The gathering - By Anne Enright Page 0,26

beautiful daughters in two beautiful bedrooms. Tall, no doubt, and clever. Who would attend their destined private school, and who would each be mapped, discussed, mulled over, well loved.

At least that was the plan.

‘And what happened then?’

‘Then we got married.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘Then we had you!’

‘Yes!!!’

And your father took one look at you and ran out the door. (And that is certainly not true. Look! he is still here.)

Tom was taught by the Jesuits–which explains it all, he says. He is very clear-sighted about the world, and yet he questions himself, constantly. He pushes himself hard, and is rarely satisfied. He is completely selfish, in other words, but in the poshest possible way. I look at him, a big, sexy streak of misery, with his face stuck in a glass of obscure Scotch, as he traces the watermark of failure that runs through his life, that is there on every page.

And when he looks at his children, I do not know what he sees. He loves them, but they are in his way. And, whether he loves me or not, I too am in his way. But he is wrong. I am not in his way. I never have been.

If this is a fight, then these are the facts: when Tom was starting out in his own business, and I had a small baby, I left that baby with a minder and worked day and night to keep up with the mortgage repayments. But when he began earning again, it was clear that his money was much more important than any money I might earn, that his job was an important job, that he couldn’t be expected to be doing pick-ups and Pampers and snot and drop-offs with so much importance around. And, eventually, I gave up work so that we would not be so much in his way.

But although these are the facts, they are not completely true. I don’t miss work, for example. Not in the slightest. Even now, I can’t believe I wasted so much of my life writing about heated towel rails. Endless words. About the difference between mulberry leather and tan. About oatmeal, cream, sandstone, slate.

This is how we used to live our lives.

I walk in the door after a terrible day at the office and kiss my husband, who is shattered after a day of work and baby-minding. Then I take Rebecca from him and change her nappy and put cream on the rash, and I fight with him about this, or about the empty fridge, or the washing-up, and somehow the baby gets put down and around half nine when she is finally asleep, I come downstairs and get a large glass of wine and bitch heartily about my boss, then I tidy up and drink a bit too much and stay up a bit too late. At half eleven Tom clears his work from the kitchen table and says, ‘Don’t stay up all night,’ and, after a while, I hang the dishcloth over the kitchen tap and go up to bed. I know how unhappy he is. There is no doubt that my husband is unhappy, but also excited with his new business, and surely the mess can not last. Other people have children. Other fathers do not feel, as he does, unmanned by it–by the lack of money and the mayhem, and the fact that there is no place here for his considerable charm.

I should allow him space for his considerable charm. I place my face against his back and reach around to cup the soft handful of his prick, because I have had a little too much wine, and I think he actually hates me now, I am so much to blame for it all.

And he either turns, or he doesn’t.

And in the gap I realise that he is having sex with someone else.

No. In the gap I remember how much he wanted to have sex with someone else, when that someone else was me.

A week after Liam’s funeral I look at my husband’s body. Asleep. Alive. I want to see all of it. It is a warm night. I take off the covers quickly, and he moves and is still again.

Tom is sad in his sleep. His hands are gathered under his chin, his legs are impossibly long and large, they do not look bent so much as broken at the knee. The hollow under his ribcage slopes to a little low, pot-belly and the cushion of his scrotum