The Ballroom Café

by Ann O'Loughlin

  Ella stuck her head out the drawing-room French doors and called her. ‘Don’t overdo it, Debbie. Have you an admirer?’

  Debbie felt a blush rising in her.

  Ella got some fresh cloths and scouring pads from the press and they set off to the ballroom. Debbie got down on her knees and scrubbed the ballroom floor with a soapy steel pad, her trousers sodden with dirty water, her fingers red from the combination of the hot water and the frenetic scrubbing. When she finished polishing the oak floorboards, they looked as they had done when Ella’s great-grandaunt had had fine gatherings in the big room with a view. An invitation to such an evening was like gold dust; revellers were prepared to travel from as far away as Dublin to spend time at Roscarbury Hall.

  ‘We will have to ask Mulligan to put putty in the windows and give them a lick of paint,’ Ella said. As she finished polishing the ballroom’s bevelled glass, she spotted Muriel Hearty beetling up the avenue. ‘Well, I knew it would not take her long.’

  Roberta also saw Muriel come up the driveway and up the steps to the front door. She pushed her hip flask deep in her handbag and stayed out of sight in the side library. But Muriel Hearty knew her way around Roscarbury Hall and rapped on the window. She waved, forcing Roberta to fix a smile on her face and go to the front door.

  ‘Roberta, how are you?’ Muriel Hearty shot into the hall before she was even invited. ‘Well now, what has been happening here? I even thought the garden looked all spruced up. Are ye expecting important visitors or what?’

  ‘Haven’t you arrived, Muriel?’ Roberta said, making her visitor beam with pleasure. ‘How are things at the post office?’ she added.

  ‘Oh, you know, up and down. Gerry O’Hare keeps getting letters from the Revenue. Don’t know what all that is about.’

  ‘Aren’t we lucky we don’t get much post or you would be able to tell us what is happening in our lives as well.’

  Muriel giggled uncomfortably. ‘Ah sure, I mean no harm. Actually, I am here because there is a huge parcel delivery, several boxes, coming out of Gorey for Ella.’

  ‘Of course, I would know nothing about that.’

  The two women listened as they heard Ella clumping down the stairs.

  ‘I will leave you to it,’ Roberta said as her sister arrived in the hallway.

  ‘Ella there is a delivery coming in from Gorey for you. You are going to have to get Gerry O’Hare to collect it,’ Muriel said, already peering up the staircase.

  ‘Muriel, you could have phoned. There was no need to come out of your way like this.’

  ‘Ah sure, the fresh air is good for me. Now tell me, some in town say you are setting up a bed and breakfast and others say an even bigger restaurant. Which is it?’

  ‘A café, Muriel, in the old ballroom on the first floor, and in the garden in the summer. Come on up and I will show you.’

  Muriel made a straight line for the stairs, eager to see at first hand the goings-on at Roscarbury Hall.

  ‘Have you heard that Tom Mason’s wife has left him?’ She did not wait for an answer. ‘Just packed her bags last night and said she had found a new man, who could love her, and off she went. I believe he opened the butcher shop as normal, though when I went to get a bit of steak I saw he was putting a lot of oomph into the cleaver chopping.’

  Ella did not say anything, but led the way down the long corridor to the ballroom door. ‘It is still a bit of a mess, but we are getting there.’

  She opened the door. The floor dazzled and the windows sparkled, throwing light onto the two tables, set up in red and white.

  ‘Now let’s sit and have some tea,’ Ella said, directing Muriel to a seat by the window.

  ‘Well, haven’t ye done a fine job? I can see myself having a lot of cuppas here. What a great place for a chat.’

  ‘And a gossip,’ Ella added, though she tried to dilute the barbed tone of her voice.

  Debbie appeared with a pot of tea for two and ginger cake cut into neat squares, a dab of cream on the side.

  ‘I could get used to this,’ Muriel laughed.

  ‘Tell me more about Tom Mason. I always thought he and Tricia were happy.’

  ‘So did all of us, and I think so did the fool Tom Mason. She won’t get better than a butcher. Sure, people eat meat in good times and bad.’

  ‘She hardly married him for the meat,’ Ella said.

  ‘Well, the lad she has gone off with is younger than her. They say he is a mature student, whatever that is. I wonder what he saw in her. For God’s sake, Ella, she is in her sixties if she is a day. She must be mad, throwing up a good man like Tom Mason. So good he never asked her once to help out in the shop. He said a lady of her gentility should not have to look at dead animals. What I wouldn’t give for a man like that.’

  Ella did not answer, but Muriel continued regardless.

  ‘You know what will happen. That young man will throw her over next month or maybe next year and that saint of a butcher, the fool, will take her back. Well, I for one will never talk to her again. She can buy her stamps somewhere else.’

  ‘They might be in love,’ Ella said.

  They sat quietly for a moment, each in their own way envious of the butcher’s wife.

  ‘It will come to no good end. I know that for sure,’ Muriel snorted.

  ‘Maybe,’ Ella said.

  A van trundled up the driveway.

  ‘You are getting another delivery, Ella.’

  ‘A few pots of flowers to brighten up the front.’

  Behind the screen, Debbie slumped against the sink, her head down, pain gripping her insides, a sick feeling rising inside her. She pulled over a small stool and sat, her head resting on the cool stainless-steel rim of the sink, her body stiff with pain. Pulling deep breaths, she waited, hoping this episode would pass. She had only a few weeks left in this place; why she was wasting it helping set up the Ballroom Café, she simply did not know.

  9

  Bowling Green, October 1968

  Agnes had been missing exactly a month when Debbie’s birthday came along. They had a small cake with eight candles and she blew them out quickly, the pain in her heart too much that Mommy was not there. That morning she had got up and sat by the window until Rob called her, taking her into such a tight bear hug she could feel the well of grief inside him. When he produced the cake, she loved him because he remembered and because he was so strong for her.

  It was the first year there was not the usual trouble around her birthday.

  Every other year an agitation infused Agnes, who became crotchety and cross with her daughter. Debbie only picked up on the tension as she approached her fifth birthday.

  For weeks she pestered Agnes about a party. She thought of cake and balloons and her mother happy and beautiful. Mary Power’s mother had baked and iced a cake to look exactly like their house, with Mary waving from the top window.

  ‘If we try to do that it will look a mess, because your father never bothers about the upkeep of the house.’

  Agnes surely griped a lot more, her mouth contorted, her eyes narrow, but Debbie did not listen. She tuned in for the last bit, which came loud and clear.

  ‘You can forget about a party this year. I am just not up to it.’

  She went upstairs to lie down and was still there when her husband came home from work. The house was quiet; his daughter was sitting, her arms folded, at the kitchen table.

  ‘What’s wrong, baby face?’

  Debbie threw herself at him and began to sob.

  ‘Hey, hey, what could be so bad?’ He took out his handkerchief and dabbed her eyes gently.

  ‘Mommy says I can’t have a birthday party and I’ve told everybody at school I’m going to have the best party ever.’

  ‘I’m sure Mommy didn’t mean that exactly. Let me go and talk to her.’ He tucked her up in a blanket with a plate of cookies in front of the TV.

  She waited until she heard him go into the bedroom before tiptoeing up the stairs.

&n
bsp; ‘Aggie, you can’t do this to her. She is only four, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘“I want, I want, I want.” I’m not running myself ragged over this.’

  ‘Aggie, she’s excited. Remember when she was born? We were so happy.’

  There was a loud crash. When she looked through the keyhole, Debbie saw her father ducking down by the dressing table; the mirror was smashed and a lamp was lying on the floor broken.

  ‘Aggie, have you taken leave of your senses?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about when she was born. Where were you?’

  ‘You know I couldn’t be there. We’ve been happy, haven’t we, all these years?’

  ‘Happy. Is this what you call happiness?’

  ‘Aggie, don’t say things you’ll regret later.’

  ‘It’s what I feel.’

  ‘Aggie.’

  Rob made to go to his wife, but she shouted at him. ‘You always take her side. I will not change my mind. That is the end of the party talk.’

  ‘All right, all right. I’ll talk to Nancy.’

  ‘Aren’t we so lucky to have Nancy?’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘You’re good at that, Rob Kading,’ she shouted at his back.

  Debbie raced down the stairs, but her father saw her slip across the hall to the sitting room. He stopped to give her time to settle herself in front of the TV before entering the room.

  ‘Baby face, why don’t we do something totally different? Five is a big birthday, big enough for a party away from the house.’

  ‘Where will we go?’

  ‘Let me chat to the folks in Ed’s Diner.’

  She smiled at him. His face was a grey colour and the frown on his forehead made him look old. He cooked fried eggs for their tea and made a big thing of explaining that Mommy was tired and needed to rest.

  ‘Don’t worry about your birthday. We’ll have a great party,’ he said with a jolly smile she wanted to believe.

  ‘Will Mommy come to my birthday?’

  ‘Of course, darling, Mommy would love to go to your birthday.’

  Agnes stayed in her room all evening; even when Debbie was going to bed and lingered at the doorway she did not turn from her position, curled up in a tight ball and facing the wall.

  ‘She might be asleep. Let’s leave her,’ Rob said, gently guiding his daughter to her bedroom. He stayed with her until she fell asleep.

  When he checked on his wife, she threw a hairbrush at him. Out on the porch, he sat on his rocking chair and unscrewed the bottle of Jack Daniel’s he had been saving for an occasion. He did not bother with a glass, but swigged from the neck.

  When Debbie woke in the early hours, she did not know at first why her legs and sheet were wet. She called her mother; she did not come. Afraid to disturb Agnes, she went looking for her father and found him asleep on the rocking chair on the veranda; a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s still in his hands. He did not wake when she softly called his name. Yanking the bottle from his grip, she grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard. He rose up from the chair with such ferocity that it rocked violently. The bottle fell from her hands; Debbie shrank back into the shadows, afraid.

  As he wiped the sleep slobber from around his mouth, Rob Kading saw his daughter cowering by the sitting-room windowsill.

  ‘Little darling, I’m sorry if I frightened you. Daddy didn’t mean to.’ He held out his hands to her and she ran to him. ‘It’s not the whole party thing, is it?

  She could only whisper in his ear.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. That’s easily sorted.’

  He led her by the hand and she helped him take off the wet sheet and turn over the mattress. After they had tucked in a new sheet, he sat Debbie on the bed and helped her change into a fresh nightdress.

  ‘We don’t need to tell Mommy about this.’

  She nodded with relief and closed her eyes, the smell of whiskey from her father in her nostrils.

  When Agnes got up the next morning, it was as if her outburst of the evening before had not taken place. She cooked pancakes for breakfast, stacking them high, humming a jaunty tune. Rob winked at Debbie, and it made her happy.

  *

  At the gates of Roscarbury Hall, Debbie stopped to check her make-up and dot concealer under her eyes. The dark patches were only a little muted, but she figured Ella would be too jittery to notice. Ella was standing nervously at the front door when she rounded the bend in the driveway.

  ‘I did not sleep a wink. My stupid ideas. I should never have gone this big. I am sure I have baked too much. It will be a terrible waste.’ She stopped to look at Debbie. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit peaky.’

  ‘Hard time sleeping, too.’

  Ella gave her an odd look, but Iris, screaming from upstairs, made them take the stairs two at a time. The café looked like a sauna, white steam puffing across the room.

  ‘I am nearly scalded with this coffee machine,’ Iris shouted.

  Ella shouted to open some windows as she ran to switch off the machine. ‘Iris, stick to the garden or the washing-up. All you had to do was turn the dial.’

  ‘I only wanted to sneak a cappuccino.’ Iris stopped Ella’s hand moving for a china cup. ‘I need a mug; I am so nervous.’

  The steam dissipated, clearing to the corners. Debbie, checking out the windows, saw as many as twenty coming in the gate. When they had got past the bank of rhododendron, she took Ella by the hand and pointed to the group flowing towards the house.

  ‘My good lord in heaven, I am not going to have enough to feed them. I don’t even know some of them.’ Her voice was shaking, a tear rolling down her face. ‘Do I look all right?’

  Debbie nodded. Reaching over, she opened two buttons at the top of Ella’s cream blouse and loosened her golden hair from behind her ears. ‘Now you look great,’ she said.

  Ella, pink on the cheeks, was embarrassed but felt ridiculously happy.

  ‘I don’t want to meet any of that crowd. Time for me to exit,’ Iris said, rushing down the stairs and outside to the kitchen garden.

  Muriel Hearty led the charge. She had not just spread the word about the café; she had promised more.

  ‘They have opened up the old house. Sure, we have to have a look. No stranger was ever allowed past the downstairs before,’ she babbled on to anyone who would listen.

  Many went to gawp. Those who thought they might find some clues as to the tragic history were disappointed but seduced, instead, by the flowing fountain and garden rills, the view from the café windows, and both Ella and a quiet American behind the counter.

  Ella patrolled the garden tables and the aisles of the Ballroom Café, personally checking with each customer if they were happy. At one stage, Roberta swept by to hand her sister a red note.

  Are you happy now the whole of Rathsorney has come to gawk? Don’t take this as a measure of your success but as a level of the notoriety of the O’Callaghan sisters still. You have had your fun. For pity’s sake, stop now. R.

  Ella took the pencil from its place balanced at her ear and wrote a reply, holding it out at eye level so her sister could scan it.

  The Ballroom Café stays open. Like I said, put up or ship out. E.

  By lunchtime, all the scones were gone and people sat inside and outside with tea and coffee and slices of cake. To make everything go further, Ella had to halve the slices of cake, but nobody seemed to notice, so enchanted were they by the delicate china and the faded elegance of the old house. When the last person left, at four o’clock, Ella shut the hall door and asked Iris to put a closed sign on the main gate. Debbie had already started the washing-up.

  ‘Leave that, dear; your feet must be killing you.’

  ‘I want to get along.’

  ‘Sounds like you have plans.’

  She saw her shoulders hunch up, a shiver of tears making Debbie stoop further over the sink.

  ‘Debbie, what is wrong? Has someone said something to you? Those women can be awful
cruel: they don’t mean it, but they are vicious gossips.’

  Debbie turned, her face patched red from crying. ‘It’s not the women. Everybody was perfectly nice to me.’

  ‘Darling, what is it?’ Ella put her arm around her shoulders, steering her to a small table for two.

  ‘It’s my birthday today. I lost my dad recently. Silly, really, at my age to be so caught up on a birthday.’

  ‘You poor thing! I would not have had you working if I had known.’

  Debbie snorted her tears loudly, so Ella patted her gently on the shoulder as she reached into the cupboard under the sink for a bottle of Baileys.

  ‘I was going to put some in the whipped cream, but I thought why bother wasting it on the gossips of Rathsorney.’

  She took down two small china cups, delicate blue flowers mossed in and topped with gold rims, pouring a generous measure into each. Whipping a chocolate muffin from the cake stand, she stuck a lighted match in it.

  ‘Blow it out, quick, before we blow up the place. Happy birthday.’

  Debbie blew hard and the match toppled onto the table. ‘Thank you for being so kind.’

  ‘Drink up; it will warm you up and leave a sweet taste. Tell me about your dad.’

  Debbie took a gulp from her teacup. ‘He was always there for me. My mom … she hasn’t been in my life for a long time. Dad passed away a short while ago; there’s nothing much to tell.’

  ‘Not easy. In time, the memories themselves will bring you comfort.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Ella got the bottle and topped up the teacups.

  ‘Do you have children, Ella?’

  ‘Yes … My girl died a long time ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘She drowned at the harbour; she was only a baby. We have to take what life throws at us.’

  Debbie did not know what to say. She could hear herself breathing. They sat as the light began to dull, sipping from the china cups; there was no need to talk.