A Grand Old Time

by Judy Leigh

  Copyright

  Published by Avon an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street,

  London, SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

  Copyright © Judy Leigh 2018

  Cover illustration © Becky Glass

  Cover design © Emma Rogers

  Judy Leigh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008269197

  Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9780008269203

  Version: 2018-01-11

  Thanks to Kiran at Keane Kataria and to Rachel Faulkner-Willcocks and her team at Avon, HarperCollins for being incredible and making this novel become real. To the talented MA students and lecturers, Falmouth, class of 2015, and to Sarah and Jim for letting me stay at the villa. To the Totnes writing group – thanks for conversations and creativity. To my early draft readers, Erika, Sarah, Beau, for their warmth and good humour. To Liam and Caitlan for their irrepressible intelligence and energy. To Tony and Kim for wild Sunday lunches. To Big G for all the love and for keeping me grounded. To my Dad, Tosh, and to my own Mammy, my inspiration.

  Dedication

  For Irene.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  She bounced up and down on the edge of her bed, still in her nightie. When the creaking stopped, the silence closed in around her. Everyone was asleep in Sheldon Lodge. The room was dim and cramped, so she went over to the window and looked outside at the path that led to the road into Dublin. A bird flitted up and away. A single cloud moved across a square of sky. Evie made a puffing noise through her lips and pulled herself away.

  She went back to the bed and picked up the thin paperback lying on the duvet. Season of the Heart. Recommended reading for the ladies at Sheldon Lodge. Evie had never been much of a reader. There was a picture of a milkmaid in russet petticoats on the front cover, sitting in a cornfield. Her hair was the same bleached yellow as the corn and her face was sad. Evie flipped the novel over and read the blurb. Dulcie Jones is thrust into the life of a country maid when her gambling father sells her to pay his debts. But Marcus, the mysterious son of her new master Lord Diamant, has other plans for Dulcie …

  Evie threw the book away from her onto the duvet. It was six thirty am.

  ‘What a lot of shite,’ she muttered to herself, and then she raised her voice: ‘It’s all complete shite.’

  Sheldon Lodge offered its usual deaf ear, although she expected Mrs Lofthouse to run in, all wobbling bosoms and waving hands, to tell her to go back to bed and not disturb the other residents. Evie shuffled into her slippers and dressing gown, and snorted through her nostrils. Most of the other residents were disturbed already, well into their eighties and nineties – even the youngest of them at least ten years older than her.

  She wandered into the kitchen, listening for Barry the chef who would make her a cup of tea. She could hear him behind the metal shutters, moving around, organising breakfast. She banged her fist softly to call for his attention and waited. No reply.

  Evie sat down at the little table with its plastic cloth printed with yellow roses and realised she was in Maud Delaney’s seat. Maud, with her thin hair cropped short, usually spent the day in the chair, humped over the table, her head resting against a cold cup of tea, her eyes covered with her puffy ringed fingers. Maud’s place was next to Annie Armstrong, who gulped air like a fish. Every day Evie wondered if Maud was dead until Slawka and Joe, two of the carers, came to move her with the winch. At least it broke the monotony.

  Barry would open the breakfast bar shutters in a minute and Evie would have a hot drink and toast. Even better, there would be someone to talk to. Barry would grumble about his daughter Natalie, who had been arrested for taking recreational drugs at a pop festival in the park, and Evie would discuss the problems of poor hen-pecked Brendan, and they would both laugh and chatter. Then there would be scrambled eggs and more toast and it would be halfway through the morning and the Irish Times would have been delivered in the Day Room. She’d have two cups of coffee and make her little joke, as she did every day, that it would taste a lot nicer with a nip of cognac. Of course, they let her have a glass of red wine with her meals, but somehow it tasted bitter. Like all the sunshine had gone from the grapes.

  Evie picked up a pack of playing cards that had been left on the table and she shuffled them. She didn’t know how to play cards, but it was something to do. She sorted through them again and a card poked itself towards her. She took it out. It was the four of hearts.

  Evie placed it on the table and smiled.

  Four. Her lucky number.

  Chapter Two

  He stared at his face in the mirror. His hair was still auburn, although faded, the curls flecked here and there with grey, and his blue eyes were crinkled around the corners. He lathered his face with shaving soap and smiled at his white-bearded reflection – a paternal face, like Santa Claus. He imagined how it would be to dress as Father Christmas, surrounded by four children. He’d always t
hought he’d like two of each: two boys who liked football, a sporty girl, maybe a surfer or a swimmer, and then one for Maura. A chirpy cheeky one with Maura’s soft shining eyes.

  He lifted the razor and swiped it smoothly across his cheek, then screamed. Thin red blood seeped through his fingers and spattered on the pale tiles of the floor. He swore and dropped his razor in the basin, reaching for toilet roll to plug the small leak in his neck. He looked in the bathroom mirror: sallow face with a foaming beard and eyes round as a fish’s. His crisp shirt was going to have to come off. Maura would not be pleased.

  He threw the paper in the toilet and applied more, torn into squares, folded urgently. He stiffened and strained his ears. A rustling sound like a cold breeze warned him of Maura’s approach; the linen-clad thighs were rubbing together with a soft hiss, a stalking reptile.

  He heard her voice before he saw her. It rang ice clear.

  ‘Brendan, for the love of God …?’ She rounded the corner, looked him up and down and snorted.

  Brendan looked her up and down in turn and snorted too, but discreetly. Her cleavage tippled over the top of her V-neck jumper, revealing the tentative lace of a beige bra. The orbs he had first coveted and then caressed now held less fascination for him. The tight slacks and high heels accentuated her curves, and her face, now stern, was topped with little blonde curls pinned high on her head. He mopped his wound and waited for the onslaught to begin.

  ‘Will you look at your shirt? It is completely ruined. I will have to get you another one. The blue one won’t go as well with those trousers but never mind, it will have to do.’

  Her pause for breath was punctuated by his placatory ‘OK, my love’ – but even as he said it, he felt a pang of regret that it wasn’t OK and there wasn’t any love.

  She stared at him for a second and he wondered if she was having the same thoughts, then she sighed and started up again. ‘Brendan, it’s always the same every Saturday afternoon. You know these visits upset me.’

  Brendan couldn’t help noticing the lines that puckered perfectly around the mouth as she spoke. She has the mouth of an arsehole, he thought to himself. As she stared at Brendan, her eyes were like bullets, small, blue-grey, ready to fire. Any attempt to pass her would be a battle manoeuvre in the making, so he stayed fixed, bloody paper in hand.

  Maura rustled away, her heels tapping like nails to the brain. Brendan flushed the toilet and watched the paper, its perfect whiteness blotched with red spots, as it gurgled, dissolved and disappeared.

  Brendan was sitting in the yellow Fiat Panda on his driveway. A wafting fragment of toilet paper was still attached to the dried blood on his neck. The engine thrummed gently.

  He listened to the DJ on the radio: ‘The birds are singing and summer is blooming here in Dublin, and so let’s have the Beach Boys, bringing us “Good Vibrations”.’

  He banged his head softly against the steering wheel. Harder. Harder still. There were definitely no good vibrations to be had anywhere here. Still no sign of Maura.

  He saw a young woman and her child who emerged from their front door. It was Erin from number 27 and little Colm. Erin found her phone and started to chatter. The little boy moved from one foot to another, kicking stones. He only had on a thin jacket. The wind ruffled his hair, shaking the flags of his trouser legs, and he looked cold. He sat down on the kerb, dangling his fingers in the dirt. He scrabbled purposefully in the gravel, found something and picked it up. It was a discarded cigarette. Colm held it in his two fingers, raising his hand in an imitation of an adult pose, pulling a haughty face.

  They’d both wanted children, him and Maura. The doctor in the hospital in Dublin said there was nothing wrong with the pair of them, and they should both just relax. That was ten years ago. He was nearly forty. Too late now. It was around that time that Maura’s soft eyes hardened. Her sweet smile became pursed lips, puckered and hard. Maura was always the love of his life. Now she was just his wife, who sat across the table at breakfast in a tight suit, her hair pulled back and pinned up and her brow tight with a frown. She used to gaze up into his eyes and promise to love him for ever. Now she slammed his coffee on the table at breakfast and told him not to let it go cold. He sighed. Perhaps that was what love was now; like coffee, it starts hot and strong, only to become tepid and cool.

  Outside the car, the child looked up at his mother, who was talking and waving the arm carrying the handbag. Colm put one end of the cigarette in his mouth. He began to smoke as he had seen his mother smoke, as he had seen other adults smoke. He had it off to perfection, inhaling deeply, holding his breath while he smiled like the Bisto kid and then blowing out the imaginary smoke in a steady stream. Brendan laughed, a quiet chuckle. Erin stopped talking, pushed her phone into her bag, turned to the boy and gave him a slap across the head.

  Colm dropped the cigarette butt and screamed, his face reddening with furious tears. He looked like a comic book character. Erin grabbed his hand and with a swift pull she yanked him to mobility. His little feet moved in the air, then landed in a run to keep time with his mother. Brendan thought that was no way to treat a kiddie; his hands clutched the steering wheel harder as the Panda shuddered when Maura leapt in. She swung the carrier bags of cakes into the space behind her and looked sharply at Brendan.

  ‘Are we ready to go, Brendan? Do we have everything?’

  He nodded. ‘I think so, my love.’

  Maura stared straight at him, her eyebrows making a deep V in her forehead, her mouth pursed. He knew the expression like he knew his own reflection.

  ‘Brendan, what in the name of God is this stuck on your neck? Toilet paper. Now look at the state of you.’

  She reached in her handbag for a tissue. He knew what was coming. Her pink tongue poked through her lips, dampened the paper and scrubbed the hard tissue against his neck. Like a dutiful child, Brendan kept still and closed his eyes and thought that he could feel the love leaking from his life.

  She looked at him, breathing out sharply, the moist hanky in her fist. She paused and, for a second, her eyes were soft again. She ruffled his hair, her fingers snagging in his curls. She touched his neck with the tenderness she’d have bestowed on a child. ‘There, Brendan, you’re all done. Much better. Shall we go?’

  The Panda engine was still humming softly. Maura was sandwiched inside a brown checked jacket with a faux-fur collar; she had the red lipstick and crimson nails of a ferocious hunter that had just skinned and swallowed its prey whole. ‘What are we waiting for?’

  He gulped. ‘Maura, I don’t think Mammy likes Sheldon Lodge. I mean, she hasn’t settled—’

  ‘She is in the best place, Brendan. They can do Tai Chi and cookery classes for the aged. They can give her a good life. Better than she was, by herself.’

  ‘She looks miserable, to tell the truth.’

  Maura thought for a second. ‘Nonsense. I’m sure she’ll be happy as a lark. Come on, let’s get moving. Traffic will be terrible in Dublin centre.’

  His hands were squeezing the steering wheel. He glanced at the faux-fur collar around Maura’s throat. He moved the gears into first. The DJ on the radio was excitedly talking about the heyday of Oasis and the 1990s, then the chords struck out and the song began: ‘Wonderwall’. It was a song that was playing all the time, the year they’d met.

  The tune epitomised the ecstasy of their young love. Brendan had taken Maura, slender and soft, in his arms, as they kissed and whispered and planned for the future. They had both been just eighteen and she had gazed at his face as if he was a blessed saint. He had felt that he could achieve anything, for her sake. And the voice sang the words just for them. Words which promised undying love, love beyond measure, love so vast it would last for ever.

  As Brendan smoothly turned the Panda towards the edge of the estate, Maura’s eyes were half closed in a glaze and she began to sing, in her thin, cheese-grater voice:

  ‘Wonderwaaaaall …’

  She was in her own world, and he had
no idea what she was thinking. He wondered if she remembered the happy times; if she recalled their many walks by the River Liffey, how he gave her his anorak once when the rain started, how she squeezed his fingers and smiled into his face. He wondered if she was thinking anything at all. His fingers made deep grooves on the fabric on the wheel, wondering where she had gone, the sweet, soft-skinned girl of his past. He sighed from somewhere, lost fathoms inside him, and looked at the traffic ahead, nose to bumper, grumbling to a halt.

  Chapter Three

  Four is the luckiest number. Born on fourth of April, 1942. Fourth of five children. Four hundred thousand euros from the sale of the house. Four sausages for lunch today. Four had always been lucky for her. Her da had given her a four-leaf clover, dried between the pages of a book, when she was four years old. She’d had her son on the fourth of March. He’d been her fourth baby, the only one who stuck.

  Fifteen is not a good number. Left school at fifteen. Hated school. Married Jim on fifteenth of July. Married life, from then onwards, until he died. Moved to Sheldon Lodge on the fifteenth of December. Room number fifteen. No, fifteen is definitely not a lucky number.

  Evie was deep in thought when Mrs Lofthouse spoke to her. Mrs Lofthouse spoke for the second time, and the third, more loudly and with slow emphasis.

  ‘Evelyn. Your son is coming to see you today. Brendan? He is coming to see you.’

  Evie blinked. She put on her best confused look and stared directly back.

  ‘I’ll just give your hair a bit of a tidy up. Brendan will be here at four.’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Brendan – and his wife Maura. Lovely couple, Evelyn.’

  Evie pulled a face. Maura was always stiff, polite, putting on a pretence of wifely perfection. Evie didn’t feel she knew her well at all, even after almost twenty years. Maura was humourless, starchy. She reminded her of the nuns at school, who insisted she must be called Evelyn and not her preferred abbreviation. She’d decided at four years old that ‘Evie’ was so much nicer, cheekier: it suited her much better than the more formal version. Evie was a chirpy name. Maura could do with being chirpier, she thought. The nuns flitted into her head again and she remembered how they had punished her for using the Lord’s name gratuitously. That was the first time she took up swearing as a hobby. The words rolled in her mouth like sweets.