Just Between Us

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘Rose, is that the time? I’m all at sixes and sevens, I’m not a bit organised!’ wailed Minnie when she answered the door.

  Rose gritted her teeth into a smile and walked in. Minnie had to be at least Rose’s age, round the sixty mark, but had the manner of a dizzy young girl and got flustered at the slightest provocation. Minnie was one of the people who’d worried so much about the type size on the charity lunch menus. She’d moved to Kinvarra three years ago when her husband retired and she’d thrown herself so frenetically into local affairs, it felt as if she’d been part of the community for years.

  ‘Don’t worry, Minnie, I’ll help,’ Rose said automatically. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Well…’ said Minnie anxiously. ‘The kettle’s boiled but I haven’t got the cups out. And look at my hair…’

  Hang-gliding, definitely. It had to be more fun than this, Rose reflected. ‘Why don’t you go and fix your hair, Minnie,’ she said calmly, ‘while I sort out the tea.’

  Minnie fluttered off upstairs and Rose grimly thought that the group’s chosen charities would be better served if its members all just sent a cheque every year to the charity of their choice. They’d save money spent on endless tea mornings where at least half the time was spent on the process of sorting everyone out with seats, cups and plates of cake.

  Rose briskly organised the tea, her mind elsewhere. She often wondered how had she ended up in this life. She’d never wanted to be a pillar of the community and a leading light of every local concern going. When she was eighteen, she’d wanted to work in a modern office in the city, where people addressed her respectfully as Miss Riordain and where a wage packet with the anticipated amount of money was put into her hand every week without fail. The respect and the unchanging wage packet were important. On her father’s tiny farm, income fluctuated wildly, resulting in lean times and very lean times. Nobody felt the need to show particular respect to the beautiful and clever daughter of a small farmer and Rose had grown up deeply aware of the nuances of how people treated the daughters of the local doctor and the big landowners. One of her ambitions was to receive such respect. A good, settled job and a pay packet that came every week would give her freedom. She’d got her foot on the ladder all right, with the junior secretarial job in a construction company. Efficient and eager to learn, she’d dedicated herself to self-improvement. She’d battled with an elderly typewriter until her nails broke and she watched the senior secretary for hints on how she should dress. And then she’d met Hugh, the dashing young lawyer friend of the owner’s son. Hugh came from a world where people never needed to be told how to dress or which fork to use. But to two people in love, that didn’t matter. They were soul mates. Love turned Rose’s life plan upside down and within two years she was married with a small daughter.

  Occasionally, she wondered what would have happened if she’d said no to Hugh? Maybe she’d be a high-powered businesswoman, having an exciting but selfish life instead of living for others in Kinvarra where her only day-to-day concerns were her charity work, getting the freezer fixed and helping Hugh organise Christmas hampers for the firm’s most important clients.

  Tonight, his firm was involved in a Christmas fundraiser for the local poverty action group which, with the recent wave of redundancies among the area’s big factories, was even more stretched for funds than usual. A black tie gala dinner, it would mean top table stuff and all the Kinvarra glitterati out in force. Rose enjoyed getting dressed up but there were times when she got bored with the inevitable polite conversation at such events. Hugh, on the other hand, never got bored with gala dinners.

  She dragged her mind back to the task in hand.

  There were seven committee members, so she whipped out seven cups and saucers, because Minnie always made such a big deal about china cups and not mugs. She laid out milk and sugar, cut her lemon cake into slices, and had everything ready by the time Minnie came downstairs.

  ‘Oh, Rose, you’re so good,’ trilled Minnie when she saw everything. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’

  Rose had been about to say something mundane about how it had been no problem, when she really looked at Minnie. For once, Minnie’s girlish complexion (‘soap and water every morning!’ she claimed) was grey and tired. Her eyes were a telltale watery red. It wasn’t mere tiredness, Rose realised. It was something else.

  ‘Are you all right, Minnie?’ she asked gently. Minnie looked into the face of the woman she’d been half in awe of ever since she’d moved to Kinvarra. Rose was like some elegant television celebrity; gracious and ladylike, without a hair out of place. She had a look of that poor Jackie Kennedy, God rest her. Minnie had never met any aristocratic types but she knew one when she saw one. Rose Miller came from classy people, Minnie was sure. And she was kind; as friendly to the girl in the pub who served them tea as she was to Celia Freidland, the committee chairwoman.

  Minnie had tidied the house extra specially for the meeting mainly because Rose would be there. Rose’s husband was a very important man, she had a beautiful house in the most expensive part of town, and she had three lovely girls. Minnie never met Rose without being overwhelmed with a desire to impress her.

  ‘Minnie,’ said Rose again. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? Is there anything wrong?’

  Minnie shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all. Now, the committee will be here any minute.’ Her smile was camera-bright. ‘I suppose we’re all ready?’ she added.

  ‘Yes,’ Rose said kindly. There was more to it than tiredness, clearly, but if Minnie didn’t want to talk, that was her business.

  The doorbell pealed and Minnie rushed to answer it, welcoming in her guests as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

  For once, Rose didn’t hurry the committee’s ramblings. She was quieter than usual and the meeting meandered on until half five when everyone began making astonished noises at how time had flown and how they had families to feed. Rose left after giving Minnie a meaningful handclasp on the doorstep.

  ‘Please phone me if you need to talk,’ she whispered.

  As she drove home, Rose couldn’t get Minnie Wilson out of her mind. There was something wrong there and Rose longed to be able to do something to help. Poor Minnie. As she speculated on her hostess’s misfortune, Rose couldn’t help thinking again of her own life and how happily it had turned out.

  Adele often said, grudgingly, that Rose was lucky. But Adele was right. She had been lucky.

  Nobody could be prouder of their daughters than she was of Stella, Tara and Holly. Even if she hadn’t been their mother, she’d have thought they were special women. She had a granddaughter she adored, too. Amelia had a great way of staring up at her grandmother with those big, grave eyes and asking things like: ‘Granny, will you and Grandad have a baby so I can play with it?’

  Stella had roared with laughter when Rose told her about it.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said we were thinking of getting a puppy and would that do?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Stella howled. ‘She wants a dog more than she wants a baby sister; she won’t let you forget that.’

  If only, Rose thought, Stella had someone in her life. Tara was blissful with Finn, happier than Rose would have imagined she could be. Seeing her middle daughter so settled, made Rose long for the same happiness for Stella. She’d have given anything to see Stella content. Not that she would ever say that to Stella. But a mother could hope.

  And as for Holly: well Holly never told anyone what she wanted. Rose did her best to be there for Holly in the background but her youngest daughter had retreated from life in Kinvarra, and Rose, desperate to help, had to accept it. Perhaps Holly was happy after all. Because you never knew, did you, reflected Rose.

  Hugh insisted that Rose should stop worrying about her brood.

  ‘They’re modern women, haven’t they the lives of Reilly?’ he’d say, proud as Punch of his three bright daughters. When the girls
came home to Kinvarra, Hugh was always keen to take them into town to lunch or dinner, to ‘show them off’ as Rose teased him.

  ‘I’m surprised you haven’t set up the Daughters Sweepstake Race,’ she joked, ‘where all the great and good of Kinvarra get their offspring in the race to see who’s the best.’

  ‘There’s a thought,’ he said gravely. ‘You’re always telling me you’re fed up with organising charity dinner dances and cake sales. A sweepstake would be a sure-fire winner.’

  Dear Hugh. He’d been blessed with a great sense of humour, for all that he drove Rose mad with his ability to spread chaos all over the house without ever bothering to tidy up. No matter how many times she scolded him, he still left the bathroom looking like someone had been washing the Crufts Best In Breed in it, with at least three soaked towels thrown around and the top off the shower gel so that a trail of sticky gel oozed into the shower tray. But, despite everything, she loved him and he was a wonderful father. There had been bad times, for sure. But Rose had weathered the storms, that was all in the past. She was lucky.

  The Millers’ rambling farmhouse was in darkness when Hugh Miller returned home. Once, Meadow Lodge had been the badly-maintained home of a small farmer with several rackety haybarns, a silage pit positioned right beside the kitchen window and sheep contentedly grazing in the garden, doing their best to fertilise the landscape. When Hugh and Rose had bought it forty years ago, they’d knocked down the crumbling farm buildings, turned the three-acre plot into a decent, sheep-free garden, and had modernised the whole house. Nobody looking at Meadow Lodge now would ever think it had been anything but a gracefully proportioned building with fine big rooms, a huge comfortable family kitchen and gas heating to cope with the winds that sometimes swept down through the midlands and Kinvarra. Rose had filled the house with comfortable couches, luxurious-looking soft furnishings, lots of pictures, lamps that cast a golden glow and plenty of unusual ornaments.

  With his arms laden down with his usual consignment of papers and briefcase, Hugh unlocked the front door, shoved it open with his shoulder and turned on the lights in the hall. He wondered where Rose was. It wasn’t like her not to be there when he got home. Even if she had one of her meetings on in the evening, she rarely left until he was home and, if they weren’t going out, she always had something delicious cooking for him. It was strange, therefore, to find a dark, cold house, especially since it wasn’t long before they had to go to the Poverty Action Night dinner.

  Dumping his cargo, Hugh threw his big sheepskin coat on the hall chair, dropped his car keys on the hall table not thinking that they might scratch the wood, and went into the big yellow sitting room.

  Switching on the overhead light, not bothering to shut the curtains or even switch on one of the Oriental table lamps that Rose liked, Hugh sank down into his armchair, stretched his long legs onto the coffee table because there was nobody there to object, and flicked on the television news.

  He was still watching half an hour later when Rose arrived. She switched on the hall lamp and switched off the main light before putting Hugh’s keys into the cream glazed pottery bowl where they lived.

  Hugh was still glued to the news.

  Rose swallowed her irritation when she went into the sitting room and found all the main lights blazing. If opened curtains were the extent of her problems, then she had little to worry about. Silently, she shut the heavy, primrose-yellow curtains and flicked on the lamps, all of which took mere moments. Why did men never do that sort of thing? Did being a hunter-gatherer absolve the whole species from domestic tasks?

  ‘How are you?’ asked Hugh absently, without taking his eyes from the box.

  ‘Fine,’ said Rose. ‘We’ve got to be out of here in an hour: I’m going to make a cup of tea and then have a shower.’

  ‘Oh I’d love some tea,’ said Hugh.

  Why didn’t you make some, then? Rose thought crossly. She stopped herself snapping just in time. She was grumpy tonight, for some reason. She’d better get a grip on herself. She, above all people, had no excuse for moaning. But as she went into the dark kitchen to boil the kettle, she thought that it was all very well deciding that you were lucky, but Hugh drove her insane sometimes.

  She’d just made the tea when the phone rang. ‘Hiya, Mum,’ said Tara breezily. ‘How are you?’ Rose beamed to hear her middle daughter’s voice. Tara

  was one of life’s the-glass-is-half-full people and it was impossible to be miserable in her presence. ‘Great, Tara love, how are you?’

  ‘Wonderful. Finn and I are just racing out the door to a special film screening but he just got a work phone call, so I thought I’d give you a quick buzz.’

  ‘Sounds like an interesting evening,’ Rose said, holding the portable phone in one hand and pouring tea into two pottery mugs with the other.

  ‘I wish,’ sighed Tara. ‘It’s a small-budget, black and white and boring thing written by one of National Hospital’s ex-writers.’ National Hospital was the television soap which Tara wrote for. ‘We’ve all been press-ganged into going. I’m terrified Finn will doze off in the middle of it.’ Tara laughed merrily. ‘You know what he’s like when he’s made to watch anything without either football, car chases or Cameron Diaz in it.’

  ‘Like your father, in other words,’ Rose said smiling. She poured the correct amount of milk into Hugh’s tea. ‘Why do women marry their father?’

  ‘It saves time,’ Tara said. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘The usual. Trip to the supermarket this morning, a charity meeting in the afternoon and the poverty action gala tonight.’

  ‘I hope you’re going to be wearing the Miller family emeralds,’ joked Tara.

  ‘But of course,’ rallied her mother. The Miller family emeralds consisted of old-fashioned earrings and a tiny and very ugly pendant, all of which were in Aunt Adele’s keeping. Adele was always dropping heavy hints about leaving them to one of her nieces when she died, but the girls were doing their best not to be remembered.

  ‘Actually,’ said Rose, ‘I haven’t worked out what I’m going to wear and we’ve got to leave soon.’

  ‘Shame on you,’ teased Tara. ‘The whole town will be talking if you don’t turn up in your glad rags. Do you not have some swanky cut-down-to-the-boobs dress that’ll make everyone so astonished they cough up even more money for charity?’

  ‘I’m trying to wean myself off the wanton trollop look,’ Rose said gravely. ‘Besides which, I don’t have the bosom for that type of thing any more.’

  ‘Shame,’ laughed Tara. ‘I better go then, but can I say hello to Dad?’

  With the radar that meant he always knew when his beloved daughters were on the phone, Hugh had already picked up the phone in the hall.

  ‘Hiya, Tara love,’ said Hugh happily. ‘What mad sexy scenes have you been writing this week to shock us simple television viewers?’

  Even Rose, on her way upstairs, could hear Tara’s groan of ‘Da-ad!’

  ‘She’s in great form,’ Hugh remarked when he walked into their bedroom a few moments later, pulling off his tie.

  ‘Yes, very happy,’ said Rose who was standing in front of the wardrobe mirror attempting to zip up a cream beaded evening dress. ‘Will you do me up?’ she asked Hugh.

  He ambled across the room and threw his tie on the bed.

  ‘Were you talking to Stella today?’ he asked as he expertly pulled the zip to the top.

  ‘Not today,’ replied his wife. ‘She said she was going to have a busy day. And her neck’s been at her all week. I might phone her now.’

  ‘Great.’ Hugh grinned. He stripped off his clothes quickly, while Rose sat on the edge of the bed and dialled Stella’s number. She wedged the receiver in the crook of her neck and began to paint a coat of pearly pale pink on her nails.

  ‘Hello, Amelia,’ she said delightedly when the phone was finally answered. ‘It’s Granny. I thought you and Mummy were out when you didn’t answer.’

  ‘Mu
mmy is in the bath. She has a cricket in her neck,’ said Amelia gravely, ‘and Aunty Hazel gave her blue stuff to put in the bath to get rid of the cricket.’

  ‘Poor Mummy,’ said Rose. ‘Tell her not to get out of the bath, whatever happens.’

  ‘She’s here,’ Amelia announced. ‘And she’s dripping wet bits onto the floor.’

  ‘Sorry darling,’ apologised Rose when Stella came on the line. ‘I told Amelia not to get you out of the bath.’

  ‘It was time I got out,’ Stella said. ‘I was in danger of falling asleep in there.’

  ‘How’s your neck?’

  ‘A bit better,’ Stella admitted. ‘It started off as a little twinge, or a cricket, as Amelia says, and today it just aches. I can’t lift a thing and Amelia has been very good, haven’t you, darling?’

  In the background, Rose could hear her granddaughter say ‘yes’ proudly.

  ‘Have you got any of those anti-inflammatories left from the last time?’ Rose said worriedly. ‘If you’re out, remember, you left some here just in case. I’ll drop them up tomorrow if you want.’ Kinvarra was an hour’s drive from Stella’s home in Dublin, but Rose never minded the trip.

  ‘That would be lovely, Mum,’ Stella said. ‘I don’t have any tablets left,’ she admitted. ‘But are you sure you want to drive up? The traffic’s sure to be mad this close to Christmas.’

  Rose smiled. ‘What else are mothers for?’ she said simply.

  ‘Can I say hello?’ said Hugh.

  Rose held up a finger to indicate that she’d be another moment. ‘Tell me, what time do you want me there for?’ asked Rose. ‘If I come up for ten, you can go back to bed and I’ll bring Amelia swimming.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, that would be wonderful.’ Stella sounded so grateful. ‘But I feel so guilty…’

  ‘Rubbish. You need a break,’ her mother said firmly. ‘Here’s your father.’

  Rose and Hugh changed places.