matter what, so he let himself be worked on and shamed by Larry, and the end of it was that Robbie said he would find her, and off he went with Larry to leave no stone unturned.
They asked everyone, they looked everywhere, they even sent Avril to the women’s refuge to check if she was there. But Rita wasn’t in Belfast at all; she was on the boat with the kids and heading for London, where the cousin of an aunt-by-marriage had promised to make room for them till they got a start. The mother knew alright, but she wasn’t saying. If Larry found Rita, the mood he was in, Rita wouldn’t be walking for months.
So, no joy all over again, and off they went to a bar to make a few further enquiries. Larry started running Rita down. He said she was a fat, idle, good-for-nothing bitch, a toe rag, not fit to lick the corns on his feet, and a whole lot more besides. Robbie took it for a bit then he said that was his sister Larry was slagging off, but Larry didn’t care whose sister she was, he got worse and worse, till the filth fairly rolled off his tongue. So Robbie hit him—which took some courage—and soon they were rolling around on the floor among the chair legs, half the bar either joining in or trying to pull them apart.
Robbie made it home in the early hours. He was battered and bruised, his tail between his legs; he was looking for comfort, but I wasn’t there.
No way was I there, I wasn’t stupid. I was afraid of Larry, and there was a girl I was friendly with just round the corner who owned a passable sofa. I left no note, in case they came looking.
The next day I took my time. I went to a lecture then sat on in the coffee bar, and when I got home I let myself in very quietly and stood in the hallway, listening. Silence. The flat was empty, Robbie away back out to work. But he wasn’t away back out to work. He was there, in the kitchen, waiting.
“Where were you?” he asked, but I didn’t answer. He lifted his hand, and the black eye he gave me took weeks to lose its colour.
That was back in the early days, we weren’t long married, and I suppose I bought into the hard-man myth along with near everyone else in Belfast at that time. And he was sorry, really sorry—he promised he’d never do it again, and he didn’t.
But not doing it again was killing him—even I could see that—it was the reason he shook me till my teeth rattled; it was why he couldn’t let me be when we were out together.
And he was a nice lad when he let himself off the hook. That’s all he was, just a lad who thought he had to be a hard-man, take no shit, drink till he couldn’t stand up, and look out for his own. He was bright too—every bit as clever as I was. He’d grown up on the streets, education was crap, but a part of him hungered after it. That’s why he hung round with students—it wasn’t only to pick up girls, the way he let on. And he wasn’t a hard-man either, he was a soft man with a hard-man’s training. His own man as well, for he’d feinted and ducked and somehow stayed clear of the paramilitaries. Not so many—reared as he was—managed that at all.
So that was Robbie, poor Robbie that never did anything on me but what he’d been programmed to do: find a girl, stick a ring on her finger, get some kids on her, feed them and clothe them, and keep the whole show on the road whatever the cost. Well, we’ll leave Robbie out of this now, I’ve nothing to hold against him—not the torn knickers, nor Barbara Allen, nor the hospital for the mind that came after the hospital that saw the last of Barbara Allen. He couldn’t help himself. He was near as much a victim of himself as I was.
And those were strange times, and people found strange ways of coping. Sometimes down here I remember those times and hardly believe myself that some of the things that happened happened at all. And I couldn’t ever talk about them to folk here. They’d think I was mad or I’d made them up.
Icried a lot after Jacko died, so the doctor put me on antidepressants. He said they might do the trick.
I took the tablets and felt even worse, so I cried all the time, and the more I cried the more I couldn’t stop. Robbie kicked up, so I kept going back, but nothing the doctor did seemed to make any difference.
Robbie said he’d come with me the next time, and I was glad. He talked to the doctor, the doctor talked back, then the doctor sighed and said that a week or two in Purdysburn might be worth a try. Robbie looked at me, I nodded my head, and the doctor filled in the forms.
What you can’t see doesn’t exist. If you start into seeing things that aren’t there at all you have to be schizophrenic or mad. Purdysburn is Belfast’s mental hospital, so my going there made sense to me as well as to Robbie. And it wasn’t so bad, once I was used to it. Plus it was such a relief not to have to try to be normal that the crying stopped a few hours in, and I hardly noticed.
The dining room frightened the wits out of me that first night. All those mad people, eyes down, eating away; I was terrified someone would take it into their heads to speak to me.
Then when no one did I started wishing they would.
“D’you not want that?” It was the fella sitting across from me, leaning forward, staring at the potato bread I’d been pushing around my plate. I didn’t answer.
“Give it to Annie,” he said. “Annie’s mad for potato bread.” He still hadn’t looked at me, but I was looking at him and what I saw was a pasty-faced lad hardly older than I was, with hoody owl eyes that looked out from behind those round National Health glasses, the same as John Lennon wore.
“You’re a picky eater,” he said to what was left of my Ulster fry. He had little slim wrists and brown tufty hair that stuck out round his head as though he’d just woken up.
“I’ve a tapeworm,” I told him. “That’s why I’m thin.”
“You have not. If you had one of them you’d have cleared the plate.”
“It’s asleep,” I said. “On account of the medication.” He lifted his eyes slowly and looked at me and didn’t look away. His eyes were light blue, and the lids were large and his gaze seemed to come from a long way off.
“Which one’s Annie?” I asked, just for something to say.
“The auld doll at the end of the next table.”
His name was Michael. After that, I always sat beside him in the dining room. He was the first person I’d spoken to, and that gave him stability in my uncertain world. That, and the impermeable distance in his half-closed eyes. He was in because he’d tried to drown himself. He didn’t tell me this right away, he waited till he was used to me, then he sprang it on me one afternoon, the two of us sitting in the dayroom, smoking.
“It takes all sorts,” I said when I’d heard his news. “The Lagan’s a dirty old river, I wouldn’t go jumping in it myself.”
“Who said anything about the Lagan?” He stared into the middle distance. “I built a raft, so I did. Pushed off from Ballyholme Bay.”
“Where’s Ballyholme Bay?”
“Bangor, County Down.”
“Rafts are so you can float, not so you can drown.”
“Fair point,” he said. “I had a bike, a Harley.”
