Friday Reading

Deborah takes a bath, and begins her return to normal life . . .

That room, Oh Lucy-Goose, I wish you could have seen it. Stepping into it I felt like Alice when she ate the magic cake and grew nine feet tall. Each object in the room was so dainty and tasteful and perfectly arranged that I was afraid to move for fear of knocking something over, let alone lying or even sitting on the bed.

  It’s . . . it’s . . . I don’t know, I clasped my hands in childish delight. It’s like a doll’s house, I said at last to Rose.

  Yes, she grinned. Mark likes everything just so.

  But who normally sleeps here?

  No one, she said. He keeps it as a guest room.

  I might never want to leave it, I said, letting my scruffy backpack slide from my shoulder to the polished wood floor.

  Make yourself at home, Rose said. I’ll run you a bath.

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  At home. I couldn’t have imagined ever feeling I belonged in a room, or a house, like this. And where or what was home anymore? I had run away from home. Even if I returned there, to our house, with you and Mam and Denis still there, living the same life you had been leading when I left, I would feel like a stranger. While I was at the Mission I pictured that return sometimes. In the deepest blackest moments of loneliness, I imagined myself walking through the back door to find Mam sitting at the table with a mug of coffee and a script in front of her, the radio going in the background, cigarette butts piling up in the ashtray, the windows weeping with condensation, and then you coming in from school. I tried to guess at your reactions but they varied with each iteration of the fantasy.

 Sometimes I fancied you might not recognise me. Or Mam would and you wouldn’t. More times though I saw you both crying, giving out to me and hugging me at the same time. And then the trouble was I felt sick. Well, not literally. More like several emotions tumbled through me and the one that lingered when the rest had drained away was humiliation. Do you understand that I couldn’t come ‘home’, couldn’t face you all again until I had something to show for my flight? I needed to be able to face myself with some kind of dignity before I could face all of you and take whatever you had to throw at me. On the flip side of that daydream of return was the knowledge that I didn’t need to ever return or show my face in Dublin again. I could simply remain gone.

  Before any of that could come to pass, however, I had to see myself in the looking glass of Mark’s grand bathroom with its deep claw-footed tub and ornate pull-chain toilet. Unfortunately there were two mirrors, one over the basin, another standing alone at an angle, so there was no escaping my own reflection. Now I understood why Rose had been shocked at the sight of me. I looked like a tramp. Worse in the nip, skin a sickly pale hue, like a plant deprived of light, bones jutting at awkward angles, hair lank. I was a wash out. Good job Mam didn’t see me then – she’d have read me the riot act. I sank into the hot water that Rose had mixed with so much bubble bath that it frothed over the rim as soon as I stepped into the water. I’ve never had such a sense of luxury before or since. My body expanded in the warm scented water.

  At the Mission we were restricted to one shower a week, a tepid trickle really because the water pressure and heating were so bad. I wished that the bath water could wash away all the memories of that horrible place but no such luck. They dog me still.

 There are nights I wake up suddenly thinking that I have heard the bell for morning prayers and I’m half way out of the bed when I realise it’s Pearl crying for her feed. Relief runs through me then and I hold her close but even the comfort of her small form clinging to my flesh cannot fully banish the shadow of the grinding demoralisation I suffered in that grim place.

And yes, because I know you’ll ask, I have tried to get it closed down or at least to warn people about it. Mark helped with that and other things. He’s an interesting man. Contacts here there and everywhere, if he can be believed about them all. I think he likes to create a bit of mystery or mystique about himself. It matters to him to be needed and respected, or, as he’d say himself, to be held in high regard. He is kind and generous, and now he’s in need of help. We do the best we can for him.

Sorry, I’m leaping ahead here. One thought leads to another and another. I don’t want to revise this letter because if I start to do that I’ll never finish it. And there is so much to tell you that sometimes it all gets jumbled in my head. Marge was right, keeping a diary is a good discipline!

Photo by Europeana on Unsplash

We spent the rest of that day ‘decompressing’ as Rose called it. Eating, talking, walking, drinking, smoking. That night we met up with some of Rose’s friends in a pub. She told them I had just escaped captivity by a doomsday cult. They pressed me for stories and I obliged for a while until, suddenly, at about nine I was overcome by a wave of tiredness. I could no longer put two words together and my eyes insisted on falling shut. It was Mission bedtime and my body had become so attuned to it that I couldn’t stay awake a minute more. Rose brought me home, guiding my steps with her arm around my waist. Back in the darling bedroom I fell onto the bed fully dressed and conked out.  

  Several hours later I woke with a start and sat bolt upright, seized with fear. Breath held, I waited, expecting to hear some noise or cry that had disturbed my sleep. Not a sound broke the stillness. The world was still, sleeping. I had no idea what had woken me or what had frightened me. I got up and took off my clothes (Rose’s clothes really, that she had lent me, along with a belt and safety pins to fit them to my smaller, scrawnier frame).

Thirst parched my mouth, my lips and tongue were dry as sand. It was a long time since I had been out drinking. A red kimono hung on the back of the bedroom door. I slipped it on, opened the door and peeked out, left and right. The other doors to the landing were all closed. A small lamp glowed from a dresser next to the bathroom. I tiptoed down the stairs to the hall, and turned to go on down to the kitchen.

 A shaft of light fell from the open door of Mark’s library. I moved as silently as I could past the door. Through the opening I saw his balding head shine beneath a reading lamp. Swathed in a gold kimono, he rested against the back of his armchair, mouth slack, a newspaper spread on his lap. I padded down to the kitchen where I filled a glass with water, gulped it down and repeated the action twice more before filling the glass a third time and climbing the stairs to the hall. Concentrating on my silent steps I passed his library again.

 I ran away once you know.

 One foot on the bottom stair, hand on the banister rail, I halted and waited, wondering if Mark really had spoken or if I had imagined it.  

 Come in and talk to me, he continued after a pause. I don’t bite you know.

 I turned and crossed the hall to the library.  

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For those of you following Deb’s journey you see I’ve kept her safe! Share your thoughts right here!