‘Wrong country,’ Leo said, a grin appearing on his face. ‘I’ll put you out of your misery. It’s in Donegal.’
‘Donegal, as in Ireland Donegal?’
‘As in Mum’s grandmother’s Donegal?’
The grin was now a hundred-watt beam. ‘The very place.’
‘Well, that’s convenient,’ Miranda said. ‘We can decide on the spur of the moment to have a getaway weekend and it will only take us thousands of dollars and two days of travel to get there.’
He ignored her. ‘Your mother grew up just a walk from that very house. Don’t you remember her talking about it? There was a beach down the road, and a little stream and a stone bridge where blackberries grew and they’d pick them and make jam and pies and —’
‘Leo, it wouldn’t have been like that,’ Miranda said. ‘You know what she used to say about her holidays. It rained every summer. There were probably midges.’
‘She said the wind would always howl and they had to spend most of the time indoors,’ Juliet added.
‘She loved it there,’ Leo said firmly. ‘You’ll love it too once you see it.’
‘He’s lost his marbles completely,’ Miranda hissed to Juliet when they went out into the kitchen together. ‘More money than good sense. I thought the sports car he bought last year was a worry, but this is ridiculous.’
‘Let him be. He sold the car, remember. It’s something he has to do, you know that. He gets like this every year around her anniversary.’
‘So let him fly back to Hobart and put hundreds of dollars worth of flowers on her grave. Not buy a house on the spur of the moment in the wilds of Northern Ireland.’
‘It’s Donegal. It’s part of the republic.’
‘Juliet, I don’t care if it’s in the middle of Beirut. What’s he doing spending our inheritance on some house none of us will ever visit?’
‘Because this house means something to him. He thinks it’s important.’
‘It’s all right for you. You live just an hour or two’s flight away. What about me and Clementine and Eliza, on the other side of the world? It’s ridiculous.’
‘It’s not ridiculous.’ Leo had followed them into the kitchen. ‘It’s my treat to you all. I can afford to buy it. I can afford the airfares to get you all there. Even if it’s only once a year, for one of our Christmas get-togethers. Please, girls. It would mean a lot to me.’
And so it happened. Through some miracle of schedules, each year for the past five years they had somehow managed to gather in the Donegal house for one of their Christmas celebrations. Miranda still complained about it every year.
‘One year, Juliet, just one year I’d like to say no to him. Just to see what would happen.’
‘He’s an old man. He’s our father. Family’s everything to Leo.’
‘And after he’s gone? Then what?’
Juliet never liked to think about that. She moved from the bedrooms to the living room now, filling the vases with flowers she’d bought in Killybegs on the way through that morning. She had just finished arranging them when her mobile rang. She checked the number and snatched up the phone.
‘Leo!’ She’d starting calling him by his first name the year she turned forty. Her sisters had followed her lead. ‘At last! Where are you?’
‘Hello, chicken. I’m in Paris, about to board the Channel train.’
‘Paris? What are you doing there? I’ve left a dozen messages for you in your London hotel.’
‘I only just got them. I heard about a wonderful museum in the north of France and got talking to the man who runs it. He invited me over and showed me the most marvellous things that never go on public view. We were about ten floors underground, I’m sure of it. Could have stayed there for days. I can’t wait to tell you all about them. Now, have you got pen and paper and I’ll fill you in on my travel plans.’
‘I need to tell you something —’
‘Hold on a moment, Juliet, would you? We’ve got a terrible line. I’m going to try another spot.’
She moved over to the window, watching the progress of a thick creamy wave into the bay as Leo came back on the line and kept talking. He was going to spend a night or two in London, he told her, then fly into Belfast airport and hire a car for the two-hour drive to Glencolmcille. He’d be with her by the end of the week, he said.
‘This will be one of our best Christmases, I can feel it in my bones. When do the others arrive? Don’t tell me, Maggie’s already there, is she?’
‘Well, no.’ Juliet cursed her family yet again, leaving it up to her to break their news. ‘Leo, she’s not coming.’
‘She’s not what?’
‘Maggie’s not coming. She rang on the weekend. She’s sending everyone’s presents by special delivery but she said she just can’t be here with us this year.’
‘But she loves these gatherings. Perhaps if we ring her again once we’re all there? Maybe it wouldn’t be too late for her to —’
‘I’ve got news about the others too.’
Leo laughed. ‘Don’t tell me they’re not coming either.’
‘Okay, I won’t.’
His voice became serious. ‘Who’s not coming?’
‘Eliza and Clementine. They both rang yesterday. Miranda’s decided to come for only two nights. It’ll just be you and me here for the rest of the week. Won’t that be nice?’
‘Juliet, no offence, but of course it won’t be nice. When did this happen? What reasons have they given? It’s because of Maggie, isn’t it? Because she won’t be there.’
He was right. It was no coincidence that her sisters had found reasons to change their plans after hearing that Maggie had decided she definitely wouldn’t be joining them.
‘It just wouldn’t be the same without her,’ Clementine had said from Hobart. ‘And I’d hate to think of her imagining all of us enjoying ourselves without her. It was going to be a rushed trip for me as it was. I’m going to save up my holidays and have a proper break with her in the new year.’
‘I’ve got four new clients,’ Eliza had said from Melbourne. ‘It doesn’t seem worth travelling all that way just for a few days, especially when Maggie won’t be there.’
‘Maggie’s the only thing that makes those gatherings bearable,’ Miranda had said from Singapore. ‘If she’s not going to be there, I’m not coming for a whole week either. I’ll spare you a day, maybe two.’
Another year Juliet might have argued with each of them. Pleaded on their father’s behalf. The fact was, she felt the same way. It wouldn’t be the same without Maggie.
‘We have to make Maggie change her mind,’ Leo said. ‘It’s not too late for the others to come. I was counting on you all being there.’
Juliet laughed. ‘Good luck, Leo. We’ve spent twenty-six years teaching Maggie to know her own mind and think for herself, and you’re going to overturn it with one phone call?’
‘But I’ve got plans. Things I need to talk to you all about.’ Leo was quite agitated now. ‘And what if Sadie turns up this year and none of you are there?’
‘I’ll be here.’ She fought to keep her temper. Of course she would be there. Dutiful, reliable Juliet. ‘And you know Sadie won’t turn up.’
‘She might. I sent an invitation to her care of the priests in Hobart. They promised to send it on to her. My credit card details, the address, everything. You haven’t heard anything, have you? I put your phone numbers as well as mine on the letter.’
Juliet rubbed at the mark on the window pane with added vigour. ‘Oh yes, now I remember, she rang last week. Did I forget to tell you? You know how things like that slip the mind, the sister we haven’t seen for twenty years deciding to drop by for some mid-year mulled wine.’
‘It’s not a joking matter, Juliet.’
Juliet sighed, searching inside herself for some patience. Leo had been talking about Sadie a great deal recently. ‘I’m sorry. No, we haven’t heard from Sadie either. As far as I know she won’t be surprising us with
a visit.’
‘Sadie and Maggie are alike, in many ways, aren’t they? Carrying guilt like this. Cutting themselves off from everyone.’
‘The two situations are completely different, Leo, and you know it.’
‘Poor little Maggie.’
‘Not so little, Leo.’
‘When will this New York exile of hers end?’
‘I don’t think there’s a time limit. Though Miranda did mention something to me about another friend wanting the apartment next month, so Maggie may need to move out after that.’
‘Then what? She goes back to London, to her old job, back to that Angus of hers?’
‘I don’t think Angus is part of it any more. And she never mentions work. She’s living off her savings, I think.’
‘I might just make a little trip over to see her after I’ve caught up with you. Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do. I know she told us she wanted to be left alone, but she’ll make an exception for me, surely.’
‘Could you let me know what time you’ll be dropping by here, Leo, if it’s not too much trouble?’
‘Don’t be hard on me, Juliet. I’m an old man, reviewing my life, counting down the days to the grave. Humour me. Who’s cooking this year, by the way?’
‘Who? Let me think…’
‘What country is it this year?’
‘Thailand, as you very well know. You had the deciding vote, remember?’
‘Thailand, of course. I’ll call you as soon as I get to Belfast Airport, I promise. Let you know when I’m on my way.’
‘That would be great.’ He was already distracted. She could hear it in his voice. ‘See you soon, Leo.’
She hung up and returned to the kitchen. Even if she’d wanted to, it was hard to stay cross with Leo for long. How could she not admire a seventy-eight-year-old father who’d taken up gallivanting as his primary hobby? Myles wouldn’t have agreed, of course. They’d had this fight many times over the years. ‘Yes, he’s a charmer, but he also manipulates you all. You know that, don’t you? Never lets you forget how much he’s done for you.’
‘How can you say that? You know how generous he is with his money, with everything. We couldn’t have expanded half as quickly as we have if it wasn’t for Leo’s money.’
‘Leo’s money that came with far more conditions than any hard-nosed bank manager would have attached. “Thou shalt all gather each year for at least one Christmas celebration, whether you like it or not —”’
‘We do like it.’
‘“Thou shalt keep a spare room in thine house for Leo to drop in whenever it suits him.”’
‘Of course I’m not going to turn my own father away if he wants to come and stay. He’s an old man, Myles.’
‘He’s an old man who is used to getting his own way. The five of you – the four of you – have been dancing to his tune for as long as I’ve known you.’
Juliet had been furious with him. Because, perhaps, he was just the tiniest bit right. But how dare he? It was all right for him, both his parents living the life of Reilly in retirement in Spain. Family was important to Juliet. More important than anything. It always had been.
It was time to get back to work. Block those negative thoughts out. A saying from the old days in the Hobart café all those years ago came to mind. ‘Make the best of what you have’. It amazed her sometimes how consoling those clichés actually were. She was sure there had been one about busy hands making a light heart. Even if there were just three members of the family here this year, there was still lots of work to be done.
She’d unpacked some of their supplies into the large freezer already, but half of the wooden shelves and the big table in the centre of the room were still covered in boxes and paper bags. The small shop in the village had the essentials, but she couldn’t expect them to have the sorts of ingredients she needed this year – coconut milk, coriander and lemongrass, for starters. Last July they’d had a Spanish Christmas. The year before it had been German. Or had it been Austrian? She remembered lots of sauerkraut and wiener schnitzels. And Leo singing a passionate version of ‘O Tannenbaum’.
She only had herself to blame. The multicultural July Christmases had been her idea. She’d decided on it twelve years before, when the Hobart family home was still their gathering place for the two Christmas celebrations each year, one in July, one in December. The July menu hadn’t changed in years: roast turkey, crispy, golden-brown potatoes, four different vegetables – freshly shelled peas, brussels sprouts, parsnips and carrots, roasted to crunchy tips the way they all liked them. Bread sauce and homemade gravy. For dessert, a traditional plum pudding made two months previously from directions in their mother’s handwritten recipe book. Juliet would keep the bowl on the darkest, coolest shelf of the pantry, as her mother had done, each week tipping a little more brandy into the bowl, taking a moment to breathe in the rich, curranty fumes. She’d make a fruit cake and her own thick white icing. She’d have Maggie beside her nearly every step of the way, a mini chef’s apprentice, watching solemnly as she made the pastry, helping her measure out the sultanas and mixed fruit peel for the mince pies, letting her take charge of sifting the icing sugar on top of each golden pastry lid, arranging them onto serving dishes, finishing each display with a little sprig of artificial holly.
It was as she and Maggie started to ice the mince pies that year that she’d been overcome with a feeling of absolute boredom. How many had she iced over the years? She made an average of thirty of the little pies each year. This was their twenty-fourth July Christmas.
She’d turned to her niece. ‘Maggie, what’s thirty multiplied by twenty-four?’
‘Seven hundred and twenty,’ a then fourteen-year-old Maggie said without hesitation.
More than seven hundred mince pies. Two dozen cakes. Two dozen puddings and turkeys, hundreds of brussels sprouts… It was time for something new. Before she had time to change her mind, she’d gone out to the shed and spoken to Leo.
‘Will you cast us all out if I change the Christmas menu a little?’
‘Of course not. As long as we eat together and I get to laugh at you all in silly hats, I’m happy.’
‘So I don’t have to cook a turkey tomorrow?’
‘Not if you don’t want to. It’s about being together, not what we eat.’
She’d called in the others. ‘You won’t complain if there is no turkey on the table?’
‘I won’t. And I bet the turkey won’t either,’ Miranda said.
Eliza had taken some convincing. ‘I thought the whole point of the July Christmas was to have turkey in wintertime rather than summertime.’
‘Mum never specified the menu,’ Juliet explained. ‘It was the idea of it she loved.’
It hadn’t felt like she was being dishonourable to her mother’s memory, not even for a minute. It had been a feeling of change, of moving on, even if just in a small way. A strange relief. The turkey – already bought, alas, so the change in menu no last-minute reprieve for it – went into the freezer. The vegetables were chopped into tiny pieces and made into soup, which she would freeze as well. The plum pudding would keep for another month or two – another year or two even, considering the amount of brandy it was steeped in. She’d shut her eyes tight and thought of the most delicious meal she’d had recently. She got an immediate sensual memory of a wonderful three-course meal she and Myles had enjoyed six weeks earlier in Leichhardt, Sydney’s Little Italy. Perfect. They’d have an Italian July Christmas. Antipasto to begin, pasta for second course, meat for third course, rich creamy tiramisu for dessert. A long, leisurely Italian meal, out under the trees, just like all the ads for pasta sauce on the television.
She got organised quickly. She was almost too late. The supermarket was closing when she drove up. Almost defeated, she remembered the deli in West Hobart that stayed open late, no matter what day it was. She went in with intentions of buying everything she needed for an Italian-flavoured feast, and then got talking to Freddie, the I
ndian man behind the counter. Half an hour later she left carrying three crammed bags of fresh vegetables, spices, meat and two handwritten pages of recipes.
The next day the Faradays sang Christmas carols and pulled their crackers over a feast of samosas, chicken tikka, naan bread, chutneys, cucumber raita and saffron rice. The next year they went French (caramelised onion soup, slowcooked chicken, tarte tatin), the following year Spanish (spicy prawns with parsley, ovenbaked fish with cumin), after that Vietnamese, Moroccan, Irish, German and, at last, Italian. They were slowly working their way around the world, each of them taking it in turns to pick a country. Each of them except Sadie, of course.
It still amazed Juliet that they’d been able to continue with the traditions without Sadie being there. It was Maggie who had insisted. Proof again that they’d been right to make light of what had happened to her that summer, to turn the whole thing into an adventure. She had started talking about the July Christmas the day after she came back home, as though things were perfectly normal. She hadn’t even seemed bothered that Clementine barely let her out of her sight, that all of them kept touching her, hugging her, saying how much they’d missed her.
It was Miranda who made up the story to explain Sadie’s sudden disappearance. It was two weeks after they had got Maggie back. Their neighbour Mrs Freyn had stopped Miranda on her way into town. She’d noticed everyone was home for the weekend again.
‘I haven’t seen that Sadie for a while,’ Mrs Freyn said. ‘Clementine’s been taking her daughter to school every day lately, I’ve noticed.’
Miranda said she didn’t know where the idea came from. It had simply popped into her head. ‘Actually, Mrs Freyn, she’s made a big life decision. She’s decided to drop out. Join the counter culture. Take up an alternative lifestyle.’
Mrs Freyn just stared at her.
‘She’s become a hippy,’ Miranda said helpfully.
‘You should have seen her hurry to get away from me and pass on the news,’ Miranda told them when she got home.
Clementine stayed stony-faced, as she always did back then when Sadie was mentioned. Eliza thought Miranda had gone too far. Leo hadn’t been at all amused.
Those Faraday Girls Page 24