‘I’m afraid that particular one doesn’t come in other colours.’
‘Pity. I always think owls are mysterious.’ Tracing the curves of its head with a slender finger. ‘I think they should be witches’ familiars instead of black cats.’
‘Do you really?’ Isobel asks. The things she has to listen to sometimes.
‘Definitely. Those giant eyes, and the way they can twist their heads around, and that sound they make. Sends shivers down my spine when I hear it.’
And yet she wants an owl on her cushion.
‘We do have a blue one, but it’s got an elephant on it. Or how about the gorgeous Siamese cat in navy? I have it myself at home – everyone admires it.’
Isobel doesn’t have the Siamese cat, or any of the other Creature Comfort cushions, in her apartment. Her couch is the pale yellow of wild primroses; the cushions scattered across it are in various shades of cream, with no motifs. But it’s a lie that works surprisingly often: people are easily swayed.
Not this one. ‘It was the owl I was after,’ she says, her eyes sliding away, her gaze wandering over the shop as if other owls might materialise. Fly from the teapots, maybe. Pop out of the toasters, or spring from the cuckoo clock when its door opens.
When she’s alone again Isobel goes into the back room and makes a pot of green tea. While the kettle sings she opens a press and sees Mo’s ancient adding machine inside. Had it for years, she told Isobel. Leo got it for me, she said. Better than any computer, never lets me down.
They could well get rid of it now – their new accountant does all his sums on a tablet, would surely laugh at that contraption if they showed it to him. They could bring it to a charity shop – might catch the eye of some collector of antiques. Or they could simply bin it, but so far nobody’s touched it. Not doing anyone any harm.
Back in the shop her phone beeps: a text from Jack. You need a lift tonight? he asks. I’ll be passing your door.
Thoughtful as ever. She studies the screen, composing a reply. Composing a number of replies.
Thank you, she types eventually, but I’ll be travelling early to help with preparations. See you there, looking forward to it.
After she’d left Alex, she phoned Jack to tell him. She’s not sure why: it just felt like something she should do. She’d met him briefly at Daphne’s on the night it happened, the night of Una’s dramatic disappearance – but of course it wasn’t the time or place, and it wasn’t until four or five days later that she picked up the phone and dialled his number.
Daphne told me, he said, which Isobel had partly guessed. Still, she felt he should hear it from her too. I’m sorry, he added, and it didn’t sound insincere.
There’s nobody else, she told him, even though he hadn’t asked, even though he probably wasn’t interested. She wanted him to know that another man wasn’t involved this time; for some reason, it seemed important that he know this.
There hasn’t been anyone else since Alex. In over a year she hasn’t gone on a single date. She hasn’t shared her bed, or anyone else’s, since she and Alex were man and wife. She’s interacted with males in the shop; a few have even flirted mildly with her, but nothing more has come of it. And for now, she’s fine with that. In lots of ways, being alone suits her – it’s the thought of being alone forever that unnerves her.
She’s happy to have Jack back in her orbit, however casually. For years, after she’d renewed contact with him and Daphne, their encounters had, not surprisingly, been strained, and Isobel had assumed that they’d never again achieve anything resembling a normal friendship. But over the past year, since she and Daphne have been repairing their damage, it seems that Isobel and Daphne’s father are achieving their own resolution. Now when they meet, usually at Daphne’s house, there’s an ease between them that Isobel rejoices in – and if she senses a tiny occasional hesitancy in him, a barely discernible pulling back in his manner towards her, she considers it no more than she deserves.
For Daphne’s sake, she’s glad for her and Jack to be where they are, and for her own sake too. He’s a good man.
The shop door opens to admit a couple, mid-thirties, with brightly coloured jackets and the healthy complexions of people who spend a good deal of time out of doors. Boating, maybe: Isobel can see them on a yacht in matching white trousers and striped jumpers.
‘Great window,’ the man says. American or Canadian; she can never distinguish the accents.
‘My granddaughter is responsible,’ Isobel tells him. Granddaughter is easier than trying to explain the relationship – and now that she’s getting Daphne back, she may as well lay claim to Una too. ‘She changes the window every Saturday – she’s very artistic.’
‘I can see that. How ’bout the bike? Is it for sale?’
The question is regularly asked. Once again, Isobel explains that the bicycle in the window belonged to the previous owner, a relative of hers by marriage, and is not for sale. ‘We keep it there for sentimental reasons,’ she tells them. ‘He wasn’t old when he died.’
For whatever reason, the story tends to go down well. Finn’s blue bicycle, and its constant presence in the window, usually adorned with items from the shop’s supplies – an umbrella dangling from the handlebars, a birdcage sitting on the carrier, a throw draped over the saddle – gives the shop its character, makes people more inclined to bring something away from it.
As the pair wander along the aisles, the door opens again and Una appears, her school tie absent as usual from its official spot, her hair pulled into the high ponytail she’s taken to wearing lately.
‘Anything that needs doing?’ she asks. She’s dropped in most days after school since Mo’s departure – not that she wasn’t a frequent caller before that. ‘Can I help in any way?’
‘I was just talking about you,’ Isobel tells her, and passes on the tourist’s compliment. ‘He was asking about the bike too.’
Una laughs. ‘Another one.’
Wonderful to see how happy she is now, after the loss of both parents in her short life. She delights in the shop; it’s as if she was born to work there. And of course, love helps. Love always helps, and Una is undoubtedly in love. Her choice of boyfriend might have been a little bewildering, but love doesn’t always allow for choice.
Wonderful, too, how she and Daphne look after one another now, closer than many a mother and daughter. Lovely to see how Daphne, with no children of her own – and, it has to be said, no great memories of being mothered herself – has nurtured that relationship and built it into the fine thing it is now.
And of course Daphne has also had a little luck in the love department lately, which is good to see too.
Isobel checks under the counter. ‘You could bring some bubble wrap out from the back room,’ she tells Una, and off the girl goes.
‘Say.’
Isobel turns. The Americans, or Canadians, are standing before the seascape.
‘You might wrap this one up for us,’ the man says. ‘It’s a little beauty.’
Una stays for an hour or so, working her way along the shelves, lifting objects to dust carefully under them, replacing everything exactly as she found it. Watching her, Isobel wonders if she’s ever reminded of the shop when her father ran it, if she ever thinks back to the time he stood behind the counter.
Of course, it’s changed a lot since then – the renovations were pretty extensive – but one of the features they’ve retained is the old counter, sanded and varnished but still there. Does she ever see him as he was? Is she ever stirred by memories of him here?
‘Are you looking forward to this evening?’ Isobel asks.
Una smiles. ‘Yeah, should be good.’
And before either of them can say more, a car horn toots outside the door. Una instantly blushes: he’s here, the one she’s been waiting for. The one who always collects her as soon as he finishes up at his catering college. She stows the duster in its place behind the counter and lifts her rucksack. ‘See you later,’ she sa
ys, slinging it over a shoulder. She strides across the floor and pulls open the door with the effortless grace of the young. Eighteen, and all to live for. Isobel was happy and hopeful too, at eighteen.
When the clocks tell her it’s five twenty she cashes up, looking forward to Daphne’s reaction when she hears that the seascape has been sold. Nice news to get on her birthday.
Mo would surely have something to say about it, if she could. One born every minute, or words to that effect.
UNA
She listens to his phone ringing.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, George. Kevin says the pups are ready to go. We could bring Josh’s along with us this evening, if you like.’
Dolly had done what came naturally sometime in January. We’ve no idea who the father is, Kevin said, when it became apparent that the family dog was in the family way. We’ll have to wait and see what comes out – and what came out, around the middle of March, was a glorious tumble of twelve oversized ears and six raggy tails and plump wriggling bodies in coats that ranged in colour from Dolly’s black and white through caramel brown to chestnut red.
We need to find homes, Judy said. Ask anyone you can think of – so Una put it to George, who consulted with Louise. When the response was positive, Una took photos of each pup on her phone, and a chestnut male with a cream patch over an eye was selected.
‘I’m being given the thumbs-up here,’ George tells her now. ‘Bring it along – he’ll be delighted.’
‘OK, see you later.’
She hangs up and passes the word to Kevin, who goes off in search of a box.
Charlotte spreads butter on a second scone. ‘They’ll have to think up a name,’ she says, reaching for the jam. Charlotte has been eating for two since November. Eating for half a dozen, more like, Kevin remarked lately, and got a swipe with a tea towel across his rear end in response.
‘I think they’re going to let Josh name him,’ Una says.
Josh, five since last August, hasn’t been told of the pup’s existence, let alone its imminent arrival. Una can’t wait to see his face. She’s been his official babysitter since just after Christmas. Their bedtime routine never varies: she tucks him in and reads him three stories, and then they sing songs in turn until he falls asleep.
And now that she has her own car, and is doing the driving test the very second she can, George won’t have to drive her home for much longer.
She couldn’t believe it when Daphne gave her the keys on her eighteenth birthday, four weeks ago. It’s too much, she said.
Tom gave it to me for a good price, Daphne replied. Una didn’t think people who were well on the way to forty could still blush.
You’re getting it on condition you take lessons with my father, Daphne went on. He’s giving you six as his present – and that was fine by Una.
The car is so retro: none of her friends had seen a Morris Minor before, and everyone is mad about it. It belonged to some old relative of Tom’s, and even though it’s pretty ancient it’s in really good nick, and had less than forty thousand miles on the clock.
It stank of cigarettes when it arrived – the owner must have smoked like a chimney – but she and Theo scrubbed it and sprayed it until they banished the smell, and Una found a website that sold car stickers, and ordered four red flowers that look great against the black. Hippie chic, Theo said, when he saw them stuck on the left rear wing. He’s so goofy sometimes.
She had her fifth lesson with Jack on Wednesday – he says she’s got lightning reflexes – and Theo takes her out sometimes in his car. He brings her to the university campus where everyone goes to learn. He’s had a full licence since he was seventeen – Kevin taught him to drive – and he bought a car at Christmas for five hundred euro, an eighteen-year-old dark green Nissan Micra that will do them until Una passes the test and Daphne finally has to let her drive. The Morris Minor is much cooler than the Micra – but she keeps that thought to herself.
She’ll be finished school in two months, and she’s taking a couple of weeks off before starting full-time at The Blue Bicycle. She and Isobel will split the week between them, overlapping now and again at the busy times.
She adores working in the shop on Saturdays. She annoys Isobel during the week too – can’t keep away from the place. She still feels Dad there, but it’s in a good way now, not so sad anymore. He was happy there, and so is she. Sometimes she gets frightened, thinking that all this happiness can’t last forever. And then she thinks, Well, of course it can’t, so she’s enjoying it while she can.
She doesn’t know if she and Theo will last forever either – they’re both young, they’re one another’s first love – but she hopes they will. She wants him to be her last love too.
She’s told her dad about him. You’d like him, she said. He’s a good person, he’s like you.
‘Here we go.’ Kevin reappears with a box. ‘Theo, get the scissors and poke a few holes in it.’
Judy removes her apron and sinks into a chair. ‘I’d sell my soul for a cup of tea. Charlotte, how’s that pot?’
‘Empty.’
‘I’ll make more,’ Una says, and brings the kettle to the sink. Perfectly at home she is here now, part of the family. For her birthday Judy baked a sponge cake, filled it with jam and whipped cream and wrote Happy 18th on the top in buttercream icing. I wasn’t sure I’d fit ‘birthday’, she explained. Seeing it, Una recalled the slices of chocolate cake she and Daphne had eaten the day after her seventeenth birthday. Banishing, with every sweet, delicious mouthful, the memory of the evening before.
The man who attacked her – Dave wasn’t his real name, surprise, surprise – was traced through his computer. And there was a wife, only her name wasn’t Jean or Joan, and she knew nothing of her husband’s online activity.
At first he tried to deny the attack, said he’d never met Una, only spoken on the Internet with her – but under questioning he broke down, said it was the only time he’d done anything like that, he didn’t know what had come over him, he was deeply sorry. The guards waited until he’d finished apologising and charged him with sexual assault.
Thankfully his guilty plea meant Una wasn’t needed as a witness in court: she wanted never to lay eyes on him again. He’s doing time now, and Louise has told them that he’ll be put on the sex offenders’ list when he gets out. He’ll think twice before he looks at another young girl, she said.
Una hasn’t told Theo, or any of his family, what happened. She told them she left Charlotte’s bag behind in the taxi, and she found a similar one to replace it. They didn’t need to know. Nobody needed to know the full story except Daphne and Isobel, and presumably Jack and Mo, who would have expected some kind of an explanation. She doesn’t know exactly what they were told – the subject wasn’t raised by either of them afterwards.
She doesn’t think about it now; she doesn’t let it into her head.
The pup is placed in the box, with a squeaky rubber bone and a bald tennis ball that he loves. When the lid is put on, Una pokes a finger through one of the holes, and immediately feels the small wet tongue lapping at it. She carries the box out through the front door – can’t let Dolly see her taking one of the babies away – and Theo brings his car around.
It’s half past six. The journey to Louise’s house – George and Louise’s house now – will take them a good forty minutes in the Friday traffic, still heavy at this hour. She sits in the passenger seat with the box on her lap. She slides her finger back into the hole, wiggles it and feels the baby teeth grab it.
‘We won’t stay too long, yeah?’ Theo asks. ‘After the dinner, I mean.’
He’s wary at the thought of spending time with them. The only one he’s met so far is Daphne, and only after Una practically forced him into it. This evening he’ll be introduced to the rest of her family, and she’s well aware that he’s dreading it. She wonders if he’ll ever feel at ease among them, if that will ever be possible for him. Even though he’s entirely blamel
ess, he’ll always be the son of the man who drove the lorry that killed her dad.
‘It’ll be OK,’ she says, hoping to God it will. ‘We’ll go as soon as you want to. I’m dying to see Josh’s face,’ she adds, to take his mind off it, but she can see by the set of his jaw that he’s wishing they were going somewhere else. Anywhere else.
She slides a hand across, lays it palm up on his thigh. ‘It’ll be OK,’ she repeats, ‘honestly. They’re fine, they’re great’ – and he shifts gear as they approach a red light.
‘We could run away,’ he says. ‘We could go to Australia and never come back. We could go tonight – we could go right now.’
She laughs, loving the intimation that they’ll spend the rest of their lives together, even if he’s saying it in jest. ‘We have no passports,’ she says. ‘No money, no clothes. And what about this pup? We couldn’t bring him to Australia.’
‘Hmm.’ The light changes and they move off. ‘Passports might be a problem all right.’
‘And the pup.’
‘And the pup.’
She leans across and kisses his cheek. ‘They’ll love you,’ she says, ‘like I do,’ and he shoots her a soppy grin.
They carry on driving. It’s twenty to seven.
EVERYONE
It’s ten o’clock. They’ve finally got as far as the cake.
‘Mostly wholewheat flour,’ Louise tells Daphne. ‘Just a small bit of white. And brown sugar, but not much, because the carrots are pretty sweet.’
Three small pink candles, recently blown out, sit on the plate next to the remainder of the cake. The six long white ones that Isobel brought have been dotted about the room – three on the table, one on a windowsill, two on the dresser, each pushed into a sand-filled terracotta flowerpot. Two floor lamps with twin deep-yellow shades provide the only other light in the room.
Two Fridays in April Page 27
