by Maeve Binchy
‘Maureen,’ she said. The girl at the cooker looked up with an agonised face. ‘I wanted to ask you …’
‘Burned to a crisp, both of them. Both of them burned to a bloody crisp.’
‘What?’ said Jo.
‘Two trays of sausages. Just put them in the oven, stop fussing, Mary says. I put them in the oven. And now look, burned black. Jesus, do you know how much sausages are a pound, and there were five pounds altogether. I told her we should have fried them. Stink the place out, frying them, she said. Well, what will this do, I ask you?’
‘Do you know the girls upstairs?’ Jo persisted.
‘No, but Phyllis said she asked them, they’re not making trouble are they? That’s all we need.’
‘No, I’m one of them, that’s not the problem.’
‘Thank God. What will I do with this?’
‘Throw it out dish and all, I’d say, you’ll never clean it.’
‘Yes, you’re right, God, what a fiasco. What a mess.’
‘Listen, do you know the girls, the other ones, Nessa and Pauline?’
‘Just to see. Why?’
‘Do you know where they are?’
‘What? Of course I don’t. If they’re here they’re in the other room, I suppose, waiting to be fed, thinking there’s some hot food. I’ll kill Mary, I’ll literally kill her, you know.’
‘Do they normally go away for the weekend?’
‘God, love, I don’t know whether they go up to the moon and back for the weekend. How would I know? There’s one of them with a head like a lighthouse and another who goes round with that dynatape thing putting names on anything that stands still … bells and doors and things. I think they’re all right. We never have many dealings with them. That’s the best way in a house of flats, I always say.’
Jo left it there. It seemed unlikely that Mary would know any more, and she decided to leave her happily with the man in the aran sweater until she was given the bad news about the sausages.
A hand caught her and suddenly she was dancing herself. The man was tall and had a nice smile.
‘Where are you from, Limerick?’
‘Not far out,’ she said laughing. Then dread seized her again. What was she doing dancing with this stranger and chatting him up like she might have done at a dance at home? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to him, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go. I’ve got something awful on my mind, I can’t stay.’
At that moment the window in the kitchen was broken by a big stone, and glass shattered every-where. There were screams from the garden and shouts.
‘I’m getting the guards, this looks like a bad fight,’ said the tall boy and like a flash he was out in the hall. Jo heard him speaking on the phone. In the kitchen people were shouting to each other to move carefully. A huge lump of glass lay precariously on top of a cupboard: it could fall any moment.
‘Is anybody hurt, stop screaming, is anybody cut?’ Jo recognised Phyllis and felt a small amount of relief flood back into her. At least they were nurses; maybe a lot of them were. They’d be able to cope better than ordinary people. People had run out the front door and an almighty row was going on in the garden. Two men with cut heads were shouting that they only threw the stone in self-defence, people had started firing things at them from the window first; one of them was bleeding over his eye. They only picked up the stone to stop the barrage coming at them.
The guards were there very quickly, four of them. Suddenly everything was different; what had looked like a party began to look like something shameful. The room that had been full of smoke and drink and music and people dancing and people talking about nothing was now a room full of broken glass and upturned chairs and people shouting trying to explain what had happened, and people trying to comfort others, or get their coats and leave. Neighbours had come to protest and to stare: it was all different.
It didn’t take long to work it out: the two men in the garden were crashers. They had tried to come in the front door and been refused admittance; they had then gone around to see if there was a back entrance. That was when the first one had been attacked with a hot weapon which had both burned and cut his face. Investigating the attack, the other one had been wounded in exactly the same way. (The weapons were, of course, Mary’s burnt sausages.) They thought that everybody in the party was firing things at them so they threw one stone before leaving.
Notebooks were being put away. Phyllis said that one of the men needed a stitch, and she would go to the hospital with him, taking Mary as well, since Mary’s arm had been cut by flying glass. The party was over. The guards said that too much noise was being made for a built-up area and, since two of the hostesses were disappearing to the hospital, there didn’t seem to be any point in guests staying on in a flat which was now full of icy winds because of the window. Some of the men helped to pick the last bit of broken glass out, and a sheet of tin was found in the boot of somebody’s car. It was a sorry end. The guards were leaving; one of them saw Jo sitting on the stairs.
‘Are you all right for a lift home?’ he asked.
Jo shook her head. ‘I don’t need one. I live upstairs.’
‘You look a bit shook, are you all right?’ She nodded wordlessly.
‘What a night, not much of a Saturday night in Dublin for a little country girl, is it?’
He was trying to cheer her up. It didn’t work.
‘Well, I’ll be off, you go off too and get some sleep, you need it by the look of you.’
She nodded again.
‘You are all right, you’re not in shock or anything? It’s all over, it was only a broken window,’ he said soothingly. There’ll be worse than that before the night’s over.’
‘Oh God,’ she said.
‘Hey, Sean,’ he called, ‘this one’s going to faint, I think, give me a hand.’
She came to as they were getting her in the door of the flat. She had had the key in her hand and it had fallen when she fell.
‘Which is her room?’ Sean said.
‘How would I know?’ said the one who was carrying her. ‘Here’s the kitchen, get her in there …’
She saw the names on the table.
‘Don’t touch those, they’re evidence,’ she said. ‘Please don’t touch them.’
They decided they’d better all have a cup of tea.
* * *
‘It’s television, that’s what it is,’ Mickey said.
‘It’s that and eating too much rich food late at night,’ said Sean.
‘But how can you be sure they’re all right?’ Jo wasn’t convinced.
‘Because we’re normal human beings,’ said Sean.
Jo flushed. ‘So am I. I’m normal too, that’s why I’m worried. I’m just concerned and worried about them. Stop making horrible jokes about my eating rich food and having nightmares. I haven’t eaten anything, I’m so worried, and that is exactly why I didn’t come to the Garda station because I knew that’s the kind of reception I’d get.’
She burst into tears and put her head down on the table.
‘Mind the evidence,’ Sean giggled.
Mickey frowned at him. ‘Leave her alone, she is worried. Listen here, those two will be back tomorrow night right as rain. Nobody abducts people like that, honestly. Nobody says please wash up all the mugs and tidy up your rooms and come on up the Dublin mountains to be abducted, now do they?’ He smiled at her encouragingly.
‘I suppose they wouldn’t.’
‘And you are kind to be concerned, and we’ll say no more about it tonight now because you’re exhausted. Go to sleep and have a lie in tomorrow. Those two rossies will be home tomorrow night and you’ll think you were mad crying your heart out over them. Do you hear me?’
‘But I’m so stupid, I’m so hopeless. I can’t cope with Dublin, I really can’t. I thought I’d have a great time when I got a flat, but it’s all so different, and so lonely, so terribly lonely, and when it isn’t lonely it’s like a nightmare …’
‘Now
stop that,’ Mickey said firmly. ‘Stop it at once. You never talk about anyone but yourself, I this, I that. You’re constantly wondering what people are thinking about you. They’re not thinking about you at all.’
‘But I …’
‘There you go again. I, I, I. You think that there’s some kind of gallery of people watching you, sitting there as if they were at the pictures, watching you leave the house each day, all your movements, saying, is she having a good time, is she being a success in Dublin? Nobody gives one damn. Why don’t you start thinking about other people?’
‘But I am thinking about other people, I’m thinking about Nessa and Pauline …’
‘Oh no, you’re not, you’re only thinking about what you did to them, whether you’re responsible for their kidnapping and disappearance, or whether they’ll think you’re silly.’
Jo looked at him.
‘So, lecture over. Go to sleep.’ He stood up. So did Sean.
‘You’re probably right,’ she said.
‘He’s always right, known for it,’ said Sean.
‘Thank you very much indeed, it is a bit lonely at first, you get self-centred.’
‘I know, I felt a bit the same last year.’
‘Sligo?’
‘Galway.’
‘Thank you very much again.’
‘Goodbye, Jo.’
‘Goodbye, Guard, thank you.’
‘Mickey,’ he said.
‘Mickey,’ she said.
‘And Sean,’ Sean said.
‘And Sean,’ Jo said.
‘And maybe some night you might come out with me,’ said Mickey.
‘Or me, indeed?’ said Sean.
‘I saw her first, didn’t I?’ said Mickey.
‘You did,’ said Jo. ‘Indeed you did.’
‘I’ll wait a bit until the two lassies are back and installed, but I’ve a night off on Monday …’
‘You’re sure they’ll come back?’
‘Maybe if I called for you about eight on Monday? How’s that?’
‘That’s grand,’ said Jo. That’s grand altogether.’
3
DECISION IN BELFIELD
She had been reading the Problem Pages for years. One or two of them always said things about having done grievous wrong in the eyes of God and now the only thing to do was to Make Restitution. Most of them said that your parents would be very understanding – you must go straight away and tell them. You will be surprised, the Problem Pages said, at how much tolerance and understanding there will be, and how much support there is to be found at home.
Not in Pat’s home. There would be no support there, no understanding. Pat’s mother wasn’t going to smile like people did in movies and say maybe it was all for the best and it would be nice to have another baby around the place, that she had missed the patter of tiny bootees. And Pat’s father wasn’t going to put his arm around her shoulder and take her for a long supportive walk on Dun Laoghaire pier. Pat knew all this very well, even though the Problem Pages told her she was wrong. But she knew it from personal experience. She knew that Mum and Dad would not be a bundle of support and two big rocks of strength. Because they hadn’t been any of that five years ago when her elder sister Cathy had been pregnant. There was no reason why their attitude should have changed as time went by.
Cathy had actually finished college when her little drama broke on the family. She had been twenty-two years old, earning her own living and in most ways living her own life. Cathy had believed the Problem Pages, she thought that Mum wouldn’t go through the roof. Cathy had thought that there were ways you could talk to Mum and Dad like ordinary people. She had been wrong. Pat remembered as if it were yesterday the weekend of the announcement. It seemed to have gone on all weekend, Cathy saying she didn’t want to marry Ian and Dad saying Ian must be brought around to the house this minute; Mum saying this was the result of trusting people to behave like adults and like responsible people; Cathy looking frightened and bewildered. She had said over and over that she thought people would be pleased.
Pat had been sixteen, and she had been shocked to the core. She had never heard words used like the words that were used that weekend. Dad had even apologised for some of the things he had called Cathy, and Mum had never stopped crying. Cathy came and sat on her bed on the Sunday evening. ‘It’s not the end of the world,’ she had said.
‘Oh, but it is,’ Pat had said, almost afraid to look at Cathy in case she saw under her waist the whole dreadful shame that was going to cause such trouble.
‘It’s just that I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life with Ian,’ Cathy said. ‘We’d be ridiculous together, we wouldn’t last a year. It’s such a terrible way to start a marriage with anyone.’
‘But don’t you love him?’ Pat had asked. The only possible reason you could do the things that Cathy must have done with Ian to get herself to this stage must have been love.
‘Oh yes, in a way, I love him, but I’ll love other people and so will he.’
Pat had not understood, she had been no help. She had said useless things like maybe it wasn’t really positive, the test, and maybe Ian might like to get married if Cathy explained it properly. Cathy had taken the whole thing very badly; she had refused to accept that Mum and Dad might have any right on their side. ‘They’re so liberal, they say they’re so liberal,’ she had scoffed. ‘They keep saying they’re in favour of getting divorce introduced and they want contraceptives, and they want censorship abolished, but they refuse to face facts. They want me to marry a man knowing it will ruin my life and ruin his life, and probably wreck the baby’s life as well. What kind of liberal view is that?’
‘I think they believe that it would be the best start for the … er … the child,’ said Pat uncertainly.
‘Great start … forcing two people who should love the child most into a marriage they’re not prepared for in a country which doesn’t see fit to set up any system to help when the marriage breaks down.’
‘But you can’t have people going into marriages knowing they can get out of them.’ Pat was very familiar with the argument from fourth-year debating clubs at school.
‘Well, you certainly can’t go into a marriage, a doubtful marriage, knowing you can’t get out of it,’ Cathy had said.
She had gone to London, five days later. Everyone else had been told that she was doing this wonderful new post-graduate course. It was a special qualification in EEC law; it was obviously the absolutely necessary qualification of the future. Mum had said that with all the changes that were going to come about from Brussels and Strasbourg and everything, Cathy was doing the right thing. Pat knew that Cathy would not come back. She knew that the family had broken up, and broken much more permanently than when Ethna had gone to be a nun. Ethna hadn’t really left at all, even though she was in Australia: Cathy was only an hour away but she had gone for ever.
Ethna had never been told why Cathy had gone to England. At Christmas the long letter with the small slanted writing had wanted to know all about the course that Cathy was doing and what her address was and what holidays she would get for the Christmas festivities. Nobody wrote and told Ethna that Cathy hadn’t come home for Christmas. Perhaps Cathy had written, but it was certainly never mentioned in the weekly letters which came and went; every week a green Irish air letter on the hall table begun by Mum, where Dad and Pat added bits; and every week, but slightly out of synch, a blue air letter from Australia with details of Sister this who had done that and Sister that who had done this. And all of the time nothing from Cathy.
At about the time that Cathy’s baby should be born Pat had asked Mum for the address. ‘I wanted to write and see if there was anything we could do.’
‘Oh, there’s nothing any of us could do,’ Mum had said bitterly. ‘If there had been anything then we would have been glad to do it, but no, we knew nothing, your sister knew everything. So she knew best and went off on her own. No, I don’t think there’s anything we cou
ld do. I don’t think it would be welcomed.’
‘But, Mum, it’s your grandchild. Your own grandchild.’ Pat had been almost seventeen and full of outrage.
‘Yes, and Ian’s mother, Mrs Kennedy, it’s her first grandchild too. But are either of us being allowed the privilege of having a grandchild, and a baby we all want, and a christening, and a fuss, and the birthright of any child? No, no, a lot of claptrap about not wanting to settle down and not wanting to be tied down. I wonder does Miss Cathy ever ask herself where she would be if I had felt that way?’ Mum had got very pink in the face about it.
‘I’m sure she’s very grateful to you, Mum.’
‘Oh I’m sure she is, very sure. Yes, she must be. Fine life she’d have had if she had been given away to an adoption society the moment she saw the light of day because I couldn’t be tied down.’
‘But you were married already, Mum, and you did have Ethna.’
‘That’s not the point,’ Mum had roared.
And suddenly Pat had realised what had been said.
‘Is Cathy giving the baby away, she can’t be giving the baby away, can she?’
‘I’m not permitted to know what she’s doing. We’re not in her confidence, your father and I, but I assume that’s what she’s doing. If she can’t be “tied down” to a perfectly reasonable nice boy like Ian Kennedy, then it’s very unlikely that she can be tied down to an illegitimate baby which she would have to rear on her own.’
Pat had gone to the firm of solicitors where Ian Kennedy worked with his father. He was a nice, redhaired boy, about the friendliest of all Cathy’s boy friends; it was a pity she hadn’t married him.
‘I came to talk to you about Cathy,’ she had said.
‘Yeah, great, how is she?’ he had asked.
‘I think she’s fine …’ Pat had been nonplussed.
‘Good, give her my love when you write, will you?’
‘I don’t have her address, and Mum is being difficult. You know, not being able to lay her hands on it …’
‘Oh, I don’t know where she is now,’ said Ian.