by Cathy Kelly
And then, two years later, along came Julia, and suddenly there was no point in Grace wondering if they’d done the right thing or not. Julia had made all the second-guessing redundant.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Stephen had said. ‘I never thought … She was there and you weren’t.’
It didn’t hurt any more. Not after fifteen years. But it … Grace searched for the word. It stung. Yes, that was it. It stung that their marriage hadn’t worked, and yet Stephen had now been living happily with Julia for thirteen years. Julia had managed what Grace couldn’t. That, too, stung.
Julia was so very different from her. Childless by choice, it seemed, effortlessly cool, intellectual in a way Grace had no interest in being; she was as far apart from Grace as it was possible to be. Grace’s social life didn’t involve book clubs – she had tried one once when the children were younger, but it hadn’t worked out. Wine had been produced too soon, everyone present was a mother, the conversation had inevitably turned to children, and by ten they were all tired, worn out with half a bottle inside them. Not one single conversation had gone on about the book.
Julia’s book club, however, had progressed through the Irish classics, great American literature, Australian writers and Booker Prize winners, and was now casting around for fresh territories to cover – Grace knew this through Fiona; Stephen would never confide such details. Any more than he would tell her about the foreign films he and Julia went to see, or their visits to the theatre and their annual trip to attend the opera in Vienna.
Grace’s social life revolved around her children, friends from school, and some of the mothers she’d known from when Michael and Fiona were small. Her best friend was Nora, who ran the Hummingbird Nursing Home in town. It was a world apart from Stephen’s current life, and even though she knew she shouldn’t be comparing, she somehow still did.
‘Why do I do that?’ she’d asked Nora many times. ‘Why do I wonder if I had been more like Julia, more laid-back and sophisticated, would we still be together?’
Nora, wise as Grace and still married to her childhood sweetheart, Leopold, said she thought it was just one more part of being human: imagining what might have been.
‘The path not chosen – it haunts us all,’ she said. ‘We all wonder, Grace. Listen, as I’ve said before, you had children and a career: you were thinking of both of those things when you told Stephen he should move to Dublin without you. Besides, you are very sophisticated.
‘Sometimes,’ Nora went on, ‘I wonder if I hadn’t stayed in Bridgeport, married Leopold and set up the Hummingbird, would I be singing in the Royal Albert Hall once a week and living in a posh flat with suitors coming by with flowers daily?’
‘I can’t imagine you with a different life,’ Grace said.
‘Neither can I really,’ Nora said. ‘But I still dream about it from time to time. People dream, sweetie; it keeps us sane. But you’re you, not Julia. She’s never had the joy of children. And let’s face it, you’d go stone mad if you were out at the cinema and theatre every night. As for the opera, even though you listen to it for me when we’re in the car together, I know it’s not for you. You’re a Fleetwood Mac girl, and if you were blonde, I swear you’d dress like Stevie Nicks.’
They both laughed.
‘Principals can’t wear trailing shirts and too many bangles, or have long, long hair that hints at someone having run their fingers through it,’ joked Grace. ‘Though I might try it one day for fun.’
It was nearly six, and a typically freezing January night, as Grace drove home through the streets of Bridgeport. Even in the bitter cold, with wet roads and the possibility of black ice round the corner, it was still a beautiful place to live.
She recalled the times she’d flown into Waterford airport and looked down on her beloved home town from above. Clinging to a peninsula close to Waterford city, it called to mind a starfruit placed on the mouth of a river: the town with its five fingers splayed out and the silver thread of the River Dóchas leading to the harbour. The river divided the town into two, the opposite sides joined by the Old Bridge and the New Bridge.
Well over a hundred years ago, Bridgeport had evolved from a fishing town into a resort where wealthy people frequented the big Edwardian hotels that lined one side of the harbour. On the other side of the water were the fishermen’s cottages, now painted in sherbert colours, at least a third of them turned into restaurants capitalising on the local fishing industry. In the late 1980s, half a Viking boat and some Viking gold had been dug up from the river delta at low tide, and the canny lord mayor had insisted on having an interpretative centre built, to put Bridgeport firmly on the tourist map. The New Bridge was speedily renamed Thor’s Bridge and the short winding path along the headland on the west side of the town became the Valkyrie Walk. A long-drawn-out row had been going on ever since, with the Ancient Order of Hibernians insisting that it should be called the Nuns’ Walk, as the path was reputed to have been used by sisters making their way to morning prayers from the old convent that adjoined a long-abandoned monastery on the headland. Those whose businesses relied on the tourist trade felt Vikings were a far better bet than nuns when it came to drawing holidaymakers to the area.
The argument had been rumbling on for years, with battle re-enactment days interspersed with silent retreats, both of which brought in tourists.
As Grace drove, she tried to remember whether she had anything in the fridge for dinner. Healthy eating was all well and good; at school she operated a strict lunchbox policy that banned crisps and permitted chocolate or sweets only on Fridays, but the lunchboxes of five- to twelve-year-olds were a far cry from the provisions of a divorced headmistress. Eating properly took planning, and sometimes Grace simply didn’t have the time or energy for such a thing. She kept meaning to order her shopping online, but somehow she never got round to it.
‘I don’t see how this healthy business is all that good for you,’ Nora had moaned the week before, when they’d been having their once-a-month Friday-evening get-together – or witches’ coven, as Nora’s husband called it. ‘There’s no cake in it, for starters. People need cake,’ she added firmly.
‘You can live on cake and it doesn’t go near your hips,’ Grace pointed out with a wistful sigh, regretting that she’d started the conversation. ‘If I so much as look at a piece of cheesecake, five minutes later I’m wearing it. I used to be able to eat like a horse.’
Nora could carry weight, being nearly six foot tall and still built like an athlete, despite being the wrong side of sixty. Grace, who was a shade over five five and with slender bones, came from a family where the women piled on the pounds once they hit menopause. The weight settled implacably around their middles and refused to move.
At fifty-four, and with a wardrobe of clothes she was determined to carry on fitting into, Grace had begun to realise that genes were powerful things. In theory, she had no problem with her changing shape – people aged, bodies were bound to change; it was the way of the world. But she felt mildly irritated when garments like her lovely russet silk skirt, the absolute favourite thing in her wardrobe, no longer fitted.
She and Nora had examined the skirt to see if careful seamstress work might make it wearable again, but the consensus had been no.
‘I’ll have to buy new clothes now,’ grumbled Grace.
Nora laughed. ‘You have to be the only woman who doesn’t like clothes-shopping.’
‘I’m too impatient,’ Grace said. ‘It takes hours and you come out with one blinking sweater for all your trouble.’
‘You, impatient? Never,’ added Nora sweetly. ‘Go into one of the big shops in Waterford and get a personal shopper. It’s all different now. Nobody tries to make you buy expensive things. You just tell them what you want to spend.’
‘I’d hate that. No, I’m going online,’ said Grace. ‘If I look like a madwoman in something, nobody but me and my own mirror will know, and I can send it back.’
While she was at it, she migh
t as well sign up online to get her food delivered, she decided as she drove into town, trying to figure out where she’d stop to shop for dinner. Planning was all it would take. Less planning on school and more around her own life.
She decided that she couldn’t face the supermarket, which had somehow turned into a dating zone in the evenings, full of single people with baskets eyeing up other single people with baskets.
Since the divorce, Grace had spent far too much time thwarting the efforts of well-meaning friends hell-bent on setting her up with men; the last thing she wanted was to encounter flirtatious or uninterested glances over the avocados. She didn’t know which was worse – being eyed up or being considered too old to eye up. Maybe it was a good thing her russet skirt no longer fitted – it did make her look a bit schoolmarmy. Her favourite magazines were always warning of the dangers of making yourself seem older than you were by slipping into comfy clothes. Still, did it matter how a person dressed? What you were like on the inside and your enthusiasm for life was what mattered, surely?
The mini-market at the bottom of Westland Street had no time for such shenanigans. It was the sort of place where office workers nipped in to grab frozen pizzas, milk and tea bags, too tired after a hard day to care what anyone else was doing.
‘Mrs Rhattigan, hello,’ said the cheery ex-pupil behind the cash register when Grace had finally filled her basket.
‘Hi, Maxine, how’s college?’
‘Great,’ Maxine said, ringing up Grace’s purchases with speed: fresh pasta stuffed with cheese and ham, pasta sauce, lettuce, balsamic vinegar, and finally, evilly, two of those yogurt-pot-sized cheesecake desserts. All wildly innocent purchases.
That was one of the drawbacks of the job, Grace thought with a private grin. A headmistress daren’t buy a bottle of vodka and chicken nuggets for dinner, else it would be round the town in a moment.
‘Thanks, Maxine,’ she said with a big smile as the girl helped pack her groceries. ‘Your mother told me you got great results in your Christmas exams.’
Maxine returned the smile.
You never forgot the children, that was the thing about being a headmistress. Whether they were beaming examples of sweetness or naughty little monkeys forever being caught messing in class, it didn’t matter. If a child had been through her school in the twenty-four years she’d been there, ten as a teacher and fourteen as headmistress, then Grace remembered them.
Not all her past pupils were doing as well as Maxine. As Grace left the mini-market and drove home, her thoughts turned to the discussion she’d had that day concerning Ruby Morrison.
She’d known there was a problem as soon as Derek McGurk, headmaster of next door’s Bridgeport Technical School, asked to see her urgently. As the respective heads of the town’s two biggest schools, they ended up having most of the same kids pass through their doors; some were no trouble at all, while others had files the size of house bricks to catalogue their many transgressions, warnings and suspension notices.
It was both a blessing and a curse to Grace that she felt so bound up in the lives of her little students. Just because a pupil had left her school at the age of twelve and gone on to the grown-up world next door didn’t mean she could forget about them – or stop worrying about them. Derek was wily enough to realise this and often got her involved when confronted by a problem he didn’t know how best to tackle.
During her lunch break, Grace had walked the few hundred metres to Bridgeport Tech. As always, she was struck by the difference between the senior school and hers. Here, the scent of teenage trainers mingled with sweat and deodorant and a hint of forbidden cigarette smoke; Derek and his staff did their best to stamp out smoking, but their efforts were about as successful as trying to plug a giant hole in the dyke with an ice lolly.
‘Hello, Derek,’ she said, sitting herself down on the most comfortable seat in Derek’s modest office.
‘Coffee?’ Derek asked, poised over his favourite toy, a gleaming black Nespresso machine, bought by himself and not from school funds, as he told his guests every time he offered them a drink from it.
‘That would be lovely,’ Grace said. ‘One of the little green ones?’
Grace knew that Derek had romantic notions about her and that nothing gave him greater pleasure than to invite her into his inner sanctum. She’d spent years pretending not to notice how he complimented her whenever he saw her. One day, she was sure of it, he would be brave enough to ask her to dinner. But even though as a principal she was supposed to know all the answers, she had absolutely no idea how to wriggle out of that one.
‘You look wonderful today, Grace,’ he said, eyes shining at her like a faithful dog.
Inside, Grace quailed.
‘Thank you, Derek,’ she said, in her most professional tones, thinking that if she’d known she was going to be visiting his office that day, she wouldn’t have worn the gold silk blouse that Fiona had bought her because she said it brought out the honey flecks in her blue eyes. She wouldn’t have indulged herself with a splash of Opium perfume either, which her ex-husband used to say was unadulterated female pheromones in a bottle that no man could resist.
‘I’m sure you’re as busy as I am. Let’s talk about what’s worrying you, shall we?’ she went on.
Ruby Morrison, now almost seventeen, was the daughter of Jennifer and Ryan Morrison. Until about a year ago she’d been a model pupil, but now she was locked into a downward spiral, sitting silently in class and not taking part in any discussions. She was doing little or no homework and had gone from being an A student to someone who failed every test. Earlier that day she’d been sent to the principal’s office for not turning up for history class, despite being in school.
‘It’s the fourth time she’s missed class in this way this month, and we’re only just back after Christmas,’ Derek said. ‘Her form teacher has asked her what’s wrong, but she won’t say, says she’s fine. When the teacher pushed, she said school was boring. Nothing more. You can only do so much, Grace, if they won’t even talk to you. Which is why I thought you could help.’
Grace had been listening with sadness. Ruby had been one of the good ones, the kids who were a pleasure to teach. She did her homework happily, got on with well with her peers and was eager to be picked whenever an older pupil was required to deliver a message to a younger class’s teacher because she loved the little kids.
Grace could picture Ruby perfectly: pointed chin, solemn grey eyes that saw everything, and the same midnight-dark hair as her mother, Jennifer.
Jennifer had been a different kettle of fish: one of those women always ready to see insult in everything and fire off a letter of complaint.
‘Have you spoken to her mother?’ Grace asked.
‘I haven’t. Her form teacher has, but all she got was the usual: Ruby is an angel and so what if she skips class. Why are we complaining about Ruby when there are hoodlums in the place – you know the kind of thing.’
Grace did indeed. There were always the deluded parents who refused to believe there was any sort of issue with their own son or daughter and that the problem was everyone else.
But Ruby? Ruby wasn’t the sort of girl to skip class. Something was going on, either at school or in the girl’s home life, to have brought about this change.
Ruby’s little sister, Shelby, was still under Grace’s care: a gentle nine-year-old who was shy, her teacher said, but biddable and artistic.
‘Bullying?’ she asked.
Derek didn’t bridle. ‘You know the work we’ve put into the bullying programme,’ he said. ‘You can’t see the paint on the walls for anti-bullying posters. We’ve had the whole class working on it in social and personal studies all month. It’s not that – it’s something at home. Nobody can reach her, not the form teacher, nobody.
‘You’ve got a great network in this town, Grace,’ Derek went on with a hint of envy. ‘You know everyone. Could you discreetly find out if there’s anything going on there? Ruby’s mother
isn’t easy to deal with. If we knew what was happening – money problems, whatever – we might be in a better position to help.’
Knowing everyone and everything was a real boon. Grace knew that Ruby and Shelby’s parents had split up, but that was four years ago. There could be no trauma there, surely? But then the length of time since the split was no guarantee of improved relations. Some couples carried separation or divorce like a precious wound and refused to ever let it heal. Grace hoped that wasn’t what was happening here. But what was happening?
She hadn’t stopped fretting about Ruby since she left Derek’s office. The little girl with the grey eyes had been one of those special children, the ones who touched a teacher’s heart and would always have a place in it. Teenagers were so vulnerable, delicate creatures held to earth by fragile threads that could so easily be broken. She and Stephen had done their very best to shield Michael and Fiona from the effects of their divorce, and thankfully both had grown into happy, confident adults. But little Ruby … what had happened to her?
Grace parked the car, gathered up her briefcase and bag of shopping, and hurried up the path to the front door of the pretty cottage she’d bought when she and Stephen had finally divorced. Inside, she turned on lights, closed curtains and then flicked on the television news; sometimes, when she was feeling down, a blast of headlines about the world’s problems put things into perspective.
It was at moments like this that she wished she still had someone to share things with. Someone to whom she could say, ‘I’m tired and worried and I don’t know if I can do this job for much longer because it’s hard, and I’m soft.’
But there was nobody, not even a mouse. Since she had put down poison a few weeks ago, the scrabbling under the sink cabinets had stopped.
‘Sorry, mouse,’ she said in the general direction of the cabinet as she boiled water for her pasta. ‘I feel mean now. If I were a Buddhist I wouldn’t have done that. I’m sort of sorry I did. You deserve a life too. Just not under my kitchen cabinets.’