about my mother. I could talk for hours about her, about what I loved about her and what I hated about her, too. Only I don’t use the word hated to Sheila because she will read too much into it.
‘She could be a bit overprotective,’ I say. ‘You know, not happy about the crowd I hung around with when I was in my teens.’
‘What about Ursula?’
‘Oh, she loved Ursula. We were like twins. We were inseparable from day one at school. No, it was more the new friends I was making that she was . . . wary of.’
It’s Declan I’m thinking of, in particular, as I tell her this. And as I lie on the couch with my eyes half-closed, I can see us meeting after school, him taking my books from me and walking me most of the way home. At weekends, we go for long walks. Sometimes he brings his dog along. Bran. All our dogs are called Bran . When one Bran dies, we get another. He thinks he might want to be a vet. I’m not sure at this stage what I want to do, although I like history. It’s my best subject. Declan is my secret. I haven’t told Mamma about him. I don’t want her to meet him because I know what she’ll do. She’ll invite him to our house so often that she’ll suffocate him. She’ll be nice to him, so nice. But when she and I are alone together in the kitchen, washing and drying the dishes, she’ll say something about him that isn’t exactly bad, but isn’t quite good, either. And that will leave me feeling unsure about him. I know this is what will happen because it’s what she always does.
I’ve never told Sandy about Declan; I would end up telling him things I’d rather he didn’t know. And I’m not ready to tell Sheila about him, either. Not yet. So I tell her about meeting Sandy, losing him and getting him back, and about my mother’s death. But I keep it all at surface level. I’m not ready to dig too deep. She must be bored stiff.
I tell her about the house in Ireland and my plans for it. I like talking about that. I’ve given Joe the go-ahead to start the work. I’m still considering whether to sell it or keep it, but the more I talk and think about what it could look like, the more I think that I’m going to keep it.
We talk a lot about music, about how I came to the piano at the relatively late age of eleven and then discovered singing.
‘It was thanks to Dermot, really. He sang in the local male-voice choir and there was a piano in the house. He had an old recording of Richard Tauber singing “You Are My Heart’s Delight” and he used to sing along with it. It was quite funny – sometimes he came in a bit the worse for wear after choir practice and all he had to do to soften my mother up was sing a few bars of that song.’
I tell her that music is probably the only thing that makes complete sense to me.
‘People have their idiosyncrasies, haven’t they? You just have to accept them. And all sorts of things go wrong and you have no control over them. But music is gloriously predictable. Most of the time, you know exactly where it’s going and it’s utterly satisfying when it gets there. And even when it does something you’re not expecting, you still end up thinking that this was the only way it could have gone.’
I tell Sheila about my childhood in Drumcondra with my mother, how energetic and vivacious she was, how she filled my existence in those early days before I started school and met Ursula.
And then the Dolls’ Hospital comes into my head, and, for some reason I can’t explain, I start to cry. Why would talking about a good memory, a special one, bring tears? But it does – quiet torrents of them. It’s the first time I’ve wept at one of our sessions and I have to use the box of tissues that Sheila keeps on a coffee table next to the low couch. And, despite my having wiped my eyes and blown my nose, the memories of that day flooding back and it’s as if I’m there, fiercely clutching Audrey to me, unwilling to let her be taken from me.
I kept my
‘She could be a bit overprotective,’ I say. ‘You know, not happy about the crowd I hung around with when I was in my teens.’
‘What about Ursula?’
‘Oh, she loved Ursula. We were like twins. We were inseparable from day one at school. No, it was more the new friends I was making that she was . . . wary of.’
It’s Declan I’m thinking of, in particular, as I tell her this. And as I lie on the couch with my eyes half-closed, I can see us meeting after school, him taking my books from me and walking me most of the way home. At weekends, we go for long walks. Sometimes he brings his dog along. Bran. All our dogs are called Bran . When one Bran dies, we get another. He thinks he might want to be a vet. I’m not sure at this stage what I want to do, although I like history. It’s my best subject. Declan is my secret. I haven’t told Mamma about him. I don’t want her to meet him because I know what she’ll do. She’ll invite him to our house so often that she’ll suffocate him. She’ll be nice to him, so nice. But when she and I are alone together in the kitchen, washing and drying the dishes, she’ll say something about him that isn’t exactly bad, but isn’t quite good, either. And that will leave me feeling unsure about him. I know this is what will happen because it’s what she always does.
I’ve never told Sandy about Declan; I would end up telling him things I’d rather he didn’t know. And I’m not ready to tell Sheila about him, either. Not yet. So I tell her about meeting Sandy, losing him and getting him back, and about my mother’s death. But I keep it all at surface level. I’m not ready to dig too deep. She must be bored stiff.
I tell her about the house in Ireland and my plans for it. I like talking about that. I’ve given Joe the go-ahead to start the work. I’m still considering whether to sell it or keep it, but the more I talk and think about what it could look like, the more I think that I’m going to keep it.
We talk a lot about music, about how I came to the piano at the relatively late age of eleven and then discovered singing.
‘It was thanks to Dermot, really. He sang in the local male-voice choir and there was a piano in the house. He had an old recording of Richard Tauber singing “You Are My Heart’s Delight” and he used to sing along with it. It was quite funny – sometimes he came in a bit the worse for wear after choir practice and all he had to do to soften my mother up was sing a few bars of that song.’
I tell her that music is probably the only thing that makes complete sense to me.
‘People have their idiosyncrasies, haven’t they? You just have to accept them. And all sorts of things go wrong and you have no control over them. But music is gloriously predictable. Most of the time, you know exactly where it’s going and it’s utterly satisfying when it gets there. And even when it does something you’re not expecting, you still end up thinking that this was the only way it could have gone.’
I tell Sheila about my childhood in Drumcondra with my mother, how energetic and vivacious she was, how she filled my existence in those early days before I started school and met Ursula.
And then the Dolls’ Hospital comes into my head, and, for some reason I can’t explain, I start to cry. Why would talking about a good memory, a special one, bring tears? But it does – quiet torrents of them. It’s the first time I’ve wept at one of our sessions and I have to use the box of tissues that Sheila keeps on a coffee table next to the low couch. And, despite my having wiped my eyes and blown my nose, the memories of that day flooding back and it’s as if I’m there, fiercely clutching Audrey to me, unwilling to let her be taken from me.
I kept my
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