Maeve Binchy

by The Quentins (Lit)

  254

  I .

  kept coming in all afternoon and all they needed for payment was an ice-cream.

  Best not to question good news, Patrick always believed, like the look of love and huge relief in Brenda's eyes as she reached out her hand and stroked his through the most extraordinary - and successful - evening that Quentins had known so far.

  255

  Carissima

  When Brenda's great friend Nora had lived all those years in Italy, she had written long, long letters. Always she began with the word "Carissima" ... It sounded a bit fancy, Brenda thought, a little over the top, but Nora had insisted. She spoke Italian, she dreamed Italian now. To say "Dear Brenda" would sound flat and dull.

  Carissima .. . dearest . .. was a better way to begin.

  And Brenda wrote back faithfully. She charted a changing Ireland for her friend, for Nora who lived in the timeless Sicilian village of Anninziata. Brenda wrote how the waves of emigration were halted, how affluence came gradually to the cities, how the power of the Church seemed to slip away and change into something entirely different.

  Brenda wrote that young people from different lands came to find work in Ireland now, girls who found themselves pregnant kept their babies instead of giving them up for adoption, young couples lived together for six months or a year before their marriages.

  Things that were unheard of when Brenda and Nora were young.

  Nora wrote about her friends in this village. The young couple who rented the pottery shop. Signora Leone. And of course Mario.

  Mario, who ran the hotel.

  Nora never wrote of Mario's wife Gabriella or their children. But that was all right. Some things were too huge to write about.

  256

  h

  6

  rr

  Brenda wrote about a lot of things, how she had met this guy they used to call Pillowcase, but was most definitely called Patrick Brennan these days, how they had fallen in love and worked in many restaurants. She told how the good fortune of running Quentins had fallen into their lap and they were ra pidly making a great name for themselves. She wrote about the people who came and went, staff, and those like Patrick's brother Blouse, who had stayed and flourished there.

  But Brenda only once told the deepest secrets of her soul, their great wish to have children, the long, often humiliating and eventually disappointing road of fertility guidance. That was too hard to write about.

  Brenda was very helpful in that she acted as a spy for Nora O"Donoghue by going to see Nora's family. Hard, unforgiving people, who regarded her as a sinner and a fool, someone who had disgraced them by running off after a married man.

  They were so uncaring about Nora's life that Brenda urged her friend to forget them. "They have forgotten you unless it suits them," she had written to Sicily. "I beg you, don't listen to any pleas they may have when they are older that you should return and be their nurse."

  "Carissima," Nora had written, "I will never leave this place while there is a chance that I can see my Mario. I wish they could share my happiness. But perhaps one day they will be able to."

  Nora's Mario died, killed in an accident on the mountain roads which he drove across so fast. The village implied that the Signora Irlandese should now leave and go home.

  Brenda would never forget the day Nora had appeared at Quentins, long dress, wild hair, her face mad with grief for the only man she had ever loved. She still called Brenda "Carissima". They were still best friends. The long years apart, well over two decades, had changed nothing between them.

  And when Nora found a new love, Aidan, the teacher up in Mountainview School, she and Brenda clutched each other like teenagers. Til dance at your wedding," Brenda promised.

  "Hardly, there is the little problem of his first "wife," Nora had giggled.

  "Come on, Nora, drag yourself to the present day ... there is divorce since 1995."

  I managed for well over twenty years without marriage first

  257

  time round. I can do it again." Nora wasn't asking for the moon and stars.

  "You do what you like, but I'm not giving up on it," Brenda threatened.

  Patrick said that it was amazing they found so much to talk about. He was never jealous of their friendship, but often said that men just didn't have conversations like that about every single aspect of life.

  "You are the losers," Brenda said.

  "I agree, that's what I'm saying," Patrick said unexpectedly.

  Nora went every week to the hospital where her elderly father lived in the geriatric ward. Ram or shine she wheeled him in the grounds. Sometimes he smiled at her and seemed pleased, other times he just stared ahead. She told him about any happy things that she remembered about her childhood. Often these were difficult to dredge up. She didn't tell him about Sicily because already it was fading in her mind like a highly coloured photograph left in bright sunlight. So she told him about Aidan Dunne and Mountainview School and the Italian classes. And she talked pleasantly about her sisters Rita and Helen, and her large!} silent brothers, even though she hardly saw them at all.

  The news that she had moved into a bed-sitting-room with a married Latin teacher had horrified them all over again. Really, Nora seemed to be a scourge sent to lash their backs.

  Nora called to see her mother every week. Age had not improved her mother's temper or attitude, but Nora was determined to remain calm. Years of practice had given her a skill at being passive. And it was easy to call in for an hour and listen to her mother's list of complaints if she could go back on the bus to good, kind Aidan, who was so different and saw nothing bad in the world.

  The day of her father's funeral was bleak and wet. Brenda and Patrick came but they decided against letting Aidan take part. He might be like a red rag to a bull.

  Some of her students from the Italian class came to the church, an odd little group which certainly helped to boost the numbers.

  "I'd ask you back, but I don't honestly think that my mother would be able to . . ."

  258

  No, no, they insisted, they had just wanted to pay their respects. That was all.

  Nora's mother found fault with everything. The priest had been too young, too swift, too impersonal. People hadn't worn dark clothes. The hotel they had gone to for coffee, just the family, had been entirely unsuitable.

  She brooked no conversation at all about Father. Did not care to hear that he had been a kind man and that it was good that he was at peace. Instead there was a litany of his mistakes which were apparently legion and the main one was his never having taken out a proper insurance policy.

  "And now of course you'll all go off to your own homes and leave me alone for the rest of my days," she said.

  Nora waited for the others to speak. One by one they did. They told Mother that she was in fine health, that a woman in her seventies was not old these days. They reminded her that her flat was very convenient for bus stops, shops and the church. They said that they would all come to see her regularly and now that there was no longer a matter of visiting Father, they would take her on different outings.

  Their mother sighed as if this was not nearly enough. "You only come once a month," she said.

  This was news to Nora. It had always been implied that the visits from her sisters and sisters-in-law were much more frequent. It meant then that she, with her weekly visit, was indeed the best of them all.

  She noted it without allowing her face to change.

  Rita and Helen were quick to explain. They were so busy and, honestly, others must remember how hard it was with families and running proper homes.

  The implication was that Nora had all the time in the world and no responsibilities so should play nursemaid and be glad to do so. Nora, who worked harder than any of them, Nora, the only one of them without a car who did the awkward shopping, and visited four times as often as the others did, always bearing something she had cooked for her mother.

  It "was gross
ly unfair of them to make her of all people feel guilty. And she had promised Brenda Brennan that she would never weaken. But Nora had also promised herself that she would be polite and courteous to the family, she would not return their hostile, bad-mannered attitude.

  So she blinked at them all pleasantly as if she hadn't understood the direction of their conversation. She could see it driving them

  259

  all insane. Still, what the hell, she was not going to lose her dignity on the day of her father's funeral. And after all, she had Aidan to go home to after all this. Aidan, who would make her strong tea, play some lovely arias in the background as they talked, and want to know every heartbeat of the day.

  Then tomorrow she would meet Carissima Brenda and tell her the story again.

  She looked at her sisters, brothers and their spouses. Not one of them had a fraction of the happiness she had.

  This gave Nora great confidence and strength and made it easy to put up with their taunts and very obvious suggestions that she abandon everything and go and look after her mother full-time.

  "I'll come round to see you tomorrow," Nora promised as she left. She kissed the cold parchment of her mother's cheek.

  Did this woman miss the man they had buried today? Did she look back at times when there was passion and love? Maybe there had never been any passion and love.

  She shuddered at the thought. She who had found it twice in one lifetime.

  She saw Helen and Rita looking at her oddly. She knew that her sisters often talked about her with their sisters-in-law. It didn't matter very much.

  "Will you be round at Mother's tomorrow also?" she asked them pleasantly.

  Helen shrugged. "If you're going, Nora, there's not much point in us all crowding in," she said.

  "And anyway I'll be there next week," Rita snapped.

  But she could still hear them reassuring their mother, "Nora'll be in tomorrow."

  "Aren't you going to be fine tomorrow, Nora will do any jobs for you."

  "Nora has nothing to do, Mam, she'll do all the shopping for you when she comes to see you."

  It would be like this always. But it didn't matter. None of the rest of them had known happiness like Nora had. It was only fair that she should give something back.

  "Did you end up paying for their coffee and sandwiches yesterday?" Brenda asked her friend Nora.

  260

  "Brenda, raw Carissima Brenda, don't you always have the hard word?" Nora laughed.

  "That means you did," Brenda cried triumphantly. "Those four kept their hands in their pockets and you, who have no money at all, paid."

  "Don't I have plenty of money thanks to good people like you?"

  She went on washing and chopping vegetables in Quentins, where she was paid the hourly rate.

  "Nora, will you stop and listen to what you're saying? We pay you a pittance here because you insist it will all mount up to take Aidan and yourself to Italy, and then those selfish pigs make you spend your few pounds on their bloody sandwiches. It makes my blood boil."

  "Brenda Carissima ... you of all people must not boil. You know they call you the ice maiden, you know you must be cool and calm. To boil would be a great, great mistake."

  Brenda laughed. "What am I to do with you? I can't make it up for you which might stop me boiling. You won't take what you call charity."

  "Certainly not."

  "Well, swear one thing. Now. Swear here and now that you won't listen when they tell you that she needs a full-time carer and that you are it."

  "They won't!"

  "Swear it, Nora."

  I can't. I don't know the future."

  "I know the future," said Brenda grimly. "And I'm very sad that you're not going to swear."

  It happened sooner than e ven Brenda could have believed. Only weeks after her father's funeral, Nora found herself being told that her mother had failed terribly.

  They didn't get in touch with her at home because the little flat she shared with Aidan Dunne was still out-of-bounds territory for her brothers and sisters. Some of the letters were sent to Mountainview School, some care of her mother. Helen directed hers through Quentins Restaurant, which was why Brenda became suspicious.

  "Tell me, I demand to know what are they asking you to do now," she begged.

  "You are really a very difficult friend, Carissima," Nora laughed

  261

  as she polished the silver, another little restaurant job she had managed to wangle to help top up the Italy fund.

  "No, I'm so helpful and so good for you. Just tell me what they want."

  "Mother is walking around in the night. It came on her suddenly. She can't bear being on her own, apparently."

  "Your father was in hospital for over three years, she had some time to get used to it."

  "She's old and frail, Carissima."

  "She's seventy-five and as fit as a flea."

  They looked at each other angrily.

  "Are we having a fight?" Nora asked.

  "No, we couldn't have a fight, you and I. You know all my secrets, where all the bodies are buried," Brenda said ruefully. "But believe me, I tried to persuade you not to run after Mario, and as it turned out I was wrong. You had the life you wanted. However, I'm not wrong this time and that kind of pressure was nothing to what I'm going to put on you now. Before I have to shake it out of you, what have they asked?"

  "That I spend some nights in Mother's place," Nora sounded mutinous. "It's not much to ask. I mean . .."

  "How many nights?" Brenda's voice was like steel.

  "Well, until they get full-time help ..."

  "Which they won't ..."

  "Oh, they will eventually, Carissima ..."

  "Don't Carissima me, Nora. They've asked you to go in every night, haven't they?"

  "For a very short time . .."

  "And Aidan?"

  "He'll understand. I'd want him to do it if it were one of his parents."

  "Listen. That man had one class-A bitch of a wife already. Don't let him have a second wife who turns out to be as mad as a fruitcake."

  "We owe it, we have so much happiness, and isn't it like a bank? You have to give something out if your account is overflowing."

  "No, Nora, that's not the way it works."

  "It is for me and for Aidan too. I know it will be."

  There was a silence.

  Nora spoke again. "It's not that I don't have the guts to refuse

  262

  1

  them. I do, plenty of guts. I know my mother disapproves of me, and my brothers and sisters do, but that's not the point."

  Brenda knew with terrible clarity that this was indeed the point. This family wanted to destroy Nora's happiness.

  Nora had spent too many years in the hot sun of Southern Italy. It had affected her judgement, softened her mind. It was going to lose her the love of that good man Aidan Dunne.

  "Will you promise me one thing ..." Brenda began.

  "I can't make any promises."

  "Just do nothing for a week. Say nothing to anyone for one week. It's not long."

  "What's the point if I'm going to do it anyway?" "Please. Just to humour me."

  "Bene Carissima ... just to humour you, then."

  Brenda Brennan called a friend who was a matron in a hospital. "Kitty, can I ask you a very small favour? There's a nice bribe of dinner for two in the restaurant."

  "Who do I have to assassinate?" Kitty Doyle asked eagerly.

  "Do you like having me around your flat, Mother?" Nora asked.

  "What kind of question is that?"

  "I just wondered. You don't smile. You don't laugh -with me."

  "What's there to smile and laugh about?"

  I tell you little jokes sometimes."

  "Ah, don't start going soft in the head, Nora. Really now, on top of everything else."

  "On top of what else?"

  "You know."

  "Can I bring Aidan to meet you, Mother? I've met all h
is family."

  "You haven't met his lawful wedded wife, I'd say."

  I have, actually. I met her up at Mountainview School and I met her up at her house. You know, where Aidan used to live. I painted the Italian room so that she could make it into a dining room when she sold the house."

  Her mother showed not the slightest interest.

  "Would you like me to paint the kitchen here for you, Mother?"

  "What for?" her mother asked.

  "No, let's leave it," Nora said.

  263

  "Your mind is a million miles away, Nora," Aidan said that night. "Is something worrying you?"

  "Not really."

  "Tell me."

  Til tell you in a week," she said.

  "There's nothing wrong, Nora? I can't wait a week. Tell me, tell me."

  "No, it's no illness or anything. It's just a problem. I promised I'd wait a week. You sometimes wait before you tell me things. Believe me, it's nothing sad," she said, her hand on his arm.

  "I love you so much, my beautiful Nora," he said, tears in his eyes. "And I too will have news for you in a week."

  "I'm not beautiful. I'm old and mad," Nora said seriously.

  "No, you foolish love, you are beautiful," said Aidan, and he meant it.

  Back in her mother's flat, Nora assessed how much she needed to bring with her. Sheets, a couple of rugs that could be easily stored when they were not in use on the sofa.

  She would have to have a sponge bag, a change of shoes and some underwear that she could store in the bathroom cupboard. She must get a stronger electric light bulb. Maybe she could do some embroidery at night when Mother was asleep.