All they could do was hope and pray that it soon passed out of her system. It went without saying, Fiona wrote, that it was the worst time for it to happen when the family were still mourning the loss of their father. His cheery presence was sorely missed both at home and in the pub and shop. Everything had changed entirely now that he was gone. But, it had to be endured, as nothing could bring him back. The house seemed very big and very lonely with just the two of them, and Fiona said she didn’t meant to grumble, but that she was sure that Angela and Bridget would understand that it was very hard for one person alone to try to keep both the business running and their mother’s spirits up at the same time.
She asked that both Angela and Bridget might do Novenas or light candles with their mother’s health in mind. And they might also say a prayer for Fiona herself. She did not indicate exactly what she needed their prayers for, but reading between the lines she was finding their mother and the situation at home difficult to deal with.
A heavy weight descended on Angela as she read the three pages. The message was quite clear – even though Fiona had recounted some light-hearted stories of characters who frequented the pub – that her sister was feeling the burden of being the one with the sole responsibility for their mother.
As she pondered it, she thought that in fairness Fiona hadn’t made any mention of her cancelled plans for New York. And she could imagine how difficult it was for her sister being there on her own with their mother. Of course, Fiona was the closest to her, working in the shop and still living at home, but she had after all planned to move out to America to work with her friend. At the funeral it looked as though it was just postponed until Nance was back on her feet. But so far, that hadn’t happened – and it didn’t look as though it was going to happen any time soon.
And then it suddenly occurred to her that, when their mother recovered, perhaps Fiona was hoping that she might come home to live with Mam and let her go on with her plans to emigrate. After years of being an embarrassment and almost a stranger to her mother, maybe the time had come when they had found a need for her.
Angela could picture it. There would now be a place for her behind the shop counter or the family bar. There would be a place for her now to help care for the mother who had abandoned her all those years ago. The mother who had left her with strangers – doctors and nurses and nuns – not knowing or caring how she was treated or coping with the situation. Never asking how she felt about it all. The mother who had visited her once a year and who she was brought home to the odd Christmas when she was fit to travel.
No, Angela thought. That was not going to happen.
Chapter 15
It was a beautiful warm evening – the first real good day in spring. Angela got off the bus in the centre of Lucan and went into a nearby flower shop and bought a bunch of red and yellow tulips, then she started off on the half-mile walk to her aunt’s house.
She was wearing her calliper today, as it would allow her to enjoy the walk in the sun. Walking any great distance without it, she knew, and she would pay dearly for it later.
Her aunt was waiting for her, salad and cold ham and brown bread on the table. She was delighted with the flowers, and told Angela how lovely her new hairstyle looked.
Angela carefully patted her piled-up hair with her hands. After the girls had left, she had put a few more pins in it and tidied it up, so that it looked a little more like her usual style. “You don’t think it’s too big a change? The fringe and everything?”
“It’s lovely. It really suits you. Give you a bit of a lift.”
Angela wasn’t quite sure as to why she needed ‘a bit of a lift’ but she took it as a compliment. Her aunt also surprised her by having a bottle of Blue Nun white wine on the table.
“I thought you might enjoy a glass with the salad,” Catherine said. “A little treat for us. We might as well enjoy ourselves. Somebody gave it to me as a present a few weeks ago. I wouldn’t open it just for myself, and I haven’t had anybody here to enjoy it with.”
They sat chatting over the meal and two glasses of wine, her aunt talking about the weather and what she was doing in the garden, and about her new part-time job in a local gift shop. They had, her aunt said, the most beautiful crystal ornaments and clocks and things. The sort of things you would see in upper-class houses in the posher parts of Dublin.
Angela in turn told her all about the girls doing her hair, their suggestion about her wearing trousers – which Aunt Catherine wholly agreed with.
“Sure, everyone is wearing them now, Angela, and you can get them in all styles. I saw lovely wide ones in the new summer catalogue that one of my friends has. I think they’re called bellbottoms after the sailor style of trousers. They would be great for hiding the calliper.”
“I’ll think about it,” Angela said.
“Are you still thinking of making a move from the office?” her aunt asked.
“Yes, I am,” Angela said. “Maybe later in the summer. There’s nothing wrong with the office I’m in – I just feel I could do with a change.”
And then, the talk eventually came around to her mother. She told Catherine about the letter.
“So, she’s still no better?” her aunt asked. “I’m sorry to hear it. Shingles is a terrible thing, and it can go on for ages, especially with older people. Not that I’m saying your mother’s that old, but she’s no spring chicken either. Neither of us are.”
“Well, Fiona sounded pretty worried. I think she’s finding it a bit of a struggle trying to keep everything going.”
Her aunt gave a sigh. “Didn’t we know this would happen? We knew it would be too much without your father there, but with your mother not able to work now as well...”
There was a short silence.
“Any news from Joseph?”
A shadow passed over her aunt’s face. “I spoke to him on the phone on Wednesday. I rang because I knew it was his night off from the hotel. It costs me a fortune ringing, but it’s worth it every now and again just to hear his voice.”
“And how is he doing?”
“He’s getting on great at work, he’s been on some course about wine – what to serve with what kind of meat, and that sort of thing. He said it was really interesting, and that he’s learned a lot.”
“That sounds great,” Angela said. She thought her aunt sounded more positive now – proud of what Joseph was doing – and she tried to think of something else to keep that note in the conversation. “And how about his music? Is he getting a chance to do that?”
“He’s still doing it in his spare time. There’s another fellow who he works with, a chef, and he’s great on the piano, so they’re working on songs together. They try to get the same days off.”
“That all sounds great,” Angela said. “You must be relieved he’s settled in so well. It’s a big change from Dublin.”
“Oh, I am, but it still worries me he’s so near to his father. I wouldn’t want Kenneth’s unreliable ways rubbing off on him, or to see him turning into a ladies’ man like he was.”
Angela’s eyebrows shot up. “Was he really?”
“Well, he would like to think he was one. As far as I know he never went off with anyone, but he always had an eye for the ladies. You know, chatting them up, looking at them when he thought you might not notice.”
Angela hadn’t been aware of that side of her Uncle Ken. It made her feel uncomfortable now, but she said nothing to her aunt as she had enough on her plate at the moment.
“I don’t think Joseph is like that at all,” Angela said. “He is always very respectful when he’s around girls. And he’s already had a few serious girlfriends without anything like that cropping up, hasn’t he? Didn’t you tell me that he broke off with the last one because he felt they weren’t really suited, and he didn’t think it was fair to string her along?”
Catherine nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right, Angela. He was decent about it.” She took a drink of her wine. “He actually has a
new girlfriend over in England. He’s been going out with her for the last couple of months. She’s a music teacher.”
“Well, they’ll have a lot in common.”
“That’s what he was saying on the phone. He sounds fairly keen on her.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“I’m not too sure about it...”
Angela stared at her aunt. “What do you mean?”
Tears welled up in Catherine’s eyes. “If he settles down with somebody in England then he might never come home again.” She shook her head. “If that happens, Angela, I will never, ever forgive your mother for what she’s done.”
Chapter 16
Fiona walked slowly down the wide staircase from her mother’s bedroom, thinking how different her life would have been if she had gone to New York at the start of the year. How different everyone’s lives would have been if her father hadn’t suddenly dropped dead.
It was now May, and she would now be well settled in the enormous apartment in Park Avenue, working alongside her friend Elizabeth. She would be well used to the big, busy streets, the tall buildings and the yellow cabs that her friend described in great detail in her letters. She would be wearing glamorous summer dresses and sandals every day for months on end, enjoying soda parlours and shopping in Macy’s department store, and going to Mass in St Patrick’s Cathedral. Instead of only reading about all that.
And, by now she would surely have found an American boyfriend. If Elizabeth could meet a fellow from Brooklyn at a dance, Fiona knew she could have easily done the same. She wasn’t being vain – it was a simple fact that she had always been one of the first girls asked onto the dance floor in Tullamore. It was the same with her sister Bridget. When Fiona brought her to a dance last Christmas, the boys had been falling over themselves to dance with her too. Not that Bridget had any interest in them, of course. And it would have been the same with boys and dances for Angela, if it hadn’t been for the problem with her leg.
Fiona crossed the hallway now to pick up the white and brown envelopes scattered on the Victorian tiled floor. The postman had delivered them when she was upstairs sorting her mother out. She sifted through them, noticing nothing of great interest amongst the bills and invoices apart from the weekly letter from Bridget. Her chatty news would be something, at least, to lift her mother’s spirits.
She sighed and stopped for a minute to put the mail on the mirrored hallstand while she adjusted the irritating strap of her sling-back shoes which kept slipping down on her heel. She slipped the shoe off, and then moved the strap along to a tighter hole which she hoped would make it more secure, then manoeuvred it back on again. She tutted: it was now too tight. Hopefully it would stretch a little as the day wore on.
She glanced at the mirror to check her lipstick, eye make-up and hair before she walked to the pub and shop where she now worked every day since her father died.
As Fiona stared at her reflection now, and adjusted a strand of her wavy brown hair, she wondered if the effort she put into her appearance for work was worth it. Her mother always advised her that single women should look their best at all times, especially a young woman in Fiona’s position where she was in the public eye all day in the shop and bar. Who knew who might call into the shop? So she always wore a nice dress or a blouse and skirt with her pearls. Recently, she had started to wear slacks more often, and was wearing a tan pair today with a cream twinset. Not only were the slacks more modern, but she found them practical when she used the stepladder to reach items on the higher shelves.
It was unlikely anyone other than locals would call into the shop or bar at lunchtime, but they had two commercial travellers booked into the rooms upstairs later in the afternoon whose names she had not come across before. Most of the businessmen stayed in Bolger’s Hotel, as they got special rates and the hotel kept a special section of the dining-room especially for them, where they could all catch up on the latest news about businesses in the towns they visited. If the hotel was especially busy, then they sent the men to Hayes Hotel or the pubs with rooms like Traceys’. Most of the travellers tended to be older men who had been company representatives for years, moving around the country but, as her mother pointed out, “They might have a son or younger brother who they could introduce to you.”
“I’m not that desperate,” Fiona continually told her, but it fell on deaf ears.
When she had brought her mother’s breakfast of boiled egg and brown bread up to her room just this morning, Nance had mentioned the fact that the more refined men preferred to see women in skirts as opposed to trousers.
“The way you’re talking you’d think we were the family out of Pride and Prejudice, and that the whole family would become homeless or bankrupt if I don’t find an eligible man with money to prop us all up.” It was rare she was impatient, but her mother was becoming obsessed with finding a suitable match for her. Her mother had always felt that marriage was the safe haven for women, and was especially fearful on her eldest daughter’s behalf now that the only male in the family had been taken from them.
“Oh, Fiona, I only want what’s best for you!” Her mother was hurt now. “Don’t forget I’m the one now with all the family responsibility since your father died. I never thought about these things before. He was the kind of man who sorted everything, paid for everything. I just want to know if anything happened to me that you’ll all be looked after. I don’t want to think of any of you being lonely in your old age. That’s the saddest thing that can happen to anyone.”
Fiona knew her mother was referring to herself now. “We’ll all be grand,” she said briskly, “and if I meet the right man, he won’t care whether I’m wearing a skirt or slacks. And if I don’t meet anyone, I’ll do just fine. I have plenty in my life with the shop and my friends, and now that I have the car I can go to Dublin or Galway when I have the time.”
Her mother had sighed and lifted her teacup and Fiona knew that she should not have mentioned Dublin.
“I hope Angela is okay,” said her mother. “I worry about her up there. I wish she would come back home.”
“She seems to be doing fine. We’d know if she wasn’t.”
“I don’t know what the big attraction up in Dublin is.”
Fiona shrugged. “You know she likes Dublin. She’s used to it after going up and down to it all these years. She’s more used to it than Tullamore.”
“She’s still going back and forward to your Aunt Catherine. She sees a lot more of her than she does of us.”
“She has friends there as well,” Fiona said. She shrugged. “Angela goes her own way. She always has.”
There was a small silence. “Do you think she might ever meet a nice fellow? Do you think anyone would take her?”
“Of course,” Fiona said. “She’s only twenty and very attractive. She’s already got her typing qualifications and she’s great with her hands. I know she doesn’t tell us much, but I know she’s already been out on dates.”
“She never tells me anything...I wonder what kind of a fellow she’s been out with?”
“You’d never know with Angela,” Fiona said. “But one thing I do know – for all you’re worrying about her, Angela will always be grand – with or without a man.”
“Well, she always looks lovely, in spite of things. She makes the best of herself.”
Fiona went over now and kissed her mother on the forehead. “You should stop worrying about things and concentrate on getting better.”
“I can’t help it – I worry about you all.”
“The doctor said that worrying only makes shingles worse – and you’ve had a very bad case of it. You were lucky the rash didn’t meet in the middle – they say that’s a very bad sign. It was nearly as bad as it could have been.”
“I know, I know...” Her mother was on the verge of tears now. Lately, she was always on the verge of tears. “But I can’t help worrying. What if anything happened to me now, what would you all do? I’m so exhausted a
ll the time I can hardly get out of bed.”
“I know it’s awful and it’s taken a lot out of you, but shingles won’t kill you. The doctor said that. He said it’s only dangerous for very old people or somebody who has been ill. It might take a while before you feel well again, but he said you will eventually get back to your old self. You’ve got to rest until your system is back to normal.”
“I’d just feel happier if you and Angela had someone to look after you. Especially Angela...”
Fiona patted her mother’s hand. “Stop worrying. We’ll be grand.”
“At least I don’t have to worry about Bridget getting married. She’ll be well looked after where she is in the convent. God will look after her.”
“Hopefully,” Fiona replied, smiling now. “Hopefully God will look after us all.”
As she went into the big old kitchen now and saw the note on the table asking her to order the meat for the coming week for the house, and a list of cleaning things their housekeeper needed, Fiona wondered how she had suddenly come to be responsible for everything. Responsible for the running of the family business. Responsible for the family home and responsible for her two younger sisters.
She had not expected things to get straight back to normal after her father’s death. She knew her mother would need time to grieve and to adjust – but she hadn’t reckoned on her mother completely falling apart.
New York, along with Paul Moore, was now in the dim and distant past.
Chapter 17
On Saturday morning, after the usual morning washing ritual, Bridget and the other girls in the dormitory got dressed in their outdoor gardening clothes and aprons.
They went silently down to Mass then afterwards over to the refectory to have breakfast.
Even though they weren’t allowed to talk, Bridget could always detect a more relaxed atmosphere on a Saturday as they had no formal schooling. As they ate their eggs and sausages and buttered brown bread, one of the older girls read aloud to them from a book about the life of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.
A Letter From America Page 11