The Day Samuel Died

At the bar. In here of all places. Him. Talking, his hands in the air. Girls on either side. Loud and in the way. It’s him. Your man. The bastard. I haven’t seen him since they did this place up. We met here, years ago, in the old downstairs smoking area. Of course I run, quickly, out the side entrance, up to the suburban secrets behind Wexford Street. Run away, out, away. I don’t bother telling anybody. I’ve become careless lately. You know, just head off without telling anyone you’re leaving. I do this if people are being idiots, ignoring me. I will not be missed.

He didn’t even see me. I hope he didn’t, he’d be ringing home, telling them I’m gone in the head again. My heart is beating. Too fast. It shouldn’t go this fast when I’m only walking. I’ve had three glasses. I need to go and sit somewhere. To hold myself for a few minutes. Then I’ll go back. I can pretend to be friendly. I have some lines ready, I have things to bring up. He might have seen me, he’ll notice if I’ve run away. I’ll go back in, I’ll make some small talk. Blah, blah fucking blah.

And he looked so good. I could see the tiny parts of him from across the room. Those small raised veins on his forearms that I hate. That hideous monobrow hard to see in the pub light. I see his body hidden in this dark room. He shouts out to me from underneath this mass of people.

‘Come hither. Come lover. Come you bitch.’

Here’s a bench. I’ll sit here. Let me smoke a cigarette. Just one, one cigarette. That’s better. He hates me smoking. Gum after this and more fresh air. Just in case he comes after me, running to the streets, calling ‘Caoimhe? Where are you?  I love you. Come back.’

Instead I sit here, alone, facing the posh houses. A car pulls up as I sit. A man and his children. So common. With the three-wheeled pram. The spoilt brats and the suit. Here they are for me. I sit and gawk.

I am a fool. Of course we couldn’t have a baby. He filled me with shit, which I think he meant at the time.

‘I want to spend my life with you. You’d be a great mother.’
I cursed at him — pushed him away — all the same eating it up. Swallowing these tiny comments a woman craves into my skull.
I watch this other man now.

‘Come in, Clodagh, Conor. Come away from the lady’

Lady? I’m 26. And alone. I hate my friends. I’m stuck in a job I hoped I’d have worked my way up and out of a long time ago. My friends do not help. I rarely go home. I could walk away from this pub. From this street. Who would notice? It’d take at least a week. I live alone. Maybe longer.

Work would miss me. I’d be missed by the boss. My sick days. That’s how the body would be found. Over her annual sick day limit. Where is the bitch? Nobody cares — not even me. Why would I? Getting old, fat and miserable. I was different in college. I believed in me, just as you believe in me. That song. I believed in God. That prayers would help me if I needed it. I believed in love. In this man. I cannot say his name. Bastard.

And so I lay and let them kill it. They killed it inside first. Then it came out — God knows looking like what. I woke up sore. Afraid. Empty. He came and brought me home. Stayed that night. I cried.

‘Why are you crying?’ I kept crying, I could not stop. ‘It’s gone; it’s over, stop crying’

And he didn’t know — and will not know — why I was crying. I was grieving. I was hollow. I loved that baby — the feet, the toes. The little penis. Some bitch told me it was a boy. Thank you.

It was part of him. Part of me. He didn’t know it but I wanted to have that life he boasted of. His own house, his car. Everything would be his. He would get it all. Like this futile man home at seven to his wife. He would have it all.

I am hollow and alone. Worst of all, my baby does not exist. I cannot grieve over nothing. So I sink into myself.

I predict this — some futile man will come along, him hiding something equally sorrowful. Secretly gay; raped as a child. A pitiful, miserable fucker. We shall force ourselves to love, procreate, to make something bigger, extend this pain outside our selves, latch it onto something else. Someone new born into hatred. The cycle continuing.