by Maeve Binchy
“That’s right,” Moira lied.
Ania lived in a world where everyone was good and happy. She was pregnant again and taking things easy. The doctor had said that she needed bed rest, and so she lay at home contemplating a great future with their child. This time it would happen, and if lying around in bed would ensure it, then Ania was willing to do it.
Once a week, Carl drove her in to the clinic so that she could see everyone and keep up to date on what was happening. She was pleased that Moira was going to the country place for the weekend. It might cheer her up.…
Moira looked out of the train as she crossed Ireland towards her home. She had packed her little case and had no idea where she would stay. Perhaps her father and Mrs. Kennedy might offer her a bed?
Mrs. Kennedy was fairly frosty when Moira telephoned to speak to her father. “He’s having a lie-down. He always takes a siesta from five till six,” she said, as if Moira should somehow have known this.
“I’m in the area,” Moira said. “I was wondering if I could call in and see him?”
“Would that be before or after supper?” Mrs. Kennedy inquired.
Moira drew a deep breath.
“Or even during supper?” she suggested.
Mrs. Kennedy was more practical than welcoming. “We only have two lamb chops,” she said.
“Oh, don’t mind about me. I’m happy with vegetables,” she said.
“Will you arrange that with your father when he wakes up? We don’t know what he would want.”
“Yes, I’ll call again at six,” Moira said through her teeth. She had eased her father’s passage to live openly with Mrs. Kennedy and this was the thanks she got. Life was certainly unfair.
But then Moira knew that already from her work. Men laid off from work with no warning and poor compensation; women drawn into the drugs business because it’s the only way to get a bit of ready money; girls running away from home and refusing to go back because what was there was somehow worse than sleeping under a bridge. Moira had seen babies born and go home from the hospital to totally unsatisfactory setups while hundreds of infertile couples ached to adopt them.
Moira sat in a café waiting for the time to pass until her father woke from his siesta. Siesta! There would have been little of that in the old days. Father would come in tired from his work on the farm. Sometimes Mother had cooked a meal—most times not. Moira and Pat used to peel the potatoes so that that much was done anyway. Pat was not considered a reliable farmhand, so Dad would ensure that all the hens had been returned to their coop. He would call out until the sheepdog came home. Then he would pat the dog’s head. “Good man, Shep.” Every dog they had over the years was called Shep.
Only then would he have his supper. Often he had had to get the supper ready—a big pot of potatoes and a couple of slices of ham, the potatoes often eaten straight from the saucepan and the salt spooned from the packet.
Life had changed for the better in her father’s case. She should be glad that he had that wordless Mrs. Kennedy looking after him and cooking him a lamb chop of an evening. Why was the woman so unwelcoming? She had no fear of Moira and she should know that. But then she had always been stern and forbidding. She seldom smiled.
With a shock she realized that this is what people actually said about her. Even Mr. Ennis had mentioned that Moira was very unsmiling and seemed highly disapproving of things.
When Moira rang back, her father sounded lively and happy. She knew that he spent a lot of time wood carving nowadays and had built an extra room for his work. He did most of the talking and finally said, “So are you coming for supper tonight?” as if there was never any question.
She took a bus out to Mrs. Kennedy’s and knocked on the door timidly.
“Oh, Moira.” Mrs. Kennedy showed just enough recognition and acknowledgment that she had arrived, but no real pleasure.
“I’m not disturbing you or my father?”
“No, please come in. Your father is freshening himself up for supper.”
That was a personal first, Moira thought to herself. Her poor father would sit down for whatever meal there might be with muddy boots and a sweaty shirt, ready to spoon out the potatoes to Pat and herself and her mother, if she ever sat down. Things were very different now.
Moira saw a table set for three. There were folded table napkins and a small vase of flowers. There were gleaming saltcellars and shining glass. It was far from suppers like this that he had spent his former life.
“You have the house very nice.” Moira looked around her as if she were a housing inspector looking for flaws or damp.
“Glad it passes the test,” Mrs. Kennedy said.
Just then her father came out. Moira gasped—he looked ten years younger than the last time she had seen him. He wore a smart jacket and he had a collar and tie.
“You look the real part, Dad,” she said admiringly. “Are you going out somewhere?”
“I’m having supper in my own home. Isn’t that worth dressing up for?” he asked. Then, softening up a little, he said, “How are you, Moira? It’s really good to see you.”
“I’m fine, Dad.”
“And where are you staying?”
So no bed here, Moira thought. She waved it away. “I’ll find somewhere … don’t worry about me.” As if he worried! If he did, then he would ask his fancy woman to get a bed ready for her.
“That’s grand, then. Come and sit down.”
“Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Kennedy said. “Have a glass of sherry with your father. I’ll serve the meal in about ten minutes.”
“Isn’t she great?” Her father looked admiringly at the retreating Mrs. Kennedy.
“Great, altogether,” Moira said unenthusiastically.
“Is there anything wrong, Moira?” He looked at her, concerned.
“No. Why? Should there be?”
“You look as if something’s wrong.”
Moira exploded. “God Almighty, Dad, I came across the country to see you. You never write … you never phone … and now you criticize the way I look!”
“I was just concerned for you, in case you’d lost your job or something,” he said.
Moira looked at him. He meant it. She must have looked sad or angry or disapproving—all these things that people said.
“No, it’s just it’s the long weekend. I came back to see my family. Is that so very unusual? The train was full of people doing just that.”
“I thought it was kind of sad for you: your home gone, sold to other people, Pat all tied up in his romance.”
“Pat has a romance?”
“You haven’t seen him yet, then?”
“No, I came straight here. Who is it? What’s she like?”
“Remember the O’Learys who ran the garage?”
“Yes, but those girls are far too young. They’d only be fourteen or fifteen,” Moira said, shocked.
“It’s the mother. It’s Mrs. O’Leary—Erin O’Leary.”
“And what happened to Mr. O’Leary?” Moira couldn’t take it in.
“Gone off somewhere, apparently.”
“Merciful hour!” Moira said. It was an expression of her mother’s. She hadn’t said it in years.
“Well, exactly. You never know what’s around the next corner,” her father agreed.
He was in an awkward position, Moira realized. He couldn’t really remonstrate with Pat for moving in with a married lady. Hadn’t he done the very same thing himself? Mrs. Kennedy came in just then to ask would Moira like to freshen up before supper. Her father was nodding. Moira decided that she did want to freshen up. She took a clean blouse out of her suitcase and went to the bathroom.
It was an amazing room. The wallpaper had lots of blue mermaids and blue sea horses on it. There were blue and white china ornaments on the windowsill and a blue shell held the soap. A crinoline lady dressed in blue covered the next roll of lavatory paper in case people might know what it was and be affronted. There were blue gingham curtains on the
window and a blue patterned shower curtain.
Moira washed her face and shoulders and under her arms. She put on her clean blouse and returned to the table.
“Lovely bathroom,” she said to Mrs. Kennedy.
“We do our best,” Mrs. Kennedy said, serving melon slices with a little cherry on top of each. Then she brought in the main course.
“Remember, vegetables are fine for me,” Moira said.
Her father waved her protest aside. “I walked into town and got an extra lamb chop,” he said.
Mrs. Kennedy looked as if Moira’s father had given her a priceless jewel.
Moira showed huge gratitude. She didn’t feel that she could easily discuss Pat’s new situation, so she ate her supper mainly in silence. Her father and Mrs. Kennedy talked animatedly about this and that—his wood carving of an owl, a festival that was going to exhibit some local art. Mrs. Kennedy said that of course he should offer some of his work to be put on show. This was also news to Moira.
They spoke about Mrs. Kennedy’s involvement in a local women’s group. They all felt that farming was finished and that there was no living to be made from the land. A lot of them were training to go into the bed-and-breakfast business. Mrs. Kennedy was thinking she might join in. After all, they had three rooms more or less ready; all they’d need to buy was new beds. That would be six people, and they would make a tidy living.
Moira realized that she didn’t know Mrs. Kennedy’s first name.
If she had, she might say suddenly, “Maura” or “Janet”—or whatever she was called—“can I sleep the night in one of those three rooms, please?” But she had never known her name and Dad referred to her as “herself” and, when he was talking to her, as “dear” or “love.” No help there.
When she had finished the meal, Moira stood up and picked up her suitcase.
“Well, that was all lovely, but if I am to find a place to stay, I’d better go now. The bus still goes by at half past the hour, right?”
“Leave it to the next half hour,” her father said. “You’ll easily get into Stella Maris. They’ll give you a grand room.”
“I was thinking of calling on Pat,” Moira said.
“He won’t be there. He’ll be up at the garage. Leave him till the morning, I’d say.”
“Right, I’ll do that, but I’ll go now, as I’m standing. Thank you again for the nice meal.”
“You’re very welcome,” Mrs. Kennedy said.
“It’s good to see you, Moira. Don’t work too hard up there in Dublin.”
“Do you know what kind of work I do, Dad?”
“Don’t you work for the government in an office?”
“That’s it, more or less,” Moira said glumly.
She set out on the road. She wanted to go past her old home before the next bus came. She walked down the old familiar lane, a lane that her father must have walked many a time before he had officially left his home to live with Mrs. Kennedy. And why would he not want to live with her? A bright, clean house where he got a welcome and a warm meal and maybe a bit of a cuddle as well. Wasn’t it much better than what he had had at home?
She arrived at her old house. Straightaway she could see that the new owners had given it a coat of paint; they had planted a garden. The stables, byres and outhouses had all been changed, cleaned and modernized, and this was where they made their cheese. They had a successful business, and it all centered around the house where Moira had grown up.
She went into the old farmyard and looked around her, bewildered. She must now see the house. If they came out, she would tell them that she had once lived here. She could see through the windows that there was a big fire in the grate and a table with a wine bottle and two glasses on it.
It made her very sad.
Why couldn’t her parents have provided a home like this for Pat and herself? Why were there no social workers then who would have taken them away to be placed in better, happier homes?
Her mother and father were not functioning as parents over those years. Her mother was in deep need of help, and her father struggled ineffectually to cope. Moira and Pat should have grown up in a household where they could have known the language of childhood. A family where, if Pat ran round pretending to be a horse, they would have laughed with him and encouraged him and not cuffed him around the ears, as would have happened in this house.
Moira never had a doll of her own, not to mention a doll’s house. There were no birthday celebrations that she could remember. She could never invite her school friends home, and that was how she had learned to be aloof. She had feared friendship and closeness as a child because sooner or later that friend would have expected to be invited to Moira’s home and then the chaos would be revealed.
There were tears in her eyes as she saw what the house could have been like when she was young. It could have been a home.
Moira caught the bus to town and booked two nights at the Stella Maris. The room was fine and the cost reasonable, but Moira burned with injustice. She had a father who had a home with spare bedrooms, and yet she was forced to pay for a bed and breakfast in her own hometown.
She would go to see how Pat was faring the next morning. It was ludicrous to think of him with Mrs. O’Leary—she was so much older. It was nonsense. Mr. O’Leary couldn’t have left because of Pat.
She would find out tomorrow.
Next morning, she went to the garage. Pat was there on the forecourt, filling cars with petrol or diesel. He seemed genuinely pleased to see her.
“Have you got a car at long last, Moira?” he called.
“I have, but it’s up in Dublin,” she said.
“Well, we can’t fill it up for you from here then.” He laughed amiably. He was totally suited to this work, easygoing and natural with the customers, good-tempered and cheerful in what some might have found a tedious and repetitive job.
“I came to see you, actually, Pat. Do you have a break or anything coming up?”
“Sure, I can go anytime. I’ll just tell Erin.”
Moira followed him towards the pay desk and the new shop that had been built in a once-falling-down garage.
“Erin, my sister, Moira, is here. Okay if I take a break and go and have a coffee with her?”
“Oh, Pat, of course it is. Don’t you work all the hours God sends? Go for as long as you like. How are you, Moira? Long time no see.”
Moira looked at her. Erin O’Leary—about ten years older than Moira—a mother of two girls and wife of Harry, who was a traveler and often traveled rather longer and farther than his job required. He had now traveled out of the country, it was said at the Stella Maris, where Moira had brought up the subject at breakfast.
Erin was wearing a smart yellow shop coat with a navy trim. Her loose, rather floppy hair was tied back neatly with a navy and yellow ribbon. She was slim and fit and looked much younger than the forty-four or-five she must have been. She looked at Pat with undeniable affection.
“I hear you’ve been very good to my brother,” Moira said.
“It’s mutual, I tell you. I couldn’t do half the work I do without him.”
Pat had come back wearing his jacket and heard her say that. He was childishly pleased.
“I’m glad. He was a great brother,” Moira said, trying to put a lot of sincerity into her voice. In fact, he had been a worry and given her huge concern over the years—but no point in sharing that with Mrs. O’Leary.
“I don’t doubt it,” Erin O’Leary said, putting her arm affectionately around Pat’s shoulders.
“And is all this a permanent sort of thing?” Moira asked, trying desperately to smile at the same time so that they would realize it was a good-natured, cheery kind of inquiry.
“I certainly hope so,” Erin said. “I’d be lost without Pat, and so would the girls.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Pat said proudly.
Would she have encouraged this setup herself as a social worker? She might have examined Erin O’Leary�
��s circumstances more carefully, checked that her husband would not return and evict Pat Tierney from his home and business. She would always have put the best needs of her client forward, but was there a possibility that by challenging the living arrangements at Mrs. O’Leary’s, she might have deprived Pat of the loving home and workplace that he now seemed to have?
They went for coffee to a nearby place where everyone knew Pat. He was his own man, with plenty to say.
People asked him about Erin and he told them how she had made a cake with his name on it for his birthday last week and they had all given him a present. And Erin must have told some of the regular customers too, because there wasn’t room on the mantelpiece for all his cards.
With a heart like stone, Moira remembered that she had not sent him a card.
She had, she said, been to see their father. “He seems happy with Mrs. Kennedy,” she said grudgingly.
“Well, why wouldn’t he be? Isn’t Maureen the best in the world?”
“Maureen?” Moira was at a loss.
“Maureen Kennedy,” he said, as if everyone knew her as that.
“And how did you find out her name?”
“I asked her,” Pat said simply, looking at his watch.
“Are you anxious to be back there?” Moira asked him.
“Well, she’s on her own—there’s only a young girl in the shop and she’s a bit of an eejit with the till.”
Moira looked at him and bit her lip. She hoped that there were not tears in her eyes. Pat reached over and took her hand.
“I know, Moira, it’s hard for you having no one of your own and seeing Dad all settled with Maureen and me with Erin, but it will happen, I’m sure.”
She nodded wordlessly.
“Come back to the garage with me. Come in and talk to Erin.”
“I will.” Moira paid for their coffee and walked like an automaton back to the garage.
Erin was pleased to see them. “There was no hurry, Pat. You could have stayed longer.”
“I didn’t want to leave you on your own too long.”
“Well, there, Moira! Isn’t that music to the ears?” Pat had gone to put on his working gear again.
