Lizzie eats her slice and watches them saying exactly the right things to each other. Funny, how things work out. She left school after Leaving Cert and got a waitressing job in O’Gorman’s – just for the summer, to make a bit of cash for the year she was going to spend travelling with her friend Síle. Then she was going to come home and start working as a baker.
Baking is her passion. It’s all she ever wanted to do. From the time she realised that you could put together a lot of things that couldn’t be eaten on their own, and add a bit of heat, and produce something delicious, she was totally hooked, happiest up to her elbows in flour and surrounded by spices and bowls of beaten eggs, and little bags of sesame seeds and caraway seeds, and books with oven-temperature charts inside their front covers. She made her first Christmas cake at eleven, nearly delirious from the smell of fruit soaking in dark rum, and from then on Mammy never baked another one. Now Lizzie makes eight cakes every October, for various relatives and neighbours.
She has a stack of books beside her bed, and every one of them is totally dedicated to the art of baking. Each night she devours them, poring over the ingredients of cottage cheese dill bread, learning the difference between biscottentorte and tiramisu, licking her lips over summer berry strudel. She bakes as often as she can, whenever she and the kitchen are free at the same time. As well as keeping Mammy and Daddy well stocked up, Lizzie bakes for everyone else, too. When she goes to visit friends, she brings a cake; if the friends are married with children, they get a bag of cookies or buns. When Mrs Geraghty up the road had a stroke Lizzie visited her with a plate of light lemon squares. When Louise and Derry got engaged, they asked her to make a cake in the shape of a plane for the party; they’d met on board an Aer Lingus flight to Rome. To date she’s made cakes for six weddings, eleven christenings and countless birthdays.
When she started, she experimented all the time. She wanted to conquer the mysteries of baking – find the perfect temperature to rise yeast at, get the balance just right between sweet and tart in a strawberry rhubarb pie, stop those blasted cherries from sinking to the bottom of her fresh cherry cake. She had her share of disasters – every so often Jones would sniff at his bowl and wonder what on earth he was being dished up, or Daddy would be emptying the kitchen bin and discover a plastic bag that felt mushy and warm. But she learnt as she went along.
And the plan always was that one day she’d stand in her very own bakery, and people would make a special detour for a loaf of her four-cheese-and-onion bread, or a box of her triple chocolate chunk cookies, or a warmed slice of her Spanish tortilla tart. She’d have a little counter at one side where people could sit and eat, and she’d take orders for birthday cakes in the shape of racing cars, and wedding cakes with each tier a different recipe. And children would stand on the path and breathe in the aromas that wafted out, and beg their mothers for a bun. Oh, she had it all planned.
Except that, before she found a way to tell Mammy and Daddy that herself and Síle were heading off after the summer, Síle decided to go to college instead of Europe, and Lizzie couldn’t face the prospect of going alone. She thought she might as well stay on at O’Gorman’s while she decided what her next step should be; better to be earning a few quid than sitting at home doing nothing.
It simply didn’t occur to her to go ahead with the baking plan; she still yearned to see a bit of the world – she’d never been further than Dublin – and she knew that, once she started baking for a living, that’d be the end of her travel plans. So she whiled away the hours in O’Gorman’s imagining herself on a beach in Greece or picking grapes in France or climbing a mountain somewhere in Africa. She was desperate for a bit of excitement, but she couldn’t bring herself to make the break on her own.
On her way home from work after telling Julia O’Gorman that she could stay on for a while, Lizzie opened a savings account. She promised herself it was just till next spring; then she’d definitely take off – on her own if she had to.
But somehow it never happened. In the spring Julia made her head waitress, Monday to Friday, eight to four – this was before they started doing evening meals – with a series of teenagers to train in and keep an eye on, and a stream of regular customers who felt safe in the unchanging world of O’Gorman’s, where you had your dinner in the middle of the day and you went home to your tea. And Lizzie stayed on, because the longer she put off her round-the-world adventure, the further away from her it seemed to go.
She didn’t find anyone else to go travelling with – her friends were well settled into relationships, or had already moved away, or were in the middle of their studies – and when it came down to it, she just couldn’t face the notion of heading off alone. The furthest she got with her plan to become a baker was going around the three bakeries in Kilmorris and asking if they needed any help. None of them did, and she hadn’t a clue where to go from there.
And so it went. Occasional visits to the cinema, on her own or with whichever of her increasingly rare boyfriends happened to be on the scene; the odd coffee with one or other of her old pals who squeezed her in between ballet runs and music lessons; and evenings at home with Mammy and Daddy and crosswords and telly and Scrabble and how was your day and have some more cabbage, it’s not worth keeping this bit and I hate to throw it out and my knee was at me again last night and will you get some white pudding for the dinner.
And now here she is, engaged for the past eleven years to the son of her mother’s best friend, and still dreaming about becoming a baker. As she changes into her black skirt and white blouse after dinner, Lizzie suddenly thinks: Maybe it isn’t too late. What has she got to lose by giving it another go – finding out more about what steps she should be taking? Really, she gave up far too easily last time. She’s never even talked about it with Tony; by the time he arrived on the scene, her dream was well tucked away. But she’s so much more experienced now . . . Zipping up her skirt, she feels a flutter of hope. Maybe it isn’t too late.
As Tony walks her back to the restaurant, she decides to test the waters.
‘Darling, you know how much I like to bake.’
He looks indulgently at her, squeezes her shoulder. ‘I do, pet – and you’re great at it. Those cakes you make are really delicious.’
Lizzie smiles; so far, so good. ‘I’ve been thinking of going into it full-time – you know, making it my career. What would you think?’
He looks puzzled. ‘Full-time? But how could you do that, with your job at the restaurant? You’d never manage the two, pet.’
She shakes her head, still smiling. ‘No, of course I wouldn’t. I’d have to give up the restaurant – get a job in a bakery for a while, till I had enough experience to open up my own little place.’
Tony stops walking, turns her to face him. She looks up at his horrified face and feels her heart sinking. ‘Lizzie, love, you’re not serious. Tell me this is a joke.’
Her smile disappears. ‘What would be so terrible about it? It’s not as if O’Gorman’s would collapse without me – you could get any number of waitresses to do what I do.’ As she speaks, she feels something heavy settling around her.
He’s shaking his head slowly, hands on her arms. ‘Lizzie, love, that’s not the point. We’re getting married, or have you forgotten? You’ll be part of the family, part of the business. You can’t just walk out on it like that.’
She starts to speak, but he’s not finished. ‘Look, pet, it’s one thing to be able to turn out a nice cake or a loaf of bread, but it’s a whole other story to make a living out of it. What do you know about setting up your own business, hmm?’
She feels a stab of anger. ‘Well, obviously I’d have to –’
He interrupts her, hands still trapping her arms. ‘Look, pet, this is a crazy idea. You bake wonderful cakes; no one’s denying that. But you’re a waitress – an excellent one – and you’re marrying into a restaurant business. I think you need to get your priorities right here, Lizzie.’
Again s
he has to fight down a spurt of anger. ‘Tony, please don’t lecture me about where my priorities lie. I don’t see why my having a different career should in any way be seen as disloyal –’
He cuts in again, speaking slowly, in a way that makes her want to slap his face. ‘Look, love, all I’m saying is that we’ll be in charge whenever my mother retires, and it would be a bit silly if you were off baking cakes when we were trying to keep the restaurant going.’ He drops her arms and puts his hands in his pockets. ‘Where would the money to open up your own place come from, anyway? Have you thought of that?’
It’s the one thing Lizzie was hoping he wouldn’t bring up. They’ve been putting money into a joint account for years, but that’s earmarked for the two of them; it’s ‘ours’ rather than hers. She couldn’t expect him to hand it over – and it would be petty to take out her half.
‘I could see about getting a loan . . .’ But she knows she’s on shaky ground now. Why should she expect any bank manager to hand over the kind of money she’d need? It’s not as if Tony would offer the restaurant as collateral.
He sees her uncertainty and puts an arm around her shoulders. ‘Lizzie, love, it just wouldn’t work, with two businesses to manage – you’d be dead out.’ You, not we. ‘I’ll tell you what – I’ll speak to my mother about letting you do some baking for the restaurant, instead of ordering it all in. I’m sure she’d be delighted to have some home baking to serve up.’ He takes her arm again and begins to steer her gently in the direction of O’Gorman’s. Subject closed.
And Lizzie imagines baking apple tarts and chocolate sponges and fruitcakes for O’Gorman’s until Julia retires – and then baking exactly the same tarts and sponges and cakes after that; because why on earth would Tony want to change anything when he’s in charge? His life is exactly the same now as it was when they got together. He still lives at home with Julia, and even after he and Lizzie are married, that isn’t going to change: Lizzie will just move in. Julia will need minding as she gets older – they couldn’t possibly desert her.
Tony still has his golf, and his Toastmasters, and his fortnight in Bundoran every September with Julia. He and Lizzie go away for a week in May – well, he wouldn’t feel happy leaving Julia on her own for any longer; surely Lizzie can understand that.
And for the past twenty years Lizzie has been saying Yes, of course, and Yes, I understand, and No, I don’t mind, and now, as she walks arm in arm with the man who’s just crumpled up her dream and tossed it into the gutter, she wonders how long she can go without telling someone she’s dying.
Chapter Two
It’s time for Lizzie’s check-up.
She goes every six months without fail; she figures her teeth need all the help they can get. As well as the fillings in the back she has two crowns in front, cleverly disguised as real teeth, and most of the time, unless she opens her mouth really wide, she gets away with them. Otherwise she has no major mouth problems. Joe, her dentist, is cheerful and talkative.
‘Well, Lizzie, looks like the rain is here to stay. Open a bit wider if you can there; that’s great . . . Ah yeah, bit of shadow there – nothing serious . . . Sorry, that’s a bit sensitive there, is it? . . . How are your parents keeping?’
Lizzie spends so much time wondering how to give the shortest possible answers with her mouth full of his hand doing something vaguely uncomfortable that the visit is usually over before she knows it. She suspects Joe’s chat is a cunning ploy to distract her, and she has to admit that it usually works. She never really minds her visits, except when she needs an injection. Her toes curl as Joe approaches with a mini road-drill and plunges it into her jaw for what seems like forever, chatting away happily as he fills her with pain.
When she arrives for her check-up, Dorothy shows her into the empty waiting room – ‘Won’t be long, Lizzie’ – and disappears. Lizzie knows from experience that it’ll be at least half an hour – Joe needs his chat. She glances around the familiar room.
Posters on the wall that she knows off by heart: one telling her to floss, another showing her how to recognise the first signs of gum disease – presumably for the benefit of those who ignored the first poster – and a third explaining how to brush properly. Out the window she can see Joe’s little garden, covered with piles of brown leaves from the tree in the corner. An almost-bald Virginia creeper hangs on grimly to the end wall. A few frozen-looking shrubs huddle along one side.
She looks down at the magazines in front of her. Sixty-four-year-old Dorothy seems to be Joe’s main supplier of magazines; apart from a few car and fishing ones – presumably donated by him – most of them are either religious or aimed at the housewife, and all of them are well past their sell-by date. Lizzie skims the front covers and sees ‘Bread to Butter Him Up’ on an ancient Woman’s Friend. She flicks the pages and finds the bread recipes; nothing she hasn’t already tried to butter up Daddy and Tony with.
Her eye is caught by the headline on the opposite page: ‘If I Had My Life To Live Over’. She begins to read about an eighty-five-year-old woman from the hill country of Kentucky, who made a list of all the things she’d do differently if she were given the chance to start again:
I’d ride more merry-go-rounds,
I’d take more chances,
I’d pick more daisies,
I’d eat more ice-cream and fewer beans,
I’d climb more mountains, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets,
I’d start barefoot in the spring and stay that way later in the fall . . .
When Dorothy puts her head around the door, forty minutes later, Lizzie is sitting quite still. A magazine lies open on her lap, but she’s not looking at it; she’s gazing straight ahead, in the direction of the window and the garden beyond. Dorothy thinks, But she doesn’t see it, and then wonders where that thought came from.
‘Right, Lizzie, he’s ready for you now.’
Lizzie turns her head and astonishes Dorothy with a dazzling smile. ‘Thanks, Dorothy.’ She stands up slowly and puts the magazine on the table, then walks out the door and up the stairs to Joe’s surgery. Something about the way she moves reminds Dorothy of her son, who went through a bout of sleepwalking when he was five or six, giving her the shivers whenever he appeared on the landing in his pyjamas, eyes open but completely unseeing. Luckily he grew out of it after a few weeks.
Dorothy closes the door and goes back to her desk, wondering, but completely unaware – how could she know? – that Lizzie’s world has just shifted on its axis. Dorothy, mother of three and grandmother of four, one with diabetes, has no idea that the words of an old American woman have somehow poked their way through the shell that has surrounded Lizzie for so long.
And, sitting in Joe’s chair and trying to tell him in one syllable how Daddy’s leg is doing, Lizzie wonders how he can’t hear the beating of her heart. Among the jumble of feelings racing through her, one thought is sitting quietly in her head.
It’s not too late. I’m only forty-one and it’s not too late.
Walking home half an hour later with a mouth full of plaque-free teeth, Lizzie takes deep breaths and tries to think straight. What has happened to her? Why is she full of this energy, this force that’s propelling her feet quickly towards home, as if there’s something that she can’t wait to do when she gets there?
There is. When she reaches the house she goes straight upstairs. Mammy calls, ‘That you, Lizzie?’ from the kitchen, and she calls back, ‘Yeah,’ and keeps on going. She hardly knows what she’s doing; it’s as if something stronger has taken over, as if on some level she’s not in control any more. And, instead of scaring her witless, this strange new phenomenon is filling her with an excitement she doesn’t remember ever feeling before. It’s as if she’s being shaken awake, and she can’t wait to jump out of bed.
When she gets to her room she takes out her writing pad with unsteady hands and writes, ‘Dear Julia, I wish to inform you that I intend to –’ and tears it out and starts again: ‘De
ar Julia, It is with sadness and –’ and tears it out and starts again: ‘Dear Julia, I find myself in a unique –’ and tears it out and starts again.
Dear Julia,
I’d like to hand in my notice. I will be leaving O’Gorman’s in two weeks, on Friday January the third. I hope this does not inconvenience you too much.
Yours sincerely,
Lizzie
She pulls the page out carefully and folds it up and puts it into an envelope. Then she goes downstairs and eats her dinner.
Steamed fish and soft cauliflower and mashed carrot and parsnip – Friday-night dinner. Lizzie can’t understand how Mammy and Daddy are chatting away as if nothing has changed; can they not see that nothing is the same, that nothing will ever be the same again? For the first time she can remember, she has to force herself to eat. Her stomach is so full of butterflies, she’s afraid there won’t be room for the fish.
That evening, work flies by; she can’t believe it when she looks at the clock and sees it’s a quarter past eleven. She tries to remember one order she took and can’t. She knows she’s spoken to Tony – he’s on duty tonight too – but she hasn’t a clue what either of them said. She seems to be moving faster than usual, rushing past tables, flying into the kitchen, collecting plates of food from the chef, scribbling down orders. She wonders why no one comments.
When the last customers leave at ten past twelve – what did they eat? – she goes to where Julia is bagging the takings.
‘Julia, I need to have a word.’
Julia glances up, then back down at the bundles of notes in front of her. ‘What is it, dear?’
Lizzie takes a deep breath. ‘Julia, I’m handing in my resignation.’ Julia’s head snaps back up, and Lizzie says, ‘I’m leaving,’ and holds out the envelope.
Julia looks at the envelope, and back up at Lizzie, and says, ‘Leaving?’ in a voice that really means, Kindly explain yourself.
The Daisy Picker Page 2
