Make Yourself at Home

by Ciara Geraghty

  ‘You should talk to him,’ he said.

  ‘Where is Hugh?’ Marianne whispered, pressing her hand across the receiver.

  ‘He’s on a day off,’ said Freddy, also whispering.

  Marianne felt weak with relief. She knew she’d have to talk to him sooner or later. She was glad it would be later. She put the receiver to her ear. ‘Hello?’

  The Get-Well-Sooners gathered around her, straining forward as if that might allow them to hear what the person on the other end of the line was saying. Marianne could hear their breathing all around her, in and out in unison, it seemed to her. She usually hated other people’s breath. Too hot. Too pungent. Too personal.

  Right now, she found it comforting. ‘The Wind Beneath My Wings’, Rita would probably start singing if she got wind of Marianne’s train of thought.

  Marianne tightened her grip on the phone. Where was Rita?

  ‘Yes, this is Marianne. I’m her daughter … I see … Okay then … If she does ring, you’ll tell her I’m …? Thank you. Goodbye then.’

  She hung up.

  ‘Well?’ said Bartholomew in his booming voice.

  ‘Rita didn’t order a taxi from them today,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Do they know where Hugh is?’ asked Shirley. ‘Maybe Rita’s with him?’

  Marianne shook her head. ‘I asked. They don’t know.’

  ‘We could try him on his mobile telephone?’ said Ethel.

  Freddy wrestled his phone out of the pocket of his trousers. ‘I’ll ring him,’ he said. After a while he shook his head and hung up. ‘It’s just ringing out.’

  ‘Let’s sit down and have a think, shall we?’ suggested Ethel, when it became clear that nobody had any further suggestions to make.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And, just as an aside, I think there are some rock buns left over from the other day. I spotted them in the biscuit tin. If anyone’s hungry, that is.’

  Nobody wanted to admit they were hungry in such circumstances but there was nothing any of them could do in the face of Rita’s gigantic, misshapen rock buns. Marianne made tea.

  Peppermint tea for Ethel, served in a china cup, with the tea bag left on the saucer so she could pop it back into the cup if she went for a refill, which she sometimes did and sometimes didn’t.

  A pot of tea made with PG Tips for Freddy and Bartholomew, which they shared today without their usual bickering over who should get the second cup, the second one being stronger.

  Lyons tea for Shirley, who did not make her usual reference to ‘Blueshirts’ when Marianne made a mug of Barry’s Classic Blend for herself.

  It was good to have something to do.

  Her worst fear was that Rita was drinking somewhere.

  That she was drunk somewhere.

  The others didn’t seem to think this was likely.

  As if Rita had never been a person who disappeared when she was supposed to be somewhere. Like a parent-teacher meeting. Or one of Flo’s school plays.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ Flo would ask Marianne after the show.

  ‘She had to rush off.’

  ‘Did she see me?’

  ‘She said she’d never seen a better Pinnocchio.’

  Cadging a lift from one of the other mothers back to Ancaire.

  ‘Was your mother feeling unwell again, dear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Marianne struggled to remember where William had been. Why hadn’t he been there? And how had he managed to escape scrutiny in these matters? She supposed it was his gender, expectation being so much less for fathers.

  The woman alcoholic.

  Or worse, the mother alcoholic. She was not somebody to be excused. Or even pitied.

  And being the daughter of alcoholics, especially a mother alcoholic, that seemed inexcusable too. Something Marianne had done wrong. Or something she had failed to do right.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Marianne looked towards the door of the drawing room. Patrick stood in the hallway, holding an empty crate in his arms, peering at them through the open door.

  ‘Rita’s disappeared,’ said Freddy, his grey eyes huge behind his glasses.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ said Bartholomew, glaring at Freddy.

  ‘Not for certain,’ said Ethel, peering at the face of her Timex watch. ‘But she never misses a class without letting us know.’

  ‘That’s true’ said Freddy. ‘Even when William had his first stroke, Rita told us she conducted the meetings round his bed in the hospital.’

  ‘How that poor fucker survived to have another stroke is beyond me,’ said Shirley shaking her head.

  Patrick set the crate on the hall table and walked into the room. He looked at Marianne. ‘Rita left a note,’ he said. ‘On the kitchen table.’

  Immediately, Marianne felt the usual flare of annoyance – Patrick knowing everything as usual – but also relief – Patrick knowing everything as usual.

  ‘I didn’t see any note,’ said Marianne. She sounded peevish. Her usual self.

  ‘It was there,’ said Patrick. ‘On the kitchen table.’

  ‘Well, it’s not there now,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Was Gerard in the kitchen earlier?’ said Patrick.

  ‘I shooed him out.’ Marianne did her best to avoid the goat, whose horns seemed longer and sharper than goats horns were supposed to be.

  ‘He must have eaten it,’ said Patrick. ‘He loves Bond notepaper.’

  ‘Just tell us what the note said,’ shouted Bartholomew, making everybody jump, including Patrick.

  ‘It just said something like, “My apologies. I have to be elsewhere today. Please go ahead without me.”’

  ‘Where’s elsewhere?’ said Freddy.

  ‘Clearly, she does not want us to know,’ said Bartholomew.

  ‘She wouldn’t skip a session unless it was important,’ said Ethel, glancing around the room and patting the pockets of her cardigan.

  ‘Your glasses are on your head,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Oh, so they are, dear, thank you,’ said Ethel.

  ‘Do you think she’ll be back before we leave?’ asked Shirley, looking at Marianne. ‘Sheldon got eight out of ten in his spelling test this week. He was hoping for one of Rita’s gold stars.’ When Shirley smiled, it was like the sun coming out after a nuclear winter. It was a thing of beauty, her smile, made all the more beautiful by its scarcity. Nobody could do anything in the face of it except smile back, which they did.

  ‘Well?’ said Shirley, her smile vanishing and impatience taking over.

  ‘I know where she keeps the gold stars,’ said Marianne, standing up. ‘I’ll go and get them.’

  In the kitchen, Marianne took her phone out of her pocket and rang Happy Hair’s landline. Perhaps Hugh was in the salon and had his mobile on silent?

  He answered on the sixth ring.

  ‘Happy Hair, good morning, Hugh McLeod speaking. How can I be of assistance?’

  ‘Hugh?’

  ‘At your service,’ he said. Marianne could tell he was smiling. Also that he had put on a telephone voice.

  ‘It’s Marianne.’

  ‘Oh. Hello,’ he said, a little hesitant. Then rallied with a more cheerful, ‘How’d you like my new and improved telephone technique?’

  ‘It’s very … professional,’ Marianne had to admit.

  ‘I thought you’d like it,’ he said. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’ His tone was brisk now.

  Marianne couldn’t blame him.

  ‘I can’t find Rita,’ she said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I thought maybe she might have mentioned something to you?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’ Marianne could hear the rasp of stubble and knew he was rubbing at the side of his face with his fingers, which was the thing he did when he was trying to work something out.

  ‘She had quite a … busy day yesterday,’ said Hugh after a while.

  Marianne thought ‘busy’ was a kind word to use to descri
be the events of yesterday.

  ‘Maybe she’s just gone somewhere to have a rest?’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes, but where?’ said Marianne.

  Hugh blew into the phone and the sound tickled Marianne’s ear. ‘Well,’ he began, hesitant, ‘she mentioned recently Flo’s anniversary. Marking it.’

  ‘But that’s not until the end of April.’

  ‘Aye, I know, but she … she thought she’d do it a little earlier this year.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Marianne. ‘I see.’ She clenched every muscle in her body so she wouldn’t cry again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Marianne,’ said Hugh. ‘I know it’s hard.’

  ‘Please stop being nice to me,’ she whispered. She was terrified she might cry again.

  ‘Newbridge Farm,’ said Hugh all of a sudden.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rita mentioned it recently. Does that ring any bells? Something to do with Flo? Her anniversary?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marianne. ‘It does.’

  Chapter 32

  Flo was supposed to go to Newbridge Farm for her school tour.

  Marianne remembered her contagious excitement when she came home from school that day. Announced the trip. ‘We’re going in a week and there are seven days in a week so that’s seven sleeps.’

  Marianne forged her mother’s signature on the consent form. Their parents had gone somewhere – Marianne couldn’t remember where, an arts festival, probably – for a few days. She took a ten-pound note from the milk jug in the kitchen cupboard, where Rita left cash for emergencies whenever they went away. She folded it carefully inside an envelope, sealed it shut with spit from her tongue. She remembered the sour taste of the paper, pressing the flap down, making sure it was sealed. Flo counting down the days.

  ‘Three more sleeps,’ she told Rita when she and William returned home, bouncing up and down on her feet like she had springs in her shoes.

  The night before, an argument erupted between Rita and William. Nothing unusual but it had gone on for hours, the pair of them charging around the house, banging doors, throwing books, filling their glasses to the brim. The usual. But it had ended on the beach, and Marianne, terrified that they might decide to go swimming as they had before, couldn’t sleep until she heard them returning home at dawn, holding hands and singing, stopping only to kiss each other. Or hug each other. Or hold each other up.

  Maybe Marianne forgot to set her alarm. Or perhaps she slept through it. She didn’t know. All she knew was that they were late.

  Too late.

  The school bus had left by the time she and Flo arrived. They were out of breath with the rushing and the running and Flo was doing her best not to cry but crying anyway.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ she cried. ‘It’s not fair.’ She said it over and over.

  ‘I’ll bring you some other time, darling,’ Rita told Flo when she managed her way down to the kitchen that afternoon. ‘I’m so thirsty,’ she told them. ‘It must be that cheese I ate yesterday.’ She opened the fridge and drank deeply from a bottle of water which, Marianne had worked out years before, was gin.

  Now, when Marianne got to Newbridge Farm, the man in the café was drying a cup in that distracted way people sometimes did when their minds were not on the job.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Marianne, standing at the counter.

  The man rubbed the cup with a tea towel and stared off into the middle distance.

  ‘I think it’s dry now,’ she said in a very Shirley tone. It worked because the man said, ‘Huh?’ dragging his eyes from some distant point over Marianne’s right shoulder and fastening them on her face.

  ‘I’m looking for someone,’ Marianne blurted.

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ the man said, setting the cup on the counter and flinging the tea towel onto his shoulder. Marianne cleared her throat. ‘I’m looking for my mother,’ she said. ‘She’s … I think she might have gone to the animal farm. But she could have stopped here first?’

  The waiter leaned on the counter. ‘What does she look like?’ he said.

  This bit was easy. ‘She looks like Rita Hayworth,’ she said.

  ‘In which film?’ he asked, interested now.

  Marianne shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen a Rita Hayworth film.’

  The waiter widened his eyes, shook his head. ‘You’ve never seen Gilda?’ he asked.

  This was one of Marianne’s pet hates. Didn’t she just say she hadn’t seen any of Rita Hayworth’s bloody films?

  ‘She’ll be wearing a dress. Like a deb’s dress. You know the ones, in silk or satin, with sequins and complicated straps and a full skirt. High heels. Bright red lipstick. She wears a turban on her head. It could be any colour, apart from black, navy or grey.’

  The waiter took a moment to digest the details. ‘Sounds like Rita Hayworth in You Were Never Lovelier,’ he said then. ‘Great film. You should do yourself a favour and watch it.’

  ‘Have you seen her?’ asked Marianne.

  The waiter shook his head and picked up the cup, began drying it with the tea towel all over again. ‘Can’t say as I have,’ he said. ‘It’s been sluggish in here today, with the rain.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Marianne, backing away. ‘I’ll try the farm.’

  The waiter shook his head. ‘You have to go through the café to get into the farm and I’d remember somebody like your mother.’

  Despite her naturally low reserves of trust, Marianne was inclined to believe the waiter. Perhaps it was the steadfast and attentive way he dried crockery.

  She cast about the café. A few pockets of people here and there; two couples; one woman feeding her baby. Marianne fished her phone out of her pocket, examined the screen. No missed calls, no messages from Rita. Or from any of the Get-Well-Sooners to let her know that Rita had returned.

  She phoned Rita’s number again. It began to ring. And as it did, she heard Rita’s ringtone: Rita Hayworth’s character in Gilda singing ‘Amado Mio’. She snatched her head this way and that but still couldn’t see Rita. She began to make her way towards the sound. Towards the back of the café, a woman sat alone with her back to Marianne. She had sparse, thin hair, dark with a good two inches of coarse grey at the roots. She sat hunched over a mug, both her hands wrapped around it, warming them. On the table beside her, a phone, shuddering every time it rang. The woman paid it no attention.

  ‘Rita?’

  The woman turned slowly and even when she looked up, it took Marianne a moment to recognise her mother. Without her false eyelashes, pan stick and lipstick, her face seemed faded. As if someone had pulled a plug and drained it of all colour and vitality.

  She wore what looked like one of Marianne’s tracksuits. On her feet a pair of thick socks and runners. Thrown over her shoulders, a woollen shawl, but even so, Rita looked frozen with the cold, her lips tainted a blueish-white. For the first time since Marianne had known her, Rita looked her age. That is to say, she looked old. Properly old. Elderly woman old, her face creased and lined like a page, loose and forgotten at the bottom of a handbag.

  It was shocking.

  Marianne pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Rita?’ she said again. ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone? I’ve been phoning you. And looking for you. I’ve been … worried about you.’

  At first, Rita just shook her head. Eventually she said, ‘How did you know I’d be here?’

  ‘Something Hugh said.’

  For a while they sat there, the two women, not saying anything.

  ‘Do you remember Flo’s school tour?’ asked Rita.

  Marianne nodded.

  ‘It took so little to make Flo happy,’ Rita said then. She closed her eyes and two enormous tears swelled and rolled, slow and solemn, down the worn skin of her face.

  Marianne nodded. That much was true.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ said Marianne, putting her hand on her mother’s arm.

  Rita shook her head. ‘I’m supposed to go around the farm,’ she said. ‘I always
go around the farm when I come. There are owls. Flo loved owls, didn’t she?’ She looked at Marianne then, with bloodshot, tired eyes, and there was a pleading in them, too. A request for confirmation.

  Marianne nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Flo loved owls.’

  Rita stood up, her face whiter now as the light caught it. She gripped the back of her chair.

  ‘You’re in no state to go around the farm today,’ said Marianne, standing up too, putting her hand on Rita’s arm to steady her.

  Rita didn’t argue. She didn’t say anything. Just nodded.

  ‘We’ll come back another day,’ Marianne said.

  Rita shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, with quiet authority. She threaded her way past the tables and chairs like an old person. A properly old woman, worried about banging her hip, falling, breaking something.

  Marianne followed her. Most of her was glad that she wouldn’t have to come back another day. She’d be like Ethel looking for a sign. A sign of Flo. And there would be none.

  Through a glass he held before him, inspecting it for flaws, the waiter watched Rita’s careful walk to the door. He removed the cloth from his shoulder, wiped the rim of the glass with it and examined Marianne as she passed the counter. ‘You didn’t find her, then?’ he asked.

  ‘I did,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Oh,’ said the waiter, confused.

  ‘She’s just … she’s not herself,’ Marianne explained.

  It struck her that she had spent her whole life wishing that Rita was not herself. Wishing that she was somebody else. And now, it seemed, she was. The realisation gave Marianne no pleasure.

  Chapter 33

  Marianne slept in the next day.

  So did George.

  She put it down to yesterday, the strangeness of it. She was a creature of habit. Even here, at Ancaire, she had somehow found a routine. Had managed to grasp the hang of it, and even though she often felt like she was hanging onto it with the whitened tips of her fingers, she had gleaned some small comfort from it nonetheless.

  She hated the way nothing ever stayed the same. Like yesterday, when they arrived home, Rita insisted on going in the back door so she wouldn’t have to face them. The Get-Well-Sooners.