The Daisy Picker

by Roisin Meaney

  Lizzie forces herself to look straight back at her. ‘Julia, I know this will come as something of a shock’ – Julia’s mouth is a thin line, the eyes that meet Lizzie’s are narrowed – ‘but I have to get away; I . . . I need to sort things out. I hope you’ll understand – and of course I’ll work out my notice. It’s all in there.’ She holds the envelope out further and waits.

  Julia looks down again at Lizzie’s hand but makes no move to take the envelope, so Lizzie puts it down on the table between them. Then she gestures towards the back of the restaurant. ‘Excuse me, Julia, I have to find Tony.’ She walks over to the kitchen door, well aware that Julia is watching her. Her legs feel shaky.

  Tony is cleaning off the worktops in the kitchen; he doesn’t trust the job to anyone else. He glances up and smiles as Lizzie walks in – ‘Not gone yet, love?’ – and Lizzie leans against one of the giant cookers because she’s not sure her legs will hold her up.

  ‘Tony, I have something to tell you.’ Her mouth feels dry; she longs for water.

  Something in her voice makes him look at her more closely. ‘What is it?’ He holds a yellow sponge in his hand. She keeps looking at the sponge, watching the suds drip from it onto the worktop.

  ‘Tony, I can’t marry you. Something has happened – something that has made me feel differently, about everything . . . I’m sorry, but I can’t go ahead with . . . We can’t get married.’

  As she trails off, knowing she sounds ridiculous but not having a clue what else to say, he puts down the sponge and peels off his rubber gloves. He doesn’t look too worried – he probably thinks she’s bluffing, trying to make him name a date by putting pressure on him. ‘Look, Lizzie, why don’t we go and sit –’

  She takes off her ring and places it carefully on the worktop, out of the way of the suds. The rubber gloves sit, palms together; they look like they’re praying. ‘Tony, I’m sorry. I’m going to be finishing up here in two weeks, and then I’m leaving Kilmorris.’ God, where has that come from? She had no idea she was going to say that; but, even as she says it, she realises that of course she’ll be leaving Kilmorris. How could she stay now?

  Tony takes her by the arms and puts a now-let’s-be-reasonable smile on his face. ‘Lizzie, what are you talking about? We’re getting married. We can book a church tomorrow if you –’

  ‘I don’t love you.’ And there it is. The words hit the walls of the kitchen and bounce off the steel surfaces and squelch through the suds he hasn’t wiped away. His face goes blank and he drops his hands.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tony. I’m really sorry.’ She pushes herself away from the cooker and walks out of the kitchen.

  Julia, who must have heard, stops her – ‘Lizzie, wait a minute’ – and hands her a brown envelope. ‘I think it’s probably best if you don’t come back, under the circumstances. This is what you’re owed, and I’ll send on your P45.’

  Lizzie can’t make out whether she’s mad at her or not; there’s no sign on Julia’s face to tell her. She takes the envelope and says, ‘Thank you, Julia,’ and walks out the front door. On the way home she wonders what Julia will tell her regulars.

  She wonders what Julia and Tony are saying about her now.

  Then she wonders how on earth she’s going to tell Mammy and Daddy.

  Chapter Three

  Mammy nearly dies.

  Lizzie sits them both down the next morning and tells them she’s going away for a while. They look at her blankly; then Mammy says, ‘A little holiday, is it? Not before Christmas, surely? You’ll wait till the New Year.’

  Lizzie takes a deep breath. ‘Not just a holiday, Mammy. A . . . I don’t know; a change of scene, I suppose. I’ve never lived anywhere else only here; I’d like to see a bit of the country, settle somewhere new for a while, see how it goes.’

  Mammy looks bewildered. ‘But what about Tony? What about your job? You can’t just head off like that; you have responsibilities.’

  ‘Actually’ – Lizzie crosses her fingers under the table – ‘the engagement is off. And I’ve resigned from work.’ Here it comes.

  Mammy’s hands fly to her face. ‘Oh my God, Lizzie, what are you telling us?’ Lizzie doesn’t know whether she’s more shocked about the engagement or the job. Daddy just sits there; he’s used to letting Mammy do the talking. He doesn’t look too surprised, though. Lizzie wishes she knew what he was thinking.

  She takes another deep breath. ‘Look, this is something I have to do. I was feeling – I don’t know – smothered; I wasn’t happy . . .’ She breaks off; how on earth can she make them understand? She tries again, reaching for Mammy’s hands across the table. ‘I have to go away for a while, think things out – be on my own for a bit . . . ’

  Mammy pulls her hands away, takes them off the table altogether. ‘So this is how you repay us – by making us the laughing-stock of Kilmorris. And I can’t imagine how poor Julia must be feeling – deserting her just before Christmas.’

  Lizzie feels her temper rising. ‘For your information, I offered to serve out my notice, work over Christmas, and poor Julia refused.’ She makes her voice soften. ‘Look, Mammy, this is not about you or Julia; it’s about me, and my happiness. Don’t I matter more than what the neighbours will say?’

  It’s no use. She might as well talk to the wall.

  Mammy goes round to see Julia that afternoon, and comes back looking grim. ‘That poor woman is broken; I hope you’re happy with yourself, Madam.’ And Lizzie – who can’t imagine the carefully groomed Julia O’Gorman even slightly cracked, let alone broken – doesn’t bother trying to reason with her any more. What’s the point?

  On Christmas Day, after a glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, Mammy tries a new tack. ‘Why don’t you take a little break, Lizzie? Go walking in the Burren for a few days – or what about somewhere nice and sunny, Lanzarote maybe? The Curtins went there last spring and loved it. You could stay in a little hotel for yourself, somewhere central – you don’t want to take any chances in those places. You’d have the beach for your swim, and you could go to a few museums if they have any there. Treat yourself to a good dinner at night; Patsy Curtin said it was very cheap to eat out.’

  Mammy pauses, pours another inch of sherry into their glasses. ‘And I’m sure Julia would be delighted to take you back after, and forget all about this little – upset.’

  And Lizzie explains gently that she isn’t going to book into a B&B in Connemara, or head off to Lanzarote where the Curtins were. This is something she has to do, and it’s going to last longer than two weeks, and she’s leaving on Monday week, and there’s nothing more to say, except that she hopes she’ll go with Mammy’s blessing.

  Mammy stands up and goes over to the cooker to check on the turkey. She turns around after closing the oven door, and Lizzie’s heart nearly cracks at the hurt look in Mammy’s eyes, and she almost changes her mind. But then she thinks of the old American woman, and twenty years of pretending, and she closes her mouth and says nothing. And Mammy lifts the lid on the saucepan of Brussels sprouts – almost pulpy enough for consumption – and that’s the end of that.

  That afternoon, Daddy gets Lizzie on her own. He comes into the sitting room, where she’s making a list of all she has to do before she goes, and he stands by the couch and says, ‘Lizzie, about this plan of yours –’

  Lizzie puts down her notebook and looks up at him. ‘It’s no good trying to stop me, Daddy – I’ve made my decision.’

  He smiles and shakes his head. ‘I’ve no intention of stopping you. You do what you have to do, and good luck to you.’ And he takes a folded piece of paper out of the pocket of the cardigan Mammy got him for Christmas and hands it to her. ‘That’ll help you make a start.’

  Lizzie looks down at the cheque and her eyes fill. She blinks. ‘Daddy, I don’t need –’

  ‘I know you don’t, but I do.’ He hesitates. ‘And, Lizzie –’ She looks up at him. ‘I think it might be best if we kept this to ourselves.’ She wants to hug h
im, but it’s not something they do, so she just nods and thanks him and tucks the cheque into the pocket of her linen trousers as he leaves the room.

  On New Year’s Eve, Lizzie sits at home with Mammy and Daddy, watching someone from RTÉ counting down the seconds – she was supposed to be going out to dinner with Tony – and when it’s next year they shake hands and Daddy says, ‘Go mbeirimid beo ag an am seo arís,’ and Mammy and Lizzie say, ‘Amen.’ They finish their drinks – one each, whiskey and 7-Up for Daddy, gin and tonic with lemon and no ice for Mammy, red wine for Lizzie – and then Daddy locks up for the night and they all go to bed. And Lizzie hugs her plan to herself, and counts the days, and waits. Not long now.

  On Monday the sixth of January, she’s going to haul her stuffed rucksack downstairs and fling it into the back of her blue Fiesta, with her baking books and her portable telly and her CD player and her cryptic-crossword book and her travel Scrabble and Jones. She’s going to say goodbye to Mammy and Daddy, and she’s going to drive away to the rest of her life. She’s not planning to travel the world – she has Jones now; and anyway, it’s not how far she goes that matters any more.

  She hasn’t a clue where she’ll end up, or what she’ll do when she gets there – apart from finding a way to bake for a living – and she’s as excited as a child on Christmas Eve. She wants to open up and reach out and grab hold of whatever is flying past, and just hang on tight.

  She goes into the bank one day and transfers half the joint-account money into a new current account in her name. It’ll keep her going while she finds the bakery job. She notices that Tony hasn’t touched a cent.

  After dinner on Friday the third of January, she helps Daddy with the washing up. She always washes, he always wipes – she doubts that he knows where the Fairy Liquid is kept – while Mammy adds a half-bucket of coal to the fire in the sitting room and then puts on her slippers. When every piece of evidence that dinner took place has been destroyed, Lizzie heads upstairs to have another go at her rucksack. It’s been packed for over a week, but she loves taking it apart and starting all over again. Every time she does this, something else gets left out or put in.

  She decides the hairdryer can come out. She’s going to cultivate a new look – tousled hair and long floaty dresses. The only problem with this is that she doesn’t have any floaty dresses, long or short. She doesn’t have any dresses, full stop, except a black velvet knee-length one with lacy sleeves that she bought on impulse after Síle got engaged, years ago, and they went shopping after a couple of glasses of sparkling wine. She let herself be talked into the dress, and now she only takes it out on the rare occasions when she needs something a bit posher than faded jeans. She wore it to her school twenty-year reunion and spent the night trying to remember names, and looking at photos of babies, and trying to sound convincing when she explained why she’d been engaged for eight years and why it didn’t bother her a bit.

  But her calves are a bit hefty and she feels better when they’re well hidden from public view. And she loves her jeans. They probably do nothing for her (Mammy says they do nothing for her; Mammy loves her black velvet dress), but when she climbs in they wrap themselves tenderly around her and hug her curves. Hello, Lizzie, here we are again; just snuggle in and get comfy. Thank God for denim, in all its glorious blue shades.

  Right, she’ll have tousled hair and jeans and no make-up. She takes out her two lipsticks and her eye pencil (the same one that she used to join up her freckles) and the ancient tube of foundation that she never uses anyway, and leaves in a tube of even more ancient hair gel so she can scrunch her wet hair and make it look all tossed and dead sexy.

  After a minute, she puts back the eye pencil and the hairdryer. Maybe she’ll have sleek, shiny hair instead, and dramatic eyes. Then she puts back the lipsticks; sleek hair and dramatic eyes would look funny without a bit of colour on the lips. But that’s it; she puts her foundation and a half-full pot of powder blusher in the bin, and before she can change her mind she lifts the plastic bag out of her wastepaper basket and brings it down to the big black bin in the garage.

  She goes back upstairs and has another rummage. After a minute she goes downstairs to get the foundation and blusher out of the bin. You never know when you might need perfect skin and a rosy glow. It’s not as if they’re heavy; and she can always dump them later if she finds she’s not using them.

  As she goes back up to her room again, Lizzie wonders for the millionth time if she’s a little insane – heading off without an idea where she’s going to end up. Maybe Mammy is right – maybe she should just go to someplace like Lanzarote, or somewhere more exotic like Barbados, for a week. On the other hand, the fact that she hasn’t a clue where she’s going means that she can go wherever the hell she likes. And she knows well that a week of lying on warm sand in the sun might be pure bliss, but it isn’t going to fix what’s wrong. She needs to make a complete change, whatever that takes. A fresh start. She likes the way that sounds – like something just out of the oven, fragrant and steaming.

  She passes Tony in the street the day before she’s due to leave, and she says hello. He looks through her.

  The following morning, on Monday the sixth of January, Lizzie stands by the open car door in her old navy winter coat, rubbing her gloved hands together and freezing quietly. In the boot of the Fiesta are her rucksack, her telly, her CD player, Jones’s litter tray, her bag of baking books and a couple of jackets. On the passenger seat, safely belted in, is Jones in his carrier. She debated leaving him until she got settled somewhere, made sure he’d be welcome; but the thought of taking this giant leap without him was just too scary – she needs his furry, lazy bulk beside her to go through with it. She’ll just have to find a cat-friendly place to live in.

  She looks at him sitting in his carrier, looking faintly bored. He’s not scared of a giant leap – well, in theory, anyway; she doubts that he’d manage a baby leap, let alone a giant one, in real life.

  Beside the car are her parents, standing close together on the frozen path. Lizzie stamps on the ground to get some feeling back into her toes.

  ‘Well, I’d better get going, I suppose.’ Before we all solidify.

  ‘Did you take the holy water?’ Mammy is still dead against the move, but she’s concerned about her daughter’s immortal soul.

  ‘I did, yeah.’ It’s sitting on the shelf under the dashboard, a little plastic bottle that Mammy filled at the church the other day.

  ‘Let us know when you’ve a place to stay,’ Daddy says.

  ‘Course I will; I’ll ring as soon as I’ve landed somewhere. Don’t worry about me.’

  That’s a good one – like asking the spring clematis over the garage not to bloom till September this year because Aunty Kate is coming to visit from America with her new husband and step-kids and you want the place to look well. Mammy and Daddy have no one else to worry about; in forty-five years of marriage, Lizzie is all they managed to produce. She’s lived under the same roof as them for forty-one years, apart from the weeks driving around Cork or Kerry or Galway with Tony. Now she’s thrown a backpack into the boot of the car and she’s disappearing God knows where for God knows how long, and she tells them not to worry. Very funny.

  Daddy came home with a book from the Tourist Office the other day. He’d paid seven euros for it – the price was written on the front cover – and he handed it to Lizzie after dinner, when Mammy had disappeared into the sitting room.

  ‘Now, you can pick out a nice place and give them a ring.’

  Lizzie took it from him and opened it with a sinking heart. It was full of self-catering houses and apartments by the sea, or in towns near golf courses, or just outside villages, all approved by Bord Fáilte; and she knew that, wherever she ended up living, it wouldn’t be in one of them.

  To keep the peace, she promised Daddy she’d take the book with her and be guided by it. ‘It’s just that I don’t want to pick anyplace yet, while I haven’t worked out where I want to
go. I might be travelling around for a while before I find a place that appeals to me.’

  He looked at her, trying to understand, and nodded.

  The book is sitting in the little pocket in her door, beside her road map of Ireland. She’s planning to give it to the first charity shop she passes.

  Mammy puts a hand on her arm. ‘Now, Lizzie, you know you can still just go for a couple of weeks and come back. It’s not too late to change your mind; your bed is always here, and Julia would have you back in the morning if I had a word with her.’

  And I’d last another six months and then throw myself off the tallest building in Kilmorris. Lizzie smiles and puts her arms around her and knows her bed will always be here, and knows she’ll never live here again. Mammy smells of rashers and Pledge and hairspray.

  ‘I’ll remember, Mammy.’

  ‘You make sure you find someplace nice to stay. Make sure it’s not damp.’

  Lizzie nods. ‘I will. And you take care. I’ll give you a ring this evening.’

  ‘Do that.’

  Mammy moves back as Daddy steps forward – after forty-five years together, they’re perfectly synchronised. Daddy puts out his hand, but Lizzie ignores it and puts her arms around him. She can’t remember when she hugged him last. He feels narrower than she expected.

  ‘Bye, Daddy.’

  ‘Bye now, Lizzie. Mind yourself.’ He pats her back twice, then drops his arms and steps back from her.

  Lizzie slides into the driver’s seat, pulls the door closed and winds down the window.

  ‘Drive carefully,’ says Mammy.

  ‘I will. Bye now. Say bye, Jones. Go in out of the cold now; ye’ll freeze. Talk to ye later. Wish me luck.’

  ‘Good luck,’ they chorus, standing close together. Mammy tucks her arm into Daddy’s and waves at Lizzie with her other hand. ‘Make sure you wrap up well.’

  Lizzie starts the engine and moves off, waving awkwardly out of the window, watching in her mirror as the couple on the path get smaller. They look old and unfamiliar, this white-haired man in his grey suit and this neat little woman in a brown tweed coat over her blue-and-white flowery apron, not going in out of the cold, just standing there together and waving. Pretending that they don’t mind her going, that they’ll be just fine without her. From his carrier, Jones mews once.