Diarmuid stops the car on the winding road beside the nursing home. From the outside it just looks like a rather large suburban house. I wish it was. I wish Aggie’s dog Scamp could rush towards me and plaster me with kisses as soon as she opens the door; I wish she would come to meet me with a geranium cutting in her hand and a cake just out of the oven. She is in a place where, though they take her pulse several times a day, they don’t know the heart of her.
But when I get to her room, she is sitting up cheerfully. ‘Sally!’ she exclaims. ‘Have a mint toffee. Marie just brought me some.’
I pull the boiled-cabbage-coloured chair to the side of the bed and dip my fingers into the plastic bag.
‘I’ve been thinking about DeeDee.’ Aggie’s eyes are bright, excited. ‘She says parts of us are like the back yard, and parts of us are like the Serengeti or… or Canada. It’s a very individual thing, this mixture. Everyone has their own. What she means is that parts of us are small and parts of us are big… and I suppose there must be some medium-sized stuff in there too.’
She’s talking as if DeeDee has just popped out to get a bar of chocolate. I feel like shaking her, shouting, ‘DeeDee’s dead,’ to shut her up.
‘How are the sheep?’ I ask. ‘Are they still floating?’
‘Oh, they’re not sheep, dear.’ Aggie smiles at me indulgently. ‘They’re angels. Big white angels. I saw their wings the other night.’ She chuckles. ‘Sheep, Sally? Sheep don’t float.’
I allow myself to be gently reprimanded. Angels? Poor Aggie. ‘DeeDee will love the angels,’ Aggie says. ‘I’ll bake her some marble cake and we’ll all have tea on the lawn.’
‘That’ll be nice,’ I say, in this new voice I’ve learned lately – a sort of caring, professional voice, slightly detached. ‘Would you like me to plump up those pillows for you?’
She shakes her head.
‘Diarmuid drove me here to see you,’ I tell her.
Aunt Aggie is crumpling a paper handkerchief in her hand. Her face suddenly looks sad. ‘June, it was. Hot, too – a proper summer day. DeeDee was there and everyone was happy. Laughing on the family lawn.’
‘Diarmuid and I had a takeaway meal on Bull Island last night,’ I say. ‘It was lovely – watching the sunset, laughing, getting away from it all…’
Aggie is completely lost in her memories. ‘Tilly and Bruno were there, and your great-grandma, Clarice.’
I sense an opportunity to distract her. ‘Grandma Tilly was your sister, isn’t that right?’ She always loves to explain the family tree.
‘Yes. And she married Bruno, who was your grandfather. Of course, you know that.’ She straightens a crease on her duvet. ‘I wonder if DeeDee ever married. We’ll find out when she visits. She might even bring her husband with her.’
‘What was Great-Grandma Clarice’s husband called?’
‘Jethro. He was my father.’
‘Of course.’ I knew this already, but listing the names seems to calm her.
‘He was a stern man in many ways,’ Aggie says dreamily. ‘He used to have awful arguments with DeeDee about her hats.’
I know I shouldn’t encourage Aggie to talk about her lost sister, but my curiosity gets the better of me. ‘Why?’ I draw my chair closer.
‘He said they were too big. Too extravagant and colourful. Sometimes they blew off in the wind.’ She chuckles to herself at the memory. ‘Mum used to argue with her too.’
‘About what?’
‘About being late. She was late for almost everything – sometimes it was just a few minutes, but she was never bang on time. Mum used to say she’d be late for her own funeral.’ I look down at the floor.
‘She and Tilly, your grandma, had disagreements as well. DeeDee had very strong opinions.’
‘About what?’
‘About life. She thought Tilly didn’t think enough about life and feelings and love. She said she never wanted to discuss things properly.’
I twist a paper handkerchief around my fingers. ‘Would you like me to open the window a bit? The heating is very warm, isn’t it?’
‘That day on the lawn, DeeDee was saying she wanted to be an actress. We all laughed. She did, too. She was forever saying she wanted to be this or that – an opera singer, a nurse… a nun, even.’ Aggie smoothes the duvet again. ‘That’s what we were laughing at. Not at her wanting to be an actress, but…’ She stares at me earnestly. ‘But at the way she kept changing her mind.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ I say. ‘It must have been –’
‘DeeDee always behaved as if her life might start off properly at any moment,’ Aggie interrupts. ‘As though she was only filling in time until it did. A number of nice young men wanted to marry her, but she didn’t want them. She was waiting for some grand passion. She said an ordinary marriage would trap her; she wouldn’t be able to stand it.’
The paper handkerchief is fraying in my hands. Hearing these things is dreadful and fascinating and almost unbearably sad – because Aggie thinks DeeDee may walk in here any day now, but I know she won’t.
‘She used to say that what she needed was someone she could really talk to.’
I get up. ‘Excuse me. I have to go to the toilet.’ I flee the room and walk down the lino-covered corridor; I stand by the window and stare at the yellow summer roses blowing in the breeze. I take deep breaths. I don’t have to stay here much longer. She’ll stop talking about DeeDee when I get back. I’ll get her onto the angels.
‘She was working in that fancy hat shop,’ Aggie says as soon as I return to her room, ‘and every day she’d go to the same café for lunch and meet Alistair.’
‘Alistair?’ Despite myself, I am drawn into the conversation again. Every new detail about DeeDee seems shiny and strange, and some of them are preposterously familiar.
‘Yes. He was the one who kept giving her those fancy ideas. He worked in the theatre; he was a costume designer or something. That’s why he kept coming into the shop. He was married.’
‘Oh.’
‘She didn’t love him.’ Aunt Aggie answers my unspoken question. ‘But she loved the world he suggested. More like the movies… you know, where things could change suddenly. Where you might find yourself in the south of France because some fancy film director liked your smile.’ She sighs. ‘DeeDee wanted more than ordinariness. She hated all the repetition, the way the bus to work always took the same route. Laundry. Remembering to buy things to eat.’
I find myself smiling, but then I notice there are some tears at the corners of Aggie’s eyes. ‘That’s why we shouldn’t have laughed that day,’ she says. ‘That day on the lawn… But she was so much younger than us, and she looked so pretty.’
I don’t quite get the logic of this last sentence.
‘What she can’t have known was that we were laughing because we loved her. It wasn’t like a joke… but… a celebration.’ Aunt Aggie’s face is creased with regret. ‘She left us soon afterwards.’
‘But she was laughing too, you said.’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t real laughter. It couldn’t have been, in the circumstances.’
‘What circumstances?’ I say quickly, sensing a secret.
Aggie glances at me quickly, sharply. ‘I don’t want to go into that now, dear. We don’t talk about that.’ She looks fierce and frightened.
I feel like screaming, Why don’t we talk about it? But I don’t. Maybe I can prise it out of her another time. Or maybe someone else will tell me. I recall Marie’s words in my parents’ kitchen about DeeDee breaking Aggie’s heart.
‘DeeDee didn’t feel loved, you see, even though she was. That happens to some people, Sally.’ Aggie is looking at me carefully. ‘They’re loved, but they don’t feel it. Something’s happened to the part of them that would know it.’
Suddenly I can’t stand talking about DeeDee any longer. The room is incredibly hot. I get up and open a window. I look at my watch: it’s past lunchtime, and I said I’d meet Erika and go to a film.<
br />
‘When will you find her?’ Aunt Aggie’s voice is pleading, desperate. ‘I need to see her. I need her to know I love her.’
I stare at the floor. If I’m not careful, I will cry.
‘I’m sure she knows you love her,’ I say brightly. ‘Of course she does, Aggie.’
‘No, she doesn’t. I didn’t make it clear at all. Not afterwards.’
‘After what?’ I say gently. Aggie just stares blankly at my face. ‘What if…’ I look at her guardedly. ‘What if I find her, but she’s far away and doesn’t feel up to the long journey to Dublin? I could get her address. You could send her a letter.’
‘It wouldn’t be the same,’ Aggie says flatly. ‘I need to see her. I’d go to her instead.’
I don’t tell her that this is crazy. I can’t tell her so many things now.
‘I’d very much like to find DeeDee for you, Aggie.’ It’s a neutral, friendly thing to say. It seems to be enough. I smile at her, and she smiles back.
Chapter Fifteen
Erika and I are walking along a leafy path in St Stephen’s Green; the rain has gone and it’s a nice, bright Saturday afternoon.
‘Could you please slow down a bit, Sally?’ Erika pants. ‘You’re almost running.’
‘Aggie wants to eat cake with DeeDee on a lawn,’ I say agitatedly. ‘But DeeDee’s dead, and I haven’t the heart to tell her.’
‘DeeDee’s dead?’ Erika says. ‘You never told me that.’
‘It happened yesterday. An awful lot of things happened yesterday.’ I see a bench by the pond and slump onto it exhaustedly.
‘She died yesterday?’ Erika sits down beside me.
‘Oh, no – no, I heard about it yesterday. Aunt Marie phoned to say she’d died in Rio de Janeiro fifteen years ago.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Erika says. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I shouldn’t care, really. I never even met her.’ I stare at the ducks diving in the pond. They look so cheerful and perky. ‘It’s just that Aggie is desperate to see DeeDee again. She keeps begging me to find her. I don’t think she could deal with the news that DeeDee is replenishing the soil somewhere in South America.’
‘That’s just her body,’ Erika says firmly. ‘The soul lives on. She may even be listening to us right now. She’s… she’s probably smiling at you with great love and compassion.’
‘Look, Erika, you know my feelings on that stuff,’ I say sharply. ‘When people die, that’s the end of it; that’s what I believe, anyway. But please don’t let’s talk about it now.’
Erika maintains a distinctly mutinous silence.
‘I hope I don’t start sobbing hysterically at Aggie’s funeral,’ I mutter. ‘I didn’t cry at Grandma Tilly’s or Grandpa Bruno’s, but I cried like an Oscar winner at Mary’s and at Brian’s.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you mention these people before,’ Erika says, somewhat puzzled.
‘They were distant cousins. Marie herded us all together to pay our last respects.’
‘Good old Marie.’
‘Why are you calling her good old Marie?’ I demand. ‘She’s very bossy and opinionated.’
‘Yes, but she cares about you all, doesn’t she?’ Erika says, with that awful fairness of hers. ‘In her own clumsy, weird way, she really does care.’
‘Yes, and sometimes I wish she didn’t,’ I snap. ‘Marie’s caring is very uncomfortable. It’s only June, and I’m already worrying about that stupid family gathering of hers in September. I feel it’s some sort of deadline.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I feel like the whole thing with Diarmuid has to be sorted out by August, so that I’ll know what to say to everyone.’
‘About what?’
‘About why I left him, and why I went back – or…. or didn’t. It has to sound like I thought it through.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Erika is attempting to make a daisy chain. ‘It’s not some sort of exam, is it?’
‘Yes, it is. That’s exactly what it is.’ I sigh forlornly. ‘We all sort of check up on each other while we eat Marie’s soggy lemon meringue pie. And all the younger cousins are so well adjusted.’ I am beginning to feel a mighty longing for a packet of crisps. ‘Not one of them is a lesbian or divorced… not one of them even smokes.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Erika says. She now has a daisy chain on her head. ‘I don’t believe they’re all perfect. They can’t be.’
‘DeeDee seems to have been my only weird relative,’ I say sadly. ‘I know I shouldn’t care what the others think, but I do. They were all so thrilled when I married Diarmuid. They gave us such nice presents.’
‘Let’s go to a café,’ Erika says. ‘Let’s go to a café and talk about all this over custard-filled doughnuts.’
She starts to march determinedly in the direction of Grafton Street and Bewley’s. I follow her dejectedly. ‘Chips,’ she says. ‘I need chips, too. I’m ravenous.’ When Erika gets hungry, she needs to tuck in right there and then. Her daisy chain has fallen off; I pick it up and throw it onto the grass.
‘Maybe I should start some sort of evening course,’ I say, as we pass Laura Ashley. A number of my female cousins turn up at Marie’s get-togethers in Laura Ashley dresses. They look so fresh and pretty, you expect to see morning dew on their tanned cheeks. ‘A lot of my cousins seem to be doing courses. I could talk about that instead of about Diarmuid.’
‘What kind of course?’ Erika asks, sidestepping a trombone player. The street seems to be full of people playing instruments or plaiting things into people’s hair or selling The Big Issue.
‘I don’t know – maybe something to do with psychology, or computers, or… or business management. It needs to be something impressive.’
‘You should only do a course if you want to,’ Erika says firmly. Her nose is already twitching; we’re almost at Bewley’s, and she can smell freshly ground coffee half a mile away. ‘And it should be about something you actually find interesting.’ It’s good of her to be encouraging; she has already witnessed my half-hearted attempts to learn pottery, yoga, furniture restoration and how to be a contented wife – not to mention the slightly demented time when I thought I might be a wind-surfer.
‘I slept with Diarmuid yesterday,’ I say, when we’ve got our food and found a table. The words lunge out of me.
She manages to stop stuffing chips into her mouth for a moment and looks at me sympathetically. ‘Was it… all right?’
‘Yes.’ I take a large bite of doughnut. ‘It was just fine. It’s the least I can do for him.’ Then I add quickly, ‘It’s not as if it’s a chore. I do sort of enjoy it.’
‘Only sort of?’ Erika fixes me with her soft hazel eyes. Her curly blonde hair is tumbling around her shoulders today. She usually ties it back.
I gulp my Earl Grey. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous, Erika, but those mice really affected our sex life. It’s never been quite the same since. Diarmuid is a really good lover, but… but I really began to think he cared more about them than about me.’
‘Oh, poor Sally!’ Erika must be really interested: she has forgotten about her sausage.
‘He spent hours with them in the spare room. He even had names for some of them – Snowy and Babs and Frank. Those were his favourites. He used to talk to them a lot.’
‘About what?’ Erika is clearly fascinated. She has even stopped looking around for the nearest bottle of tomato ketchup.
‘About all sorts of things,’ I say. ‘One night I heard him say, “So, Snowy, how was your day? Life’s a funny old business, isn’t it? Come here and let Uncle Diarmuid give you a nice cuddle.” He hadn’t even asked me what my day was like; he’d just said, “Hi, Sally, I’m home,” and bounded upstairs.’
‘God,’ Erika sighs.
‘Babs was the shyest. Sometimes I heard Diarmuid telling her that she was a really beautiful mouse and needed to realise it. He used to tell her she had the cutest little pink nose in the world. He ne
ver said anything like that to me.’
Erika kindly doesn’t point out that perhaps I wouldn’t have been too pleased to be told I had a cute little pink nose. ‘Men!’ she says grimly. ‘Bloody men. I don’t know why we put up with them.’ I know she isn’t including Alex in this generalisation.
‘The only proper conversation I ever had with his mother was about Diarmuid’s love of animals,’ I say. ‘She told me he’s always had a pet. Then she said she used to think Diarmuid loved animals more than people, until he met Becky.’
‘Bloody Becky!’ Erika almost snarls. ‘That mother of his sounds like a right old walrus.’
I feel like defending walruses, but I polish off my doughnut instead. As I start to fiddle with some grains of sugar on the table, I decide not to mention that Diarmuid may have lied to me about his whereabouts last night. It would mean explaining about Nathaniel, and I don’t know what I’d say.
‘At least you’re having sex,’ Erika comments. ‘I’ve almost forgotten how it’s done. Alex and I don’t even kiss properly. It’s like we’re relatives.’ She sighs dramatically and crams the last of the chips into her mouth.
‘But I thought you said…’
‘Yes, I know, I said he was going to leave his wife – or wanted to. But he’s just bought a tent. They’re all going camping next week.’
‘Well, that’s hardly a renewal of their vows, is it?’
‘I don’t think you could camp with someone you didn’t at least like,’ Erika says. ‘All that rain and discomfort, and boiling kettles over sodden wood, and… going into those shops and buying those awful fiddly special saucepans.’
This is, of course, not the time to mention that some people actually like camping. ‘They’re probably doing it for the kids,’ I say. ‘Kids love camping.’ Alex has two children, a boy and a girl. ‘Anyway, while he’s away you can get on with the cats.’
‘No one wants my cats,’ Erika says. ‘Only my friends buy them, and they all have them now.’
‘That’s not true! It’s just about finding the right market.’ I wonder if I can sneak yet another mention of Erika’s cats into my interior decoration column. I add cheerfully, ‘I need another of your cats, anyway.’
The Truth Club Page 13