A Keeper

by Graham Norton

  She stood up abruptly to avoid sinking into a now-familiar swamp of regret. The box was returned to the wardrobe and with a sigh Elizabeth accepted that she would have to share this secret. Breaking her dead mother’s confidence made her feel disloyal, but she had to tell someone about what she had found. Who would know more about Edward? She imagined her mother turning in her grave but she was going to have to speak to her Uncle Jerry and Aunt Gillian. She looked at her phone. It was still only seven thirty, too early to talk to anyone. She would make herself some toast.

  Opening the kitchen door she didn’t notice it right away. It was the rustle of paper that drew her attention, and then she saw it. Sitting up in her canvas tote bag, holding an energy bar between its small dusty pink paws, was a rat. Elizabeth screamed and slammed the door. Panting with fear she leaned against the wall and scanned the hall for any other rodents. Her body shuddered as she considered how many of them might be in the house. Had they been in the bedroom with her last night? Of course she was used to seeing rats weaving around the black plastic hills of rubbish on the streets of New York late at night, but this was different. Seeing one at such close quarters seemed almost pornographic in its horror. She considered all the things that were in the kitchen. Her car keys, the house keys, her handbag with her passport and purse. She needed a trap or poison or whatever new methods had been developed since she was a girl. The obvious place to go was Keane and Sons, which for as long as she could remember had been an Aladdin’s cave full of anything you might want that wasn’t food or clothing, though of course her cousin Noelle had added a baby boutique, despite the protests from Uncle Jerry.

  The shop wouldn’t open till nine. After having a very brief, heart-stopping cold shower, she got dressed and came back downstairs. The kitchen remained off limits and it was still only eight o’clock. The large pile of post was spread across the console table. She sighed and sat in the high-backed mahogany chair that had always been used when anyone was speaking on the phone. It creaked as it always had and the back hit the wall as she knew it would. Ripping open the various envelopes, she found appeals from donkey sanctuaries, cancer charities, guide dogs for the blind, several electricity and phone bills, a letter from the refuse collection company acknowledging the end of service from that address and then a letter from her mother’s solicitor, Ernest O’Sullivan.

  She assumed it was going to be a bill, but the letter was addressed to her. He wanted to speak to her about her mother’s will and a codicil that had come to light. Elizabeth checked the date on the letter. A week after her mother’s funeral. She folded the paper and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans. Hopefully it could be dealt with over the phone. She didn’t fancy having to drive all the way over to Kilkenny. As long as it didn’t involve her Uncle Jerry or complicate her plans, she didn’t care. Her goal was just to sell up and head back to New York with enough money to help Zach through college. He claimed he didn’t want to go but she knew that Elliot would read him the riot act when he got wind of their son’s plan. It was one of the reasons she had agreed to let Zach head west by himself to San Francisco for a visit with his father. She pulled her phone from her pocket. It would be after midnight in California, too late to call. She would ring in the evening. Looking at the screen she saw that she had a missed call and a voicemail. Zach! Even as she wondered how she hadn’t heard the phone ringing, she remembered she had left the phone on silent from the night before.

  ‘Hi, Mom. It’s me. Just to let you know I’ve arrived. Dad picked me up from the airport and everything is great. Really warm compared to home. Hope Ireland isn’t too depressing. I’m shattered so I’m going to crash. Love you.’

  It was so lovely to hear his voice. His New York swagger trying to mask his adolescent excitement about his trip. She thought about calling him back but decided against it. He’d done what she had asked and called her, so she would let him enjoy his little taste of independence. She would wait to return the call. She wasn’t going to be that sort of mother, or more precisely she didn’t want to be her own mother.

  One of the most enduring memories she had of her mother was the day Elizabeth was leaving Buncarragh to begin her studies at university in Dublin. She had expected her mother to perhaps be a little upset but what she was not prepared for was the emotional outburst that her departure had provoked. Her mother hadn’t just shed a tear as she waved her off from the door, she had collapsed into full-scale sobbing. Elizabeth remembered being embarrassed and impatient. It wasn’t as if she was heading off to war or a hospital for major surgery. She was just doing what dozens of other teenagers from Buncarragh were doing and their parents weren’t holding on to porch pillars, wailing as if they were watching their family trapped on a sinking ship. Afterwards, on the bus to Dublin, she had recalled all the excuses her mother had made over the years for not allowing her to go on any school trips. She had assumed it was to do with money, but in retrospect it seemed far more likely that her mother had an unhealthy attachment to her. Some might have said she was just being overly protective but to Elizabeth it had felt more like possessiveness. When the idea of her doing her postgraduate work in America had been broached, her mother had come up with a thousand reasons why Elizabeth shouldn’t. When the day finally came for her to fly to JFK, there was no sign of her mother at the airport to wave her off. She’d claimed she was ill, but Elizabeth knew the clingy truth.

  In need of a caffeine fix, and with the twenty-euro note she had found in the pocket of her hoodie, she left the front door on the latch and headed out. The burglars of Buncarragh could help themselves. The only thing she cared about was her passport and that was being guarded by a rat.

  Walking into Boost she fought the desire to roll her eyes. It was like stepping into one of the self-consciously hipster haunts in Williamsburg that Zach and his friends thought so much of. The exposed brick behind the counter, the chalkboards hanging from chains, the metal stools placed around old butcher’s blocks. It was a source of amazement to Elizabeth that such a place could exist in Buncarragh. She remembered the old café that Mrs Moore used to run, what had it been called? Coffee something … Pot? The odd thing was that the two women standing in front of her waiting at the counter could have been customers in Mrs Moore’s but here they were ordering skinny lattes and dry cappuccinos. She herself had always felt she was holding on to her Irish roots by stubbornly refusing to order anything other than an adjective-free coffee or tea, but now she found that the whole nation had moved on without her.

  Sitting on a high stool, she perched her laptop on a wooden shelf that ran the width of the window. The Wi-Fi password was fullofbeanz. She scrolled through her emails, deleting the junk as she went. She was left with only two that she felt she should actually read.

  The first was from Linda Jetter, their downstairs neighbour who had volunteered to look after Shelly the cat. In fact, she had been so keen that Elizabeth was considering offering her the creature full time. Zach had lost interest in Shelly shortly after his persistent pleas to get a cat were answered. Elizabeth had been dealing with her single mother guilt after Elliot’s departure, and she’d agreed to the pet against her better judgement. It didn’t help that she felt obliged to explain to everyone who encountered the cat that he hadn’t been named after the poet. Shelly was simply young Zach’s way of describing the cat’s tortoiseshell markings. The email consisted of four photographs of Shelly in Linda Jetter’s apartment. At best he looked bored, at worst contemptuous. Linda had just written ‘Shelly – feeling right at home!’ Elizabeth quickly typed a brief response, thanking Linda again for her kindness. She wasn’t sure why, but she couldn’t help feeling sorry for Linda Jetter. All she knew about her was that she was in her late fifties, had never been married and worked as a paralegal secretary in midtown somewhere. It was just that she never seemed to have any sort of social life, and came and went with clockwork precision in one of her sensible suits, carrying her work shoes in an old Lord & Taylor bag. She was probably
perfectly happy. In fact, it was likely that she felt just as sorry for the divorced single mother living upstairs.

  The other was from Jocelyn, one of her friends at work. They were both in the English Department and shared the Romantics between them. Elizabeth scanned the content. Christ, this was not good news. Jocelyn was wondering if she knew already that Brian Babst and Nicole Togler had dropped out. They had both been taking her ‘Romantics and the Celtic Tradition’. With them gone she had only five students left. Her course felt doomed which was, she thought, strangely Celtic and Romantic. She marked the email unread – she would reply later. The shop must be open by now. She’d grab another coffee to go and head over.

  Homemade muffins that looked the same on 34th street as they did in Buncarragh were sitting in a basket by the till and Elizabeth was just about to pick one up when she heard her name being whispered in her ear. She turned to find her cousin Paul with a wide grin spread across his face.

  ‘I heard you were back!’

  ‘Yes.’ She wasn’t sure what else to add. She was clearly back.

  ‘Noelle said she saw you.’

  ‘Yes. She did.’ Elizabeth searched for a phrase to add so that she seemed less curt. ‘She looked well.’

  Happily, the barista interrupted them by asking what she wanted. After she’d ordered she turned back to her cousin. He really hadn’t changed at all. Arms slightly too long for his body, dark hair still falling into his eyes, and that gormless grin. Elizabeth didn’t mind her cousin. As her mother used to say, he had no harm in him.

  ‘I was coming into the shop to see you, actually.’

  ‘Always welcome. What do you need?’

  ‘I saw a rat in Convent Hill.’

  ‘In the yard?’

  ‘No. In the house. It was sat up on the kitchen table. I nearly died of the fright.’ Elizabeth liked the feel of the words in her mouth. It was an expression her mother might have used and certainly something Elizabeth herself would never have said on campus or at home.

  ‘Jesus, that’s fierce. I’ll send young Dermot up later on with a few traps and lay a bit of poison at the back there.’

  ‘Thanks. That would be great.’ The barista leaned forward and asked for nearly six euros. Elizabeth refused to consider how many dollars that might be. She turned to Paul. ‘Can I get you something?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course.’ She remembered these strange little dances.

  ‘I’ll have a latte, so. Thanks very much.’

  Having placed the order, the two of them were sentenced to wait.

  ‘This place is new. O’Keefe’s opened it here last year. It’s nice, isn’t it?’

  ‘Lovely,’ she replied, wondering whether she was lying or not.

  ‘Will you come over? Mam and Dad would love to see you.’

  ‘Are they there? Yes, I’d love to. There is something I’d like to talk to them about.’

  ‘Right.’ Paul looked confused and Elizabeth immediately regretted saying anything. Doubtless he would assume it was to do with the will or what was going to happen to Convent Hill.

  Walking through the town back to Keane and Sons several people said hello, or shouted ‘welcome home’ from car windows. Each time she turned to her cousin Paul and mouthed, ‘Who the fuck?’ and when he enlightened her she nodded as if he had solved the mystery but in reality, she was none the wiser. Had she forgotten these people, or had she in fact never known them? It reminded her of climbing the steps at 68th Street on her way to lecture at Hunter and the way unfamiliar faces of students occasionally broke into wide smiles as they greeted her like an old friend.

  In contrast, walking through the doors of Keane and Sons shocked her precisely because of how familiar everything seemed. The smell! Nowhere else on earth had the same aroma. Chemical fertiliser mixed with plastic and cardboard all layered over the decades of long-gone scents that lingered in the wooden floors. The look of the shop was more or less the same as well. The central staircase that led up to electrical goods and small pieces of pointless furniture was covered in the same worn grey linoleum, the Christmas display remained twinkling and unwanted at the left-hand side of the shop while garden supplies and tools took over to the left of the stairs. At the back, dog beds jostled with paints and cleaning products, while the light of the new baby boutique glowed from the small alcove that used to sell paraffin and loose seeds.

  ‘They’re up in the flat. Head away up and see them.’ Paul encouraged his cousin towards the stairs.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ It was Noelle descending the stairway, putting one foot in front of the other with great care like a beauty pageant contestant exiting a private jet.

  ‘How are you today?’ she enquired, peering over the cellophane-wrapped Babygros piled high in her arms.

  ‘Great. Yourself?’

  ‘No rest for the wicked!’ Noelle almost shrieked, punctuating the end of the sentence with a strange nasal honk.

  ‘I’ll let you get on.’

  ‘Talk later,’ she called over her shoulder and headed past the long-life bulbs.

  A wide smile full of teeth and lipstick fixed on her face, Noelle hid her disappointment well. This was so very far from any life she had imagined for herself. Folding Babygros, dusting unsold birdfeeders, sticking prices on colanders. She sighed and headed towards the rear of the shop. When she had met Paul he had been studying at the College of Commerce out in Rathmines and somehow she had assumed that meant he had a certain amount of ambition. He had confidence, money in his pocket, people liked him, he was what she imagined a young empire builder might be like. When she realised that she was pregnant, she hadn’t even panicked. It could be part of the plan. Paul and Noelle were a team and together they could achieve great things. It was only after the wedding that he had mentioned something about returning to Buncarragh. She remembered the way he said it seemed to imply that they had discussed it or that it was an idea she had always known about. Noelle made it very clear to her new husband that she had no intention of rotting away running some Mickey Mouse family shop in Buncarragh. He had pleaded. Promises had been made. They would save up for a couple of years and start their own business back in Dublin. She hadn’t been thrilled but at least it was a plan, but then two more babies had come along and by the time her in-laws had decided to retire, the whole country was in the toilet. Keane and Sons was worthless, and their savings were hardly enough to buy new bikes for the kids, never mind start a new life. It was obvious that Paul didn’t mind a bit. This was what he had always wanted; for Noelle it was just what she had. Buncarragh. She could see that her kids were happy and even she acknowledged that leaving wasn’t an option, so every morning she got up, looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and put on a brave face.

  Up in the flat Elizabeth was wrapped by her Aunt Gillian in a hug that was both too long and too tight.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ the older woman hissed in her ear, turning the name into a mournful incantation. Finally releasing her niece, she then grabbed both her hands and peered into Elizabeth’s eyes. ‘How are you? It must be hard. Hard. Is it? Hard being back?’

  A heavy gold bangle on her aunt’s wrist caught her attention. Surely that had been …

  ‘Oh, you noticed it! Your mother insisted I have it. Insisted. So, so precious.’ Gillian stroked the bangle before wrapping it in a firm grip that suggested she would not be parting with it before her own deathbed.

  Elizabeth was a pinball machine of emotion. Suspicion, fury, jealousy, sadness, but mostly a strange regret because the one person who would really appreciate this story was no longer at the end of the phone. Laughing at her aunt and uncle or listening to her mother relating her sister-in-law’s latest transgression had been a staple part of their family bond for so many years. Elizabeth realised that moments like this would continue to catch her unawares, a thread of memory being snagged on a nail from the past.

  ‘Sorry. Seeing it just took me by surprise. Everything seems so strange, you know,
being in the house without her.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ Gillian now grabbed her niece’s arm and pulled her down beside her on the green brocade sofa.

  ‘Will you have a cup of tea?’

  ‘No thanks. I’m just after a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Ah, you will.’ Gillian heaved herself back out of the sofa. ‘I’m making one anyway. Jerry will be gasping.’ She made her way towards the kitchen and Elizabeth noticed the way her aunt leaned on the backs of chairs and rolled slightly from side to side as she walked. How many more years had Aunt Gillian got? A whole generation slipping away like a crumbling cliff face into the sea.

  Left alone, she looked around the room. A new flat-screen TV was really the only noticeable change from when she had spent time here as a girl. The white horses were still galloping out of the surf in the large print hung above the brown and beige-tiled fireplace, electric bars now glowing orange where coals had once burned. A faded tapestry map of Ireland, which she was fairly sure her mother had made, was in a thin brown frame next to the corner cabinet where Aunt Gillian kept her Waterford crystal, so special that it wasn’t used even for special occasions.

  A shadow fell across the room and turning she saw her Uncle Jerry in the doorway. Another hug, but this one not trying to compensate for the months and years of silence between them. He seemed smaller than he had been but the manly scent of hair oil and cigarettes was as strong as ever.

  ‘Jerry? Is that you?’ came Gillian’s voice from the kitchen. ‘Can you give me a hand with the tray?’

  Like a well-trained dog, Jerry turned and walked away. His trousers hung loose around his legs and seemed too long. Elizabeth wondered if she should volunteer for tray duties, but then reminded herself that this elderly high-wire act probably happened on a daily basis.