careful every time I say anything he mightn’t like, or he sulks.
“Why does it matter to you that he sulks, Lucy?” Marian, the counsellor, was sitting opposite Lucy, listening carefully to the whole story. Martin had refused to come.
“He makes me feel wrong. As though I’m in charge of his happiness and I’ve spoiled it. Failed him somehow.”
“It sounds like you are having difficulties communicating properly. It would really help if Martin would come next time, but if he doesn’t, I can still help you to cope with the situation.”
“Don’t do that,” Trynor said to Marian’s guide, “We don’t want her to cope. We want her out. Can Marian do that?”
“She won’t always do it directly,” said Marian’s guide, who was sitting on the floor beside Marian, “but it often happens, when people realise what’s actually going on in their lives. Get your girl to keep coming, even if her husband won’t. After all, you only have to worry about her, you know.”
“You sound like a counsellor yourself.”
“Yes, don’t I? After all, I did go to nearly all the lectures on the counselling course. I could have passed the exams. Pity I can’t practise, just sit here trying to get across to people. Marian sometimes hears me, that’s fun.”
“Well, can you work on her hearing you and tell her to help Lucy realise what’s going on?”
“You sure you want her out?”
“Never surer.”
Lucy walked slowly up Grafton Street, thinking over what Marian had said and what she should do next. Three more visits on my own with Marian and then ask Martin again if he’ll come. I really don’t want this to fail, she thought. I have to have another baby. My gosh, what am I saying? Another baby? What on earth for? I have my girl and my boy - the gentleman’s family, they say. We can’t afford another, well I can’t afford another, not to mention taking time off to have it. And when would we conceive it anyway? He’s interested in me once every two months if I’m lucky. Or unlucky, seeing as it’s always for him and never for me, those drunken fumblings. But I have to try. I can’t just give up without trying.
“Don’t see why not. Plenty of people do, why should you have such high standards? Ruddy nuisance, you are, wanting to do your best all the time. Cut and run, Lucy, cut and run.”
Lucy broke into a trot and jogged her way up the street, weaving between the ambling crowds. At Stephen’s Green she stopped, a little puffed, and wondered why she was in a hurry. She walked more sedately across the road and went into the Green, passing the duck-pond on her way across to Earlsfort Terrace and the clinic, where Clodagh was holding the fort. As she did with Fuzz, Lucy envied the ducks their unconcern, their absorbing interest in the moment, as they upended in the endless search, as Beatrix Potter had put it, for their lost clothes. She smiled, remembering the picture of the guilty kittens being ticked off by their mother and then stopped smiling as she realised that that was the expression Martin had adopted when she had asked him to come to the counselling.
“I think he treats me like his mother. I realised last week, when I saw the ducks.” Lucy looked at Marian, glad she had explained. Marian looked a bit bewildered, not making any quick connection between ducks and filial piety.
“Tell me more about that,” she asked. So Lucy talked and as she did she began to realise things about herself as well as about Martin. How she had allowed herself to become the bread winner, ‘because I always want things to be right, and after all, I could earn money’. How she for reasons she could not explain, wanted to have another baby.
“But that is crazy. My marriage is terrible and I’m talking about babies. How can I even think it?”
“Maybe we will get your marriage better and Martin will get a better job and then you can have the time to have one. Let’s wait and see. You aren’t old, you have time to spare.”
“But if Martin won’t come to see you, how can it improve? He just looked hangdog at me when I said I’d been here and then talked about something else. I’ll try again, but I don’t know.”
“So, I thought I’d better come and put you straight.” Martin sat back in his chair and looked at Marian. He had