The Playground Page 13

  ‘It was good fun, though Irenka and Joy were pretty overbearing. Were you stuck here all evening?’

  ‘I was in, my eye! I had my last session of radiotherapy that afternoon. I was too wiped out, to be honest.’

  ‘You look so well. I didn’t realise.’

  ‘Really? Thought I was the talk of the playground, assumed everyone knew. Breast cancer. I had a lumpectomy thing and then some radiotherapy. That was my last treatment, thank Christ.’ She carried on stacking, then stopped, sat back on her ankles, looked at me, rubbed her hand on my back.

  ‘Don’t look so worried. I’ll be OK. I’ve beaten it, I think. I wish Billy could believe it though. Every time I so much as cough he’s fussing over me. The poor lad’s angry because this is my second time with it. And I had scans and a mammogram that didn’t catch it. He’s blaming the doctors, the machines, everything. He’s trying to get me on a raw vegan diet that he read about online; he’s been on that computer for hours. He’s terrified that it’s going to kill me. He lost it when his dad left, now he’s blaming himself for the stress he put me through around then; he thinks that’s why it’s after coming back.’

  The cleaner, Mary, was making a remarkable amount of noise beside us, throwing old papers into bin sacks, to show that she wasn’t earwigging, which of course she was.

  ‘I’ll do next Wednesday’s games shift with you, if you’d like? It’s the same day as Addie’s birthday but I thought I’d bring the party over to the playground.’

  ‘Ah lovely, thanks, Eve.’

  *

  The system crashed that afternoon, something to do with ‘comms’ – a word, an abbreviation, that meant nothing to any of the staff. For the first half an hour after it went down everyone was irritated, particularly Pete who took pride in his organisational skills and was now unable to record late returns. Two hours later and with no sign of the technician, we had all begun to enjoy our inability to do any work.

  The disorder was infectious. No one was even attempting to whisper. Kids were plunging into the bean bags, screaming, amazed at not being told off. The local drunks had reinstated themselves on the bench outside the back door, and were happily inebriated. The elderly, always noisy with their groans and coughs and heavy breathing and unable to find their mobile phones with the incredibly loud and incongruous ringtones their grandchildren had selected for them, chatted at the top of their voices about the news, the weather, the result of the general election.

  The chaos had seeped as far as the toilets. ‘You’d want to see what they’ve done in there,’ Mary said, on her way back with a mop and bucket and a slippery surface sign.

  ‘Spare us the details, would you? Please?’ Belinda said.

  It was that time of the afternoon, three forty-five, when the Leaving Cert students arrived: coats hanging off, dragging their bags behind them, the girls, flatfooted in Dubes, the boys behind them in beanies, slumped shoulders and spotty chins, pretending they were there to do homework when really they just wanted to hang out.

  As soon as they sat, the sniggering and loud whispering began. Then snorts of hysteria, swapping places, dragging chairs across the floor, lots of little rebellions. They were too full of hormones and too keen to impress to sit still. Next were the endless trips in and out through the swing door for cigarettes or to the shops for coffee and sweets. One girl thought it was hilarious to continuously clear her throat, as if to sit silently doing your homework was deeply un-cool. Had I ever been this silly? A whole lot sillier actually, but that wasn’t the point.

  ‘Hey, guys, can you keep it down a little?’ I said, from where I was standing in Health and Beauty, the sound of my voice reverberating horribly in my ear, the snorts of suppressed laughter from the two girls down the end making me cringe. It still came as a shock to realise that I was no longer young, but someone’s mother, middle-aged, invisible. ‘Snazzy,’ I heard myself say about a new coat one of Addie’s little school friends was wearing the other day—I could have sworn the toddlers rolled their eyes at each other.

  My phone beeped in my pocket, causing a student to look up from his computer and tut. Two new messages, the first from Sumita letting me know that Addie was ‘very great but didn’t eat much her carrots’. The second from Mr Norman:

  Thank you for opening the park this morning. Just two things to note for the next time: open the LEFT HAND GATE only (this is safer so that kids can’t run out onto the road), and please can you LOCK the chain to the RAILING rather than the GATE. PS: you may not have noticed the new sign – dogs are no longer permitted.

  ‘Library’s closing in five minutes,’ I said, working my way around each section, at exactly five minutes to five. The small girl and boy that had been deposited in the corner that morning were still there. The boy was lying on the floor on his belly, colouring in a photocopy of SpongeBob SquarePants; his sister was above him, curled into a chair, sucking her thumb as she read a book.

  ‘We have to wait for our mam,’ she said as she stood up, bookmarked her place in her novel, grabbed her rucksack.

  ‘That’s OK, sit tight. She’ll be here soon, I’m sure,’ I said, trying to be kind. She opened her book again, slotted her thumb back in her mouth, told her brother it was OK.

  *

  With Joe it was always his glasses, but there was something about me and keys. If you were to pile up all the keys I’d lost in my life they would reach a great height. I must have left them in the library which was now closed. It was Addie who noticed the open window by the balcony. Joy must have forgotten to close it when she’d left monkey nuts out for the squirrels that morning. She’d now gone to spend a week at an artist’s retreat in County Monaghan, to work on the themes of loneliness and sexual longing, so there was no point in calling her about keys.

  Mr Norman, who always kept a close eye on happenings around the square, was straight over to assist. What we needed was a ladder. I hitched myself over the wall of the porch and knocked on Mr Larson’s door. I knew he had one, I’d seen him use it for the hedge that separated our two homes. He appeared in his dressing gown for some reason, didn’t acknowledge Mr Norman, who was leaning against the wall, arms folded, and he was at the front gate moments later with the ladder, still in his dressing gown but having swapped his slippers for wellington boots.

  I’d forgotten that the two men didn’t get along. Irenka told me that they’d fallen out years earlier over a strip of land between their two homes. Mr Norman had wanted to develop the land but Mr Larson wouldn’t give it up, so Mr Norman sold, moved to the opposite side of the square and for a while Mr Larson used the land to grow rocket, turnips and potatoes. Now it was a no man’s wilderness, a rubbish dump for the neighbourhood, great hunting ground for cats. ‘That bastard’ was how the two men had referred to each other ever since.

  It was hard to imagine Mr Norman being bad-tempered, a little easier with Mr Larson. Though outwardly jolly, jogging indoors instead of walking when he came back from putting out the bins, I sometimes heard his raised voice through the walls, and he’d shown a flash of anger the other evening when I’d charged round the corner with my umbrella and we’d collided, the spokes of my brolly poking him on the head (I was in heels and he was quite short). His expression had changed as soon as he’d recognised me and I’d smiled and said hello. He’d smiled back, asked how I was, folded his arms and settled into a conversation. I liked that I might be mending old wounds – that I was bringing them together, forcing a truce.

  The two men stumbled around the front garden, trying to manage the ladder, looking like Laurel and Hardy. They were attempting to balance it against the balcony – neither one of them seemed particularly excited about the prospect of climbing up and neither had volunteered when Nathan arrived. He took the ladder from the two men, propped it against the balcony and climbed up the side of the house in seconds. I stood there like a silly girl, shouting at him to be careful. The other two men stood back, impressed but somewhat emasculated by his confidence and agility
.

  ‘Do you want me to put that up while I’m here?’ Nathan asked, once we were safely inside again, tapping his foot against the side of an Ikea box that was lying on the floor in the sitting room beside the TV. It was a bookshelf that I had bought for Addie several months before but had yet to assemble.

  ‘Could you? That would be wonderful, if you’re sure you have time? Can I get you some tea?’

  ‘No bother at all. Milk, two sugars, please.’

  ‘Now, you show me where you’d like me to put it, little lady,’ he said, taking Addie by the hand and letting her lead the way.

  He also replaced a door handle that afternoon and fixed a leak in the toilet, lifting Addie up when he’d finished to show her how the cistern worked.

  ‘So, I’d better get back to it …’ he said, all his jobs done. I thanked him. Told Addie that he had to go home.

  ‘Would you like to play a game with me?’ she asked, her invitation so simple and earnest it was impossible to refuse. He threw her up in his arms, caught her and tickled her until she could bear it no more, the way Joe used to. Then he rooted in his pocket, took out a small green bouncy ball that lit up when you squeezed it.

  ‘OK, I know a good game, come with me.’

  He stood at the top of the stairs in the hall while Addie stood at the bottom and they threw the ball to each other. Every so often it bounced against the Memory Foam mattress propped in the hall for Irenka to help her bad back, which caused it to ricochet off the walls. This made Addie giggle so hard that she got the hiccups and then she had a little accident.

  ‘Nathan’s so silly,’ she said that evening, as I lifted her into her bath. ‘He’s my best friend. That’s why because he makes me laugh and laugh.’

  *

  ‘You are more relaxed than you’ve been in a long time. You are in complete control of your thoughts and your feelings.’ Nonsense.

  ‘Your mind is very centered and calm. A deep feeling of inner calm begins to resonate through your whole body.’ No it doesn’t.

  Why was I being deliberately self-destructive? Why wouldn’t my mind just shut up and let it work? Bella had recommended this meditation CD, Creating Inner Peace and Calm. She’d tried it out for her fear of flying and she made it the whole way to Boston and back without the help of alcohol or drugs; she’d just listened to the CD over and over and practised diaphragmatic breathing techniques.

  I tried again to quiet my mind, I breathed slowly and deeply. I tried to shut out Addie’s little snores.

  ‘You are strolling through a meadow on a warm summer’s day. The air is clean and fresh. You feel the pleasant warmth of the sun on your head and shoulders. You feel so good. You relax, deeper and deeper. Drifting down, drifting down, drifting down. You reach a secluded spot by the edge of a stream where you can rest. You gaze into the gently flowing water and feel a deep connection with the effortless flow of nature. You lower yourself down onto the soft grassy bank and gaze up at the bright-blue sky. You lie back on the grass. And relax, deeper and deeper. Not a care in the world now. You feel yourself drifting off into a relaxing sleep. A deep, dreamy sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep. You gooo to sleep. You gooo to sleep …’

  ‘Come here,’ Nathan said, leaning against the edge of the picnic table in the park, holding his arms out, beckoning me.

  ‘Why?’ I said grinning, chewing my lip, moving towards him. He linked his arms around my waist, pulled me close and kissed me hard on the mouth.

  ‘Jesus. I’ve wanted to do that for days, months. Since you moved in,’ he said between kisses. Then we fell back onto the table in the darkness.

  ‘Oh God, I need to shave, need a shower.’

  ‘Shush. You’re perfect. Delicious.’

  He smiled and squeezed me and kissed me again on the warm skin of my neck. Then he lifted me up, carried me away from the table, lowered me onto the grass.

  He lay above me, slipped his hand under the material of my skirt and rubbed the sticky-hot area between my thighs, sending aches of pleasure shooting through me. He prodded with two fingers, then fed them deep inside me and tugged my knickers to my knees. We kissed more, harder lips, entwining tongues. I undid his belt, pushed his stiff denims …

  ‘Mama! I need you. My elbows are bursting!’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘It’s absolutely infuriating, she never answers her phone. No, no. Just milk, please. That’s enough. Thanks, Margo.’

  There was a muffled noise that sounded like the phone being dropped.

  ‘Hi, Mum. Mum? I’m here.’

  ‘I’ll try her again later. She might be – what day is it?’

  ‘Mum? I can hear you. Mum?’

  ‘Oh, hi, pet. I thought you weren’t there.’

  We began the conversation as we always did, both talking at the same time and staying silent at the same moment. We couldn’t get the timing right.

  ‘Sorry, Mum, you go first. Are you having a lovely holiday?’

  ‘I’m sitting here looking at the most glorious view – fields and fields of sunflowers around me, all in bloom. All’s fine. Yop. Yop. Now listen, tell me, how did Addie get on this morning? That was the most smashing photo, by the way.’

  It was her first day at school. She had stood, proud and mischievous, while I’d taken her photograph outside the front door, in her new blue shoes and bumble bee rucksack. She had let me down a little when I’d introduced her to her teacher, Miss Meredith, refusing to speak or to even look at her. She’d just kept whacking me with her koala bear. Then she’d wanted to paint, which I’d been pleased about; this would impress the teachers and the other mothers (I hadn’t said it to Ruth, but I thought she had quite an aptitude for her age). What she produced was a huge black scrawl, disconcerting in several ways.

  ‘She’s still there, the poor little thing. I’m collecting her at one.’ All her bravado had evaporated when the moment came for us to part. She had clung onto my leg, then tugged hard at my hair, begging me not to go.

  ‘Well, I must say I feel terribly sad to be missing all these occasions, but I’m home first thing Wednesday morning and I’ve got her a lovely Pinocchio puppet.’ Mum didn’t do surprises, I was never sure why.

  ‘So how are you getting along?’

  ‘I’ve had a bit of a stomach upset but other than that I’m having a marvellous time.’

  ‘Oh no, Mum, are you OK?’

  ‘Of course, sweetheart, don’t be silly. I’m absolutely fine.’ She hated, hated being asked about her health. She moved on to her plans for the rest of her trip; I moved towards the window and looked out. Someone had left one of those enormous blue Ikea bags just outside my front door. It was filled to the top with timber. My first thought was that it was some sort of joke; Billy and one of his pranks or perhaps something Joy had ordered for an art installation. Then I remembered Nathan’s promise to bring me firewood.

  ‘Mum, you’re breaking up a bit.’

  ‘Hello? I can still hear you.’

  ‘I’ll see you in a few days, maybe we’ll drop round on Friday? Oh and, Mum, I forgot to say, your hall ceiling’s leaking again.’

  ‘Oh, dash it. Well, there’s precious little I can do about it from here,’ she said, irritated by the news and by me for imparting it.

  Then she was seized by a coughing spasm. It started with a simple clearing of her throat and became a chesty, phlegm-filled, breathless thing. On and on it went. When she was able to talk again she sounded a little fainter, a little further away.

  ‘Are you OK, Mum?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. It’s nothing. It’s just a morning thing. Just a crumb,’ she said, still wheezing.

  I looked outside to see if I could spot Nathan so I could pop over to thank him once I’d hung up, but the house was empty, his jeep gone. The playground had been colonised by a thousand school kids in green uniforms, all of them screaming. At least six of them were on the net swing together, moving wildly to and fro; a boy was surfing on the middle of the see-saw, while two others ba
lanced on either end. Some were climbing up the slide, making arches of their legs, while others slid down between them. Two were dangling out of the chestnut tree, clinging onto its leafless branches. They must have been on a half day.

  ‘Sorry, Mum, what time is it?’

  ‘Well it’s nearly two o’clock here but we’re an hour ahead of course.’

  ‘Oh, God, I have to go, I’ve got to collect Addie.’

  ‘All right, love, off you go, you can’t be late on her first day. Bye bye bye bye bye.’

  ‘Bye, Mum. I can’t wait till you’re home. I always feel happier when you’re here.’

  This was something I always said and always meant. I think she only half-liked hearing it. She liked to know that she was loved and missed, but it also made her feel guilty that she was so often away. Whenever she was abroad I felt disconcerted, worried that she was in too much of a hurry. Worried that she would trip over on a kerb, slip on the step into the swimming pool, like she’d done before, become careless in her competitiveness and drive into a wall, exhaust herself by being up before anyone else, by taking charge of the day’s itinerary, always agreeing to share a room with the snorer, or with a person so eccentric or extreme that no one else could tolerate them. She would always take the discomfort, put her own needs last. And I was worried about us at home without her. Often I couldn’t put my finger on my unease but as soon as she was home, it evaporated and my world felt safe again.

  *

  I stood outside the classroom window watching Addie. She looked serious and a little sad in a queue with her classmates, smaller than the others and not quite managing her school bag, lunch box, coat and a still-wet painting. When she spotted me, everything about her became animated, her eyes, face, body. She began jumping on the spot, waved and blew kisses and gave me the most luminescent smile, then she nudged the child beside her to show her that her mama had come back, that all was right in her world.

  ‘I got a sticker! That’s why because I ate my lunch all up. And do you know what else? I got a happy helper silver star.’