by Maeve Binchy
It was part of his life that she should be there, reacting and smiling and pealing with laughter. He needed her approval and her courage. He had to know what she thought about everything. She looked up suddenly to know were they boring him and caught him staring at her.
“What is it, Declan? Am I droning on too much?”
“You couldn't drone on. It just isn't in your vocabulary.” His voice sounded thick suddenly, as if he had a cold.
“Hey—I'm meant to be looking after you,” she said anxiously. “Are you developing a wheeze?”
“No—it's something else entirely.”
“Like what exactly?”
“Like emotion, if you push me. You know, the way they say in books ‘His voice was husky with emotion
“Oh, Declan—aren't you a scream!”
“I mean it,” he said simply. “I was just looking at you and realizing how precious you are to me.”
Maud and Simon pretended to study the map with huge intensity.
Fiona came over and kissed Declan lightly.
“And you to me,” she said. “But I'll have to borrow your laptop. There have to be cheaper flights than what the twins have found.”
He still held her hand a little and didn't take his eyes off her face. It was as if he was looking at her for the very first time. Nothing mattered as long as he could be with Fiona, at St. Jarlath's Crescent, her parents’ house, the flat she shared with Barbara, by the seaside. Anywhere. Suddenly it was clear to him. She was quite literally the center of his life. And soon he would be in the clinic working with her all day and he would see her every night.
When Declan came back to work in the heart clinic everyone was very supportive and he caught up on all the news surprisingly quickly. He had been away when Hilary's mother had died, but he knew the whole story from Fiona and he took the first opportunity to tell Hilary how sorry he was.
“She's at peace now,” he said to Hilary.
“Thank you, Declan. Another way of putting it is that I wouldn't be told, I wouldn't listen and she was killed by a car as a result.” Her voice was very flat.
“Don't think like that. It wouldn't bring her back.”
“No, but if I had listened to other people she wouldn't be dead. I can't forget that. I am allowed to feel ashamed and sad about it.”
“You loved your mother. What's bad about that?”
“You are very soothing, Declan, but we must not be bland.”
“No, I agree, I have a tendency to go down the bland route, but can I tell you something? If I hadn't had the accident, Fiona wouldn't have got to know my family so well, and they love her now. If it had just been a dinner, a roast that night, we would still be playing games and dancing round each other. Am I mad to think we were meant to be together? Is that too bland or is it just being grateful for how it turned out?”
“It hasn't turned out well for me.”
“Yet,” Declan said. “A day will come when you are glad that she didn't spend years lost in a fog. Not yet, but believe me it will come.”
“She's a lucky girl, Fiona,” Hilary said.
Declan move toward his patients with their notes in his hand and a smile of reassurance on his face.
“Well, Joe, you're looking fit and well. I hope you feel as well inside. No palpitations?”
And it was as if he had never been away.
Hilary and Ania watched him, delighted to see him back.
“He is so important to this clinic,” Ania said in a solemn little voice.
“As are you, Ania. This place couldn't function without you,” Hilary said with such sincerity in her voice that Ania's eyes filled with tears.
Chapter Four
It had been like a personal intervention of the Mother of God when Ania met Dr. Clara Casey and got a job in the heart clinic.
Ania was the youngest of her family. She could not remember her father because she had been only three when he was killed in an accident. It was a terrible day when poor Pawel reversed his new lorry which was his pride and joy into a deep quarry. He had made only the first payment on this truck, which was going to change their finances. Papa would work all the hours that God sent and the family would be wealthy in their happy home. His daughters would marry men of substance in the area and his son, Józef, would join him in the business. Their name would be known all over the countryside as people who could be relied on.
Ania heard all this later. Because the story was so often told in her family, she sometimes believed that she remembered that day, the day they brought the news home that Papa was dead and the lorry had not been paid for. Two pieces of almost equally bad news, the way it was told.
So there was no wonderful family home. There was her poor mother, her mamusia, who worked all the hours in the day to put food on the table. Her brother, Józef, joined no family company; instead he went north to Gdansk, looking for work. At first he wrote and said he was in the shipyards and doing well and he sent Mamusia a little money. But then he met a woman from Gdynia and with the expense of setting up a home for himself and his new bride, soon the money stopped coming.
Her two sisters worked in a factory, where they met men and married them. There was nothing for them at home now—better to start lives of their own. They would come by from time to time, complaining about their in-laws and how hard they worked.
“Stay single as long as you can, little Ania,” they warned. Not that this was hard for Ania to do—she was still very young and when she came home from school each day there was little enough time even to do any studying. It was her job to get the irons ready to press the clothes that her mother mended. And it wasn't a matter of lovely, easy electric irons like now, with steam irons like today. Ania had learned to iron with great heavy things that warmed on the stove, and always with a damp cloth to protect the material. Woe betide anyone who left a scorch mark.
Mamusia always said that if you returned the clothes steamed and pressed to people when the alterations were done, they really appreciated the garment looking much smarter than it had before. It would encourage them to bring their skirts to be let out for a matronly figure or a school uniform adapted for a younger child.
Some other girls in her street went to the carnival when it came to town, and the circus, and they would meet for coffee and fizzy drinks in the café beside the bridge. But not Ania. There was always too much to do.
Mamusia was always cheerful and full of hope.
“We have our good name, little Ania, we have our standing here among these people. Your father was a respected man. We have managed to pay off what was owing on his lorry. We are people of honor. Nothing can bring us down.”
But Mamusia didn't know what was in store that would change everything.
• • •
When Ania was fifteen, Mamusia made her a birthday present of a little jacket trimmed with dark green velvet. A customer had bought too much and Mamusia had carefully put aside some of the small pieces that she snipped off.
Ania was delighted with her finery. Her dark hair looked very shiny and she thought that in fact she might not be that ugly after all. She had always seemed so scrawny and awkward compared to other girls, she hadn't known that she would look so fine when dressed up.
She saved her little amount of money to go to the café with her best friend, Lidia, to show off her new style. The other girls were very admiring and all the time she was aware that a dark-haired man was looking at her with some interest.
Eventually he introduced himself.
“I'm Marek,” he said. “And you are very beautiful.” Nobody had ever said anything remotely like this before to Ania. She felt a lovely thrill of excitement. This man really thought she was beautiful— little Ania, Mamusia's little kitchen helper.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“What a pity they don't have a jukebox here. We could dance,” he said.
“I'm not a good dancer.” Ania looked at the ground.
“I could teach you,
” Marek said. “I love to dance.”
“I might see you again …” Ania looked at him innocently.
“Yes, you might, but not in a dull, dead place like this. In the next town there is a good café called Motlawa. I go there most afternoons.”
And little Ania, who had never told her mother an untruth in her life, wove a long story about a friend at school whose mother had died and the funeral was in the next town. Her mother gave her the money for the bus fare and Ania set out alone for the Café Motlawa. She had washed her hair and put the juice of half a lemon in the rinsing water, as Lidia had told her this made it shiny.
As she left the house her mother had pressed a coin into her hand, to light a candle in the church for the poor soul who had died. Ania had never felt so guilty in her whole life. She spent the extra money on a lipstick and hoped against hope that this would be an afternoon that Marek was dropping in at the café.
She saw him immediately, and there was music playing. He came straight over and stretched out both his arms. Soon they were dancing. It seemed as natural as anything to lean against him and feel his arms around her. They didn't talk much. They didn't need to. And then when she said she had to go to catch her bus, he walked her to the bus station.
“You look so beautiful in your green jacket,” he said. “Like something from a forest, a nymph maybe.”
“It's my only good coat,” she admitted. “You may get tired of looking at it.” Then she realized how forward she had been. “I mean, that is, if we were to see each other again …” She was full of confusion now.
He lifted her chin and gave her a gentle kiss. She could feel it on her lips all the way back on the bus, while she tried to make up some story about the funeral she was meant to have attended and to think up an excuse to go to the Café Motlawa again.
Love always finds a way.
Ania had read that and it was true. The local schoolteacher was having several outfits made, but she needed smart buttons, much better than the local shop provided. Ania said that she remembered she had passed a shop that day when she had gone to her friend's mother's funeral. Perhaps she could go and spend a day in that town and see what she could find. Again, she felt overcome with guilt at her mother's gratitude.
“What a good daughter you are, Ania. I was truly blessed with you,” her mother said. “When my Pawel was killed, when my Józef went away to Gdansk, I knew I could rely on you. Thank you, my daughter, thank you again.”
In minutes Ania found a shop that sold the right buttons. The old man told her to help herself from the box. He was shortsighted and couldn't see properly.
Ania had pocketed half a dozen tiny pearl buttons before she realized what she was doing. It would mean that she would have spending money. She thanked the old man, told him she couldn't find what she wanted and left the store with the buttons in her pocket. She was wearing her old navy blue jacket, which was very shabby but could easily be dressed up, so she spent the money on a pink-and-white enamel brooch to pin on her jacket.
Marek said that she looked beautiful, and they danced together all afternoon. She saw people looking at her admiringly. None of them knew that she would spend the evening ironing the alterations her mother had been doing all day and then sewing on the little pearl buttons that she had stolen.
“What do you do for a living, Ania?” he whispered in her ear.
So he didn't know she was a schoolgirl. “I help in my mother's dress-designing and tailoring business,” she said.
“And do you make much money doing that, little Ania?”
“No, very little.”
“You'd like money to buy beautiful things?”
“Oh, yes—but wouldn't we all?”
“I love good clothes too, so I work to make money to buy them.” He was so handsome with his white teeth, his snowy white shirt, his black leather jacket and his dark gray, fine wool trousers. Just to look at him you would think he was a very wealthy man. And yet if he was, why was he able to hang around cafés and dance for the afternoon instead of going to work?
It was a mystery.
So she asked him.
“I am waiting until I can afford a place of my own, Ania, a really good place. I don't like working for other people. It will happen one day. Meanwhile, I look and learn …”
Ania managed to find excuse after excuse to go to town to meet him. After three months had gone by, he suggested that Ania miss the bus back to her village.
“I couldn't do that!” Ania said, shocked.
“You could stay with me for the whole night. We both want it …”
“But, Mamusia?”
“Your mamusia will be told you have missed the bus, you are staying with that friend whose mother died—remember? You will go back on the bus tomorrow morning …”
“No, Marek, I cannot.”
“Right.” He shrugged and already she could see that he was emotionally saying good-bye to her.
“I could do it next week,” she said hastily.
And he smiled his slow, wonderful smile.
One of the reasons she had said no was because she was wearing such shabby underwear—an old gray slip, washed so many times it was shapeless and almost threadbare, a tired bra that had belonged to both of her sisters. If this were to happen, then she would be prepared.
For a week she sewed in her own room, adding lace here, little rosebuds there. She also worked hard for her mother, in order to lessen her guilt when the time came. It was an endless week. She missed a lot of classes at school and brought her sewing to the school bicycle shed to make sure that she finished the garments for her mother.
On Saturday, dressed from the skin out in her best, Ania got on the bus trembling. She was going to have sex for the very first time tonight. She was going to spend the whole night in Mareks arms. Her heart was beating so fast it made her dizzy.
“Be careful, little Ania,” her mother called.
For one moment, Ania wanted to run back and weep on her mother's shoulder, tell her everything. But the moment passed and she was on the bus.
By now, she knew some of the people in the Café Motlawa. They nodded at her and welcomed her as a regular.
Marek was waiting, leaning on the counter.
“Dzie'n dobry, Ania,” he greeted her formally.
“Dzie'n dobry, Marek,” she responded shyly.
Then she was in his arms, dancing to the music. Like always. Except that this time she was not going home to her mother.
Please, please, may it all be all right…
She had never stayed late like this before, so she saw them putting candles in bottles and watched the great romantic shadows flickering on the walls. Then she went to the telephone and called Mrs. Zak who ran the corner shop back home.
Mrs. Zak was horrified that Ania had missed the bus. “Where will I tell your mother that you will stay, Ania?”
“With my school friend, Lidia, Mrs. Zak. I will be home tomor-row.” Eventually, after what seemed an age, Mrs. Zak hung up.
As Ania turned around she saw Marek was looking at her.
“You are beautiful, Ania, and I love you,” he said.
“I have never done this before. I might not be very good at it,” she began.
“You will be wonderful and we will be very happy,” he said, putting his arms around her. They went to a room upstairs from the café, where there was a mattress and a rug on the floor. There was a jug with flowers in it, placed there by Marek. It wasn't wonderful, but she felt very happy as she fell asleep in his arms. The next morning he went and got her a breakfast of coffee and rolls.
Nothing had ever seemed so magical.
Then, smiling at the whole world around her, she got the bus home.
Her mother suspected nothing when Ania got back. Her two sisters called that day and there was talk that one of them might be pregnant and a lot of excitement about the news. Ania was miles away in her mind, back in the Café Motlawa. There had to be a way that she could go back to Mare
ks town again, but it had been such a performance missing the bus once, she could never try that again.
She sewed and mended and ironed, her heart heavy at all that was nearly within her grasp but could so easily be snatched away.
The following day when she went to Mrs. Zak's shop to buy bread and vegetables, she heard that the café on the bridge was for sale. The long thin miserable man who owned it had decided there was no future in selling coffee and cakes that were too expensive for the older people while the younger ones traveled on the bus to the next town for cafés that had music. So he was selling it as soon as he could.
“Let's hope nobody buys it who is going to make it a noisy place,” Mrs. Zak said.
“Oh, heavens,” Ania said.
“Because whoever does buy it may well want to have it as a bar.”
“That is true. Mrs. Zak, can I also buy a stamp?” Ania asked.
Dear darling Marek,
You know the café on the bridge in our town? Well, it is now for sale. I remember you said you wanted your own place, so perhaps you could buy it and then I could see you every day. I would like this so very much.
Your loving Ania
The very next day he arrived. He brought his brother and another friend, and they talked for hours to the man with the long, sepulchral face who ran the café. They explained they wanted a quiet family business and that he would not find it easy to get buyers in such an out-of-the-way spot. There was a day of talking and small cups of coffee, and by late afternoon a deal had been agreed. Marek, his brother and their friend would buy and refurbish the Bridge Café.
