A Posy of Promises_a heartwarming story about life and love

by Sharon Dempsey

  What does Niamh know about anything?

  Quite a lot. She’s the one with all the relationship experience.

  And look where that gets her! Up shit creek without a paddle.

  True. Here, I have to go. Talk soon.

  Yeah, soon.

  5

  Later that night, Ava embarked on the clear-out. It had been hanging over her for weeks like an opportunistic migraine waiting to pounce. She knew that if she was going to move out, it would be sensible to de-clutter and sort things out in advance. There was no point putting it off, and she knew that as soon as she started work on number ninety-seven, she would be so consumed by it, that she would rarely have time to check in on Moonstone Street, let alone tidy it up.

  She decided to get stuck in upstairs and work her way down. She climbed the steep, narrow staircase suddenly feeling energised. If she was actually sorting out Moonstone Street, then moving into number ninety-seven seemed more real. It was no longer a dream or a far-off plan to be contemplated and looked forward to. It was actually going to happen.

  Maggie’s house may have been small, but she had accumulated five decades’ worth of living, all packed in drawers, cupboards and boxes stacked on top of the wardrobes. Most of it was old faded newspapers, the reason they were kept long forgotten, some of Ava’s school books and school reports, even old Irish dancing medals and programmes listing the reels and the jigs and naming the contenders. Junk really, but it could take up to a month to sort through and separate the stuff worth keeping from that which needed to be dumped.

  Ava had no intention of spending weeks trawling through it all. She wasn’t going to be sentimental about it. It was a clear-out job that needed to be done with a ruthless heart, not weighed down by maudlin thoughts dressed up as memories. Maggie had intended to do it for years but as always, she gave up at the thought of chucking out things she had long forgotten why she had kept in the first place. Ava could do a better job since she didn’t intend to pore over every photo or run through the story related to each ornament or novelty item. She would be clinical and cold and just get on with it. Besides, it would be so much easier to do while Maggie was still alive. The thought of clearing out the house after Maggie’s death would have seemed too final and emotional, at least now it was a work in progress, not an expurgation of their life.

  Ava started with a large cardboard box with Fyffes bananas printed across it in a faded royal blue print. The box had stayed on top of the wardrobe in Maggie’s room for so long that it had ceased to be noticed. Ava stood on the bed and reached up to lift the large box down. A cloud of dust made her cough, but undeterred she opened a black plastic bin bag in preparation for the rubbish to be discarded.

  Ava rummaged through the sediment of Maggie’s life, the bits and pieces which had sunk to the lowly depths of her awareness and sat decaying and gathering dust for years.

  The sorting was almost fun. Ava picked up objects like an old porcelain shepherdess ornament that she remembered sitting on the windowsill for years, until it had been knocked down and cracked. Instead of throwing it out, for some reason, Maggie had kept it until it had been forgotten. There was an old brass compass which Ava thought had probably belonged to her grandfather, Paddy. She put it to one side, not wanting to part with it, and then reprimanded herself, thinking if she decided to keep every little object of interest she would get nowhere. The hours went by, and by the time she had three oversized bags full of rubbish and two earmarked for the Cancer Research shop, she felt that she had made good headway.

  Ava decided to take a break and went back downstairs to make a cup of tea. There was one box, an old leatherette cutlery canteen, she had set aside without going through, knowing it contained mementoes of her mother, photographs and newspaper clippings, and thought she would sit back on Maggie’s bed with her cup of tea and have a poke through it.

  Ava had vague memories of looking through the container years earlier with Maggie. They had stored photographs in it and a few postcards Scarlett had sent from her travels, but over the years the box had been pushed to the back of the wardrobe, and to the back of their minds.

  Setting her mug of strong tea on the bedside cabinet, she sat on Maggie’s pale blue candlewick-covered bed ready to reminisce and reconnect with the few memories she had of Scarlett. Ava coughed as a scratchy dryness caught in her throat. Dust floated around her like a mist of time. Everything she touched seemed to have a layer of years’ worth of dust accumulating as if to prove just how long the boxes and possessions had gone unnoticed.

  She pulled a pillow behind her back and made herself comfortable to sort through the contents. She opened the tarnished gold-coloured catch on the old royal-blue leatherette box and found amongst the silver-grey satin-lined box, with grooves shaped to hold the long-since-vanished cutlery, the pages of a letter carefully folded over and addressed to Ava in Maggie’s scrawling hand writing. The writing was not quite as bad as it had become in the months before she went into the Sisters of Mercy home. Her letters were looping and sloping forward as if in haste to finish what needed to be said.

  Ava, if you are reading this, then one of two things has happened — either I am dead and sleeping with the angels in heaven, God rest my soul, or you have been looking through stuff you have no right to be searching through. If it’s the latter, fold this letter up at once, child, and we will speak no more about it.

  Ava inhaled sharply. Letter writing from the grave wasn’t Maggie’s style. Ava shivered, thinking of her grandmother sitting at their little kitchen table with the red and white gingham tablecloth, to compose a letter she intended to be read when she was dead. Ava couldn’t resist reading on, despite Maggie’s express instruction.

  Right, I assume I am dead. I hope you gave me a good send off. I better have been laid out in the good navy suit I bought in the Country Casuals sale. The woman in the shop said the pink scarf lifted my colouring so I draped it over the suit hanger hoping you would have the sense to put it on me for my wake.

  I always kept it at the front of the wardrobe to make sure you noticed it when you would be looking for something to dress me in. I hope you used O’Mallie’s funeral directors. The other crowd have a reputation for not doing the hair and make-up to a good enough standard, and I would like to look my best, not like poor Nessie Hamill who was no more like herself than my left leg is like a sparrow’s beak.

  I wonder who came. Did you serve the tea in my good Royal Doulton tableware? The cake stand is a bit wonky but hopefully it did the job, providing the cakes were light and fluffy the way I bake them. If you bought them in from McKearney’s bakery they will be as hard as the calluses on a farmer’s hands.

  Sorry I am digressing. I am avoiding the issue as ever. I may have made some mistakes in my life but you should know they were done in the name of love, love for you.

  Anyways. The purpose of this letter is to fill you in, so to speak. I wasn’t one for dwelling on the past, as you know, and I let things go by without explaining them to you. You were always such a good girl and never gave me a moment’s bother, except for that time you stayed out late and drank that snakebite concoction. I hope you learnt your lesson — never mix blackcurrant Ribena with lemonade, the bubbles do something to the syrup and it can make you light-headed.

  Perhaps I should start at the beginning. They say it’s all in the name and maybe that was part of the problem. I couldn’t see past the name Scarlett. Thought it was the most beautiful name ever and when Rhett Butler took Scarlett in his arms I just about swooned in the back row of the stalls of the New Vic. So, you see, when my baby came along I wanted to name her Scarlett, hoping for a feisty beauty, but I got more than I bargained for.

  I should have listened to the priest, they are nearly always right. Father Gilligan did the baptism rites and when he asked for the name and I said, ‘Scarlett’ loud and proud for all to hear, he muttered something about pagan names and bad seeds and christened her Mary instead. I didn’t give a hoot. So, what
if she was Mary on her baptism form? When we went down to the City Hall to register the birth, your granddad told the official his daughter was to be named Scarlett Mary Connors. I thought my heart would burst with pride at him standing up for the name I wanted for that bonny weeun with the head of dark hair.

  As my luck would have it, the priest was right. Scarlett lived up to her name and became the feisty beauty I’d hoped for. Of course, I hadn’t thought of how raising a girl with a temperament and a wilful streak to frighten the gypsies would be so hard. Her antics near enough killed your poor granddad, God rest his soul in Heaven with the angels and saints.

  Our Scarlett grew up to have raven black hair, eyes the colour of violets and skin as clear and luminous as the moon. A real beauty, they all said so, even the Connor’s cousins couldn’t deny our Scarlett had more than her fair share of looks, and it near enough choked your great aunt Sadie Connors to admit it. Of course, Grandma Connors said it would be her curse, and maybe she was proved right in the end. Too good-looking for her own good, she had said.

  It was like having a peep into the history of her life, seeing it from Maggie’s perspective for the first time and realising the loss she must have felt when Scarlett moved away. Tucked behind the letter, Ava found a bundle of photographs. They were little four by four squares of faded colour photos, each holding an image of Scarlett. In one of them she was standing proud wearing a full-length white broderie Anglaise first communion dress, her hands clasped piously in prayer with pearl rosary beads entwined around her little fingers. Her long, dark hair covered in a soft, white veil secured by a plastic comb topped with fabric roses.

  Another showed her looking awkwardly from beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat, sitting on a beach, her hair blowing behind her. She looked about fourteen, her eyes avoiding the camera and her mouth contorted into a huffy little pout, seemingly unhappy to be dragged along for a day at the seaside let alone to be photographed.

  Ava recognised the next image. It was a photograph she had seen before, Scarlett wearing tight jeans with a T-shirt and a denim jacket draped over her shoulders with an acoustic guitar resting against her legs as if it were a casual prop.

  A fourth photograph showed a young Scarlett sat between her mother and father on a sofa in what looked like Grandma Connors’ house. She was wearing a gingham shirt, the collar a huge wide lapelled creation that made Ava smile. Her bare knees stuck out from beneath her skirt and she had russet-coloured boots on which rose up to just below her knees. Maggie and Paddy were sitting as if sandwiching Scarlett in, looking like they were trying to force her to stay with them.

  And then Ava found one of Scarlett photographed close up: wide eyed and smiling with Ava as a baby resting on her shoulder. Her blue-black lustrous hair draped like a silk scarf around her pale face. Ava felt her heart lurch. It was an image of such tenderness and love that she felt certain her mother had loved her. Scarlett hadn’t just run off without it impacting on her too. What had it cost the young girl in the photograph to leave behind the child snuggled contently into her neck?

  Amongst the keepsakes on top of the wardrobe, Ava found a scrapbook full of old newspaper clippings about Scarlett’s success in the States. The Belfast Telegraph carried a full-length photo of her holding her album cover, looking serious. Her band stood behind her as if to emphasise that Scarlett was the main attraction. The headline read, ‘Local girl tops the hit parade’. Other clippings were album reviews, small pieces about how well she was doing Stateside. The clippings stopped at 1979, the year after Ava was born. Several pages of the scrapbook lay unfilled as if waiting for someone to pick up the thread of the story and fill them in.

  Ava went back to reading the letter, feeling that she was unravelling her own past, along with her mother’s, her heart contracting and beating as always but now filled with a renewed yearning to know more.

  Ava felt as if everything and yet nothing had changed. The kaleidoscope of her soul had shifted ever so slightly, rearranging everything she believed and revealing a whole new picture.

  6

  ‘Operation recovery is underway,’ said Niamh, teasing Ava’s hair into a low chignon. They had abandoned the loose topknot and rejected the quiff fringe.

  ‘What exactly are you supposed to be recovering?’ asked Ava, eyeing her reflection in the mirror with something approaching concern.

  ‘Your dignity, your looks,’ replied Niamh as she looked in the mirror at her creation with a critical eye.

  ‘Your man,’ piped up Cal who was busy trying to sort out Niamh’s jewellery kit. He was stood holding a tumble of necklaces all entwined in a mess of glittery gold and silver.

  ‘Girl, you are one lazy cow. Would you look at the state of these,’ he said holding up the knotted chains and beads for them to see.

  Ava tried to pull away from Niamh’s grasp as a shower of hairspray rained down on her head, inducing a fifty-a-day type coughing fit.

  ‘No one mentioned recovering Finlay. Besides, he doesn’t seem to want to be recovered,’ said Ava as Niamh pulled on her hair a bit too harshly for her liking. ‘Oi, go easy.’

  Cal rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. ‘Honey child, do you know nothing? The first thing a man does to win his woman back is make her jealous. That wee set-up was all for your benefit.’

  ‘I wish I had your confidence, Cal, but I don’t think I was on his mind when those curtains closed.’ Ava sighed, then took a hefty swig of her wine to dull the aching pain of the memory.

  ‘Listen, I know a thing or two about men. Sure, haven’t I been round the block and up the entry a few times more than you, and when a man feels snubbed he does what comes naturally and grabs another bit, to help ease him over the heartache. Tis the way of the world,’ Cal said sagely, as if he knew only too well how the machinations of the male mind worked.

  ‘He is right, you know,’ Niamh replied, helping herself to more wine. ‘Cal has more experience than both of us put together. He’s been round the block and up the entry many a Friday night. If Finlay wanted you back the first thing he would do would be to put out and about his manhood, knowing full well in this town you’d get wind of it.’

  ‘I think you two are forgetting Finlay is not the hard-done-by party here. He dropped me, so why would he be looking to make me jealous?’ asked Ava reasonably.

  ‘Girl-child, yer man wanted to feel loved, appreciated, and you and your frigid fandanny had frozen him out. So, he does the only thing to do and tells you it’s over. That doesn’t mean he wants it to be over, he just wants to make you want him more,’ said Cal while checking out his reflection in the mirror and adjusting his spiked hair.

  ‘And we, Ava Connors, are going to help you find your inner sex kitten, starting with a new look and a night out to blow your socks off,’ Niamh said smiling.

  ‘Once you are in the zone of sexed up honeyness, he’ll come running back like a dog with two dicks,’ concluded Cal.

  ‘What am I doing, letting you two take charge of my love life?’ groaned Ava, putting her head in her hands.

  Niamh put her hand on Ava’s shoulder and looked at her in the reflection of the mirror. ‘Doris Day, I hate to spell it out to you, but you ain’t got a love life. That’s why your fairy godmothers are here. Trust us we’re the lurve doctors. Here to cure your every ill.’

  Ava had a feeling she might regret it but hell, what else had she to do on a Saturday night?

  Ava woke out of a heavy sleep and was aware of a scratchy dryness at the back of her throat. Her tongue felt rough and parched like a piece of old shammy leather left to gather dust in a long-forgotten kitchen drawer. A desperate stiffness seemed to spread outwards down her jaw, around her neck and shoulders and finally became a searing pain crashing through her head. She tried to move but it was as if her body had been submerged in concrete, cold and solid, holding her down.

  Where am I? She thought as another burst of pain radiated at her temples. Maybe I’ve been drugged and left for dead with one of my kidne
ys stolen and put for sale on eBay. But the pain centred in her head and her raspy, starchy mouth tasted of soured wine, indicating that her suffering was most likely to be all self-inflicted. It had been so long since she had experienced a hangover that she had forgotten how awful it could be.

  She heard a low guttural groan and then realised it was coming from herself. Jagged shards of memory punctuated her consciousness as she recalled the previous night. She could remember drinking shots, amber and verdant-coloured drinks with names like Moon Beam, Siren, and Bomber. There was music, loud and thumping, and lights. Raucous laughter and some carry on with throwing back shots like there was no tomorrow.

  A flash of seeing someone who vaguely looked like Ava dancing on a stage and doing a seductive striptease came into her mind. It was like an out-of-body experience where she could see what she was doing yet had no control to stop herself. Oh no, she groaned inwardly, I can’t have.

  But she had, and now remembering, in the cold light of day, she was surprised to find herself smiling, and then silently giggling as she recalled the silly dance she had done with a huge fluffy pink ostrich feather between her legs.

  Niamh and Cal had taken her to The Kitty House, a club with a burlesque theme night in full throw. They had an open mike segment where members of the audience were invited up on stage to help Betty Boom Boom do her thing. Cal had practically dragged Ava up to the stage and then, when the spotlight fell on her and the audience had cheered, she found herself complying and being rushed to the wings where she was trussed up in a red satin basque with black glittery fringing and high black patent boots which were a couple of sizes too big. She could remember saying that she looked like a drag queen and someone else saying she should be so lucky.

  Suddenly she was led out onto the stage by Betty who whispered into her ear in a broad west Belfast accent, ‘you look great, just copy me.’ Before she knew it, she was swinging her hips slowly to the jazzy soundtrack and sucking her tummy in, while trying to stick her ass out and rotate it in time to the music. The bright stage lights dazzled her, preventing her from seeing the audience, but she was acutely aware of them shouting encouragement and spurring her on.