“Dissatisfied with your lot?”
“There’s usually some niggle. For a while it was the building work in the house. Now it’s normally the kitchen. I go out thinking, Why haven’t I got a kitchen, vent some of my frustration with the current situation — the cooker with only one ring working, an erratic oven, the useless fridge that lets everything go off. So then I have to find the upside. I imagine it in production, almost ready to go and then on the point of being delivered, et cetera, and that calms me down. When the kitchen’s in I’ll pound on about something else. The garden probably.”
“Hmm.” His voice has changed. He’s lost interest in what she’s saying. “Sit over by the fire and dry out properly. I have some paperwork so you’ll have to excuse me.” The words are clipped, his mood different.
“I’ll wash up and clear away,” she volunteers, trying to recapture the bonhomie that has suddenly evaporated.
“Don’t touch anything! That’s an order.”
She glances out the window but there’s no change in the weather. “I could make my own way home if it started to clear.”
He shakes his head. “It’d be a mud bath. The rain hasn’t finished with us yet, not by a long chalk. Don’t fret. I’ll drop you home later. I’m not taking a chance on you walking home alone in the dark. I’d be up for reckless endangerment if you came to grief and ended up in a ditch.”
She pokes the fire, throws on a log, and sprawls out on the sofa. Her head feels heavy and her limbs ache. She extends her fingers like a cat flexing and unflexing its claws in the heat.
When he returns an hour later, she’s fast asleep, her body folded like a concertina, knees to chin, arms hugging knees, the skirt falling away from her pale thighs. He shakes her awake. She opens her eyes, starts when she realizes he’s watching her, and sits up abruptly. There’s a sleepy jerkiness to all her movements.
She shifts uneasily under his scrutiny. “Get all your work done?”
He nods. “Your clothes are dry. I checked.”
“Thanks,” she says, and scuttles off.
In the bathroom it hits her. What an idiot she is! He took offense at her remarks about the kitchen, thought she was having a go at him. How could she have been so dense? She pulls on her jeans, zips them up, and does a sprinting dance of rage on the cold tiles.
When she rejoins him, she says, “That’s better. I feel human again.” He looks at her and looks away, says nothing. He’s staring out one of the windows. She stands beside him. “You shouldn’t take what I said about the kitchen as criticism. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
And he turns toward her and smiles. “That’s okay. It’s just that the order book is full. Everybody’s lining up with demands, and they all want their kitchen right bang now, immediately, before Christmas.”
Suddenly he moves to stand behind her. She imagines him being close, his breath on her neck, and tilts her head sideways but he’s out of view. She doesn’t like this inexactness, the anxiety of being unable to place him, and whirls about. He’s not as close as she imagined, although closer than she’s used to. She refuses to meet his gaze. “The weather’s picking up,” she says brightly. Her voice is shot, comes out hoarse.
He ignores that and draws nearer, a step or two at most, but she loses her nerve, backs away and looks down. The room seems to be breathing heavily. How will she react if he touches her? She prays for a witty putdown to come her way. There’s nothing but silence. No movement. Nothing. When she looks up again, he’s at a distance.
“Must put on my boots,” she says. Awkwardly, she pulls them on and laces them up. The leather is still damp.
“Ram some rolled up newspaper inside those boots when you get home and they’ll dry out. I think we’ll chance driving you home now,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Okay. Let’s away.” His voice is brisk. “Want a quick look at the workshop?” he asks unexpectedly.
“Sure. Might as well, I suppose.”
He strides ahead, unlocks a sliding door and pushes it across. It shuttles open with a magnificent mechanical crash. When she reaches the outsized shed, he’s turning on lights, flicking switches and opening shutters. She sees lathes and planes and sawdust on the floor. “We’re under pressure with orders, but I’m making a start on yours.”
“I wasn’t complaining.”
“Really? I thought you were going on long walks to quell your impatience with its progress.”
“I told you not to take what I said too literally.”
He laughs. “Got you going there, didn’t I? Were you worried?”
She clenches her fists. “It’s so hard to know with you. How can I tell when you’re teasing? I could… I could… oooh,” she says.
“Could you now?” He grins and whips away tools and cloths covering the beginnings of a kitchen. “Here it is. It exists outside your imagination.”
“What do you call that? The carcass?” She examines it. “It’s hard to tell what it’ll be like in the end.”
“The basic structure has to travel and be installed.”
Suddenly there’s darkness. The world goes still. She can’t see a thing. She gasps.
“The power’s out,” he says.
“Christ!” She’s afraid she’ll knock over something or knock against something. She stands rigidly still for what seems an eon in time. A hand touches her arm. She gives a loud cough. The hand retreats. Suddenly the workshop is flooded with light and she’s blinded.
He packs things back the way they were. There’s a disoriented feel to her body, as if she’s been spun too tight and suddenly unraveled. She follows him in a dazed fashion. “Better lock this place up in case the electricity goes again,” he says. “There’s no light left in the day.” In the jeep he says, “I’m aiming to have your kitchen ready by the end of this month. Worst-case scenario sees it spill over into early December. You’ll be well used to the oven when it’s time to cook Christmas dinner.”
“That’s great, but my mother wants me to spend Christmas with her in Dublin.”
The skies open as they reach the main road. He’s withdrawn and uncommunicative. The scarred side of his face is toward her but the scar is lost in shadows. He glances at her, but it’s as if he doesn’t see her. She has the impression that he’s anxious to have her gone. She imagines that she has flunked some test and leans her pulsing head and aching neck against the cool of the window beside her.
The next thing she knows is that they’re in her driveway and he’s shaking her awake. “Don’t tell me I fell asleep again,” she groans.
“Don’t worry. You only drooled a little.” It isn’t easy to make out his expression in the gloom. She throws him a horrified look. “No, you didn’t. Honestly,” he says indulgently, leans across her and opens the passenger door.
She meets his speculative look with a tentative grin. “I don’t drool, but thanks anyway,” she says, jumps down a little too quickly, lands hard on the gravel, and swings the door shut. She regains her equilibrium as the jeep reverses out of the yard and speeds off.
The following week an Eddie Devine, deputy principal of the mixed secondary school in Killdingle, leaves a message on Ellen’s answering machine: This is for Ellen Hughes. Ellen, I’m ringing in connection with the CV you left in. There’s been an unexpected development here. One of our teachers, Moira O’Dwyer, is on certified sick leave and she’s unlikely to be back before her maternity leave starts. I have somebody short-term to cover her classes, but we need someone full-time. If you think you might be interested, would you give me a ring? He leaves his work and mobile numbers.
Ellen replays the message a few times while sitting at the kitchen table, her legs on a chair. She has never met this Eddie Devine. He sounds fussy, earnest, and dull, someone she imagines that she would go to great lengths to avoid, an unlikely harbinger of good news. But that’s what he is. A job, an occupation, is exactly what she needs, even if she’s a little work-shy after months of idleness.
She opens a bottle of red wine and pours herself a glass. The phone rings but she allows the answering machine to field the call. There’s a sound like an exasperated sigh and then a click. Later, as she watches television in the dark, the phone springs into action again but the person hangs up.
Before she goes to bed, she rings Eddie what’s-his-name’s mobile and gets his messaging service. “Hi, Eddie. This is Ellen Hughes returning your call. I’d be interested in that job, but I have to be in Dublin this weekend. I’ll ring you Monday when I get back. Okay?” There, it’s done. Her extended sojourn may be coming to an end. She’s willing to sell her soul. If she’s offered the job, it will mean that she’ll be working in the lead up to the Christmas holidays.
The next morning she swallows a glass of tap water, locks up the house, walks to the car, slings her weekend bag into the boot, and drives off in the direction of the main road.
Six
WHERE TO, LADIES?” the taxi driver asks in heavily accented English as he starts the meter. He speaks with what Ellen takes to be a French accent.
“City center. Drop us off at Stephen’s Green,” answers Maureen. Ellen is relieved to see that Maureen’s hair has reverted to its former brown. With the exception of Maureen, she hasn’t met up with former colleagues since the end-of-year staff lunch the previous June. “Remember the early days, when we all used to adjourn to Whelan’s after work on a Friday? We haven’t done that in years. It’s the mad lives we lead,” Maureen says.
“It’s marriage, Maureen. You’ve had pregnancies, kids, and held down a full-time job. It’s all a drain.”
“Plus I’m married to the greatest slob of all time. On the other hand, you had Christy.”
“We didn’t have kids. I was free to come and go as I pleased.”
“Ah, but you were miserable. You can smell unhappiness. It’s like body odor.” Maureen likes to scratch the scab of what remains of Ellen’s feelings about her marriage to see if the wound is healing or festering.
Ellen turns her face to the street. “That’s in the past, Maureen, done and dusted. All’s well with the world. Let’s just have a good time.”
“Yeah, we’re going to party tonight,” Maureen says with the determination of a prisoner on day release.
Ellen laughs. “You don’t get out much, do you?”
“Neither do you, Missy Ellen, don’t forget. All I’ve been hearing is whine, whine about how there’s nowhere to go at night in that godforsaken village. You have to come home for a dose of night-life.”
The word “home” reverberates in Ellen’s head. “Oh, shut up, Maureen! Amn’t I entitled to a moan now and again?”
Their driver is uncharacteristically quiet, perhaps because of limited English. Directions, queries, and static buzz through on his radio. Maureen hums a popular tune, her head at an angle, a finger pressed against her right ear, as if she’s listening to herself in a recording studio. Maureen doesn’t know that she sings off-key.
There’s such a contrast between the gloom of the village at night and the illuminations of the city, thinks Ellen. The taxi chugs along Terenure Road North, past the rundown cinema, the church, and stretch of shops. It picks up speed in the bus lane, whizzes past the triangular park, through the lights at the junction to Harold’s Cross Road, and over the hump of Grand Canal Bridge. As it trundles down Upper Clanbrassil Street toward Lower Clanbrassil Street, it passes the pawnbroker’s shop with its three dented golden orbs. Traffic slows in New Street. Ellen views shops, a public-housing development, and apartment blocks, built on what used to be a warren of narrow streets and little houses before they were bulldozed to accommodate a dual carriageway.
Patrick Street presents itself to view, a run of recently built apartments squaring up against what can be seen of the floodlit spire of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The cathedral and street drop out of sight when the taxi changes lane to join the queue of cars trying to turn into Kevin Street. “I always mean to visit St. Patrick’s,” Ellen says. “I’ve never been inside.”
“It’s full of British military flags and all sorts of stuff about the dead of the Great War, with lots of plaques to deans, rectors, and fallen soldiers. Very weird really, kind of alien. Reading all these English names, it feels as if you’re in another country.”
“I wouldn’t mind a look. How come you were in it? It’s not the sort of place I associate with you.”
“Paddy and I were really skint a few years ago. My parents took the kids off our hands for a week, so we pretended we were on our holidays in Dublin.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Everywhere, whatever you can manage in a week: Dublin Castle, the National Gallery, the National Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Hugh Lane Gallery, the Dublin Writers’ Museum, the place with the mummified bodies — St. Michan’s — the cathedrals, Joyce’s Tower in Sandycove, and the Phoenix Park, including the zoo. We did a lot of sitting in pubs in the afternoon, even went on the literary pub-crawl. Mind you, Dublin’s ruinously expensive.”
“So you wouldn’t recommend it?”
“Oh, every Dubliner should check out their native city. The best bit is going to the tourist center and looking for leaflets. You feel you should be in the know but you’re not.”
“And what was the highlight?”
Maureen tosses it up. “Culture-wise, the skeletons in St. Michan’s — they were creepy and interesting — and otherwise, the Botanic Gardens. I can’t understand how I never went there before.”
Like prehistoric dinosaurs, yellow and blue cranes arch their sinister heads above new property developments, extended necks and jaws ready to dip and bite. Traffic is blocked, tailing back all the way to the Patrick Street junction. Ellen slips down into the seat, hunches her shoulders, and wedges her chin into the top of her chest. “They are building everywhere. Whenever I come up I always see a new construction site,” she says.
“It never stops. I can’t keep up with the changes,” says Maureen. “The scary bit is driving along some route you used to know, only to discover they’ve demolished houses, moved the road, and rerouted the traffic. It’s panic stations then because the direction signs are useless. They’re written in a code nobody knows.” She gives Ellen a gentle dig in the ribs. “You must miss this. All the excitement, I mean.”
“I do and I don’t. The towns are really coming on. You’d be surprised what you can buy in Killdingle now — designer clothes, delicatessen stuff, even the semi sun-dried tomatoes you’re so mad about. It has a really good shopping area down by the river, and there’s an absolutely brilliant state-of-the-art pub-cum-restaurant. I’ve been in it a few times for lunch. You’d want to see the style of the young ones, swanning about in skimpy outfits, exactly like their city counterparts, plenty of navel exposure. Reminds me of Dad’s cousins being shocked by jeans years ago, Mollie and Peg tut-tutting, Sarah disapproving — ‘So unladylike,’ she used to say. ‘Wear a nice frock.’ You never hear the word ‘frock’ now.”
Ellen sees antique shops, unfamiliar buildings, coffee shops and restaurants full of bodies, throngs of people milling about streets, and a part of her aches for the hassle and battle of living in the city. Where do all these people come from? “I miss the buzz,” she concedes.
“Paddy says you need great inner resources to live in the country. There’s so much happening in the city, you’ll always get by. Although, I don’t think he’s exactly right. You can be lonely in the city. People circumnavigate each other’s lives. It nearly happened to us, didn’t it, till you decided to cut and run? That was the spur for us to realize that we wanted to keep in touch.”
“We let it slide.”
“Exactly. Anyway, I’m laying odds on you coming back, Ellen. Lots of people go to live the rural dream but most of them scuttle home. At least you had the good sense to keep the job open.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’ll give it a year, maybe extend it to two. It’s a big culture shock but… it has its compensa
tions.”
“Such as?”
Ellen laughs. “Such as the walks, the views — some of them are spectacular — the quiet, although that took some getting used to, being at a distance from Kitty and Christy, and the slower pace of life. People have time for each other. In the city the clock is always ticking.”
“Maidens dancing at the crossroads? You sound like one of those tourist ads that everybody laughs at.”
“It’s not perfect. You keep meeting the same people over and over again. That takes getting used to. Noise from traffic starts at five in the morning. Some people have to travel incredibly long distances to work.”
The taxi cruises along Cuffe Street. Ellen feels a real pang when she sees the vista of Saint Stephen’s Green, its trees standing proud against the darkening sky. You left all this, a voice in her head says.
“Drop us off at the Shelbourne,” Maureen instructs the driver.
“No problem,” he says.
“You’ve got the lingo,” she tells him, but he doesn’t respond.
They give him a big tip. “In case he thought we were trying to insult him,” Maureen says. “They pick up key phrases so quickly. It’s the follow-through that’s problematic.”
A dark-haired Romany gypsy in headscarf, cardigan, and long, full skirt — like an outdated image from National Geographic — approaches them. She waves a copy of The Big Issue with one hand and jiggles a baby on her hip. “Hello, good evening. Nice to see you,” she says in a singsong patter as if she expects to strike up a conversation. “Would you buy? Nice ladies, would you like to buy?” she urges as she waves the magazine in their faces.
“No, thanks very much,” Maureen says impatiently, and they sweep past her into the hotel. “I hate the way they try to ingratiate themselves to put you on the spot,” she complains.
“Like telesales people?”
“Those? I’m rude to them on principle. Down with the phone as fast as I can.”
“Good evening,” says the porter as they pass.
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