Make Yourself at Home

by Ciara Geraghty

  Bartholomew’s interview was at eleven o’clock in the morning so, after Marianne had picked up the Get-Well-Sooners and dropped them at Ancaire, she drove Bartholomew to the theatre in Rush where the interview would take place. She parked outside the door.

  ‘Oh dear, Marianne,’ said Bartholomew, immaculate in a navy herringbone suit with a triangle of handkerchief peeping out of the breast pocket, in the exact same shade as his tie. ‘I don’t think I can do this.’

  ‘You can,’ said Marianne in the voice she used to employ when her clients got jumpy around tax return season.

  It seemed to work because Bartholomew looked at her with his damp, pale blue eyes and said, ‘Do you really think so?’ His tone was plaintive but there was a sliver of hope in there somewhere.

  Marianne nodded briskly.

  ‘Perhaps we should do the breathing exercise Rita swears by,’ suggested Bartholomew after a while.

  ‘We?’ said Marianne.

  ‘It’s good to have a bit of company,’ said Bartholomew.

  They sat in the car and breathed in for five, held it for five, breathed out. Bartholomew insisted on doing it ten times. When Marianne opened her eyes – she hadn’t realised she had closed them in the first place – Bartholomew was looking at her and smiling.

  ‘What?’ she said, straightening. ‘Do I have food on my face?’

  ‘I was just thinking how fabulous your hair is,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Hugh’s got a great pair of hands,’ he added, wistfully.

  ‘You should go,’ said Marianne, looking at her watch. ‘I suppose you want me to wait for you?’

  Bartholomew shook his head. ‘I’d prefer if you didn’t,’ he said. ‘Just in case it goes balls up.’

  ‘It won’t go balls up,’ said Marianne.

  ‘You said balls,’ said Bartholomew, grinning.

  ‘Go on,’ said Marianne. ‘You don’t want to be late.’

  ‘But if I’m too early, I’ll look desperate,’ said Bartholomew, widening his eyes so that he did look a bit desperate.

  ‘You’ll look enthusiastic,’ said Marianne.

  Bartholomew, who had been sitting on his hands, plucked one from beneath him and placed it on Marianne’s, gripping the wheel. ‘You know,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’d have come if it weren’t for you.’

  His hand was warm from the recent weight of his backside on it. Marianne surprised herself by not pulling her hand away. In fact, she turned it so she was now holding Bartholomew’s hand in hers, her fingers long and white and thin against Bartholomew’s short, brown ones. Bartholomew smiled at her, steeled himself and opened the car door.

  ‘Wait,’ said Marianne, diving for her handbag and reaching inside. ‘Freddy gave me something to give you. I nearly forgot.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Bartholomew.

  ‘This.’ Marianne handed him what looked like a shopping trolley token, in the colours of the rainbow.

  ‘Oh, my word.’ Bartholomew took it gently from her and placed it in the centre of his palm. He shook his head. ‘He kept it,’ he said, almost to himself. He looked at Marianne and there were tears in his eyes and she cursed herself for giving it to him at all.

  ‘The night of the marriage referendum,’ Bartholomew said quietly. ‘We were so drunk, me and Freddy. I wanted to take a trolley from outside the supermarket and wheel Freddy around in it. Like a triumphant lap, you know? But we didn’t have a euro coin to put in the slot and then an old queen gave Freddy this token and away we went, Freddy in the trolley and me pushing and the pair of us singing ‘People Get Ready’.

  Marianne really regretted giving Bartholomew the token now because, while he no longer looked like he might cry, there was every possibility that he was going to sing.

  Which he did. ‘People Get Ready’. He closed his eyes and spread his arms while he sang the entire first verse and there was absolutely nothing Marianne could do but wait for him to stop. When he finally did, he slipped the small token into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, patted it there.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘are you sure I look presentable enough?’ He pulled down the visor and examined his teeth in the mirror.

  ‘I am,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Right then.’ Bartholomew hauled himself out of the Jeep, closed the door behind him and Marianne watched him until he disappeared inside the theatre.

  When she lifted her hand from the steering wheel to take off the handbrake, it was shaking. She was as nervous as if it was she who was about to be interviewed. Which was ridiculous. Bartholomew was a grown man who could take care of himself. It was just … this was so much more than a job interview. It was Bartholomew taking his first, shaky-legged steps into this brave new sober world he had managed to build for himself. Stepping off the carousel of casual hook-ups, crashing hangovers, and lost opportunities. Living alone and independently for maybe the first time in his life. Doing his best not to depend on anyone. Trying not to let anyone down. Having his heart broken by Freddy, who hadn’t meant to break it but who broke it all the same.

  Marianne had a sudden and terrible urge to run into the theatre and talk to the interviewer. Let them know just how brilliant Bartholomew would be at the job, no matter how chequered his work experience might appear on the two pages of his curriculum vitae.

  And then she remembered. She had told him he could do this. She had led him to believe that she believed in him.

  She would just have to have a bit of faith.

  Chapter 23

  Marianne was not needed the next morning. Hugh had driven the Get-Well-Sooners to Ethel’s house where the meeting was taking place. It was Ethel and Stanley’s wedding anniversary and Ethel was keen to stay close to home until the dinner-dance that evening. ‘Just in case dear Stanley sends me a sign earlier than usual,’ she had explained to Marianne who managed not to say anything sceptical.

  Marianne had thought it would make a welcome change, not having to drive around the country in Rita’s unpredictable Jeep, picking her clients up and dropping them off and listening to their bickering and singing and whooping.

  The house seemed very quiet.

  She thought about Bartholomew, who had phoned her after the interview.

  ‘When did they say they’d let you know?’ she asked him.

  ‘Next week sometime,’ he said.

  ‘How do you think it went?’

  ‘Do you mind if we don’t talk about it?’

  Marianne walked through the quiet house, George’s nails tap-tap-tapping on the floorboards behind her. Goose bumps erupted onto her skin. It seemed like a betrayal, worrying about Bartholomew and his interview. A lack of confidence in his ability to shine.

  Marianne pressed her nose against the window in Rita’s studio. Patrick’s workshop door was closed. He must have gone to meet a customer. Or get supplies.

  The grandfather clock in the hall chimed loudly.

  She marched to the kitchen where she filled a bucket with hot, soapy water and carried it out to the glasshouse. She had thought about clearing it out for ages but never appeared to have enough time or energy to follow through.

  Now, she seemed to have a surfeit of both.

  She scrubbed at the glasshouse, filled Patrick’s wheelbarrow several times with the overgrown foliage from inside, refilled some of the now empty pots with fresh compost, pushed some seeds Patrick had given her deep into the soil, watered them.

  Again and again, Marianne poured the tepid, dirty brown water out of the bucket, refilled it. She scrubbed at the last traces of moss and algae, kept scrubbing until they relented and let go. She used the hose to rinse the suds off the glass. She stopped for a quick lunch of one of Rita’s roasted asparagus and goat’s cheese tartlets, eating it on an upturned bucket in the glasshouse, washing it down with a glass of milk.

  By the time she finished, in the late afternoon, she was sweating and out of breath. Her hair had reverted to type, back to the tangled, wild version of itself, George having insisted on his morning w
alk on the beach, unable or unwilling to acknowledge the adverse effect of the salty sea wind on her freshly coiffed do. She pushed as much of it as she could fit behind her ears, stepped away from the glasshouse to get a better view. With the amount of foliage she had cut away inside, she could now see right through the glasshouse, all the way to the sea.

  Today the water was a bright green with the slant of the setting sun on the surface, and the waves were gentler, ripples rather than surges.

  ‘You’ve done a great job.’

  Marianne turned round. Rita was standing on the grass with her hands on her hips, smiling. She was even more dressed up than usual, no mean feat, Marianne thought. Although the overall effect was demure rather than her usual exuberance. There was a definite black tie tone to the outfit: a sleeveless black silk gown with a scooped, ruffled neckline, pinched in at the waist, a fishtail skirt ending at her ankles and a pair of high-heeled gold sandals with her toes poking out the top, uniformly painted the same sophisticated gold as her shoes. Even her fingernails matched. A black and gold leopard-print cocktail bag was tucked under her arm. A cropped black jacket hung off her fingers.

  The entire effect was one of attention to detail and seemed to suggest a ‘less is more’ policy that was not in keeping with Rita’s usual sense of carnival when it came to dressing.

  ‘You look … lovely,’ Marianne couldn’t help saying.

  ‘Oh, I’m not too conservative?’ said Rita, looking down at herself.

  ‘No,’ said Marianne, stung.

  ‘Sorry, darling, It’s just, I have to go to Ethel’s churchy dinner-dance thing and I didn’t think they’d let me in if I was in one of my usual rig-outs, as you call them.’

  Marianne couldn’t help feeling a modicum of shame. It was true that she referred to Rita’s outfits as rig-outs. And not in a kind way.

  ‘You don’t give a whit what other people think,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Well, no, I don’t usually, but Ethel is so particular about this event and it’ll be crammed with churchy people. You know how scared I am of churchy people.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were scared of anything,’ said Marianne, surprised.

  ‘Only gatherings of churchy people. They’re just so … strange.’ Rita actually shuddered although whether it was from the cold – the usual sharp wind was whistling in from the sea – or because of the strange churchy people, Marianne couldn’t tell.

  ‘I thought Ethel went to that dinner-dance thing with, well, you know, Stanley,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Marnie, you do know that Stanley is dead, don’t you?’ said Rita, looking at Marianne with concern.

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Marianne. ‘It’s Ethel who seems to have difficulty with that fact.’

  Rita sighed and shook her head. In her subdued outfit, she looked a little less than herself. She looked tired. ‘She just … she misses him,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘Every day.

  Marianne nodded. ‘I know,’ she said.

  Rita straightened, gathered herself. ‘Anyway, the thing is, Ethel is there, at the dinner-dance. But Stanley is a no-show.’

  ‘There’s a surprise.’

  Rita ignored Marianne’s sceptical tone. ‘He usually sends his sign before the dinner is served. But they’re already dishing out the baked Alaska and there’s no sign of a sign, apparently.’

  ‘What sort of sign?’ Marianne asked, curious in spite of herself.

  Rita shrugged. ‘Different things. A song maybe. One year it was a smell. Marrows, I think. Stanley used to grow them. Or it could be something someone says or just, you know, Ethel gets a sense of him, nearby. It gives her great comfort.’

  Marianne peeled off her gloves. ‘I presume you’ll want a lift.’

  ‘Actually,’ Rita said, ‘Ethel wondered if you could come too.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She adores you.’

  ‘Ethel adores everybody.’

  ‘She says it will cheer her up.’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘I’m just telling you what she said.’

  Marianne sighed. ‘How long do I have to stay?’

  Rita shook her head. ‘She didn’t specify.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Marianne, picking up the bucket and emptying it down the drain beside the glasshouse.

  ‘So you’ll come?’ said Rita brightly.

  ‘Fine,’ said Marianne, gruffly. ‘I just need to wash my hands.’

  ‘And maybe brush your hair?’ said Rita. ‘The churchy people …’

  ‘Nobody’s going to notice my hair.’

  ‘And could you put a dress on?’ went on Rita. ‘It’s just …’

  ‘I know, I know, the churchy people.’

  Marianne tossed the gardening gloves inside the glasshouse. ‘I’ll meet you in the Jeep in five minutes.’

  ‘How about ten?’ said Rita. ‘That’ll give you time to put a bit of lipstick on.’

  Marianne owned one dress. It was black. She wasn’t sure what fabric it was made of; some synthetic mix that meant she could throw it in the machine and didn’t have to bother with the iron afterwards. She’d had it for years. She’d worn it to every work Christmas party she had been unable to wriggle her way out of, and the few ICA events she’d had to endure. Brian had said it was ‘nice’ the few times she’d had occasion to wear it. She hunted through her suitcase for the black strapless bra she had to wear with it, since the dress was a halterneck, tying at the back of her neck with a piece of black satin ribbon. She wrestled her way into the dress, which stopped just south of her knees. Her bare legs were a blueish white. George, sitting on the rug, looked at her, his cocked head giving him a sort of concerned expression.

  ‘Okay, fine, I’ll put tights on,’ she told him crossly. She found a tangle of tights in the zip section of her suitcase and managed to extract a pair with no obvious snags or ladders. They felt strange against her skin and she was reminded of Hugh and his aversion to trousers, and his kilts, and his hairy legs, which were also long and sturdy and …

  She pushed her feet into the only pair of shoes she had that weren’t runners. They were black sandals, a little higher than she remembered, the heels skinny as knitting needles and a slender strap that fastened around her ankle and didn’t promise much in the way of support. She practised walking down the length of the room with George’s curious amber eyes following her progress, like one of Rita’s self-portraits. When she managed two consecutive lengths without stumbling, she put her hair up, using the biggest scrunchie she could find, brushed mascara onto her eyelashes, used her finger to dab a bit of grey eyeshadow across her lids and smeared some lipstick – a copper sort of brown – across her mouth, smacked her lips together as she had seen Rita do on many occasions.

  She checked her watch. She had managed it in exactly five minutes.

  ‘No,’ she said to George, who had stood up and was now waiting patiently beside the bedroom door. ‘You can’t come. Not this time. The churchy people wouldn’t like it.’ Marianne pulled his ears gently between her fingers, just the way he liked and he took the opportunity to lick the inside of her arm, which she rubbed on the side of her dress.

  Rita stood at the bottom of the stairs as Marianne inched her way down, clutching the banisters.

  ‘I like your rig-out,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not too much, is it?’ said Marianne, looking down at herself.

  ‘You look very elegant.’

  Marianne shrugged. ‘Well, you know, best to make an effort for the churchy people.’

  Rita nodded grimly.

  They set off.

  The dinner-dance was taking place in the hall behind the Church of Ireland. It was a fairly rudimentary building, which the committee had prettied up with fairy lights, dangling from the eaves, and an enormous red ribbon wrapped around the front door with an oversized bow stuck in the middle, making it look like a Christmas present somebody forgot to open. As they approached, Marianne could hear an amplified voice callin
g out raffle numbers. When they reached the door, another car pulled up and when Marianne looked, she saw it was Hugh’s bottle-green Jaguar. The doors flung open.

  ‘Bartholomew!’ Rita called out. ‘And Freddy! Shirley! Hugh! Oh, you darlings! What are you all doing here?’

  ‘Got a damsel-in-distress call from Ethel,’ said Bartholomew, looking very dapper in a top hat and tails. ‘She left a message on your phone but was worried you mightn’t listen to it until later, so she phoned me, and I phoned them, and Shirley plucked Mrs Hegarty’s eyebrows so she’d look after the boys, and Hugh said he’d drive us.’

  Hugh poked his head out of the car and grinned at everyone. He was in his usual kilt and shirt but had added a black tuxedo jacket to his ensemble, which gave a little gravitas to his appearance. With Freddy in a white Cats T-shirt under a faded but otherwise presentable black corduroy jacket, and Shirley, toned down in a khaki print, nearly knee-length dress and freshly polished Doc Martens, Marianne felt the churchy people could not deny them access on the grounds of their appearance, at least. She felt nearly proud of them.

  ‘You all look beautiful,’ Rita declared.

  ‘No one’s ever called me beautiful before,’ said Hugh, and through the shadowy darkness of the night, Marianne could hear the grin in his tone.

  ‘Well, they should,’ said Bartholomew, taking the opportunity to clasp Hugh’s arm. ‘Look at you, you’re a magnificent specimen.’

  Freddy’s face curdled. He pushed his glasses up his nose with a long, bony finger. ‘When you’ve quite finished,’ he said pointedly to Bartholomew, ‘we have Ethel to attend to.’

  ‘Okay, okay, keep what’s left of your hair on, Frederick,’ grumbled Bartholomew, releasing Hugh. ‘Now, follow me,’ he told them, marching towards the door in a thick cloud of Paco Rabanne. Rita, Shirley, and Freddy followed in single file, like foot soldiers marching to the front line.

  ‘I’ll park the car,’ said Hugh. Marianne nodded and hurried towards the building.

  The Get-Well-Sooners crammed through the front door into a poky little foyer, a trestle table standing stoutly between them and the door into the main hall. The table was covered in crepe paper, raffle tickets, and a petty-cash box. A pair of old but well-maintained red velvet curtains were pulled tight across the door into the hall.