A Gift to You

by Patricia Scanlan

  All that summer, builders hammered and banged and Lillian and Matthew’s snug home was turned into a designer show house, with wine-barrel chandeliers, Louis Vuitton steamer trunks for tables, Argentinean leather chesterfield sofas that looked hideously uncomfortable, and mirrors, and picture frames that had cost an arm and a leg for their ‘distressed’ appearance. Lillian would have been mighty ‘distressed’ to pay such ridiculous money for such nonsense.

  All their posh friends came for barbecues on the newly built deck and that first Christmas, Saundra decided that gold and silver would be her decorating ‘theme’. Only two of Lillian’s precious Christmas baubles made the grade. I was ignored. She chose a silver diamante bow to decorate the top of her tree that year.

  They were all so superficial, those so-called sophisticates, as they boasted about their affluence, their investments, their villas on golf courses on the Algarve, their Jags and Mercs and four-by-fours. They tried to outdo each other in every aspect of their lives and could not hide their envy if one of their crowd stepped further up the ladder of avarice and one-upmanship. Mendacity, envy, selfishness and insincerity seeped into the walls of Sunnymede when those people gathered and it made me weep for the days of straightforward kindness and goodness when Lillian and Matthew were alive.

  For three years, Saundra, Theo and their ‘friends’ used Sunnymeade as their ‘country retreat’. Theo would work the room at parties, drawing people aside, telling them of a ‘Golden opportunity to make a killing,’ on this investment or that bond, or hotels in the States, that was going to skyrocket in value. I heard names like ISTC, Anglo, Seanie, ‘Fingers’, Irish Nationwide AIB, BOI, spoken of in smooth, smug, confidential tones as Theo urged his guests to borrow even more money to fund these ‘blue chip’ investments. ‘You’ll have no problem getting a loan, he would assure them, expansively. ‘Let me put you in touch with someone.’ He had no time for ‘cautious people’. He advised many of his guests to place their money ‘offshore’; he had ‘people’ who could look after them. Some took his advice, delighted to have pulled a fast one on the taxman. Saundra would open yet another bottle of ‘bubbly’ and discuss Botox and fillers and plan trips with the ‘girls’ to have a discrete nip here and a little tuck there.

  And then, last year, everything changed utterly! The theme for that particular Christmas was Swarovski. All crystal baubles that cost a fortune, and blue velvet bows and blue lights, on an artificial silver Christmas tree. It was a hideous look. So cold and stark, a far cry from the twinkling warm hues of Lillian’s and Matthew’s tree that scented the house with the smell of fresh pine.

  It was a far smaller group than they usually entertained on St Stephen’s night. An edgy, nervous energy percolated through the rooms as a miasma of uneasiness settled on Sunnymede. The Hendersons didn’t come. They’d lost four million in a ‘sure fire’ investment Theo had convinced them to put their life savings into. The Wentworths lost two million in the same venture. Others had lost high six-figure sums. There was talk of property crashes in Spain and Dubai, and stocks and shares on the floor, pensions decimated, and fortunes owed to the banks. Seanie and ‘Fingers’ had come crashing down from their pedestals.

  Theo, behind the façade of hail-fellow well-met bonhomie, was like a tautly strung violin, and Saundra’s Botoxed forehead hid a tension headache that lasted for the entire three days they were in situ. Things turned nasty when Bert Lewis, the worse for drink, cursed Theo and said he’d lost everything because of his advice and what the hell was he going to do about it? Drunk, bitter and angry, he said what everyone else was thinking and the party ended abruptly. The guests filtered out with indecent haste, murmuring awkward goodbyes.

  ‘We’ve become outcasts,’ Saundra wailed, as their ‘best friends’ drove away and life as they’d known it came crashing around their ears.

  Sunnymede and the villa in the Algarve were put up for sale as Theo sought to secure his assets by buying property in New England in Saundra’s name. He’d sold most of his stock for top dollar in a company just before it began its steady and inexorable slide to the bottom, a company he continued to urge his ‘friends’ to invest in even as it went belly-up. There was talk of insider trading. It didn’t particularly bother him; business was business. There were always risks. But it did bother him that his reputation was ruined. No one in their circle would ever take advice from him again and slowly, like the tide going out, their former chums withdrew from him and Saundra, and the façade of friendship dropped like icicles melting on the eves.

  It was a bad time for selling property. While there were many viewers there were no takers. The steamer trunks, sofas, mirrors and distressed picture frames were gone. The house was quite bare. The price dropped . . . several times. And then, one wintry afternoon, the door opened and a young couple walked in, hand in hand.

  ‘Oooh, I like it!’ the girl exclaimed. She had long, wavy brown hair with glints of gold. She reminded me of Lillian.

  ‘Well, thanks to my wonderful grandma, we can just about afford it.’ The young man smiled. He was fair-haired with a smattering of freckles and lovely green eyes.

  ‘Mam said we could have her old sofa, the one with the big cushions, and the pine dresser. Oh, Pete, it’s perfect for us!’ The girl was excited and I felt myself relax. All was going to be well. I just knew it.

  Five weeks later, I’m sitting atop the tree, and the smell of cooking and the sound of laughter is drifting from the kitchen. Tara, my new owner, found me under the stairs, dusted me down and said to her smiling husband, ‘Isn’t she gorgeous!’ I had a delightful sense of déjà vu.

  Lillian would approve, I thought, as Pete made sure I was facing in the right direction, perfectly positioned. I was back where I belong.

  Façades

  ‘You’re coming home for Christmas? Fantastic! We’ll have to get together. You’ll have to come over for a meal.’ Izzy Reynolds injected a note of false gaiety into her voice as she spoke to Mari Clancy, an old schoolfriend who was ringing from Dubai. ‘Is Brett coming with you?’

  ‘Er . . . no, not this year. Things are a bit crazy at work and he can’t take time off Mari sounded glum.

  ‘Oh . . . poor Brett,’ Izzy sympathized, privately relieved that the wealthy consultant wouldn’t be around to patronize her and Bill with his boastful tales of life in the Emirates.

  ‘So, look, how about the day after Stephen’s Day? You know the way the diary fills up, and Mam will have me doing the rounds like nobody’s business,’ Mari said briskly.

  ‘I’ll be looking forward to it,’ Izzy lied, thinking that a visit from Mari was the last thing she needed. They talked for another while, swapping gossip and news and Izzy was glad it was Mari who had called. It must be costing a fortune, but Mari was loaded and money wasn’t an issue for her. It never used to be an issue for her and Bill, either, she thought dolefully, replacing the receiver.

  Later, in the kitchen, she found herself humming ‘My heart is low’. To her way of thinking, ‘Only A Woman’s Heart’ was one of the greatest songs ever written for and about women. The writer of that song knew exactly what Izzy was feeling at that moment. Low, disheartened, dispirited, depressed and extremely agitated.

  She wiped her worktops vigorously. When Izzy was stressed she cleaned her worktops over and over again, lifting the bread bin and matching set of coffee, tea and sugar containers, annihilating any unfortunate crumb lurking in the vicinity. Today the worktops were getting a rigorous going-over, as were the fridge-freezer doors and the top of the cooker.

  It was funny, how she headed for the kitchen when she was under pressure. Her sister always attacked the bathroom in her moments of stress. Izzy’s best friend would invariably cut the grass.

  She sighed deeply. Her husband Bill had been out of a job for the last fourteen months and there was no sign of anything on the horizon. Christmas was just ten days away and her three children were up to ninety with excitement at the thoughts of Santa’s impending arrival. />
  The Christmas shopping had to be done. She and Bill had just had a row about it. Now, to crown it all, she’d had the call from Mari, to say she would be back in town for Christmas. More expense. Normally, she loved having visitors and it would have been a pleasure to see her old schoolfriend, but these days she didn’t want to see anyone. She just wanted to shrivel up inside her shell and stay there.

  In the last few months, all her hope that Bill would have no problems in finding another job had become harder and harder to sustain. As money got tighter, their savings dwindled and their standard of living noticeably diminished. Izzy increasingly felt like burying her head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich.

  She didn’t want Mari Clancy coming to her house when she had no oil for the central heating. Izzy didn’t want her to know that she’d sold her Fiesta and Bill’s Volvo was in the garage because they hadn’t got the money to tax and insure it. Mari would have to put up with cheap wine and a simple meal. Izzy just didn’t have the money for steaks and champagne. It was months since she’d been able to afford luxuries like that.

  Izzy rubbed viciously at a particularly stubborn piece of grit that was embedded between the curved edge of her drainer and the muted beige worktop. To think she couldn’t even afford to drive any more. Who would have ever thought it? Who would have ever thought that their family’s affluent, comfortable lifestyle would have been so severely shaken and disrupted that gut-wrenching evening when Bill had come home from work, grey-faced and shaken to tell her that the multinational computer company that he worked for was closing its Irish operation in favour of their American outfit, with a loss of five hundred jobs.

  ‘I’m finished, Izzy, I’ll never get another job at my age.’ Bill sat with his head buried in his hands while Izzy tried to take in what her husband had just told her.

  ‘Don’t be daft, Bill!’ she said firmly. ‘You’re only forty-three. That’s young, and people are always going to need human resources managers. Experienced human resources managers.’

  ‘Izzy, you don’t know what it’s like out there, I’m telling you, it’s cut-throat. They can get fellas half my age with better degrees that’ll work for half my salary because they’re so desperate to get a job. The Celtic Tiger’s well and truly vanished.’ Bill had tears in his eyes and Izzy, horrified at the state her usually cheerful and easygoing husband was in, flung her arms around him and hugged him tightly.

  ‘Stop worrying, Bill, we’ll manage fine. You’ll get a job, I know you will. You’re the best there is; you’ll be snapped up in no time,’ she comforted, absolutely believing every word she spoke. Bill was bloody good at his job. He’d get another job . . . and soon.

  Week after week, month after month, she’d said the same thing over and over, trying to keep her spirits up as much as his. Unemployment didn’t happen to people like her and Bill with their pretty, four-bedroom semi-detached dormer bungalow in a tree-lined cul-de-sac in Clontarf. They had always been able to afford a fortnight abroad every year and trips to London where Izzy’s sister lived. Music and swimming lessons for the kids had been the norm and Izzy had never envisaged that it would ever be otherwise.

  When she’d thought about unemployment she’d had a mental image of people whose lifestyles were a million miles from her own. Izzy wasn’t a snob or anything like it; she was lucky and she knew it. She’d never thought that unemployment could happen to her family. Bill was a trained professional, for God’s sake, with years of work experience. Being a human resources manager for hundreds of employees was an important job. People like him didn’t end up on a dole queue. Or so she’d thought.

  ‘Get real, Izzy!’ her younger sister, Stella, remonstrated one day several months after Bill had been made redundant, when she had been moaning about their situation. Stella was a community welfare officer and she knew a lot about unemployment. ‘Don’t kid yourself that it’s all people from so-called deprived areas that are on the dole, it isn’t. There’s a hell of a lot of people like Bill, in middle management, who are out there suffering behind their lace curtains and going to the St Vincent de Paul for help with their mortgage repayments. People who enjoyed a lifestyle just like yours.’

  ‘St Vincent de Paul, but that’s for poor people!’ Izzy exclaimed in horror.

  ‘These people are heading for poor,’ Stella said gently. ‘They’re living in lovely houses, with no heating and no phones and not enough money to pay the mortgage, and in danger of their homes being repossessed. They need help too.’ Seeing her sister’s stricken face she said gently. ‘Look, I’m not suggesting you’re ever going to need to go to the St Vincent de Paul, but what I’m saying is, start economising. Use some of Bill’s redundancy money to whack a bit off your mortgage. Get rid of one of the cars. I’m not saying that Bill won’t ever get a job again, hopefully he will, but just don’t think that he’s going to waltz into a new position just like that. It doesn’t happen like that any more, unfortunately. There’s a recession out there and it’s not going away anytime soon.’

  Izzy came away from her chat with her sister more scared than she had ever been in her life. For the first time since Bill had been made redundant she had lifted her head out of the sand and taken a long, hard look at their situation. Stella’s words might have been harsh but they had stiffened Izzy’s resolve. It was time to sit down and take stock and face the hard facts. Bill was unemployed and likely to stay that way. The future had to be faced.

  That night, when the children were in bed, she sat down with her husband and calmly announced that it was time for them to discuss their financial situation so that they could make long-term plans. Bill slumped down at the kitchen table twiddling a biro. She could see his fingers shaking. ‘I don’t know how we’re going to manage,’ he muttered.

  I’d like to kill the bastards that did this to him, Izzy thought viciously, as she saw her husband’s hopes and dreams fade to ashes. He flicked on his calculator and they began to work on the figures he had in front of him. They talked of her going back to work, if she could get a job; but then they would have to pay for childcare for the three children, which was so expensive it would take up most of her salary.

  Bill said they had to reduce their mortgage by two thirds – that was vital – and at least they’d have the comfort of knowing that their home was safe enough. They’d use his lump sum for that. They’d sell her Fiesta and with the money they’d make from that they’d continue the insurance policies, the most important of which was the policy they had taken out for their children’s education. They’d pay the VHI for another year. If Bill didn’t get a job after that there’d be no more private health insurance.

  They went to bed subdued.

  Izzy began to take her calculator to the supermarket. Before, she had never considered the cost of food that much. Whatever she felt like had gone willy-nilly into the trolley, as had make-up, books, magazines, and a couple of bottles of wine. But those days were gone. Every cent counted now. It was coming up to the second Christmas of Bill’s unemployment and her money was cut to the bone. Any saving, no matter how small, was welcome. Thank God for big impersonal supermarkets, she thought one day as she stood at the cash desk with her trolley full of Yellow Pack and Thrift. It would be a tad mortifying if the neighbours saw her, or the girl at the check out knew her. That was always a little worry. Silly, she knew, but she couldn’t help it.

  It wasn’t that Izzy normally gave a hoot what people thought of her, it was just these days she seemed to be a bit more vulnerable. Only the other day, her seven-year-old son, Keith, had come in, his little face scarlet with emotion. ‘Mammy! Jason Pierce says that Daddy’s got no job an’ that we’re going to be poor an’ that you can’t afford to bring us to Disneyland in Paris. He’s a big liar, isn’t he? I told him to put his dukes up an’ I gave him a puck in the snot an’ he went home bawling,’ her son added with immense satisfaction.

  ‘Say “and”, Keith, not “an’ ”,’ Izzy corrected automatically, hoping that Jaso
n Pierce’s nose was well and truly bloodied. Little brat! Since the Pierces had moved in next door, six months ago, there had been nothing but fights with the youngsters in the cul-de-sac. It wasn’t really Jason’s fault; it was that obnoxious father of his, Owen. Owen Pierce was the most bigheaded, boastful, superior individual Izzy had ever had the misfortune to encounter.

  Owen was a tax consultant, who had begun to make good money. On the way up, he revelled in his yuppie lifestyle. He and his wife Nicole and their two children, Jason and Diana, had moved in mid-summer, and had proceeded to make themselves thoroughly unpopular with their neighbours.

  At first, the ten other families in the cul-de-sac had welcomed them and been friendly and chatty, but gradually Owen’s thoroughly bumptious ways had begun to grate. It was his hail-fellow-well-met ‘I’m a tax consultant. What do you do for a living?’ carry-on that got under people’s skin. Owen had the biggest satellite dish, the biggest barbecue pit, the most expensive shrubs and the flashiest car. He loved boasting and always made sure that when he was telling Izzy or Bill something, the rest of the neighbours could hear as well. Izzy normally did not make snap judgments about people, but she knew very soon after she met him that he was someone she couldn’t stand.

  Nicole had invited Izzy in for a cup of coffee about a month after they had moved in. Nicole, with her heavily made-up face and her perfectly manicured nails, had made sure to let Izzy know that she had a woman who came in to clean twice a week. She had timed the coffee invite with the arrival of the woman who did her ironing. Nicole’s daughter, Diana, was the same age as Jessica and as they sat drinking their freshly ground coffee, the other woman paused in their conversation and said meditatively, ‘I wonder if I have anything I could give you for Jessica. She and Diana are the same age and Diana has so many clothes. She gets so many presents. I’ve got lots of stuff that she’s never worn.’