She turned up without fail each morning and stayed until either Sarah or Neil got home, and timing was never an issue. In between keeping the children fed and entertained she somehow managed to deal with whatever household tasks were outstanding. She emptied the laundry basket and pegged out the washing, she cleaned windows, made beds and ironed shirts. She’d even mown the lawn once, laughing when Sarah had protested the following morning.
‘What else would we be doing? Martha was a great help, emptying the grass box for me, weren’t you, dote?’
The children adored her, and Neil approved of her too. Sarah had come home from work on one memorable occasion to find the four of them sitting cross-legged on the sitting-room carpet, each holding a tiny plastic cup. A tea towel spread on the floor between them held a miniature milk jug and sugar bowl, a normal-sized plate of real biscuits and the small, battered metal teapot that Sarah used for her single breakfast cup if Neil had left the house before her.
Martha wore one of Sarah’s aprons, doubled over several times at the waist. Stephen scattered biscuit crumbs on the carpet as he munched.
‘Tea party,’ Noreen had said, straight-faced. ‘You’re just in time. Martha, anything left in that pot?’
And Martha had poured her mother a cup of ‘tea’, and Sarah had sat and eaten biscuits, and given thanks, for the umpteenth time, for Noreen.
Shame that she didn’t make more of an effort to smarten herself up, though. No makeup, no attempt to disguise the white strands scattered through her reddish hair. Out-of-date clothing in pastel shades that didn’t suit her pale colouring, shoes that never seemed to match what she was wearing. And that awful brown canvas bag, winter and summer.
Clearly, she needed help – which was why Sarah had come up with her plan. Their birthdays were days apart at the end of October, with Noreen almost exactly ten years older. Sarah hadn’t given this year’s birthday too much thought – who wanted to be reminded that a milestone birthday was on the way? – until Christine had suggested a party.
‘You really should – when do you get a chance to dress up? I’ve already warned Brian I’m going to have a big bash for my fortieth. And you’ll get lots of gorgeous presents.’
And the more Sarah had thought about it, the more the idea began to appeal. Why not celebrate the fact that at forty she was happier than she’d ever been, with two beautiful children and a wonderful husband? Why not mark this milestone by dressing up and eating cake with friends and family? It was only a number.
And then she thought of Noreen, hitting fifty a few days earlier. Why not make it a joint party? Why shouldn’t both of them mark their birthdays? And to make it more of an occasion, why not invite Noreen’s friends in secret and surprise her on the night? Even though it was still months away, where was the harm in planning ahead?
‘She has a sister,’ Christine said, when Sarah put the idea to her. ‘I could get her number from Brian’ – and, just like that, the plan was hatched. The sister, whose name was Joanna, had been briefed and had agreed to help. Everything was set.
And the best part, the part that Sarah had told nobody about, was that she’d also come up with a man for Noreen. Single, of course – never married, as far as she knew. Not handsome in the strict sense but terribly nice, and only a few years older than Noreen, ten at the very most. Sarah would invite him to the party and make the introductions, and Noreen would be looking her best, and hopefully they’d hit it off.
As she approached the gates of St Sebastian’s, the man in question appeared behind the wheel of the familiar yellow minibus. Sarah raised a hand in greeting and Dan, the nursing home’s driver and general handyman, waved back before turning onto the road and moving off.
Helen
She sat in front of the television and watched as Nelson Mandela walked to freedom after being locked up for twenty-seven years. She looked at the beaming face of his wife Winnie, walking hand in hand with him. She listened to the loud cheers from the crowds of South Africans, black and white, who had gathered to witness history, and she could feel the hope that here, at last, was the beginning of the end of their struggle.
When the newsreader moved on to another item she got up, leaving the television on. She left the room and climbed the stairs. She opened the door to Alice’s empty bedroom and stood on the threshold.
The single bed was unmade, the covers carelessly thrown back: in all her eighteen years, had Alice once made her bed? The art books, always piled higgledy-piggledy on the floor by the radiator, were gone. The top of the dressing-table was bare, except for a single lidless lipstick wand and the tiny curl of a silver earring back.
Alice’s records were gone too, her Smiths and her Bruce Springsteens and her Pet Shop Boys, all vanished from the wooden crate under the window that she’d stacked them in.
Helen crossed the floor to the narrow wardrobe, on whose top sat Nelly, the blue elephant that Breen had sent to heal a long-ago broken wrist. She opened the door and saw a clutch of wire hangers. Was there anything as dismal as the clatter of empty hangers? Nothing, not even a shoe, not even a goddamn insole.
She opened drawers in the dressing-table and found a used postage stamp, still attached to a raggedy piece of envelope, a paperclip and one green ankle sock, balled in on itself.
She slipped off her shoes and got into the bed and pulled the rumpled blankets up around her. She closed her eyes and pressed them to her face. She breathed them in.
Alice.
Her torment, her scourge. The battles that had been fought between them, the doors that had been slammed. Alice, the cause of countless sleepless nights, grounded for half her life. Stubborn, sulky Alice, her precious rebel child.
‘Don’t forget to feed the cat,’ she’d said to Helen the day before, looking unbearably young in her red plastic raincoat, the last bag slung over her shoulder as she’d stood waiting to pack it into the back of Jackie’s battered van. ‘His bowl is under the hedge.’
‘I know where it is.’ Helen, with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, biting the inside of her cheek to stop her mouth trembling. ‘Ring when you get there, OK? Doesn’t matter what time. Find a phone. Reverse the charges if you can’t get change.’
Off with two other art-college dropouts, the three of them having decided, after a single term, that working for nothing in an eco-something-or-other outfit in the middle of Wales was preferable to getting a proper qualification. Nineteen in a few weeks: what could Helen do except give her enough money to ensure she didn’t starve and wave her off?
‘So …’ Alice had stood uncertainly in front of her, and Helen had reached across and given her a quick kiss on the cheek. No hug: a hug would have undone her. No declaration of anything: they’d never learnt how.
‘Mind yourself. Take care. Don’t do anything stupid.’ Helen rubbing her hands together just to have something to do with them, all her effort concentrated on not falling apart. ‘Get in, you’ll freeze. Ring me.’
Alice had clambered into the van’s single front seat beside Dermot, whose girlfriend had dumped him at Christmas and who was probably planning to console himself with his two travelling companions once they’d got to Wales. Jackie had ground the gears, and the van, which surely wouldn’t take them as far as the end of the street, let alone Wales, had spluttered off. Helen had turned abruptly, before it was out of sight, and gone back into the empty house.
She pushed back the blankets and got out of Alice’s bed and left the room. She closed the door softly – no more slamming now – and walked slowly down the stairs and back into the sitting room, where she stared unseeing at the television screen.
Alice’s phone call had come several hours later. Well past midnight, long after Helen, sitting halfway up the stairs with an empty whiskey glass, had decided that the van had burst a tyre on a Welsh motorway and smashed into the central barrier, killing the three of them instantly.
She’d stumbled down and picked up the phone, sure it was the police, expecting an un
familiar, concerned male voice asking in a singsong accent if he had the right address for Alice Fitzpatrick.
‘Yes?’
‘Mum?’ Alice had sounded wide awake, and far away, and very much alive. ‘I’m on a pay phone. It’s gobbling money so I can’t stay long.’
Relief had flooded through Helen. She’d closed her eyes. ‘Where are you?’
‘We’re here – we’re at the centre. We’ve just arrived. We ran out of petrol about twenty miles away. We left Dermot minding the car and Jackie and I hitched a lift to the nearest petrol station, and then we asked a lorry driver we met there to bring us back. His accent was gas.’
She’d sounded happy. Helen had decided not to dwell on the image of her climbing into a stranger’s car, not to mention a strange lorry driver’s cab. She’d leant against the banister, suddenly bone weary.
‘Go to bed now,’ she’d said. ‘It’s late. Drop me a line when you get a chance. Ring if you need money.’
After hanging up – keep warm, she’d forgotten to say keep warm – she’d refilled her glass and brought it upstairs to bed. This morning she’d woken with an impressive headache and a mouth as dry as straw. Forty-eight in a fortnight, and still giving herself hangovers.
She turned off the television. Nothing but bad news, apart from Mandela; nothing but wars and famines and terrorism, Ceauşescu and his wife shot to death in Romania on Christmas Day, two pensioners put up against a wall and riddled with bullets. More bombs in the North, no sign of peace after more than twenty years of bloodshed. People crushed to death at a football match, the ground splitting open in San Francisco. Who needed to have all that thrown at them night after night?
She lit a cigarette and sat alone in the sitting room. She listened to the ticking of the mantel clock and thought again about her daughter. Left home, the Irish Sea between the two of them now. No qualifications, nothing to show for thirteen years of education.
Artistic talent certainly, but what use was talent without something to harness it and structure it and make it work for you? What good was being able to draw if you’d thrown away your chance to channel it into some kind of career?
Listen to her: she sounded like her parents so many years ago, scandalised when Helen had refused to go to college, horrified all over again when she’d thrown up her job to marry a musician and raise a child. And yes, she could see their point now, damn it. If she’d done a course in journalism after school she’d have been well established by the time she’d met Cormac, could have made a proper career out of it instead of living from cheque to cheque like she did now. No savings to speak of, nothing put aside for the future, when younger writers would push her aside.
Maybe Alice would go back to college. Maybe she’d see the attraction of a qualification and a decent job when the novelty of living on brown rice and lentils had worn off.
Helen stubbed out her cigarette wearily. This was it then. This was her life now. Watching for the postman every morning, waiting for the phone to ring. Drinking a little more each evening, telling herself it did no harm, until she woke up one morning on the kitchen floor.
Oh, for Christ’s sake. ‘Get a grip,’ she said aloud. She left the room and went out to the back garden. She called the cat and he came padding slowly towards her from under the hedge.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘You’re better than nothing.’
Back in the sitting room she pulled a writing pad from the drawer under the television. The cat jumped lightly onto an armchair and sat regarding her solemnly as she began to write.
Sarah
Sorry it’s been a while, things have been a bit weird here lately. First thing that happened, just after Christmas, was that Alice announced she’d quit art college. Big shock, never saw it coming. I did a rant, of course, but it fell, as usual, on deaf ears. Long story short, she moved out yesterday, went to Wales of all places, with two others she met in college – seems they cooked up this big plan between them.
They’re working for some environmental crowd based in the middle of nowhere – don’t ask me what they’ll be doing, keeping an eye on the world, it sounds like – and of course, all they’re getting in return is meals and accommodation. Can you imagine the set-up? I’d like to think she’ll have her own room, or at least share with other females (she went off with one of each) but who knows? I warned her to write, so she’d better.
In other news, my father, who’s eighty-two, had a pretty major stroke last month, and has been in hospital since then. He can’t talk or move his left side. I call to see him a couple of times a week, but all I can do is sit there. You may have gathered that I’ve never been close to either of my folks – I’m not entirely sure that having a child was ever on their to-do list – but I can feel sympathy for the way he is now. It’s weird to see him so helpless; he was always a big shot with plenty to say. My mother has pretty much taken up residence there, spends practically all her time in his room. According to his doctor, he could last for years like this or go in the morning, which isn’t much help.
Nothing else, really. Work is work. Two books to review and a piece (again) on Valentine’s Day in the pipeline. Yawn. Bring back Breen: at least rowing with him kept things interesting.
My new neighbours are having work done on the house; I dread to think what condition it was in when they got it, empty for nearly three years. Probably paid nothing for it. The front is like a builder’s yard right now, stacks of timber, towers of roof slates. Old owner would be spinning in his grave if he could see it. His lawn is ruined, and the hedge he was always clipping is a mess – they’re replacing it with a wall, apparently. At least they haven’t asked me to go halves, which I couldn’t afford, now that I have a daughter earning nothing in Wales who’ll probably look for cheques with frightening regularity.
She stopped and laid down her pen. She sat back and looked into the cold fireplace, the ashes from their last fire two nights ago still lying in a little heap there. The room was chilly, but it seemed wasteful to light the fire, or switch on the central heating, for just one person. Tomorrow she’d find a cheap fan heater. She picked up her pen again.
I’ve just realised something. I’ve never lived alone, never in my life till now.
She stopped again, rubbed at an itchy spot on her cheek, realised it was wet, tickled by a tear that had come out of nowhere.
I have to admit that I’m missing her.
Another tear splatted onto the page, just below the last line. She blotted it carefully with her sleeve.
‘What are you looking at?’ she asked the cat. ‘Haven’t you ever seen anyone cry before?’
He didn’t blink, his yellow eyes fixed calmly on hers.
She laid the pad aside and sank her face into her hands.
Sarah
Sarah stood at the kitchen window and watched as the old woman with the bent back snipped excruciatingly slowly at the forsythia, as she’d been doing every dry day for the past two weeks.
No one had passed any remarks. No one had wondered aloud why she was doing the very same thing she’d objected to when Charlie was alive, clipping and pruning and weeding, maintaining the garden he’d restored. Taking up, literally, where he’d left off, working determinedly with set shoulders and pursed mouth, as if she was on a mission and would not be deflected.
Which, of course, Sarah thought, was exactly the case. Martina was atoning for her contrariness. She was attempting, by carrying on the work Charlie had begun, to make amends for her harassment of him. How sad that they hadn’t been able to work together in the few years he’d been with them.
Martina was eighty-nine now and slower on her feet; arthritis had curved her back and swollen her knuckles. But each day that the rain stayed away she did what little she could in the garden, talking to no one as she worked. Alone with her thoughts, whatever they might be.
Had she ever confided in anyone in the whole of her life? Had she ever spoken of what was in her heart? Sarah still tapped on her door occasionally,
but Martina seemed to have little interest now in conversation, barely responding to Sarah’s comments, her gaze drifting more and more to the garden and the shrubs she tended.
And Helen, who as far as Sarah could make out had never been close to her parents, had lost her father in March, two months earlier. So sad to think they’d never connected in any meaningful way while he was alive. Did Helen regret it now, did she wish she’d tried to have some kind of relationship with him when they were both adults?
‘I’m so glad I married you,’ Sarah told Neil that evening, as they bathed the children.
He looked at her. ‘What brought that on?’
She soaped Martha’s arms. ‘Nothing. I just wanted to say it. I’m glad you asked me, and I’m glad I said yes. I think it’s terribly sad when people are afraid to communicate what’s in their hearts.’
He lifted Stephen from the bath and wrapped him in a towel. ‘I think your mum’s been drinking.’
Sarah frowned. ‘Don’t say that.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, reaching for the talc bottle at the end of the bath. ‘Just kidding.’
Sarah turned to Martha. ‘Men don’t know how to talk about their feelings but ladies do. That’s the big difference between us.’
Neil pulled a pyjama top over Stephen’s head. ‘I’ll be late tomorrow, got a call from a potential new customer outside Naas. I promised I’d drop over after work and have a look.’
The golf course hadn’t lasted; just two years before they’d admitted defeat and closed the gates. But Neil had survived, pursuing job leads doggedly, poring over landscaping books in his spare time, broadening his skills whenever he had the opportunity.
‘Out you come, lovey.’ Sarah helped Martha from the water. ‘How late is late?’
‘Could be eight or nine, could take a while. They’ve half an acre out the back they want to talk to me about: sounds like they want me to design a garden for them.’
Something in Common Page 20
