Putting Out the Stars (13 page)

Laura reached across the bed and lifted the phone. ‘Hello?’

‘Only me, to say thanks a million for last night. It was great, as always.’ Breffni’s voice sounded rusty.

Laura lay back against the pillows, pulled the duvet up around her shoulders. ‘Are you dying?’

‘Not too bad. How’s
your
head?’

‘A little fragile; I’m still in bed. But we cleaned up last night, so I’m entitled.’

Breffni gave a snort. ‘Good God – it’s half eleven in the morning, woman. Easily known you’re childless; Poll was in to us at seven. I’ve the washing on the line
and the bathroom cleaned. I’d have hoovered, but I didn’t know if I could bear the noise.’

Laura laughed. ‘Ah shut up, you sound like Superwoman. And I don’t believe a word anyway; you’re probably still in bed yourself.’

‘I wish. Anyway, thanks again. My place next, end of the month, yeah? I suppose I’ll ask the other two as well.’

‘Do – it would be good for Ruth. D’you think she enjoyed the night?’

‘Course she did. Weren’t we all nice to her?’

‘Yeah . . . well, let me know when you’re in town. I’m not too busy this week – we could meet for coffee.’

‘OK, I might be bringing Mary in on Thursday actually. Take care. Polly sends kisses.’

‘Give her one back. See you soon.’

Easily known you’re childless.
‘Childless’. ‘Barren’. Horrible, dry, brittle words. Whereas ‘womb’ sounded all round and
juicy. Not
her
womb though; hers was withered and brown, deprived of whatever it needed to grow and blossom and bear fruit;
the fruit of thy womb.
Her womb was empty of fruit. It
squatted inside her and mocked her each month:
Nothing again, Laura. Better luck next time, Laura. Must try harder, Laura.

Every twenty-eight days, regular as clockwork, she wrote ‘tampons’ in angry letters on her shopping list. Each time the blood came, she cried in the bath late at night, when Donal
was asleep.

When she visited Cecily, she looked at her and thought:
even you, so cold, so unfeeling; even you could do it.
She watched young girls pushing babies in the street, lifting them
carelessly out of their buggies, pushing soothers and bottles into their mouths – and she hated them for being what she couldn’t be. She heard about abandoned babies with silent
outrage; how cruel, how unfair that was.

She saw Breffni with Polly, the huge, terrifying love between them, and she ached for it. She remembered when Breffni was pregnant, especially in the last month or so, how she’d stop in
the middle of a sentence and put her palm to her swollen stomach, and just hold it there with a look that Laura had never seen before. A look that Laura couldn’t decipher, as if it was in a
foreign language.

And this was why, of course, she couldn’t confide in Breffni. How could she possibly cry on Breffni’s shoulder about not getting pregnant, when Breffni and Cian had conceived Polly
without even trying? Hadn’t wanted a baby at all, in fact. Laura remembered Breffni’s phone call, over two years ago, as if it had happened last week.

‘Laur, I’m in trouble.’

She sounded funny – was she crying? Laura squinted at the digital face of the clock radio: two thirty-two. Beside her, Donal grunted and turned his face away from the lamp she’d just
switched on.

‘What’s wrong?’ She imagined fires, earthquakes, disaster on an epic scale. ‘Is Cian all right?’

‘I’m pregnant.’

Laura’s heart lurched. She drew in a sharp breath. ‘God.’ Her mind raced. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah. I did two tests, and I’m a fortnight late. I’m never late.’

Laura groped for something to say. ‘What does Cian think?’

Breffni said nothing.

‘Bref? You haven’t told him?’

‘Look, I don’t know what I want to do . . . I have to think –’

‘You have to tell him; it’s his baby too.’ Donal stirred again and turned back, watching her through half-open eyes.

‘What’ll I do, Laur? I don’t know what to do.’

Laura took another deep breath. ‘You have to tell him. And then you talk about it together. Promise you’ll tell him.’

And Breffni had told him, and three months later they’d arrived in Ireland and moved in with Cian’s granny Mary until they found a job for Cian and a house for the three of them,
having decided that Ireland was a better place to bring up a child.

And Laura had wanted so much to tell Breffni that she and Donal had just started trying for a child of their own, but she couldn’t, not when Polly had been unplanned – it would have
seemed insensitive somehow. And then, after Polly arrived, and Breffni was struggling with exhaustion and crying if you looked crooked at her, Laura found it even harder. How could she bother
Breffni now, particularly with that? And when the first few difficult months had passed, and Breffni finally fell in love with her daughter, and glowed with her new happiness, Laura still said
nothing; at that stage, she simply couldn’t. What had turned into the biggest heartache of her life – getting harder to bear with every month that passed – had also turned out to
be the one thing she couldn’t bring herself to share with the person she felt closest to, after Donal.

And Donal was the last person she could talk to. How could she? It would be like a criticism, an accusation:
Where is our child? Why have you not given it to me? What’s wrong with you?
What’s wrong with us?
She knew how ridiculous it sounded – not able to discuss your fertility problems with your husband – but knowing it sounded ridiculous didn’t make
it go away.

She often wondered about Donal’s family. He told her that he’d been an only child, the surprise arrival in a late marriage. His parents had met when his Australian mother had visited
Ireland in her thirties, and eventually, after three years of long-distance courtship, settled in Sligo with her new husband. When Donal was nineteen, his parents decided to emigrate to Australia,
where his mother’s ageing father lived alone. Of course, they’d wanted Donal to go with them, but he’d chosen to stay in Ireland.

‘The last thing I wanted was to up and move halfway around the world. My mother’s family lived in this small town – a village really – out in the middle of nowhere. The
thought of starting a whole new life in a place like that just didn’t appeal to me. And I was in the middle of a catering course; I wanted to finish that.’

‘But didn’t you miss them? Weren’t you lonely?’ Laura could not imagine being separated by such a distance from her own beloved father.

Donal shrugged. ‘To be honest, we were never much of a family. My folks weren’t the touchy-feely types really – I don’t ever remember my mother hugging me. And I had pals
here, plenty of company. I looked forward to the independence, in fact – they didn’t give me a lot of freedom growing up. The over-protected only child, that was me. Of course, I had
quite a job to convince them to go off without me, but eventually I managed it.’

‘And you stayed in Sligo, by yourself.’ Laura tried to picture it: this teenager, little more than a child really, waving goodbye to his parents as they set off for the other side of
the world. Going home afterwards to live in an empty house.

‘Well, I was only in Sligo for a few months after they left, as it turned out. When I finished my catering course, I was offered a job in Cruise’s hotel here in Limerick –
you’ll hardly remember it, it’s gone years; it was where Cruise’s Street is now – and I ended up staying here, sold the house in Sligo after a few months and rented here
until I eventually bought the one I have now.’

It all sounded terribly casual to Laura. ‘And how come you never write to your parents – or they never write to you?’

He grinned. ‘You may not have heard, but we have what’s called e-mail now. Quicker, cheaper, less hassle.’

She wasn’t satisfied. ‘But have you ever been to visit them? What about at Christmas – aren’t you ever lonely?’

Donal laughed. ‘Now there’s a girly question. No, I can’t say it’s ever bothered me, being on my own at Christmas. When I was in Cruise’s, we were rushed off our
feet – I hadn’t time to worry about not having the mammy at home to cook my turkey. And now –’ he grinned ‘– you might have noticed that I can cook a fair old
turkey all by myself.’

Laura wasn’t about to be distracted. ‘And are you still in regular contact? How often do you hear from them?’

He shrugged again. ‘Well, I suppose we’ve drifted apart over the last while. To be honest, love, it doesn’t bother me. I think it’s different for guys; they don’t
need the family as much as females seem to.’

She still thought it strange, to lose contact with your parents so completely. And not even to have them at your wedding – Donal had insisted that neither of them would be able for the
trip to Rome.

‘They’re in their eighties now, both of them. The journey would kill them, believe me.’

And Laura had to agree with that. But she wondered sometimes if there was more to it than he was telling her – if there’d been some kind of a falling-out. Maybe he’d done
something so bad that they’d disowned him. Robbed a house, maybe, or left some poor girl at the altar. She supposed she’d never know; have to accept that she’d never get to meet
her parents-in-law. Never be able to present them with a grandchild – that was assuming she ever managed to get pregnant, of course.

She and Donal had talked about children when they’d decided to get married. She wanted a big family, full of the squabbles and excitement and noise that neither of them had had growing
up.

‘Mother was always so –
civilised.
Obsessed with manners – “use a napkin, don’t put your knife in your mouth, keep your elbows off the table” –
as if any of that nonsense mattered . . . and we could never make noise in the house; if Andrew and I had any kind of row, we had to go out the back to yell at each other. I used to love having my
tea at Breffni’s, where everyone grabbed what they wanted, and leant across other people’s plates and stuff, and Mona never minded if you talked with your mouth full. They had better
grub too – mashed bananas on sliced white bread, and fish fingers, and sausages – Mother hated sausages.’

It was a month before their wedding. Laura was lying on the couch in Donal’s house, balancing a mug of coffee on her stomach; he was sitting at the end, cradling her bare feet in his
hands. He smiled at her chatter, but said nothing.

She lifted her head from her cushion and looked over at him. ‘What was it like, growing up in your house? Must have been quiet too, with just you.’

He looked back at her for a minute before answering. Then he said ‘Yes, it was quiet, I suppose; I didn’t really notice.’

He never seemed to want to talk about his family. Laura wondered again if something had happened to drive them apart. She lifted a foot from his lap and poked him gently in the side with it.
‘So you’d like a few children to make our house nice and noisy then?’

He grabbed her foot and held it tightly. ‘If that’s what you want, I’m happy.’ He smiled again, but it was strained. She sat up then and swung her legs down, and slid
over beside him and found his hand, and twined her fingers around his.

‘Donal, is there anything you haven’t told me – anything about your family . . . ?’ She faltered as he looked blankly at her.

‘Of course not. I’m just not that pushed about having a family of my own. But if you want to, that’s OK.’

She wasn’t satisfied. ‘Darling, you have to want it too. I’m not the boss of you.’ She spoke gently, sensing a wariness about him that she hadn’t seen before.
‘We need to be sure about this.’

Then he reached up and ruffled her hair with his free hand, amused. ‘So young and so serious.’ The jokey Donal, back again.

She grabbed his other hand. ‘Donal, stop. I
am
serious. This is a big thing.’

‘OK, OK.’ He stopped and looked at her. ‘Seriously, if you want children, that’s fine with me.’ He paused. ‘But maybe we could wait awhile? I’d like to
have you to myself for a few years.’ And of course she loved hearing that – couldn’t argue with it. She wanted him to herself too. And she
was
only twenty-two –
plenty of time for children.

So they waited, and were careful, and the years passed. And now she was twenty-nine, and they’d stopped being careful two years ago. She’d thrown away her repeat prescription for the
pill, and Donal had seemed happy to go for it – or at least, not
un
happy.

And since then, nothing had happened.

The first few months she hadn’t taken too much notice. It was bound to take some time, after her being on the pill for so long; they couldn’t expect to be successful right away.
She’d hold the newborn Polly in her arms and think:
this’ll be me soon.

The day after Polly’s first birthday, without saying anything to Donal, Laura had gone to visit the doctor who’d seen her through measles and chicken pox, and a nasty case of
shingles one summer. She felt slightly foolish, but the worry that had started as a tiny niggle a couple of months ago had begun to grow; it was time to do something.

Dr Goode had listened without interrupting. Then he told her that there might well be nothing to worry about. He said what she’d been expecting to hear – that her body needed time to
return to its normal level of fertility after long-term contraception. He said it would be quite unusual for her to get pregnant straight after coming off the pill. He said that if she wanted, he
could do some simple exploratory tests – but he’d need to see Donal too.