by Maeve Binchy
Aisling certainly seemed to know how to manage Tony, though. She had said to him quite firmly that his wedding suit was too tight.
‘It’s all right when I hold myself like this,’ Tony had said defiantly.
‘But you won’t, you’ll fall over, you’re holding your breath,’ she said.
‘I’m not going on any diet, I’m not giving up drinking pints just to fit into a wedding jacket better,’ he said, scowling at the thought.
Aisling laughed. ‘Did anyone suggest you should? What a stupid idea, just to look well on the day. No, I don’t think you should dream of losing a stone to fit into it, no, get him to let it out and you can be grand and comfortable.’
Tony gave up drinking pints for a month. Anyone could stay off the beer for a month, a few scoops of gin and soda to keep body and soul together. He lost the stone in three and a half weeks. Mrs Murray marvelled at it. She felt sure that this is what Aisling had intended when she was dismissing the very idea of it. She was a proper little madam that one.
Two weeks before the day Aisling and Tony walked out to see how the new bungalow was getting on. Aisling said she wanted to time the length it took her to walk from home. At a leisurely pace it was ten minutes.
‘That’s grand,’ she laughed. ‘If you hit me a belt over something I can be back in town and have a posse rounded up in no time.’
Tony looked hurt. ‘That’s a stupid thing to say, I’d never hit you … you’re like a flower,’ he said.
Aisling was touched. ‘It’s only my sense of humour. You’re right, it was a stupid thing to say. That’s nice of you to say I’m like a flower. Will we grow lots of flowers? I like delphiniums and lupins … we never had any room for them back in the yard in the square.’
‘You can grow whatever you like,’ Tony said expansively.
Aisling felt that Mam was right, Maureen had a lot of things to put up with. Imagine having to hide flowers from those pig-ignorant Dalys. She put her arm in Tony’s as they walked through the unfinished house. Tony had been annoyed because the plumbers hadn’t completed last week. Aisling wished that there weren’t so many windows and opportunities for her mother-in-law to cluck over them and interrogate her about curtains not even ordered, discussed or thought about.
Suddenly he turned to her as they poked disconsolately into the half-finished kitchen cupboards filled with wood shavings.
‘It’ll be grand you know.’
‘Oh, I know, sure there’s ages of time, I mean we’ll be four weeks in Rome … that’s six weeks altogether,’ she said, trying to be cheerful.
‘No, I don’t mean the house, the whole thing, you know, being married?’ He looked eager. And pleading.
Aisling felt very old. ‘Of course it will be grand. How could it not be, aren’t we the best-matched pair in the whole town?’
‘I love you, Aisling,’ Tony said, without any attempt to touch her.
‘Then I’m really very, very lucky,’ Aisling said. I am, I really am, she told herself.
Johnny was annoyed that he hadn’t been invited to the wedding, but Elizabeth was cool and firm. It was tempting, very tempting to take him with her. The handsome Johnny Stone would steal the show, he would be proof that little shy Elizabeth White had done well out in the big world. He would be so charming too … even Aunt Eileen would fall for him. She could imagine him sitting on a high stool with Uncle Sean asking about the business and really wanting to know. In a flight of fancy she even saw him in the convent parlour. That he would be a success was never in doubt … but she felt it would be wrong. And, anyway, even more important, it was Aisling’s day, not hers. Johnny would be a distraction, he would take from the bride and groom.
But she didn’t tell him that.
Aisling was jumping up and down outside the glass partition. Elizabeth had to wait until her suitcases came off the plane and it seemed like a very long wait. Aisling kept making mouthing sounds and sign language and pointing her finger in the direction of the door and making a face. Elizabeth resigned herself to understanding nothing. She thought Aisling looked magnificent in her navy blazer and a green kilt. She even flashed her large engagement ring through the glass partition and mimed that the diamonds were too heavy for her hand to support. The prospect of marrying the Squire in a week’s time certainly hadn’t tamed her, Elizabeth noted with relief.
Eventually the cases arrived and she was out, she was hugging Aisling like a schoolgirl after a hockey match. Within minutes they were away.
*
They had timed it well. Eileen had just come in and was having her customary cup of tea in the kitchen … the tea that divided the working day in the shop from the working day at home. Between mouthfuls she was instructing young Siobhan, the new maid who had replaced Peggy, on how to set out the salad.
‘Don’t throw it all together in the dish, Siobhan, lay the lettuce leaves out in lines and a bit of ham on top of each one, and then a bit of tomato on each one. No, give it here to me, I’ll do it. Niamh, move your school books, they’ve no business here, they’ll get covered with food. Move them do you hear, up to your room. Is Donal back in yet?’
At that, the door opened and Elizabeth entered. Aisling was behind her, laughing and holding a suitcase in each hand.
Eileen put down the cup and stood up. This tall, slim woman, this girl with the beautiful scarf draped around her shoulders, with the elegant gold pin and safety chain pinned on her lovely cream-coloured dress … Eileen could hardly believe it was the child with the cut knees, gawky on her bicycle, nervous and anxious to please, flushing and stammering … this was a different person altogether.
She stood at the door looking across the big kitchen and then she ran, she ran like a child and threw her arms round Eileen and squeezed her so tightly her breath nearly stopped. She smelt of expensive soap or talcum powder, but she shook and trembled as much as she had ever done when she lived in the house.
‘You’re just the same, you’re just the same,’ were the only words that Eileen could hear as she clung to the thin girl who gripped her so tightly. Eventually she pulled away and there were tears pouring down the pale face; she took out a handkerchief with lace on it and blew her nose hard. ‘This is terrible. Here am I trying to make a good impression on you and I nearly suffocate both of us and then I start to weep all over my careful make-up. Can I go out and come in all over again?’
‘Oh Elizabeth … thank God you came back to us … thank God you didn’t change.’ Eileen held her hands almost as if they were about to dance a reel together. They smiled at each other foolishly.
‘Mam, you never make that kind of fuss over me,’ Aisling complained in a mock-hurt tone, but laughing in order to lighten the intensity.
‘Nor me …’ Niamh said in genuine envy, tongue-tied by the apparition in the cream dress and the scarf. She was as open-mouthed with amazement at Mam’s welcome as was Siobhan who stood with the lettuce and cooked ham in her hands gaping at the mistress with astonishment.
‘The uniform looks much better on you than it did on us,’ Elizabeth said hastily, feeling that Niamh needed some attention. ‘Has it changed or something?’
Niamh looked pleased. ‘No, but we’re allowed to wear our own blouses now so long as they’re not loud, as Sister Margaret would say. …’
‘She never says it still?’
‘She never says anything else.’
Elizabeth sat down on a kitchen chair and stretched her arms. ‘Oh, if only you knew … if you had any idea how marvellous it is to be back. …’
The homecoming was even better than she had expected, even in her best dreams. The bedroom was the same, the two beds with their white candlewick bedspreads, one on each side of the white chest of drawers. The same statue stood on the mantelpiece, a bit more chipped around Our Lady’s cloak, but the same one, certainly. The Sacred Heart Lamp burned still at the little oratory on the landing, the rooms were a bit smaller and the stairs a little narrower but the place hadn’t shrunk. Pe
rhaps because it was such a genuinely large house by anyone’s standards, she thought. And shabby. Had the carpet always been so torn, and escaping from the stair rods? Did the wallpaper peel and have big brown damp stains long ago or had all this happened recently? And did any of it matter? The place just welcomed her from every corner, it seemed.
Aunt Eileen and Niamh walked beside Aisling as the house was toured and even Siobhan followed at a distance, dazzled by this girl with the English accent who seemed to be so much part of the house.
And Donal ran up the stairs two at a time to see her. He was tall and thin and so white it was as if someone had rubbed chalk on his face. He had thin and almost blue lips and when he smiled and laughed his face looked like a thin skull. Elizabeth bit back the tears pricking her eyes. She had hoped he would look like his brother Sean but he didn’t resemble him in any way.
‘Do you think I grew up well, Elizabeth White?’ he asked self-mockingly.
‘You’re terrific, Donal, you always were,’ she said.
‘Do I look gaunt, though, and bony?’ His voice was light but she could hear the pain and worry.
She touched his forehead and melodramatically lifted a lock of hair that was falling in his eyes.
‘La, sir, fie, Donal O’Connor you do seek for compliments, but if you must have them then you must. You look like a poet, you look like an artist. You look a bit like that picture of Rupert Brooke or maybe even Byron. Now, will that do you? Or must I flatter you more?’
He smiled a great smile and she knew she had said the right thing before Aunt Eileen squeezed her affectionately.
Uncle Sean came in as they were investigating the new kittens which had been discovered that morning in the bathroom.
‘This is Monica’s daughter, Melanie, and these are her first kittens.’ Niamh was full of pride.
‘Oh, a Gone With the Wind period, I imagine,’ Aisling laughed.
‘I wish I’d had a sister,’ Elizabeth said suddenly.
‘Hadn’t you me, wasn’t I better than a sister?’ Aisling demanded.
‘Yes, but you weren’t there all the time.’
‘I was there when you needed me.’
‘Indeed, I’ll never forget it.’ Their eyes met.
‘Where is she, where is she?’ Uncle Sean had got older, much older than Aunt Eileen. He seemed to be full of extra hair, sandy hair in his nose and his ears and on the back of his hands; she hadn’t remembered that. Or was it because Father had such smooth, hair-free, almost polished skin?
Uncle Sean was almost embarrassed by the elegance of her until she hugged him hard.
‘Faith, and I couldn’t keep you in pocket money these days by the look of you. Isn’t she a picture, Eileen, isn’t she like a fashion plate?’
‘Oh no, Uncle Sean, don’t say that, you don’t like fashion plates!’
‘I love them, I just don’t know enough of them. Eileen, give over this notion of having tea here, I think I’ll take Miss White down to Maher’s for a few quick ones and then maybe dinner in the hotel. Wouldn’t that set the town talking? Sure they wouldn’t know who this posh young one is and they’d think I was a great old spark. What do you think of that?’
Elizabeth played along. ‘Nonsense, they’ll remember me well, and they’ll say there’s that Elizabeth White who spent years and years taking from the O’Connors and now she’s doing it again.’
Eileen said seriously, ‘Don’t ever even say that as a joke, Elizabeth child, you were as much a part of this family as any of them. The pity was that we couldn’t have had you longer … but you’d not have turned out as well. I used to miss you as much as I missed my Sean.’
That was new too. When Elizabeth had left Kilgarret Sean’s name was not spoken aloud in the house.
XIII
ELIZABETH SAT BETWEEN Aunt Eileen and Maureen in the front left-hand seat of the church. Eamonn and Donal were at the church door guiding the guests to their seats. Niamh, as bridesmaid, was at home still with Aisling and Uncle Sean; about now they would be getting into the car which was already waiting in the square. Uncle Sean was pacing the sitting room like an animal in a cage and his hair looked odd since he had had too violent a haircut the day before. Nobody had commented on it, but Aisling had whispered to Elizabeth that he managed to make himself look like a convict, which would undoubtedly add to Mrs Murray’s pleasure when she saw the wedding pictures.
Elizabeth looked across at Tony as he knelt with his head in his hands, more from a hope of escape than from piety. He had what love-story writers would call a florid charm, Elizabeth thought; he had a high complexion and there always seemed to be sweat on his forehead. He was a big stocky man, and looked older than he was. If Elizabeth had been asked to guess she would have said closer to forty than to thirty. He had seemed uneasy on the three occasions they had met, but she excused him; so was she uneasy. She was very conscious of saying the right thing, the thing that would make her seem like a friend, an ally, rather than a rival. She found herself talking about the weather, and the journey over from England and the journey down from Dublin.
Then, Tony must be nervous, it was a big day for him too. No wonder he had sweat on his brow, no wonder his mind hadn’t been on their conversations. No wonder he half-sat, half-knelt, with his hands over his face, while his friend, Shay Ferguson, the best man, roamed the church with his eyes and winked twice at Elizabeth when he caught her eye. Shay was even older than Tony Murray and much fatter. He was a confirmed bachelor, and Elizabeth remembered that he had been one as far back as her own time in Kilgarret. Shay and his brothers sold agricultural machinery and they had often been in Uncle Sean’s shop. She had always thought of him as being Uncle Sean’s age; it was a shock to think of him as a friend of Tony’s. Odd and uneasy-making. It was as if Aisling were being handed over to older, coarser men in some way. Elizabeth gave a little shiver and pulled herself together.
She whispered to Aunt Eileen.
‘Can I say something or are you praying?’
‘I’m only pretending to pray. Go on.’
‘Are you happy or are you sad? Your face is hard to work out.’
Aunt Eileen smiled. ‘I’m happy really. It took Aisling so long to make up her mind, you know that too. She didn’t rush into it. He’s a good man. I think he’ll be able to look after her. No, I’m not sad. I’m mainly happy. There’s your answer.’
Aunt Eileen smiled during her conspiratorial whisper. She looked very attractive, Elizabeth thought. Much, much nicer than Mrs Murray. Aunt Eileen had a lovely pink and grey coat and dress that matched. It had been bought in Switzer’s in Dublin five weeks ago and tried on a dozen times while shoes and handbag and hat were matched to it. The great thing about Kilgarret was that you could always take home things like shoes and handbags and try them out in comfort and then decide what you wanted to buy. Aunt Eileen had a little rouge on too. Aisling and Elizabeth had tried to get her to wear more, but she said she looked like a Dutch doll. Her hat was a smart grey one and the battle to make her wear a pink rose in it had been lost.
‘I’m a woman in her fifties. I’ll not wear decorations like a Christmas tree,’ she had insisted.
Maureen looked tense and unhappy. In the daylight and in the church she thought her shot taffeta dress looked cheap and flashy. Certainly her mother-in-law had managed to plant the idea in her mind this morning. Mrs Daly had looked at the changing colours that had pleased Maureen so much and sniffed. Wouldn’t a nice two-piece have been more suitable? She would have thought that a wedding needed something a little formal. And those little shoes, they looked like slippers. Was Maureen really going to wear them? Oh well. Maureen looked with envy at Elizabeth’s outfit. A lemon-coloured skirt and jacket with a coffee lace blouse underneath. It looked so right for a wedding. And on her hat she had coffee and lemon ribbons. Now why hadn’t Maureen thought of something like that? Maureen pulled at the wide taffeta skirt and got no more pleasure from watching the colours change when the light changed. She
had thought this was its best feature when she had tried it on and had spent ages admiring it secretly in the bedroom. Now she hated it. Even her hair was wrong. It looked flat and drab though she had washed it and pinned it up last night. Why hadn’t she insisted to Brendan that she wanted to join the party back at home when Mrs Collins and the little shampooing girl had come up to do Mam’s hair and Aisling’s and Niamh’s and even Elizabeth’s? Brendan had said it was mad to waste money and time; why hadn’t she been firm?
Mrs Murray smiled over a few times. She looked harsh and sharp, Elizabeth thought; but perhaps that was only because she had heard so many tales about her during the week she half expected the woman to look like the devil incarnate. Her navy outfit seemed to be all points and edges. Sharp revers on the jacket, sharp edges on the handbag, pointed toes on the shoes, peaky brim on the hat. Beside her stood Joannie, who had only come home the night before. Joannie hadn’t changed much in nine years, Elizabeth thought. Still stocky, and legs planted wide apart when she stood. She had freckles and a handsome sort of face, like Tony but better-looking. She wore a white dress and coat … which Elizabeth had always heard was bad taste. Somewhere in her store of knowledge she had the information that you never wore white to a wedding, in case you might upstage the bride.