Finishing Touches

by Patricia Scanlan

  ‘Thanks a million for putting up with me,’ Aileen bubbled as they left the shop, clutching her purchases to her bosom. ‘I was really starting to get desperate.’

  ‘So were we!’ Laura said drily, and laughed at the expression on Aileen’s face. ‘Only joking, honey!’ she teased.

  ‘I think we should have a quick cuppa and then go solo for half an hour,’ Cassie suggested, leading the way upstairs into Woolworth’s café.

  ‘They do real fat sausages in here. I think I’ll have some,’ Laura mused. It was a long time since breakfast and the cream slices earlier on had been only a snack.

  ‘More sausages!’ Aileen exclaimed. ‘OK, we’ll have a plate of sausage and chips between us,’ she said firmly. ‘I want you to be able to eat my fantastic dinner!’

  By four-thirty, weary but triumphant, they headed for the car-park. As well as getting all their decorations, they had managed quite a bit of Christmas shopping. The air had turned very chilly and they could see the carol-singers’ breath as they lustily sang ‘Silent Night’ to an appreciative crowd outside Arnotts. The Christmas lights twinkled against the dusky-pink sky and people pushed their way along the crowded street. Henry Street at Christmastime had an atmosphere all of its own and Cassie loved the hustle and bustle of it, and the women of Moore Street singing, ‘Five for twenty the Christmas wrapping paper!’ and ‘Get your Cheeky Charlies!’

  Their chanting brought back childhood memories to Cassie as she followed Aileen and Laura. When the children were small, her parents had always brought them into Dublin for a treat just before Christmas, and even now, years later, she could still remember the great sense of awe and excitement she had felt as a child. In those days when crime was not rampant, none of the shops had shutters on the windows. Jack and Nora would walk the length of O’Connell Street and Henry Street with five open-mouthed children in their wake, gazing through shop windows at the wondrous displays of toys and fancy goods. The illuminated Christmas trees along O’Connell Street and the lights strung across Henry Street gave a fairytale illusion of another world. Trying to make up one’s mind about what to ask Santa for when there was such an array of goodies to choose from was part of the excitement. John and Martin, in particular, changed their minds every shop window they came to.

  Then, on their return home, having stopped for the treat of treats, fish and chips out of Macari’s chipper, the Jordans would all sit down at the big dining-table and Nora would hand out pens and paper. The next hour would be spent writing and rewriting the precious letters to Santa Claus. All five epistles would be ceremoniously placed in the chimney, which was especially cleaned for the occasion. The excitement when all the letters were found to have disappeared the following morning was indescribable. If she had one wish, Cassie thought, as she gazed at the good-humoured pandemonium around her, it was to be a child just once more and to be in Henry Street with Jack and Nora and the others on a crisp frosty night before Christmas.

  ‘Come on! Stop dawdling! We’ve to collect the tree,’ Aileen reminded her, pushing forward through the crowds like Queen Boadicea heading to battle.

  They arrived back at the flat with the tree sticking out through both rear windows of the Mini and Laura and Cassie perched precariously on the front seat, trying to avoid the pine-needled branches. Aileen’s dote of a tree had turned out to be a fat little bush.

  An hour later, Aileen, fortifying herself with cooking sherry, serenaded them with ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ as she prepared their repast. Cassie and Laura were struggling with the unruly little tree. Try as they might, they could not get it to stand straight in the bucket of soil. Like a dipso, it kept toppling sideways. ‘I’ll fix you!’ muttered Laura grimly, marching out past the singing Aileen to the backyard. Locating a sturdy piece of wood, she went back in and rammed it up against the base of the tree. That did the trick.

  ‘That deserves a drink!’ Cassie approved, busy putting a plug on the lights.

  ‘Hear! Hear!’ cheered Aileen, appearing with the sherry bottle in one hand and the wine bottle in the other and a holly wreath on her head. ‘Take your pick!’

  ‘Aileen O’Shaughnessy, you are the limit!’ laughed Laura. The smells wafting from the kitchen were mouth-watering but Aileen just smirked as they begged to know what was for dinner. ‘Wait and see!’ She disappeared to her domain and the girls got down to the serious business of decorating. Everything was going to plan and Laura and Cassie were thrilled with their artistic endeavours.

  Twenty minutes later a horrified shriek emanated from the kitchen and Cassie and Laura rushed in to find the frying-pan simmering under a froth of bubbles as Aileen rent the air with every curse in her wide and varied vocabulary.

  ‘What did you do?’ the girls shrieked in unison.

  ‘I thought it was the drum of salt!’ wailed Aileen, ‘and it was the washing-up liquid! My beautiful dinner is ruined!’

  Cassie caught Laura’s gaze. They stared at each other and then they were laughing, laughing until the tears ran down their cheeks, clutching their sides as they howled with mirth at the sight of Aileen aghast in front of her bubbling frying-pan.

  ‘It’s not funny!’ Aileen shrieked in outrage. ‘The chicken is ruined!’ This only made the other pair laugh louder. ‘Well, you can starve then!’ she retorted, beginning to laugh in spite of herself.

  ‘That’s the best laugh I’ve ever had,’ gasped Cassie, wiping her eyes five minutes later. ‘This is one of your star turns, O’Shaughnessy.’

  ‘Glad you enjoyed it,’ giggled the now-recovered Aileen. ‘We’ll have to use the rent money to buy dinner!’

  By ten-thirty, the flat was decorated to their satisfaction, the windows with snow and red tape – Cassie’s idea – the tree a masterpiece of twinkling lights, sparkling balls and glittering tinsel. Holly adorned the pictures and a huge spray of mistletoe hung from the lightshade. They had wrapped the Christmas presents they had bought and these lay under the tree, artistically arranged by Cassie, who was good at such things. She had wrapped the bucket holding the tree in silver foil and it caught the reflection of the lights in a shimmer. A small crib was placed on top of the television.

  Sitting in the firelight, with just the glow of the fairy lights to illuminate the room, the girls tucked into the fish and chips that Aileen had fetched for them. Another bottle of wine helped to ease the trauma of the ruined dinner and they were thoroughly enjoying their evening at home together.

  Lifting her glass, Cassie smiled at her two best friends. ‘To our first Christmas in the flat and to many more to come!’

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ smiled Laura, lifting her glass.

  ‘And many happy returns,’ grinned Aileen, as she clinked her glass with theirs.

  Sixteen

  Cassie and Aileen had gone to bed but Laura was busy writing her Christmas cards. Sitting on the floor in front of the still-red fire, she gazed around the decorated room with pleasure. She hadn’t wanted to go to bed; it was too nice sitting in the gentle glow of the Christmas tree lights. The difference the decorations made to the room! It had been a real treat for her to decorate the room today. In fact the whole day had been a treat. Laura wasn’t used to such a fuss being made about Christmas.

  At home they didn’t bother much about decorating. Oh they got a turkey and pudding, but most of the day was spent in front of the TV and the only decorations were a few bits of holly and whatever cards the family received. Peter didn’t believe in decorating Christmas trees.

  At home as the days got nearer Christmas, things would get tenser and tenser. Her elder brother would be arriving home drunk every evening. Her maternal grandmother would be coming to stay for Christmas as usual, and Peter would be making nasty remarks about being lumped with his mother-in-law yet again, and Laura’s mother would become pale and pinched-looking as the tension mounted and she longed for the whole awful carry-on to be over as quickly as possible.

  For as long as she could remember, Laura had hated Christm
as. There had always been rows. Rows between her mother and father, rows between her grandmother and father, and then, when her brother had started drinking, rows with him. This year she was spending only Christmas Day at home and then she was coming back to the peace of this little flat on St Stephen’s Day. Cassie and Aileen were both spending Christmas and St Stephen’s Day in Port Mahon, so she would be the only one here. But she didn’t care. She just couldn’t cope with home any longer. It was so wearying and soul-destroying hearing the same old arguments and then listening to her mother moaning bitterly about it all.

  How many times had Laura told her to put her foot down and demand to be treated with respect? How many times had she told her to tell one of her sisters to take her grandmother for a change? How many times had she told her to kick her brother out of the house and make him stand on his own two feet? He might think twice about coming home paralytic with drink and puking all over the place if he had to clean up after himself and take responsibility for his actions.

  Every year Anne Quinn gave out about her husband, mother and son making Christmas a misery for her and every year Laura told her to do something about it. This year, she had even suggested that her mother spend Christmas in the flat with her and to hell with the other three. Laura thought it was the perfect solution. It would really give the others something to think about and perhaps finally make them realize that Anne was no longer prepared to be a doormat. But her mother had refused the offer.

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ Anne responded limply. ‘It wouldn’t be fair – and besides, what would people say?’

  ‘Who cares what they say? And why wouldn’t it be fair?’ Laura retorted vehemently, feeling so angry with her mother she wanted to shake her. ‘Is it fair the way you’re treated year after year? For God’s sake, Ma, stand up for yourself and make them respect you.’

  Anne just shrugged her shoulders listlessly. ‘Sure, they take no notice anyway of anything I say or do or want,’ was invariably the defeatist response.

  If her mother would only make some small move in the right direction Laura would give her every encouragement but that whiny, resigned acceptance of her lot infuriated her so much she frequently had to bite her tongue when listening to her mother’s complaints.

  Well, she’d go home on Christmas Day and that would be her duty done and then she’d get the hell out of that pathetic household and come back to Dublin and the lovely new life she was carving out for herself.

  Laura stared into the glowing embers. She was creating a new life for herself, and very nice it was too. She thoroughly enjoyed university life, being part of the student body, participating in debates, joining the different societies, drinking gallons of coffee in the huge cafeteria while arguing points of law with her classmates, studying in the huge library with hundreds of others, all bonded by the common desire to get their exams and make their mark on the world. Campus life was a joy to Laura, unlike some of her peers who found the place vast, soulless and lonely. Life at UCD was what you made of it and Laura Quinn was making the very best of it.

  As well as her academic life, she had her working life. In order to make ends meet with her grant she always had to have part-time jobs. Still, it was all going to plan. If only she could secure a really good degree! That was all she cared about at the moment. A good degree would mean a good job, and a good job would mean security and independence. They were her top priorities.

  Setting her alarm for the crack of dawn, Laura snuggled down in her cosy bed and fell asleep.

  Aileen tossed and turned, unable to go to sleep. In spite of her bedsocks her feet were freezing and she was very loath to get up and reheat her hot-water bottle. Cassie slept like a baby in the other bed. And so she might, thought Aileen enviously. Cassie deserved to sleep soundly. She wasn’t making a bags of her life like her best friend was.

  Aileen sighed deeply. Today had been a good day, a great day actually, apart from the ruined dinner. But that had only added to the fun. The other pair had roared laughing although Aileen was raging with herself. She had really wanted to cook them a nice dinner. She didn’t do much cooking, not even when it was her turn on the rota. She would far prefer to hoover or polish and it often ended up that she did Laura’s chores for her while Laura did her cooking.

  Living in the flat with the girls was a joy, all she had ever thought it would be. It was such a relief to get away from Port Mahon and her clinging, demanding mother. Her poor sister, Judy, was really feeling the brunt of it now and Aileen had warned her to make the break when her time came. Honestly, mothers could be such a problem sometimes. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Angela; of course she did. And she had a lot for which to be grateful to her. But Angela overdid the poor helpless widow and Aileen had got weary of it. Even if Cassie and Laura hadn’t come to live in Dublin, Aileen would have come on her own. Her mother had tried so much to smother her when she was growing up that she had felt utterly trapped. At least now she could live some sort of a life of her own.

  Come the New Year she was going to have to do something about that life, she decided restlessly. She was going to have to do something about her job, number one.

  Aileen found her job stultifyingly boring. Every morning she signed in at nine, went to her dingy little cubbyhole and began to arrange the invoices and receipts that were brought across from the main office. There were hundreds . . . thousands of them – pink forms, green forms, white forms, duplicates, triplicates. These were filed downstairs in the huge brown-and-cream windowless room where she spent half her time. At eleven she had a fifteen-minute tea-break with the cleaner, Mrs Hardy. If it weren’t for Mrs Hardy she would have gone completely mad.

  ‘Himself has a hangover and it serves the miserable old git right. He’s the crankiest old bastard I’ve ever met,’ she informed Aileen the previous day. She was referring to their esteemed staff officer and immediate superior. Mrs Hardy always referred to Mr Alden as ‘himself.’

  ‘I know I shouldn’t be talking about him behind his back when he isn’t here to offend himself, but I think he’s a bit too fond of his drop, if you know what I mean.’

  Aileen had to struggle to keep her face straight when she heard Mrs Hardy coming out with ‘offend himself.’ She had been working in the office only two days when Mrs Hardy told her that the girl who had worked there previously had gone to work in Zomby Araby. Mystified, Aileen had later learnt that the girl had gone to work for an oil company in Saudi Arabia. Mrs Hardy and her malapropisms were the only light in Aileen’s otherwise dull as ditchwater day. At eleven-fifteen precisely the boss would come down for his tea and Aileen would return to her filing until one o’clock, when she would sign the attendance book and go for lunch until two-fifteen. Then it was back to the grindstone. The afternoons were spent typing, a routine broken only by a fifteen-minute tea-break at three-fifteen. At 5 p.m. she signed herself out and knew that the next day and the day after that would be exactly the same. It was the most soul-destroying thought, and she knew for a fact that her promotional prospects were pretty hopeless. There were scores more like her in the Corporation and getting promoted was something that took years. You could work hard for your pay or, like her boss, you could do feck all, it didn’t matter. You still got paid your cheque every fortnight. It was desperately hard to motivate yourself, and Aileen was beginning to lose the battle. She knew of people who had done the same job for years and years. Well, she wasn’t going to be one of them. She wanted out.

  Then there was her love-life! Aileen’s brow furrowed in the dark. Trust her to go and complicate her life by falling for someone like Liam Flynn. If only she could bring herself to talk to the girls about him. It would be such a relief to confide in them about this man who had come into her life and turned it upside-down, bringing her to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Many times she had almost blurted out the whole story but, afraid of what they might think of her, she had bitten her tongue. She had never kept anything from Cassie and Laura before and it
troubled her deeply. After all, they were her best friends and always there, come hell or high water. She would tell them in the New Year, seek their advice perhaps, although she knew before asking what their advice would be.

  She wasn’t looking forward much to Christmas. No woman in her position would be, she thought glumly pulling the sheets up under her ears. She wished she were lying in Liam’s arms. She’d be warm all over then, she reflected drowsily, as her eyes began to close.

  Cassie had gone to bed tired out after their long eventful day. She had thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it and the flat looked really nice and festive. It had been lovely to spend an evening with the girls as their evenings together were few and far between, what with Laura and her part-time jobs and study and Aileen with her amateur dramatics and the mysterious Liam Flynn.

  She was kept busy with her extra-mural computer course and her participation in Allied Isles’ social club. She had joined the basketball club, basketball having been her favourite sport at school, and tomorrow she was due to play a match in Killester against a team from one of their banking rivals. She was looking forward to it immensely. If there was one thing she enjoyed, it was a good vigorous game of basketball.

  She couldn’t say she was exactly looking forward to Christmas. It would be nice to spend time with the family and she was looking forward to giving them all the presents she had bought them, but home still felt very lonely without Jack and it was twice as hard at Christmas. All she could do was think of the good times ahead. Once Christmas was over, the three of them were going to get dozens of holiday brochures and pore over them to decide where they were going to spend that much-desired first holiday abroad together. She was also going to start an evening course in interior design. It was something she had always wanted to do and there were quite a few courses on offer in the city. So that would be something to look forward to. She was also going to paint and decorate the flat, with the landlord’s permission. He had told the girls they could have two weeks rent-free and that he would supply the materials if they wanted to decorate. He wasn’t a bad old stick really. He owned about six houses around the city that he had let in flats, and drove a big BMW, but behind it all he was decent enough and they knew if they were in a fix as regards locking themselves out, he would always help.