The red-headed boy grabbed her hand, and worked it up and down in an enthusiastic greeting.
“And what’s your name?” she asked him gently.
He gave a broad smile. “My name – is Thomas,” he announced. “Thomas – Carroll.”
“Thomas,” Aisling considered. “That’s a nice name. And where do you live, Thomas?”
“Over there.” He pointed in the direction of the furthest house at the other side of the lake. “Me and Jean,” he said brightly, “we’re good buddies.”
“Ah, I see,” Aisling now vaguely remembered a conversation with Jean when they had just arrived. Something about some neighbours with a slow child, but Aisling was exhausted and fairly disorientated at the time, and a lot of the talk had gone over her head.
“You on vacation?” he said now, giving another big smile. “You staying at Jean and Bruce’s place?”
Aisling nodded. “Yes – that’s right. I’m staying here for a few weeks. I’ve come over for Sandra’s wedding.”
Thomas clapped his hands together. “I’m going – ” he started, but in his excitement, couldn’t quite find the words.
Aisling smiled and waited.
Thomas pointed a stubby thumb into his chest. “I –” he started again, more slowly this time, “I’m going to the wedding. Dad . . .” he paused to think, “Dad bought me – a swell new shirt!”
“That’s great,” Aisling told him. “I’ve got a new dress to wear to the wedding, too.”
Thomas beamed, then pointed in her direction. “You and me – we both look swell!”
Aisling laughed out loud. “Yes, Thomas,” she told him, “we’ll both look really swell!”
Thomas then went on to regale Aisling all about the wedding and fishing in the lake, his favourite milkshakes, and finally about all the medals he had won for swimming.
“Really? Medals for swimming?” Aisling said, very impressed.
“Yeah! Yeah!” Thomas said, nodding enthusiastically. “I’ll show you – at my house.” He tugged firmly at Aisling’s hand now. “Dad put them on the wall – so everyone can see them and say Thomas is a very good swimmer. Thomas is an – excellent swimmer.” He was leaving no doubts in Aisling’s mind as to his capabilities. “Come on!” he pointed to the path that wound around the lake. “We can walk around . . . around to my house to see my medals.”
“No, no, Thomas,” Aisling told him gently. “I’ve got to stay here to look after the house for Jean and Bruce. They’ll be home soon.” When she saw the smile slide from his face, she quickly added, “Maybe another time . . . maybe you could bring your medals back here to show me.”
Thomas shook his head vigorously. “No – no! They’re stuck on the wall. Dad says only he is allowed . . .” he gestured with his hands as though lifting a plaque from a wall, “to lift down.”
Aisling nodded. “Okay,” she told him. “I’ll talk to Jean, and maybe we can walk over to your house some time. Before I go home.”
“OK,” Thomas replied, smiling again. “But where is your house?”
“Oh, it’s a long way away,” she said, “in a place called Ireland.”
“Ire-land,” he repeated thoughtfully, mulling it over.
Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by a distant voice calling the boy’s name.
Thomas’s whole face lit up. “That,” he said, thumbing in the direction of his house, “that’s my dad!”
“I think he’s looking for you,” Aisling said. “You’d better head back home.”
“My hamburger,” Thomas told her, rubbing his hands together gleefully, “and my milkshake – probably on the table now!”
Aisling looked across the lake to the boy’s house. She could just make out a figure in the distance. “I think you’d better go across, Thomas,” she advised him. “Your dad might be getting worried.
“No problem,” he told her, shaking his head. “Me and Dad – we good buddies!” Then, he put four fingers in his mouth, and after a few attempts gave a piercing whistle.
A few seconds later another loud whistle came back.
“I gotta go,” he told Aisling with a shrug. “I’ll see you again . . . tomorrow.”
“OK, Thomas,” Aisling said, thinking it best not to argue with him. Maybe by tomorrow he would have forgotten all about her going to see his medals.
Thomas set off down the lake path in a purposeful manner. After a few yards he stopped dead. He turned to look back at Aisling. “So long!” he called, holding up his thumb.
“So long!” Aisling echoed, and held her thumb up too.
* * *
Maggie and Declan were full of all the wonderful places they had seen on the journey over to Jean’s friends, all the lovely things they had eaten, and all the lovely people they had met.
“They ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” Bruce joked. “Wait until the wedding on Saturday – there’ll be more invites to ‘come over for drinks and barbecue’ than they can handle.”
“I think I’ll be going back to Ireland an expert on burgers and steaks!” Maggie said.
“And we’ll have to be building one of them barbecue-things too,” Declan chipped in. “And we’ll have all the neighbours peepin’ around the place, trying to figure out what the hell it is.”
They all roared with laughter, and once again Aisling wished that her parents could be this open and carefree all the time, especially her uptight mother. She wished they could talk about religion so intelligently at home, the way they had talked late into the night here. She wished she had the guts to say that she had a lot of doubts about the Catholic religion, that she didn’t believe in half of it, and felt you didn’t have to attend church to be a good person. She could just imagine her mother’s face if she dared even suggest it – especially with her being a teacher in a Catholic school.
Bruce was not a Catholic – and didn’t subscribe to any particular religion – but it hadn’t seemed to rattle Maggie too much at all. And Jean’s divorced son was bringing a woman friend to his sister’s wedding, and again Maggie had only commented on it in private to Declan and Aisling.
But this was America where all cultures and creeds went, and Ireland was Ireland. Where Aisling’s sister was viewed as a fallen woman, and where Aisling was tied for life to a man who did not give her the love and respect that a husband should.
Chapter 6
Feeling revived by her solitary day, Aisling got up early and after a long, refreshing swim in the lake prepared to join the others for a day out shopping.
“Isn’t Jean marvellous to take us around when she has the wedding coming up so soon?” she said to her mother over an American-style breakfast of crispy bacon strips, scrambled eggs and pancakes and maple syrup. Bruce was the cook this morning, and he was giving Declan a demonstration of how to make pancakes and scrambled eggs American-style, while Jean ferried plates of food back and forth from the kitchen. Maggie picked up the maple-syrup bottle and frowned suspiciously at it. “She’s that type,” she said, after a few seconds. “Always was – very confident in herself. She wouldn’t be too worried what others would think – they can take her as they find her.”
“But she’s very good,” Aisling said, helping herself to more of the delicious bacon. “Nothing’s too much trouble.”
Maggie pursed her lips. “Oh, it’s easy for Jean,” she said in a low voice.
“What do you mean?” Aisling asked.
“Well,” Maggie said, “she has plenty of help . . . and they’re certainly not short of money.” She pointed her knife in the direction of the kitchen. “You just watch and you’ll learn a lot. Jean won’t be spoiling her fancy nail-varnish washing up the pots and pans. Oh, no – it’ll be that poor Mrs Waters who’ll cycle miles to come here, and do all the cleaning for a few oul’ dollars.”
“Mammy, that’s terrible!” Aisling hissed. “Jean is really nice to Mrs Waters, and she gives her food and things to take home.”
“And Bruce,” Maggie went on as if
Aisling had never spoken. “If she asked him to jump, he’d only ask how high. You wouldn’t get an Irishman standing in the kitchen with a flowery pinny on.”
Aisling put her fork down. “Mammy, that’s not fair – Bruce has taken a fortnight’s holiday to take us around, and he’s only making an issue of the cooking to keep us entertained. ”
Maggie stood half-out of her chair to check that Jean was out of earshot. She leaned over and prodded the table in front of Aisling. “Never mind ‘Mammy that’s not fair’ – just you listen and you might learn something!”
Aisling’s stomach tightened, and she suddenly felt she was fifteen years old again. How could she have been so silly as to think her mother could really change her deeply ingrained, narrow view of life? How could she have been so silly to think that a trip to America could make a leopard change its spots so quickly?
“Don’t you be getting carried away with all the Yank-style talk over here,” her mother warned now. “Jean’s good-hearted and all that . . . but as far as hard work and religion go, she’s lacking. She’s made no excuses about the son bringing another woman to the wedding, and him still a married man.”
“He’s divorced, Mammy,” Aisling whispered. “He’s not married any more.”
“As far as I’m concerned he is,” Maggie stated, “and in the eyes of the Church and God, he’s still married.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m surprised at you standing up for divorce, Aisling – and you a Catholic teacher. I hope all this heathen nonsense isn’t giving you any notions . . . I would never have encouraged you to come with us if I thought for a minute you would be so easily impressed.”
Before Aisling had a chance to reply, Declan and Jean came back out from the kitchen, laughing and chatting.
“Maggie,” Jean said, “I think your husband will be adding another string to his bow. He’s now an expert on pancakes!”
“Well, that’ll make a change,” Maggie said, a smile now pinned on her face. “I’ve never known him to be an expert at anything before.”
* * *
Entering the big, airy American shops with the soothing background music was like entering another world. The shops were like nothing Aisling and her parents had ever seen before – not even in England. Thankfully, Maggie seemed to have forgotten her crusade against divorce and godless Americans, as they moved from one giant department store to another. She hadn’t even passed comment on the fact that Jean was wearing bright red Capri pants with a matching scarf tied at the front of her blonde hair. Her favourite ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ saying hadn’t been whispered this morning so far.
Declan found more interest in the huge American supermarkets, and couldn’t get over the ones that sold food, clothing and household items under the one roof. “I couldn’t see them catching on in Ireland,” he told Bruce, lifting up a fishing-rod. “You see, there just isn’t the population or the money there. You’ve got to remember that we were only getting back on our feet from the Famine when the Civil War knocked us back to square one.”
Bruce nodded vaguely, knowing little about Irish history, and having heard nothing but comparisons between America and Ireland since his wife’s relations had arrived.
Aisling wandered up and down the aisles in one of the big stores, unable to enjoy things as much as she would have liked. The heated, whispered conversation with her mother over breakfast had really disturbed her. When would her mother ever see her as a grown woman instead of a young girl?
“You all right, honey?” Jean asked her as they looked at a rack of brightly coloured summer coats. “You seem a little quiet this morning.”
“I’m grand, thanks,” Aisling said quickly, lifting a duck-egg blue coat with a white collar and cuffs from the rail. She smiled at her aunt. “I’m just overwhelmed by the choice of things . . . I don’t know where to start looking. I really love all your shops.”
Jean touched her arm. “Don’t mind your mom, Aisling . . . it’s just her way. Being brought up in Ireland back in the thirties and forties was tough. I still have problems with it . . .”
Aisling turned and looked at her aunt. The heated argument between herself and her mother must have been overheard. Aisling felt herself flush with embarrassment. It was just so rude of them to have been arguing in her aunt’s house. Then, as Jean lightly squeezed her hand reassuringly, Aisling suddenly felt as though she was going to burst out crying.
Thankfully they were both distracted for the moment as they caught sight of an ecstatic Maggie making her way towards them, holding up a pile of fancy towels.
“I – I think I might try on this coat,” Aisling murmured, turning towards the changing room.
They stopped off for lunch at a ‘Western’ restaurant with ranch-style doors, where they were served steaks, salad and French fries by waiters wearing cowboy hats and check shirts with neckerchiefs.
“This is more like the America we know from the films,” said Declan, taking in all the decorative whips and spurs which adorned the walls. “I only hope there’s no Red Indians ready to leap out on us!”
As they left the restaurant, Aisling heard her mother say to her father, “I’m enjoying the change with the food and everything, but the only thing is, we haven’t had a decent spud since we left Ireland. It’s all chips, chips, chips and salad with everything.”
Declan had nodded in agreement. “Only the Yanks would think to put a cold salad with steak. They don’t seem so fond of the oul’ cabbage and turnips, do they?”
Maggie nodded, her tightly-permed hair sitting as perfectly as the day it was done just before leaving for the holiday. “All I can say,” she sighed, “is thank God I brought plenty of the tea over with me. The potatoes I can live without, but a decent cup of tea is the least any of us can ask for.”
Declan clapped her on the shoulder, and winked over at Aisling. “We’d have been shagged altogether, Maggie, if we had problems with both the spuds and the tea!”
The day was glorious, so Bruce suggested that they stop off at a country park to make sure that Declan got his daily walk in the shaded greenery, rather than just the concrete pavements of the towns. Refreshed, they moved on to the next town which was another hour’s drive away.
Although she felt annoyed with her mother, Aisling was pleased to see that, in spite of the niggles over potatoes and cabbage, her parents were actually getting great pleasure from the beautiful scenery and the lovely weather.
“Dublin won’t hold the same attraction for me, after being in all these lovely big department stores,” Maggie stated to no one in particular. “I never realised we were so behind the times in Ireland.”
Aisling smiled to herself, for her mother and father were lucky if they travelled up to Dublin once a year.
When they reached the town of Binghampton, Jean suggested that they all might like to have an hour or two on their own to look around. “Some of the shops are kinda small,” she explained, “and it might be easier for you to get around in ones or twos than the five of us together.”
Declan went off with Bruce to look at a shop that sold old-style saddles and cowboy boots, and Jean took Maggie off in search of a wool shop that might just have some stylish knitting patterns she wouldn’t find in Tullamore.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own, honey?” Jean checked, as Aisling went off with directions to the Town Bookstore that Bruce had been telling her all about. It was a fairly big shop, and one that might have some of the books Charles had asked her to find for him.
“Oh, that one could get lost in a book shop,” Maggie told Jean as they walked along at a nice, easy amble, “and when she’s reading, you might as well talk to the wall – she’s in another world altogether. She’s always been the same, since she was a child.” She shook her head. “Strangely enough, they’re all great readers. Pauline could sit all day with a book or magazine . . . and of course Charles spends half the time with his nose stuck in one. Weird kind of books he reads, about the oddest things.”
“B
ut you were fond of reading when you were a girl,” Jean reminded her sister. “Those American books and comics our Auntie Philomena used to send over from Boston. You were mad about them.”
Maggie raised her eyebrows. “True,” she said thoughtfully. “Now that you say it . . . it’s quare how we change over time without hardly noticing it. I suppose it was after I got married, that I got out of the way of reading. Now, I’d never think of starting a book – I’d be too guilty about doing nothing. It’s never-ending, between the shop and the house.”
“You have a full and busy life, Maggie,” Jean said softly, “and as long as what you’re doing makes you happy, that’s all that counts.”
“The only time I really sit down is when I’m knitting or sewing, and even then, there can be times when I’m up and down like a fiddler’s elbow.” Her voice dropped. “I think that’s what made me decide to come over here for the wedding. It was a good excuse to make me have a break . . . to be honest, I think I really need it.”
Jean took a chance, and put her arm around her older, frosty sister in the middle of the street – and was surprised when she didn’t flinch. “I’m delighted you came, Maggie,” she said, “and we’ll make sure you have the best holiday ever.”
* * *
On her way to the Town Bookstore, an unusual dress in a shop window caught Aisling’s eye. It was very different from the sort of dresses she would normally have bought at home – kaftan-style, in a mixture of pinks and mauves. She went inside and tried the dress on, and when she looked in the mirror she felt as though a stranger was looking back at her. A beautiful, blonde stranger who bought what she pleased, and wore what she pleased.
A blonde stranger who had never known Oliver Gayle.
Before she knew it, Aisling was walking out of the shop with two of the dresses wrapped in tissue-paper in fancy paper bags with the shop’s name on it. One for herself and one for Pauline, who was much more adventurous with fashion than Aisling. She smiled when she thought of the surprise on her sister’s face when she opened the package back in Ireland.
Aisling Gayle Page 4
