I’ll be home for Christmas

by Roisin Meaney

  ‘And this is Tilly,’ Laura said, when she got the chance, and Susan extended a hand, smiling.

  ‘Laura’s told me about you,’ she said. ‘What a surprise, a new stepdaughter.’

  Her speech was less heavily accented than Laura’s or Gavin’s, less polished than Colette’s. Taller than Laura, shorter than Tilly. Brown-eyed, clear-skinned, wide-mouthed. Make-up barely there – or so cleverly applied that it seemed barely there.

  Her shoulder-length hair was tousled, some of it caught beneath a deep red scarf that was draped loosely about her neck. A large diamond ring winked in the light as she tucked a strand behind an ear.

  She pulled off the scarf and removed her coat to reveal a navy sweater and dark blue jeans. Not thin, and not plump exactly. Solidly built was how you’d describe her, broad-hipped and -shouldered. Maybe not what magazines would deem pretty, but pleasingly large eyes and mouth. A calm wide smile displaying teeth that were perfectly regular. Her smile looked like she meant it.

  Different from Diane, as different as Tilly could imagine, was her first impression. More grounded, more sure of herself, none of the jittery, fluttery mannerisms, none of the fragility that had seemed to emanate from Diane.

  ‘Gavin,’ she said, opening her arms, ‘good to see you.’

  ‘Likewise.’ Their hug was genuine, their warmth for one another evident.

  ‘And where’s Her Majesty the Queen?’ she asked, drawing back, and Poppy was duly taken from her playpen to be kissed and exclaimed over.

  ‘Now,’ Susan said, ‘presents.’

  ‘Oh, leave that till later,’ Laura said – but Susan unzipped the case and produced wrapped packages that were excitedly torn open to reveal DVDs and annuals and bangles and paper dress-up dolls.

  ‘The usual,’ she said, handing a box to Laura that turned out to be perfume.

  ‘Something to keep our gardener warm,’ she said, and Gavin unwrapped a fur-lined brown leather hat with ear-flaps, which he placed directly on his head, and pronounced to be just what he’d always wanted.

  Another hat was produced, this time for Poppy, sky blue with scattered green dots and a giant green pompom. Finally, she turned to Tilly. ‘I hate to leave you out,’ she said – and even as Tilly was protesting, she was hunting in the case until she unearthed a small box of chocolate-covered almonds. ‘Any good?’ she asked. ‘I brought a few in case we went visiting. Do take them – I’ll feel better.’

  So Tilly took them, and Gavin announced just then that dinner would be ready in ten minutes, and that everyone should wash hands.

  Tilly accompanied Susan upstairs. ‘Your usual quarters,’ Laura had said, which turned out to be the room Gladys had vacated, and which someone, presumably Laura, had tidied since then. Must have been while Tilly had been out walking.

  Out walking. Andy Baker.

  ‘I love this house,’ Susan said, leaving her case by the bed and crossing to the window without turning on the light, although by now it was fully dark outside. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

  ‘It is.’ Tilly hovered in the doorway, wondering whether to leave or stay. Light from the landing threw a yellow slice into the room.

  ‘Come and look,’ Susan said, so Tilly joined her at the window. They stood side by side, taking in a sky that was packed with stars, and an enormous milky disc of a moon that hung low over the horizon, and a sea that dazzled beneath it, millions of tiny pinpricks of light dancing and jumping on its surface.

  ‘You have different stars here,’ Tilly said.

  ‘Oh yes – we do, don’t we? That must be strange. Can you see them as clearly where you live?’

  ‘Yes – we’re out the country, on a farm.’

  ‘Not by the sea?’

  ‘No. A long way from the sea.’

  A car passed by on the road, going in the direction of the village. Tilly watched its headlights cutting through the dark. She followed it until it disappeared, and the silence took over again.

  Susan pushed the window open a crack. ‘Listen,’ she murmured – and Tilly listened, and heard the distant low thunder of the water.

  ‘Imagine living here,’ Susan went on softly. ‘Imagine never having to leave. Imagine if you could have this all the time, every night.’

  Something, some tiny catch in her voice, made Tilly glance at her. A silvery tear was snaking slowly down her cheek. Without a sign of embarrassment she reached up and brushed it away.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ she said. ‘My hormones are all over the place. I assume Laura told you I was pregnant.’

  ‘She did – congratulations.’ Tilly let a few seconds pass, wondering if Susan knew that she was too, but no further comment was made. ‘When did you and … my father meet?’

  Silence. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. Maybe it was too soon for a question like that.

  Eventually Susan said, ‘It was at an art auction, a fundraiser for the school where I worked.’

  ‘You’re a teacher?’

  ‘No – a secretary. I went along to the auction, just to help out. Luke was there. He’d contributed a painting, and agreed to come along and say a few words. It was a big coup for the school: a father of one of our students owned a gallery where Luke exhibited.’ She lifted a hand, let it drop. ‘We were introduced, we got talking …’ She trailed off.

  Tilly waited for more, but no more came. ‘Well,’ she said, moving off, ‘I’d better get ready for dinner.’

  ‘See you downstairs,’ Susan replied, not looking around.

  At the door Tilly paused. ‘Will I put on the light?’

  ‘No,’ Susan said, still looking out. ‘Not for the moment,’ so Tilly left the door ajar.

  In her room she took her phone from her pocket and opened her outbox and found the text message she’d been unable to send the day before. Happy Christmas, love my present, thank you. Miss you all. She added Sorry, been having problems with the phone signal, all well now and pressed send. She watched it heading off to Ma. Middle of the night at home, she’d see it first thing in the morning.

  While she was putting Susan’s chocolates into her suitcase she spotted the present she’d brought for Laura, and forgotten about. She’d give it to her next chance she got.

  In the bathroom she brushed her teeth and tidied her hair and put on a fresh slick of lip gloss. She switched off her light and groped through the sudden darkness to the window. A different view from Susan’s room but the same stars. The hills were silhouetted against the sky, black against paler black, their outlines already becoming familiar, something comforting about their hulking shapes. She recalled how luminous with snow they’d been at the start of the day, and she wondered how they’d appear the next time she looked out, and the next.

  Imagine never having to leave.

  Imagine her baby being born here.

  She pulled her curtains closed and went downstairs.

  SUNDAY

  27 DECEMBER

  It took several seconds, maybe more than that, to make her way out of sleep, her befuddled brain crawling back to consciousness as she forced her head to turn towards the bedside locker, where the noise was coming from.

  The noise, which was her phone.

  Her eyes were still closed. She slid an arm across the sheet until her hand connected with the locker. She felt about, and sent her tube of hand cream sliding off to land with a flat thump on the floor. She brushed against the clock-radio, and the base of the lamp, and managed not to knock over her water glass. She didn’t find what she was looking for.

  She unglued her eyelids, blinked them open. 8:47 was the first thing she saw, in bright green winking digits. Sunday morning, not even nine o’clock, and someone, some ignoramus, was ringing her. Someone wasn’t going to stop until she answered. A miracle Poppy hadn’t woken.

  Gavin up and gone, even on Sunday.

  The phone rang on. Better be life or death.

  She levered herself into a vaguely upright position and spotted the phone sitting on the far side of
the radio. She reached across and grabbed it, and slid back down under the duvet.

  Gladys’s name showed in the display. Her mother-in-law was ringing her at this ungodly hour: she might have known it would be Gladys. Forgot one of her knitting needles, left her reading glasses behind. She debated cutting her off, but decency prevailed. She pressed the answer key.

  ‘Gladys.’ A croaky mumble, which was all she deserved.

  ‘Mrs Connolly … Laura.’

  She blinked. Not Gladys, a man.

  ‘It’s Larry Kawalski,’ he said.

  Larry Kawalski, this early in the morning. On Gladys’s phone. Laura sat up, snapping suddenly into gear. ‘Larry,’ she said. ‘What is it, what’s wrong?’

  A loud exhalation. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I don’t know … this is difficult—’

  He stopped. Laura waited, prickling with dread. Something had happened to Gladys.

  ‘It’s your mother-in-law,’ he said. ‘It’s Mrs Connolly senior. I’m afraid … I have to tell you’ – Laura felt her stomach clenching – ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I have to tell you … that she … she passed away, just a little while ago. She … just … I’m sorry—’

  He came to an abrupt halt.

  Gladys was dead.

  Laura jumped into the silence. ‘It’s OK, Larry, it’s OK. We’ll come to Dublin, just as soon as we can—’

  Gladys was dead. Gladys was gone.

  She scrambled from the bed, hunting for underwear with one hand as he stammered out his account of how he’d got up to use the bathroom an hour or so earlier and found the door locked and silence within, how he’d called and got no response, and gone in search of help, and eventually roused a neighbour.

  ‘He came back with me and broke the lock on the door, and … well, we found her, we found Mrs Connolly.’ An out-of-hours doctor had been summoned and Gladys had been pronounced dead. Larry had located her phone, he’d scrolled through her contacts and found both Gavin and Laura’s names, and chosen to ring Laura rather than have Gavin hear over the phone that his mother was dead.

  Gladys was dead.

  ‘The doctor’s just called some guys, some paramedics,’ he told Laura. ‘Mrs Connolly’s gonna be laid out in her room here until Mr Connolly gets in touch, lets him know what he wants done.’

  Gavin had to be told, she had to tell him. She found tracksuit bottoms, a cleanish shirt and a cardigan. As she struggled into them she assured Larry that he was welcome to remain in the house for his final night in Ireland – wondering, even as she said it, where on earth they’d all fit. She took the doctor’s number from him, scribbling it on the back of a receipt she found in her bag.

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ she promised, ‘as soon as we’re on the road. In the meantime, maybe you should find a hotel and have some breakfast.’ Cringing, even as she spoke, at how trite it sounded. Sending him to a hotel for a full Irish, after what he’d just been through. A good stiff brandy was what he needed.

  ‘The Piggotts offered me breakfast,’ he told her. Laura had never heard of the Piggotts, but she presumed they were the Good Samaritan neighbours who’d come to his aid. ‘They wanted me to stay at their place till you got here, but I didn’t like to leave Mrs Connolly alone.’

  Poor man, trying to do the right thing. ‘Thank you, Larry. Sorry you had to go through this.’ As if he hadn’t enough sadness to deal with.

  ‘She was a kind lady,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘She was kind to me.’

  He was talking about Gladys in the past tense. It sounded wrong. It jarred like a radio not quite tuned correctly, like someone singing slightly off-key. But Gladys had been kind to Larry, a man in sore need of kindness at this time. Laura recalled her mental sniggering at the thought of the two of them heading off to Dublin together, and felt ashamed. ‘Take care of yourself,’ she told him. ‘Try and get some rest. I’ll be in touch soon, I promise. We’ll see you this afternoon.’

  As she hung up, her bedroom door opened and the girls appeared. She ushered them back to their own room and got them dressed quickly – and as they emerged into the corridor again, Poppy could be heard chattering to Rabbity, so back they all went to change and dress her too, and begin another day.

  As Laura peeled off the damp nappy, she recalled everyone assembled at the gate yesterday to say goodbye to Gladys and Larry. ‘See you in the spring,’ Gladys had called, waving out the car window as Gavin had driven them away. Thank God, Laura had thought, waving back. Thank God she’s gone.

  And now Laura had to break it to Gavin that his mother, who’d been alive and well this time yesterday, was dead.

  But Gladys hadn’t been well, had she? They should have acted on that collapse two days ago: they should have insisted on her staying in bed, at least, like Dr Jack had recommended.

  And hadn’t he written a prescription, something for her blood pressure? Laura had completely forgotten about it till now. They could have called on Dick Flannery, Roone’s chemist, to fill it. Dick would have obliged them, she was sure. So careless they’d been, so unthinking.

  But Gladys had seemed fine, hadn’t she? She’d eaten her meals, hadn’t complained of aches or pains. She’d gone off to Dublin with Larry in high spirits. Who could have seen this coming?

  In the corridor the boys’ bedroom door was wide open, their room deserted. Laura tapped softly on Tilly and Susan’s doors in turn and got no response from either. Both still asleep; she’d leave them a little longer, until she had to call at least one of them.

  But there they were in the kitchen, not asleep after all. Tilly was at the fridge, Susan was nursing a cup of something at the table and looking tired, although she’d gone to bed directly after dinner the night before.

  The boys were eating cereal and reading comics – and Gavin was there too, still wearing his jacket and Susan’s leather hat, taking brown eggs from the basket and slotting them into boxes at the worktop.

  ‘Here they come,’ he said, ‘all the sleepyheads.’ Not meeting Laura’s eyes. Talking to his daughters, not to her.

  ‘Morning,’ Susan said, ‘we were just about to phone the guards.’ Opening her arms for Poppy, so Laura passed her over.

  ‘I was going to put on sausages,’ Tilly said, ‘if that’s OK.’

  ‘That’s fine.’ Laura settled the girls at the table. ‘You might fill the kettle for Poppy’s formula too.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Gavin,’ Laura went on lightly, ‘can you come outside? I want to show you something.’

  ‘Just a sec,’ he said, not pausing in his task.

  ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  He glanced up, saw her face.

  ‘Back in a minute,’ Laura told the others, throwing a look in Susan’s direction – but Susan was murmuring to Poppy, her head bowed.

  He walked out ahead of her. As she followed him through the scullery she grabbed her old quilted jacket and pulled it on. The day was breezy and dry, not a trace of yesterday’s snow to be seen, a tiny red dot of a cap in the field the only evidence that a snowman had briefly existed there. She led Gavin across to the orchard and found a spot that wasn’t overlooked by the house.

  She told him, as gently as she could, that his mother was dead.

  His face collapsed. His eyes filled.

  ‘It happened quickly,’ she said. ‘She didn’t suffer.’ She reached for him but he stepped back, shaking his head.

  ‘Gavin—’

  ‘No,’ he said, his hand shielding his face from her as his shoulders began to shake. ‘Leave me alone.’ His other arm raised to keep her away, not wanting her comfort.

  ‘Gavin, please—’

  ‘No.’ Throwing her a fierce look. ‘Don’t pretend you’re sorry. You never liked her. Leave me alone, go back inside.’

  A coldness in his voice she’d never heard before. She couldn’t think what to say that wouldn’t sound insincere.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ he repeated, but she couldn’t go, she couldn’t leave
him.

  ‘I’ll pack,’ she told him. ‘We’ll bring the boys with us and leave the three girls. Susan and Tilly will be here. It might be best to say nothing to the girls – about … Gladys, I mean.’

  He ignored her. He turned his back on her, keeping his grief from her.

  ‘You need to ring the doctor,’ she said. ‘He’s waiting for instructions from you. I’ve got his number.’

  They stood apart from one another, a million miles apart.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Gavin, I’m truly sorry.’

  She waited another few minutes, listening to the sound of his sadness. Eventually she turned away, leaving him like he wanted.

  ‘Send the boys out to me.’

  She looked back. He was brushing a sleeve across his face. ‘Send them out. I want to tell them.’

  ‘Will you not come in and have something to eat?’

  He gave a shuddering sigh. ‘Just send out the boys, would you?’

  So she left him among the apple trees and returned to the kitchen.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Susan asked. The only one who wasn’t eating.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ Laura replied, knowing her face told a different story. She found a sachet of green tea and dropped it into a mug. ‘Will you have breakfast?’

  Susan shook her head. ‘Can’t face food till at least noon – I’ll make up for it then.’

  The boys were finishing their cereal. ‘Your dad needs you outside for a minute,’ Laura told them. ‘Get your jackets on’ – and off they went. The girls attempted to follow, but Laura distracted them with their treasure box of sparkly crayons and glue and scraps of fabric. While they were busy sticking and colouring, she told Tilly and Susan quietly about Gladys.

  ‘We’ll go as soon as we can arrange it,’ she said. ‘We’ll take the boys – Gavin’s telling them now – but we’ll leave the girls.’

  ‘When will you be back?’ Tilly asked.

  Laura thought. Today was Sunday, tomorrow the removal, Tuesday the funeral. ‘We’ll try and get back on Tuesday.’ Half six the last ferry was in the winter: if they managed to leave Dublin right after lunch, whatever kind of lunch it turned out to be, they’d make it.