‘I’d love to,’ she said.
‘Wonderful – pick you up at half seven.’
They’d been dating, or whatever you wanted to call it, since he’d rung, a few days after giving her the nursing-home number, to ask if she’d be at all interested in going out to dinner with him.
He took her to restaurants and the theatre and the cinema. He drove her out of the city on Sundays, his only day off, and they walked along riverbanks and drank tea in little village cafés with lace tablecloths. He was the most generous person she’d ever known, presenting her regularly with chocolate and books and flowers. He paid for everything when they went out, wouldn’t hear of her contributing.
He was pleasingly, but not overly, tactile. He would stroke her hand absently as they watched a play, and reach out to cradle her elbow when they crossed a street. Occasionally he draped a hand lightly across her shoulders as they walked. At the end of an evening he would bend his head and kiss her goodnight, his lips warm, his beard tickling her face, his huge arms enveloping her. And on most Saturday nights he stayed over.
There’d been no big seduction scene – they were both well beyond coyness. One evening, a few weeks after they’d got together, Helen had suggested he stay the night, and he’d smiled and accepted the invitation. He was gentle in bed, and as considerate as she’d thought he would be – and if their sex life wasn’t as earth-moving as she would have liked, she’d felt cherished for the first time since Cormac.
He was good company. He laughed often, was never short of conversation. He could make a story out of anything. He loved his work: he got enormous pleasure from advising people on what to plant and where to plant it. His business, by the sound of it, was thriving.
He was fifty-two, four years older than her. He’d never been married, and he never referred to previous relationships, but it was obvious that there had been at least one or two: she certainly wasn’t his first lover. His parents and sister, his only sibling, were dead, but he had various relatives scattered around Dublin – cousins, aunts, nieces, nephews – whom he saw regularly. One of the cousins, George, had started the garden centre with him more than twenty years earlier, and the two still ran it together.
His goodnight kisses were comforting; she enjoyed the feel of his arms about her. His bulk soothed her, made her feel safe. His default setting was happy, his good humour the perfect counterpart to her occasional black moods. Simply by being himself, he made her feel less prickly.
On paper he was perfect. In person he was perfect too, if you were looking for someone dependable and kind. And what was wrong with dependable and kind? She was forty-eight; she’d moved beyond fireworks. He was good for her, she’d been lucky to meet him. To think it had been Malone’s cat that had brought them together.
Malone, who had been dead after all, who’d never got to find out that Helen had taken in his cat. The woman on the phone stuttering out the news, assuming that Helen cared. Pity all the same he hadn’t known that the cat was OK: sounded like the poor bugger had been attached to it.
I have a new boyfriend, she’d written to Sarah, after she and Frank had been seeing one another for about a month. You’d approve. He’s a real gentleman, treats me like a queen – and you’ll be pleased to hear that this time I’ve gone for my own generation. He’s fifty-two and looks like Santa, big fluffy beard, twinkly eyes, the lot. He actually dresses up as Santa in his garden centre on Christmas Eve – I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he told me that.
She made no mention of him in her letters to Alice: time enough to introduce them when Alice came home at Christmas. Frank would still be around, she was quite sure of that. She remembered Alice’s rejection of Oliver, her silent treatment of him whenever they’d been in the same room, the tension at their shared meals. But Alice was older now and had moved out – and Frank was no Oliver Joyce.
She opened the front door and walked out to the garden, gathering her wrap more tightly around her. The days were getting chillier, now that winter was approaching. Where were the years going? She regarded the brick wall her neighbours had erected and saw Malone’s ghost, clipping the hedge that had preceded it.
She remembered Cormac scooping her up to carry her into the house the first time he’d brought her around to see it. ‘You only do that when you’re married,’ she’d protested, laughing, and he’d winked and said, ‘Just getting in some practice.’
She pictured Alice as a toddler, insisting on wheeling her own buggy from the gate to the house, stumbling when the wheels bumped up against the path’s raised brick border.
And now Malone and Cormac were dead, and Alice was grown-up and living in a different country, and in two years Helen would be fifty.
And it was Sarah’s fortieth in little over a week, a big party was being planned in a local hotel – and typically of Sarah, she was incorporating a surprise party for their childminder, whose fiftieth was around the same time.
She has no idea! It’s great that I’m planning a party anyway, so I don’t have to do all the arranging in secret. We’ve invited every relative and friend her sister could round up, and I’ve even found a man for her – he’s Dan, the driver at the nursing home for as long as I’ve been there, and longer. He’s a really sweet man, and I think he and Noreen would be perfect together. I’ll introduce them anyway, and you never know.
She’d invited Helen to the party.
Don’t you think, after all these years, it might be time for us to finally meet up?? You could bring Santa with you (!!) and you could stay the night in the hotel. I’m sorry I can’t offer a bed – our house will be bursting at the seams with various family members – but I’d love to meet you. Do come!
But Helen had turned down the invitation, saying Frank had already booked tickets to a play that evening. It wasn’t true – and even if it had been, cancelling wouldn’t have bothered him in the slightest: on the contrary, he’d have been delighted at the thought of a trip to Kildare to meet Helen’s mysterious penfriend – but for some reason Helen resisted the idea of coming face to face with Sarah. They got on fine on paper: best to leave it at that.
The cat appeared suddenly, padding unhurriedly through the bars of the front gate and down the path towards Helen, tail in the air.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked. ‘Account for your movements.’
It slinked around her, pressing its body against her calves. They’d grown used to one another, both abandoned by the ones closest to them.
‘Come on.’ She turned, and it followed her into the house.
Sarah
She rolled Stephen’s buggy to and fro as she stood outside the junior infants classroom window, searching the sea of small bodies scrambling to get ready for home until she found Martha. There she was, by the opposite wall, reaching on tiptoe to yank her pink raincoat from its hook, looking both heartbreakingly grown-up and frighteningly young in her grey cardigan and too-long navy skirt.
As soon as the teacher slid across the door that opened onto the yard, the waiting parents moved forward to claim children, some already dropping to their knees to button coats and pull up zips. Sarah stood where she was, a smile in place for when her daughter found them.
Martha emerged and looked about, skimming over the adults until she picked out Sarah. Her face brightened as she skipped towards her mother, schoolbag bouncing against her legs. Sarah crouched and gathered her into her arms, pressing her lips against the soft, warm cheek. ‘Hello, my precious. Did you have a good day?’
‘Mmm. How come Stephen got jellies?’
Sarah released her and tucked her schoolbag underneath the buggy. ‘I’ve got some for you too. Did you have a nice day in school?’
‘Yeah. Cathal was bold again. Where’s my jellies?’
Life was hectic. Working part-time helped, of course, but there were still busy afternoons and weekends with two small children who claimed all her attention, and a father, seventy-nine last birthday, who, despite his continuing indep
endence, she felt obliged to visit at least twice a week.
Neil did his bit when he was around, but these days he was busier than ever, more involved now with the design side of gardening, Most weeks he spent one or two nights away from home, with customers from miles around looking for him to plan their gardens – and willing to pay him surprisingly well in return – and on the nights he did appear he was often too tired to do much more than eat dinner and go to bed. Sarah supposed it was a good complaint – worse if he had nobody looking for him – but still.
Thank goodness for Noreen, who continued to provide such wonderful help. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you,’ Sarah would tell her regularly, and Noreen would laugh and say anyone could do what she did: all it took was a bit of patience.
After much thought about a birthday present for her, Sarah had bought a very sweet wicker picnic basket, lined in blue and white gingham and stocked with crockery, cutlery and glasses for two.
‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with the blind date you’re lining up for her, would it?’ Christine had asked when Sarah had shown it to her.
‘Not at all – she can use this with a friend, it doesn’t have to be for a couple. And it’s not a blind date, it’s just Dan, and he would have been coming to my party anyway. I’ll introduce them, that’s all.’
‘And you’re hoping they’ll take one look at each other and fall helplessly in love.’
‘Of course not – well, not straight away. But you never know what might develop.’
Christine had shaken her head, smiling. ‘It takes more than availability for people to fancy one another.’
‘I know that. I’m not totally innocent.’
But it could happen, and maybe it would, and Noreen would be glad of the picnic basket then. Nothing like slices of chicken terrine and a glass or two of wine by a sunny riverbank to move a relationship on a little.
Look at Helen, almost fifty and with someone new, who sounded lovely. Shame about her not being free for the party: Sarah had been looking forward to them finally coming face to face. When you thought about it, the fact that they hadn’t met up yet was pretty remarkable – they were only forty miles apart, for Heaven’s sake.
But of course it was only a matter of time. You couldn’t write to someone for so long, share so many confidences with them, feel that they were as much a part of your life as the others in it, and never meet. Sooner or later it would happen.
In the meantime, something else was preoccupying her. Maybe she was expecting too much: she was well aware that with Stephen’s birth her most fervent wish had already been granted. Maybe it was the prospect of turning forty in just over a week. For whatever reason, the desire to conceive again, for her and Neil to give life to another baby, was becoming overwhelming.
She needed to talk it over with him. They needed to find time to reconnect. It seemed like forever since they’d made love – more often than not, on the nights he was home he was asleep before she got to bed – but if they were going to try again they needed to do it soon.
‘Do you think we could go away, just the two of us, even for one night?’ she asked. ‘We could get Noreen to stay over, or bring the children to Christine’s.’
With a night to themselves, with a chance for him to tune out of work and without Stephen and Martha to distract them, she could bring up the subject.
But he shook his head. ‘Sorry, love, I’m just too busy right now. Maybe if work eases up a bit. We’ll see.’
We’ll see: what you’d say to a child to stop them demanding something you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, supply. Oh, she knew she shouldn’t resent the fact that he was working steadily, but he didn’t have to say yes to every job offer that came along, did he? It wasn’t as if they needed the money, with him able to command such high fees, and her working too.
But she wasn’t about to give up. She’d wait till the party was over and then she’d sort something out. She’d ask Christine to take the kids for a night, no need to involve Noreen. They’d stay at home, she’d fill a bath for him and cook his favourite dinner. She’d remind him why he’d fallen in love with her, and then she’d talk about what was uppermost in her thoughts.
They just needed to find the time, that was all.
Helen
Was it him? Hard to be sure, with the evening sun lighting up the plate-glass window that separated them. Helen shielded her eyes and watched the man walking past the restaurant. Yes, definitely Breen – and look at the grey in his hair now. How long since they’d last met? Two or three years at least since he’d retired.
She remembered talking to him briefly at the party the newspaper had thrown to wave him off, but she couldn’t remember what they’d discussed. That had been the night she’d brought home the Swedish barman – or was he Norwegian? The details were vague, her head fuzzy with the whiskey she’d drunk. She remembered trying to make coffee in the kitchen when she’d brought him home, spilling granules all over the floor.
Not that he’d been worth it. No thought except for his own pleasure, no idea where to go to keep her happy. Gone before she’d woken the following morning – taken one look at her, probably, in the cold light of day and headed for the hills.
‘Someone you know?’
‘My old boss, and … his wife, I presume.’
Must be the wife: scarlet lipstick in a washed-out face, enormous gold hoop earrings, pale hair pulled tightly into a knotted green scarf. Heavy brown coat, thin legs beneath, shiny black shoes whose high, high heels lifted her a couple of inches above him.
Didn’t exactly look like the sunny antidote to Breen, same grim expression as his own. Not touching, both looking straight ahead as they walked. Hardly a barrel of laughs around that dinner table.
But still together, if she was the wife, despite Catherine’s hints that all hadn’t been well. Maybe they’d worked through it. She tried to imagine Breen agreeing to counselling; she conjured up the image of him sitting across a desk, taking advice from someone on how to conduct his marriage. Never happen, not in a million years.
‘I think I’ll go for the steak,’ Frank said. ‘I’m in a red-meat mood today.’
Helen wasn’t hungry, not in the slightest. All day she’d felt off-colour, stabbing listlessly at the typewriter keys, her back aching, her head light. She should have rung him to cancel the date, gone to bed with a hot lemon drink. But the time had run away with her until it was too late to call it off, and here she was.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I don’t feel so good.’
He was instantly concerned. He drove her home, sent her upstairs while he boiled the kettle and filled a hot-water bottle. He fussed so much, drawing the bedroom curtains, hunting through the bathroom cabinet for a thermometer, taking the blankets from Alice’s bed to pile onto Helen’s, riffling the pages of the phone book to find a late-night chemist, that in the end, weary, she sent him home, pretending to feel much better now that she was tucked up.
He left reluctantly, threatening to return first thing in the morning until she insisted that a phone call would be fine, the phone next to her bed so she could answer it easily. She listened to the sound of the front door closing softly, his steps down the path, the creak of the gate, his van door opening and closing, and finally the engine, moving him away from her.
She was never sick, apart from the odd head cold or bout of indigestion. Her hangovers didn’t count, being self-inflicted – and since she and Frank had got together they’d pretty much disappeared anyway, with him not being much of a drinker. No fun getting pie-eyed on your own.
She lay unmoving and assessed her current situation. A throbbing, small but insistent, around her temples. A stiffness across her shoulder blades and down her spine, as if she’d had a fairly challenging workout. A heat in her cheeks – her temperature was up a bit – a shiver in her limbs, an ache in her chest when she breathed deeply. Some bug that would have to work its way through her system.
After a while she pulled
herself up, wincing, and sipped the lemon drink he’d left on the locker. He would have made a good nurse. She dressed him in white scrubs, put a thermometer around his neck, rubber-soled shoes on his feet. Nurse Murphy at your service, full of tender, loving, smiling care. He’d probably have to lose the beard.
She didn’t love him, not in a romantic way. She wasn’t in love with him, not at all. But she’d had a great love once, which was more than a lot of others got. And Frank had taken her home when she was sick, he’d put her to bed and flapped around her like a mother hen, and there wasn’t exactly a queue waiting to do that. He was worth hanging on to.
She lay back and closed her eyes, waiting for sleep.
Sarah
Dear Mrs Flannery
You’ll probably be surprised to hear from me, but my mum said your 40th birthday was coming up so I made you this card at my painting class. I hope you like it.
I’m living in Cardiff now, you probably know that from Mum. I’m working in a pub and sharing a woman’s house, but my friend and I are hoping to find our own flat soon. Our budget is small but we don’t need much room.
I hope your children are well.
Happy birthday,
love Alice x
It was lovely, a hand-painted card that had arrived the day before her birthday. A little red plane flying through a clear blue sky and trailing an orange banner that read Happy Birthday. So sweet of Alice, all the way from Cardiff.
The party hadn’t been a disaster, nothing like that. Most of the people Sarah had invited had turned up, and they’d seemed to enjoy themselves. Christine had ordered a gorgeous three-tier lemon sponge cake, decorated with yellow fondant roses. Sarah had felt good: quite a few had admired her new blue skirt and grey lacy top.
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