by Maeve Binchy
This year the research had come up with Clifden. They would drive there from Dublin on a Tuesday, starting early, leaving plenty of time. They would pack sandwiches and a flask of coffee because you never knew. They began to pack the suitcases on the Friday before they left. Better to pack early, Nessa said, because you never knew what you might forget. Harry liked to pack from a list. Wiser to write it out and tick off each item as it went into the case he said, otherwise you could easily think that things were packed when they weren’t.
Nessa brought their five pieces of silver to the bank, each one wrapped in a piece of cotton and then all zipped into a little yellow bag. For the rest of the year they lived in the bottom of a cupboard. No point at all in tempting burglars by displaying them on shelves or anything.
Harry went round all the window locks and tested the alarm system several times. Better be sure than sorry, he always said. They wished they had a reliable neighbour who might water their little garden but sadly it was only a wild, unkempt girl with red hair and a boyfriend who stayed over nights. No point in asking her to do anything for you.
They nodded at her courteously, always better to make friends of these kind of people rather than enemies. She used to shout ‘Howaya, Nessa? Harry?’ which was very forward of her since she must have been less than half their age.
The evening before they set out for Clifden they had everything ready for their departure. Sandwiches in the fridge, two eggs to boil and just enough bread to toast for breakfast. The house would be left neat and tidy to welcome them back a week later. Then Harry would have five full days to recover before he went back to work. It was a long, long journey, they knew that. They would both be very tired.
There was a ring at the door. They looked at each other in alarm. Eight o’clock at night! Nobody would call at that hour.
‘Who is it?’ Harry asked fearfully.
‘Melly,’ the voice said. ‘Can I come in please, Harry?’
They didn’t know anyone called Melly.
‘From next door,’ the voice said. ‘It’s urgent!’
They let her in. Her red hair was spiky, she wore a horrid purple top that exposed her middle bits and jeans with patches on them. Her face was very pale.
‘I just don’t want to be alone right now. Could I stay for an hour please? I won’t be any trouble. Please, Nessa? Harry?’
She looked from one to the other.
‘Are you unwell?’ Nessa asked. ‘Should you go to a doctor? The hospital?’
‘No, I’m frightened. Mike, my fellow, he’s been smoking bad stuff. God knows what he might do to me. I don’t want him to find me at home.’
‘Won’t he come looking for you here?’ Harry was very alarmed at inviting such trouble under his roof.
‘No, he’d never think I’d come here,’ she said.
‘Well . . .’ They were doubtful.
‘Oh, go on, Harry, Nessa, you can keep your eye on me. I’m not going to go off with your silver or anything. Just an hour or two or whatever.’
‘I don’t know,’ Harry said.
‘Harry, you’re a decent man. How would you feel if I were beaten to death and you could have saved me?’
They found themselves nodding.
‘But we can’t stay up late because we’re going to the West tomorrow, and by the time we get to Clifden we could be very tired.’
‘I’ll just get my bag,’ Melly said and hopped back home for a giant lime-green sack.
‘I’ve everything here,’ she said, as an explanation.
‘But . . . um . . . Melly, we told you we’re going to Clifden tomorrow!’
‘I’ll come with you!’ Melly said, overjoyed. ‘He’ll never think of looking for me in Clifden, it’s perfect.’ She smiled from one to the other.
She slept on the sofa with her things strewn over the floor. During the night they heard him shouting and looking for her.
‘Do you think we should do anything?’ Harry whispered to Nessa in bed.
‘We are doing something—we’re driving her to the other side of the country,’ Nessa said, trying to put the man’s raised voice out of her mind.
Next morning Melly took all the hot water for her shower and used the nice new towels they had prepared ready for their return. She made them breakfast, however, saying that since there were only two eggs she had made an omelette and divided it into three.
Harry and Nessa looked at each other aghast. Their whole plan had been thrown totally out of order by this ridiculous girl whom they hardly knew. By now they should have been in their car and beyond Lucan. Instead they were still at home plotting how to get Melly into the car.
‘He could be looking out the window so we’d better take no risks,’ Melly warned. ‘You could put a rug over me and I could crawl very slowly into the back seat.’
Then there was her lime-green sack; he would certainly recognise that. So Harry had to hide it in a black plastic bag.
‘By the time we get to Clifden we’ll be ready to go to a mental hospital,’ Nessa said into Harry’s ear.
‘If we ever get there,’ Harry whispered. ‘She’s talking of doing things en route.’ That was something Harry and Nessa never did, visit anything en route. They just got their heads down and drove there, wherever there was. It didn’t look as if it was going to be like that this time.
When they finally got away and Melly emerged from the rug it was nearly time to put on their audio cassette and listen to an improving book. By the time they got to Clifden this year they would have heard the three-and-a-half-hour version of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. But they had reckoned without Melly. She didn’t like it at all. She did, on the other hand, like the scenery and the places they passed. She chattered non-stop about the housing estates, the road signs, the huge walled demesnes, the factories and the traffic, so that Harry and Nessa lost completely the story of Becky Sharp and were forced to turn it off.
‘That’s better,’ Melly said. ‘Now we can chat properly.’
She phoned ahead on her mobile to Mullingar to friends and said she wanted them to prepare lunch—that she was bringing two pals called Harry and Nessa.
They protested vigorously. By the time they got to Clifden it would be very late. And they did have sandwiches.
But Melly would have none of it. And in Mullingar the two hippies who lived in a squat had made a magnificent lentil and tomato dish with lots of crusty bread. The hippies were perfectly at ease with Harry and Nessa and asked them to deliver some honey to Shay in Athlone because he had a bad throat.
‘But we might not stop in Athlone,’ poor Harry began.
‘Normally you wouldn’t,’ they agreed with him. ‘But because of Shay’s sore throat you will this time, won’t you?’
Shay was very welcoming, and he made tea and toasted scones. He said that Harry and Nessa were Everyday Angels, that was the only phrase for it, rescuing Melly from that monster.
‘If she hadn’t met two Everyday Angels like you he’d have trashed her, you know. He’ll probably have trashed her house and yours as well when you get back,’ Shay said cheerfully.
Nessa and Harry looked at each other. Their glance asked the question. Should they go home? Now, this minute? There was no time. Melly was on the mobile phone to Athenry. And then they were waving goodbye to Shay and back in the car heading west.
They were expected in this pub in Athenry you see; there would be chicken-in-a-basket for them when they got there and a great gig.
‘By the time we get to Clifden they’ll have given away our room,’ said Harry in a voice that sounded like a great wail.
‘Nonsense, Harry, we can give them a ring,’ Melly said.
Nessa took out her little sheet called ‘Emergency Numbers and Contacts for the Journey’ and found the number of the B&B.
‘Could you ring them, Melly?’ Nessa asked. ‘You seem to know our plans better.’
Melly saw nothing wrong with that.
‘Hiya, you’ve got a couple called Ne
ssa and Harry coming to stay with you . . . Yeah, Mr and Mrs Kelly, that’s it, it’s just that we keep getting held up on the way, you know the way it is.’
The voice seemed to know the way it was and sounded sympathetic.
‘Oh, no idea at all when, could you leave out a key and a note, you see we’re not even in Galway, only on the way to Athenry as it happens . . . Thank you, yes, thank you for being so understanding, see you when we see you then. Oh, and could I sleep in a chair or something for one night just till I get myself settled?’
That seemed to be agreed too.
‘Who am I? I’m Melly, I’m their great friend and neighbour and they sort of rescued me. No, not fussy people at all, dead easygoing, you must be thinking of other people. No, real cool. We’re going to a gig in Athenry, maybe a drink in Galway just to be sociable and then we’re going to get out of the car in Maam Cross and look at the goats and the sheep and smell the Atlantic, we wouldn’t be with you before 1 or 2 a.m., anyway, but haven’t they the week to get over it?’
She leaned in between them from the back seat of the car. ‘There, now that’s sorted,’ she said proudly.
Nessa and Harry smiled at each other, absurdly flattered to have been called dead easygoing and real cool.
Melly genuinely didn’t think they were fussy people.
And by the time they got to Clifden perhaps they wouldn’t be fussy people anymore.
The Return Journey
Freda, The card I sent yesterday was for the neighbours. Or rather for you and your paranoia about the neighbours. Anyway, its purpose was that it could be left around and looked at, spied on and inspected by them. The truth is that the place is a shambles, it’s raining so hard I can’t see whether it’s green or yellow. The truth is that I still feel hurt and unhappy and not at all like writing letters. The truth is that I must care about you a great deal, otherwise why am I letting that call from the airport get to me so badly? I believed you when you said you’d watch for the mail. I will write but just now there’s nothing to say.
Try not to worry about what people think and say. Honestly they aren’t thinking and saying much about us at all. They have their own problems.
Gina
Darling Gina,
You called me Freda instead of Mom. I wondered about that for a long while. I suppose it means you’re growing up, growing away. I told myself it meant you liked me more, thought of me as an equal, a friend. Then I told myself that it meant you liked me less, that you were distancing yourself.
For someone who claims there is nothing to say, you sure have a lot to say. You say I am paranoid about the neighbours. Well, let me tell you that Mrs Franks came in to say she couldn’t help reading your nice postcard and wasn’t it wonderful that Gina was having such a good time. So! Do they look or do they not? You say that you are upset by the call from Kennedy Airport. It was you who called me, Gina. I just said write me often. You are the one who was crying, I was the one who says what any normal mother says to a daughter travelling abroad . . . going to Europe. I said, I’d like it if you wrote to me, is that so emotionally draining? Does it deserve the lecture, the sermon . . . the order not to live my life by other people’s dictates? But I only say all this so that you’ll know I’m still me, still the same prickly, jumpy, thin-skinned mother I always was. I’d like you to call me Freda. Don’t stop now because you think I’ve taken it and run with it, that I’ve read into it more than there is. And don’t stop writing to me, Gina. You know I didn’t want you to go to Ireland. But I did say . . . I always said it was an unreasonable feeling on my part. There are so many things I want to hear about Ireland, and so many I don’t.
I think I want you to tell me that it’s beautiful and sad and that I did the only possible thing by leaving it. And leaving it so finally. I think that’s what I want you to say in your letters. And when you come home. I love you Gina, if that’s not too draining.
Freda
I’m calling you nothing in this letter in case we get another long analysis. I had an odd day today. I left the B&B which is fine, small room, small house, nice woman, kept telling me about her son in Boston who’s an illegal. I thought she meant the IRA but she meant working in a bar without a proper visa or a green card. Anyway, I was walking down the street, small houses, hundreds of kids roaming round when school’s out, the country is like a big school playground in many ways. And I saw a bus. It said ‘Dunglass’. It was half full. I put out my hand. And it stopped. I asked the driver, ‘Where is Dunglass?’ And he told me . . . But I said isn’t Dunglass not a house, a big house? He said no it was a town. Mom, why didn’t you tell me it was a town? What else did you not tell me? I got off the bus. I told him I had changed my mind.
Back at the B&B the woman was happy. She had heard from her son the Illegal. It was cold in Boston, lots of ice and snow. I asked her about Dunglass. She said it was a village. She said it was a nice kind of a place, quiet, peaceful but not a place to go in the middle of winter. It would scald your heart she said. Why didn’t you say it was a village that would scald your heart? Why did you let me think for years that it was a big old house with Dunglass on the gate? You even told me what it meant. Dun a fort and Glass meaning Green. That much is true, I checked. But what else is?
Gina
Gina my love,
I wish you’d call. I tried to get a number for you but they don’t do street listings like we do. It’s five days since you wrote. It will be five days until you get this, ten days could have changed everything. You may have been there by now for all I know.
I never told you it was a house. Never. Our house didn’t have a name, that’s all, it was a big house, it did have gates, it was the biggest house in Dunglass which wasn’t saying anything great. I just didn’t talk about any of it. There are things in your life we don’t go over and over. Go see Dunglass, go on a day when there is light and even watery winter sunshine. Go on a day when you might be able to walk down by the lake. Go see the house. Your grandmother is dead and in the churchyard on the hill. There is no one who will know you. But tell people if you want to. Tell them your mother came from Dunglass and left it. I don’t think you will tell them. You are always saying that most people are not remotely interested in the lives and doings of others.
I love you and I will tell you anything you want to know.
Your mother Freda, in case you have forgotten my name.
Freda,
Stop playing silly games. And let us stop having an argument by mail. Yes I will go to Dunglass. When I’m ready.
And don’t talk to me about my grandmother. She was never allowed to be a grandmother to me. Her name was not spoken to me, I got no letters, no presents . . . there were no pictures of me in a Granny’s Brag Book on this side of the Atlantic. The woman who lies in the churchyard on the hill is your mother. That’s the relationship. You might as well face it. Her name was Mrs Hayes. That’s all I know. You were Freda Hayes, so my Grannie was Mrs Hayes. Don’t lecture me, Freda, about forgetting your name, you never even told me hers.
Gina
Dear Gina,
I have begun this letter twelve times, this is the thirteenth attempt. I will send it no matter what. Her name was Annabel. She was tall and straight. She walked as if she owned Dunglass. And in a way she did. It was her family who had the big house. My father married in as they say. I never knew why they sent me away to boarding school, why they made me leave such a lovely home. Peggy who looked after me used to whisper about rows, and ornaments being broken, but I couldn’t believe that my Dad could be like Peggy said he was, two men, one man sober and another man drunk. Everyone admired my mother, because she ran the place. Even after my father went away she never asked for sympathy. She was cold, Gina, she made herself cold and hard. She used to say to me that we didn’t need their sympathy, their pity. We needed only their admiration. Perhaps some of that has rubbed off on me, perhaps I care too much about people thinking well of me, rather than being natural. She had only one da
ughter, as I have. We could have been more alike than I ever realised. I can’t write any more. I love you. I wish you were here. Or I were there. No, I don’t wish I were there, I can never go to Dunglass. But I want you to go to get some peace and some of your history from it.
Freda
Dear Freda,
Thanks for your letter. I think I’ll cool it a bit on all the emotion. Don’t forget I have Italian blood as well. The mix is too heady. I could explode. The days are getting brighter, I’ve been to Wicklow a lot, it’s so beautiful . . . and I went further south, Wexford . . . the river bank is like something from a movie . . . and Waterford. The Illegal is home from Boston, his name is Joseph. He is very funny about Boston, but I think he wasn’t happy there, he says his dream is to have a little cottage in Wicklow, and write songs. It’s not a bad dream. I have no dreams really.
I’m doing an extra-mural course in the University about Irish history. It was full of dreams.
I’ll give you the telephone number in case you’re lonely and sad. But don’t call just for talking. It’s very artificial.
Joseph says that when he and his mother used to talk, they both put the phone down feeling like hell. We don’t want that Freda. Now that we’re rubbing along okay. Yes of course I love you.
Gina
Gina,
It was so different then. You can’t imagine. I remember the year I met your father. All right. All right. The year I met Gianni . . . the man I married. Does that satisfy you? It seemed as if there was nothing but big funerals that year. Brendan Behan died, Sean O’Casey died. And Roger Casement . . . no I know he didn’t die then, but his body was brought back to Ireland, that’s when I met Gianni. I tried to explain it to him. We sat in a café, it was a cold wet day. He was an Italian American. He tried to explain to me about Vietnam. It was 1964. I told Gianni all about the Irish troops leaving on the peace-keeping mission in Cyprus and I showed him where they were building the new American Embassy. And the Beatles went to America that year . . . it seems like a hundred years ago.