‘Or lying dogs sleep easy,’ mutters Eimear, but the venom has ebbed from her voice.
She doesn’t want a scene, she prefers everything serene and ordered. The three of them do, they’re Librans after all.
‘I brought you the Irish Times.’ Eimear ransacks her bag, just like the nun. The paper is located under a can of hair mousse and she reaches it over, then heads immediately for the sink in the corner of the room to scrub her hands.
‘Newsprint everywhere,’ complains Eimear.
After she leaves Gloria checks the date on the front of the paper: excellent, it’s a Saturday (you lose track of days in a hospital) so there’ll be birth announcements. She turns to them at once.
Two Clares, an Aoife and twins Gemma and Joseph. Hmm. Aoife has potential. There’s also a brace of Seans, a Patrick and a Sarah. Patrick’s lovely but he’d end up a Paddy. She scans the list of parents’ names and is relieved to find she doesn’t know any of them.
Another set of twins, Richard and Alison, catches her eye.
‘Good God above,’ she rants, ‘it’s bad enough other women having babies without managing two at once; no wonder there aren’t enough to go around for the rest of us.’
She’s still wading through birth weights and welcomes from brothers and sisters when Mick walks in.
‘Eimear phoned last night and said she’d be in this morning,’ he tells her.
‘Been and gone,’ replies Gloria as he leans over to kiss her. On the forehead again. Does the man think she’s had her lips amputated?
Gloria surreptitiously turns the page so he can’t see Birth Announcements but Mick isn’t fooled.
‘I don’t believe it, you’re not at that again, Gloria, you’ll do your head in.’
She toys with the idea of tears but hasn’t the heart for them.
‘I was only taking a quick look at some names.’ She smiles brightly. ‘What do you think of Aoife?’
‘I think you should have your head examined putting us both through this. What are you doing, picking out names for babies after what’s happened to the two of us.’
His tone is so vexed she feels aggrieved.
‘You’re not the one who needed a massive blood transfusion, you’re just the one who snored like a pig until I was knocking on death’s door.’
He throws her a reproachful glance. ‘It’s mentally unbalanced, reading up on baby names at a time like this. You’ll push yourself over the edge and I’ll be left to gather up the pieces.’
She realises it’s madness but she can’t help herself, it’s like picking a scab – she knows it won’t help the healing process but there it is on her knee insisting on being fiddled with.
Perhaps if she could say this to Mick it would help but she doesn’t, she rolls over and faces the door, her back towards him. Lunch arrives and she leaves the tray untouched.
‘You must eat,’ he insists, ‘you’ll never get well otherwise.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ she pouts.
‘Force yourself.’
‘No.’
‘It’s criminal to waste food like that.’
‘You eat it if you’re so concerned.’
‘I didn’t come to hospital to eat your lunch,’ he objects.
‘Well what did you come for? It certainly wasn’t to cheer me up or distract me with news or keep me company – from what I can see you came to lecture me and order me about.’
Mick lifts his coat. ‘I’ll call back later when you’re feeling calmer; this is a difficult time for me too you know.’
He compresses his lips into a paving crack and stalks off.
Gloria removes the cover from the lunch plate – vegetable curry. Trifle to follow. She leaves the curry, eats half the trifle – ‘A drop of sherry would work wonders for you,’ she addresses the bowl – and switches on the television. Imelda calls by with some medication and mentions that she’ll be discharged on Monday. She also reveals that the Australia fund is seriously depleted as a result of last night’s session.
‘Another hen party?’ asks Gloria.
‘No, leaving do for one of Gerry the Guard’s schoolfriends New York-bound to make his fortune.’
‘So you gave it some welly.’
‘I gave it some shoe – I lost one, don’t ask me how, and Gerry the Guard had to piggyback me up the garden path but he slipped on ice and we ended up skittering about all over the place – he got me there in the end though it was more of a slither than a manly stride. They don’t have that snake on the Garda Siochana crest for nothing.’
Imelda bounces away, fresh-faced, but reappears within seconds. ‘Call for you, Gloria, I think it’s your mother. I’ll wheel the phone in.’
Gloria’s spirits lift at the prospect of a maternal chat but it turns out to be her mother-in-law, the real Mrs McDermott. She’s not the worst in the world but Gloria isn’t in the humour for her.
‘Lovie, I know exactly how you must be feeling,’ bawls the voice on the end of the line. ‘I lost two babies myself before Mick came along, bless him. You never forget a miscarriage, no matter how many babies you have afterwards.’
‘That’s a comfort,’ Gloria thinks bitterly, holding the phone a few inches from her ear.
‘Oh, it was hard in my day, sure enough,’ she bellows, ‘you had to get on with it if you lost a baby.’
Her mother-in-law continues in this vein for five minutes, while Gloria fantasises about hanging up and claiming they were disconnected.
‘Still, I have my boys and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. You should always remember this about babies, lovie, if they don’t make you laugh they’ll never make you cry.’
‘Margaret,’ Gloria interrupts, desperation lending her fluency. ‘You’ve no idea how much I appreciate your call, it’s helped so much. But there’s only the one phone on this corridor and I can’t monopolise it. I’m going home soon, I’ll ring you then.’
‘Are you indeed? I’ll pop down and visit you, so. I have the free travel since I turned sixty last year.’
Somebody up there has really got it in for her. Gloria sends the telephone trolley clattering against the wall and prepares to treat herself to another wallow, she’s earned it. So they’re turning her out on Monday: out to the tender mercies of a mother-in-law determined to be supportive if she loses her voice in the process, and of a husband who can’t bear to touch her. Gloria’s grown curiously attached
