The Women of Primrose Square

by Claudia Carroll

  Wow, she thought. Her mother certainly didn’t do things in half measures. Emily had been entirely airbrushed out of her own family. Dead Girl Walking.

  ‘Now, will you leave quietly?’ her mother asked in a softer voice, ‘or do you want to cause another scene?’

  Emily needed no persuasion. She felt like she’d been smacked right across the face – the exact same sensation. So without another word, she turned on her heel and stumbled her way out, aware that the pensioner card players were watching her every move. She left, walked across the grass you weren’t supposed to walk on, then out through the main gates.

  She wasn’t a crier. Not even when her dad died could she shed a single tear. Course, everyone said that was a guilty conscience on her part, but that was only part of it. Tears didn’t come naturally to Emily; she’d almost forgotten how to be emotive. For years she numbed all emotion with booze – but she didn’t have that security blanket anymore.

  It was a good half hour and two buses later before she could think clearly again. Then she rang the one person she knew had to listen to her.

  ‘Hey, there you are,’ Leon said, as soon as he answered. ‘How goes the day?’

  ‘I can’t do this,’ Emily said shakily. ‘This Step Eight lark. It’s too painful. I tried and it was vile and awful and a huge mistake, so that’s it, I’m over and out.’

  ‘Then try again. Try harder. Fail better.’

  ‘Jesus, Leon, I’ve never needed a drink so badly in my whole life. I need vodka and I need it now. Just a small one. And I’ll stop after that, I promise.’

  ‘Stay exactly where you are,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way.’

  Violet

  In spite of herself, Violet was beginning to develop an irritated fondness for Frank Woods. If one discarded the fact that he was clearly unhinged – because what man in his sane mind would possibly wish to dress up in ladies’ clothing? That consideration aside though, Mr Frank Woods was proving to be perfectly acceptable as a paying guest. Considerate. Tidy. And regularly including Violet in his dinner plans whenever he cooked at home, which thankfully was frequently.

  A frightening amount of her new-found rental income had been swallowed up by outstanding bills, workmen to come and reconnect her boiler, an electrician to fix her faulty fuse box, and suchlike. Tradespeople, Violet’s father Freddie would have sniffed, she thought with a harrumph. Back in the day, such callers wouldn’t even have been permitted to enter the house through the front door.

  ‘That’s what the basement door is for,’ Father used to say. Even builders who her father had started out with, even his own cousins who all worked as painters and decorators, weren’t allowed in through the grand front door that looked out over Primrose Square.

  If Violet concentrated and focused her mind hard enough, she could still see her father’s tall, proud outline standing in the downstairs hallway, dressed in the good three-piece suit he wore for Sunday Mass, checking his pocket fob watch against the grandfather clock in the hall, to make sure both were perfectly synchronised.

  What would you make of this, Father? she often wondered. The house he was so proud of and had put so much money into, now a crumbling, decaying wreck with rising damp on the walls and most of his good furniture auctioned off years ago for cash. Freddie Hardcastle would have spun in his grave at the thought of paying guests lodging at his house. Back in his time, the likes of Madam Emily Dunne wouldn’t have been permitted to cross the threshold – either through the front door or the tradesman’s entrance.

  Frank Woods, however, was at least proving to be a gentleman. Night after night, he would gently rap on the drawing room door to ask Violet if she’d care for some chicken casserole, perhaps, or a delightful lasagne he often rustled up. Violet was invariably starving but would feign lack of appetite until Frank gently asked a second and even a third time.

  ‘Well, if you insist,’ she’d say, and minutes later, she’d be sitting down to a proper, nourishing home-cooked meal – every single one delicious. No one had cooked for her like this in years. Not since she was a young girl.

  ‘So, Emily seems nice,’ he said to her over a particularly good dinner one evening. ‘Although, I think very possibly not a morning person.’

  ‘Emily Dunne?’ Violet said, her fork frozen in mid-air.

  ‘She’s out just now,’ Frank went on, dishing up lamb chops and mint sauce, ‘so should I leave some dinner in the fridge for her? Then she can have it later when she gets back.’

  ‘Don’t dream of doing any such thing,’ Violet said sternly.

  ‘I just thought it might be nice . . .’

  ‘Out of the question,’ Violet said crisply. ‘Emily Dunne is a rude, malicious little madam and she certainly doesn’t deserve lamb chops. Did you know that’s she’s actually just been released from—’

  ‘Probably kinder not to judge,’ Frank gently interrupted.

  For the life of her, Violet completely failed to comprehend why. She infinitely preferred people who judged just a little bit.

  That blip aside, though, Violet thought later, as she tucked herself up under her patchwork eiderdown quilt for the night, Frank Woods was proving to be perfectly satisfactory as a house lodger. She’d treated him to one of Bach’s preludes on the pianoforte after dinner that evening, and he’d nodded along most enthusiastically. Best of all, Emily Dunne stayed out of the way for most of the evening, though God alone knew where she was. Doubtlessly off with that gentleman caller of hers. The one with the array of tattoos. Well, good riddance to her. The last thing Violet would have wanted was the likes of Emily Dunne shattering the peace of her lovely evening with Frank.

  Violet heard the little rip coming home at well after 11 p.m., slamming the hall door behind her, then thudding up the stairs loudly enough to wake the dead.

  Miss Emily Dunne, she thought crossly, would most certainly be receiving one of her handwritten missives the following morning. And if Violet ever caught her using one of her royal family mugs, there’d be merry hell to pay.

  *

  Trust that interfering do-gooder to go and ruin everything. Jayne Dawson, Primrose Square’s very own resident bleeding-heart liberal.

  ‘It’s so wonderful to see you and Frank bonding so well,’ Jayne said, cutting two slices of chocolate biscuit cake and handing over a generous piece to Violet. She’d come round to run a few errands and had brought the cake with her, knowing it was Violet’s favourite. The two ladies were sitting down to tea at the kitchen table, with the cake neatly laid out on the special plates Violet had bought to celebrate the late Queen Mother’s one hundredth birthday.

  ‘Eric was just saying it’s heartening when two souls from different generations connect so beautifully,’ Jayne chatted away. ‘It’s often a past life thing, Eric was telling me.’

  Ordinarily Violet would have gobbled up the chocolate biscuit cake in a single helping, but this time she paused, wondering where exactly Jayne was going with this. Violet was no great fan of Jayne’s second husband – a new age hippy from Florida, if you could believe that. Ever since they’d got married the previous year, it was all ‘Eric this’ and ‘Eric that’. But if you saw the state of this Eric fella, Violet thought, you’d run a country mile. Honestly, the man dressed head to toe in snow white. In Dublin. Even in winter. He looked like one of those idiots who ought to shave his head and bang a tambourine up and down Grafton Street, instead of irritating Violet with his second-hand opinions on her new lodger.

  Past lives indeed.

  ‘I don’t see how this is any of your fancy man’s concern,’ Violet said, taking a sip of her tea. That was how Violet signified her strong disapproval of Eric; whenever she was in Jayne’s company, she constantly referred to him as ‘your fancy man’. Never, ever as ‘your husband’ or, Lord forbid, by his Christian name.

  Not that Jayne even seemed to notice, she was so away with the fairies these days.

  Just look at her sitting at my kitchen table, Violet thought, in h
er baby pink tracksuit with a pair of rubber-soled shoes in a shade of neon pink no one over the age of three had a right to be seen in. ‘Trainers’, as Jayne referred to them. Trying to look and act like a teenager when she was well over seventy years of age.

  ‘It’s so lovely for you to have company, Vi.’ Jayne smiled. ‘I often used to worry about you here on your own. I know before I met Eric, I hated rattling about a house this size, all on my lonesome.’

  ‘That’s because, unlike me, you didn’t grow up in a fine house like this,’ Violet said haughtily. ‘It’s hardly my fault if your family came from a Corporation estate, now is it?’

  Jayne took a sip of tea and let the insult whizz over her head. There was a long, measured pause before she spoke again, as if she was choosing her words very, very carefully.

  ‘Frank has just turned fifty,’ she eventually said.

  ‘And what’s that got to do with anything?’ Violet said imperiously.

  ‘Well, it’s just that he’d be exactly the same age as . . .’

  Violet glared back at her over her teacup. ‘As whom?’ she said, sounding deadly calm. ‘To whom can you possibly be referring, Jayne Dawson?’

  ‘Oh come on, love,’ Jayne said gently. ‘You know exactly who I mean. We’re old friends, Vi. We have no secrets.’

  Violet took her time before she deigned to answer. ‘I have absolutely no idea whom you can possibly be alluding to. And if you had the slightest bit of breeding in you, you’d appreciate that now would be an appropriate time for a change of subject.’

  Jayne sighed, then reached across the kitchen table and took Violet’s thin, bony hand in hers.

  ‘Honesty in all things,’ she said. ‘That’s what Eric always advises.’

  ‘Do you have to keep droning on about your fancy man?’ said Violet sourly. ‘It’s terribly boring.’

  ‘Eric says that when we miss out on a part of our life,’ Jayne went on, ‘we often go back to reclaim it.’

  ‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘All I meant,’ Jayne replied, ‘is that if you ever felt like you missed out on . . . well, you know . . . on a whole lot of things over the years, well . . . then there’s no need to anymore, is there? Because you’re having a special relationship with Frank now. Which is wonderful,’ she added, seeing Violet’s face slowly turn a furious shade of crimson.

  ‘And what, according to you,’ Violet said, drawing herself up tall, even though she was sitting stock still, ‘is it that I missed out on throughout the course of my life?’

  ‘Oh Violet, come on, don’t be like this. You know right well what I’m talking about.’

  ‘I most certainly do not.’

  ‘Vi, please. You don’t need to pretend with me of all people. I was there. I know.’

  Violet stood up as if she’d been electrocuted. There was a scarily long pause before she could answer. Instead, she fumbled around for her walking stick in stony silence, as Jayne bit her lip.

  ‘I’ll thank you to get out of my house right now, Jayne Dawson,’ Violet said, in a low, calm voice, her arthritic hands shaking with anger.

  ‘Please don’t be angry,’ Jayne said. ‘You know the last thing I’d ever want to do is upset you.’

  ‘Just leave,’ Violet said coldly.

  ‘Times have changed, you know,’ Jayne tried to say, as Violet stood at the kitchen door, rapping her walking stick impatiently off the floor. ‘People are so much more open about the past now. It’s OK to talk about these things, Vi. Everyone understands.’

  ‘I already asked you to go,’ was Violet’s icy response. ‘Are you stone deaf as well? And you can take that revolting cake with you.’

  Emily

  Emily had known some long nights of the soul in her time, but nothing, absolutely nothing, compared with this.

  The following day, she stayed holed up in her room with her head under the duvet for as long as she possibly could, ignoring her hatchet-faced landlady hammering on the door. It was only when Violet threatened to have the door broken down unless she made herself scarce, that Emily eventually hauled herself out of bed and out of the house. Then she managed to kill most of the afternoon on a park bench in Primrose Square, until her pal Susan got back from work later that evening. The sheer sense of relief she got when she saw Susan’s slim, petite outline coming around the corner of Pearce Street on her way home was overwhelming.

  The two women saw each other most evenings, talking, gossiping, going for long, relaxing strolls through the square in the cool evening air, then maybe slipping back to Susan’s for a barbeque dinner.

  But that particular night, Emily needed her friend more than anything.

  They sat side by side on a rattan sofa in Susan’s south-facing back garden as the sun set. For once, they didn’t bother going out onto Primrose Square. Here, they had peace and real privacy to talk.

  ‘You poor thing,’ Susan said, when Emily told the sorry tale of her visit to her mother the previous day. ‘I can’t imagine how that must have felt for you.’

  ‘Worst part of all, though,’ said Emily, ‘was that my first, instantaneous response was to reach for a drink. Literally the only thing I could think about was knocking back a very large vodka. All those months of being sober, all that time I spent trying to get sober – I’d have undone it all in five minutes, for the sake of getting my hands on one, single drink.’

  ‘But you didn’t, did you?’ said Susan, horrified.

  ‘No,’ Emily said, shaking her head. ‘No thanks to me, though. Full credit to Leon, my sponsor, for that.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  Emily sat back and squinted up at the dying sun. ‘He dropped everything,’ she said, pulling her fleece jumper tighter around her, almost as if to comfort herself. ‘He’d been out in his taxi and zipped straight over to meet me. He even stayed on the phone the whole time until he picked me up. Then he took me to McDonald’s in town, bought me a strong coffee and let me rant at him till I got it all off my chest.’

  And boy, had Emily ranted. All the pain and humiliation she’d felt at her mother’s outright rejection of her came tumbling out.

  ‘I know I deserve no less,’ she’d kept saying to Leon, ‘but Jesus Christ, this hurts. It really fucking hurts. I’ve only got one parent left on this earth and all I tried to do was make amends to her and I can’t even do that much right.’

  Emily hadn’t cried in front of Leon, but she’d been bloody close to tears. And all the while, he sat patiently and listened.

  ‘I want a drink,’ she told him honestly. ‘Just one. And that’ll be it. I promise. I just need to steady my nerves and I’ll never drink again. I swear.’

  At that, Leon had sat forward and gently took her hand.

  ‘You don’t,’ he said quietly. ‘Trust me, a drink is the very last thing you want at this moment in time. This is just the craving, and this too will pass.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for Leon,’ Emily said now, turning back to Susan, ‘I honestly don’t know what I’d have done. He dropped me home afterwards and called me first thing this morning and . . . he’s turning out to be such a rock. You have no idea.’

  There was a long, thoughtful pause.

  ‘I know it’s none of my business,’ Susan eventually said. ‘But if it’s not too personal, can I ask you something?’

  ‘You and me have no secrets,’ Emily said, savouring the quiet and stillness of Susan’s back yard. The calm after the storm.

  ‘Why drink?’ Susan asked. ‘I mean, what started you off drinking in the first place? I know you were just a teenager, but . . .’

  ‘But . . . I have the bad luck to have been born with an addictive personality,’ Emily finished the sentence for her. ‘I know, some people are lucky enough to be able to drink in moderation, but a very long time in therapy has taught me that I’m not one of those people. It’s all or nothing with me, and not just when it comes to drinking, either. It’
s not enough for me to have just one vodka and tonic – I want the whole bottle. Then, of course, the more you drink, the more it takes to get properly drunk, so without knowing it, bam! You’re trapped in a vicious circle. That’s me, that’s my pattern. And somehow, I have to learn to live with that.

  ‘My dad drank too, you know,’ she said. ‘It was perfectly normal in our house to have bottles of wine on the table at meals and to see Dad passed out in an armchair with an empty bottle of whiskey beside him at night. I’m not making excuses,’ she added. ‘It’s just that they say a lot of it can be genetic. There is alcoholism in my family, and I was unlucky enough to inherit the gene. Dad was a functioning alcoholic, though; he was able to drink heavily, and yet sustain a family and hold down a job. I couldn’t do either.

  ‘I started drinking young too,’ she said, as Susan listened intently. ‘Filching booze from my dad’s drinks cabinet when I was a teenager, that sort of thing. Mind you, I was always the wild child at home; my sister Sadie was the perfect one and I could tell even at that age that both my parents infinitely preferred her to me. So, what did I do? I drank to make the pain of that go away. I had it under control for a while when I met Alec, and when we first got married, but once he and I broke up, that was it, I couldn’t control it anymore. Tried and failed. So, from here on in begins a lifetime of vigilance. And that, my friend, is the price of sobriety.’

  *

  Hours later, Primrose Square was dark and deserted as Emily strode through it in almost pitch darkness. But it was peaceful and soothing to hear the gentle breeze blowing through the sycamore trees that lined the square, and it made a welcome change to have the whole place to herself. It was past 11 p.m. and apart from one lone woman walking two very yappy dogs, she was all alone with her thoughts.

  Had she been on the drink, she thought, she’d doubtless have climbed the fence into the kid’s playground area, screaming and yelling her head off as she whizzed around on the roundabout and high-kicked it on the swings. Old Emily wouldn’t have given a shite if she’d woken every single neighbour within a two-mile radius – but the new, sober her was very different. More respectful. Considerate. And even though she couldn’t stand Miss Violet Hardcastle, the last thing Emily would have wanted was to disturb that quiet, mousey fella, Frank what’s-his-name, the guy who looked a bit like a frightened gerbil.