Music from Home

by Geraldine O'Neill

  It was raining when they came out, so they had said a quick goodbye and then run to their cars.

  “It would be easier if you don’t mention Cathy being there,” Jude had said to Maria when they were on the way home. “My mother isn’t keen on her. Although my mother is the best in the world, sometimes the less she knows the less she has to complain about.”

  He had asked her then how things were going and if she was getting used to living with Ambrose and everyone else in the house. She told him she liked Ambrose very much, and thought she was settling in okay, although she missed her father and old home very much.

  “Give yourself time,” he said, smiling warmly at her. “But I can tell you one thing – we are all enjoying having you. You’ve brought a whole new life to the house.”

  When they’d arrived back home, Maria was relieved when her grandmother just asked if she had a nice time. She then asked Jude if they had met anyone and he said they hadn’t apart from Owen. Maria couldn’t imagine what the problem was with Owen’s girlfriend, Cathy, but she decided it was none of her business.

  She had gone into Tullamore on Tuesday with Theresa to register for evening classes, and then her grandfather had dropped her in for her first typing class on Thursday night and picked her up at the end. She had enjoyed it very much and had come back with a list of the books she needed to buy for the following week.

  On the Friday her grandfather drove her over to Mullingar to a shop he had been recommended, and he bought her a brand new Olivetti typewriter. He did it quietly and easily, and made it plain to her that it was her choice and she was to pick whichever one suited her and the course best.

  When they got back home, they had dinner and then her grandfather brought her a small desk from one of the spare bedrooms for her typewriter, and a short while later when she was arranging her books on the bookshelf, he came back upstairs carrying a red Dansette record-player.

  “That will keep you company when you’re up here studying,” he told her. “I don’t know if you’re the same, but Jude always said that it helped him to concentrate.”

  Each night when she went up to her bedroom she went over the day in her head, and then she allowed herself to think of her father for a while and some nights cry quietly again as she remembered all that had happened. She went over all the lovely memories she had of Paul and the time they had spent together, and wondered when she would hear from him again. She knew it could be a while before she heard from Stella, but she hoped that if Diana wrote back to her, that she might have some news of her friend.

  It was at church the following Sunday that Maria realised her grandmother had been right about the great interest amongst the local people that her appearance would cause.

  When they got out of black Ford car outside of the church, Patrick and Jude went to the boot of the car and lifted out Ambrose’s wheelchair. Then they lifted him out of the back of the car and settled him in the chair. Then they set out for the church.

  Maria had worn her red wool coat with the matching black hat trimmed in red, and had been pleased when her grandfather and Jude said how lovely she looked and her grandmother had said that it was obviously a well-made, expensive coat.

  “You look like a model out of one of the magazines,” Ambrose had said. “You obviously take your good looks from the Donovans.”

  They had all laughed when her grandfather had tipped her elbow and said, “I don’t think anyone would believe us if we claim the nice Italian tanned skin and the lovely black hair, but we’ll happily claim all the other bits about you.”

  Every single person said good morning as they passed, which Maria found surprising. Back in her own church in Heaton Moor, only people who knew you well spoke to you. The odd person you didn’t really know might smile and say the occasional word, but most kept a polite distance.

  It was when they were approaching the church door that Maria noticed that some people coming through a side gate were looking over and obviously talking about them. Then, inside the church, she felt she was being carefully studied as the family went into a row at the back to accommodate Ambrose and his wheelchair.

  When the Mass started she found the priest’s unusual Irish accent hard to catch, and even though she had her Sunday Missal open at the correct pages with the Latin words he was reading, she still could not follow him well enough to keep her place.

  After a while she gave up trying and her thoughts automatically drifted back to Manchester and her father and Paul. When Communion time came she stood to join the queue to head towards the altar. Her grandfather stayed at the back with Ambrose and the priest came up at the end of Mass to give him and another lady in a wheelchair Communion, because the chairs hadn’t enough space at the altar to turn easily. It was when she was walking slowly along between her grandmother and Jude that she noticed the slight stir in some of the rows. Then, on the way back down the aisle, she bent her head when she suddenly became self-conscious when she saw so many faces openly turned in her direction.

  By the time she got back down to her seat her heart was thudding and her face was burning. And, by the time that the priest had moved on from the prayers after Communion to the closing prayers, she knew her grandmother’s instincts had been correct about how people would react.

  Maria realised she had little experience of small-village communities and the way they worked, but something told her that the stir she had caused in church was not just because she was a new face and not just because she looked different with her Italian colouring. And neither was it because her clothes were slightly different, being more modern and colourful than those of the other females. She somehow knew that those inquisitive eyes were looking at her because she was Anna Donovan’s daughter. Anna Donovan who had left the village almost twenty years before and never come back. And something told her that these same people knew something that she did not. They all knew the reason why her mother had gone in the first place.

  As soon as the priest gave his final bow on the altar, her grandfather indicated to her that they would move quickly to get Ambrose and his chair out of the church, so as not to have people squeezing past the chair. Other people in the last pews and those standing at the back all moved along with them, and as they moved in single file out of the small church doors, Maria once again could feel she was the object of discussion.

  She was so quiet going home in the car that Jude and Ambrose asked her several times if she was okay, And, as she stared out of the window at the passing fields and the trees, and the houses and cottages dotted amongst them, she wondered if every person in those houses knew something about her mother that she did not.

  After a while she felt her grandmother’s hand reaching for hers, and she held her hand until the car pulled into Donovans’ driveway. As Maria walked behind her uncle going into the house, she knew that whether her grandmother was ready or not, she was soon going to tell her grandparents that she needed to know what had happened to her mother. She wasn’t going to do it tonight but it would be soon. She was going to choose her time carefully and then she would tell them what she wanted.

  She would tell them that she needed to know the whole, unvarnished truth.

  Chapter 41

  Diana drew the Mini to a halt outside Contis’ house, and sat for a few moments surveying the Estate Agents’ ‘For Sale’ sign. Then, she breathed deeply and got out of the car. It was lunch break at Gladrags,and so she was in her working outfit of a blue bouclé dress, short co-ordinating jacketand white court shoes.

  Franco was already in the house waiting for her, and when she greeted him she could see that some of the weight of Leo’s death had been lifted off him. The sadness that he had worn like a heavy cloak from the minute his friend had died all through the week of the funeral had started to ease a little from his shoulders and his face. She could see that it had not entirely gone, but, like herself, normal everyday life had started to creep in. It had begun the process of carrying them both forward into a life that w
as less without the vibrant, kind man they both, in their different ways, had loved.

  “You saw the ‘For Sale’ sign?” Franco asked.

  She nodded. “When did it go up?”

  “Last Friday,” he said. “And they have had six enquiries already, and two of them are viewing the house tomorrow. The Estate Agent thinks it may well be gone by Christmas.”

  Diana looked around Leo’s sitting room, across to the corner where his coffin had stood, and was now replaced by the usual armchair and cabinet that had always been there. The grate which had always held a blazing, comforting fire was now cold and grey and empty. Soon, she thought, there would be no trace of him or Maria in this house. All their belongings would be packed and stored and new people would be living here as if the Contis had never existed.

  She went and perched on the edge of one of the armchairs by the cheerless fireplace, and Franco sat in the one opposite.

  “Is there any news from the bank?” she asked.

  “They think they have all the final documents now, and should soon be able to give us an exact figure as to what Leo owes.”

  “What about the horse?”

  “Charlie has paid the rest of Leo’s loan off, and he’s happy to just take complete ownership of Bella Maria.”

  “That’s good,” Diana said. “That, at least, is another problem less for Maria. And when the house is sold then it’s just Leonardo’s . . . Any idea how that is financially shaping up?”

  “I have the bills and invoices laid out on the table in the dining room, if you want to have a look at them.”

  Diana looked at him for a few moments and then she said, “No, Franco, I don’t think I do want to look at them. I’ve been thinking recently that maybe I’ve been involved in Leo’s business as much as I should.”

  He shrugged and held his hands out, palms open. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that what happens now is not my business. You are the one in charge here now, the one who is acting on Maria’s behalf. You are the one who knows everything about the restaurant business.” She shrugged. “I am not Leo’s wife or even his fiancée – I’m just a girlfriend who happened to meet him a few months before he died. I don’t think I have the right to be involved in the sale of his house or what should happen to his money or what should happen to Leonardo’s.”

  “But you were more than just a girlfriend,” Franco said. “Leo told me that. He said that he planned to propose to you at Christmas.”

  Diana looked at him, her breath taken away. “Really? He said that?”

  Franco nodded. “He told me that one of the nights he brought you to the restaurant. He said he would have asked you sooner, but he was afraid to rush you or Maria. He told me he wouldn’t wait any longer than Christmas.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before now? Why didn’t you say something before Maria went to Ireland?”

  Franco looked awkward, unsure what to say. “I didn’t think about it,” he told her. “I was so shocked about Leo and then with the funeral and everything. Things like that didn’t seem to matter any more.”

  “But it would have mattered to me,” she said quietly. “It would have made me feel I had more of a place in things, instead of worrying about whether I was being too pushy or presuming that I meant more to Leo than I did. It would have mattered to me because if I thought that Leo was going to marry me, then maybe I would have felt it was all right to offer Maria should come to live with me instead of going to Ireland. I could have explained that I would have been her stepmother quite soon.”

  Franco paused, his brow creased deeply, as though giving great thought to her words. “But what about Leo’s letters?” he asked. “Leo wanted her to go to her mother’s family.”

  “We could have given her a choice. Leo had written that letter before he met me, before he knew he had someone else to look after her. He knew you and Bernice had a busy house with your own children, and he knew Mrs Lowry was getting too old to look after a teenager. The way it happened, poor Maria was presented with no alternative to Ireland.”

  “I am so sorry,” Franco said. “I thought we were all doing the right thing. The thing that was best for her. The thing that Leo wanted.”

  Diana looked at the chef now and suddenly felt sorry for him – that she had been too hard on him. “Maybe it doesn’t matter . . . and maybe it was the right thing, because Maria seems to be settling over in Ireland. I had a letter from her yesterday, and she told me she was hoping to start evening classes to learn to type and that her grandparents have arranged for her to have classes in her other subjects with a teacher who lives nearby.”

  Franco looked relieved. “Good,” he said, “that’s very good to hear. I told her I was no good to write letters, but that I will phone her sometime. Her grandfather gave me their phone number. I just wanted to wait until I had some news about the house or the restaurant and, at the moment, I have nothing to say about it.”

  “I think she still plans to come back here in a year or two when she is old enough. She said she is doing things to fill the time until she is eighteen.”

  He held his hand in his chin, thinking. “She might settle there and not want to come back.”

  “Yes,” Diana said. “She might settle there but, in the meantime, I’m going to invite her to stay with me for Christmas.”

  Franco’s eyes lit up. “That would be wonderful,” he said. “Bernice and I were saying how sad it would be not to see her this Christmas.”

  “If her grandparents agree, then I don’t see why she shouldn’t come – if that’s what she wants. She might be settling with her family in Ireland, but still might like to come back here because she said that she misses her friends and even us older people.”

  “Good, good! And maybe by then, we might have news about the house and about Leonardo’s.Maybe we might even open Leonardo’s for Christmas Day.” He looked sadly at Diana now. “You know we always had dinner in the restaurant, don’t you? Leo and Maria, me and Bernice and the children. It gave them room to move around and play with their presents from Father Christmas. The boys would take their bicycles and scooters out into the lane to ride up and down …”

  His face suddenly fell, and Diana knew that once more he was reliving the accident in that same lane that put an end to Leo’s life. The accident that changed every one of their lives.

  Chapter 42

  It was a quiet weekday afternoon in mid-November when the dinner dishes had been washed, the men were fed and back out working in one of the fields, and Ambrose was having his customary rest. Under the watchful eye of her grandmother, Maria sifted flour, bicarbonate of soda and a few pinches of salt together, then she made a well in the centre of the dry mix and poured a jug of buttermilk into the middle of it.

  “Now, make your hand as wide as you can,” her grandmother instructed, “and draw all the dry mixture into the milk. Do it lightly and get as much air into it as you can.”

  Maria worked on it for a few minutes, giving it her fullest concentration as Theresa had advised. Living in the moment, as the kind neighbour called it. She was getting better at blocking out the endless thoughts and memories that would haunt every waking moment if she wasn’t vigilant. Forcing her full attention on even the smallest activity would hopefully keep her too occupied during the day to revisit the raw wounds within.

  Ambrose, of course, helped her greatly to do that without realising. When he had the energy he spent hours reading to her or playing cards or doing a jigsaw or playing chess. Sometimes they just sat with the rest of the family watching television or listening to the radio. Other times, Ambrose just talked for seemingly endless hours about things like the geography he or Maria were studying, or perhaps about interesting snippets he had heard on the World News.

  Maria loved their chats but there were times when he said things – usually unexpected – that put her heart crosswise in her chest. Just the other day when they were sitting by the fire, and his mother was washing towels in the
sink in her usual quiet way, he had said how lucky she was to have travelled to Italy.

  “I would love to go there,” he said, “to see all the old statues in Florence and I’d love to see The Leaning Tower of Pisa. I would also love to go to New York and see all the places that Sister Theresa has lived in.”

  “Maybe you will one day,” she had said, smiling at him.

  “I doubt it,” he said quietly. “Sometimes I cod myself that I will, but I know really that a sick individual like myself would never be fit for the journey over to Europe.”

  Maria’s throat had almost closed over and she struggled to say, “You never know when you are older, Ambrose. You might improve.”

  He had lifted his thin arm up and put his hand on hers as though to comfort her. “Unfortunately, Maria,” he said softly, “there will be no great improvement for me. With what’s wrong with my chest and heart, I’m doing well to be as good as I am.”

  As his hand made the smallest squeezing gesture, she gripped his frail hand in hers as though by doing so some of her own strength might transfer to him.

  He looked over to the sink. “Isn’t that right, Mammy? Isn’t that the truth?” When there was no reply he looked at Maria and winked and then said loudly, “But I’m grand really. I have a good life here and I’m grateful to be able to do as much as I do.”