Starting with the priest, Ellen Crowley and a tearful Peggy at ten o’clock that morning, and ending with the last of the neighbours after the removal to the church, they had fed, watered and comforted well over a hundred people. Beth had been very moved by the appearance of men and women she hadn’t seen in over twenty years; but of course, James had. She was finding it difficult to remember that she was the outsider here: she kept forgetting, kept thinking of it as her home.
She hated the thought of this house being locked up, stripped bare, waiting to be sold to strangers. She had grown to love it again, as she remembered doing when she was a small child. And this time, coming home, she had, finally, felt truly welcome. She looked around the warm, slightly shabby kitchen. Someone would come in here and rip it all out; its guts would be spilled into a waiting skip. They’d probably turn it into something white and minimalist and painfully trendy, all glass and brushed stainless steel. She shivered. She wished she could keep it just as it was, for her and Laura to come back to. Alice would like the thought of them visiting more frequently, keeping in touch.
Old Mrs Collins from the house at the corner had come into the kitchen while Beth was busy making tea and raging silently against the ghosts of potential house buyers. The stooped old lady was leaning heavily on her walking-stick.
‘Elizabeth?’
Beth had turned around, startled at the unfamiliar voice.
‘I just wanted to say that you’re the image of your mother. She was very proud of you, you know.’
She’d nodded at Beth, several times. Then, without saying anything else, she’d turned around slowly and made her way back out into the hall.
‘Thank you,’ was all Beth had managed to call after her. She didn’t even know if the old woman had heard her.
‘Drink?’ asked James.
‘Make it a double.’
He handed Beth her glass and then threw more turf briquettes on the fire. The gesture reminded her of the night she’d arrived. Only five days ago, and now it was all over. The funeral tomorrow was the last marker, the final acknowledgement of this rite of passage from daughter to orphan, from child to grown-up.
‘I can’t believe she’s gone. I can still feel her everywhere.’
Beth sipped at her drink. She was comforted by the thought of the photographs at the top of the wardrobe, the letters which could be read and reread. They weren’t finished with each other, yet. She didn’t need to let Alice go, not for another while. They were still keeping in touch.
James sat in the armchair across from hers.
‘Jesus, I’m absolutely knackered.’
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. It was only then that she remembered how much more he was dealing with. The last couple of days had been so frantic that she’d forgotten all about him and Olive. Now that she and the kids had gone back home, Beth felt it was time to ask. No more beating around the bush, either – Alice’s death had taught her that. Time was no longer an unlimited luxury.
‘What about you and Olive? Have you had a chance to talk?’
He shook his head.
‘No, not really, not yet. I’m going to go over for a few hours tomorrow evening.’
He finished his drink in one gulp. He gestured towards her glass.
‘Another?’
‘Why not?’
She was beginning to wind down, to feel almost normal again. She liked the feeling in the room. It was comfortable sitting there, just herself and James, surrounded by the bright shadows of Alice.
‘I don’t know whether you have given this any thought, but I’d rather we didn’t sell the house.’
She felt a little shiver of delight. Had he read her mind? She let him continue: he didn’t look as though he would welcome being interrupted.
‘I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about the rest of my life. Alice’s death has brought everything into focus for me: including the things I’ve been leaving on the back burner. I’m not prepared to live like that any longer.’
His tone was quiet, but Beth could see the depths of his determination. She was glad for him, glad that he was finally learning to put himself first. It was time for him to shape his will around himself, and not be always moulded by others.
‘I don’t know about me and Olive – I don’t know what’s going to happen with us in the long run. In the short term, I don’t want to go back there to live. I’ve moved out, and I want to stay moved out. I’ll meet her and talk to her often, of course, and I want to stay close to my kids. But I’m not going back until I get my life sorted out. At least – ’ and he stopped, looking at Beth, ‘that’s what I’d like to do, but a lot of it depends on you.’
She wanted him to ask, wanted to be able to say ‘yes’.
‘How?’
‘I’d love to live here and do this old place up, bit by bit. I could make it very comfortable.’
‘Would there be room for me and Laura?’ she teased.
He smiled at her.
‘There’s room for anyone you want. It’ll always be half yours. Think it over.’
She shook her head.
‘I have thought it over. I’ve thought about nothing else all day. I hate the thought of strangers moving in here, particularly as I’ve only just begun to feel that it is my home. I don’t want to let it go.’
She was still curious. She wanted to ask him something, wasn’t sure how appropriate it was. She decided to ask it anyway, seeing more and more of her mother’s blunt tongue in herself.
‘Does this have anything to do with Alice’s letters? – don’t answer that if you don’t want to: I’m just wondering how astute she was.’
He grinned.
‘She was no fool. But no, it’s not directly because of anything she said. Just the realization that I have choices – and she did remind me of that. You don’t have to spend your life trying to be something that you’re not. I think the whole awful experience of her death has given me back a part of myself.’
‘Me, too,’ Beth said softly. ‘And I’m really glad that no strangers will get the chance to start ripping the heart out of this lovely old house. We’re the third generation to live here – I’d love to think of it going on for ever.’
He raised his glass.
‘Here’s to the fourth and fifth generations, then.’
She smiled over at him.
‘Let them wait their turn. Here’s to the third.’
*
Beth was looking out her bedroom window anxiously. Laura was late. She had insisted to her mother that she’d take a taxi from the airport, and now Beth was worried. She shouldn’t have listened to her; she should have gone and collected her. She glanced at her watch. Nine twenty. The funeral Mass was in forty minutes.
She and James had stayed up most of the night, only snatching sleep between six and eight. They had shared memories of bikes and swings, of ice cream and glasses of fizzy lemonade. They remembered their jobs of shelling peas and collecting summer loganberries in the welcoming shade of the walled garden. They’d shared some of the different Alices they had each known, too: the all-efficient housewife, sharp-eyed on the lookout for unfinished chores: sharper-tongued when she found them. The working mother, rushing from one job to the next, but still insisting on checking all homework, all the time. The proud parent: nothing was more important than doing well at school. And then the adoring grandmother, completely oblivious to the faults of her grandchildren. One generation had seemed to be enough for Alice to soften her expectations, to gentle the edges of her words. They had laughed a lot, too, which surprised Beth. She’d never thought of funeral days as a time for laughter. It had buoyed them both up, made them ready to face the last bit, which Beth was now dreading. She needed Laura beside her during the Mass; she wanted all of her family around her, even Olive. Today was not a day for divisions.
It was raining, naturally. The mourning car was due in fifteen minutes. Where was Laura? Beth was about to ring the airport when a taxi
swung through the gates and came to a noisy stop on the gravel. At last.
She ran to the front door, ready to welcome her daughter. She was surprised to see the outline of two figures on the porch step. She opened the door, curious, not knowing what to think.
Laura stood there, in floods of tears as soon as she saw her mother. And there, with one arm protectively around his daughter’s shoulders, was Tony.
‘I hope I didn’t need to be invited?’ he said.
*
Beth closed her bedroom door behind her. She looked out into the gleaming street below, beyond the low walls of the front garden. The rain had been relentless, all day. Somehow, she had preferred that; there would have been something very insensitive about sunshine on the day of Alice’s funeral. She closed the curtains, shutting out the glow of the streetlight that had comforted so many of the long winter nights of her childhood.
There was a strong feeling of Alice, all around her. Beth did not believe in ghosts; what she felt in this room now was not some eerie restlessness of the spirit, but rather the warm glow of reassurance and acceptance. This was where her mother had written her letters, after all, where she had groped towards something beyond the years of bitterness and mistrust. Beth sat at the same little desk now, wanting to finish the conversation that her mother’s letters had started. She remembered as a child, throwing pebbles into the pond in the back garden, watching the way the ripples had widened, growing larger and larger as they reached the edges of the little pool. She had always liked to see the process in reverse: she imagined the ripples reproducing themselves in smaller and smaller circles until they reached the stillness at the centre of the storm. She felt now that she and Alice had just negotiated the outer circles successfully. Now she wanted to come close to the centre, to complete the something which still pulled at her, nagging for her attention. She’d be leaving soon, too soon, and there were some things that just couldn’t wait. And she wanted to be on her own to attend to them.
She had sent Laura off with Gemma, relieved that the two girls’ white, pinched faces had recovered as soon as the funeral formalities were over. Both of them had begun giggling at nothing, each of them goading the other on to helpless laughter, reacting in their own way to the stress of the awful last few days. James and Tony had caught Beth’s mood quickly, and gone off together for a pint somewhere, leaving her to herself.
She got up from the desk and pulled open the wardrobe doors, taking time to look at everything the way Alice must have seen it. It was as though a sudden shift in her perception had taken place, as though she were looking out through borrowed eyes. On the top right-hand shelf, there were half a dozen photograph albums, the old-fashioned type. Beth took down one of them and glanced through it quickly. Faces, names, places that meant nothing to her, until she suddenly caught sight of a young woman that could only have been Alice. She looked at the photograph more closely. A group of young women, all neatly gloved and hatted, smiled out at her from 1945. She’d take these albums back with her if James didn’t mind. She was curious to track down Arthur Boyd, and she had a strong feeling that this was where she would find him. And she wanted to take her time doing it.
There was the famous sewing basket, on its own on the bottom shelf. Beth knelt down and opened it, the varnished cane lid creaking in the way it had always done. Neatly arrayed in all the little compartments were shirt buttons, fasteners, old-fashioned hooks and eyes, safety pins. Beth smiled to herself; Alice had always been a hoarder, not even throwing away the small safety pins that came attached to dry-cleaning labels. Underneath the first hinged tray lay bits of petersham, tailor’s chalk, a measuring tape. She would take these back with her, too. She’d never be any good with her needle, not like Alice had been, but she liked the sense of connection she got when she handled these strangely intimate bits and pieces. She put the sewing to one side. She’d pack it with her last-minute stuff in the morning.
Reaching up to the top shelf, she found the two bundles of photographs which Alice had mentioned in her letter. And there, right where she’d said it would be, was the photo of the four of them, taken by a passer-by in the Phoenix Park on that magical day in May 1957. Little girl with eyes creased against the sunshine, smiling into the camera. Holding one of her hands was the eight-year-old James. The two of them were standing between Alice and Jack, who looked oddly formal in good clothes. Jack was wearing a shirt and tie under his new jumper, and Alice had on a dress and jacket – hardly picnic wear. Beth was almost sure she remembered the dress her mother was wearing: it looked strangely familiar. Then she got it. She did remember it: it had been cut down and made into a winter coat for Beth the year she’d started primary school. Beth felt the photograph as something of a reproach. How had everyone learned, in the space of one generation, to be so utterly wasteful? She smiled in spite of herself. She was even beginning to think like Alice. She put her bundle of photographs into the sewing basket. She would look at these back home, in her own time. There was no longer any rush.
She made one last sweep of the top shelf and her hand caught at something on the final arc of its search, something pushed almost to the back, right at the wall. Alice must have stood on a chair to do this. Beth stood on tiptoe and finally managed to get her fingers around the soft corner of a cardboard box. She pulled, and the box slid willingly to the outer edge of the shelf.
It was big, and quite heavy. She toppled it into her arms and carried it over to her waiting desk. She had begun to feel acutely nervous: what other surprises might Alice have in store for her? How much self-knowledge was one wilful daughter supposed to acquire in just one week? Cautiously, she lifted the lid of the box. There, wrapped in tissue-paper as Alice had promised, was Dolph. She laughed out loud in relief, pulling back the layers of thin paper, which were marked with some strange black lines. She looked more closely: Alice had used old dress-patterns as Dolph’s blanket. Beth could hear the words clearly, in capital letters, as Alice would have spoken them. WASTE NOT, WANT NOT. But they had wasted, hadn’t they? At least thirteen years, which were only now beginning to be recovered.
There were three little jewellery boxes here too. Beth opened the midnight-blue one, first. Sellotaped to the lid was the word ‘Gemma’, and a highly polished gold locket and chain rested on the velvet covering. She put it to one side. The next box was wine-coloured, the lid not quite held in place by the unsteady hinge. Inside was a tiny solitaire, with ‘Laura’ printed in wavering capitals on a piece of card bent to fit the lid. Beth recognized it as having belonged to Margaret. It was the perfect choice for Laura, whose hands must be every bit as delicate as her great-grandmother’s. The final box was bigger and flatter than the others. It contained a wide gold bangle, with delicate engraving. There was a folded envelope too, with ‘James’ written in large letters across it. Nothing for Olive; Beth wasn’t surprised. She didn’t need to read the contents of the envelope to know that Alice had left that decision up to James. Quite an astute old cookie, her mother. It comforted Beth to know that however devastating her final illness had been, she had held on to all the sharpness of her judgement right up until the last minute. That was something to be grateful for. Such a complete drawing together of loose ends was just what she would have wanted for herself.
The final package was wrapped in brown paper. She opened it carefully, full of curiosity. Inside were three well-worn books. A Biggles compendium belonging to James – she’d have to tease him tomorrow about his politically incorrect reading matter; The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey by Patricia Lynch, which she had read and reread as a child until she knew it practically by heart, and a very old, well-worn copy of The Ugly Duckling. Where on earth had Alice found that?
Her eyes began to fill as she leafed through the familiar pages. The binding was falling apart, and something slid on to the desk’s surface as she turned the book’s final pages. Another envelope, her name written in spidery strokes across the front. Her heart began to thump painfully now. She put the book on he
r bed and ripped open the envelope’s flap. Why was it here? Why not with the other letters? For a moment, Beth had a painful sense of foreboding: what if this was just gibberish? What if Alice had written this when she was no longer herself? She held her breath as she unfolded the pages carefully, and was flooded with relief to see her mother’s careful, distinct handwriting. She began to breathe again: this was the real thing. She was shocked when she saw the date: just one day before the first stroke, the beginning of the end that had taken everything that mattered away from her.
‘Woodvale’
6th September 1999
My Dearest Elizabeth,
I’ve just come home from Sunday dinner with James and Olive. It was a lovely day – Eoin and Shea were home from New York with their girlfriends, and they’re all heading off to the West of Ireland tomorrow morning. I have to say, I was quite amazed by them. Shea has an American accent, quite a strong one, too – after only a year? Is it just me, or is that a load of old nonsense? He’s so like his mother. Anyway, they both seem to be doing very well for themselves, earning ‘a pile’, as Shea put it. Eoin is the quieter one, getting more like James every day. He said to me afterwards: ‘The Stock Exchange is a real young man’s game, Gran – the pressure’s too much. I’ll be out of it in five years’ time, at the latest.’ Their girlfriends were friendly enough, but without a great deal to say for themselves. They were all long blonde hair and painted nails. And they never stopped smoking! I thought the Americans were too health-conscious to smoke? They ate hardly anything, either, and Olive had gone to a lot of trouble. Maybe they were a bit overwhelmed, we were all there – Keith, too, who’s got the place he wanted at university, and Gemma, just back ten days ago from a summer job in London.
Sitting there, with all of them, I was struck so forcibly by how much times have changed. Of course, I knew that before today, but somehow the meal this afternoon might have been taking place in another time, another place. I felt very disconnected from everybody – as though there was no place for me in my own life any more. Olive and James seem to be able to let their children come and go so much more easily than I ever could – is it because there was always the two of them, or because they are better parents than I could ever be? I can’t understand how I could have got it so wrong. I keep remembering you and James as toddlers, small children – anything up to the age of twelve. After that, it’s like there’s a great big gap.
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