Michael knew she was deliberately not getting too excited about either the sherry or his opinion of Hetty’s husband.
“I am not particularly bothered about the sherry. I probably should have told them to help themselves,” she said.
When there was a light tap on her front door, she knew who it was.
“I saw the light on and knew you were up.”
“Michael, I was thinking back to the days of the Ludlow Hall Fete.”
“They were good days, mostly, or is that just the way we think of life events so many decades on?”
“That was a good day. Do you remember when we set off walking across the paddocks?”
“I told you you were beautiful.”
She stared at him.
“I did not expect you to remember.”
He laughed.
“Eve, you blushed, the pink rising up your neck, just as it is now.”
She busied herself, closing the button box and putting it away.
“It was such a pity Arnold vetoed the holding of a fete at any other time. Jack Davoren and his big mouth.”
“I called to tell you that great word won me the Scrabble tournament. Mackey pretended to know what it meant, but I know he didn’t.”
“Oh good! What is the prize?”
“A weekend in Belfast, all expenses paid.”
He sat on the edge of his seat.
“Eve, I was hoping you would come with me. We could get away from here, get to know each other a bit better.”
She sat down suddenly, a strange feeling flowing through her.
“We know each other so well. You know everything about me.”
“We are friends, that is for sure, but maybe we need to get away from the shadow of Ludlow.”
Her mouth was so dry she could not speak.
“I hope I have not overstepped the mark.”
Placing her hand on his arm, she managed to talk. “I don’t know what to say, Michael. Thank you, I would love to go.”
“Do you mean it?”
“I mean it.”
Her voice was stronger and she looked him straight in the eye. When he stood up, she did too, and when he reached to pull her towards him and kissed her, she did not object.
“Shall we say next month? I would say spring in Belfast, but it does not have a great ring to it.”
She giggled and he let her go. They stood holding hands, looking at each other, until Michael shook his shoulders.
“I have to go, the shop won’t open by itself. Richie was up early and away to the swimming pool. He prefers keeping fit to standing behind the shop counter. Can I call back this evening, we can plan the trip?”
She nodded, and he reached over, kissing her on the top of her head, before making for the door.
Waving him off, she felt giddy with excitement. Not able to concentrate on anything, she got herself ready, waiting inside the window for Hetty to arrive, so they could go to Ludlow Hall together.
When she saw the car pull in, she went to the door.
“You are keen today,” Hetty said, giving Eve an odd look.
She had pulled out on to the road, when Eve broke the awkward silence.
“Hetty, I have been asked on a date.”
Hetty crunched the gears.
“What did you say, Eve?”
“Michael has asked me on a date.”
Hetty swung into the Ludlow Hall driveway and stopped the car.
“Oh, my God, and about time too! Tell all.” She was screeching, her knees jigging up and down in excitement.
“He has won a prize and we are going to Belfast together.”
Hetty stopped, staring at Eve.
“Not just a day trip, Hetty, a weekend away.”
Hetty threw back her head and laughed long and hard. “That is the best news I have heard in a long time. What will you wear?”
“I have plenty of clothes.”
“Silly woman, you will need all sorts.”
“I didn’t think of it like that,” Eve said quietly, and Hetty laughed again.
“How I envy you, Eve Brannigan, invited for a weekend away with a man, and at our age.”
Hetty parked beside the seat at the front of Ludlow Hall.
“It is not for a while yet, so I have plenty of time to prepare,” Eve said, almost as if she was trying to reassure herself.
They let themselves in the front door and went straight to the drawing room, hoping to get in two hours’ work before the other ladies arrived.
“I didn’t see Connie’s car. She must be avoiding us. I told her we would be here.”
“Maybe she took the opportunity to do something away from Ludlow,” Hetty said, a tinge of disappointment in her voice.
“If Michelle Obama is going to be giving our quilts the once-over, we had better get cracking,” Eve said, and the two of them headed into the drawing room to set to work.
19
Connie was up early waiting for the delivery truck. When notification had come a few days earlier that the boxes shipped from the States so long ago had arrived in Ireland, she was nervous. Now she was waiting to touch the bits and pieces that had made up her daughter’s short life. That she would soon be able to do it was both painful and exhilarating.
After Molly’s death, she had Amy go to the house and tip all of Molly’s stuff into cardboard boxes, sealing them up quickly, so they did not have to face their terrible loss. She never went back into the house. Her sister did it for her, carefully selecting every last thing connected to Molly. Connie at that stage could not bear to look at it, ordering the boxes that summed up a precious life to remain sealed, stacked in Amy’s basement.
As the lorry trundled up the driveway, she walked out to meet it, directing the men around the back, to unload the boxes into the barn. Box after box was lifted out carefully. When the truck doors were shut and all the boxes were stacked in the barn, one of the delivery men turned to Connie.
“Are you sure you don’t want us to bring some into the house? They are heavy.”
She did not answer, but took the clipboard and signed it, waiting for the truck to reverse, beeping its way down the driveway, before she walked across to the barn.
About thirty boxes were piled two high to the right inside the door. Tearing the nearest one open, she saw her funeral suit, the deep purple trousers and jacket she wore that day, because she knew Molly hated black. Why on earth had Amy sent it over? She would not complain, though. Amy was brave enough to go into the house to pick up everything, big and small, that was Molly. All that was Ed Carter she left for the cleaning company coming in behind her.
Pushing her hand down through the box, Connie pulled out a vacuum-packed plastic bag filled with the clothes and paraphernalia of a life not fully lived. Pulling at the cardboard box, tears rising through her, she lifted out hard plastic square bags, six of them, one for every year of Molly’s life. Grabbing them, holding the stack out in front of her, she stumbled across the yard, pushing through the kitchen door, landing them on the table.
Only weeks before it all happened Connie had filled up six vacuum-packed bags with neatly folded clothes, the first five years’ mementos of milestones passed. For the bag from when Molly had turned five years old, Amy had done her best, but it was a jumble of everything, reflecting the turmoil of the last day of packing in what was the family home. The bags were labelled Molly. The baby year, the first year, the second year, the third year, the fourth year, the part-filled fifth. Happily, Connie had folded and arranged the clothes, finding pleasure in picking the little outfits that summed up a year.
The night before, scrolling down through the Mommy Blog she had stopped at this one:
MARCH 2009
I don’t want to throw away any of Molly’s clothes, but let’s face it, small kids generate a lot of stuff and we can’t keep it all. This, her second year, she has so many darling dresses, but my favourite is the simple red-and-white gingham. It cost a fortune on a weekend away for Mo
mmy and Daddy in Boston. It brings back such beautiful memories. It must be the first item folded neatly and kept as a talking point for years to come. I am sure one day Molly will go through these memory boxes of clothes and find them all so adorable and, hopefully, a reflection of her young life.
Connie xx
Connie ran her hand across the little dress. In fact they never got to Boston that weekend. She was ready, but Ed was too busy, agitated, and in no mood for a weekend away. He shouted at her that she should have consulted him before booking a hotel. He paced the floor of the kitchen, snarling into his phone, and she wondered what had happened to the once kind and considerate man she had married. When he had turned into a man prone to terrible flashes of anger, she did not know. She was sure it was the tension around her that made Molly decide to act up that morning, crying and screaming, so that Ed marched out of the house and drove off.
Reaching for the blue pyjamas with the trains on them, Connie felt an anger rise up inside her. Ed had protested loudly and angrily when he saw his daughter wearing the pyjamas, shouting they were meant for a boy. When she said Molly loved trains, he became sullen and quiet, shrugging his shoulders, ignoring Molly.
Connie let the pyjamas drop and reached instead for bag six, clothes squashed and wrinkled, the pyjamas she had worn in the days before her death still inside out from where she had pulled them off, two nights before. Burying her head in the pyjamas, Connie breathed in deeply: a cold, clean smell of a life gone, a soft, fleeting innocence. She felt the stab of pain when she realised they were one of Molly’s favourite pairs of pyjamas. Molly had picked them out because they were just like the ones Mommy wore. She left the top inside out; she could not bear to rearrange from where Molly’s little hands had pulled that night, could not bear to uncrumple the pyjama legs from where they had rumpled down, as she stepped out of them – such a small step, a step that would never grow bigger or longer.
Connie felt cold, but she could not move. Flashes of pain racked through her, his words swiped at her.
Understand. Forgive.
She should have dressed her in these, her favourite pyjamas, for the last goodbye, but she was selfish, could not let them go, desperately hanging on to as much of Molly as she could.
Understand. Forgive.
The words assaulted her brain, menaced her so that she could barely conjure up the good times. Desperately, she gripped the pyjamas, willing herself to remember the day Molly picked them out: expensive, soft, in light pink with little flowers at the front. Molly was firm in her resolve to have them.
“We are sisters,” she said when she pulled them on, kicking out with her leg to show off the cuff.
An emptiness overwhelmed Connie, dull emptiness, his words echoing around her, piercing her brain and heart, tormenting her so.
Swiping the bags hard from the table, pulling the pyjamas to her, she walked to the room the builder, John O’Reilly, had earlier that day promised to make into a dance studio. The carpet had been rolled back to expose a wooden floor, the desk pushed back, the shelves cleared and dismantled. Reaching behind the curtains at the far window, where she had left the bottle of whiskey, she unscrewed it, slugging deeply, letting the alcohol burn her throat.
Shaking herself free, she went back to the kitchen. The Year One bag was still on the table. Unzipping it, the tiny babygro Molly wore the day they brought her home from hospital tumbled out. It had tiny butterflies all over. It still smelled of her, she thought, pressing her nose into the soft fabric. Gulping some more whiskey, she reached for the bib: ‘Molly’s First Christmas’. Somewhere in a box were the photographs of Ed and Molly taken that Christmas morning. What would she do when she came across them? How could she look at a photograph of them side by side? Leaning against the edge of the table, angry convulsions gushed through her body.
How could she ever understand or forgive?
She reached for the pink velvet and taffeta dress Molly had worn on her second birthday. It had gone in the wrong bag, because Molly had insisted on wearing it even when it became too short for her. On her birthday she had pirouetted across the sitting room, bowing, waiting for her audience to clap. Connie had smiled, looking at her daughter, her black curly hair bouncing on her shoulders, her back straight, her hands resting lightly on the taffeta skirt, dancing to a tune only she could hear.
Where was her little girl now? Lost to her, because of what he did.
Thumping the table hard, Connie shouted.
“I will never understand, never forgive.”
Her words ricocheted off the walls, pumped through the house. Swigging some more from the bottle, she caught the dress, flinging it across the room. Scooping up more of the clothes, she threw them hard, watching as they hit the fridge, landing on a pile on the floor. Tears fogging up her eyes, she stumbled up the stairs, the whiskey bottle in her hand. Falling onto the bed she cradled the bottle like it was her baby.
She used to lie with Molly to help her get to sleep, her arm lightly over her, sometimes humming a little tune, until she felt the heaviness in the bed, the rhythm of her breathing, the trust inherent in a child when they sleep. She had trusted Ed to look after her baby. Molly just trusted. What was there to understand? There was too much to forgive.
Connie sat bolt upright in the bed and fired the bottle of whiskey across the room, where it crashed against the wall, smashing, the liquid streaming across the floorboards.
His words thumped in her brain, but she would never give in.
20
Eve arrived early at Ludlow Hall. She let herself quietly in, careful that the front door did not thud too loud as she shut it. She heard Connie moving around upstairs and called up to her.
She wanted to get a good two hours in, before Hetty and the others arrived, so she set to work immediately, cutting the last squares of fabric, placing them, moving them again, until she was happy with the combination of colours. Rich greens and blues she had picked for this section, reflecting the fields and lake at Ludlow, flashes of colour radiating from a section with flowers, to remember the formal gardens at the Hall.
Standing up from where she had been on the floor, plotting out the final look of the quilt, she stepped to the window. A curl of mist pirouetted like a ballerina across the paddocks, massaging the trees, before skirting along the top of the fences, dancing towards the house. She was lost in the contemplation of this scene when she heard a fast step on the stairs, a rush across the hall, the door banged shut.
Connie was at the top of the front steps, dithering, stopping to check the door was shut, before hurrying away.
Eve, annoyed the peaceful morning had been interrupted, went back to her quilt, considering it now: a collection of gold, blue, green, purple, red and other colours in between, in rich and sumptuous fabrics to show Ludlow Hall was once a place where occasions were frequent and dressing up commonplace. Running her hand along it, she stopped at the black and purple lace, beside it a grey silk from a suit made when Arnold brought her to the Galway Races. Strengthened with a stiff backing, the light blue fabric with the little flowers from the dress she specially made for the Ludlow Fete was a centre square along with the pink gingham she wore the day Michael took her to Tinahely. If anybody asked, she would tell them it represented the simple and beautiful side of life in the estate when the sky was clear and the flowers grew and life was good.
What the inhabitants of Rosdaniel would make of it was another thing, she thought, reaching for a gold brocade from the long skirt she wore to the Lord Mayor’s Ball in Dublin. The event was a long, drawn-out affair, where her husband spent most of the evening in conversation with a city businessman. She spent the time waiting to go home. She never wore the skirt after that, though she kept the cutting from the Irish Press newspaper, which included a photograph of herself and Arnold in all their finery.
Casting the skirt aside, she glanced out the window, expecting to see Connie on the avenue. It was quiet. Maybe she had reached the bend quickly in her rush.
Eve had not heard her skirt around to the back either. A worry rose up in Eve. She tried to concentrate on the quilt laid out on the floor, but a tension twitched at her, making her go to the window again. Distracted, she checked the kitchen. At the kitchen door, she stopped: there were clothes everywhere. Items of clothing small enough for a child on the floor, strewn across the table, dumped in front of the fridge, even hanging from the dresser. Stepping further into the room, she saw the plastic containers marked “Molly”. A huge cardboard box was on the floor beside the sink. It was half open, as if somebody had had a change of mind after ripping up one side. A short note had been thrown on the draining board.
Eve glanced at it.
Darling Connie,
I am not sure why you want Molly’s clothes; you are hardly staying in that place. I hope this does not upset you too much. Remember, I can come over. Just give me the word. You should not be on your own.
The local newspaper said it is going to do a big spread for the anniversary. We told them we won’t cooperate as it is too upsetting.
I hope you are talking to somebody over there about all this and learning to cope. You are in our thoughts and prayers.
Love,
Amy xx
Eve sat on one of the straight chairs beside the table, a strange feeling curdling in her stomach. She picked up a pink taffeta and velvet dress. It was almost brand new. Beside it lay a sleepsuit, clean but well worn. A sparkly skirt was on the floor. Eve bent down to pick it up.
It was as she was doing this that the dread and fear consumed Eve, making her rush from the kitchen to the front door, letting it bang behind her. Scanning the avenue and the paddocks, she did not see anyone. Wanting to scream for Connie, she did not. Instead, she walked briskly down the yew walk, panic pushing her forward. She was cross at herself; she had not noticed earlier something was wrong. Never had Connie walked past the drawing room door without sticking her head in or waving a fast goodbye. Neither had she ever gone into Ludlow Hall but Connie had said hello, either walking up the hall from the kitchen or calling from upstairs. Fear radiated through Eve as she quickened her pace, approaching the lake and jetty.
The Ludlow Ladies Society Page 17
