At a Time Like This

by Catherine Dunne

  ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘But I’m hoping we don’t make a habit of evenings like this.’ I turned to Nora. ‘The happy parts, by all means, lads, but not the sort of stuff that drives any of us to smoke our brains out. Life’s much too short.’

  We called it a night soon after that. All Maggie could do was pace restlessly and smoke. There was a piece missing, she kept saying. A piece missing. Georgie would never be foolish enough to give anyone reason to come after her. Any legal or financial reason, that is. And all Nora could do was handle the photographs of Megan, already aeons removed from the drama of the absent Georgie. I felt tired and flat and encouraged the two of them to share a taxi home. They did, but not before they protested about wanting to help with the cleaning up. I waved them away and they finally left me to it, at my own insistence.

  Maggie hugged me for longer than usual before she left. I had a strong sense that the breach between us was finally healed, that our future would be better than our past. I felt a surprising amount of gratitude to Georgie for having made it so.

  ‘Take care of yourself she said, and then, as Nora opened the front door after her perfunctory embrace, she whispered: ‘I thought you were very brave tonight. I’ll call you in the morning. Maybe we could meet for coffee, just the two of us?’

  I hugged her back. ‘I’d like that. And by the way’ I said, ‘you’re holding back something. You’d better tell me tomorrow.’

  Maggie looked over her shoulder quickly. Nora was just getting into the taxi. ‘Our Italian supplier,’ she whispered. ‘His name is Roberto something or other.’ She frowned. ‘Like the film director, but with a different ending. I can never get it right.’ Then her face brightened. ‘Tarantini, that’s it. Roberto Taran-tini.’

  ‘And do you think . . . ?’ I began.

  Maggie shrugged extravagantly. ‘Jesus, Claire, what do I know any more? He’s years older, conservative as they come – and I found him terrifying. If there was anything between the two of them, they deserve an Oscar. Each.’

  The taxi-driver sounded the horn. A brief, impatient summons.

  ‘Gotta go.’ She hugged me again. ‘Thanks again for dinner. Talk tomorrow.’

  ‘’Bye,’ I said. ‘Take care. Sleep if you can.’

  She waved over her shoulder and ran down the garden path, her high heels clicking. I smiled to myself. Despite Frank’s well-meaning and often-repeated advice, no one could part Maggie and her stilettos.

  As I loaded the dishwasher, some old memories began to nudge. A fragment of conversation here, a sideways glance there. Georgie at Trinity, not bothering to turn up if a more attractive opportunity presented itself, or two-timing Danny on the occasional weekend, or else just calculating the best way to get whatever it was she wanted.

  I thought of the ways she’d always tried to sideline Nora, and how astonished she’d be at tonight’s revelations. I felt sad as I remembered Nora’s photographs: not just those of Megan, but the ones of Robbie’s birthday party too. She’d brought them along to point out all the family resemblances for us – the dark hair and brown eyes; the sallow skin; the handsomeness. I had envied her her four children all over again. What’s this the expression is: an embarrassment of riches? I wished, not the first time, that I had more photographs of Paul and me, ones that were more natural, less posed than was the fashion of the eighties.

  It was as I was scraping the remains of the coq-au-vin into a Tupperware bowl – none of us had been very hungry – that I froze. I can still see myself standing there, wooden spoon in hand, rich red-wine sauce dripping on to the countertop in front of me. It made a pattern on the white marble, a shape reminiscent of the map of Australia. I had a sudden feeling of paralysed recognition, that moment when time stands still. As it began to recede, leaving the back of my neck tingling, it became a slowly satisfying click-clack of things falling into place. It was like the domino effect of hundreds of tiny pieces from the past twenty-five years, each knocking the other off balance, each tumbling after the one before it and finally settling in front of me into silence and to rest. I dropped the spoon, scattering New South Wales into Queensland, obliterating Tasmania completely, spattering the painted surface beside the stainless steel hob.

  ‘Oh, good Jesus Christ of Almighty’ I said aloud.

  10. Maggie

  I like the feel of the air here because it’s fresh and it’s clean and it smells of newly cut grass in the mornings. In the evenings, there is the scent of turf fires and woodsmoke. It’s a treat after the dirt and diesel of Dublin. I’ll always be grateful to Georgie for helping me get my hands on this. My own cottage, views of the Curlews, miles and miles of peace and tranquillity. And it’s just remote enough for me, tucked away safely between the hills of Leitrim and the waters of the Shannon.

  My new weekend routine is very pleasant. For the last six months, ever since I found my refuge, I leave the shop as early as I can manage on Fridays so that I can beat the traffic. That means I get here by around half-five or six. The first few months were taken up with overseeing the renovations, making decisions about what to change and what to keep, and then cleaning up after the builders. I mean, they were all enjoyable activities in their own way, and Anthony, my builder, made sure that I felt in control all the time, but I was glad when they were over. I was impatient to start the fun stuff of decorating and buying and playing house. Anthony humoured me, and the man’s response to every request was always, ‘Yeah, that’s possible. No problem.’ Thanks to him, I felt a sense of excited ownership even while the interior was still a tip.

  But all that has now come to an end. These weekends, as soon as I arrive, I light my fire and pull the curtains. In a couple of weeks’ time, the clock will go forward and then I’ll get another hour or so of brightness in the evenings. I’m looking forward to that. In the meantime, it’s wonderful to close my own front door, to shut out the gloom and do something I haven’t been able to do in years. I’m reading up a storm. All the books I’ve not had time for, the ones I bought and postponed for a quieter time, the Christmas and birthday presents that were never opened, but sat on shelves and bedside lockers waiting for their opportunity. Well, the opportunity doesn’t come by itself, so why keep waiting for it? And I have discovered that quieter times are a myth. It’s now or never.

  And where is Ray, my husband of twenty years? Where is my family in all of this self-indulgence? My two lovely daughters are at university, managing their own lives and looking after their own flats. I have one young son about to spread his wings. In less than three months, a whole eleven and a half weeks, he will sit his Leaving Cert, and who’s counting? We both are, that’s who.

  ‘You tryin’ to get rid of me, Ma?’ he asked me the other night when we were trawling the internet together, looking at student accommodation in Glasgow. But he was grinning.

  ‘Kevin, I’m appalled you could even think such a thing,’ I told him.

  ‘That’s a “yes”, then, isn’t it?’

  We’ve been having this kind of banter on and off for a few weeks now. Part of me knows he’s being the protective son, that he knows that when he’s gone, the nest is definitely empty. He doesn’t mention Ray, and I don’t either. But I won’t allow feelings of guilt or responsibility or duty to hold him back. It’s his turn, his life. And oddly enough it’s also mine. All we each have to do is take it. Then it’s freedom for him, Glasgow, university life, fun, novelty and good luck to him. He doesn’t know about ‘Blue Heaven’ yet. Nobody does, except for Georgie. But he will, in time. And until then, I’ll continue to enjoy my solitary weekends, my walks, my books.

  My time. My life. The time of my life.

  I get up about nine on Saturdays and walk to the local supermarket for fresh bread and fruit. I like this kind of shopping. It’s so much more enjoyable than the forced marches I used to have to the shops when the kids were small. I remember our student times, too, when Georgie hated grocery shopping even more than I did. Can’t see the point to something that has to
be done over and over again, she used to complain. A waste of our existence. And I agreed. I mean, at least when you shop for clothes you come home with something that gives you pleasure. And something that lasts. But this leisurely shopping is different, this early morning stroll down the hill towards the village. It doesn’t feel like a chore. Instead, it has become the way I choose to start my day.

  I may well be the cause of some local gossip around Coillte, although people here are very polite. I have got to know Anthony of course, and through him, carpenters, painters, the owners of the local hardware store. I made it a point to bring nothing with me from Dublin. Everything I bought during the cottage’s renovation was bought either in Coillte, or in the villages surrounding us. Everyone I employed was local. I’m not green enough to believe that you can buy acceptance, but I do believe that you can create goodwill.

  When I finally arrived here last night, it was strange to feel that I was carrying on as normal despite the huge absence of Georgie. During other, previous lives of ours, even if we weren’t in touch on a daily basis, we always knew we could be. Then, when we met, we just picked up where we’d left off, as though no time had passed at all. But this time things are different. I don’t know where she is and I can’t imagine her in her new surroundings. That makes me feel edgy, as though I have lost my bearings, although I am not the one doing the travelling.

  And then, last night, I pushed open my front door to find Georgie’s letter waiting for me. At a time like this, I felt that its arrival was significant in more ways than one. It was the first piece of post to come to me at my new address. Or should I say our new address? For legal and technical reasons, Georgie is the owner of my cottage because this is one bit of my life that Ray will never share. ‘Blue Heaven’ is not a name I’d have chosen for a cottage surrounded by so much green. Even the name of the village, Coillte, means ‘woodlands’. But there you have it. Georgie thought that the name was so naff I should keep it.

  ‘Hang on to it, Maggie,’ she advised. ‘It’s just like a boat,’ she looked all solemn and serious, ‘bad luck to change it.’

  And I have held on to it, just to please her. But I have my doubts.

  I knew she’d get in touch with me eventually. I was just glad that it was sooner rather than later. It’d be hard to break a habit of forty years, even if you wanted to. It feels strange that she’s only a week gone now and already we have all begun to adapt to her absence. True to form, her letter explained nothing and didn’t try to justify anything. She knows that, with me, she doesn’t have to. The envelope was postmarked Frankfurt, and that is all I need to have, to know that the one place in the world that Georgie has not fled to is Germany. And ‘fled’ is hardly the right word, either, I think. There is no sign of panic in Georgie’s leaving. Quite the opposite. This was an orderly retreat, if ever I’ve seen one. I’ll tell Claire about the letter at some stage, of course, but I’ll have to let at least some time pass before I do. There is a role for her, spelt out by Georgie with her usual succinctness. But she’s right, Claire might not want to accept it.

  ‘Papers will follow by the end of the month,’ Georgie wrote. ‘You’ll be able to see that “Blue Heaven” is yours for your lifetime. After that, I’ve set up the trust, as we agreed, and on your death, it passes to Eve, Gillian and Kevin. Your solicitor and mine will both be trustees, and they suggest that you invite one other person. Someone you’d be confident would make the right decisions on your kids’ behalf. I think that Claire would be ideal, but you might feel differently. It could bring her into contact with Ray, and I don’t know how either you or Claire would feel about that. There’s no immediate rush; take your time and think about it.’

  Trust; trustees; trustworthy. It was like a map of my life, pointing out the same destination over and over again, with me never managing to reach it. But at least I have this: something in my name, something that gives me independence and freedom, something that Ray cannot take from me, as he has taken so many other things.

  There are a few shoppers here before me this morning. Not too many, as things tend to move slowly on Saturdays in Leitrim. Those who are here are recognizable by their uniforms of Day-Glo rainwear, deck shoes and, more often than not, small children with large life-jackets. I hope their boats are centrally heated. The March sky might be blue, but it’s the blue that’s forged out of of steel and wind and ice. I think of my oil-fired radiators back at the cottage and make a mental note to check the tank. It is an ugly-looking structure in the back garden, but Anthony did a good job of camouflage, by securing a trellis all around it. Once the soil heats up properly, I’ll plant mile-a-minute-vine. There’s no point in doing anything like that until the spring frosts have run their course.

  My site – my site! – stretches to almost half an acre and I’m itching to get planting vegetables and flowers, some trees and shrubs. I bought myself a few coffee-table gardening books a couple of weeks back, off Amazon. I’m also watching every gardening programme that comes on TV I heard someone remark recently that it used to be cookery, but now it appears that gardening is the new sex. I’ll buy that. It seems to me perfectly reasonable that planting and tending, hoeing and digging, cutting back and nurturing something that responds is a lot less trouble for much greater reward.

  I take one of the small wire baskets that lie just inside the supermarket door. Today, I buy fresh peaches, cherries and apricots. It’s amazing the influence tourists can have on sleepy villages. I put two Spanish tomatoes into my basket. The tomatoes of Andalucía have to be the best in the world. For my breakfast, even back in Dublin, I copy what the local café in Mojácar used to serve.

  I’d spent the whole summer there once I’d finished third year, polishing up my Spanish. Then, once I’d done my finals, I went back again. I was exhausted, unsure about my future, sick of the gloom of Dublin. I craved the light and the feel of sun on my bones. My mother had given me the proceeds of some insurance policy that had just matured, one she had taken out on me years back. I didn’t need to think twice. I packed a rucksack, divided the cash into three small bundles and hid it in my socks and a money belt that I wore under my T-shirt. Then I took the cheapest flight I could get to Madrid, a train that took for ever to get to Almería and a series of local bone-rattling buses to tiny places like Agua Amarga, Carboneras, Aguilas, before finally settling on the village of Mojácar. Small and whitewashed and Moorish, with a string of empty beaches and blue water, it captured me the moment I saw it. I rented a tiny apartment up the hill from the beach and basically got lost for five months.

  Georgie came to visit but the heat killed her. No matter how many fans we had, or how we positioned them, she couldn’t sleep. And that was only June, long before the Andalucían summer really got into its stride. She went home after two weeks, fired up with plans for opening her own boutique in Dalkey That was the time, though, that she told me she had made up her mind about Danny.

  ‘He’s out of control,’ she said, one day while we were sitting on the beach under an umbrella. We were both sipping a café del tiempo, a delicious brew of espresso poured over ice cubes and wedges of lemon. It helped to cool us down. ‘He’s doing more and more drugs and lying about it.’

  I wanted to be careful. I was hardly in a position to give advice about managing men.

  ‘You think it’s more than a phase?’ I asked.

  She grinned. ‘It’s a phase that’s lasted more than four years. I’m not going to hang around to find out.’

  ‘Do you still love him?’ I asked. To me, it was always the only question that mattered.

  She shrugged. ‘What’s love got to do with it?’

  A lot, I thought. But I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say. ‘Well, maybe you can work it out together, if he gets some sort of help . . .’ I watched her expression.

  She shook her head. ‘You’re too kind, Maggie, too trusting. Besides, I have ambitions, lots of ideas running around my head right now. I want to run my own business. How could I
possibly rely on Danny?’

  I wasn’t sure what she meant. ‘Do you mean he’d hold you back?’ I asked.

  She drained her glass. ‘He stole from me, Maggie, about a month ago. A hundred quid. That’s a hell of a lot of money’ She looked straight ahead of her. I don’t think she even saw the bathers who dotted the shoreline, the toddlers screaming at the waves. Her eyes were fixed on something much farther away.

  Are you sure?’ It was the only response I could think of.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t you and it wasn’t Claire and I certainly didn’t spend it. No one else has access to my bedroom. So yes, I’m sure. It’s the last straw. I need to move on.’

  And I knew that the subject was now closed. I lit a cigarette for her. We smoked together in silence. She left a few days after that and I missed her. But I knew that she needed to go home. I managed to survive the soaring temperatures, but that was only because I was doing nothing, not even thinking. I spent most of the day in the water.

  Leitrim weather couldn’t be more different from Mojácar, of course, but being here reminds me in so many ways of Spain. It feels as though I’ve been given another chance to live my youth. Maybe it has something to do with the newness of possibility after all these years in the doldrums.

  Claire will love it here and I’m looking forward to inviting her. Georgie’s absence has meant that Claire and I have moved even closer together. Our friendship has teetered on the brink of collapse, more than once, over the years. Now, at least I can feel that it has begun to pull back from the edge. Claire doesn’t know this, but I knew about her abortion a few years after it happened, long before she told me. Keeping that secret from her was not easy, but Paul had made me promise not to tell. He confided in me the day of our father’s funeral, and at the time, it made so many things fall into place. Claire’s face at Nora’s wedding, his running away to Australia, the suddenness of their split.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Paul,’ I said to him. ‘It explains so much.’