by Maeve Binchy
He had optic measures which he fitted into his sideboard. The rug-covered furniture turned into a counter. The vases were taken off the high stools, the chairs were assembled around occasional tables.
Eve would have a small dry Martini, some of the other ladies had thimble-sized glasses of sherry, and the men mainly had beer taken from a metal barrel, well disguised during non-pub hours as a giant magazine stand.
How did I discover this?
By spying on them.
And what I discovered looked a very happy scene. They were never drunk and it was doing nobody any harm. But of course they were breaking the law. You are not actually allowed to sell intoxicating liquor without a licence. Anywhere. And certainly not at a nursing home where there are all kinds of rules and regulations and none of them include allowing the residents to have a cash bar.
But they were enjoying it so much. It would be a shame to end it. I resolved that I must never know about it.
So whenever any member of the staff began to tell me that maybe I ought to know something, I managed to avoid hearing it. Lord knows what else I might have inadvertently closed my eyes to! Anyway the board continued to visit and I always managed to let Dan know what day they were coming well in advance as they sometimes called on residents to know how they were getting along, and I didn’t want them to arrive when the cocktail hour was at full throttle. Eventually another board member sold out and I now owned half the place.
My sister Jane was awfully sulky and not a bit pleased for me when I told her. I wanted to take her out to dinner to celebrate. But Jane was full of shrugs and raising of shoulders and saying it was so odd that a nurse who was more or less trained by the State should have risen so high. I was too busy really to worry about it, I had to make sure not to schedule painting classes at an hour that would cut across Dan’s opening times and on the day we had our art exhibition a lot of them went for Dutch courage to Dan’s.
The very next day I went for a walk by myself in the woods, accompanied only by the dog.
Maturity loved the woods and found something interesting at every turn. We were near the well so I went in to inspect it.
There were notices around it about the intended road.
‘We won’t let them take you away, St Ann,’ said one of them. Another had a pencil attached and asked people who opposed the huge highway to add their names to a list below. I was going to put my name on it. Most of my people back at the home were against the change. Then I wondered, might it in fact mean that some of them would get more visitors if all that traffic congestion was eased.
At that very moment my mobile phone rang. There was a bit of sighing around me as if to say that nowhere was sacred these days.
It was the home. Three inspectors from the Health Board had arrived unannounced.
I had to think quickly.
I looked up at the statue for some advice. ‘Come on, St Ann, you didn’t do much for me in the husband stakes,’ I said. ‘Get me out of this one anyway.’ Then I asked to be put through to Dan’s room.
‘Mr Green?’ I said with as much authority as I could muster. ‘Mr Green, there’s been a little change of plan. I won’t be able to join you and discuss your artwork with you as arranged. I wonder if I could ask you all to go almost at once to the dining room. You see, some health inspectors have arrived and I’m not in the building. I’ll be back shortly and I want to show them around. It would be a great ease to me if I could know that everyone was heading for lunch. Having of course cleared up all your artwork before you leave, if you know what I mean. Thank you so much for being co-operative, Mr Green.’ I hung up.
Dan would do it. Maturity and I raced back to the car and I drove like the wind back to Ferns and Heathers. The inspectors were having coffee and shortbread in the hall. They were looking at the exhibition of local flora in glass cases. They were studying the notices on the wall about upcoming cookery demonstrations, a matinée showing of Brief Encounter which was a regular favourite, and a debate on the great new road.
I apologised for not being there and suggested a tour of the premises. As I was leading the inspectors along the ground floor I saw the little line of lunchtime drinkers full of giggles heading for the dining room. Not even the flappers who drank bathtub gin during Prohibition could have had as much fun as they were having.
All I had to do now was make sure that Dan never acknowledged what I had done, how I had saved his little pub enterprise and my home.
‘Afternoon, Poppy,’ he said cheerfully. Then he nodded at the inspectors from the Health Board. ‘Fantastic place this, but my God, she’s a stickler for law and order, every by-law has to be observed, fire drill, hygiene, you wouldn’t believe it. Still we all like it and that’s saying something, isn’t it?’
The inspectors were impressed, the gigglers went to their lunch and I knew that we could go on like this for ever.
Part 2 – Elegant Jane
They used to say about me when I was young that I was a perfectionist. I liked the description actually, it meant that I wanted things to be perfect, which I did. But as I got older they stopped using the phrase. Probably thought it meant finicky, picky, hard to please.
And eventually old maid.
Nobody ever said Poppy was a perfectionist. Dear me, no. She always had cut knees or scabs on them. Her hair was constantly falling over her face, her clothes ripped or torn from climbing up in the Whitethorn Woods or sliding down things. And yet amazingly people always liked Poppy. Quite disproportionately in fact.
The house was full of her friends, that loud noisy Grania practically lived in our house for heaven’s sake. Oh and crowds more. And it was the same with boys when the time came – which was very early really – she had dozens of them around the place too. When she left St Ita’s school in Rossmore she could have gone to university as I did. I have a degree and became a librarian but no, Poppy, who always knew her own mind, had insisted on nursing.
Mother and Father were, I suppose, relieved that it didn’t cost them anything but still. What had they worked for and saved for if it wasn’t to give us an education? Poppy would come home with hair-raising tales of life on the ward. Honestly, what she had to do all day! How people trusted human lives to my half-crazed sister was beyond me.
When she was qualified (against all the odds; I must say I never thought she’d see it through) she went into a ward for the elderly, most of them mad, poor dears, and completely wandering. Poppy found them fascinating and hilarious. You’d swear she was working with Einstein and Peter Ustinov, not a lot of elderly people who were totally confused and barely knew what day it was.
Amongst the seemingly endless series of young men who all wanted to be with Poppy there was one called Oliver. His people owned a lot of property all over Rossmore. Very, very good looking, a bit of a philanderer, I suppose. He didn’t really work because he didn’t really need to. And his family were all torn between relief that he was settling down at last and concern that he had chosen as his bride a nurse called Poppy with no background. I warned Poppy that he might not be the entirely utterly faithful type and she said that life was all about taking risks, and after all she might find herself attracted to another man so marriage was just a giant optimistic step.
I didn’t see marriage like that. I saw it as something you thought about rather a lot and made sure it was the right thing to do. Oddly, I had never really been close enough to consider seriously marrying anyone, except that time with Keith who was also a librarian and we were really quite well suited but there was a huge misunderstanding there. I don’t know what happened.
We were actually talking about getting engaged and I explained about the small square-cut emerald I would like for my ring. It wasn’t extraordinarily expensive or anything but it seemed to upset him that I had already chosen it and tried it on. When I was telling him we must have a walk-in closet in the house because otherwise our clothes would get crushed beyond belief he felt … well, I don’t know what he felt really
. But he said he needed more time and then he sort of faded away.
Oliver and Poppy’s wedding was just what you’d expect. Haphazard, disorganised, everyone laughing. Lots of champagne and little chicken sandwiches. And a wedding cake. That was all. No proper banquet with place names or anything.
Mother and Father enjoyed it. I didn’t.
That loud Grania was braying all over the place, brought her dreadful red-faced father with her. Mother and Father said that Poppy had never been a day’s trouble in her whole life.
I thought that was rich.
Poppy? No trouble?
What trouble had I been, I might ask? I lived in my own flat and I did go to see them. Not as often as parents like, but enough. From time to time anyway. Poppy and Oliver had a marvellous house, well, compared to my small flat it was marvellous, but of course hopelessly neglected, what with Poppy still out slaving away in a geriatric ward.
I’ll tell you, if I had married Oliver and all his money I would have stayed at home, done up that house and invited people in. Then he mightn’t have wandered so much.
I knew about his wandering quite early on actually. I saw him nuzzling a girl in a wine bar. Naturally he saw me too and disengaged himself. He came over full of charm.
‘We’re adults, you and I, Jane,’ he said.
‘Indeed, Oliver.’ I was icy.
‘So adults don’t run home with silly tales, do they?’
‘Unless they see other adults doing silly things in wine bars,’ I said, proud of myself.
He looked at me for a while. ‘I suppose in the end, it is your call, Jane,’ he said and went back to the girl.
I paid my bill and left.
As it happened I did not tell Poppy.
I had tried to warn her before she married him and she had been shruggy and so dismissive – let her find out herself.
She found out about six months later when she came home unexpectedly and opened her bedroom door to find Oliver and an old flame having a nostalgic whatever. She asked him to leave. That very day.
Of course he made a fuss.
She was being doctrinaire, he had said, which indeed in many ways she was. She wanted no explanations, excuses, no promises of a faultless life from then on. She said to him that she just wanted the house, no maintenance, that it was actually a good deal he had got, which he would realise when he came to talk it over with the briefs and his own divorced friends.
And then as if that wasn’t all bad enough losing this great catch, Poppy threw up her dull but safe job in the hospital and went to work at a crazy retirement home called Ferns and Heathers.
I mean, what a name! But Poppy, being Poppy, said she liked it. It was better, she said, than calling it St Something as a lot of these places were called, and it made the people who lived there feel they were not being hurtled rather too swiftly towards the next world. And some of these homes for the elderly were called remorselessly jolly names, she said, so she was happy with Ferns and Heathers, and was always down on her hands and knees planting both to make sense of the silly name.
Really, Poppy defied every rule in the book.
Against all the odds the damn nursing home took off and became very successful and Mother told me that Poppy owned a great deal of it nowadays. They said they would like to go and live there when they were old. And Poppy said they should go in nice and early while they still had all their energy for the marvellous things that the residents all did.
I hated going there actually.
I went of course out of solidarity from time to time but really it was looking at the old people’s crêpey skin and thinking of their table-tennis tournaments that upset me.
Sometimes Poppy would say in that idiotic way she spoke like an eleven-year-old, ‘What exactly is it that you do, Jane, which is so exciting compared to all this?’ And of course nobody can answer a question like that.
Mother and Father said there was no stopping Poppy. I don’t know why but they seemed to say it with some admiration.
Lots of the old mad people in the home felt very strongly about the bypass that was going to be built around Rossmore. Some of them welcomed it, saying it was progress when they went into town on their occasional visits. It would be easier to cross the road as the traffic would be less. Others were against it and said that their relatives would now fly by and not come to see them at all. Poppy began to organise debates on it at the home and then bring both sides into Rossmore to let them protest on different sides. Is that mad or what? And even Oliver when he called to visit me from time to time said she was a bloody marvel.
I took to keeping big juicy olives and little slices of salami in my fridge in case Oliver called. And I always dressed up anyway so he never found me looking like a slattern. Poor Poppy often looked as if she had been doing hard manual labour all day … which in a way she had on those nursing wards. Before she went to that home. And I liked Oliver coming to call, yes I did.
And of course we went to bed together. I mean, Oliver is that kind of person. I mean, there was nothing serious in it. I was his sister-in-law after all or his ex-sister-in-law to be strictly accurate. And I didn’t really see him as husband material. No, if St Ann were going to answer my prayers, I don’t think it was going to be with Poppy’s ex.
He talked rather a lot about Poppy, which was irritating. I said once that we had gone beyond Poppy as a topic of conversation but he looked puzzled. He always wanted to know if she was seeing anyone and I said, you know Poppy, seeing everyone, seeing no one. This puzzled him further and he asked did she want to know about him?
Now the truth was that if I mentioned Oliver, Poppy would raise her eyes to heaven and sigh. But I didn’t pass this on. He seemed to think we were much closer than we were, asking me little titbits about when we were girls. As if I can remember!
I decided to go over to this idiotic place, Ferns and Heathers, to see Poppy, well, really so that I would have something to tell Oliver about her. I wanted him to think we were more loving and bonding than we actually were.
The first thing I saw when I arrived was Poppy’s bottom up in the air as she dug at some hole in the ground. Beside her were assorted geriatrics including of all people that loud Grania’s red-faced father, Dan. What was he doing here? They were all laughing hysterically at something. I felt that when my shadow fell on them they stopped laughing.
‘Why it’s Elegant Jane!’ cried the awful Dan. And the others looked at me without much pleasure. Poppy came up from the hole in the ground, her hands filthy and streaks of mud on her face.
‘Oh hallo, Jane, what’s wrong?’ she asked. As if there would have to be something wrong for me to come and see my only sister.
‘Why should there be anything wrong?’ I snapped at her.
They all understood, the old folk, and Dan understood better than most.
‘Fasten your seat belts,’ he said. They laughed.
‘Light the touchpaper and retire,’ said another old man with hardly any teeth. A man who must have retired thirty years ago.
I hated them for seeing our coldness and recognising it for what it was. I hated Poppy for letting them see it.
‘Right, folks, I have to go away for a short while. Please stay well away from the hole, for God’s sake, I don’t want to be digging you all out with broken hips,’ Poppy ordered them and led me to her little house in the grounds. She washed her hands, poured me a sherry and sat down to talk to me.
‘You still have mud on your face,’ I said.
She ignored me completely. ‘Is there anything wrong with Dad?’ she asked.
‘No, of course not, why, should there be?’
‘Well, his blood pressure was up last week,’ Poppy said.
‘How on earth do you know?’ I asked.
‘I take it every week when I go round on my half-day,’ she said.
Poppy goes to Mother and Father every week on her half-day? How extraordinary!
‘So what is it then?’ Poppy asked, looking
wistfully out at the garden where she wanted to be, not in here talking to her only sister.
‘I was talking to Oliver,’ I began.
‘Oliver?’ She sounded bewildered.
‘Yes, Oliver. Your husband, the man you were married to.’
‘But I’m not married to him now, Jane,’ Poppy said as if she was talking to someone retarded. She talks to those old bats outside on much more equal terms than she talks to me.
‘No, but he was making enquiries about you,’ I said, wondering how this had got so out of control.
‘Like what kind of enquiries?’ She was totally uninterested. I so wished I hadn’t come.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Things. Like were you good at games at school, like what we did on your birthday at home.’
‘Oliver wants to know all that? Lord, he must be madder than we thought,’ Poppy said cheerfully and looked out the window again as if she were dying to get back to digging holes.
‘I don’t think he’s mad at all, I think he is very sane. I really believe that he wanted it all to work, you know, when you were married.’
‘Yes, of course he did, that’s why he brought his old girlfriend back to my bed,’ Poppy said in a matter-of-fact way.
‘Well, it was his bed too,’ I heard myself say idiotically.
‘Oh well, of course, that makes it all right then,’ Poppy said.
There was a silence between us. I tried to fill it. I wanted to show some interest in this mad place where she worked.
‘What were you digging the hole for?’
‘Mass burial ground, cheaper than funerals,’ Poppy said.
For a moment I believed her. Well, we don’t go round making these silly jokes in the library.
‘Sorry, it’s for a giant palm tree. It’s arriving this afternoon – we wanted to have its space ready for it.’
‘Then don’t let me detain you.’ I stood up huffily.
‘Don’t go – finish your sherry.’ She sat there tousled and untidy. I sipped it in silence.
Twice she looked as if she were about to confide in me and then stopped at the last moment.
