stuff. The thought made her giggle, before she covered her mouth with her hand.

  Still holding Daddy’s hand in one of hers, with the other, trembling, Rosie opened the cabinet beside the bed, hoping that she’d spot it now. Sure enough, it was in a blue washbag, sure to have been packed by Mary-Pat, along with a bottle of Blue Stratos, a bar of soap, a toothbrush and a packet of cigarettes, a cheap plastic lighter shoved into a corner of the packet. ‘I thought you’d given up the fags,’ Rosie said out loud as she opened the manicure set. ‘God, I’d kill for a fag, do you know that? But I gave them up, Daddy, would you believe? Yep. Two years and six months ago, but who’s counting?’ And anyway, she thought now as she looked longingly at the cigarettes, Craig would smell it off her breath. He was like a bloodhound when it came to that kind of thing, could sniff out cigarette smoke and alcohol at a hundred yards. He wouldn’t say a word, she knew, but a look would be enough. She’d seen that look once, and she never wanted to see it again.