Music from Home

by Geraldine O'Neill

  Just as Maria began to feel they were walking along an endless lane, she spotted a gap between two high hedges and as they got closer she saw a red-painted gate. Ambrose directed her to go through it and, when she manoeuvred the wheelchair around a bit and straightened up, she found she was looking straight at a small, ivy and clematis-covered thatched cottage, with a red door and windows, that was reminiscent of an old-fashioned cover of a chocolate box. After a day and a half of Donovan’s comfortable but fairly bare house, Maria found the colourful cottage gave her heart a lift.

  “Isn’t it a picture? She must be the finest gardener in Offaly,” Ambrose said, proud on Sister Theresa’s behalf. “Now, go around the side of the cottage to the right, as it’s easier to get in through the kitchen. We can leave the chair outside as it doesn’t look like it will rain.”

  “We’ll keep an eye on the weather,” Maria said, “and I can always come back and get the chair if necessary.”

  As she slowed to a halt, her eyes took in the small orchard to the back of the cottage with eight or maybe ten apple trees, and the well-laid out vegetable garden. A wooden-handled fork stuck in one of the freshly-turned drills told her that the ex-nun had been out working in it very recently, as did the mounds of gold and brown leaves at the side of the cottage and in the orchard. She heard some funny sounds coming from the corner of the garden and, when she craned her neck, she could see a shed with a fenced-off area and then she saw a mixture of brown and white chickens.

  She had just put the brake on the wheelchair when the cottage door opened and Theresa came out, wearing a blue knitted sweater over jeans and sheepskin boots, her abundant brown hair tied up in a colourful Indian scarf. Music was playing in the background and Maria was surprised when she realised it was The Rolling Stones’ ‘Paint It Black’. She had presumed, if music was played in the home of someone who had been in a convent, that it would be monastic or at least classical.

  “Welcome, welcome!” Theresa rushed forward to give Ambrose a hug and then she turned and took Maria in her arms.

  Maria instinctively stiffened and went to pull back but then, as Theresa’s grip loosened, Maria found herself moving towards her and they both stood with their arms wrapped around each other, saying nothing.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude . . .” Maria eventually whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “It’s okay,” Theresa said. “And there’s nothing wrong with you –how you feel is only natural after all you’ve gone through.”

  Without warning, tears welled up in her eyes and Maria suddenly knew that things could now go one way or another. She could feel hugely relieved that she had someone who seemed to understand everything she was feeling. She knew that she could either accept that support and keep going or she could just keep it all to herself and gradually crumble into little pieces.

  “She’s grand,” Ambrose said. “She’s a good strong girl and, from what she’s told me, her father would want her to make the best of things here . . .”

  She felt his hand touch hers and she knew that there was no real choice but to blink the tears back.

  They manoeuvred the wheelchair into the small hallway. Then they helped Ambrose out of the chair and, taking an arm each, assisted him into the kitchen and got him settled into the armchair at the side of the range. After he caught his breath, Ambrose took his coat off and unwound the scarf from around his neck, and then Theresa took them to hang up in the hot press so they would be warm for him going home.

  It was then that Maria could take the time to view her surroundings and, like the pop music, the bright little kitchen was not what she had imagined to find down that narrow laneway. The walls were painted in a pale yellow with a blue-stencilled border of flowers and birds running across the top, and a row of small violet-coloured hearts along the middle. Maria guessed that Theresa had spent days and nights hand-painting these herself.

  An old-fashioned dresser, painted duck-egg blue, held a collection of floral cups and saucers and plates in different designs. On each wall there hung a myriad of photographs and paintings alongside white-painted functional shelves holding jars of herbs and spices. Her gaze moved along to decorative shelves on another wall which held small holy statues of Our Lady and St Francis of Assisi, carved animals, glass paperweights, and vases and bottles filled with tiny intricate flowers which looked good enough to be real but were, in fact, artificial.

  Besides the comfortable blue velvet armchair that Ambrose sat in surrounded by patchwork cushions, there was a white-painted rocking chair which had the same little hearts stencilled on it.

  “Right!” Theresa said, coming back into the kitchen and rubbing her hands together. “First, is the music okay or is it annoying? I’m just checking because not everyone here appreciates some of the more modern stuff I like.”

  “I love it,” Ambrose stated. “Every chance I get, I switch our radio at home onto the pop channels. All that country music and traditional stuff my mother plays drives me mad.”

  Maria laughed. “I like all sorts of music, and especially The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.”

  “Good! Then we’re all sorted,” Theresa said. “The next question is, are you ready to eat lunch now? If it’s too early for you, we can have it later.”

  A big smile spread on Ambrose’s face. “What are we having?”

  “Chicken and . . .” There was a pause.

  “Peanut butter sauce and rice!” cried Ambrose.

  “How did you guess?”

  “Because,” Ambrose said, grinning at them both, “I asked you last week to make it when Maria came over.”

  “Well, lucky I had all the ingredients in,” Theresa laughed. “I would have hated to disappoint you.” She looked over at Maria. “Do you like rice?”

  “Yes,” Maria said, “and I like peanuts although I’ve never tried peanut sauce.”

  “I left some of the chicken plain just in case you didn’t like it.”

  “It sounds lovely and very unusual.”

  “American,” Ambrose mused. “You wouldn’t normally get that kind of food around here. My mother has a bad turn every time I tell her that I’ve tried something new down at Theresa’s. She and my father would be very plain eaters. Now, Jude would be a bit like myself and have a go at anything. I had a great time last week when I stayed down here for the few days – we had devilled eggs one of the evenings and another one we had meat loaf with barbeque sauce.”

  Maria felt a small pang. “We used to have meat loaf at home . . .” she said, her voice faltering a little. “Although I think it was a bit different from yours – it was an old Italian recipe that my Italian grandmother made with a tomato sauce.”

  “If you would like to sit in the rocking-chair, I’ll bring a small table over and we can eat in here as it’s warmer,” said Theresa. “The fire in the sitting room hasn’t really got going yet, but it should be fine by the time we finish lunch.” She smiled at Maria. “You and I can go and chat in there, while Ambrose has his afternoon nap.”

  “The best part of the day!” Ambrose said, stretching to put his folded arms up behind his neck. “When you’re all full up and have a nice little doze for yourself.”

  Sister Theresa brought the table over and then, when she went to the hot press to get a cloth for it Ambrose leaned forward, a solemn look on his face. “I’m sorry now, Maria, but I could see by your face you were a bit sad when I mentioned the meat loaf.”

  Maria nodded. “You don’t need to apologise,” she said. “Nearly everything reminds me. It’s there all the time.” How intuitive he was, she thought. At times he gave the impression that most things went over his head, and yet, when you least expected it, he showed he missed very little.

  “Last week Theresa and me were thinking of things that might help you to forget, but I suppose it’s far too soon.”

  Maria realised then that the invitation to lunch today by Theresa hadn’t been a spontaneous one and that her arriva
l must have been fully discussed by them the previous week. Whether it was a suggestion by Ambrose alone that she come down to Theresa’s or whether her grandparents had been involved because of the school issue she didn’t know. She thought it was strange, really, to be discussing such personal things with someone she barely knew. But, did it really matter, she wondered, how long you knew someone, if you got on as well as she felt she did with this particular woman? The important thing was she had been lucky enough to meet someone who seemed to have an understanding of her situation, as soon as she arrived in Ireland.

  It struck her that she had found the same with Diana Freeman, who had just appeared in the church, and then later had slid so easily into her life and then into her father’s. And how perfect it had all been for those precious months they had been together, to have another female around the house, to have someone to talk about feminine things. When she looked back their chats had not been about anything very exciting and, to friends like Stella with mothers and sisters, it might even have seemed ordinary and often boring. But Maria, who had been used to only Mrs Lowry’s regular company, had enjoyed those afternoons and evenings so much. And it seemed that fate now had placed another two very unlikely companions into the centre of her life, and she wondered how that was now going to work out.

  In a way she felt guilty for thinking it, but she hoped that they were not going to be the main figures in her life for long because she desperately hoped that Ireland was not going to the main place in her life for too long either.

  Theresa sorted the table and a stool for herself and then she went over to put the food on the plates, and Maria helped carry them over to the table.

  “Your kitchen is beautiful,” Maria said, looking around her. “I really like the colours and the interesting things you have on the walls and shelves.”

  When they were all settled and eating, Maria complimented Theresa’s cooking and said she would love the recipe for the peanut sauce.

  “That would be great,” Ambrose said, and smiled. “You could cook it for me every week.”

  “Of course, you must be used to all sorts of different food with your father having owned a restaurant,” Theresa said. “What was it like?”

  When she started off talking about Leonardo’s, Maria was afraid she might cry but she managed to steer herself away from mentioning too much about her father and went into more details about the menu and the décor in the restaurant. Ambrose asked a few questions about pasta, which he had never heard of, and then, when it was explained, he said the only pasta he had eaten was tinned macaroni. Maria wasn’t sure if the local shops in Ireland would have dried pasta, but, she told him, if she found somewhere that sold it, she would cook it for him some time. The conversation then moved on to American restaurants and all the different foods that Theresa had learned to cook when she was out there.

  Maria helped with the washing-up and, when she was busily drying, Theresa nudged her and pointed over to Ambrose, who was dozing in the chair. They quietly finished and then tiptoed past him into the sitting room. It was every bit as vibrant as Maria expected after seeing the kitchen, with billowing green silk curtains tied back with plaited ribbons and four Van Gogh prints – which Maria recognised from her art classes – not framed, but stuck on wooden boards and varnished over.

  Maria leaned back into the velvet and brocade tasselled cushions that gave a decadent look to the rather battered old claret-coloured sofa and surveyed the rest of room. Across from her, Theresa sat in an armchair that could only be described as a work of art as it was covered by scraps and squares of material in all sorts of patterns and textures.

  “My Auntie Biddy’s old chair,” Theresa explained, “that I couldn’t bear to throw out when I inherited her cottage. It was decrepit, with tears all over that the stuffing was poking through, so she used to cover it with shawls and blankets and God knows what else. She was quite an eccentric and didn’t really care what people thought of her.”

  Maria smiled and wondered if her niece had perhaps inherited the same tendencies.

  “She was a great seamstress, made all her own clothes and curtains and things, so I went through all her boxes of fabric and picked out a few bright bits that I thought complimented each other and cheered the place up.” She narrowed her eyes in thought. “Auntie Biddy – my father’s sister – was so different from my mother, who was more . . . oh, I suppose, rigid and conscious of her position. She had two brothers who were priests, you know. They went off to different parts of America. I think that hearing about them over the years is what gave me the idea to go out there.” She suddenly looked at Maria. “Good Lord, I’m yakking away here, probably boring the pants off you!”

  “No,” Maria said, smiling at her turn of phrase, “I’m enjoying listening to you very much.”

  When Maria complimented Theresa on the room she told her to have a wander round and have a good look. “Ambrose does it all the time. Beautiful things are meant to be shared and appreciated and not hidden away.”

  Maria went over to the main centrepiece of the room – an ebony Victorian antique display-cabinet filled with ornaments and statues. A surprising addition was a shelf filled with dozens of snowglobes which Theresa told her she had been collecting since she was a child. When Theresa saw that Maria was fascinated by the globes, she opened the cabinet and encouraged her to lift out and examine any that caught her eye. She went on to tell her that the older globes came from Ireland, several antiques from an aunt in London, and some of the more unusual ones came from America and flea markets in France. Maria was particularly fascinated by a delicate one containing acarouselhorse, which was painted in pale, pastel colours and was decorated with little flowers at the base. Theresa showed her that if you wound it up at the bottom it rotatedon a centralcolumn like a real carousel and also played a tune. Maria immediately recognised the tune as one her mother had listened to, but could not remember the name and Theresa told her it was ‘Für Elise’ by Beethoven.

  Maria finally moved from the cabinet to look at the tall bookcases on either side which were filled in a rather higgledy-piggeldy fashion which amused and pleased her, as it made Theresa seem less like a nun or a teacher and more like an ordinary person. The walls were hung with paintings and shelves that held ornaments and sculptures that looked as though they were handed down through several Irish generations, while others looked as though they came from far corners of the world. Although she had little experience in interior design, Maria knew that Theresa had a certain eye for putting things together. And, while many people back home and in Ireland might think it was outlandish and weird, there were other people who would think the cottage was a work of art in itself.

  When Maria had finished looking at everything she sat back down and, without any preamble Theresa said, “You know that Ambrose is not very well, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Maria said, “but he’s been that way since he was born, hasn’t he?”

  She then sat and quietly listened as Theresa outlined the heart and lung problems and the complications that her uncle had. She explained that he had only attended school for a few years until his condition had advanced to the extent that he didn’t have the stamina to be out of the house and away from his bed for more than a few hours.

  “So you can understand why your grandmother is not the most light-hearted person, can’t you?”

  Maria looked at her without saying anything. She couldn’t trust herself to speak as she might tell the truth and say that she found her grandmother at times an almost sour and overly serious woman.

  “I know she seems a very . . .” Theresa paused, searching for the right word, “a very stern sort of woman but I know her heart is sore worrying about Ambrose. I think you can see that she loves him very much – even in the short time you have been here, you must have seen the way she is about him.” She reached out to touch Maria’s hand. “I know your heart is broken over your own tragic loss, but your grandmother’s has been broken too. She’s a
better woman than you think she is – if you can just give her the time to show it.”

  Theresa then went on to tell her how she had come to work with Ambrose. Her family’s farm, which was half a mile away, had land which bordered onto Donovans’ farm, so the two families had known each other a long time. She looked at Maria and could see the question in her eyes.

  “I did, of course, know your lovely mother and the rest of the family. She was quite a bit younger than me, but that’s something I’ll talk about another day when Ambrose isn’t around. Is that okay?”

  “Yes,” Maria said. “I’d really like to hear about her.” She looked down at her hands. “I had a picture of what she was like in my mind for years and then, when my father died, I discovered there was a completely different side to her.”

  Theresa reached over and gently touched her hand. “I promise we’ll talk about that soon.”

  She then told Maria that it was shortly after she had come home to Ireland that she started working with Ambrose. After visiting the Donovans, she could see that he needed one-to-one attention and, since she had done some teaching in one of her many jobs in America and she had spare time on her hands, she offered to help out with his education. Thus, depending on the weather and his energy, Ambrose came down to the cottage several mornings a week. Alternatively, if he wasn’t up to leaving he house, Theresa went up to Donovan’s where they did reading, writing, basic maths and current affairs.

  “It’s a very informal arrangement,” Theresa explained. “I don’t accept money for it, but Patrick helps me out with turf for the fire, potatoes and vegetables, and Eileen often bakes me bread and cakes.” She motioned with her hand around the room. “Really, my needs are quite basic – I have everything here I could want. I enjoyed all the modern furniture and quick pace of life in America, but I like having time to myself and having all these old things around me that hold memories. I am also lucky in that I have a small income from some land that I own that is rented out, and of course I grow things myself.” She smiled. “Including some of the more unusual vegetables and herbs I was used to in America and that I find hard to buy here.”