A History of Running Away

by Paula McGrath

Genres: Literary Fiction; Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Book of the Year in the Irish Times 'A wonderful storyteller' Joseph O'Connor On the quays of Dublin, Jasmine is running, training for a fight she can't compete in. It's 1982 and boxing is illegal for girls. For Jasmine boxing is everything: after running away from home, and narrowly escaping a risky situation in London, it is all she has to claim as her own. But with a legal fight impossible, and a ghost from her past on her trail, where can it end? A History of Running Away is a brilliantly written novel about growing up, starting over and learning to fight for yourself.

Release date: June 15, 2017

Publisher: John Murray

Print pages: 256

Sample

Dublin, 2012

She is beginning to think this meeting will never end. Round and round they go, though they must know they won’t reach any conclusions. How could they? The law is the law, and unless it changes, all they can do is what they’ve always done: their best. God, would Sean ever shut up. He doesn’t have the details; no one does. It’s all speculation. Would have, could have, should have. So much for his scientific training.

She tunes him out. The strips of sky between the vertical blinds have darkened as rainclouds gather in the late afternoon. It’s looking unlikely that it will hold off until tonight, as forecast. If they would only finish up here, she might manage to get her run in before it starts. But it is her professional experience that meetings are not about coming to conclusions. Rather, they act as safety valves, where frustrations can be expressed to prevent them being expressed in less appropriate circumstances. Unfortunately, a lot of hot air gets released in the process. It’s always the same one or two, the ones who love to hear themselves speak. She’s never understood it herself. When her opinion is sought, or when she has one to express, she states it succinctly, so much so that her contributions to the minutes have become a standing joke: a page from Sean, followed by one line from her.

—It could be our turn tomorrow. Then what? We’re still none the wiser on where we stand. We don’t want to get caught up in a scenario like that, dragged through the legal system. If the legal system itself doesn’t know what it wants, how are we supposed to know?

On and on. This latest medical scandal is a very real concern, and it has her on edge as much as the rest of her colleagues. Morale is low, and more and more staff are requesting time off for anxiety-related illness. But more than worry, what she is feeling is guilt. NMP, one of her patients told her yesterday, when her breakfast tray slipped accidentally, dousing the bedclothes in tea and cornflakes. She had to ask what it meant: Not My Problem, the new mother told her – as, in fact, propped up in her bed feeding her infant, it was not. And increasingly it looks as if this current debate will not be her problem for much longer: Ken’s email arrived this morning.

 

A heads-up to let you know the job is yours. Offer in the post. Hoping you will be leading the team very soon, K.

 

Ken, Jeffrey’s protégé. She doesn’t appreciate his little insider’s heads-up. Even the term grates.

—We do need clarity, she agrees, when she realises Sean is looking at her. But her attempt to show support backfires, and he launches into lengthy agreement with his own argument. She sits back in resignation, maintaining the neutral expression she has perfected over decades of dealing with the same topic, behind which she hides her impatience with the futility of his tirade, and her urgent desire to walk out on the whole pointless debate. But she hasn’t made up her mind if she can go as far as to leave the country.

A sudden spattering against the windowpane announces the rain, and by the time she escapes it’s coming down hard. It’s not just the meeting that has her on edge, it’s also Jeffrey. A long-distance relationship was always going to be unsettling. Though if she’s honest, her current restlessness preceded Jeffrey. Somewhere in the past year, the life she had been content with for a long time had begun to feel as if it was not enough. Or too much. And it makes her feel like an idiot that she doesn’t know which. Like sometimes when she’s running, and for a panicky moment she doesn’t know whether she’s inhaling or exhaling. Perhaps she even agreed to Jeffrey’s attentions more readily than she might otherwise because of it. Now there was a new, anxiety-provoking thought.

She hails a taxi, and just as she’s climbing in and trying to close both her umbrella and the door at the same time, her phone rings. She’s ages fumbling in her bag before she finds it. It’s Jeffrey, the man she’s planning on spending her life with, but somehow the thought of a conversation with him exhausts her. That can’t be right. By the time she swipes from green to red, it has stopped. Oh well, she excuses herself, she’ll get back to him once she gets home.

Besides, she knows what he will have wanted, and by the time she gets home it will be too late. Have the taxi take you to the airport instead, I’ll send a driver to pick you up at this end. Everything is so easy for Jeffrey. But it’s unfair of him to complicate her guilt like this; he knows how she spends her evenings. Once, she let herself be persuaded. She phoned the home and explained that she had an unexpected work commitment – she didn’t know why she didn’t just tell the truth – and left it to Ana, the Filipina nurse, to soothe her conscience. Don’t worry. We will explain. She won’t even know. She had gone to London, where Jeffrey went out of his way to spoil her with oysters and champagne, and impossible-to-get tickets to the opening night of the play everyone was talking about, he said. But she couldn’t relax, and in the end she flew back to Dublin on the Saturday evening, wasting the tickets. She felt bad, but there was no getting around the facts: she was all her mother had.

The rain is coming down in sheets now. The driver has the wipers going full speed.

—You can drop me at the gate, she tells him, as they draw closer to the nursing home.

She researched for weeks, following up on every promising lead and recommendation from colleagues with at least two visits, until she settled on this one. It’s the best place for Alzheimer’s, and they do everything they can to make her mother comfortable. But still her visits leave her feeling disappointed, as if somehow everything can be blamed on her because of her choice of institution. Each evening, she finds her mother propped in an armchair, not quite looking at the wall-mounted TV permanently on low in the background. Her heavily sedated state is for her own safety, after the lightbulb incident: her mother had apparently unscrewed a lightbulb and crushed it in her hand, then smeared the broken glass across her face and tried to rub it into her skin, like a moisturiser. The carer on duty had been alerted by the screams of another patient. Luckily, the cuts were superficial, and had healed well.

—Are you sure? the driver asks.

—I’m sure.

She needs the air.

She makes a run for it, pushing her umbrella open as she goes but getting drenched anyway, so that, just for a moment, it’s a relief to get indoors. Then the sudden heat jolts her back, into the home. She checks in with Sheila, as always, then seeks out the duty nurse to get a detailed update. She examines her mother’s chart carefully, though there is rarely any variation. When she can postpone it no longer, she goes in.

Her mother doesn’t recognise her; she doesn’t even register the fact that she has a visitor, so there is little to do once she has smoothed down the throw. She says hello to May’s visitors, and walks over to look out the window. May’s family is always happy to make small talk, but in the pause after the initial observations on the weather, or the shortening of the evenings, or the heavy traffic, everyone remembers why they are there. This evening they all agree that it’s a dirty evening, and that the rain is the proper, wet kind. Then she turns to her mother and fusses over her slippers, while May’s daughter rustles up a newspaper and begins to read bits out. She likes to keep up with the news, they’ve told her many times. May is just as sedated as her mother, so it’s highly unlikely. But she mustn’t presume. No one really knows what May, or her mother, is aware of. After one or two articles, clearly chosen for their lightness of content, May’s visitors leave, but she can hear them out in the corridor, where they stand for ages chatting.

Eventually, she gets up to leave too. But just as she reaches the door, her mother says something, which is an almost unprecedented occurrence. It’s a mumble, as if she is talking to herself, but audible nonetheless. There you are, off running again when someone needs you. This, from her mother who has not been cogent for decades – first from drink, then dementia – her mother who knows nothing about running, and who certainly doesn’t know about the job in London. No one does, except the board and Jeffrey. For goodness sake, she hasn’t even received the official offer yet. And when she does, she hasn’t decided what she will do.

—What did you say, Mam? she asks. Unfairly. She knows what she said, and she knows that there is no point in asking her to repeat it. Sure enough, her mother has resumed her staring off into whatever unreachable realm she usually inhabits, and there is no repeat of the words, or any words, though she waits for several minutes longer. When finally she leaves, and slips past the close group of May’s family, she is suddenly envious of the simple comfort of their numbers.

In the visitors’ toilet, she takes her running gear and rolled-up backpack out of her Longchamp bag. She puts on leggings, T-shirt, visibility vest and runners, then she puts her neatly folded suit and blouse, shoes and her now-folded bag into the backpack. Quite the routine, Jeffrey said, when she told him about it. She couldn’t gauge his tone.

She has a book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, one of the few she owns that’s not a textbook, which she returns to again and again like a Bible. Running is the closest she comes to religion, the one thread that is woven through her entire adult life. Sometimes she thinks it’s what keeps her going. When she slips the straps of her pack over her shoulders it feels as if she is putting on wings. She walks through the front doors of the home, barely able to contain herself until she has rounded the bend in the driveway, then breaks into a run.

But there is too much getting in the way for her usual sense of peace to kick in. May’s visitors had left the newspaper lying on a chair, with its cover photograph of the beautiful woman who had died, perhaps because doctors were not allowed to help her; it’s what this afternoon’s meeting was about, and what they’re all full of at work: the mothers, the midwives, security and visitors, as well as her colleagues. They’re all talking about it in the UK too, Jeffrey told her. Such a stupid death, such hypocrisy, they’re saying, and they know all about it over there, since they are the ones who have to deal with it. She is professionally embarrassed, and much more. Isn’t it shocking, May’s daughter had said as she put the paper down, and they had all nodded, helplessly. She can’t remember if her mother glanced at it before she spoke. Was this what she had meant? She tries to reassure herself that she did not apply for the new job because it’s only a matter of time before it happens in her own hospital. She tries to suppress an instinct that tells her this is the very reason she should stay. Off running. Was that the same as running off? Of course, her mother has long been a stranger to reason, and it was highly likely that her strange little speech meant nothing at all. Or meant something else entirely; between them, after all, there was a history of running away.

Maryland, 2012

The deck chair is close to tipping point, but I straighten my knees another fraction until I’m leaning right over the gap between the pier and the boat. I perfected this art of hovering between land and water when I was a kid. Though I fell in plenty of times too. Maxie passes the fat joint he’s been rolling and I reach for it carefully; at this angle, the least movement is all it takes, and the water below is black and greasy. I take a toke. What’s the plan? Maxie wants to know, and I see him glance at the urn on the ground next to me as he asks. I inspect the joint, hoping it might offer some kind of answer, but the tip just smoulders and the ash hangs there, suspended. I bring the feet of the chair back down, right as the ash falls. I hand the joint back.

—Tell you the truth, Maxie, I don’t exactly have a plan.

—You want any help with . . .?

—You did plenty already, you know, coming with me to . . . and everything . . .

I don’t exactly have the vocabulary for this conversation, but Maxie’s nodding like he gets it anyway.

—Do you think she’d like if I took the boat out in the bay and, you know, sprinkled . . .?

Mom liked to get out on the water as often as she could. But it was also what she did whenever there was something she needed to figure out, some problem to solve. Or when we got in a fight about something. Let’s take it out on the water, she’d say, meaning the disagreement as much as the boat. By the time we got back we forgot what it was even about, because out there you have to work together, and you’re way too busy to fight. But it’s more than that. It’s how helpless you are in your little boat against the hugeness of the ocean, makes all the other stuff seem, I don’t know, trivial.

But Maxie shrugs at what I’m suggesting. I get why he’s not into it. It’s because Mom wasn’t into making big deals out of stuff. She sure as hell didn’t leave instructions for this eventuality. In the movies, dead people already have music and poems picked out. Always seemed control-freaky to me, but hey, what do I know? Maybe I’ll do all that shit myself when I get old. But it wasn’t Mom’s thing.

—No relatives?

—Not that I know.

Maxie lets that one sit there. Most of the long-timers down here have stuff they either don’t know, don’t want to know, or don’t want you to know. Which amounts to the same thing. You don’t pry.

—Well, that simplifies things, he says finally.

—I guess so.

Neither of us says anything for a while. Which is cool.

—All right, Ali Baba. He hauls himself up. —You just let me know if you need anything.

—I don’t need anything, I tell his retreating back as he shuffles off up the slipway.

It’s true. I’ve been here alone plenty of times before. And apart from that first night, when Maxie and Jess refused to leave me by myself, I’ve been staying on the boat alone. The trick is not to think too much, because no amount of thinking can change what happened. And nothing could’ve prevented it, either, because Mom would never have wanted to live anywhere but the boat. That makes it easier.

But this morning was way tough. I didn’t see it coming; I figured seeing her in the morgue was as bad as it could get, all yellow and swollen, not even close to what she really looked like, except it was definitely her. I ran out of there and ugly-cried all the way back to the marina in Maxie’s car. But this morning was even worse. Just a handful of us in some room that was not a church but was like one, all soft music and those big, stinking lilies that she hated. She’d of preferred to open all the windows and let the air in. Then I remembered the coffin, and how she was right at that moment being shoved into a furnace and burned. That’s when I had kind of a meltdown. Maxie got me out into the parking lot where we hung out by his car smoking weed until I was able to calm down.

I’m okay now. I can handle it. I just have to figure out what to do with her ashes. I’m thinking I’ll put the urn below deck, at least for starters, and I’m dragging myself up out of my chair when I notice the car pull up. It’s not a fancy marina by a long shot, and we don’t get cars like this one too often. It’s long and shiny and black, and the driver has wound down his window to talk to Maxie. Max can’t have told him much because he only stops for, like, two seconds, but when he’s leaving he glances towards me, like a sort of warning. I figure he’s got it wrong, because what would someone in a car like that want with me?

It takes them for ever to get out, and then I see why. One of them is an old woman with a walking frame, and the other one has a stick. The driver, who looks older than Maxie – and Maxie is old enough to be my granddad – is guiding them along the sidewalk and on to the pier. He’s clutching a folder under his arm, and he looks like he can’t decide which one of them needs the most attention, so he scurries back and forth between them. It’s kind of funny, so I stay where I am to watch, the old leading the ancient, all of them wearing expensive-looking black clothes, which look way too warm for the day.

Duh, the clothes were the clue, but I missed it. I even smile as they make their way towards me; Maxie was right, they are coming to see me. When the young-old guy spots me, he hurries ahead with his arm stuck out in front of him the whole way down to the boat.

—Philip Goldman, of Goldman, Zimmerman and Boyce, he announces when he gets close.

I say Hi, ignoring his hand until I hear what he has to say.

—We’re—

He checks on the ancients’ progress; they’re about halfway down the finger.

—We’re looking for Ms Alison Dougherty. Are you she?

I shake my head. He looks disbelieving.

—This is number 24, is it not?

I shrug, instinct kicking in too late to tell me to be wary. But he’s not about to be put off that easily. He leans back on his heels and squints at the slip number, which is just about visible on the board beside my chair.

—Twenty-four. It says it right here. Your friend agreed that you were Alison.

He says it like Maxie’s something unsavoury he has to hold away from his nose. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about all this. By now, his two companions have arrived. They look from him to me expectantly.

—Are you Alison Dougherty or not? he demands, losing patience.

—I am Alison, I am not Alison Dougherty, I tell him reluctantly.

The old lady can’t contain herself any longer. She edges her walker forward and peers into my face.

—Yes, yes. It’s her. She must use Delahunt, the mother’s name. You’re Alison Delahunt, aren’t you?

I nod. She seems to know everything anyway.

—I knew it, she says, sounding satisfied. —I am your grandmother, Moira Dougherty. And this is my husband, Richard, your grandfather.

I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know I had other grandparents. I guess Mom let me think that they had died somewhere down the line, like her parents had. Or had they, really? I’m starting to doubt all kinds of stuff when the guy with the folder clears his throat.

—I am under instruction . . .

He pulls a paper out of the folder and waves it, like I’m supposed to be able to read it like that. Then he’s talking a lot of stuff I don’t understand. The old pair look excited, or at least, she does. Old Richard looks like he’d prefer to be just about anywhere else. I know how he feels.

—Do you understand? he finally asks. He’s their attorney. I caught that part.

—No. Now if you’ll excuse me.

I need to get away from them. Something’s taken a turn, and I don’t like the sound of it. I pick up the urn, but I’m starting to feel like its contents are the cause of all my new problems. Your mother, he kept saying, while he waved his paper around. I caught a glimpse of a signature on it that I recognised. My mom, who liked to talk about living with nature, off nature, off the grid, but who, it seems, also had legal representation.

—You’re coming to live with us, the old lady cut in again.

I’m shaking my head as I step on to the boat deck.

—I live here.

The attorney intervenes again.

—You are a minor, and your mother has made provision. Your paternal grandparents are now your legal guardians.

—You’re crazy, I tell him. I’m not thinking straight, but I’m thinking straight enough to start untying the boat.

A shiny black shoe plants itself on to the rope.

—Hey!

—I’m afraid you must come with us. Now. The courts have already issued the order.

Rathlowney, 1982

She couldn’t empty her bank account in case Audrey, the cashier, told her mam, as unlikely as it was that she would bump into her, so she withdrew as much as she dared, and at the last minute she went through Mam’s bag and took another twenty pounds. She left a note on the hall table: By the time you read this I’ll be gone. It sounded like something off the telly when she read it back, but how else were you supposed to say it? She added another bit at the bottom. I’m going to stay with a cousin of a girl from school in England. I’ll ring when I get there. Jasmine.

There was no cousin, and no girl from school unless you counted Lisa Whelan, who at that very moment was down the road getting into her uniform. She thought of Lisa because her uncle had got her tickets for Top of the Pops. Jasmine, and everyone else in the class, tuned in that Thursday night to watch, and for a couple of seconds you could see her, swaying self-consciously to Blondie, in her yellow jumper and her gypsy skirt. But that wasn’t why she decided to go to England. It was what came next. ‘Night Fever’. It wasn’t really her thing, but the Bee Gees weren’t able to be there, David Jensen said, so Legs & Co. danced instead. That was what did it. Not that she wanted to dance like them – some of the moves were so corny you’d get laughed out of it if you tried them in the Rugby Club disco – it was the nerve of them. There they were, with their daft moves and their ridiculous see-through nighties with their silver knicker. . .