But now he was sure. And it made no sense. Because she was like someone else. Since the last weeks of the pregnancy, really, she had not been herself, what with the fearfulness and the tearfulness and the preoccupation and the panic. And the irritability. And the anger. He knew it had to pass. He knew it had to be normal. It was fear that something would happen to the baby, that she would somehow be neglected, or damaged, or lost. And that was a fear Mark understood.
In the hours after she was born they were both dazed, struck incoherent and disbelieving as though by a sudden loss rather than a gain. They had sat together on the bed in Holles Street, the plastic curtain drawn around the tiny space that had become charged with the shock of their now being three: Mark on the edge of the mattress, Joanne, flushed and wet-haired, propped up against the pillows. And the baby. For over a day, the baby without a name. Then, Aoife Luisne Casey, named after nobody, named for nobody but herself.
Aoife came to them at six in the morning. She had spent a whole night in the struggle towards them. Or away from them. Which was it? Which had she wanted? When they slopped her on to Joanne’s chest, Mark had stared at her and tried to steel himself into feeling whatever it was he was supposed, at that moment, to be feeling. This being, this screaming little being, she was his. She was theirs. What were they supposed to do with her? What were they supposed to do for her? Were they supposed to show her how to live?
Now she was quiet in her mother’s arms, sucking steadily and intently on her bottle. It was a Sunday morning. What Sunday morning, what month, what time of year? Nothing came quickly enough to his mind any more. It took a minute to work it out. It was June, it was summertime. The blinds of the sitting room were still closed. It could be any kind of day out there. At the window, he pulled the cord to reveal a pale blue sky, a dazzle of sunlight, puddles of water on the cement of the back yard. The feral cats that gathered there scattered at the rattling of the blinds. White plastic garden furniture lay around the place, old potted plants that had long since withered and died. Two bicycles were propped up against the red-brick wall, rusted now, tangled with overgrown ivy and with each other.
‘We should bring her for a walk today,’ he said, turning to Joanne, who looked at him with puffed and wary eyes.
‘Bring her where?’
‘To the Phoenix Park. Or into town, along the quays.’
Joanne shrugged. ‘Maybe, after her nap.’
He began to get the pram ready. A bag with her nappies, with wipes, with all the things they would need if she got hungry or cold, or if it rained. Another bag with bottles, something to keep them warm, an extra soother, Sudocrem. Deep inside the pram’s hood, his mother had pinned a religious medal. Some saint. He didn’t know which one. He didn’t know his saints. He knew that Anthony was for lost things, and Jude was for lost causes, and Dymphna was for the mad. But it couldn’t be any of those. He put a hand into the hood and searched for the medal; finding it, he leaned towards it, squinted to see who it was. Brigid. Of course. Brigid of the chubby little crosses made from rushes. St Mel, growing confused in his old age, had accidentally ordained her a bishop instead of an abbess. It was weird, Mark thought, the useless things you remembered from school.
‘No,’ Joanne said suddenly, from the couch. ‘Forget the park. I couldn’t be bothered. Anyway, it’s probably going to rain.’
‘I’ll take her,’ Mark said, but Joanne shook her head.
‘Leave it,’ she said. ‘It’s too much hassle. If you want to be helpful, go out and get something for dinner.’
In Centra he bought steaks and potatoes and a bag of frozen peas, and nappies and baby powder and baby formula and baby shampoo, and a box of cereal for the morning, and a bottle of wine for whenever they would ever again get to sit down together and drink a bottle of wine. And walking back up Arbour Hill he saw that Mossy was at the door. He called up to him, shouted to him not to ring the doorbell. By some miracle of St Brigid and St Jude and St Dymphna, Aoife might have gone to sleep, and if Mossy woke her, Joanne would go mad. But then he realized that in his pocket his phone was ringing, and it was Mossy: Mossy, who’d worked out already that it might not be such a good idea to make a racket at the door. Mark waved, and in a minute he was hugging Mossy, like a drowning man being pulled from the sea.
*
The summer passed. It was only a clutch of weeks, seeming longer and more beautiful before it began. Soon what sunshine came was not warm but autumnal, and the light lasted each evening for a shorter and shorter time.
Joanne had been back at work since early July. The hours were long, as she had known they would be, and as winter began to draw in, she woke up every morning wishing it was night and that she was walking up Arbour Hill, looking at the crooked number 4 on their front door, coming into the house to the smell of food and to the light on in the hall and to the fire lit in the sitting room. There was so much that she wanted to do with this house now. It had hardly been a home at all before Mark and the baby. It had been somewhere she inhabited, like a student flat. Now she saw it differently. She wanted to paint the hall a bright colour and to put down new floorboards. To rip up the ugly old carpet in the sitting room. A room had to be made for Aoife; the whole house needed light and air and space. For years before she had moved in, her father had rented the place to students, and it still had that look to it. She had not had the money to do it up when she inherited it, and she did not know where that money would come from now. But she would find it. She would have to. Soon, Aoife would be old enough to see this place with her own eyes. Joanne did not want her to see it the way it was now.
If she got home before seven, Aoife would still be up. She was a joy at that hour, cheerful, affectionate, loving the sight of her mother come home. She smiled in huge gales of happiness and grasped at the strands of Joanne’s hair. In a corner by the sofa they had laid a soft mat on the floor and scattered soft toys and other things around. She was still too young to play with them, but she seemed to like being surrounded by them, seemed to like being there on her back, taking slow account of them.
Joanne liked to be there to bathe her before bed; to sit her into the soapy water and watch her pleasure at the warmth of it, to watch her squirm and kick and stare as she relaxed her way towards sleep. She would carry her, wrapped in a towel, into the room where she and Mark slept, and she would change her into a clean nappy and a Babygro. Then she would lay her down under a pink crochet blanket. It had been Joanne’s when she was a baby; her mother had kept it all these years, had brought it into the hospital to them on that very first day. They had a nightlight of gently turning sheep and moons and stars. The baby’s eyes followed the twirling reflections on the walls and the ceiling, like the ticking hands of a clock. Joanne watched her, often, as her eyes closed. As the child slept, she clutched with one hand the top of the blanket. The other hand was always thrown wide. Often as she watched her sleep or drift into sleep Joanne felt again the dread she had felt during the pregnancy, during the labour, in the impossible first weeks. How would she do for this person all that needed to be done?