At a Time Like This

by Catherine Dunne

  That night, I told him about Trinity, about the lonely feelings I had that I hadn’t even admitted to myself. About being different and not fitting in; that kind of thing. I even told him about Miriam Fuller. That first evening was all about me, and that was something new in itself. When I finished he just nodded and then took my hand in both of his. I liked his warmth. It reminded me of how he’d held my foot, just before he eased on my new shoe.

  ‘I’d like to see you again, Nora. As a matter of fact, I’d very much like to see you again.’

  Frank said this as I stood up to go. He rose with me, and held my duffel coat while I struggled my way into it. I never did find it easy when someone else held my coat. My arms seemed to keep missing the sleeves and I’d jab at the air uselessly until whoever was holding the coat would bring the sleeves to me, rather than me to the sleeves. It was always embarrassing but I was never able to say no, thank you, I can do it myself. This time, though, it was a blessing in disguise. All that faffing about with the coat meant that I had my back to Frank when he said that he wanted to see me again, in that tone of voice that left no doubt but that he meant it. By the time I turned to face him, I think my colour had returned to normal.

  ‘I’d like that,’ I said. And I watched as his face lit up from the inside.

  ‘Good, good,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could give me your number and I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Or perhaps the day after, if that suits you better,’ he offered then.

  ‘It’s easier for me to call you,’ I said, and watched as his face slumped again, the way it had that first day in the shop. ‘I will call, I promise. It’s just not so convenient for me to get calls at home.’ I hoped that he’d accept that, that he wouldn’t push me or ask any awkward questions.

  He nodded and made no comment about the strangeness of my home. What sort of family didn’t allow its children to speak on the telephone? Ones like mine, I wanted to tell him, with hard rules and judgements and no forgiveness. Ones like mine.

  He squeezed my hand. ‘Then I’ll wait until you do so. If it’s easier, you could always call to the shop. Next time, I’d like very much to take you out to dinner, if you think you’d enjoy that.’

  I smiled at him then. ‘Could we go to the Sunflower?’

  He laughed. ‘We could indeed. Are you a fan of Chinese food, then?’

  I nodded. I preferred Indian, but in those days Dublin didn’t give us a lot of choice. And I could hardly offer to cook for him.

  ‘Friday?’ he said. He’d walked me to my bus stop and waited till my bus arrived.

  ‘Yes, Friday would be lovely. Thank you.’

  ‘Why don’t we have a drink in the Gresham at eight and I’ll book us a table in the Sunflower for afterwards?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said again, ‘why not? Let’s do that.’

  ‘Good. I’ll look forward to your call.’

  We waved to each other as I got on the number 10 bus and I allowed the numbness to settle around me all the way home. A nice man, a gentle man, a man like Captain Wentworth. Not handsome, certainly, but then neither was I. He did have nice eyes, though, and a lovely smile. You can forgive a lot when that’s the case. Not that I had anything to forgive. Quite the opposite.

  Time would tell, as my mother used to say. Time would tell.

  It took a few weeks before Frank understood that I had a real passion for cooking. By that time, we’d had dinner in all of the few decent restaurants and hotels that Dublin had to offer. Of course, it’s all different now, but back then there were very few places to try. The Trocadero, Quo Vadis, Nico’s; then there were the hotels, the Gresham, the Hibernian, the Shelbourne. And outside the city centre there was the Beaufield Mews, where you could have your dinner surrounded by lovely antique furniture and paintings. I have very fond memories of all of those places. Maybe there were one or two others, as well, but I don’t remember them any more.

  ‘Why don’t we cook at my house?’ Frank said to me one Wednesday when I dropped into the shop to see him. It was that quiet half-hour just before closing, or so we both hoped. Frank said it had been hectic all week. He had a young woman in to help him over the busy times, but she’d already gone home by the time I arrived. It was very near Christmas, I remember, and I think that people were worn out shopping by then. I had taken to dropping into the shop like this most weeks. That way, we were able to make our arrangements to meet in person without having to use the phone. If Frank found this strange, he never said. In fact, he never once pushed me to explain why phoning me at home kept on being such a problem.

  But he must have seen something in my face or else something in the way I hesitated over his invitation, because he rushed to say: ‘Only if you feel comfortable, that is. Only if you feel it’s appropriate.’ Just then, the door of the shop opened and a woman came in, dragging a screaming toddler by one arm. ‘Excuse me, my dear,’ he said and went to deal with his customer.

  My dear, I remember thinking. He’d called me ‘my dear’. I stood behind the till as I had done lots of other times, in case the phone rang or another customer came in while Frank was busy. I liked helping out there because it made me feel useful. I liked the fact that Frank needed me. That afternoon, I watched as he soothed the shrieking toddler and let him play with the machine that gave an accurate reading of the shoe sizes needed for children. Their feet grow so quickly, Frank had explained to me, and the bones can be deformed all too easily by ill-fitting footwear. The little boy was fascinated as he watched the X-ray of his feet and the mother was beaming.

  I stood at the till, and thought about the other words Frank had said. ‘Only if you feel it’s appropriate.’ Years and years later, when I saw the film Thelma and Louise and one of them, I think Thelma, says: ‘I’ve had it up to my ass with “sedate”,’ I knew just what she meant. By then, I was growing very tired of all the things that were supposed to be correct. Sedate, correct, appropriate: they’re the same thing, really. In fact, my father, with his legal language and legal judgements, was always going on about the things that were appropriate. Well, I thought, to blue blazes with that. This is a nice man. I’m going to cook dinner at Frank’s house and nobody is going to stop me.

  It was the first time since London that I’d decided to lie to my parents. I was twenty, after all, nearly twenty-one. It was high time I started to get a life of my own. I had started spending time with Maggie and Claire at the flat. Not Georgie, of course. Most of the time I spent there, I made sure that she wouldn’t be around. It wasn’t too difficult to work it out. Her lecture timetable was different from ours. I used to have fantasies about what it would be like to share with Claire and Maggie. I’d have loved to be in a flat with other girls. But Mammy and Daddy wouldn’t hear of it. It was a firm ‘no’ every time I brought it up. So I stopped. But I hated missing out on so much.

  And so, when the mother and toddler left the shop that afternoon, I said to Frank, ‘I’d love to cook for us at the weekend. Tell me where you live.’ I spoke quickly because I was afraid of giving myself the time to change my mind.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, but I could see how his smile kept getting wider. I nodded, beginning to feel embarrassed. Had I been too forward? It was too late to pull back now. Besides, most of me didn’t want to.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I said. I was glad that my tone sounded so positive. ‘I’ll even bring everything with me. All the ingredients.’

  He shook his head and his face was alive with eagerness. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘I’ve an even better idea. Why don’t we meet up on Friday? It’s my last Friday off before Christmas. We can have the afternoon and then do the shopping together. My local supermarket is very good and it stays open till six in the evening. We can drive there and get everything we need.’

  And that’s what we did. Frank had a lovely house in Kincora Road in Clontarf I took the number 30 bus from Marlborough street at two o’clock on the Friday afternoon and got off at Vernon Ave
nue, where Frank was waiting for me. We walked up the Avenue and turned right on to a lovely leafy street that was packed with neat red-brick houses. Frank’s was five or six from the end of the road. The front door was painted blue and the gardens both back and front, as I soon discovered, were tidy and well looked after, with the last leaves of a Virginia creeper still blazing against one wall. Inside, the house was full of light and colour and there was a beautiful extended kitchen. I don’t know why, but the house surprised me. I had never met a house-proud man before.

  ‘My brother Ciarán does kitchens,’ Frank explained as he showed me around. ‘He says that a good kitchen is what will always sell a house.’

  I remember that I looked at him in surprise. ‘Oh – are you thinking of selling, then?’

  He took my hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m hoping I’ll need something bigger some day’

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. But I could feel myself begin to blush. Both of us knew what he had just said.

  We went to the supermarket in Frank’s Ford Fiesta. Nolan’s, I think it was called. As we walked up and down the aisles together I thought: ‘This feels so normal, so right.’ Doing these simple things with him had begun to make me feel happy for the first time in nearly three years. And so that was the night that I told him about Megan.

  We had just finished dinner and the table was full of little china bowls of leftovers – raita, Bombay pickle, poppadoms, that sort of thing. They were all things that wouldn’t keep until the following day, so we hadn’t bothered with the clingfilm. Frank had bought candles, too, and they lit up everything very prettily. I’d had at least one glass of wine more than I was used to, and it gave me the courage I needed.

  ‘I need to tell you something, Frank,’ I said. By that time in our relationship, he had kissed me a few times, but he had never pushed me any further than that. I had known him less than three months but I trusted him. I had learned by then that how long you knew someone was no measure of how much you could trust them. I thought of my parents, in fact, when I thought about trust. Earlier that afternoon, Frank and I had kissed and cuddled on his sofa with great tenderness, but I couldn’t relax because my story was sitting there on the cushions between us, taking up space.

  ‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve felt something worrying you all day. Whatever it is, you can tell me. You can be sure of me, Nora. Nothing will change the way I feel about you.’

  And so I told him about Eddie. About how we met at a Rugby Club dance the year I’d done my Leaving Cert and about how I’d fallen head over heels for him. I told Frank about how he’d persuaded me to run away to France with him. I told him everything, including how my parents had had to chase after us from Calais to Paris to Perpignan for more than three months and how they finally caught up with us at the Spanish border. But by then it was all too late. We’d run out of money – my savings, mostly – and I’d just found out that I was pregnant and there was no longer any ‘us’. I know, I know, it is such a small story and such an ordinary one but I can’t help that. I’ve always been ordinary and at least with Frank I was able to stop pretending I would ever be anything else. The end of my story is just as obvious, too. Eddie disappeared into the night once my parents arrived and I never saw him again. In fact I have never seen him again, not from that day to this. He doesn’t even know he has a daughter out there somewhere and I’d imagine he doesn’t care either. He never came looking for me again, not even once.

  ‘My parents sent me to London,’ I said. ‘I have an aunt there – well, she’s not really family, she’s a kind of aunt-in-law, I suppose, but she took me in.’

  Frank’s hand never moved from mine. He was every bit as still as the air in the room around us. ‘Was she kind to you?’

  I shrugged. ‘Well, she wasn’t unkind, I suppose. I did all the cooking and minded the children and I got board and lodgings in return. She was out at work during the day so we didn’t really see much of one another.’

  Frank smiled. ‘So that’s how you learned to be such a great cook. That’s the best meal I’ve ever eaten.’

  I remember how grateful I was to him for saying that. At least I’d taken something home from London with me, something that would be useful. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Tell me the rest. If you were working that hard during the day, what did you do for company in the evenings and at weekends?’

  Company. If only he knew. I had no use for company. If I’m honest I’d have to say that I was terrified of letting my daughter out of my sight even for an instant. I knew what was going to happen to her and to me. I already knew that I would lose her to strangers and never see her again and never hold her again. After they took her from me, I slept with one of her baby vests on my pillow. That way, I could smell her smell and pretend she was still with me. It was a smell made up of milk and talcum powder and baby sweetness. I’ll never forget the panic when that smell began to fade. That was when I knew that she was gone for good.

  I swallowed. I didn’t want to cry, but I wanted to be sure that I told him the truth as I remembered it. ‘I used to go to bed early every night because I was so tired. And at the weekends I went to the park and the library a lot.’

  ‘And your baby?’ he said gently.

  Then I cried. When he said ‘your baby’ I couldn’t hold it in any longer. ‘She was born in June last year. I tried to keep her, but I couldn’t. I tried living in a bedsit for a while and getting a job and keeping things going, but I just couldn’t do it.’ I stopped, sobs where the words should be. Frank poured me a glass of water. I sipped for a bit and then I was able to continue.

  ‘My parents insisted I had her adopted.’ I remembered that awful day, my parents’ stiff faces and how their disapproval of me was stitched into every inch of their bodies. And I remembered the way they’d both stayed away from me, at the other end of the room.

  ‘What was her name?’

  I looked at him, surprised that he didn’t know, but of course he didn’t. Nobody did. ‘Megan,’ I said. ‘Her name is Megan and she has fair hair and blue eyes and I love her to bits.’ I folded my arms on the table, put my head down and wept. I cried with loss and love and relief. Finally, I’d been able to tell someone who wouldn’t look at me with appalled eyes and lips clamped shut into a tight, closed line. At last, here was someone who wouldn’t look at me while their face filled up with rage and disappointment and bitterness.

  I felt Frank’s hand on my hair. ‘Marry me, Nora,’ he said. His voice was very tender. ‘Marry me and let’s go and find your little girl and make a family’

  I looked up at him in astonishment.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said, his face serious. ‘We can find her and get her back. I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back.’

  Then I knew I loved him and that I would always love him for saying that. I sat up and wiped my eyes with the backs of my hands. Frank handed me his napkin and I blew my nose.

  ‘She’s nearly eighteen months old, Frank, and she’s living with a family somewhere in Wisconsin. The nuns arranged the adoption, but it was a private one without any papers. They said it was better that way because nobody would be able to interfere.’

  I remembered their faces. They weren’t cruel, those women, but watching one of them pick Megan up had made me feel like a wild animal. I wanted to throw myself at them, to scratch at their eyes and draw blood. ‘We’d never find her, not without documents. And anyway, I couldn’t rip her away from the only family she’s ever known. How could I do that? Think how unhappy that would make her, even if we could ever find her.’

  And then I started to cry again. Frank just went on stroking my hair. ‘You don’t need to decide tonight,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it again, all of it. There’s just one thing I would like you to decide, though, no matter what. Just between us. We don’t need to tell anyone just yet, not until we’re ready to. Will you marry me?’

  I didn’t need to think about it. ‘Yes,’ I sai
d. ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.’

  He stood then and pulled me to my feet. ‘I wanted to marry you the first time you walked into my shop. I want to be with you. And we’ll have children, as many as you want.’ He wound his arms around me and I thought, not for the first time, how solid and substantial he felt to me, despite his lankiness. He kissed me and then he tried a joke. He could see how sorrowful I was, remembering it all over again. ‘Now for some light relief. Those profiteroles look too good to leave till tomorrow. In fact, I could swear that they’re winking at me.’

  I laughed, grateful to him all over again. I remember how light my heart had begun to feel as we walked towards the kitchen. At last I allowed myself to believe that there might be a happy ending hesitating out there somewhere, waiting for me to come and get it.

  After dessert, we sat on the sofa together for hours, Frank’s arm around my shoulders, both of my hands holding on to his. We talked about where we’d live, how many children we’d have, how he’d always keep his promises.

  And he has.

  I know the others thought he was too old, too boring, too dull – more or less the same kind of things that they probably thought about me, particularly Georgie. Claire was kind when she found out we’d got engaged and so was Maggie. I remember being a bit surprised at Maggie. Of course, she always meant to be kind to me, but sometimes she was uneasy about it when Georgie was around. She thinks that I didn’t notice, I’m sure, but I’ve always known that Maggie needed to be in Georgie’s good books. That morning in the Buttery, I thought that Maggie was almost tearful when I showed her my ring. Georgie, though, was her usual spiteful self. The only thing she wanted to know was whether Frank and I were sleeping together. They knew nothing about Megan back then and they still know nothing. I’d promised my parents to tell nobody and I never broke my word, apart from Frank. And that was different because as far as I was concerned, that wasn’t breaking my word, that was building our trust. Quite another thing altogether.