Grace After Henry

by Eithne Shortall

‘I said to her last night, I said, “Sarah, will we call to see Grace tomorrow?” And she just said, “Who?” I tried to explain you were our daughter but she couldn’t hear me over the sound of her Bob Marley record. So laid-back she’s already fallen over, that’s your mother.’

  Mam turned her back on him. ‘We thought we’d drive you, Grace. We can just wait while you have a shower and get ready.’

  ‘I don’t really need a shower, I was just going to—’

  ‘That wasn’t a question, Grace. It was an order, on behalf of the citizens of Dublin. We brought some shampoo.’

  ‘I have shampoo!’

  She shot me a sceptical look and then glanced at Dad, who produced a bottle of L’Oréal Something-or-other from the Boots bag he was carrying: ‘Ta-dah!’

  ‘And conditioner.’

  ‘Ooo . . .’ Dad pulled another bottle from the bag.

  ‘And a razor.’

  ‘Ahhh . . .’

  I grabbed the haul from him and shot Mam a look. ‘You and your lovely assistant can wait here.’

  FOUR

  Dad drove and Mam sat in the back so I could have the passenger seat. We used to take this seating configuration whenever I was sick as a child. It made me feel like we were going to the doctor. Dad remarked on a white van hastily parked at the end of the road and I told him it was always there. He started tutting. In his driving instructor days, bad parking had been a particular bugbear.

  ‘Do you know the owner?’ he asked.

  ‘Haven’t met any of the neighbours yet.’

  ‘If you don’t have the patience to park, you shouldn’t be allowed on the road.’

  Dad switched on the radio and sang along. ‘Little Mix,’ he explained. ‘This bit is about Zayn.’ And Mam asked questions: Was I looking forward to going back to work? What was on the menu today? Did I think it’d make me feel better?

  But I couldn’t manage much in the way of conversation so she just stuck her hand around the side of my seat, squeezed mine and launched into a monologue about moths.

  ‘They said on the radio this morning that there’s an epidemic all over Dublin. They were interviewing this chap with a hardware shop in Cabra and he said he’s sold clean out of mothballs and can’t get another order for a week. I texted in to say they still have them in McGowan’s on the Blackrock Road—’

  ‘You sent that text message to me,’ said Dad, his eyes still on the road.

  ‘Did I? Well, feck it anyway! I’m always doing that. I tried to confirm my appointment for a breast check by text message last week and I ended up sending it to your father.’

  Dad started to chuckle.

  ‘I will not tell you what his response was.’

  ‘The love doctor would like to reschedule for a private consultation in the bedroom, please dress—’

  Mam clipped him on the ears. ‘They had a scientist on the radio who thought it might be connected to climate change but yer man presenting the show is one of those climate change deniers so then the whole thing got completely sidetracked and . . .’

  Leaving Aberdeen Street, we skirted the edges of the Phoenix Park and came down onto the noisy congestion of the city centre quays. Everywhere I went I saw Henry – all the places we’d been, and the places I didn’t know if he’d ever been. I saw him in the lines of men who cycled into the park, the clusters who waited at bus stops, the lonely figures who visited the other graves. He was the constant mirage. And I sought it out. I did it to myself. I searched every crowd until I found him. The false hope that caused my heart to jump for the briefest moment was worth the nauseating plummet when memory came crashing in.

  I watched a cyclist swerve between buses and taxis and articulated trucks. Henry had believed everything happened for a reason. But how would he explain what had happened that evening? Was he supposed to die at the age of thirty-three? What kind of reason was there for that?

  The first time we met was at one of Claire Maguire’s house parties. Years before ‘let’s do lunch’ or even before our truth-or-dare kiss. Henry didn’t really remember it, but I did. He was so handsome. He had heavy eyebrows and sallow skin – well, sallow on the spectrum of Irish skin tones. He looked like he should be on telly in some American high-school drama, not hanging around Dublin suburbs where the girls all had acne and the other boys were perpetually waiting to fill out. Henry towered over everyone, and he’d towered over me as we both waited for the kettle to boil.

  ‘What are you making?’ I shouted over the tinny music and drunken friends.

  ‘Hot whiskey.’ He took a container of cloves from the back pocket of his jeans and a naggin of Jameson from the other.

  ‘Isn’t that a Christmas drink? It’s July!’

  ‘I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s from A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens. You should read it.’

  ‘I have,’ I lied, having entirely forgotten it was not originally a Muppets movie. ‘Bah humbug, et cetera, et cetera.’ Who tells people to read books at parties? That’s what I remember thinking. It was summer. School was over.

  ‘There’s an art to making hot whiskeys,’ he continued, as if he hadn’t heard me, which he may not have. It was loud in the kitchen. He grabbed a lemon from the fruit basket, threw it up in the air and caught it. The kind of move you could only get away with as a teenager.

  ‘Go on so,’ I said as the boiling water grew louder and finally clicked. ‘Educate me.’

  But just as he reached for the kettle, Aoife was at my shoulder asking for the cigarettes. They were in my bag so I left to go find them. And even though I hurried back, he was gone. Half a lemon sitting on the counter where he had been.

  No longer interested in tea, I went and sat with Aoife and another girl as they puffed away self-consciously and gossiped about everyone around them. I was about to go the bathroom to check my eyeliner when a glass appeared at my shoulder. I turned around to see Henry Walsh proffering a drink.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, stunned.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ he replied and disappeared into the crowd. The girls looked from the hot whiskey to each other, wide-eyed, trying to decipher if the party line was approval or scorn.

  ‘But it’s July!’ said the one who wasn’t Aoife.

  The next day I went into town and bought A Christmas Carol, the same copy that had been in his backpack that evening. I started reading it on the bus home, scouring each page for a clue to Henry Walsh.

  We should have gone to the cinema that night, not a stupid house viewing. Henry wouldn’t have been on the quays then. We would have met outside the Savoy, ignorant of how close to oblivion we had come. We were going to get our dream house anyway, our dream life. I made Henry come to the East Wall viewing. I made him worry about being late. I made him wear that stupid scarf.

  I killed him. That was the truth. I may as well have pushed him under that truck.

  ‘Pet?’

  The traffic lights were red. It was early morning and everyone was going to work. I yearned to be like everyone else. Nausea hit and I waited for it to pass.

  ‘Hey, Grace?’

  Dad took his hand off the gear stick, momentarily, and placed it over mine and my mother’s. I realised then that there were tears on my face.

  ‘If it’s too soon to go back, we can just call your boss and—’

  I stopped him there. ‘No, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. Just – I’ll be grand.’

  ‘We’ll pick you up this evening.’

  ‘Aoife is going to collect me,’ I said as the Portobello Kitchen came into view. ‘We already arranged it.’

  Dad pulled in outside the restaurant and Mam leaned her face forward.

  ‘Kiss,’ she said, and I planted one on her cheek.

  ‘Bye, Dad.’ And I stretched over to kiss him too.

  ‘Good luck, love.’

  The front of the Portobello Kitchen was as I’d left it – the ‘r’ broke
n off and hanging from the final ‘o’, and the second ‘o’ stolen, so it read: Po t Belly Kitchen. There was a sign on the door written in the style of those old ‘No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs’ notices, only this version said: ‘No Wires, No Macs, No Pods’. Below was another sign also in the handwriting of Dermot Gormley, my boss and the proprietor of the Portobello Kitchen:

  That means NO WIFI you gobshites! If there’s a laptop under your arm, keep walking!!!

  I pushed the door open and made my way through the melange of old school tables, which Dermot had actually stolen from a school, a Christian Brothers place that had shut down in a cloud of disgrace, and beer barrels he’d gotten from the pub next door and just started referring to as ‘stools’.

  ‘Good morning,’ said a young woman standing behind the counter. ‘What can I get for you?’ She was bronzed and beautiful and exuded a sexual confidence. You didn’t even need the accent to know she wasn’t Irish.

  ‘I work here,’ I said.

  The girl frowned at me, then it dawned on her. ‘You’re Grace.’ Then it really dawned on her. ‘You’re Grace.’

  I gave her a small smile.

  ‘I’m Christina. Tina. I’m new.’

  ‘Hi, Tina. Is Dermot around?’

  ‘He’s in the . . . He’s in his office.’

  I lifted the counter top and passed through the coffee dock into the back room.

  ‘Dermot?’ I knocked lightly on the door of what had once been a storage cupboard but was now also the manager’s office.

  ‘My saving Grace!’ Dermot pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and rose from a mound of dockets and receipts to give me a kiss on both cheeks. If you asked Dermot what he did, he’d tell you he was an actor, even though he’d never had a single paid gig in his life and he made all his income from running the Portobello Kitchen. ‘It is good to have you back,’ he said, replacing the glasses and inspecting me further. ‘You look better than last time I saw you.’

  ‘At . . . the funeral?’

  ‘Yes. You looked dreadful.’ He nodded. ‘Much better now.’ He led me back into the kitchen. ‘Have you met Tina? Brazilian. She’s new.’

  ‘They always are.’

  ‘I’m hoping this one might stick around a little longer. I’m paying her more than minimum wage. And I’m pretty sure her visa depends on it.’

  Dermot had been a full-time unemployed actor when his father, a butcher, died and left him these premises. The idea of killing animals for a living turned his stomach so he converted it into a restaurant. He didn’t know anything about cooking or management or HR (visa blackmail was a common tactic in his efforts to retain waiting staff) but he did like to eat in restaurants and he reckoned that was enough. Dermot had gone to the interior designer with a single word – ‘Theatre’ – and the explanation ‘Because I am an actor’ and they had decked the place out in cheap velvet.

  And yet, entirely in spite of himself, the Portobello Kitchen was one of the most popular casual dining spots in the city. Dermot hadn’t realised that, these days, the jars he was using because he was a cheapskate actually cost more than glasses in most homeware shops; the carpet that was plain dirty was seen as distressed and people thought the cabaret décor was self-aware. You could charge a lot for self-awareness in Dublin. Dermot got annoyed whenever the place was busy, which was every lunch and dinnertime, and the more he tried to turn people off, the more they came back. They thought his gruffness gave the place character. There was even a parody Facebook page dedicated to Portobello Dermo.

  ‘Do you want to tell me about how you’re doing or . . .?’ Dermot winced at me like the words pained him. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed the shaking head was involuntary.

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ he said with a sigh of relief. ‘Let’s refresh your memory of the kitchen.’

  FIVE

  The familiarity of the tiles and fridges and the extractor fan that Dermot had taped onto the wall himself after firing a Dutch chef who insisted it needed to be professionally fixed had a calming effect.

  ‘Everything is much as you left it,’ said Dermot, standing in the middle of the kitchen. ‘The freezer still makes too much noise and the customers are as reprehensible as always. We’ve started keeping the eggs in the fridge and doing the sink-or-float test before throwing them out, blah blah blah. I can’t remember which means they’re still good but you can look it up if you’re bothered. The rota is on the back of the bathroom door now. I think that’s about it. I’ll be gone for a couple of hours this afternoon. I have an audition.’

  ‘I promise not to poison anyone,’ I said, pulling my uniform from my bag.

  Dermot shrugged. ‘You can poison the whole lot of them for all I care.’

  The crowds came thick and hungry right up until 3 p.m. I was slow to start but by the lunchtime rush I was in the swing of things. Hotpot heating, water boiling, bread toasting, and me crushing avocado into guacamole with one hand and stirring soup with the other. It was like I’d never been away. I enjoyed the constant busyness of my brain, and when it all calmed down there was a whole moment where I didn’t think of Henry.

  ‘One day for an aunt, uncle or grandparent. Bit of leeway there. A person could have a never-ending line of aunts and uncles.’

  ‘You have one of each, Henry.’

  ‘No need to tell them that. Three days for a parent. Very generous of them. It would take that long just to arrange a funeral.’

  ‘How long do you get for me?’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Your finger traces down the page. ‘Well, you’re not a spouse but I guess we’d class you as a life partner . . .’

  ‘Unless you’re planning to trade me in.’

  ‘No.’ You sigh. ‘I guess not.’

  I flick the towel at you.

  ‘For you I get . . . one week.’

  ‘One week! If you died, I couldn’t go back to work after one week.’ A silence as I put away the last of the plates. ‘Could you?’ I turn around, and you are staring. ‘Henry?’

  ‘I don’t even want to think about it.’

  I throw down the tea towel and go over to kiss you on the head and face and neck.

  ‘But look at this.’ You clear your throat, pulling me onto your lap. ‘If I die – which I think you could handle much better than the other way around, by the way – you get money.’

  ‘Oh? What are you worth?’

  ‘Well, it depends on when and how, but at least €15,000.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘You don’t think my life is worth more than €15,000?’

  ‘It’s not that . . .’

  ‘Seems a bit cheap to me.’

  ‘It’s just, there was this Chloé bag in the window of Brown Thomas that I thought I could never possibly afford but now . . .’

  You reach for the towel and flick it back and it doesn’t quite make contact but I shriek anyway.

  ‘Have I told you how much I hate you?’

  ‘Yes.’ I kiss you on the head, resting my hand where it fits at the nape of your neck. ‘But tell me again.’

  The usual resurgence came at 4 p.m.: the late lunches, early dinners and the sizeable coffee and cake brigade. I just about had the slate cleared when Tina started to deliver the ‘Linner’ orders.

  ‘One hotpot, two bean soups, one special,’ she shouted through the orders window that allowed me to see from the kitchen through to the restaurant floor.

  Then two minutes later: ‘Are we still doing the lunch special? One portion with mustard.’

  And then: ‘Tuna salad on flatbread, no salad, no mayonnaise, no – just tuna on bread. I’m still charging full price for that.’

  I moved fast and efficiently. I could do this. Henry always said I was efficient. I used to think it was a lame thing to admire, just because he couldn’t watch TV and talk at the same time. The buzzer went on the micro-oven and I removed a hotpot, placed it on the shelf of the orders window and hit the counter bell t
o get Tina’s attention. I made three different sandwiches simultaneously and four minutes later they were lined up next to the hotpot. Bingbing-bing!

  I admired the tuna steak with particular pride, it was just the right shade of pink. Henry was right: I was efficient. Bing-bing-bing-bing. Where was she? Through the window I could see Tina talking to a man. Her skin really was as glossy as her hair, and the man— My heart jolted.

  The man Tina was talking to was tall and broad with shoulders that barely curved. Just like Henry. His hair was different but that was possible and I held the hope tight.

  ‘Tina!’

  She turned, and so did he. The ringing chatter from the restaurant disappeared and everything slowed down. I heard myself gasp. I went to step forward, to start making my way to him, but the face wasn’t right. I looked away, towards the floor, breathe, then I brought my face up again. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t a thing like him.

  The door to the kitchen swung open and Tina came in to get cutlery.

  ‘You okay?’ she asked, her right hand hovering over a pile of forks.

  ‘The man . . . The one who was just . . .’

  ‘The German?’

  ‘The one you were just talking to?’

  ‘Yes, tall, handsome, a raspberry brownie-to-go. Tourist, of course. Too attractive to be Irish. Irish men,’ she muttered, grabbing the cutlery. ‘They all have the same three faces.’

  I never knew when it was going to happen. I was so sure in Tesco one day that I actually called out his name. The man turned around and of course it wasn’t him, but in the moment before I had been one hundred per cent positive that this was all a great mistake and Henry was not dead but actually alive and well and shopping for Bran Flakes on Prussia Street. I used to think Henry so singular, so incomparable. Now he lingered on every street corner.

  When Olga arrived to take over for the dinner shift, I sidestepped her sympathies, telling her my friend was waiting on double yellow lines. In the corridor, I slipped out of my uniform and shoved it into a bag. Aoife was sitting in her battered Volvo across the road. She beeped the horn and I raised a hand.