and she was afraid. He was her life, her one and only true love. She could never survive without him.
‘First thing in the morning,’ he went on, ‘I’m away…me and the boy. As for you…’ He turned, just for a moment, staring at her, seeing a stranger. ‘It’s finished, Rita. I’ve had enough. From now on, you can do what you like, because I don’t give a sod!’ Ignoring her wailing and her excuses, he left the room.
He was halfway up the stairs when he heard her scurrying after him. ‘Don’t leave me, Donny. I’ll be good…Don’t stop loving me!’ She grabbed him by the trouser leg, pulling him back.
Frustrated, he swung round and snatched her to him. ‘How can I ever let myself love you again?’ he said, on a shuddering breath. ‘Dear God, Rita! There was a time when I would have willingly died for you, I would have fought the world for you – and I have. But not any more.’
‘Don’t say that.’ She saw her life ending right there. ‘Please, Donny, don’t forsake me.’
‘What – you mean in the same way you’ve for-saken me?’ There was a break in his voice. ‘You’ve shamed us all. You’ve shamed me and the boy, and your father – the only one who would take us in when I lost my business and couldn’t pay the rent.’ He despaired. ‘Time and again, I gave you a second chance. Like a fool, I thought you might come to your senses.’
Thrusting her away, he said harshly, ‘Why do you need to be with these other men? Aren’t I man enough for you? Don’t I treat you well – provide for you, love you as much as any man can love his woman?’
He thought back to the time when their love was young. Oh, but it had been so wonderful – exciting and fulfilling for both of them. They had met fifteen years ago, when Joseph had come into the firm of carpenters where young Don, waiting for his call-up papers, was working. It was Rita’s half-day off from her apprenticeship at the hairdresser’s so her daddy had brought her along for a bit of company. The young Irishman and the seventeen-year-old girl had fallen for each other at first sight.
Don sighed deeply, all these thoughts rushing through his brain while he held his wife’s body close to his, feeling her heart beating wildly against his own.
When had it all started to go wrong? he asked himself. Maybe if they had had more children…but it wasn’t to be. More likely, it was when he’d gone overseas with the Army in 1942. A lot of people had changed during the war – and not for the better. Good marriages had gone bad all the time. He knew that Rita resented being stuck at home with baby Davie, and that bitch of a mother of hers, Marie, had encouraged her to go out drinking and dancing and doing God knows what.
It had all led up to this. And he couldn’t take it any longer.
‘What is it with you?’ he asked brokenly. ‘You’re fortunate to have three people in your life who give you all the love they can, and yet time and again you throw it all back at us.’
Supporting her by the shoulders he looked at her sorry face, now swollen with the drink, her once pretty eyes drugged and empty, and the tears rolling down her face. And his heart broke. She looked so vulnerable, so sad, he wanted to press her to him, to hold her so tight and love her so much that she would never stray again, and for a moment, for one aching moment, he almost forgave her.
If only she would mend her ways, he thought. If only she could bea proper wife and mother, like she used to be. But she couldn’t. That woman had left them all behind long ago. ‘No, Rita.’ The sadness hardened to a kind of loathing. ‘Sure, I can’t forgive you any more.’
In that moment, when he turned from her, he felt incredibly lonely, and more lost, than he had ever been in his whole life. And yet he still loved her. He always would.
From the top of thes tairs, Davie and his grandad saw and heard everything. ‘Come away, boy’ The old man slid an arm round his grandson’s shoulders. ‘You don’t need to listen to this.’
As his father walked up the stairs, a broken man, Davie looked into his eyes. ‘You won’t really leave, will you, Dad?’ he asked. ‘You can’t leave us.’
‘I’m not leaving you, son.’ Davie was his pride and joy. The boy was conceived before Rita went bad, so he had no doubts about being the boy’s real father. Moreover, Davie had a way with him that reminded Don of his own boyhood, in his manner and his thinking, and in that certain, determined look in his eyes. Yes, this boy was his own flesh and blood, and through the bad times when Rita neglected them both, it was Davie’s strength and nearness that kept him sane.
He looked at the boy, with his shock of brown hair and his quiet dark eyes and he saw a man in the making.
Taking him by the shoulders, Don told him, ‘You must go back to bed now. In the morning, you and me are away from these parts.’ He glanced up at his father-in-law. ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’ve tried my best. She’s your daughter. I hope to God you can talk some sense into her.’
The old man nodded. ‘And if I can…will you comeback?’
Don thought for a moment, before shaking his head. ‘No.’
Through his anguish, the older man understood, though he did not underestimate the ordeal ahead of himself.
‘No, Dad!’ Davie had never been so afraid. ‘She needs us. I’ll talk to her…I’ll make her see. She won’t do it again, I promise.’ He tried so hard to hold back the tears, but he was just a child and right then, in that moment, his whole world was falling apart.
Then, seeing how determined his father was, he clung to his grandad. ‘Don’t let him go!’ he sobbed. ‘Tell him, Grandad, tell him she’ll be good and she won’t hurt us any more. Tell him, Grandad!’
Suddenly Rita was there, shouting and yelling and going for Don with her claws outstretched. ‘You cruel bastard! So you’d leave me, would you!’ Wild-eyed and out of her mind, she went for him, hitting out, tearing into his flesh with her nails, and it was all he could do to defend himself and at the same time keep the pair of them from toppling down the stairs.
‘ENOUGH!’ Enraged, the old man threw the boy to safety, before lashing out at her with the back of his hand. ‘To hell with you! You’re no daughter of mine!’
When she stumbled and slid down the steps in an oddly graceful fashion, the boy lurched forward and ran down the steps after her. At the bottom, when he went to help her up, she threw him off. ‘LEAVE ME!’ she screamed.
Then, seeing the agony on his young face she was crippled with guilt. ‘I’m sorry, son. It was my fault, all my fault.’
Struggling with her, he managed to sit her up. ‘Where are you hurt, Mam?’ His voice trembled with fear.
Composed now, she smiled resignedly. ‘I’m not hurt. Give me a minute to get my breath.’ She chucked him under the chin. ‘He can go if he wants to. You can make your mammy a cup of tea and the two of us will talk until the sun comes up – what d’you say to that, eh?’ She didn’t tell him how her back felt as though it was broken in two, nor that her arm had bent beneath her at a comical angle, and the pain was excruciating. She felt strange. Drunk, yes. But there was something else, a frightening thing, as though all the life and fight had gone out of her in an instant.
Horrified,
