Just Between Us

by Cathy Kelly

  This morning, she was clad in a pair of Freddie’s ancient khaki shorts and a short-sleeved blouse so she wouldn’t get too hot as she cleaned up the camp bed. Stella and Amelia were coming to stay for the weekend and, as there wasn’t much room, Freddie had hit upon the idea of dragging out the camp bed for Amelia.

  ‘Stella can sleep with you and there’s loads of room for the camp bed to fit in your room so Amelia can be with you and her mum,’ Freddie said enthusiastically.

  Unfortunately, the camp bed was past its best. Rose had hosed it to death outside the cottage back door but it still looked grim, creaky and far too decrepit to hold even little Amelia without collapsing under the weight.

  Rose gave up and went to find Freddie, who was sitting in the front garden under an sun umbrella, reading the newspaper and drinking diet lemonade.

  ‘It’s too far gone, Freddie,’ Rose said. ‘I’ll have to go into town to see if I can buy a little foldaway bed of some sort.’

  ‘Get cakes, will you,’ asked Freddie. ‘We’ve eaten all the biscuits and I’m peckish.’

  Rose had just turned to go into the house and change, when she noticed a taxi struggling up the laneway.

  ‘Who could that be, I wonder?’ she said out loud.

  Nettle Cottage was situated on a quiet lane where there was little traffic and Freddie could accurately predict what was going on around her just by looking at the cars trundling up and down the lane.

  Freddie put down the paper to have a good look. ‘We didn’t invite anyone and forget about it, did we?’ she inquired thoughtfully. ‘I can’t remember, anyhow, but you never know.’

  Rose grinned at this proof of her aunt’s laissez-faire attitude to guests. Freddie was not the type for rushing round with the vacuum when people were due. She was more likely to brush Prinny’s luxuriant golden fur carefully so she’d ‘look her best for the visitors’.

  The taxi pulled up outside the cottage gates and Rose watched in astonishment as Adele Miller climbed out. The taxi driver took a vast suitcase out of the boot and hauled it up to the cottage, with Adele following, taking careful steps in her low-heeled court shoes. Wearing one of her infamous knit suits with yellowing pearls at her neck, Adele looked somewhat out of place amid the relaxed bohemian atmosphere of Nettle Cottage.

  At the sound of visitors, the dogs rushed out of the house, barking wildly and dancing round both Adele and the taxi driver.

  ‘Adele,’ said Rose weakly. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come to stay. I hope that’s all right,’ Adele said. ‘I was afraid to phone in case you put me off.’

  The driver dropped the cases and headed back down to his car.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Freddie, seeing as no-one else was bothered with talking to the poor man. ‘Long time no see, Adele,’ she added cheerily.

  ‘Hello, Freddie,’ said Adele, sinking onto the seat beside Freddie and fanning herself with her hand. ‘I’m not intruding, am I?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Freddie. ‘You’re welcome but you might have to sleep on the floor. We’re all out of beds.’

  When Adele’s case had been dragged into the house and she’d been shown where the bathroom was, Rose boiled the kettle and went out to apologise quietly to Freddie.

  ‘I had no idea she was coming,’ Rose said. ‘I honestly don’t know what she’s here for.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Freddie was sanguine. ‘We can manage. We’ll have to buy two camp beds, that’s all. She can sleep with you and Stella can have one of the camp beds…’

  ‘No way,’ hissed Rose. ‘I’m too old to start sleeping with people I’ve never slept with before. Adele can have a camp bed or, if she doesn’t like that, we can fix her up with a room in one of the hotels.’

  ‘Not with this heatwave, you won’t. I doubt if there’s a hotel or a bed and breakfast round here that isn’t full to bursting.’

  Rose closed her eyes briefly.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Freddie repeated. ‘We’ll manage.’

  ‘You don’t know what Adele’s like,’ Rose whispered. ‘She’s very particular about sheets and what sort of bed she sleeps on. She’s not an easy guest.’

  Freddie’s sea-green eyes twinkled. ‘We’ll soon knock that out of her.’

  Rose began to make tea for Adele, her mind racing. Why had Adele come and interrupted her idyll? Rose had done her very best not to think about Hugh. She’d somehow blanked the whole painful memory of the party from her mind, and any time she thought of that awful phone call and the anguished voice of the anonymous woman, she forced herself to think of something else. And now Adele had come and brought all the pain into sharp relief.

  Rose laid the tea things and a jug of water on the cast-iron table in the garden and moved the sun umbrella so that the table was shaded. Freddie pulled her deckchair over but said no to tea; she was too hot. Rose agreed and took some iced water herself.

  ‘Thank you, Rose. I could do with some tea.’ Adele emerged from the house and sat down at the table. It was a very old piece of garden furniture and in Meadow Lodge, it wouldn’t have been let out in public without being sanded down and repainted every year. In Nettle Cottage, it was left to peel elegantly. Indeed, Rose had spent many a therapeutic hour peeling off strips of black paint while gazing out at the sea beyond the roofs and spires of Castletown.

  She poured tea for Adele and proffered a plate of very plain biscuits.

  The dogs, sensing that the new visitor would have no truck with wet, questing doggy noses, sat a respectful distance from Adele and kept their eyes peeled for titbits.

  ‘How are you, Freddie?’ asked Adele politely.

  ‘Great,’ sighed Freddie. ‘Enjoying the sun. You picked a great weekend to come, Adele. The fair’s on tonight and all day tomorrow. Tonight, the history society are re-enacting the Viking years on the village green and tomorrow, there’s a gymkhana, and the children’s fancy dress.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Adele weakly. She took a biscuit and the dogs leaned forward as one.

  ‘Girls!’ warned Freddie.

  They all leaned back again. Freddie got to her feet. ‘I’ll bring them for a quick walk and let you two talk in private. Come on, girls,’ she called. The dogs, with one longing look back at the plate of biscuits, galloped after her.

  ‘Does she walk far?’ asked Adele, watching Freddie stride off up the lane at a cracking pace.

  ‘Probably only a mile or so in this heat,’ Rose said. ‘The dogs aren’t able to walk too far when it’s hot.’ She sipped her glass of water and waited for the lecture. Hugh needs you, people in Kinvarra are talking. Isn’t it time you came to your senses and came home?

  ‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here,’ Adele said.

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ Rose replied politely.

  ‘I wanted to show my support.’

  If Adele had said that she wanted to run off and join the navy, Rose couldn’t have been more surprised. ‘Why?’ she said finally.

  ‘I’m so angry about what Hugh has done. I knew that women liked him but I never thought he’d do anything other than flirt mildly with them. My father was the same; women loved him and it was mutual, I can tell you. But I thought that’s all it was, Rose. Flirting. I would never have believed it of my own brother. If only I’d known, I could have done something…’

  ‘Adele,’ sighed Rose, ‘you’re not responsible for Hugh. He’s a big boy, he makes his own mistakes.’

  ‘But such mistakes! I can’t forgive him, Rose, I’ve tried but I can’t. That’s why I’m here,’ Adele added hotly. ‘To show Hugh what a terrible thing he’s done and that I’m on your side!’

  Rose was more touched than she could say. She knew that Adele adored Hugh. For Adele to publicly choose between them was a huge sacrifice.

  She reached out and touched her sister-in-law’s arm briefly, a moving gesture between two women who were not affectionate towards each other. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘that’s lovely o
f you.’ She paused before asking: ‘How is he?’ It was strange to ask after Hugh as though he were a stranger. All her life it had been the other way round: Adele and everyone else asked her how Hugh was.

  ‘Sad and sorry,’ Adele replied. ‘He really is sorry but, as I told him, that’s no good now. He should have thought of that in the first place and not cry to me when the milk is spilt.’

  Rose grinned to herself. Trust Adele to come up with an apt homily. If Hugh’s leg had fallen off, Adele would have had something moralising to say about being especially thankful for the one he had left.

  ‘Adele, I have to go shopping,’ said Rose. ‘Stella and Amelia are coming this evening and I’ve got to purchase a couple of camp beds.’

  Adele’s eyebrows arched. ‘Camp beds?’ she said in a Lady Bracknell voice.

  Rose smothered a grin. Adele might have defrosted a bit but she hadn’t changed that much.

  ‘This is a two-roomed cottage, Adele, two rooms with two beds and this weekend there will be five people staying. So somebody’s going to be on a camp bed.’

  Rose knew she couldn’t put Adele on a camp bed. ‘You can share with me. Stella and Amelia can have the camp beds. Or you can have a camp bed yourself. Either way, you won’t have either a room or a bathroom to yourself. And Freddie’s linen cupboard doesn’t run to changing the sheets every day, either.’

  Adele sniffed. ‘I suppose that will have to do,’ she said. ‘I can rough it.’

  ‘Don’t let Freddie hear you saying that,’ laughed Rose.

  It was still so hot that Rose decided to leave her shorts on and change her shirt into one with sleeves to protect her shoulders from the midday sun. Adele’s concession to the heat was to extract a straw sunhat from her suitcase.

  ‘Normally, you’d be scandalised by my wearing shorts,’ Rose commented as they got into Rose’s car.

  ‘You’re lucky you have the figure for shorts,’ said Adele. ‘I wish I did.’

  By the time they’d found the camping shop, and bought one foldaway bed and one child’s blow-up bed, both women were tired and hungry.

  ‘Let’s go into Molloy’s for lunch,’ said Rose impulsively. ‘They do lovely seafood salads.’ Ordinarily, she’d have never suggested taking her sister-in-law into a pub but she had a strong sense that things were changed between her and Adele. Some ancient barrier had been broken down and the rules were different.

  ‘Why not?’ said Adele.

  The owner of Molloy’s had styled his pub-restaurant on the harbour restaurants of his native Sydney and in summer, the huge wooden terrace area was jammed with people wanting to enjoy gigantic plates of seafood overlooking the curving Castletown Bay. Rose and Adele nabbed one of the last seats on the furthest-out terrace and sat with the sea breeze cooling them.

  ‘It’s very hot,’ said Adele, watching enviously as Rose eased her bare feet out of her sandals and rested them on the lowest bar of the wooden rail surrounding the terrace.

  ‘Why don’t you take your cardigan off? And your tights,’ said Rose.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ said Adele, who never dared go without tights except when she was at home. ‘I’ve only got a camisole under this,’ she added.

  ‘Yes you could, Adele,’ said Rose. ‘Nobody’s watching.’

  Sixty-five years of conditioning fought for supremacy in Adele’s mind. She scanned the other diners. There were families with toddlers plonked in high chairs, happily covered in tomato ketchup and waving chips. A group of twenty-something men and women were decked out in tiny T-shirts and denim cut-offs. To Rose’s left was an enormous party of tourists from hotter climes, all bronzed and looking pleased at this seventy degree Fahrenheit proof that Ireland was more than a country of mist and rain. They were all ages and sizes, yet nobody seemed worried about wearing shorts with varicose veins and chubby knees showing.

  Adele got up and made her way to the ladies’ room. She returned with her tights in her handbag and her knit cardigan draped around her shoulders.

  ‘Isn’t that better?’ said Rose.

  They feasted on Molloy’s famous crab platters and then took a gentle stroll down the beach in their bare feet, sandals dangling from their hands.

  ‘If all of Kinvarra could see us now,’ laughed Rose ruefully. ‘The two Miller ladies ambling along on the sand in bare feet.’

  Adele looked alarmed at this. It was one thing to throw caution to the wind in a place where nobody knew you, quite another to do so and tempt fate by imagining some Kinvarra resident observing such reckless behaviour. Still, she’d forgotten how wonderful grains of sand could feel between the toes. The beach was hot to walk upon but at the edge of the water, the sliding wet sand was cool and gritty, slithering away when she walked on it.

  ‘Hugh would enjoy this,’ Adele remarked thoughtlessly.

  ‘Do me a favour, Adele. Don’t talk about Hugh. Please. I need time and peace, give me that, please.’ Rose kept walking, her eyes on the misty blue horizon. In the shimmering distance, she could see a yacht, a sleek racer basking in the sun. Hugh loved boats, although it was years since they’d cruised the Shannon in one of those solid cruisers. Rose could remember the two of them setting off for a weekend, with nothing more taxing to do than negotiate the cruiser into tiny, sun-dappled harbours and meander along to some pretty pub for delicious, home-cooked food. It all came back to Hugh, really. She thought about him all the time, without any help from Adele. You couldn’t spend forty years of your life with one person and then cut the cord, never looking back. Rose spent hours looking back. Even in this wonderful, obligation-free life she was living, there were many quiet moments where introspection was inescapable. If Hugh was cast in the part of poor Lot, she would have turned into a pillar of salt many times.

  Adele walked on in silence. She didn’t notice the pretty opalescent shells washed up on the beach. It would take more than taking her tights off to make Adele the sort of person who collected seashells.

  Rose spotted a booth selling ice cream.

  ‘What do you think, Della?’ she asked. ‘Would you like an ice cream?’

  Adele smiled at the affectionate use of her childhood name. ‘Why not,’ she said.

  The beds were set up by seven, and Freddie had concocted a simple meal based on salad, garlic bread and an omelette, which was ready to be cooked when Stella and Amelia arrived. While they waited, the three women sat outside in the golden evening, enjoying the evening sun. One of Freddie’s precious vinyl records played in the background, sending the gentle rhythms of Hoagy Carmichael spinning out into the evening air. A bowl of stuffed olives and a jug of Freddie’s Singapore Sling sat on the cast-iron table. Prinny lay panting across Rose’s feet, while Pig and Mildred had thrown themselves down beside Freddie.

  ‘The Viking evening doesn’t start till eight,’ Freddie remarked, ‘so we should see some of it.’

  ‘I’m surprised you’re not involved,’ Adele said tartly.

  ‘Oh they asked me, but two years ago, we did Irish folklore and I was Queen Maeve and the trouble that white bull caused. The problem with these re-enactments is always the animals.’

  Adele looked astonished. Rose grinned and took another olive.

  ‘Look,’ she cried suddenly, getting to her feet. The dogs jumped up too. ‘They’re coming!’

  Amelia chattered wildly for the first ten minutes after she and Stella arrived, telling Granny that she’d got a hamster named Dimples, that she’d been to Moon’s and gone on the big water slide, and that for Becky and Shona’s birthday, Aunty Hazel had got a bouncy castle in the back garden. Shona fell off and bumped her head but Amelia didn’t.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ said Stella, holding her mother tightly. ‘You’ve no idea how much I’ve missed you.’

  ‘We’ve gone a month without seeing each other before,’ said Rose, trying to hide how guilty and shocked she felt at the heartfelt plea in her daughter’s voice.

  ‘Yes, but that was different,’ Stella said, her face still bur
ied in Rose’s shoulder. ‘I knew you were there with Dad, this is different country, isn’t it? Everything’s changed.’

  ‘We’ve been in touch every few days,’ Rose protested, remorse overwhelming her. She’d thought that Stella would understand her desire to get away from everything and sort out how she felt. And normally, although they spoke on the phone a lot, they didn’t live in each other’s pockets. Rose despised those mothers who demanded that their city-dwelling children trek obediently home every second weekend, refusing to believe that they had their own lives in another place. Rose had thought she’d made the right choice by avoiding all those pitfalls, but now it seemed as if she’d been mistaken.

  Adele had been in the shadows and at that instant, Stella noticed her.

  ‘Aunt Adele, hello, what are you doing here?’ she asked stiffly.

  ‘Adele’s come to offer support,’ Rose said quickly.

  Stella looked just as surprised as Rose had been but she rallied quickly. ‘That’s nice,’ she said.

  Amelia loved Freddie’s cottage and was delighted with the sleeping arrangements, especially her blow-up bouncy bed. Most of all, she adored the dogs, who returned the favour and clustered happily around her. Freddie knocked out the omelette at high speed so that the entire party would get to see some of the Viking show.

  ‘It’s history coming alive,’ she told a wide-eyed Amelia, who was even more thrilled that she was going to be allowed to stay up late.

  Stella was very quiet, so Rose found herself overcompensating in the conversation department, chattering on about the meals on wheels and how she’d toned up from walking so much with the dogs.

  When the meal was finished, they walked down the lane to the Viking show. Amelia skipped on ahead, while Freddie slowed her pace to walk with Adele, leaving Rose and Stella in the middle of the party.