Something in Common

by Meaney, Roisin

  So she was moving on, with full responsibility in the nursing-home kitchen, and around twenty-seven mouths to feed each day. Her hours were half past eight to half past four, Monday to Friday – someone else, some man, covered the weekends. Breakfast was at nine, lunch at one and tea, which she could prepare in advance to be served by the nursing staff, at half past five. She would have an assistant cook and a kitchen junior – two people working under her, taking their orders from her.

  Within a week Uncle John found a replacement, so she phoned the nursing home and told them she could start the following Monday. As the days passed, she found herself becoming increasingly anxious.

  What if the assistant cook had been there for ages, and resented being told what to do by a newcomer? What if Sarah burnt something on her first day, or didn’t make enough to go around? What if she poisoned them all with underdone chicken, or the first batch of queen cakes she made in the unfamiliar oven fell flat?

  Maybe she’d been too ambitious, applying for the position of head cook at twenty-four. Maybe she should have bided her time at the hotel, or looked for a position in a restaurant kitchen with a little more responsibility. She wondered what the other candidates had been like – they surely couldn’t have been younger – and how the board of management had decided on her. What if she let them down, what then?

  Her parents had a lot more faith in her abilities.

  ‘We’re very proud of you, love,’ her mother told her. ‘Not many people your age would find themselves in charge of an entire kitchen. It’s a big honour for you.’

  ‘She’ll be well able,’ her father put in from behind his newspaper.

  ‘Of course she will: I know that.’

  They’d been astonished to hear of her encounter with the woman on her way home from the interview. Sarah hadn’t been going to mention it, but she couldn’t help blurting it out as soon as she’d arrived home. ‘I hadn’t a clue what to say. I was afraid I’d put my foot in it, and make things worse.’

  ‘She was lucky you came along,’ they’d assured her. ‘You did what anyone would have done, you handled it very well. Now go and change out of those wet clothes,’ her mother had added, ‘before you get pneumonia. Why you didn’t let your father drive you is beyond me’ – and, just like that, they’d put the episode behind them.

  But over the nights that followed Sarah found herself replaying the whole thing as she lay in bed. She didn’t think Christine was right: it hadn’t felt like a cry for help. She could still easily conjure up the woman’s haunted expression – the empty, shadowed eyes, the starkly defined cheekbones. It was the face of a tormented woman, not someone looking for attention.

  What had happened to cause her to be so miserable? A broken romance maybe, a betrayal by someone she loved. Or bad news of another sort, a terminal diagnosis; told she was going to die, and unable to face a slow, painful end. It could have been anything, and Sarah would never know.

  Monday came and her new job started, and the woman on the bridge was forgotten as Sarah concentrated on settling into St Sebastian’s – and to her delight, she discovered very quickly that her years of experience in the hotel had prepared her well, and she was more than capable of handling the demands of head cook.

  She revelled in every aspect of the work, from planning the weekly menus and ordering supplies to preparing the dishes and plating them up. Right from the start she took to visiting the dining room towards the end of lunchtime to chat to the residents and get their opinions, and she also tapped on the bedroom doors of those unable to make it to the table.

  By and large, she was positively received. Her elderly charges invariably expressed surprise at her young age, but most seemed perfectly satisfied with her efforts. They welcomed her attention, and were eager to offer their food preferences – and their life stories, if she had time. It wasn’t hard to warm to them, to want to feed and nourish them.

  Within a week, she knew she’d made the right choice in coming to St Sebastian’s. It was the perfect fit for her; it was where she was supposed to be.

  And, best of all, she had Bernadette, her cheerful sixty-plus assistant cook, who’d worked in St Sebastian’s kitchen since it had opened in the fifties, and who had no ambitions at all to be the boss. ‘I’m happiest carrying out orders,’ she told Sarah. ‘Tell me what you want done and I’ll do it.’

  Not surprisingly, she knew all there was to know about the workings of the nursing-home kitchen, and was invaluable in pointing out where things were kept – and she also had no problem in rearranging them to Sarah’s satisfaction.

  ‘You’re the youngest boss I’ve had by a mile,’ she told Sarah at the end of the first week, ‘but you know what’s important. The last cook never once set foot in the dining room. They love you here, even Martina.’

  Sarah doubted that. Martina Clohessy would find something to complain about if the fanciest French chef was cooking her meals. She’d already informed Sarah that the beef in the stew was on the fatty side, and that pastry gave her hives.

  But for every Martina there were half a dozen Stephen Flannerys.

  ‘You’re a better tonic than all the pills in the world,’ he’d tell her, cradling her hand in both of his trembling ones. ‘I’d swim the Atlantic for one of your fruit scones.’

  Barely thirty-nine when Parkinson’s had struck, turning him into a shaking old man by the time Sarah met him, shortly after his sixty-sixth birthday, she’d never heard a single cross or self-pitying word from him.

  And there was Jimmy Doohan, who played ‘The Mountains of Mourne’ and ‘Come Back to Ireland’ on his battered accordion when anyone requested it, and often when they didn’t. And poor Dorothy Phelan, who rarely spoke any more, who didn’t recognise her daughter and son-in-law when they visited, but who smiled so sweetly whenever Sarah visited her room with a helping of trifle or a slice of still-warm ginger cake.

  Sarah grew very quickly to love them all. She rose each weekday morning looking forward to getting back to them. The sad woman with the curly hair was called to mind just twice a day, when Sarah cycled over the bridge on her three-mile journey to and from work. The ghost image of the Beetle was there, and the lonely figure standing behind it – but gradually even these faded, and the episode settled into a dim corner of her mind, to lie largely undisturbed over the months and years that followed.

  Helen

  ‘Mama.’

  ‘Just a minute.’

  Her irritation increased as she read the article. Clumsy metaphors, clichéd rhetoric, nothing new, nothing to grab the attention, nothing controversial or thought-provoking. She checked the by-line: written by a man, like ninety per cent of the articles. She folded the newspaper and replaced it on the shelf. She could do better, miles better, given half a chance. She wouldn’t write for that rag, though – she’d choose a better class of paper.

  ‘Mama, jellies.’

  ‘I’ll get you some in a second, hang on.’

  She’d always loved reading. She’d worked her way through an impressive number of novels during the hours in her bedroom when she was supposed to be doing homework. She’d been a reader all through her twenties and beyond, up to the time that Cormac had been diagnosed, and then she suddenly couldn’t keep her mind on a newspaper column, let alone a book.

  At school, English had been the only subject she’d felt any enthusiasm for. Helen has a clever turn of phrase had been one of the few positive comments on the report cards her parents had opened silently. Helen would watch her mother scanning them with pressed-together lips.

  She had a clever turn of phrase: in fifth year she’d written a few pieces for the school magazine, before boys had begun to distract her from any kind of schoolwork. She remembered one in particular – her favourite – in which she’d scoffed at the ridiculous new Barbie doll. I bet it was designed by a man, she’d written. No woman in the world could have a chest that big and a waist that small and still be alive, let alone capable of walking without toppli
ng over. And this is what passes as an acceptable toy for little girls.

  Lying in her darkened room, she remembered the ripple of attention it had caused among her classmates, the kick she’d got from seeing her name in print, even if it was only in faint purple type on a sheet of paper that had been cranked out on the school’s spirit duplicator.

  Why hadn’t she kept writing? Why hadn’t she gone in that direction when she’d left school? Young as she’d been, her articles had been a damn sight better than the drivel she’d just read. Drivel that someone, presumably, had been paid to write.

  Helen shows promise, another English teacher had written, somewhere along the line. And she’d got a B in English in the Leaving Cert, even though she’d never really studied for it. She’d shown promise, and she’d done nothing about it.

  But maybe it was time to start again.

  ‘Mama.’

  ‘Coming.’

  She scanned the newsagent’s shelves and found the newspaper she used to read before she’d stopped reading anything. It was also her parents’ newspaper of choice – one of the few things they had in common – and by far the most respected of the nationals. She turned the pages until she came to the editorial, saw M. Breen beneath it. He’d been editor for years; he was practically a household name. She had no idea what his first name was; maybe he felt using an initial gave him some sort of cachet – or maybe his parents had christened him Montgomery, or Mortimer.

  What was to stop her writing something and submitting it to him? What was to stop him printing it, if it was any good? She wondered if you needed some kind of qualification to write for a newspaper. Only one way to find out.

  But she needed an interesting subject, one she was familiar with, one she could write about confidently. She knew all there was to know about being widowed young, about the hell of watching your husband withering away and being helpless to stop it – six months on, the pain of his death was no less sharp – but that was probably not what people would choose to read about over their toast and marmalade.

  She could write about the day she’d driven to the bridge, she could spell out the abject misery of not wanting to go on living, and the dawning horrible realisation that she didn’t have the courage to stop the world and step off – but again, who wanted to begin their morning with someone else’s nightmare?

  She needed something light but also revealing, something that would inform as well as entertain. A topic that would give people something to think about, and send them off to work with a smile on their faces.

  What about life as a female shop assistant? She’d witnessed enough in her ten years behind the counter at Burke’s to fill a book. She could write about the long hours on her feet, the pitifully short breaks, the uniform that had to be kept spotless, even if it meant hand-washing it at midnight. She could write about the injustice of earning just over half the salary of a male assistant doing precisely the same job, only with less efficiency.

  But she could also pull awkward customers from her memory, detail the odd requests she’d heard over the years, make it funny as well as revealing.

  She’d have to make up a pseudonym, so nobody at her old workplace would know it was her. She couldn’t be Fitzpatrick or D’Arcy: they’d recognise her married and maiden names. But she could use her grandmother’s name. O’Dowd, she could be.

  ‘Helen O’Dowd,’ she said to Alice. ‘Like that?’

  Alice shook her head irritably. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘OK, we’re going now.’

  She’d write the piece and send it off, and if it was rejected she’d write another. She’d wear M. Breen down, she’d make a nuisance of herself until he gave in.

  The more she thought about it, the more the idea appealed to her. She could write in the afternoons when Alice took her nap, and in the evenings after she’d been put to bed. She could work from home so no childminder would be needed, and she wouldn’t have to call on her parents for help. If she had to interview anyone, she’d do it over the phone.

  It would be even easier when Alice started school, just two months from now. And if – when – Helen began reading books again, she could try submitting a few reviews. A whole new career at the age of thirty-three.

  Or maybe not. Maybe when she tried it, she’d discover that she wasn’t half as good as she thought. And even if she did well, even if editors loved her, it wouldn’t make her any happier. It wouldn’t take her pain away, or even lessen it. But she had to earn money somehow, and this seemed like something she might manage, a thing she might have a flair for.

  At the counter she paid for the newspaper and got jelly babies for Alice. She pushed the buggy out of the shop, and as she turned onto the street she caught sight of her reflection in the window.

  Now that she’d got used to it, she quite liked her short hair. So much easier to manage – towel it dry after washing and that was it. Her mother’s face when she’d seen it, though: not a word said, but the look had been enough.

  ‘It was time for a change,’ Helen had told her, as if the question had been asked, and thankfully her mother had left it at that. She’d been lucky with the man she’d got to fix her botched attempt, only two quid he’d charged, and no comment made on the state of it, which she’d appreciated. She’d given him a two-bob tip, and been back twice for a trim since.

  She walked home with Alice, starting her shop-assistant piece in her head.

  Sarah

  They went to her uncle’s hotel for dinner, her old workplace – hard to believe that she’d been gone for over nine months. They always went to Uncle John’s when one of them had a birthday. They sat at the same table, set into the left bay window, a reserved sign on it until they arrived.

  It was 1975, with America finally admitting defeat and pulling troops out of Vietnam, and three members of an Irish showband massacred by terrorists, and the British Conservative Party getting its first female leader. The world was full of change, every week bringing new upheaval, and the Kelly birthday celebrations carried on merrily. Sarah wondered if she’d be blowing out the candles on her sixtieth birthday cake here, accompanied maybe by Christine’s children, who would turn up for their unmarried aunt’s party out of pity.

  The presents were good though. From her parents she got the black jacket she’d picked out the previous week. Not at all fashionable but handy for the bike, zipped and hooded and not too heavy. Christine’s gift-wrapped box held a pair of chunky tortoiseshell bangles, and Brian gave her a book token.

  ‘When you’re married, you and Christine can give me a present between you,’ she told him, ‘and Christine will pick it out, so you’ll be off the hook.’

  He grinned. ‘You mean my mother will be off the hook. I haven’t a clue when it comes to presents.’

  ‘You haven’t done badly with me so far,’ Christine told him.

  ‘Only because you drop loads of hints – I’d have to be blind and deaf not to pick up on them.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  Sarah watched them together, so comfortable, so at home in each other’s company. She thought again how lucky her sister had been to find the man she wanted, and to discover that he wanted her too. Sounded so simple, but here she was at twenty-five still without a single prospect.

  Unless you counted Neil Flannery, whose father Stephen Sarah had been cooking for since she’d got the job in St Sebastian’s. Even though she hadn’t even met the son, she supposed he was a faint possibility.

  Stephen certainly thought so. ‘You’d be ideal for each other,’ he’d told her more than once. ‘He’s a good lad, just hasn’t met the right lady. And he’s about your age.’

  His wife Nuala silenced him whenever he brought up the topic in her company. ‘Stop that, you’ll embarrass Sarah. I’m sure she’s well able to find her own boyfriends.’

  She came to see her husband often, nearly every second day – they were from a small market town less than twenty miles from St Sebastian’s – and she sat by his bedside
or armchair for much of the afternoon. Their only son, the mysterious Neil, worked during the week as a gardener and visited his father at weekends, when Sarah was off-duty.

  ‘But he’s starting a job soon just up the road,’ Stephen had told her, ‘and he says he’ll be in more often while that’s going on, so you’ll get to meet him then.’

  ‘Shush, stop that,’ his wife had said automatically.

  What must it be like, Sarah wondered, to have your life partner struck down so young, to watch him deteriorate, see the strength and vitality washing out of him, to be forced eventually to put him into care because you could no longer look after him yourself?

  ‘Of course we would have loved to keep him at home,’ Nuala had told her once, when they happened to be leaving together. ‘This was the last thing Neil and I wanted, but it just became too much. And it wasn’t fair on Neil either. He has his own life, and his work takes him all over the place.’

  Awful to have husband and wife living apart from one another, never sharing a bed at night, never waking up together or sitting down to a family dinner. What kind of a marriage was that for anyone?

  The loneliness Sarah had already witnessed in the nursing home and the poignant stories she’d heard from some of the residents had broken her heart several times over, had reduced her to private tears more than once. But she still felt convinced that the job was right for her – she could make a difference to them. She was making a difference.

  She looked around the hotel table at the faces she’d grown up with. So lucky she was to be surrounded by a caring family, with so much heartbreak out there. She smiled at the chocolate cake that was being wheeled across the dining room on the dessert trolley – chocolate for her, coffee on Christine’s birthday – with the half-dozen flickering candles stuck into the top.

  She was aware that everyone in the room was looking at them now, waiting for the birthday girl to blow out her candles. If she were married she’d cook a birthday dinner herself, invite her family around. But without a husband or a home of her own, she was still the child who got taken out by her parents.