Mary Costello - The China Factory

She takes a step back inside and puts a hand on the counter. He leans into the kitchen. ‘Are you not feeling well?’

‘No, I need to…’ He pulls a chair towards her and she sits down.

‘Can I call someone, a doctor?’

‘I have to get to the hospital.’ She flinches.

He takes out his mobile phone. ‘I’ll ring an ambulance.’

‘No. It would take too long.’

He helps her into her car, then sits in beside her and reverses out of the driveway. She names the hospital, a large, city-centre maternity hospital. He thinks of stories of babies born en route to hospital. This is different. He turns out of the estate. There are speed ramps and he has to slow. When they join the main road she straightens up and leans her head back. He thinks she has come through the worst.

‘Traffic isn’t too bad this time of day,’ he says.

‘No.’

A small white dog trots along the footpath.

‘Are you feeling better?’

‘Yes, I think so. I’m sorry about this.’

‘That’s okay. No worries.’ At a red light a group of teenagers crosses in front of them. The girls have long shiny hair. Halfway across one girl says something, and they all laugh.

‘They’re lucky, aren’t they?’ she says. He puts the car in gear and looks at her. Her eyes are green and her hair is tucked behind her ears. Her face is very pale. He glances at her hands.

‘Yeah, I suppose,’ he says but he isn’t sure what she means.

He drives on, stopping and starting in a line of cars. He wonders what lies ahead.

‘You’re not from the city,’ she says then.

‘No, I’m from Mayo.’

‘On the coast?’

‘Yeah.’ They are going over the canal bridge now. ‘Do you want me to call someone for you when we get there?’

‘Yes… No, it’s okay, actually. Peter, my husband, is in Germany, on business. I called him already. I have a sister in Meath and she’ll come in.’

They are moving very slowly in the traffic.

‘Will you go back to Mayo?’ she asks. Her face is tilted towards him, calm, serene. He feels himself within her orbit.

‘Yes, I think so. I might build a house there.’

‘Beside the sea?’

He nods. ‘On a hill. Looking out to sea.’

‘Oh,’ she whispers. She is silent then. Some minutes pass. She has forgotten him. He fears she will fade out and he will lose her.

‘Tell me about the place you come from,’ she says then.

He shrugs, reluctant.

She lifts her eyes to his face. ‘Please.’

‘Well, it gets a lot of rain, like everywhere in the west. The roads are bad. The land is poor. But… you get used to all that because it’s home, I suppose. I don’t know… I only think about my own place, the villages and the towns — Lecanvey and Murrisk and Louisburgh. The Atlantic is always there, pounding away, and the mountains too, Croagh Patrick and Mweelrea, half-hidden in cloud or mist most of the time, but you’re always aware of them. And the way people turn to them every day — they don’t even know they’re doing it. They look out to sea first and then up to the mountain… Sometimes I walk halfway up Croagh Patrick and stand and look out. Then these big clouds come rolling in from the sea and everything changes. You don’t know where you are. And the wind — Jesus, it would lift you… On a clear day you can see way out, all the islands in Clew Bay, and Clare Island too. My mother came from Clare Island, she’s an island woman…’

He pauses. Her eyes are still on him.

‘There’s a story she tells,’ he says, ‘a true story, something that happened in the late eighteen hundreds, I think. It happened on Achill Island… The local people were out working — whole families — in the fields. There was a baby wrapped up asleep in the heather while the mother worked. This huge sea eagle with a seven-foot wingspan flew in, plucked up the sleeping baby in its talons and carried it off out over the sea. All the local men of the island dropped what they were doing and rowed furiously towards Clare Island. The Clare Islanders were alerted too and everyone searched and searched and stretched up into the cliffs and the baby was found, safe and well, asleep in the robber’s nest…’

They are weaving their way through the narrow streets near the hospital. Something deep, below words, lies between them.

‘Do you know my worst fear?’ she asks.

He shakes his head.

‘Being alone. Christmases alone by a fire. With maybe a dog or a cat.’ She gives a little laugh. Then she leans forward and looks out and up, as if searching the sky for something.

He stops at the hospital entrance and switches off the engine.

‘They’ll think you’re the father,’ she says.

Inside she is wheeled away. His final glimpse is of the porter bending down to hear something she’s saying. He stands for a few moments in the corridor, his hands hanging by his side.

He walks out of the hospital and gets into the car. He sits there, motionless, with fixed eyes. After a while he pulls away and drives south through the city. His heart is pounding. He glances at the bloodstain on the seat beside him. He remembers her hand raised to shield the sun. He sees her now, lying down, turning to face a wall.

Something had been forming, cell by cell, limb by limb, in the dark of her. Vertebrae, tendon, knucklebone. The iris in an eye. Now, it had fallen away, a subtraction of her being. Fingerprints cut short in the making. He thinks of things he has not thought of before, about women’s lives. It is not the same for men at all. His hands turn the steering wheel. His strength, his maleness, is of no avail.

He leaves the main road and turns into her estate. He has the feeling that a long time has passed, years even, and that he will find her garden overgrown and a For Sale sign swinging in the wind. He comes to her house and eases the car into the driveway. He switches off the ignition and listens to the engine ticking. She will be stricken, no longer intact. She might need to touch walls when she gets out. She might not trust the ground anymore. She might slide her foot along the pavement, like a blind person. Trying out the world again.

Ruth had not thought of Matt, her first husband, for some time. Then Matt’s brother, Paul, called to say he was dead. She was lifting Emily into her cot when the phone rang. A drop of water fell on her head and when she looked up a grey stain had formed on the ceiling. It reminded her of the amoeba in her science book years ago.

‘Matt’s been killed,’ Paul said.

When he said that word, killed , for a second Ruth saw him being gunned down in the street. ‘He died in Jordan this morning. In a climbing accident.’

He had been with his friend Maurice. The family thought she should know.

‘Did Maurice die too?’ She was not accustomed to hearing Paul’s voice anymore. She stared at the floor and felt herself folding. She thought Matt was behind her, turning a handle, winding her down.

She stood at the bedroom window listening to Emily’s wheezing breath and looking down on the garden. The afternoon was grey and very still. In the other house, Matt had laid a gravel path down to the garden shed. Some nights now when she was preparing for bed she would hear Matt’s movements below and be surprised by a sudden elation. Then she would catch herself. It was David — David emptying the dishwasher, opening the back door, putting out the bin. But it was Matt she heard, Matt’s step on the stairs, his nighttime movements. As if he had accompanied her into this new marriage. As if he had put his imprint on this new house, this new husband.

The marriage to Matt had lasted ten years. He was older than her, and ready for children from the start. She had not wanted children or anything that might ration her love or alter her indescribable happiness. On all other things they were at one. When Charlie was born a few years later she found that she’d been wrong — that love does indeed beget love. But Matt had not felt the same — he had felt cast aside. He worked long hours and did as he pleased. Her mother told her this was the way with men and babies. It would change when the child got older.