Make Yourself at Home

by Ciara Geraghty

  She was appalled to hear how like Aunt Pearl she sounded.

  ‘I don’t tend to feel the cold,’ he said. ‘And besides, trousers snag something terrible on the hairs.’

  Marianne couldn’t help a brief eye-dart to his legs, which were, she observed, as long and sturdy as one would be entitled to expect from a man of his size. They were matted with pale red hair. Strawberry blond, she supposed.

  ‘I told you I’d wax them for you,’ said Shirley.

  ‘I believe I declined your kind offer,’ said Hugh, backing away from her.

  ‘Big baby,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ he said, tucking a thick strand of hair behind his ear. ‘I just came in to let you know that Mrs O’Driscoll has arrived and she’s insisting that you do her hair. I offered but she’s not for turning.’

  ‘All she wants is her usual bloody blue rinse,’ said Shirley, sighing. ‘Even Harrison could manage it.’

  ‘We’re just finishing up here,’ said Marianne, standing up.

  ‘Take your time,’ said Hugh, his eyes settling on Marianne’s, in a way that made it difficult for her to look away. Maybe because of their green colour. Like cat’s eyes. Something hypnotic about them. ‘I said I’d make Mrs O’Driscoll a brew and I’ve given her a copy of a Royal special of Hello! so she’s grand for a wee while.’

  Now, his eyes had slid to Marianne’s mouth. He looked at it. Like he was studying it. Marianne twitched under so much scrutiny. ‘Shirley found my stash again, I see,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Marianne, scrubbing furiously at the tell-tale chocolate stain on the edge of her mouth.

  ‘It’s a delicious combination, isn’t it?’ he went on. ‘Chocolate and chilli?’

  ‘I’ll … replace it,’ said Marianne.

  ‘No need,’ said Hugh, turning for the door. ‘You can take me for an iced coffee sometime instead.’

  ‘I don’t drink cold coffee.’

  ‘We’ll ask the waiter to heat yours up,’ he said, grinning again before he left the house. The room seemed still and quiet when he’d gone.

  ‘The bang of pheromones in here,’ said Shirley, flapping her hands about as if she was clearing the air. She turned to smirk at Marianne. ‘Although aren’t you people a bit old for that type of thing? No offence.’

  ‘I definitely am,’ declared Marianne, hoping that might be an end to it.

  ‘And Hugh certainly is,’ Shirley went on. ‘He’s thirty-eight.’ She raised her hefty eyebrows so that they almost managed to reach her hairline.

  Marianne ripped a page out of Aunt Pearl’s notebook, filled now with her small, neat print. ‘Here’s your homework,’ she said in a loud, definite voice, holding the page towards Shirley.

  ‘Although,’ Shirley went on as if Marianne hadn’t tried to change the subject, ‘it is true to say that most of our clients are women and they flirt with him non-stop and tip him outrageously. But he shares the tips with me so I try not to object to their blatant objectification.’

  ‘If you have any problems with the calculus question I set you, you can—’

  ‘One of the women – I mean, she must have been thirty-five, easily – asked him out direct. Like, in front of me. Well, I was in the back but I could hear every word.’ Shirley shuddered at the memory. ‘And Hugh was lovely to her, of course he was, the sap. But it was a hard no, all the same. I assumed he was gay for a while, you know, with the kilt an’ all. But no, turns out he just likes reading and learning new things.’ Shirley glared at Marianne to make sure she was listening, which she was because she wouldn’t dare do otherwise. ‘I’m talking poetry and plays and whatnot,’ she added. ‘For, like, fun.’

  Marianne wasn’t sure how to respond to this. Shirley seemed genuinely addled. ‘Well,’ she ended up saying, ‘once you get your exams over and done with, you’ll probably feel differently about, you know, learning.’

  Shirley withered Marianne with a look.

  ‘Why do you want to do the leaving cert anyway?’ asked Marianne then, her curiosity getting the better of her fear. ‘Since you’re training to be a hairdresser.’

  Shirley shrugged. ‘I want to know that I can, you know? I didn’t do a tap in school. Too busy making a tit of myself for the boys. Drinking my head off. What a fucken dope I was.’

  ‘And do you like hairdressing?’ asked Marianne.

  Shirley nodded. ‘I really like it,’ she said. ‘Plus I’m brilliant with people so … you know, makes sense.’

  ‘Right,’ said Marianne.

  Shirley grinned. ‘Wait’ll they hear he’s asked you out on a date.’

  ‘He didn’t ask me out on a date,’ said Marianne, nettled now.

  ‘Okay, okay, keep that mop you call your hair on,’ said Shirley, arranging her hands in a defensive position in front of her body.

  ‘Besides, I don’t go on dates. I never have.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Shirley. ‘I thought you were married?’

  ‘I am married,’ Marianne corrected her even though she had no idea why she bothered. Her marriage was as much a relic of the past as her grandparents’ ‘How to …’ books.

  ‘And you never went on a date with your husband?’ said Shirley.

  Marianne shook her head.

  ‘Not even before you got married?’

  Marianne shook her head again. ‘We talked in work. Sometimes we ate lunch together. Or went for walks.’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Shirley. ‘This sentimental mush is making me nauseous.’

  ‘It worked,’ said Marianne. ‘Well, I thought it worked.’

  ‘And here’s me thinking that Mills and Boon were dysfunctional,’ said Shirley, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Who’s Mills and Boon?’

  ‘Freddy and Bartholomew,’ said Shirley, picking up her and Marianne’s empty mugs and walking to the kitchen.

  ‘Are they a couple?’ said Marianne, following her.

  Shirley turned on the tap, washed the mugs. ‘They sort of were. Only when Freddy was good and drunk mind you,’ she said, setting the mugs on the draining board. ‘They met when Bartholemew’s amateur dramatics group rented costumes from Freddy’s shop. They were so cute together, so long as Freddy kept his glass topped up. And then BAM.’ Shirley clapped her hands together, making Marianne jump. ‘Freddy is drunk as a lord in Razzle Dazzle. one night, smoking his head off, tosses a match on the ground and sets the Cowardly Lion costume on fire.’

  ‘On purpose?’ Marianne couldn’t help getting sucked into the story.

  Shirley rolled her eyes. ‘No, you big dope, he would never do that. He’s petrified of his mother.’

  ‘Right,’ said Marianne, feeling foolish.

  ‘You’re lucky, with your mother,’ said Shirley then, in a quieter voice. ‘Rita’s been great with Freddy. With all of us.’

  Marianne bristled. ‘Lucky is not the word I’d use.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Shirley went on, ‘Freddy’s mother put her foot down after that. Said he had to sort out his drinking or she’d disinherit him. Bartholomew got him into the programme. And sober Freddy can hardly bear to look at him. So we’re stuck with the pair of them. Mills and bloody Boon. The bit where they’re trying to convince themselves that they hate each other, you know?’

  Marianne shook her head. ‘I’ve never read a Mills and Boon,’ she said.

  ‘And Hugh calls you a lover of literature,’ said Shirley, grinning. She walked to the table, stuffing her maths book and pencil case into the Star Wars schoolbag. ‘If you’d bothered reading a Mills and Boon, you’d know that you’re supposed to go on dates with your fella.’ Shirley heaved the bag on her back, grabbed her coat and opened the front door. She jangled a set of keys. ‘You have to leave now,’ she said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Marianne, scrambling to her feet and grabbing her bag. ‘So, do you want to do this again? Sometime?’

  ‘Do you promise it’ll be as much fun as today?’ Shirley said, making her navy eyes even wider and gazing at Maria
nne.

  Marianne hesitated before she answered. ‘You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Shirley. ‘But I would like to do it again. If you don’t mind?’

  ‘No,’ said Marianne. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Cool.’ Shirley swung a punch, which landed on Marianne’s upper arm. She now seemed to be waiting for Marianne to do something so Marianne made a fist of her hand and punched Shirley’s arm.

  ‘Ouch,’ shouted Shirley. ‘That fucken hurt.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Marianne, mortified. ‘I …’ She didn’t finish the sentence because she had no idea what to say. Or do. She never knew. She was exhausted, trying to work it out. Trying and failing.

  Shirley grinned. ‘You better hope my arm’s not too sore to blue-rinse the shit out of Mrs O’Driscoll’s hair.’ She nodded at the door Hugh had barged through earlier. ‘Do you want to see the salon? It’s just through there, in the back garden.’

  Marianne shook her head. ‘I’d better head off.’

  Shirley opened the door but before she left, she turned and said, ‘I still hate calculus but I’m not, like, furious with it any more.’

  ‘Not furious is a great first step,’ said Marianne, smiling.

  Shirley banged the door behind her, but by now Marianne knew that it was not because she was furious with calculus or with her or with anything really.

  It was just the way she closed doors.

  Chapter 15

  Marianne hadn’t opened the wardrobe in the bedroom again.

  Instead, she took whatever clothes she needed out of the two suitcases, open on either side of her bedroom door, until one of them was empty and the other held nothing but the little porcelain owl, still wrapped in tissue paper but no longer encased in a sock, slipper, towel and her Aran cardigan. The tissue paper was soft and made a delicate rustling sound between her fingers as she unwrapped it. The owl itself was small. ‘Is it a baby owl?’ Flo had wanted to know when Marianne presented it to her for her tenth birthday. Marianne said no. She was a fully grown lady owl.

  Flo liked the owl being a lady owl. Also being fully grown. Flo was in a hurry to be bigger. To be older. She hated being the baby. She had sometimes accused Marianne of babying her and perhaps she had a little.

  Flo had been such a good baby. She had only cried when she absolutely had to, and when she did, Marianne cried too, even though she was six by then. She thought it had something to do with the size of Flo’s tears. They seemed much too big for such a small baby.

  ‘What are you going to call her?’ asked Marianne, when Flo had unwrapped the owl, the morning of her tenth birthday.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ said Flo, holding the owl in front of Bruno’s face so he could lick it.

  The owl still didn’t have a name. Marianne set it on her bedside locker. It seemed to regard her in a vaguely resigned manner. Marianne turned it round.

  In the back kitchen, she stuffed her clothes inside the ancient twin tub and threw a scoop of washing powder over them. Then threw in another scoop since her clothes – tracksuits and fleeces, in the main – were riddled with sand and muck and animal hairs and George’s drool. They smelled, too. A damp, salty smell. When she turned the machine on, it shuddered and groaned before settling into a begrudging rhythm.

  In the kitchen, Rita scattered flour across the table and vigorously kneaded a ball of pastry.

  ‘Good morning, Marnie,’ she called out, stopping to pull her vape pen out of her apron pocket and suck noisily on the tip of it. Marianne struggled through the fug and made it to the counter. She opened Aunt Pearl’s newspaper on the jobs page and picked up a pen. She didn’t know how to do anything except accountancy. Could she be a receptionist for a start-up? No, you needed ‘people skills’. She crossed it off. A local café was looking for a waitress. Experience essential. She crossed that off too.

  ‘You don’t have time for a job at the moment, Marnie,’ said Rita, now scattering flour on an old Powers whiskey bottle. Marianne crossed off a dog-walker job. Walking George was hazardous enough. ‘What do you mean?’ she said, looking up warily.

  ‘I need your help,’ said Rita, panting now as she used the bottle – and her entire body, it seemed – to roll out the pastry.

  ‘I’m already helping,’ said Marianne. ‘Driving your lot here, there and everywhere. And now Shirley seems to think I’m available for regular maths lessons. Then there’s George. Not to mention Pearl, with her persistent furniture rearranging and—’

  ‘I need you to come to the Get Well Soon meetings this week,’ said Rita, lifting the circle of pastry off the table and arranging it into a pie dish.

  ‘No,’ said Marianne. ‘And when I say no, I actually mean, absolutely no way.’

  Rita raised her face towards Marianne. ‘Could you scratch the end of my nose, darling? My hands are covered in flour.’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ said Marianne, running the pads of her fingers up and down her mother’s nose. This close, she could see the glue Rita used to stick on her eyelashes.

  ‘It’s just for a few days,’ said Rita briskly. ‘We need some help with the preparations for the protest at Shirley’s house.’

  ‘No,’ said Marianne.

  ‘We’re making placards,’ Rita went on, as if Marianne had made some interested enquiry. ‘And the Get-Well-Sooners, well, they’re the best in the world but their arts and crafts skills are limited.’

  ‘So are mine,’ said Marianne.

  Rita looked at Marianne. ‘But you’re so … neat.’

  ‘I’m not doing it.’ Marianne folded her arms across her chest, so tight her breathing was compromised.

  ‘You’re looking for a job,’ said Rita, nodding towards the newspaper. ‘This is a job.’

  ‘I meant a paying job,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Okay, so there’s no salary,’ admitted Rita. ‘But there’s also no experience required. And I’m prepared to overlook your criminal conviction.’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ said Marianne.

  ‘It’s a little bit funny,’ said Rita.

  Marianne sighed.

  ‘So you’ll do it?’ asked Rita, picking three enormous, misshapen cooking apples from a bowl on the table.

  ‘Do what?’ said Aunt Pearl, who was, all of a sudden, at the kitchen counter. Marianne jumped, banging the hard bone of her elbow on the edge of the fridge.

  ‘Marianne’s agreed to help out at the Get Well Soon meetings.’

  ‘Just for two days,’ Marianne said.

  ‘Or maybe a week,’ added Rita.

  Marianne was about to correct her mother when Aunt Pearl chimed in with an almost cheerful, ‘That’s good.’ Marianne and Rita stared at her. Aunt Pearl collected herself before she added, ‘The devil makes work for idle hands.’

  Chapter 16

  Rita was right. Marianne was good at making placards. This came as a surprise to Marianne, who had alienated herself from her classmates in primary school by declaring arts and crafts ‘boring’. Now here she was, doing a passable job of colouring in between the lines, which was the task Sheldon set for her the following Saturday morning.

  Sheldon was the self-appointed placard-printer. He used what he called ‘bubble-writing’. Harrison decided what colours should be used; he favoured a different one in each bubble letter, which Marianne felt looked childish. She did not voice this opinion, given that her co-workers were, in fact, children.

  Bartholomew was glad of the work as it distracted him from his worries about the impending job interview, about which he seemed increasingly pessimistic.

  ‘Just be yourself, dear,’ Ethel instructed him.

  Bartholomew looked horrified. ‘Why on earth would I do that?’ he said.

  ‘Marianne’s got experience,’ said Rita. ‘Interviewing people. Haven’t you, darling?’

  ‘I thought you used to be an accountant?’ said Shirley suspiciously.

  ‘I still am an accountant,’ snapped Mari
anne.

  ‘How many people have you interviewed?’ asked Bartholomew.

  ‘Only two,’ Marianne clarified. ‘And that was over a twenty-five-year period. I managed to avoid interviewing, in the main.’

  ‘Have you ever fired anyone?’ asked Freddy, his watery grey eyes widening behind his glasses.

  ‘Of course she hasn’t,’ said Ethel, tutting. Marianne wondered how Ethel knew this about her.

  ‘So you could … maybe give me some pointers?’ asked Bartholomew, stepping gingerly towards her.

  Marianne shook her head. ‘I’m hardly what you might call a go-to for interpersonal skills, Bartholomew.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Bartholomew, ‘but you’re also the only person I know with any experience so, you know, hit me up!’

  Freddy snorted. ‘It’s so embarrassing when you try to be down with the youth,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose we could go through a few things,’ said Marianne quickly before Bartholomew could retort. ‘Like your previous experience, for example. Any qualifications that might—’

  ‘You don’t need qualifications to be an usher,’ said Freddy. ‘You just need to smile and point.’

  ‘There’s a lot more to it than that,’ thundered Bartholomew. ‘I would be the interface between the theatre, the players, and the audience. It’s a crucial role.’

  ‘Here’s another crucial role,’ said Shirley, handing him sheets of paper and cardboard.

  Bartholomew sighed and stood up, removing his suit jacket and arranging it carefully across the back of his chair. He set his cufflinks carefully on the windowsill and folded up his shirt sleeves, applying himself to the task of pasting the sheets of paper onto the cardboard.

  The affixing of the handle to the placard was completed by Patrick.

  As well as colouring in between the lines, Marianne also had to correct Sheldon’s spelling without him realising.

  She and Bartholomew developed a system for this particular task. When Sheldon passed Bartholomew a page, complete with a slogan in bubble writing and a typo, Bartholomew turned it upside down and slid it along the floor towards Marianne who slipped it inside her hoodie and excused herself. ‘I’m just going to the loo,’ she called cheerily.