“Anyone later looking at the photographs would not think other than that she was happy. There were several variations: her being assisted from the car by her father, he looking down benevolently and she from her cramped position smiling straight at the camera; she and Tripp looking to the camera, her arm linked through his, a big smile on his face, a smile on hers; here, facing each other, hands held loosely; and again there with his parents and her dying father. They were taken in the precincts of St Aloysius Church, in the town where she had lived all of her twenty-two years. Her mother was buried in the ground behind the church and her father, as they both knew as they were being photographed, would also be soon lowered into the same space. The town had been all she knew but, after a week’s honeymoon at the coast, she would move to his town, thirty miles to the west.
She looked good in the photographs and she knew it at the time. She was not, she knew early, one of those odd beauties who look down from the magazine racks in the newsagent, women who, to her mind, always looked too determined and assisted in their kind of beauty; she thought it the kind of beauty which would appeal to a certain kind of man, not the kind of man who would appeal to her. She was not of that type and would not wish to be, but she also knew from the time that these things make themselves known that she would not be ignored by men.
And she had not been ignored by Tripp, who she liked but did not love. They had met on a Saturday night in summer while she was out in the town with her friends. There were three of them, one of them being Josie Cools, the bridesmaid. Later, when it was all over, she would not remember the other. He was with two of his friends; they had played rugby that afternoon and their bus wasn’t going back until nine. It was a warm night and they were at a table outside of The Shoshone Lounge on the main street. There were not many seats available and the boys asked if they might buy them a round and sit with them. There was no reason to refuse and they seemed pleasant enough, not like some of the wilder sort thereabouts, who were born into coarseness and carried it like a badge. That sort did not often come to the Shoshone Lounge.
Tripp, who happened to be sitting next to her, was the quietest of the three, although none of them was particularly loud. They had lost their game but were cheerful anyway; it had, it seemed, been a narrow defeat. When their friends fell into conversation together she and he became isolated in their silence. For something to say, she asked about the game and he told her the score, keeping the information limited to what he assumed would be her understanding. But she surprised him. Her father had been a flanker for Dollistown Spirits – Dollistown being the town she lived in – and she had seen enough games not to be intimidated by the terminology.
He was impressed and asked her name. She said, ‘Carmel I suppose, but everybody calls me Baby.’ He asked and she told him. It was because her parents produced no successor to refer to as their baby, and so did not cease the habit of calling her their baby. Their baby became Baby to them and then the habit was picked up by everyone they knew. ‘Even at school I was Baby. So I’m Baby. I think of myself as Baby. If anyone called me Carmel it would take me a minute before I realised who they meant.’ He said that he could outdo her in the name department.
‘How so?’
‘You ready?’ He smiled. She liked his smile. ‘Tripp.’
‘Tripp?’
‘Tripp.’
‘That’s your name? How come?’
‘The actor.’
‘Which actor?’
‘Everybody says that. There was an actor by the name of Tripp Noonan, American. My parents liked him, and they liked his name. So they handed it on to me, which was not very decent of them.’
‘Tripp. I don’t know about that. I like it. Tripp. Once you get used to it, why not? Do you have a second name?’
‘Charbonneau.’
‘Tripp Charbonneau. It gets better. There aren’t many of them round here.’
‘I know. There was French somewhere down the line. You?’
‘Portis. Carmel Portis was how I was born.’
‘I’m delighted to meet you, Carmel Portis. Can I call you Baby?’
‘Of course you can, that’s me.’
When there was a lull around the table he leaned across and said, ‘Boys, this is Baby.’
‘They raised their glasses and said, ‘Baby.’
She said, ‘Girls, this is Tripp.’
They did the same, raised their glasses and repeated his name. And they passed a pleasant hour in the remaining light. The smallness of the town and its people got on her nerves a lot of the time, but it was one of those warm evenings where everything seems to be perfectly and strangely in its place. There was birdsong and the murmur of happy people, and for a good while she was one of them. And when their coach was due to leave, Tripp Charbonneau asked her if she would mind if he called her – ‘That is, if there is no one else at present.’ She was charmed by that formality and gave him her number.
Other than for his name, she did not give the matter too much thought. Men had taken her number before and some had not called. Some had, but nothing had lasted. She had slept with some but not, for the times, an indecent number. She was all too aware of the reputations which are easier to gain than to lose in small towns like hers. Although they were not all unpleasant, her main feeling from those encounters was that the man gained more from the experience than she did.
But Tripp Charbonneau did call, a week-and-a-half later. Her father answered and called up to her room. ‘Baby. It’s for you. Rick, I think he said.’ They arranged to meet that weekend, and when she went into the conservatory where her father was reading the evening paper he said, ‘He sounds nice. Do I know him?’
‘No, I’ve only met him once, he’s called Tripp.’
‘Tripp? After the actor?’
‘Apparently. You’ve heard of him?’
‘The actor, yes.’
She sat on the two-seat couch opposite her father and he looked across and smiled. He asked, ‘Are you going out this evening?’
‘I don’t think so, no. Work tomorrow. I think I’ll just read for a while.’
He looked up at her from his newspaper. ‘Everything ok?’
‘Of course, everything’s fine.’
At least once a day he asked her that question, Everything ok? And every day her reply was the same. There were only the two of them, since her mother had died when she was twelve years old. And for some reason her father, a still handsome man, and a successful businessman who had a good reputation in the town and the towns around, had not met anyone else, at least not that she knew of. She suspected that that may be because he thought that she would disapprove, and she had on occasions tried to persuade him otherwise. But all he ever said was that no one could replace his wife, Baby’s mother. ‘Don’t you worry about me,’ he would say. ‘As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.’ And she believed that to be true.
Tripp Charbonneau drove across from Byrd’s Gap the following Saturday and they went to the cinema – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. They had a drink afterwards, exchanged opinions about the film and found that they had some tastes in common. That was always a relief to her; she had been out with some men who did not have a single thing of any interest to say, when the silence would be thick between them. And with some there was no silence, they were all noise and self-absorption, with not a thought to the world but how it reacted to them. And although Tripp did not kiss her at the end of the evening, he asked if he might call her again, and she said yes, why not? He said Thank you, I’ve enjoyed it, and she said that she had enjoyed it also. And she had, she had enjoyed it. She did not think it would be a bad thing if he rang again.
*
She had gone off the rails for a while after her mother died. On her fourteenth birthday she drank vodka and cider with her friends in Canomie Park and her father, after worrying for hours about where she might be, had to go to the police station to collect her. She was sobering up and was crushed by embarrassment by the time he got there. Although he had never before been angry with her, she was sure that he would be then. But when, head lowered with the shame of it, she was brought out into the brightly lit waiting area by the female officer, he stepped quickly to her and held her tightly. He said, ‘Baby, Baby, Baby, what have we done to you?’ And on the way back to their home nothing more was said, but she could see the wetness on his eyes illuminated by the lights of passing cars.
Soon after the vodka and cider episode, she began to take her schoolwork seriously. Her father brought a tutor in to help her with physics, but the other subjects she took in her stride. With good grades, she went off to the University, which was about fifty miles away, and came home most weekends. She had her first sexual encounters while away, and one relationship which lasted for eighteen months when, for no reason other than boredom, she ended it. After getting her degree comfortably, she began teaching at the school which she herself had attended. It was an odd thing at first, to sit drinking tea and chatting to people who had been her teachers, but she soon became accustomed to the routine.
She was the only one of her contemporaries to have gone off to further study. The others, the few with whom she kept in close contact after their schooling ended, went straight to jobs; they finished their education on the Friday and went into their adulthood on the Monday. The town’s biggest employer was Dido Stollen Fashions; two of them worked there. Another, Janice Ballon, became a secretary for the railway company, and another was a buyer for a cosmetics firm in a nearby town. Other than for one who had married at eighteen and moved too far south to be given much further thought, they had all remained in Dollistown. They continued to meet up once in a while and they, the others, gave every impression of being content in their circumstances. They had the confidence which a prospering small town encouraged at that time; there was no uncertainty about the future and, barring something not yet imagined, they knew within yards and feet where in the ground they would be buried.
Everything ok? her father continued to ask.
And yes, everything is ok, continued to be the response.
She and Tripp Charbonneau continued to see each other. He met her father and they seemed to get on; that being said she did not know of anyone with whom her father did not get on. She met his family, parents, older sister and younger brother and there appeared to be no difficulties there. Tripp was a solicitor for the Municipal and his plan was that, once he had some experience behind him and enough money to get started, he would open his own office in Byrd’s Gap. She and he were comfortable in each other’s company and after a few weeks they had had a weekend in a hotel at the coast and they appeared to be compatible.
However, despite the comfort and compatibility, Baby did not for a single moment envisage the relationship as a life-long thing; it did not have that ingredient which she had never experienced but knew existed. She thought only of enjoying it until she didn’t. Then two things happened. First, her father’s mood appeared to alter. He was not a voluble man, but he became quieter than usual. One evening, when she was marking exercise books and he was reading his newspaper, she asked, ‘You ok? You’ve gone very quiet.’
‘Baby, we need to speak.’ She knew that it was something serious. He had never before said anything as portentous as We need to speak, not even when her mother died. She went into the conservatory and sat with him.
‘What?’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘Dad, what is it?’
He looked steadily at her. ‘I may have to leave you?’
‘Leave me? What do you mean, leave me? Where are you going?’
His face seemed to change shape minutely as he held her stare.
‘Dad, what do you mean?’ She knew what he meant.
‘I’m ill, Baby. Very ill.’
This is what he told her. He had been for one of his routine checks a month previously, during which a tumour was discovered on his brain. They gave him a year, maybe eighteen months if he was lucky. They were very polite he said. Very good about it all. It can’t be easy, that sort of thing. He had known for three weeks but had not known how to raise the subject with his daughter. She panicked when he told her, said that there must be some mistake. She said he looked fine, he could not be so ill. But he was calm, and he told her what she knew already; that how he looked was neither here nor there, he had been told what he had been told and, because of the source of the information, he knew it to be true. Therefore, there was nothing to do but to enjoy the time left, the time they both had together.
Still, she insisted for a day or two that it could not be true, that there had to have been some mistake. But, when she doubted it, he held her hands and said, ‘Baby, I’m going. Let’s enjoy what life there is. When you think about it, that’s all we can ever do.’ She knew that to be true, as everyone knows that to be true. They held each other and she wept on his shoulder. He said, ‘Come on now, let’s have the life that we still have.’
Once the awfulness of the thing had been absorbed, they tried to make the most of things. She spent far more time with him that she had in a long while. At weekends, when she would usually be out with friends or at a concert, she stayed with him. He tried to persuade her that there was no need for all of this attention but she paid no heed. They took early morning and evening walks through the town and into the surrounding fields. They chatted with people they had known all of their lives and he did not say anything to them about his illness, he did not want to upset them.
And during that dwindling time, she began to imagine that she saw their own small world through his eyes. This was where he had lived all of his life; he was born at the hospital which had given him the news; married at the church where he had been baptised. He had taken over his family’s farm food wholesale business. And he would be laid above his wife in the graveyard behind the church. She wondered as they took it all in, was it joy that these sights and noises brought to him, or desolation at the leaving of them forever? Or, did those words like joy and desolation now have no meaning, did they all collapse into the general strangeness and absurdity of it all. She didn’t know any way of asking how it all seemed to him.
One night about six months after the news, Baby and her father were eating at home. He had had the best part of a bottle of red wine and they talked about the life of the town and how the selling of the business was going. He said, ‘You’ll be fine, you know that don’t you? You won’t need to worry I mean.’
‘Dad, that doesn’t matter to me.’
‘There’ll be the money from the business.’
‘Dad.’
‘And the house. It’s up to you whether you keep it or sell it. It’s entirely up to you.’
‘Dad, do we have to?’
‘Well yes, we have to Baby. These things are important. Anyway, it’s all sorted, the will and everything.’
‘Dad, I’ll be ok anyway. I work, I have a good job.’
‘I know but…’
‘But what?’
‘I don’t know. I’d just like to see you settled before the time comes.’
‘Settled? You mean married.’ They laughed.
‘Well. I don’t know. Why not?’
‘Do you mean to Tripp?’
‘Not necessarily but he’s a nice enough fellow, is he not?
‘Of course he is but…’
‘But what? All I’m saying is that it might be a good send-off. But what am I talking about? It’s none of my business.’ She reached across the table and rested her hand on his. ‘I’ve been without your mother for a long time now. I don’t like to think of you being on your own. I know what it’s like.’
The second thing to happen was this. A month or so after that conversation with her father – a conversation which was not repeated or referred to again – she had gone across to Byrd’s Gap to watch Tripp play rugby on the Saturday afternoon. Afterwards, they stayed on at the clubhouse with some of his team-mates and their wives and girlfriends. She knew them by now and, although she found them quite dull with their talk of children and clothes, they were friendly enough. A club band came on at around half-seven and, although she could not put her finger on it, the atmosphere around the table seemed to alter. She sensed the other women looking at her and then whispering among themselves. Then at around half-eight, the singer from the band said that they were going to take a break but first there was a task which one of the team had to perform. The keyboard player then struck up a version of If You Were the Only Girl in the World at which Tripp, who had been quieter than usual, slid off his chair and bent down on one knee beside her. Baby tried to disguise her horror. The keyboard quietened and Tripp took a box from his inside pocket and withdrew a ring. Baby covered her mouth and said, ‘Oh my God.’ She wanted to run from the room. Everyone was looking.
‘Baby,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you know how I feel about you.’ She was not sure, nor did she much care how he felt about her. There had been no talk of love. Had he mistaken company and sex for something other? What had she done or said to give the impression that this would be ok? She made herself smile. ‘Well, the fact is that I’d like to spend the rest of my life with you. And you with me. So, will you do me the honour of marrying me?’ As everyone whooped and hollered and the drummer played a drum-roll, she wanted to say, Oh Tripp, what in the name of God are you doing? Do not do this to me. Baby Charbonneau, how ridiculous would that be? And, I do not love you.
But her room for manoeuvre seemed to be constricted by the stares of the people and the drumming of the drummer. And she felt only able to say Yes. When she did so, the whole room erupted into cheers and he kissed her hard on the mouth. His team-mates shook his hand and the women gathered round her to look at the ring. She was staying at his home that night – separate rooms – and by the sound of them his family seemed to think that a miracle had been witnessed, although Baby was pretty certain that they had been in on the act. She lay awake in one of their rooms, horrified by her own weakness.
The next day Tripp wanted to go back to Dollistown with her so that they might both tell her father. But she said no, she wanted to tell him alone. As she was leaving he asked, ‘You are happy aren’t you?’ He looked doubtful for a moment and when she said yes he hugged her and said, ‘Oh, Baby, I’ve never been happier.’ His family waved her off and she put her hand up in acknowledgement. When she was out of sight she pulled over to the side of the road and wept.
She ate with her father that night and at what seemed a favourable moment she said, ‘Dad, I have some news. You may be pleased.’
‘Yes.’
‘Tripp and I are going to be married. He proposed last night and I said yes.’ She looked at him intently, as if trying to convey her own stupidity and to will an objection from him.
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘Well.’
‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘I am, I am so long as you are.’
‘I thought it was what you wanted.’
‘What was?’
‘Me being settled before…you know.’
‘Oh Baby, Baby.’ He came round to her side of the table and she stood and they hugged. ‘That’s not why you’re doing it is it?’
‘No, no. No, of course not. But you like him don’t you, Tripp?’
‘Yes I like him, he seems a decent enough fellow but that is not the point. I just never imagined you would…I don’t know. It’s just my girl, getting married. What are you now, twenty-two? Your mother would have been as pleased as punch.’
‘I know she would. And I’m twenty-three.’
‘So, yes, of course. I’m pleased. I’m delighted. Has a date been fixed?’
‘No but the sooner the better, don’t you think.’
In her small room she lay awake thinking over what she had done, or what she had had done to her; she wasn’t sure which it was. Now that she had told her father she could not go back on it. Maybe she could go through with it and get out of it as soon as she could. but she dared hardly contemplate that. Or, there might be the possibility that she would be happy as Mrs Tripp Charbonneau. Tripp Charbonneau was a good fellow who would no doubt make a great husband for someone. She repeated Baby Charbonneau few times, then tried Carmel Charbonneau, but she couldn’t make either of those sounds fit. She wondered if he had proposed because he knew that her father in his going would leave her more than comfortable. Surely not, she could not bring herself to believe that. Had her father put him up to it, had there been a quiet word with a nod and a wink, just so that he would see her settled before he died. No, that could not be true either. She was certain that that could not be true.
*
He died six weeks after the wedding. At his funeral people were standing at the back and in the side aisles. Father Kowalski talked of James Portis as he might have spoken of a saint. He enumerated his virtues of which there were many and, even had it been an occasion for dissenting voices, it was unlikely that any would have been heard. Her father was liked and almost loved by many. It was a comfort to his daughter. Her husband was at her side and he helped her to organize things. And when it was all over they went away for a few days. It was when they were away that they decided that, rather than sell the house, they would sell the one they had just taken on in Byrd’s Gap, not far from his family, and move into the home just vacated by Baby’s father. Tripp would leave his work and open up on his own in her town.
They were similar in this respect: From birth they had both been directed toward comfort and a kind of small-town security. Their own parents had provided well so that, barring a calamity, they would never need to worry about shelter and food. They knew they were among the fortunate of the world and they did not mind sharing some of their good fortune. They gave to various charities; he to a foundation which provided sports equipment for young kids, she to the Red Cross and the local hospital. They gave to the few beggars who were on the streets of the town, and on top of that they both usually gave to whatever cause they were asked to give.
There was some tension between them when it came to discussing children – he wanted to have them, she didn’t. She did not want to stop working, and did not wish to have the burdens and responsibilities which she could see limiting the lives of her contemporaries. She saw them in the town, the girls with whom it only seemed like a few weeks ago she was playing hockey and having laughs with, now pushing two and three kids round and looking old in their youth. She wondered why it was assumed that girls would do that, sacrifice their own lives like that, just because it was expected. And for the first two years of their marriage they went round in circles talking about it. He said that he had always assumed that they would have children, he had no idea that it was not part of her plans. She did not say it, but she thought that he was making it sound as if it was he who had been pressured into marriage, as if it was she and not he who had pulled a ring out in front of all those people. But, for reasons she could not explain to herself other than not having to endure another argument about it, she stopped taking the pill and within a short while felt the first signs of pregnancy.
Tripp and his family were noisily thrilled. The next time his parents visited they brought champagne and his mother gave her a lot of unnecessary advice. She could see why some women might like the attention and make the most of it for the short while it lasted. But she felt her pregnancy only as an invasion of her life and her father’s house. But, having made her bed, she kept her thoughts to herself.
They called her Rose after his late grandmother. And Rose was an easy child early on. She slept a lot more than she cried. And then after a while she was not so easy. Theirs was not an easy relationship and she did not know what it was that made it uneasy. She did what was required, the motherly things when the nanny had left. Although Tripp had been against it, she had returned to work after a few weeks. But there was a distance between her and the child; she knew it and no doubt the child would know it in time. Their distance was balanced by the closeness of Tripp’s relationship with her. He took to the whole thing easily, as if his whole life had been bent to this. As the years went on, it was they who spent most time together; it was he who she confided in; they who laughed together.
When Rose turned sixteen, Tripp said that he was thinking of retiring in a few years and that it would be a good time for Baby to retire also. As he said he would when they married, he had set up in Dollistown and, there being little in the way of competition, the firm had grown. He had people working for him and there would be no problem retiring at fifty. The three of them discussed it. Rose seemed to be given a say and she, for reasons not clear to Baby, was for it. Baby was against; she wondered what they would do in retirement. How would time be filled? At least when they were both working they had time apart and something to talk about when they were together. But he seemed set on it, had plans to travel when Rose went off to University. Rose thought she could meet up with them somewhere and speculated on different places: South America, New York, or southern Spain. Baby had only a mild curiosity about those places, not enough of a curiosity to make her want to travel to them. Tripp talked about it for days afterwards, persuading her of the splendour of the plan, the places they would see, the time they would have together. When they were alone in bed, about a week after first mentioning the idea, he said, ‘Think about it, Baby. We’ve worked hard, we’ve sacrificed, we’ve put the time in. We’ve barely seen each other since Rose came along. We could rekindle our relationship. Be properly together. Don’t you want that?’
She thought for such a long while that he thought she fallen asleep.
‘Baby?’
She thought a while longer. ‘Actually, I think I’d prefer Carmel if it’s all the same to you.’
‘What?’
‘I think I’d prefer Carmel. My name is Carmel. That’s what I want. That’s ok is it not, Tripp? ‘
There was silence for a while, and then he asked, ‘Why?’
‘The why doesn’t really matter, does it? Baby just doesn’t seem right any more. Don’t you agree.’
‘Well, as it turns out, no I don’t agree. I don’t agree at all. It’s Baby I love, it was Baby I married. You’re Baby, Baby Charbonneau.’
‘I’m actually Carmel Portis. That’s what it says on my birth certificate. It quite clearly states that I am Carmel Portis.’
‘Baby, what is going on? Carmel, for Christ’s sake. Baby, Carmel, for fuck’s sake.’
‘Tripp, please. There’s no need.’
‘But you’re scaring me for Christ’s sake.’
‘There’s no need to be scared. You’ll be ok.’
There was no more mentioned for the next week. Then, it was a Wednesday when Rose had gone to school and Tripp off to his office, she called her deputy at the school, Rona Dent, and told her to take over for the duration. Rona Dent asked Baby if everything was ok and Baby said things were fine. She took her time over packing, making sure that she had all she might require during the first few days. She took a steak from the freezer, wrapped it in film and laid it on the bench. And then she had a long look round, room to room. At the cemetery, shereplaced the dead flowers on her parent’s grave and wiped the black marble with a cloth she had taken for the purpose.
*
Tripp and their daughter made all of the enquiries they could. In that, they were assisted by one of the town’s police officers whom he had called the following day. They were told to wait a day or two, told that people generally turned up again. But she didn’t. So, between them, what they found out was that between the cemetery and the railway station Baby had withdrawn five-thousand from their account. The teller, who knew her, said that other than for the large amount, there was nothing else strange. Then she stopped at Beauty Beauty and had her hair cut short and dyed from its natural brown to a bright red, going toward orange. The cutting and the dyeing had taken just over two hours, the girl who did the cutting and dyeing remembered it because she left a big tip.
From there, she had walked to the station with her one bag; none of the taxi firms had a record of such a fare at that time and there was no direct bus from the salon to the station. The ticket-clerk remembered the hair and the voice and the train. When pressed, she said that the woman with the orange hair may have seemed a little distracted but that she had been pleasant enough. She had, though, asked a strange question. She had asked what time the next train was and where it was going to. She seemed to have no particular destination in mind. It so happened to be the one-forty-eight to St. Lucas, a small resort on the north east coast, five hours away. The woman bought a one-way ticket.
They followed the trail. St. Lucas was a small town with only four hotels. She had signed in as Carmel Portis, but she had checked out three days before they arrived.
Ed Walsh is a writer of not yet published novels and occasionally published shorter fiction. He lives in the north-east of England.