Night Swimming by Doreen Finn

Author:Doreen Finn
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781781177006
Publisher: Mercier Press
Published: 2019-05-03T04:00:00+00:00

20

Sarah made curtains. Proper curtains with lining and intricate hemming. She kept her sewing machine in the dining room, which we only ever used for dining in at Christmas, or if there were people over. It was an old machine, a Singer, and she kept it under a dust cover when it wasn’t in use. The folding doors that divided the front room from the dining room had been opened when the weather got warm and hadn’t been closed since. It kept the flow of air moving, especially when the windows were open.

Now, Sarah had an order for six pairs of curtains. A woman from Rathmines had asked her to make them for her, so Sarah had taken over the dining room. Great swathes of fabric surrounded her. Tiny boxes of pins and foil sheets of needles were always within arm’s reach. She used the collar of her blouse as a holding place for needles and pins, their razor-fine sharpness winking in the sunlight like some kind of modernist brooch. As though Picasso had designed it, Gemma remarked, laughing.

My mother was laughing a lot. Sarah was happy for her. ‘A bit of sunshine does everyone a world of good,’ she said, as I stood beside her, holding out a length of heavy velvet while she measured it, wrote feet and inches down in her notebook, moved the measuring tape further along the fabric.

I wasn’t so sure it was the sunshine, though it was good to see Gemma happy. She used to be like that all the time, when she was young, Sarah said. Full of life. She was still full of life, Sarah had added, possibly discerning something in my face. It’s just different being a mother, that’s all. The responsibility makes you more serious, more aware of all that can go wrong. ‘You’ll see that when you have your own children,’ she added, taking the velvet from my outstretched hands and folding it carefully.

The thought of having my own children at that time was as foreign to me as space travel. Some girls in my class already spoke of being mothers, but I couldn’t imagine it. I wanted to do lots of things first. What, exactly, I had no idea, but I knew there were many things I would experience. Mostly, they took on the unfocused shape of dreams, these ideas of mine, but I would do them. Being someone’s mother wasn’t top of my list, wasn’t even on my list. Few mothers I knew gave me the impression that motherhood was anything but drudgery and sacrifice. Children weren’t important, not really. There were too many of them, of us, too many mouths always open for food, talking too much, making demands, fighting. Mothers seemed to prefer the company of other mothers, talking over garden walls, outside supermarkets, in groups at the school gates. Often, they smoked cigarettes, laughed and said things like I wish or if only or chance would be a fine thing. I had no inkling

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