Bad Things Happen Read online

  Caitríona’s pregnancy had only deepened the chasm that separated me from my father. I had taken to addressing him by his christian name during university, partly because I thought it might annoy him, partly because “Dad” seemed so at odds with the relationship we had had. I remember the evening I told him. He was sitting in his study, reading, when I came home. I knocked on the door and made my way in.

  “Hi, Lochlann,” I said, quietly. “How’s it goin’?”

  He turned his head to look at me.

  “Well, thank you. And you?”

  “Yeah, good.”

  Silence.

  “Listen, I need to talk to you, it’s kind of serious.”

  He removed his reading glasses and swivelled his chair to face me.

  “It’s about me and Caitríona, my girlfriend. The thing is…”

  I faltered, lost my nerve. I was tempted to turn tail and flee out the door. But I couldn’t escape his stare.

  “The thing is… Caitríona’s pregnant. She’s going to have a baby. We’re going to have a baby.”

  He said nothing for what seemed like forever, just looked at me. I tried to find some emotion in his stare – anger, pity, disappointment – but there was none.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. We haven’t really figured it out.”

  Another long pause and then, as though I was choosing a new car, he said:

  “Well think about it and let me know if there is anything you need, anything I can do.”

  I needed a father. I needed someone who cared enough to be aghast, distressed, to shout at me, to tell me what an idiot I was and then to tell me what to do and that it would all be fine. Instead, I got a barely-interested observer and a tepid offer of assistance. I nodded and walked out of the room.

  I hadn’t really known what reaction to expect from Caitríona’s parents. Although Caitríona would have taken that as yet further proof of my naïveté, it was simply that I had had no experience of a normal family. As it was, her parents seemed to oscillate between one day berating her for the selfishness that threatened to destroy the good name they had worked so hard to nurture and the next behaving like the model family they had apparently been in the days before her aberration, ignoring completely the event that, in a couple of months, would change her life forever.

  Those days we did spend together were spent mainly in the waiting rooms of the maternity hospital in Dublin. We felt like pariahs among the beaming, glowing mothers with their wedding rings and designer maternity wear. I have never seen Caitríona, so capable and strong, look so helpless. I felt impotent and useless in a world where I had no status and no idea. We couldn’t face the ignominy of the ante-natal classes, among suited fathers-to-be taking an hour out of the office on St Stephen’s Green, slapping each other’s backs and predicting in loud voices that junior was sure to be another ‘Rock man or play football for Dublin.

  In the eighth month of pregnancy, Caitríona finally became too great a threat to the good reputation of her parents, pillars as they were of the local community. So she was banished back to Dublin and I went to find us a flat. I refused to go cap in hand to Lochlann, and so between her student grant money, a student loan from the University branch of the Bank of Ireland and what I had squirreled away from a summer spent working behind the bar in a pub in Dublin, we could just about afford a one bedroom flat south of the city. It was no place for an expectant mother and yet, in that tiny flat, those last few weeks were somehow almost idyllic. Back together, we found the strength that had escaped us throughout the summer. Moving a single light bulb from room to room because we couldn’t afford another, and taking napkins from the local chip shop while the owner wasn’t watching because we had no toilet paper, we were happy for the first time in nine months. Perhaps it was the fact that the limbo period was almost over. The birth and its immediate aftermath terrified us, but at least it was almost here and we could only face that with which we were faced. We had both squeaked through our exams, so Caitríona had her degree and I had made it through to my second year.

  Together, we made it through the interviews at the convent that would organise the adoption on behalf of the Adoption Agency. The nun in charge was a benign old woman who had seen too much of this before to be shocked or to make obvious her disapproval. The social worker who took our case, Siobhán, was a kind young girl, who took to embracing us both while appearing on the verge of tears. It was at the convent that we met with the prospective adoptive parents. Although forewarned, I hadn’t expected the emotions it would bring. Mostly, I was intimidated. An obviously successful couple in their late thirties, they reminded me of so many of the well-to-do friends of my father who had populated my childhood. Looking back, I suppose they were as scared as we were. For them, we were the people that could shatter their dream, a dream that had maybe taken years to come true and was now so close they could almost touch it. I remember now how tightly they held each other’s hands as we negotiated the stilted conversation.

  My abiding memory of that time should be one of despair, of pain, of fear. But it’s not. When I remember those days, I remember mostly the strength I drew from Caitríona and the sense that we would get through it. And unlike nine months before, Caitríona did not treat my optimism with contempt – I think maybe she in turn drew some strength from it.

  Aoife was born at three o’clock in the morning. I felt throughout her labour and delivery, as I had through all of Caitríona’s pregnancy, that we were the hospital’s under-class, worthy only of grudging and contemptuous attention when those more deserving were comfortable. Siobhán had arranged that we would have a room, and Aoife lay in a cot beside Caitríona’s bed. We had chosen her name on the spur of the moment some weeks before. Known as the greatest woman warrior in the world, Aoife was the mother of Cúchulainn’s only son, Connlach. It seemed right that we should leave her a name that might give her the strength and courage to fight for her place in the world.

  Siobhán had warned us, especially Caitríona, to avoid getting too close, to avoid at all costs bonding with our baby. But Caitríona could not ignore the crying child beside her bed and would get up to whisper soothing words.

  “It’s ok, Mammy’s here…”, she crooned softly, and lifted her eyes to look at me as Aoife stopped crying. Through her eyes I thought I caught the briefest glimpse of... what? Love? Fear? Doubt maybe? Or maybe I just wanted to. Then the shutters came down again, and she smiled at me.

  For months we had both prayed for this to be over, and yet in those few days after Aoife was born we existed somewhere outside reality, knotted with a fear of what was soon to come, yet somehow tranquil. The day finally came when we would have to say goodbye. We had sat on the bed in silence for what seemed like hours, staring at her as she slept in her cot, oblivious to the life-altering events that were about to unfold. There was a knock on the door and Siobhán appeared, ashen-faced. I wondered how long you would have to be in that business before you became used to those days. She came to the bed and hugged Caitríona.

  “Why don’t you say your goodbyes and go on outside. There’s no need for you to be here when we take her,” she said.

  Caitríona nodded. She put her hand lightly on Aoife’s chest.

  “Goodbye, my little angel,” she whispered, silent tears streaming down her face. “I hope you’ll forgive me some day.”

  She hesitated the briefest of seconds, turned and walked quietly out of the room without looking back. No histrionics, no drama. In the moment of perhaps our greatest shame, I have never been so proud of her. I looked over at my sleeping baby. I could find no words, no final gestures. I pulled open the door and walked down the stairs after Caitríona.

  The path had descended from the cliff-top and ran along the side of a rocky beach. A family of holiday-makers, in spite of the early hour, was setting up a breakfast picnic beside a rock-p
ool. Two little children were running to and from the shoreline, squealing with delight as the approaching water chased them in and then ebbed. Their parents watched with that concentrated mixture of emotions, part joy at their fascination, part worry for their safety. I watched them as I had watched a thousand families before and wondered.

  Aoife’s arrival into the world was going to send us down one of two roads. Either she would bring us together and make us stronger in the face of whatever life threw at us, or she would prove our undoing, forcing us apart as we sought to push her out of our lives. In the years that followed, it turned out to be the former. Once I had graduated, we decided to leave Dublin. It was a decision based partly on a desire for something new, and partly on a need to get away from the past, at least for a while. And so we moved to London. Caitríona found a job that provided a perfect outlet for her penchant for political ranting, working for a law firm that specialised in representing social and environmental activists. After three years studying art, I took a job as a graphic designer with a marketing agency. My father’s disdain at this commercialisation of my gift was barely concealed. Within four or five years of Aoife’s birth, we had become the kind of people we had tried so desperately to avoid at ante-natal classes. Young, professional and passably successful. My work took us on secondments to New York, Hong Kong, Dubai, Johannesburg, always housed in luxurious accommodation, always coming back to London.

  Beneath the façade too, we were quietly getting on with our lives. And yet, even after we were married we hadn’t yet found a way to talk about her, nor did we ever discuss having more children. Had I loved Caitríona just a little less maybe I would have questioned the path we had taken. But I loved her absolutely, and no price was too steep to see her happy.

  As time went on, I began to feel a growing guilt that everything we had might have been at the expense of fulfilling our obligations to Aoife. I had refused Lochlann’s offers of financial support, accepting only what I considered mine by some transparent definition of right. So I had spent three years struggling through University on student grants and a barman’s tips. We had never been able to afford a nice holiday or a birthday dinner in a nice restaurant. The luxury of a car was beyond even fantasy. And suddenly we had the trappings of a comfortable life. Not that we were rich. We fretted like everyone else over buying our first house and spent endless evenings over a calculator working out what level of mortgage we could afford to borrow. But we were twenty-somethings with a house, a car and prospects. And I couldn’t help but feel that we would perhaps have had none of this if we had kept Aoife. And I couldn’t escape feeling guilty that, although I would never admit it even to myself, I was glad Caitríona had made the decision for me.

  CHAPTER 2

  Time has an irresistible momentum. Try as we might, we can’t swim against its tide nor move out of its raging current. There have been times – there still are – when I’ve just wanted to stop, to take stock and to plan for the life I want rather than make do with the life my world has assigned to me. We lurch from one artificial point in time to the next, from corporate year-end to Christmas to the two-week summer holiday in Spain, and at each point we wonder how we ended up there. I felt like I was losing Aoife. It was as though I had pushed her over the rail on a speeding boat, and now that she was fading into the distance in our wake, I could hardly keep sight of her. We couldn’t talk about her, but I couldn’t leave her behind.

  I know Caitríona thought about her. I would often catch her day-dreaming, her eyes in a thousand-yard stare. When she saw me watching, she would smile and make a bad joke and rush off to do something frightfully urgent. I knew her as well as I could know anybody, but still I couldn’t tell what she felt – guilt or remorse, or a sense of having made an irredeemable mistake that stole away from her life forever something of great value. She would go to great lengths to avoid being seated near children on trains or aeroplanes. She turned down invitations to christenings and birthday parties. And on those few errant occasions when we unwittingly ended up in the company of our friends’ children, she would recoil with horror if a proud parent proffered their issue to give her a kiss or to show Auntie Caitríona their new tooth.

  Of course, it became more and more difficult as our friends went through their reproductive prime, and children began to slowly take over our collective world. Inevitably and inexorably, their lives were painstakingly constructed around preparing for, celebrating or simply learning to live with new arrivals, and our carefree crew became shackled by the constraints of babysitting, school holidays and random illness.

  It was the celebration of one such arrival that brought us together at a friend’s house one Friday evening in late Summer. They were two of our closest friends, and their journey to this first child had been an all-too-common modern-day tale of longing and disappointment. That the child had arrived healthy and without complication was truly a cause for celebration.

  As usual, we were late – never intentionally, but always just too late to see the newborn before the first of many bed-times. As usual, Caitríona’s gift of champagne or something sparkly for the newly glamorous mother steered us clear of the baby shops, and as we stood chatting before dinner in clearly defined groups of excited wives and back-slapping husbands lamenting climbing handicaps, as usual Caitríona was drawn to the group of men and joined in the innocent banter.

  She seemed unusually quiet though, withdrawn almost, and I wondered what had happened at work that day to preoccupy her. She excused herself to go to the bathroom, and I watched her walk away across the room. As she passed the new mum, glowing with something close to disbelief that all of this was finally, impossibly hers, Caitríona reached out and took her hand. She said something, and they both laughed quietly.

  As she moved to walk on, another of her friends took her arm and drew her back into the excited conversation. They were passing around tiny pink dresses and sun-hats that the little one had been given, and someone held out a little suit with “Mummy’s Girl” scribbled in mock child script across the front. Caitríona reached out and took it, and despite the manly joking and girlish giggling that filled the room, in my mind everything went quiet for a moment. I watched in what felt like slow motion as she gently caressed it and stared at it. It was like a movie scene. The world flashed by out of focus, but we were still, yards apart but together, still and invisible. She looked over and saw me watching. There was the briefest pause, she raised her eyebrows in weak conspiratorial disdain, and smiled softly. She quickly handed back the little suit, the blur came back into focus, and the moment was gone. But never forgotten.

  I thought about her too. Maybe not so much in the early years, but more and more as we got older and more settled. I found myself wondering more often where she was, what she was doing, what she looked like and, most of all, how it might have been if she was with us now. The passage of time dulled the memories of how life was before we had what we now took for granted. What I felt was never so much regret as a nagging sense of maybe something better foregone. I don’t think I ever once said to myself “I wish we hadn’t…”, but I often wondered silently “What if…”. That sense of curiosity over time became a sense that something was missing, and in time the need to fill that hole took root and grew. I never discussed it with Caitríona. As the years went by, it remained the only subject that was out of bounds. We discussed everything else, had no secrets from each other, basked in each other’s company. And it did not create a barrier between us. Those were just the rules of the game and I respected them.

  Fate and time conspired to create the circumstances that tested my resolve. Only months before Aoife’s eighteenth birthday, the Irish Adoption Board launched the National Adoption Contact Preference Register. Since adoption became legal in Ireland in 1953, some forty thousand adoptions had been processed. And yet for over fifty years, no facility existed for either adopted children nor natural parents to seek information nor contact. Letting sleepi
ng scandals lie was the chosen strategy of two Irish generations raised in a Catholic state, but in a world of ubiquitous information, that was about to change. Adoption had always been associated with illegitimacy, a taboo subject alluded to only by raised eyebrows and euphemism. As late as the 1960’s, thousands of Irish children were sent to America for adoption because they were illegitimate and unwanted at home. With the launch of the new register, however, every household in Ireland received an information booklet through the post, along with an application form for those affected to join the register if they wished. Imagine the consternation that the morning post must have caused in thousands of Irish homes that day, as ghosts from the past once again raised their unwanted heads.

  That morning, I gathered up the assorted bills, bank statements and junk mail as usual as I came downstairs to put on the first coffee of my working day. Caitríona was still sleeping, so I sat at the kitchen table to open the morning’s post. I flicked through it as I did every morning, subconsciously hoping for no bad news and maybe even a bit of good fortune. A letter with an Irish stamp always caught my attention, especially one addressed in my father’s hand. I opened it, and pulled out the brown Adoption Agency envelope with the Harp insignia. I stopped dead and stared at the envelope. For a moment, as I stared at it, I was certain beyond any doubt that Aoife had asked them to find us. Then I saw that it was addressed to “The Householder” and my heart sank. I tore open the envelope.

  It was as though someone in high office had been casually eavesdropping on my silent reflections. Everything I had imagined in my far-away moments was there, everything I needed to find the baby I had abandoned. If I needed any further convincing, the irony of its timing was stark. All through the literature, the Agency pointed out that applications to join the register would not be entertained from anybody under eighteen years old. In a few short months, Aoife would be eligible. Maybe, somewhere in Ireland at that very moment, her adoptive parents were reading the same booklet. Maybe she had even found it herself. Was she excited? Or bitter? Or afraid of hurting those who had loved and raised her?