by Maria Hoey
But Robbie made no attempt to go beyond the gate. He stood and looked up at the house, “You’re on your own then,” he said, “while your father is in the nursing home? That must be hard.”
It was so exactly what I had recently been thinking that I was startled and it was all I could do to stop my eyes filling with tears. But Robbie’s eyes were on the house.
“Are you having some work done?” he asked, seeing the bags of cement and other supplies the builders had left there that morning. “I can’t imagine that will be very conducive to your writing – all that knocking and hammering – you won’t get much peace.”
“You have no idea,” I said. “It was just supposed to be a downstairs bathroom being put in because Dad had his fall on the stairs but, when the builders came out to take a look so they could give me a quote, they spotted signs of dry rot in the roof.”
“Dry rot? That’s going to be a messy and expensive business, Kay.”
“Don’t I know it,” I said. “All the infected timber will have to be removed, destroyed and replaced. And apparently the timber close by will need to be treated with some sort of fungicide. It’s a complete disaster.” I put my hands to my face at the mere thought of the scale of the disaster. “But it has to be done. I want it all finished by the time Dad comes home again.”
“But what will you do while the work is being done?” said Robbie. “You can’t stay here in the middle of all of that.”
“No,” I agreed, “I can’t. Find somewhere to rent short-term maybe – more expense. To be honest, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve only just found out and I haven’t quite got my head around it. Anyway, look, I’d better not delay you further. Bye, Robbie.”
“Bye, Kay.”
As I walked away he called my name and I turned back, overcome by a sudden hope that he was about to ask for my phone number.
“Don’t forget your plunger.” And, raising it in the air, he waved it at me.
Chapter 17
Robbie came back four days later although Mrs Nugent had beaten him to it. I was amazed it had taken her so long, but it turned out she had been away for a couple of weeks visiting the twins. She chose the day the builders came back to finally call and interrogate me, taking advantage of the front door being left wide open to accommodate them traipsing in and out. She just walked right in and bearded me if not in my den then in the kitchen. I had no choice but to ask her to sit down and make her some tea.
She went right to the heart of the matter.
“You’re home on your own again,” she said. “Been here a few weeks, I’m told, and himself not with you. Busy with work, is he?”
“There is no himself, Mrs Nugent – it’s just me now.”
She surprised me. “Probably better off,” she said. “Your mother wouldn’t be sorry, she never took to that fella at all.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “No, she didn’t,” I admitted.
“And is it right what I hear, that Robbie Duff has been to see you?” said Mrs Nugent.
There was no point in denying it – she knew – and, before very much longer, I was in full possession of all known facts and rumours concerning him. He was not married, had never been married though not for the want of trying – the women went mad for him, had no children and had bought back the Duff house which he had got for a bargain. But he was spending a small fortune now, it seemed, doing it up and he must be mad to want to come back and live in Ireland – did I not think he must be mad?
“It’s his money,” I said. “And he must want to come back.”
And then I spent the next half hour trying to evade all Mrs Nugent’s best blatant, as well as devious tactics, to elicit further information from me on the subject of Robbie Duff’s finances and intentions, what exactly the builders were going to be doing to the house, and why he had brought me home and from where.
The day that Robbie arrived, the builders had just left to go to their lunch and I had just made myself a cheese-and-onion sandwich for my own lunch and had eaten half of it when the doorbell went and there he was standing in the porch, smiling a little uncertainly at me.
“I’d have rung if I had your number,” he said, “but I didn’t, so I’ve come instead.”
“Come in,” I said.
I wished with all my heart that I settled for cheese and tomato or cheese and anything other than onion; I was sure I reeked of it. But, when I offered to make him a sandwich of his choosing, he insisted on having what I was having and then we sat down at the kitchen table and ate our first meal together. We chatted about all sorts of things but I couldn’t help feeling that something was on his mind. I asked if the two girls had arrived and he said they had. I was conscious of the fact that, technically, I should have called them “women” but they were still girls to me.
“How are they settling in?” I asked. “Are they as happy to be back in the house as you obviously are. It must feel strange for them, for all of you actually?”
Actually, I thought that he looked far from happy that day. “They’re settling in,” was all he said. “It’s just unfortunate that I have to go away again almost immediately.”
“Oh, how come?”
He told me that an archaeologist colleague who had been due to speak at a conference and then go on to oversee a field trip, had been involved in a road traffic accident. Robbie had been asked to take his place.
“The timing couldn’t be worse,” he said, “with Rosemary and the children there.”
“It’s unfortunate,” I said, “but you won’t be away for very long, will you?”
“I’ll be gone for seven days in all,” said Robbie.
“Well, that’s not so long,” I said, “and it’s not as though she’s there alone. She has Violet-May too.”
Robbie made a sound in the back of his throat; it was hard to know whether it was derision or something else.
“You haven’t seen Violet-May in some time, have you?” he said.
“Not since I was ten.” I didn’t like to think about the last occasion I had seen Violet-May. I had never liked to think about it. We had all left the police station together, a cluster of silent, glum, downward-looking people.
“Right,” said Robbie. “Well, let’s just say she’s not exactly great with small children.” He darted me a quick glance then looked away again. “And Rosemary needs all the help she can get right now.”
“I can imagine.”
He told me then that his mother had died while staying with Rosemary-June. “It was particularly unfortunate coming on top of her losing her husband Justin. He died while she was pregnant with Oliver. It’s all taken a toll on Rosemary and as a result I believe she’s very fragile right now. She needs peace and quiet and stability. Most of all she needs to be around somebody calm and kind and practical.”
He looked at me again then, and this time his gaze was direct and searching.
“She needs to be around somebody like you, Kay,” he said.
“Someone like me?” I repeated, not at all pleased at the description.
“Have you found somewhere to rent yet?”
The change of subject threw me and I shook my head, slightly mystified. “Not yet, no.”
“Good. Because I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve come up with an idea that could help us both. As I said, I have those work trips coming up. And, to put it bluntly, I don’t like the idea of leaving Rosemary to the tender mercies of Violet-May.”
I was a little shocked at his frankness but I tried not to show it.
“And meanwhile,” he went on, “here you are being forced to move out and find somewhere to rent. So it occurred to me, why not just move into my place?”
“Move in?”
“Yes.”
“Live there, you mean?”
“Yes – while this place is being fixed up. That way you’d have rent-free accommodation.”
“In return for what?” I asked, smiling, not taking him very seriously.
“Well, you’d be doing me a favour – keeping Rosemary-June company – but I suppose you could help out with the kids. Violet-May is next to useless and there’s Grace but she’s got other things to attend to.”
“Who’s Grace?”
“I hired her to help out in the house, that sort of thing. And now the children are here, she’s sort of a nanny too, I suppose. Look, just think about it, Kay. You want a place to write in peace and you can have that at the house – lots of space and quiet, exactly what you need.”
“And what would Violet-May and Rosemary-June think of that arrangement?” I said.
“Why would they think anything other than that it makes practical sense?” said Robbie. “And, besides, you’re an old friend.”
“Hang on a second,” I said. “Is this you taking pity on me, because I was moaning about the cost of renting and doing this place up?”
“Not at all. But you can’t deny you’re in a bit of a fix and I genuinely do need someone to keep an eye on things.”
“Keep an eye on what exactly?”
“The girls. Keep an eye on the girls. I’d like to know they have someone like you there.”
“Ah yes, someone – what was it again? Calm and kind and practical,” I said and I laughed a little to show I was taking that lightly.
But Robbie was not laughing, he was not even smiling, and I stopped laughing too.
“You do know they’re not ‘girls’ anymore, don’t you, Robbie?” I said. “They’re grown women, grown women I haven’t set eyes on for over twenty-five years. You call me an old friend but I don’t know the first thing about Violet-May or Rosemary anymore. And so what if Violet-May isn’t mad about kids? She’s still Rosemary-June’s sister. I’m not, I’m nothing to her. She and I were never even friends and I’m practically a stranger to her at this stage. You say I can help out with the kids, but you’ve just told me you already have a sort of nanny in this Grace. I know you’re concerned about Rosemary, Robbie, but it’s a ridiculous idea.”
“It may be a ridiculous idea,” said Robbie, “but it’s the only one I have. I honestly don’t think Violet-May is the best person for Rosemary-June at present.”
I watched as he got up from his chair at the table and stood at the kitchen window with his back to me.
“That year,” he said, “the year Alexander died, I hated my mother with a passion. I don’t mean afterwards, I mean before.”
“Well, I don’t suppose that’s so unusual,” I said. “You were fifteen and there was all that boarding school stuff and ...”
“No, you don’t understand,” said Robbie, wheeling round. “It wasn’t about being fifteen or school or any of that sort of thing. It was something else entirely. The year before that, I got into a fight with a guy at school. I can’t remember what it was about, only that he came out the worst for it and as a result he kindly informed that I had a sister who had been born before my mother was married to my father – ‘your little bastard sister’, he called her.” Robbie’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know if this is news to you, Kay. I suspect not.”
I tried to look noncommittal. “I think I might have heard something over the years, but just a rumour, none of the details … I had no idea if it was even true.”
Robbie gave a short laugh and turned back to the window. “I thought as much,” he said. “No doubt everybody heard something, some version of the truth. Even I had suspected that there was some secret about my mother – there was some sniggering, that kind of thing – but until that day nobody had come right out and said it. Of course I called that boy a liar. Then I saw the expression on the face of another boy, a friend of mine this time, and I knew it was the truth.”
He turned again and came and sat down and I waited while he sipped the dregs of his tea which I knew must be cold by now but I could not bring myself to speak and offer him a fresh cup.
“I never told my mother what I had discovered,” said Robbie. “I wish I had, I wish I’d given her the opportunity to tell her side of the story. Instead I was a judgemental little fool and I was ashamed of her and so angry with her that, like I said, it felt like I hated her. I did find the courage though to ask my father about her.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He admitted that there had been a little girl,” said Robbie. “Other than that, all he would say was that the only thing I needed to know about my lady mother was that she was indeed just that – a lady.”
I smiled. “That sounds exactly the sort of thing your father would say.”
“I only really found out more about it all after Alexander died.” He smiled bleakly. “Even then it was only by listening to what was not intended for my ears. I had been taken out of school for the funeral and I overheard my parents talking one night. My mother was very upset, she was reliving the past and the way my grandmother had reacted to the pregnancy: it seems she saw it as my mother having shamed the family. So when my father asked her to marry him, Mum expected her mother to be relieved, instead of which it seems she was almost angry. Apparently she saw it as Mum being rewarded with a wealthy husband and a fine house, instead of being punished for her sin as my grandmother thought she ought to be.”
“Her sin!” I said. “For God’s sake!”
“She went further than that,” said Robbie. “She warned my mother that sooner or later she would be punished and told her that married or not she would always be ‘a dirty little slut’.”
“Talk about harsh!” I said involuntarily.
“Yes, indeed,” said Robbie absently, and I knew that his mind was still in the past, listening to his mother unknowingly revealing herself to him.
“My father said all the right things of course but I don’t believe Mum even heard him – I’m pretty sure she was speaking more to herself than to him. She said something about how marrying him had seemed like a second chance, a fresh start. And that she had tried to make it more so by turning herself into somebody else entirely – ‘somebody respectable’ was how she put it.”
I felt a rush of sympathy for the dead woman and moved uneasily in my chair, but again I doubt if Robbie noticed.
“But she said that in spite of how hard she’d tried, she’d always known that people saw through her. ‘I hear them laughing at me,’ she said. ‘I know they talk about me behind my back – some of the women are barely even civil to my face.’ She said she saw it and heard it every day but she had made a conscious decision to ignore it by telling herself that it was Florence Flynn they were talking about, not Flora Duff.”
“Your poor mother,” I said. “I’m so sorry she had to endure that.”
Robbie bowed his head and put his cup down on the table. “My father tried to convince her that she was wrong, of course. He told her she imagined all of this but, as I say, she wasn’t really speaking to him, she was just thinking out loud.”
He got up, pushed the chair under the table and, leaning on it, looked at me. “I don’t recall all of what she said that night,” he said. “But I do remember she talked about herself as she had been when she was a child. How hard she had tried to please her mother, how she had done what she was told, minded her manners, kept herself clean and how it hadn’t made any difference. Her mother had found fault with her, accused her of slyness, of vanity, of ‘putting herself forward’.” He grimaced. “Putting herself forward. What a horrible expression.”
“Your grandmother sounds like a pretty horrible woman,” I said.
“I never met her.” He took his hands from the chair. “Would you mind if I opened the door? I could do with some fresh air.”
“Of course.” I made to get up to do it myself but he got there first and I sat back down and watched him standing in the bright square of sunlight that flooded in from the garden.
“Both my grandmothers cut themselves off from my parents for different but equally misguided reasons,” he said. “My paternal grandmother thawed slightly when I and my sisters came along, but she never forgave my mother f
or the breach the marriage had caused between her and my father. I don’t know if my mother ever saw her own mother again but, in any event, that night, the night of Alexander’s funeral, I remember Mum saying that her mother had been right all along. She was being punished for her sin and would go on being punished.”
“But that’s terrible!” I said.
I was feeling a little sick, remembering the many unkind things I had heard and thought about Mrs Duff, the things my mother had repeated, had said herself, and the things she had not said but insinuated. Although, in her defence, I was fairly certain that it was not the change in Florence Flynn’s fortunes my mother held against her, as much as the unforgiveable crime of forgetting where she came from. And so, she, like many others, made a point of remembering and reminding each other regularly in case they ever forgot.
