“So, do you work every night?” Richard Cadwell asked her the next Thursday evening.
“Mom does the mornings, I do the late afternoons and evenings, most of the time,” she said. “But we take each other’s shifts now and again if one of us needs the time. I got one young girl, Dan Taylor’s girl Karen from over the road there, she works the odd shift. Mostly she does Saturday nights.”
“Oh, and what do you do on a Saturday night?”
This was sounding less and less like casual conversation. “Generally I puts me feet up and watches Columbo. Though the odd time Doris will have a few of us over for a game of bridge. But mostly her and Les plays with other couples, so I only goes over if she’s havin’ a girls’ night.”
“I don’t mind a game of bridge myself. I’m not what you’d call a big card player but I do like a game now and then.”
That was the end of discussion of Audrey’s Saturday nights. When Doris was in the shop the next day Audrey recounted the conversation. “It does sound like he was hinting at something,” Doris said, “but it’s up to him to make a definite invitation. I mean, you’re welcome to bring him along to play cards with us, but you can’t be expected to ask him out, as long as he’s just hinting around like that, can you?”
“I don’t s’pose I can. l’ll just have to wait and see.”
It wasn’t as if she had a lot of spare time to sit around and moon over Richard Cadwell or anyone else. She was running a business and raising a child, and more and more she was looking after her mother instead of the two of them working together like it used to be. Henry was off up in Toronto again; she hadn’t heard a word out of him since he went away in January and she had no idea when he’d be back. Even if Richard was hinting around about something, Audrey would be hard pressed to make time for a man in her life. Still and all, if he were to give up smoking and stop coming in for his cigarettes, she’d miss him.
RACHEL
Rachel opened her guitar case on the bed while Vicky unbuttoned her blouse, peeled it off and pulled a T-shirt over her head, changed from her slacks to a pair of jean shorts. Their afterschool routine, most days, was to leave school and go over to Holloway’s where Rachel changed, made a cup of tea for Nanny Ellen, and picked up snacks from the store and the guitar from her bedroom. Then they went on over to Vicky’s house on Hennebury Place, where they hung out in Vicky’s room doing homework till suppertime. Rachel tried out songs from the radio: today she was playing “Lost in Love” by Air Supply while Vicky sprawled on the floor, singing along and copying Rachel’s History homework.
There was a tap at the door and Vicky’s mother stuck her head into the room. “Anybody want cookies?” she said. Not Oreos from a bag; chocolate-chip cookies warm from the actual oven. Vicky’s mom was like a mom on TV, like Mrs. Cunningham on Happy Days. She didn’t have a job; she stayed home all day cooking and cleaning and had homemade treats ready when Vicky got home from school. Vicky’s dad went out to work every morning and came back for supper every night. And Vicky had bunk beds in her room so Rachel could sleep over anytime.
“Are you going to stay for supper, Rachel?” Mrs. Taylor wanted to know, and when Rachel said, “Yes please,” she reminded her to phone Nan. Rachel liked supper at Vicky’s a lot better than supper at home. There were more people around the table, a proper family with a mother and dad and Vicky’s older brother and her sister, Karen, who sometimes worked Saturdays in Holloway’s shop. Also the food was usually better, like real macaroni and cheese baked in the oven instead of Kraft Dinner, or beans that were simmering in the oven all afternoon instead of coming out of a can a few minutes ago.
Rachel was just getting old enough, at fourteen, to feel a little guilty about these thoughts, about preferring Vicky’s family to her own. She knew that Nanny Ellen would love to cook real meals like she used to when Rachel was little, but her legs hurt a lot and she couldn’t be on her feet over the stove all day. Most of the things Rachel didn’t like about home had to do with Nanny Audrey, whom she had taken to calling Nan out loud and Audrey in her head. Audrey got mad at her a lot, and nagged her about homework and brushing her hair and helping more around the house. She didn’t bake cookies, or ask how Rachel’s day was. Not that Rachel would tell her if she did ask.
Still, Rachel knew that if Audrey didn’t work in the store all day there wouldn’t be food on the table at all. Audrey often reminded her of this. So she tried really hard not to be saucy when she came in through the shop door later that evening. Audrey was listening to Mrs. Ivany from across the street.
“Shockin’ is what it is, my dear, I don’t know what the place is coming to, do you? Youngsters hanging around, nothing better to do than bazz rocks at people’s windows—I hope you’re not up to the likes of that, are you, Rachel? She’s a good girl, isn’t she?” Mrs. Ivany’s narrow eyes darted from Rachel to Audrey.
Audrey nodded. “She don’t hang around throwin’ rocks at people’s windows. She knows better than that.”
“It’s mostly that crowd from down in the apartments, they’re all tough as nails,” Mrs. Ivany said. “Sure the police are down there every night. We never had trouble here like that before they built them apartments. What you got there, a guitar?” she added, directing her attention back at Rachel. “You plays like your father, do you? How is he doing, upalong?”
Rachel nodded. “He’s fine.” Thirteen months since she’d talked to her father on the phone, not that she was keeping track or anything. She squeezed past—once Mrs. Ivany was at the counter there wasn’t a lot of room between her bum and the shelves on the other side, especially where Rachel had her book bag and the guitar too.
Upstairs, Facts of Life was on TV and Nanny Ellen was asleep in the chair. Rachel was never sure whether she ought to wake her great-grandmother up or not; she often dozed off in front of the TV and most of the time she’d stay there till Audrey closed up the store and came upstairs. Rachel went to her own room, put away her guitar, and took The Outsiders from her backpack. She curled up on her bed, trying not to compare the heavy silence here to the happy noise of Vicky’s house.
Later, she heard Audrey come upstairs, put the kettle on, chat to Nanny Ellen. Audrey tapped on Rachel’s door. “You want a cup of tea and some toast?”
“No. Wait, yeah, ok.” Rachel brought her book out to the kitchen and read while she ate her toast and drank her tea. Nanny Ellen was settled in her own room; Audrey poured herself a cup of tea and sat down. “Get your face out of that book,” she said to Rachel. “I want to talk to you. There’s going to be some changes around here sooner or later.” Her teaspoon tinkled against the side of the cup, stirring in the Carnation milk. “I thought I told you to put that book down. Did you hear what I said?”
“Yeah.”
Audrey sighed. Rachel wondered what changes her grandmother was talking about. Was her father coming home after all this time? No, there wouldn’t be an announcement in that case; he would just show up like he always used to. Or maybe—this could be—Audrey was going to marry Mr. Cadwell, who Nanny Ellen referred to as Audrey’s “man friend.” It was gross to think about people their age dating, but if they got married, would she move into his house? Would she want to take Rachel with her, or leave her here with Nanny Ellen? Maybe Rachel could get the Taylors to adopt her.
“You know your Nanny Ellen is not very well these days,” Audrey said. This didn’t sound like any news to do with her man friend. “The one thing she always wanted was to keep working as long as she was able. But the fact of it is, she goes down them stairs every morning to open up the shop and she haves a hard time getting back up. And she’s getting forgetful—she’s going on for eighty, after all.”
“She’ll be seventy-six on her birthday,” Rachel said. Nanny Ellen’s birthday was over the summer holidays and Audrey always got Aunt Treese to bake a cake.
“Well, that’s closer to eighty than it is to seventy. S
he’s slow making change and filling people’s orders. I can’t have her working down there by herself anymore.”
“But Nanny Ellen loves the store!”
“I know she do, that’s the problem. I can’t take it away from her and I can’t keep on having her do the morning shift like she’s been doing. So what I’m going to do is, I’m going to start opening up the shop in the morning, and if she feels up to it, she can come down and work alongside me for a few hours, but I’ll be there to keep an eye on her.”
Rachel stared down at her own teacup. When she was really little, Nanny Ellen used to pour tea in the saucer and Rachel would pick up the saucer and drink it that way. She had all these little bits and pieces of memory from when she was little and Nanny Ellen was better, when she used to do the cooking and sing hymns as she cleaned the house. “I don’t need anyone here in the morning when I get up,” she said. “If that’s what you’re worried about. I get my own breakfast and everything.”
“Of course you do, big girl like you. No, what I’m thinking is that if we do it that way, I’ll be in the shop all day, hardly no break at all. Karen told me today she’s putting in for a job over to Sobeys.” Rachel had already heard this piece of news at Vicky’s house, but she hadn’t thought about how Karen getting a job at Sobeys would affect her grandmother or the shop. “What I’m getting at is, it’s about time we started to think about you working in the store,” Audrey said.
This was not going where Rachel had expected at all, certainly not any way that would end up with the Taylors adopting her. “I don’t want—”
“All Alf and Treese’s youngsters started when they were fourteen. For that matter, I started when I was only twelve. I s’pose I never thought of it before because you’re young for your age. But come your Easter holidays, now, I’m going to take some time to get you trained in on the cash register and after that you can start doing a shift after school.”
Young for your age. What did that even mean? You’re as old as you are, and Rachel felt like she had lived a long time and knew a whole hell of a lot. She thought this at her grandmother: I’ve lived for fourteen years and I know a whole hell of a lot of stuff, maybe more than you do. Audrey didn’t mind cursing herself but she’d give Rachel the rounds of the kitchen if she said “hell.” Hypocrite.
“I’ll give you some pocket money for it, don’t worry about that—I’m not going to pay you minimum wage, now, like I’m shelling out for young Karen, because it’s different when it’s family, the food you eat and the roof over your head all comes out of our profits. But I won’t see you shortchanged. You’ll have a bit of pocket money for if you wants to go out with your friends or anything like that.”
I don’t want to go out with friends. I only want to go hang out at Vicky’s. Rachel wasn’t sure she even had friends, other than Vicky. But Vicky sometimes wanted to hang out with other people. Vicky was pretty; she was probably going to be popular in high school, and what would Rachel do then? If she was working in the store she could tell people she had to work Friday and Saturday nights and that could be her excuse when she didn’t get invited to parties and stuff.
“I guess,” she said to Audrey.
“There’s no guessing about it. It’s high time you were doing your share and I don’t want to hear no lip about it.”
AUDREY
“So, where do you want to go for our Sunday drive today, my dear?” Richard Cadwell said as he held the door of his car open for Audrey. When they were both inside they shared a laugh at that, although the truth was, sometimes they did go up the Southern Shore or out to Holyrood by the old road. Today was sunny, a large day in June, and she said, “Maybe we could run out as far as the Salmonier Line. If you want.”
“It would be a nice day for a drive. We could go out by the highway, come back by the old road, and have supper in Holyrood.” They had done this a few times; Audrey liked the view out over Conception Bay, the occasional yard sale they might stop at. But mostly it was a joke between them, this business of the Sunday drive. Sometimes Ellen would say, “Sure you and Richard are not going out on a day like this—foggy and rainy and all as it is? Have the poor man in for a cup of tea instead.”
She reminded him of this as they headed off for their big Sunday drive, down Calver Avenue and over Howley Avenue Extension to his house. Lucky Richard, all alone, no-one to make excuses to. “Mom’s some good, I doubt she ever suspects a thing,” Audrey said. “Now I imagine I could tell Rachel, ‘Me and Richard are off to his house to have a good shag, I might not be home in time for tea,’ and she probably wouldn’t even bat an eyelash. The young ones these days.”
Richard laughed. Audrey knew he loved the saucy version of herself she kept for when they were alone, the things that came out of her mouth. Not that she wouldn’t say shagging, but she’d more likely use it as a curse word—“I can’t get them shaggin little friggers out of the box,” she had said just the other day, trying to unpack a box of biscuits from the wholesalers. But she wouldn’t use that kind of language to talk about anyone’s private business. When the women got talking in the shop, Audrey might say people were fooling around or up to no good, but she tried to say it in a way that didn’t sound like she was judging too much, because people who lived in glass-fronted shops shouldn’t throw stones.
Plenty of the neighbours who still thought Audrey was no better than she should be for having left her husband, and that she raised a son who got an innocent young girl in trouble and then the poor girl died in that terrible accident. So while Audrey enjoyed listening to the neighbourhood gossip as people went in and out of the shop, she rarely passed comment. She wasn’t about to put herself up on any kind of a pedestal. And she would never, never say to anyone, even to Doris, her best friend in the world, that she was shagging anyone. Let alone shagging a shagging Cadwell.
But that was what it boiled down to. The Sunday drive, more often than not, was just the two of them in the big four-poster bed in Richard’s bedroom, going at it like a pair of rabbits. This business with Richard had none of the bad feelings she associated with Nelson Spracklin all those years ago—yes, they were sneaking around a bit, but there was no wife in the picture, they weren’t hurting anyone. It was nothing but a good time, and Audrey looked forward to Sunday afternoons with the same anticipation her mother looked forward to the Sunday morning service at Gower Street. You go to your church and I’ll go to mine, she thought.
“Do you want a cup of tea?” Richard asked when they got in the house. This was part of their ritual. The cup of tea and a smoke in his tidy kitchen, and then when the tea was done, a kiss that turned into something more pressing, and Richard’s fingers exploring her body. Then he led her to his bedroom, and they took each other’s clothes off. Audrey knew she should be embarrassed to have a man undress her; she was fifty-two with everything that went along with it—flabby around the middle, sagging breasts, wrinkles—but the first time they did it she was over the embarrassment as soon as Richard told her, “You’re some lovely woman, Audrey Holloway.” She had waited a long time—maybe always—for a man to say that, to sound so delighted and happy, so she had decided to believe him.
She had thought either it would be a quick fling, or else he’d start pestering her for something more. Wanting to get married. He did bring it up, the marriage thing, after they’d been seeing each other six months or so. When Audrey said it wasn’t what she wanted, she figured he’d lose all interest.
But he hadn’t. He seemed content to play bridge with her at Doris’s every Wednesday night and go to bed with her every Sunday, and he didn’t push her for more than that. She told him this was all she had time for, what with the store and looking after Rachel and her mother. Someone to make up a couple in a card game, a good shag once a week, and no obligations. It had been going on over a year now and Richard still had that same look of delight, that catch in his voice, when they were in bed together, like he couldn’t
believe how he ever got so lucky.
He didn’t even want her to cook for him. On Sunday nights, when all was said and done, they usually went out for a meal. Once in a blue moon Richard would grill a steak or something. He didn’t have to be a very good cook to be better than Audrey.
This time, it being such a nice day, they did go for that Sunday drive to Holyrood afterwards. There was still plenty of time, with the clocks gone ahead, to drive out that far. These last couple of years, Audrey had gotten into the habit of spending Sunday afternoons with Richard, while Rachel and Ellen when to Alf and Treese’s for Sunday dinner. Rachel usually heated up leftovers for Ellen’s supper, so Audrey had the day to herself. Herself and Richard.
“I s’pose sooner or later Mom’ll have to go in a home, once she can’t manage the steps anymore,” Audrey said to Richard over her cod au gratin at the Beach Cottage. “Alf and Marilyn both thinks I should have her name down at St. Luke’s, but going in a home would kill her, I think.”
“Everyone says that, but it happens to plenty of people, in the end, and most of them survive. Sure look at my Aunt Claire, over to Escasoni.” Richard’s own parents had both died young, more or less as you might expect from the Cadwells. His Aunt Claire, who had pitched in to help raise some of the younger ones, had been in a home ever since she broke her hip three years ago. “She swore she’d get someone to shoot her before she went into a home, and there she is down in the lounge every day playing cards with four or five other ladies, happy as a pig in shit, pardon my French.”
“I s’pose Mom would manage if she had to go, but I’d like to put it off as long as we can. If I had a nice little bungalow like Alf and Treese got, now—and of course they made the offer, for Mom to come live with them, I can’t say they never. But she don’t want to leave her own home. Them stairs up and down to the shop will be the death of her, I’m sure.”
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