by Cathy Kelly
Nora wrinkled her nose. ‘We both know that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck: it’s a duck.’
They both fell silent.
‘Quack,’ said Nora finally. ‘You can’t fix the whole planet, Grace. Enough about Howard – I want to hear all about the baby and Katy and what’s going to happen with the wedding.’
For a moment Grace looked anxious, which wasn’t like her, Nora thought.
‘I’m a bit jittery, and will be until she passes the three-month stage,’ she admitted. ‘I know they have to tell people because they’re moving the wedding forward, and I suppose you have to give a reason why, but there’s a lot to be said for waiting till the first three months are up …’
Nora laid her hand over Grace’s. ‘It will be fine,’ she said. ‘Tell me, is Stephen delighted?’
‘Overjoyed,’ Grace said. ‘You have no idea. He’s rung me at least three times to talk about it, wanting to know whether he should give them a baby buggy as a present, should he get a travel cot for his and Julia’s place in case they stay over, what sort of baby seat should he buy for the car. I think he believes he’s having the baby.’
A waitress came over, asked if they wanted anything to drink and delivered menus, which they both looked at hungrily.
‘Steak sandwich for me,’ said Nora. ‘Plus chips.’ She smiled up at the waitress. ‘I need my carbs.’
‘I’m going to be boring and have what I always have,’ said Grace. ‘Goat’s cheese salad and bread rolls. I can’t have her killing herself with carbs on her own,’ she said to the waitress.
She waited until they were alone again before saying in a low voice: ‘I know you’ll tell me not to stick my nose in here either, but I can’t help wondering about Stephen and Julia. It’s not that anyone’s said anything – more a case of what hasn’t been said. Stephen was quite reticent about her at the engagement dinner. Not that he’s ever talked that much about her with me. I guess he feels it might hurt my feelings, which is sweet, but still. I’m a grown-up. We’re divorced and he lives with someone else …’
‘Go on,’ said Nora. ‘This is your ex, you are involved.’
‘OK, well, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, except Michael told me that when he rang Julia over the seating for the wedding, she snapped his head off. Julia and I may be chalk and cheese, but she’s a nice woman and she’s always been good to the children. It was completely out of character for her.’
‘Could be all this happy families wedding stuff is getting to her?’ Nora suggested.
‘I think you’re right,’ Grace agreed. ‘I suppose what makes it worse for her is that Stephen’s been talking about the past, when we were together and the kids were young, like it was all some fantasy world. I don’t understand it. It’s as if he wants all that back again,’ she said finally.
Nora studied her friend. She was constantly amazed that Grace seemed oblivious to what a fascinating, vibrant and wonderful woman she was. In her simple blue cardigan and jeans, with her dark hair tied back in a ponytail, she looked so pretty. Somehow her boundless energy and force of personality had kept her youthful, and she seemed years younger than her real age. Many men looked at Grace Rhattigan with interest – and not just Principal Derek McGurk – but Grace rarely seemed to notice. It was as if she’d closed off that part of her life in the past few years.
‘Maybe he does want all that back again,’ Nora said gently. ‘It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he’s still in love with you, that he wishes you hadn’t split up.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Grace in astonishment. ‘If he was …’ She faltered. ‘If he was, he wouldn’t have gone off with Julia and stayed with her, would he? No.’ She shook her head decisively, flicking her ponytail. ‘It’s just wishful thinking about the past, when we were a family, and he can’t go back in time: Michael and Fiona are grown up, they don’t live at home, so there’s nothing to go back to.’
‘Grace,’ said Nora calmly, ‘he could go back to you.’
‘Oh, Nora, stop. We’ve been apart almost fifteen years, we’re divorced, it’s a crazy idea.’
‘And you’ve never thought about it?’ Nora asked.
‘Don’t be daft,’ Grace said, laughing it off. ‘He left me, remember? Fine friend you are if you think he was an eejit then and possible date material now.’
‘I was just saying—’ began Nora.
‘No. Don’t say anything. What would I want with a man in my life, specifically one I divorced a long time ago? Now that really would be a triumph of hope over experience. Now, tell me all about the Hummingbird.’
Nora studied her friend, wondering whether to go along with the change of topic. In the end she decided to let it go; Grace needed to come to a conclusion herself. Of all the divorced couples Nora had ever met, Grace and Stephen got on the best. They didn’t fight or shriek at each other, and any pain Grace had felt in the early days of Stephen being with Julia had been carefully hidden.
Nora began to talk about a staffing problem but her mind was far from her beloved nursing home. Grace had thought about Stephen in that way, she was sure of it.
The house on Poppy Lane was looking a lot better than it had the first time they saw it, Vonnie and Ryan agreed as they parked outside on a stormy Saturday morning a week before the final moving-in.
A two-storey with attic conversion, it sat at the end of a small cul-de-sac and had been owned by an elderly lady who’d clearly adored flowers but hadn’t had anyone help her with general maintenance for a long, long time. The little old lady had died and an executor’s sale had progressed slowly, so that by the time the house came up for viewing, the once-beloved garden was a tangle of weeds.
The house was built of sandstone that was dirty with age, and Vonnie guessed that the last time a window cleaner had been on the premises, bell-bottom jeans had been fashionable. But the wisteria that soared up the front of the house looked loved and strong. The wisteria had sold the place to Vonnie, its branches enfolding the porch as though to shelter any visitors from rain and wind.
‘I love wisteria,’ she’d told Ryan. She and Joe had once nearly bought a pretty Edwardian house with cream shutters and a veranda covered with wisteria, but they hadn’t been able to stump up quite enough money.
‘It was just a house,’ Vonnie had said stoically when they’d lost it to a higher offer.
‘One day,’ Joe had kissed her on the temple, so as not wake Shane, who lay asleep in her arms, ‘we’ll have a house with wisteria.’
The house on Poppy Lane was it, Vonnie knew. Her past and her future coming together.
Ryan’s hand found hers and squeezed it gently.
She smiled up at him. She didn’t know how he knew, but he always knew and she loved him for it.
Inside were elderly carpets smelling of cat. They’d need to be ripped up, Vonnie knew. The floors would have to be sanded, rooms painted, and the kitchen – which was the newest bit of the entire premises – probably needed the attention of a steam cleaner for a week in order to get rid of the grime.
‘It’s old and dirty, yes,’ she said to Ryan, ‘but it just needs hard work and elbow grease, and it’s not as if I don’t have plenty of experience with that. Isn’t the hall lovely – you can just see a Christmas tree here, can’t you? And the kitchen, look – they knocked down a wall so we can have a cosy sitting room part here, and there’s space for a table between the two rooms where the kids can do their homework.’
‘Yes,’ said Ryan, ‘I see it all too.’
He was gazing around at their prospective new home with a contented air, seeing walls painted and floors sanded, imagining their three children working happily at the table while he and Vonnie chatted about their day in the kitchen. Again Vonnie sent grateful prayers up to whoever had given her this wonderful man.
Let me have some of his certainty of happiness, she prayed.
Shane, Maura and Tom had taken to the house too.
‘Ah yes
, there’s a bit of work to be done here,’ said Tom, examining the walls with the intensity of a man who’d spent years doing DIY and had the collection of screwdrivers and rawl plugs to prove it, ‘but the plumbing, the electrics and the structure are all grand, aren’t they? So it’s only a bit of dolling up. Wait till me and Ryan get at it, Vonnie love, we’ll do the work of four men.’ He reached out and put an arm round her shoulders.
‘What about me?’ demanded Maura.
‘You’re on steamer duty,’ said Tom. ‘It’s a great contraption, Ryan. You don’t need chemicals or anything. It boils the dirt out.’
‘Does it do carpets?’ asked Shane, looking doubtfully at the various dark and murky patches underfoot.
‘It’s not magic, Shane lad,’ laughed Tom. ‘I think those carpets have long since died. But Maura might give you a go of her steam cleaner if you ask nicely. She’s very possessive about it.’
‘Besides, Shane, you and me are going to paint your bedroom,’ Ryan added.
‘Blue!’ said Shane excitedly.
‘I told you, any colour you want,’ said Ryan.
Shane beamed at him.
Vonnie had insisted that Ryan take his daughters to see the house on their own.
‘So it’s their house too,’ she said. ‘If they see if first with me and Shane, it will be like we’ve already been there and they come second. You take them for their first tour.’
‘How do you know this stuff?’ Ryan said.
‘It just makes sense,’ Vonnie explained.
Shelby wanted her room pink.
‘This pink,’ she’d told her father the previous weekend, holding up a hair clip with dusty pink flowers on it.
‘Righto,’ said Ryan gravely. ‘I will get that exact pink. And you, Ruby?’
Ruby had spent a long time in the room she was to have every second weekend. ‘It’s fine the way it is,’ she’d said.
‘Ah now, Ruby,’ her father said, putting an arm round her shoulders. ‘That wallpaper is so old, the museum people have been on asking can they have a bit for an exhibit. We’re going to strip it off and paint the room. We’re a bit too broke to stump up for wallpaper, but we can do paint. You like apple green, don’t you, like at home?’
If Vonnie had been there, she might have seen something flicker in Ruby’s eyes, but Ryan was so anxious for all of this to go well that he didn’t see anything.
‘Yeah, green then,’ said Ruby.
Ruby hauled her gym bag into the girls’ changing rooms and inhaled the usual scent of perfume, highly chemical body sprays and the subtle whiff of cigarettes. The changing rooms in the technical school in Bridgeport were as old as the rest of the place, and you walked barefoot to the showers at your peril. Athlete’s foot would be the least of your worries if you did that.
‘Anyone got any tampons? I’ve got my period,’ wailed Lizette, fifth-year hypochondriac.
‘You had your period last week for gym,’ said Maria, their year’s queen bee, currently dating Seamus Delaney, sixth-year uber-jock, a student who got D minus in most of his subjects but made up for it by his prowess on the football pitch.
‘No I didn’t,’ insisted Lizette.
‘Did,’ retorted Maria.
‘Yeah, you did,’ chorused the bee-ettes, Maria’s gang.
‘Like you care if she has her period every week?’ Ruby snapped, handing a tampon to Lizette, who huffed and marched off to the loos.
Ruby belonged to a nice camp in school: not with the swots, not with the nymphets and not with Maria’s gang either. She lived in the netherworld of ordinary girls who were neither cool nor brilliant nor stunningly beautiful nor athletic. The ordinaries could roam all the various groups without ever being a part of any of them. Ruby pretended not to mind being an ordinary. She pretended not to care that she wasn’t beautiful, even though Vonnie, her sort-of-stepmother, insisted she was. That was part of Vonnie’s shtick – she told people they were beautiful, fabulous, talented all the time, the way she did with Shane.
Ruby found it both astonishing and quite sweet, because she could never remember her own mother saying You’re fabulous, you’re beautiful, Ruby. Jennifer just wasn’t that sort of mum. She was funny, for sure. She had a wicked sense of humour and she never cared what people thought of her. Boring old farts was her favourite thing to say when she was driving badly and somebody beeped her.
She’d been less funny lately. Since the news of the new house had broken, Mum was in an officially bad mood. She’d stopped watching comedy on the telly and was watching old chick flicks or true life movies on cable, ones where men were mean and women suffered because of it.
Ruby didn’t think it was good to watch those sort of movies on a loop.
Her mother was very different from Vonnie, Ruby knew, and she could see why her easy-going father would love Vonnie, because she was so calm. Sometimes, just sometimes, Ruby wondered if she could talk to Vonnie honestly about it all. About her mum and how awful things were. Because they were awful these days, and being able to decorate a stupid bedroom any way you wanted couldn’t make up for that.
She couldn’t talk to Granny Lulu, because she’d just shout at Mum and then everything would be worse.
She couldn’t tell Dad, because she could see the way his face practically froze when he had anything to do with Mum. Which left Vonnie.
Vonnie might understand that Mum was sad and lonely, that Dad’s new happiness was making it worse but that Ruby didn’t know how to fix Mum. Or if she was even fixable.
And nobody seemed to think about what it was like for Ruby.
Someone in the changing room had chocolate biscuits and was handing them out. The athletic girls were taking them because they knew they’d burn off the calories soon – not that they thought about calories. For them, biscuits were simple nourishment to keep them going through running, swimming and hockey. The nerds gobbled up the biscuits, delighted to be asked. The beautiful people said no, aghast at the very idea. Processed sugar and chocolate – like, hello?
Normally Ruby would have taken a biscuit. She was really hungry, because Mum had been so awful that all she could think about was getting out of the house, so she’d skipped breakfast and forgotten to bring a packed lunch. But suddenly, in one inspired instant, she decided she liked the pangs of hunger in her stomach. She was hungry but she wouldn’t eat. She could say no to food, no to something. That was very powerful. Like the light streaming down from the clouds in one of those biblical paintings they’d studied in Miss Maguire’s deathly dull art class. Rays of wisdom and knowledge shone through the clouds into Ruby’s head: she wouldn’t eat. There, she felt strong – in control.
And maybe if she got thinner, somebody might notice that something was wrong and ask what they could do to help. Because Ruby couldn’t keep going with things the way they were, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
Thirteen
It is not a lack of love but a lack of friendship that makes an unhappy marriage. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Birdie nursed her breakfast coffee, staring out the window at the glass bird feeder on the kitchen window where a robin was nibbling some seeds and staring cheekily in at her.
She loved robins, loved their fondness for humans. This particular one, her robin, liked to perch near her in the garden and angle his little head, bright beady eye watching her with interest. Even Thumper didn’t try to chase him any more, and Birdie talked to both of them as she worked.
‘We should have the best spare room redone for Mother’s visit,’ Howard announced, putting down the newspaper with intent.
Birdie put down her own cup. Oh Lord, Doris.
Even the robin flew off. Clever bird.
Howard’s mother was a definite threat to wildlife. She defiantly wore fur and had an old turban made of such glorious feathers that Birdie winced every time she saw it, knowing that several poor birds must have been killed to make it.
Doris had been on the phone a lot lately. She’d raged, pre
dictably, at the notion of her granddaughter being pregnant before she got married, and had threatened to boycott the wedding.
Birdie had stayed at a distance as Howard talked to his mother, but even so, she could hear Doris’s loud tones from several feet away.
‘The shame … in my day … no granddaughter of mine …’
It had all been bluster, of course. Doris wouldn’t let nuclear war keep her away from a wedding and the chance to wear her mink capelet and the diamond earrings she’d been promising to give Birdie for thirty years.
Howard had sternly reminded her that it was the twenty-first century and ‘things are different now’, following it up with ‘It wouldn’t be a wedding without you, Mam.’ Doris had been placated.
Clearly, the need to further butter up his mother had become a major feature of his grand plan, hence this sudden notion to redecorate the room she always stayed in.
As the wedding was only four weeks away and she had more than enough to contend with as it was, Birdie felt the fear rise within her at the thought of clearing the room, having decorators in and then putting everything back. She hated having work done at the best of times; invariably she’d spend her days at the beck and call of the workmen, making them tea and biscuits, praising their handiwork, and then Howard would return and jackboot around the place finding fault with it all.
She flushed at the memory of Howard refusing to pay the decorators who’d put up the Chinese floral wallpaper, because he claimed they’d made such a poor job of it they’d ruined the ultra-expensive paper and the entire job would have to be redone.
‘Howard, it’s not ruined,’ Birdie had pleaded, mortified by the fuss he was making as the two decorators stood casting mutinous looks at him. ‘It’s lovely.’
‘You can see the joins in two places on that wall!’ Howard had ranted. ‘There are gaps. There should be no gaps.’
Everyone had peered at the allegedly obvious joins. If she squinted hard, Birdie could make out a tiny sliver of wall. Just in one place, not two. Nobody else would have noticed it – but nothing escaped Howard’s scrutiny.