by Maeve Binchy
Rosie began to speak but her mother would have none of it.
‘And no, Rosie, I will not forget it. I’ve had a long day cleaning office floors, washing stains off table napkins, cleaning bathrooms and vacuuming long halls. I’m pleased that I got myself a few more hours stacking shelves. I never wondered before why I did it for years and still do it and face years more ahead doing it. But tonight I wonder. And since I get up at four in the morning, I think I’ll go to bed now where I can wonder more about it …’
‘Aw, Mam, don’t take it like that!’ Rosie called to her mother, who was already halfway up the stairs. There was no reply.
Rosie looked at her father.
‘I’m with your mother on this one,’ he said simply.
‘If you had wanted rent for the room, you should have asked,’ Rosie said. ‘We can’t all be inspired or something.’
‘Goodnight.’
Rosie had never seen her father’s face so closed, so unloving.
This had been some day. They must have a crisis meeting soon. Things were far from normal round here.
Chapter Five
They would have to have a council of war. Rosie knew that for certain. She went to her room and called Helen at Maud and Marco’s place.
‘We’re just sitting down to supper,’ Helen complained.
‘Lucky old you, there’s nothing to eat here.’
‘I know, Mam’s taken a real sort of turn over something. She wouldn’t even listen when I tried to tell her …’
Rosie decided she must interrupt or else she would be talking about Helen’s school trip for the rest of the night.
‘You’re right, she has taken a turn. But, wait for it, Dad says he’s with her on this. He just walked out of the room, and wouldn’t discuss it.’
‘Discuss what?’
‘They’re letting our room.’
‘She only says that – she doesn’t mean it.’ Helen sounded stunned.
‘She does mean it. I’ll be gone to London and she says you prefer to live with Maud and Marco … one empty room. Solution – let it to a lodger.’
‘Yes, maybe, but not forever, that wouldn’t be fair.’
‘Fair? Who wouldn’t it be fair on?’ Rosie asked.
‘Us!’ Helen said. ‘It’s our home.’
‘I don’t think that one’s going to work much longer,’ Rosie said.
‘Well, it mightn’t work for you. But then you have a home to go to and a husband who keeps coming around to ask you to come back. I have nowhere, nothing except a huge debt to a travel agency. I can’t afford anywhere to live.’
‘You’re twenty-two years old, and you have a teacher’s salary. Other teachers who are not from Dublin have places to live.’
‘Yes, but they don’t have big unfair debts to travel agencies.’
‘You only got that debt today.’
‘So what? I still have to pay it.’
‘We have to have a meeting, Helen.’
‘No we don’t, I have to go and have my supper. Mam and Dad more or less pushed me out of St Jarlath’s Crescent. I don’t want to be pushed out of here as well.’
‘I’ll round up Anthony and we’ll meet tomorrow.’
‘Where? At home?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Helen.’
‘Well, where then?’
‘I’ll think. I’ll text you,’ Rosie said.
‘Everything OK?’ Helen’s friend Maud asked as she served the pasta.
‘Don’t ask what’s all right and what’s not, let’s just eat!’ said Marco, smiling.
Oh, wouldn’t life be great if everyone was as easy-going as Marco and Maud, thought Helen. Perhaps it was unfair to expect Mam to put food on the table all that time, but as Dad said, it was their home.
And if the finger should be pointed, why was it at her? Helen was the only one of them earning a proper living. Anthony had never worked. Never. Rosie had gone and got married – that lasted ten minutes and then she was back hustling for victims in a shopping mall. At least Helen had studied, done her exams, trained as a teacher. They should be pleased with her, rather than suggesting she leave her room free. Last year at her graduation they had said they were so proud of her. Why weren’t they still proud? Why did they ask her to go away so that they could let her room? It was a mystery.
‘Stop frowning, Helen, you’ll get dreadful lines in your face and Rosie will drag you in to get them removed,’ Maud teased her.
‘Helen will never have dreadful lines on her face. Stop frightening her!’ Marco said. ‘She will be lucky like you were, Maud, and meet a marvellous Italian love …’ Marco put his arm around Maud’s neck. ‘She too will find a magical Italian for herself, just like you did!’
‘Oh, Marco!’ Maud pretended to be shocked. ‘You believe that a man is the solution for everything. You are ridiculous!’
Ronan said that he would drive Rosie to the airport.
‘I’m going for six weeks to London. I am a free person, leading a free life,’ she insisted.
‘I know that, Rosie. I am saving your bus fare, that’s all.’
‘My company will pay for that.’ She sounded more confident than she felt.
‘Let me save them the fare instead,’ he offered, rattling the car keys.
‘Oh no, I’d get nothing but how great everything was until I walked out. I don’t want one word about how good it was … It was hellish, that’s what it was.’
‘I don’t remember it as all bad,’ he said.
‘You don’t because you were out the whole time and I was cleaning the place and cooking for you and ironing. My God, the ironing of a clean shirt every day …’
‘I could do the ironing,’ Ronan said.
‘You could, you always could have, but did you? You never did. Never, not once.’
‘I would now.’
‘No, you’d do it for two days. Then you’d be off out again.’
‘Rosie, I went out to work, for you and for me. You knew that’s what I did. I never said I’d stay at home all day and play house.’
‘But you were never at home.’
‘I had to visit customers, I told you that you could come with me.’
‘Stand in pubs and be pawed by drunks? No thank you.’
‘But that’s my job, selling packets of snacks to pubs. Pubs – that’s where I work, Rosie. Be fair!’
‘Fair? I was very fair. You should know what some women would do, then you’d say I was fair. I walked away, said we’d made a mistake, that it wasn’t working. What’s unfair about that? It was the truth. We were fighting all the time.’
‘But we must have loved each other, to get married?’ Ronan was puzzled.
Rosie felt weary. ‘Listen, when I get back from London we will talk again, Ronan. Really we will. That’s if I have a place to lay my head. My mother is starting to turn my home into a guest house and is going to boot us all out.’
‘Why is that?’ Ronan liked his mother-in-law: it didn’t seem in her character to do such a thing.
‘I don’t know, money, I think.’
‘Well, why don’t you all pay her something?’
‘It’s our home, Ronan. You don’t pay at home.’
‘I did when I lived at home,’ Ronan said.
‘That’s because your family are half mad,’ Rosie said, but she felt uneasy.
Dee and Josie looked forward to going to see their client, Miss Mason.
Miss Mason told them that it was her sixty-fourth birthday. They both pretended to be amazed. In fact they had thought she was around eighty. Miss Mason looked so frail and didn’t go out to work. How could she be so young?
They made a fuss of her, slipped out and got a small cake and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ with their mugs of tea.
She clapped her hands and said it was all marvellous. She said that her niece Lily was coming to see her around teatime, so Josie and Dee prepared a little tea tray for the occasion.
Lily lived in the country but appare
ntly she was changing her plans. She was going to come and live in Dublin and she would be looking for somewhere to live. Dee and Josie had met Lily a few times. She was a tall, pale girl in a long cardigan, very fond of her aunt and always bringing her some well-chosen gift. A footstool, a magazine-rack for beside her chair, a really good reading light.
‘I could offer her a room in my house for a few weeks until she finds her feet,’ Dee suggested suddenly.
Josie’s jaw fell open. ‘But you don’t have a free room. St Jarlath’s Crescent – they’re all three-bedroom houses, aren’t they?’ she said to Dee, puzzled.
‘I do indeed have a room. Liam’s painting it today. It’s the girls’ old room.’
‘And where are the girls?’ Josie was finding Dee very hard to follow these days.
‘Rosie’s going to London to do a sales course in cosmetics.’
‘And Helen?’
‘She’s staying with a friend.’
‘Well now, wouldn’t that be great then?’ Josie was pleased to see things working out well for Dee.
‘So is there a room, Dee?’ Miss Mason wondered.
‘It would be simple, but she’d be very welcome.’
‘She’s a nurse, so she wouldn’t have a fortune, but she’d pay the going rate. I’d love her to stay with you, Dee. She’s a trusting girl and I feel like a mother to her. I don’t want her here because she’d be looking after me, not having a life of her own.’
‘We might be a bit dull for her.’
‘No, I want her to be safe as well. She’s been a home bird for too long.’
‘She’s your sister’s child, right?’
‘Yes, my sister Laura, that’s right. Lucky Laura they called her.’
‘Was she lucky?’ Dee asked. Miss Mason never talked about her sister at all.
‘She was. She got every single thing she ever wanted.’ There was a big sigh and no more information.
Dee busied herself and finished up. Miss Mason was sitting in her chair, still looking right in front of her.
‘I’ll be off now, Miss Mason. I have put my address on this note and my phone number. I’ll be at home this afternoon if your niece would like to come and see if it suits her.’
‘I’m sure she’ll love it, Dee.’ Her face was still sad.
As they got into Josie’s van, Dee wondered what was the story in Miss Mason’s family.
‘No love between the sisters there,’ Josie said.
‘She’s a nice girl, that Lily. I hope she’ll like the place.’
Lily loved the place.
‘What a beautiful room, all clean and shiny and with a window-box too! It’s beautiful, Mrs Nolan.’
‘I’m Dee and this is Liam. Do you really like it?’
‘It’s great – when can I move in? This weekend?’
‘The smell of paint should have gone by then,’ Liam said.
‘Then I’ll pay you a month in advance – is that all right?’ Lily offered.
‘Well, if you’re sure, here’s the house key,’ Dee said.
After Lily left, Dee showed Liam the money. He couldn’t believe it. They danced together around the kitchen. This was serious money. It meant they might make it through the difficult times. It might, it just might be all right.
Anthony came in and watched them for a while. Round and round they went. Then he sat down with his mobile to text his two sisters.
You asked me to tell you how things were going. Well, they couldn’t be worse. There’s been nothing to eat for three days, the house reeks of paint and turpentine and now they’re dancing around the kitchen. Dancing as if there was music. They’ve gone completely mad.
Anthony
Chapter Six
Lily had settled in very well, too well, Anthony thought. It was a different world at home nowadays.
He texted his sisters regularly about it all, but he felt that they hadn’t quite taken on board how serious it all was. And how very much life had altered – and not for the better.
Lily was a nurse at St Brigid’s hospital; she was gone at seven-thirty in the morning and made her own supper when she came back home. There was no sitting around the kitchen table these evenings. Dad and Mam were always busy, looking at maps of Sicily, painting some old back shed or helping Lily in the thrift shop where she worked a few nights a week.
Some days Lily visited her aunt, the one that Mam knew up in the posh flats. She liked to prepare a little supper for the two of them, she said. It was hard to describe her. She had a nice face like a Madonna: she could be any age – twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five. Impossible to say, really. She had straight fair hair, and she wore a long grey cardigan most of the time. She had her own shelf in the fridge with health foods and funny drinks made from beans or coconuts.
Mam said she was delighted with Lily. A nicer-mannered girl it would be hard to find, and even though she paid good rent she always played a part in the house. She slaved over the place at weekends. There she was now, out digging with Liam in the garden. She was even teaching them to play bridge. That was a very complicated game where you were meant to be telling your partner what you had in your hand but mainly you told them something baffling instead.
Helen and Rosie read these texts and were greatly confused by them.
Had Anthony gone mad? Mam and Dad playing bridge? Separate shelves in the fridge? It didn’t bode well for their return.
Helen had offered to pay Maud and Marco for staying in their house but they said no, not at all. She was a friend, she was only going to be there a couple of days, she must stay like any friend. So she thought she must contribute something – maybe bring them food, but then that was ridiculous since they ran a restaurant themselves.
She meant to think of something else they would like, but she was so busy. There was school work and the threats from the travel agency and the worrying reports from Anthony at home. There wasn’t a spare minute in the day until she would come in and flop down in front of a comforting plate of meatballs in tomato sauce or pasta with clams. She slept deeply in their small spare room and had a breakfast of salami, cheese and fresh crusty bread, which kept her going all day.
She meant to take them out for a treat at weekends but somehow that never worked out either. Their restaurant was so busy then, they were never free. And Helen was taking on extra classes teaching English to foreigners to meet the giant bill that she was going to have to pay to this devil travel agency. It was all very tiring, and these useless texts she got from Anthony made things worse.
At least Rosie had calmed down a bit since she had gone to London. She didn’t spend all her time attacking Ronan like she normally did. She didn’t complain about her high heels hurting her legs, and she said that London was very different.
She said that in every text. Helen was getting fed up with this word.
Anthony said home was different, and Rosie said London was different.
In her own life Helen found that things were just the same, with better breakfasts than back home, but the same problems about there being no men about that a sane woman would fancy. But why was everyone so busy talking about everything being different?
Helen sighed.
It would be wonderful to be in love like Maud and Marco were. They hardly had eyes for anyone else. They would laugh together and stroke each other in the restaurant kitchen before going out and being very professional in front of the customers. Back in the flat they would cuddle up together on a very small sofa and mumble at each other. Helen would go out sometimes and give them space; they were too polite to disappear and leave her there alone. It must be great to want somebody that much, Helen thought. So far in her life there had been nothing like that.
There were texts from Maud’s twin brother Simon. Maud would read them out.
Simon wrote of the rave reviews they had gathered in the restaurant where he worked. There were fancy groups who came in – politicians, film stars, business people. He told of the recipes that had been a hu
ge success, how they used seasonal ingredients, and how they had bookings six months ahead.
‘He sounds very cheerful,’ Helen said.
Helen had known Simon, of course, as he had grown up just down the street. He was more serious than Maud, a bit intense, she thought, but then he’d gone abroad and she hadn’t seen him since.
‘He has a very good job,’ Marco said approvingly.
‘He’s lonely as hell,’ Maud said firmly.
‘But look at all he says about how well he’s doing.’ Helen was puzzled.
‘A sign he’s homesick.’ Maud was very sure.
‘Well, no point in his coming back here at the moment,’ Helen said briskly. ‘Restaurants are closing at one a week or is it one a day?’ She looked at the stricken faces of Maud and Marco. ‘Not yours, of course,’ she said, too eagerly and too late.
The light had gone out of the evening.
Text from Rosie to Anthony and Helen:
I’ve been a week in London. The course is good and we learn a lot. It’s over at six. They don’t go for coffee or a drink or anything. Most of them live miles and miles away. I go back to the hotel. They allow me so much a day for my meals. I feel a bit silly in the dining room by myself every night so I have room service instead. You can’t go to the bar ’cos people think you are a hooker. It’s a bit odd. I read my notes. I watch telly. It wasn’t really meant to be like this, was it?
Love, Rosie
Text from Anthony to Helen and Rosie:
Glad to hear that you are having a great time in London, Rosie, and that you are fine with Maud and Marco, Helen. I have been very much out of things here. It’s not that Mam and Dad have gone off me or anything it’s just as if I am someone who came in from the street. They seem surprised to see me every day. There’s nothing to eat. They say, ‘Oh are you going to use the washing machine?’ as if I were going to fly to the moon. I get the sense that they are looking at my room. That Lily keeps saying that all the girls who nurse with her would just love to live in our house. I can’t think why. I have a few friends who are going to live in a big flat. I think I might well join them.
