by Sharon Owens
‘But you got on all right with everyone, didn’t you? And it’d be nice for you to see Sister Anne again, wouldn’t it? She was always so nice to us, bringing us out to see a play for the last day and everything. We never got her a leaving gift, which I always think was awfully bad of us… I’d like to give her something small now: a book or a little ornament. What do you think, Ruby?’
‘Yes, she was always very kind to everyone,’ Ruby agreed.
‘Well then, will you keep an open mind about the reunion? We could go along for a while maybe? It’s only a buffet and some background music, not a formal sit-down dinner, thank God. I hate those things; they go on and on, don’t they? Will you think about it?’
‘Surely I will,’ Ruby said finally.
‘Right. Will we swap numbers and then I’ll be on my way? Oh, I saw your father at Mass the other day and he was looking very well. Your mother wasn’t with him, though. He said she’d gone to look after a sick cousin in England for a couple of months. They couldn’t get any home help on the NHS, he said.’
‘Yes. She’s such a pet, isn’t she?’ Ruby said quickly, amazed at her father and his determination to keep up the pretence of a normal marriage. ‘Look, Teresa, come here into the shop and let me give you something to remember your visit to Belfast by.’
‘Are you sure? I hope I didn’t seem nosy or anything, by coming here today? I just wanted to keep in touch, that’s all,’ Teresa said softly. ‘We always used to sit beside each other in English, do you remember? And correct each other’s spelling tests?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ Ruby said, almost able to smell the varnish again on the old lidded desks. But hardly able to remember what life was like in the years before she had met Jonathan. Had she really been a person in her own right once? Before she became a wife and then a widow?
She ushered Teresa in the door and told her to have a good look round and to pick anything that she wanted.
‘Anything at all,’ Ruby commanded.
After a minute of thanking Ruby and then several cries of, ‘Oh now, I couldn’t take a thing, really,’ Teresa finally pointed to one of Ruby’s velvet handbags in the glass case.
‘Are those bags very expensive?’ she said, indicating the gold one. ‘I just love that beautiful gold bag there. But if it’s really pricey now I definitely won’t accept it.’
‘It’s yours,’ Ruby said, lifting it out and wrapping it up. ‘I made it myself, so it would mean a lot to me if you’d accept it as a token of our friendship.’
‘Oh, Ruby, thank you,’ Teresa said with a quiver in her voice. ‘That’d be lovely to keep my bits of jewellery in. The little bangles and things Mick gave me before he…’
‘Not another word,’ Ruby said, hugging her old friend tightly. And then they had swapped numbers and Teresa was on her way home to Fermanagh with a load of cheap clothes for the children in the back of her car that she’d bought in Primark. And one of Ruby’s precious handbags sitting on the passenger seat beside her.
‘That was very kind of you,’ Jasmine said quietly as Teresa’s car went up Ravenhill Road and out of sight.
‘She was always such a lovely girl,’ Ruby sighed. ‘What rotten luck, to divorce one husband and then bury the second one.’
‘Five kids, huh? Fuck me.’
‘I know, and yet she still bothered to come and visit me,’ Ruby said.
‘Yes, that was nice of her.’
‘The fourth secret of happiness, Jasmine: hold on to your friends,’ Ruby sighed. ‘At least now I know my stubborn old father is still in the land of the living. Even if we still have no idea when Mum is coming home from America.’ Then she hung up her coat and got back to work.
17. The Shy Guys
‘Ruby, I’ve had a genius idea,’ Jasmine said the following morning.
‘Hit me,’ Ruby said carefully.
‘Wait for this… ready-wrapped gifts!’
‘Um, come again?’
‘Right. We pick a small selection of gifts to keep unwrapped on display, like? And we wrap up lots of identical ones… so that the men don’t have to hang about when they come into the shop,’ Jasmine trilled. ‘It’ll be a godsend for shy guys everywhere.’
‘Okay, I’ll think about it.’ Ruby said. She wasn’t ruling it out, but needed time to mull over it.
‘But this is a dead cert, Ruby. You see, one of my brothers told me that he hates shopping for presents for his wife, because they always make him wait so long in the shop. You know with the debit card verification and then printing the receipt? And then the gift-wrapping and the ribbon curling and everything! Twenty minutes he said he was in a jeweller’s last week. Twenty minutes to buy a pair of pearl earrings!’
‘But couldn’t he have used cash and then bought a small gift bag in Clinton’s card shop?’ Ruby wanted to know.
‘Ruby, he’s a man. He’s not that organized. That’s the first thing I asked him, you silly moo. There was a long queue at the cash machine, he said. And then another long queue in Clinton’s. Anyway I think we should go with this idea and maybe put a little advert in the window? Business has been slacking off these last few days.’
‘Business always slacks off at the end of the summer,’ Ruby told her. ‘Anyone who can find a caravan to rent or a B&B with vacancies is away to Portstewart or Donegal.’
‘Yes, but you know it has been a little quiet lately,’ Jasmine persisted.
‘Maybe it has,’ Ruby conceded.
‘Come on then, what harm can it do? Just a small notice in the window, huh? I’ll do all the wrapping? Please?’ Jasmine begged. ‘We’ll even round the prices off to save time at the register.’
‘Up or down?’ Ruby laughed.
‘Down?’ Jasmine tried. ‘I’m sure it’ll be a great hit.’
‘Okay then,’ Ruby agreed. ‘But don’t go completely mad.’
‘All right,’ Jasmine said happily, getting out their price list to pick a small selection of suitable gifts. ‘I’ll pick cute things that’ll be easy for the shy guys to slip into their pockets. I’ll buy some lovely paper and ribbons tomorrow too. No more than twenty pounds’ worth, don’t worry,’ she added. ‘And I’ll do a beautiful display in the window, yes?’
‘Okay,’ Ruby said, surprising herself with her readiness to relinquish control over her beloved bay window. ‘Okay then. Why not?’
‘Oh, this is going to be so exciting,’ Jasmine twittered, excitedly jotting down ideas in a tiny notepad.
Ruby left her to it and stood looking out of the window, thinking of Teresa Morris née Dunne. And her sheer bravery in raising five children all by herself on a small farm in rural Fermanagh… Never mind climbing Mount Everest for charity, Ruby thought to herself. Never mind all that Boy’s Own stuff, though of course it was all well and good in its own way. But when it came right down to it women were the superior sex after all. They had more stamina than men, because it was up to them to look after the children. And there were no days off when you were a mother. Unless of course you were Ruby’s own mother! And then she thought of Tom Lavery again. And she wondered if she’d seriously fancy him if she’d never met Jonathan.
18. The Phone Call
Another few months flew by. And suddenly it was very late on Christmas Eve. Ruby was curled up in bed, wrapped in her warmest dressing gown, trying to pretend that Christmas wasn’t happening. Even though they’d been snowed under with extra holiday business in the shop in recent weeks. In fact, Jasmine’s idea for ready-wrapped gifts had been going strong for the last six months. Word had spread around the city like wildfire and now hardly a day went past when they didn’t have at least three ‘shy guys’ select a gift from the window display, come in and pay for it and then flee the shop again. Five seconds was the current record, Jasmine was always telling people. Five seconds to hand over thirty quid and take possession of a ready-wrapped trinket box, glittery scarf or pair of stylish earrings. And of course all the gifts had been specially selected to be romantic and flatteri
ng in nature, and none of them were even remotely dull!
‘I am a genius!’ Jasmine kept saying. And Ruby kept telling her that she needed to get out more. But Jasmine only said she was going to source some pink striped gift-wrap online so the gifts would match the carrier bags.
However today was the second anniversary of Jonathan’s death and Ruby was all alone in her flat. The heating was turned on full blast and the entire flat was immaculate as usual, but there were no glittery decorations in evidence. Just a small basket of white winter flowers that Jasmine had bought Ruby for Christmas. Ruby had set the pretty basket on her dressing table so she could see it from the bed when she woke up on Christmas Day.
Jasmine herself was out on a date that evening with one of the ‘shy guys’ from the shop. He’d come in to buy something nice for his mum’s birthday and then taken quite a shine to Jasmine herself. Three times he’d come into the shop and bought a gift before he’d found the courage to ask Jasmine out on a date. Ruby hoped Jasmine’s evening was going well. She deserved a nice time after such a disappointing year, romance-wise.
Suddenly the phone rang and Ruby almost dropped her mug of hot chocolate on to the pristine padded counterpane.
‘My God,’ she said aloud. ‘Living alone is turning me into a nervous wreck. Every time there’s the slightest noise I leap six feet into the air.’ She picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’
‘Ruby dear? It’s your mother here.’
‘Sweet Jesus Christ, Mum? Is that really you? Oh, thank God. Thank God you phoned! Now, just don’t say you’re fine and then hang up again, right! Where the hell are you staying in New York? Tell me before you hang up this time! And will you keep your phone switched on, please?’ Ruby got out of bed and began to pace back and forth across her lovely cream carpet. There was a lump in her throat and she was sure she’d be sobbing in half a minute.
‘We’ll get to that eventually,’ came the simple reply.
‘You’re still in America?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘I can’t believe you did this to Daddy and me.’
‘Why can’t you believe it?’
‘Mum! Look, are you cracking up on us?’
‘No, Ruby, I’m not.’
‘Listen, have you had a breakdown or something?’
‘No, I have not indeed! Will you stop being such a dramatist? I told your father why I left Muldoon, Ruby. I was bored stiff… Bored stiff dusting the knick-knacks all day long, and then going for a walk down the drive, and then back up it again. And then making the bloody dinner. Same three or four meals, in rotation, for the last forty years… I couldn’t go on like that forever, could I?’ she said huffily.
‘Mum, you’ve been away for a whole year.’
‘So what?’
‘We’ve been worried sick, for God’s sake. When you first left, I asked Jasmine if I should call the police. And she asked her dad for his advice because he knows a couple of policemen. But they said they couldn’t do anything whatsoever because you were an adult. And Dad wouldn’t hear of us doing anything official, like asking your doctor for advice. And he refused to let me ask the bank if your account had been used…’
‘Quite so. It’s a free country, miss. I’m allowed to go travelling without a chaperone.’
‘But, Mum, you never go anywhere on your own!’ Ruby was truly exasperated. ‘Dad drives you everywhere, you know he does! You know the two of you were always like a pair of bookends. Always together.’
‘Oh, stop your nonsense, Ruby Nightingale. I mean, Ruby O’Neill. I’m still an individual, my dear. I still have a brain of my own. I remembered I had a second cousin out here as it happens. So I got her address and I wrote to her. And then I got myself a passport. I’d been planning it for years. It was really quite simple, in the end.’
‘But Dad said that the taxi driver told him that you’d said you didn’t know where you were going!’
‘Of course he did. That’s what I told him, Ruby. I didn’t want the whole country knowing where I was going, did I?’
‘Oh, Mum!’
‘And so this cousin put me up at her place and helped me to find a job.’
‘A job? So you’ve got a job now in New York, have you? Are you an illegal immigrant by any chance?’
‘Yes, indeed I am. Sure the country is full of them. I’m only selling bread in a bakery in Manhattan, but it pays the rent.’
‘I don’t believe this. The rent?’
‘Yes, miss, the rent. I couldn’t go on imposing on my cousin. I have a one-room apartment just three blocks away from the bakery. A tiny place, it is. The shower is practically in the kitchen and there’s no bath, but I’ve made some great pals in the building. There’s Dorothy and –’
‘Oh, Mum, what are you trying to do to us?’ Ruby began to cry silently. Tears trickled down her face and fell heavily on to the carpet.
‘Ruby, I always wanted a job of my own. I told your father. But he wouldn’t let me work in the village or even in the town. He said the people would all be talking about me behind my back, saying I was only looking for attention. So I moved away for a while, that’s all. I needed some space. I needed my space.’
‘Don’t you think you’ve left it a bit late to have a mid-life crisis?’ Ruby wept.
‘No crisis about me, dear. I just wanted to do something on my own for a change. I’m not a simpleton, you know.’
‘But, Mum, you know you could’ve made some changes to your life without going to another country? And, by the way, you had no right to leave Dad on his own all this time. All over Christmas! Not just one Christmas either, but two of them now.’
‘You see? I had no right. That’s why I had to get away, Ruby. Because nobody ever listens to me! I have got rights, I have. I can do whatever I want.’
‘Okay then, fair enough. I’m sorry for being cross with you. But you’ve made your point now, Mum. You’ve worked as an illegal immigrant in New York, congratulations! I hope you’re very proud of yourself.’
‘Don’t be cheeky to your own mother.’
‘Are you coming home now? Or are you afraid you’ll be arrested at the airport for overstaying your holiday visa? I could take legal advice.’
‘No, I’m not coming home yet. I’m taking painting lessons and there’s still six months of them to go,’ Ruby’s mother said breezily. ‘We meet up in this big empty warehouse every Sunday morning at eight o’clock, and have breakfast together, and then we paint until the afternoon. The teacher is so good at getting us all involved and chatting away about art and everything. It’s really amazing.’
Ruby’s throat had almost closed over with worry. God love her mother, she thought to herself. God love her and her bizarre little attempt to do something different before it was too late and she ended up tottering around the nursing home on a Zimmer frame.
‘Okay, listen to me. I’m not angry with you, Mum. Truly I’m not. But, still, there are painting courses in Fermanagh. And there are bakeries in Fermanagh too. You could open your own bakery if you wanted to. And Dad is at home waiting for you. And we both miss you very much.’
‘Ah, but in Fermanagh I’m only that stuck-up Mrs Nightingale from the big house in Blackskull village. And everybody knows my business there. Everybody knows we got the bit of money from selling your father’s land. And they’re jealous of me. Here in New York I’m just another face in the crowd. And at the bakery and at the painting classes I’m just Emily from Ireland.’
‘Mum, they aren’t jealous. They’re lovely people in Fermanagh.’
‘They are jealous. I can see it in their faces when they say hello to me at Mass.’
‘So is that it then? You’re never coming home to Ireland again because of the way people look at you in Mass?’
‘I really don’t know.’ Ruby’s mother sighed heavily. ‘I haven’t decided yet. Me and a couple of pals are going to paint my digs this weekend and then we’re going to see a show on Broadway. We’ve been looking forward
to it for ages.’
Digs, Ruby thought to herself. Digs?
‘Okay then. You carry on, Mum. But will you let me know your address, please? So I can write to you? Just so I know where you are. Please?’
‘I will. I’ll send you a postcard as soon as I get the chance,’ Ruby’s mother promised.
‘Well, if you’re that busy, tell it to me now and I’ll write it down,’ Ruby said, reaching for a pencil and paper from her handbag.
‘Oh, listen, tell you what, I’ll write to you. My credit’s nearly up here,’ Ruby’s mother said.
‘You’re not going to tell me where you’re living, are you?’ Ruby said bluntly.
There was a small silence.
‘No pet, I’m not. I’m sorry, but I don’t want your father or yourself landing over here and making a show of me in front of my new pals, that’s all. I can do what I like now. I’m an adult, like I said.’
Ruby suddenly felt very angry. A burning hot flush came soaring up from her chest and spread right around her neck like an itchy woollen scarf.
‘You know what, Mum? You’re right! You just go ahead and do whatever the hell you like. It’s obvious to me now that you never loved either Dad or me all that much.’
‘How dare you say a thing like that, Ruby Nightingale – I mean, O’Neill –’
‘It’s true, Mum. It must be true. You only married him for his money, didn’t you? Because he had land! You never loved him at all!’
‘No, I did not marry for money. May God forgive you.’
‘Yes, you did marry for money. And then you got Dad to sell the land and buy that big house. And then you made him give up his job on the Council to become your companion and your chauffeur. And then you got bored being a lady of leisure so you dumped your husband and sneaked off to America on this third-rate adventure of yours.’
‘How dare you speak to your own mother like that! Stop it right now, Ruby Nightingale. I mean –’
‘Oh, give over, will you? It’s your daughter you’re talking to, Mum. Not Dorothy and the rest of them at the art class. Spare me the armchair psychology about finding yourself. You always were a detached sort of person. Always obsessed with your own feelings and emotions. Even when Jonathan died, you didn’t come to the funeral. And don’t blame the snow either! You could have come when the snow melted.’
