Apartment 3B

by Patricia Scanlan

  Monday 24 June 1985

  Watching her father’s coffin being lowered into the grave, Claire’s overwhelming feeling was one of relief. It was more for her mother than for herself; after all, she hadn’t lived at home for years now. In fact, since she moved to Dublin five years before, she had had very little to do with her father, a state of affairs that had suited her just fine. No doubt many would think that she was an unnatural daughter to have no feelings of regret or sorrow at the passing of her father, but then, they hadn’t had to suffer as her mother and she had done.

  Beside her, Molly, white-faced, watched the priest scatter a few lumps of soil on the coffin. Then the undertakers were covering the grave with the green cloth that would remain until the grave-diggers filled it in after the mourners had gone. It was hard to believe her father was no more, she reflected. Death was such a final thing. Like yesterday, when the Air India Jumbo had crashed into the sea off the Irish coast. One minute three hundred and twenty-five people had been alive, sitting on a plane making plans, looking forward to reunions with their loved ones. Then they were blown up out of the sky, their lives over. The thought depressed her. She could die tomorrow and what could she say she had achieved? Very little, she decided glumly.

  ‘We’d better go, Claire. The neighbours will be calling in,’ Molly whispered.

  ‘OK.’ Claire gave her mother’s arm a reassuring squeeze and turned to Sean. ‘We’re going to go back to the house now. Are you going to go straight to Dublin or will you come back for a while?’

  ‘Hmm,’ mused Sean. Claire knew that Sean hated taking time off school during term. He had wanted David to go back with him so that he wouldn’t miss the last week of primary school. But Claire had put her foot down. Suzy, in her first year at secondary, had had holidays since the beginning of the month but David still had a week to go. As if a week was going to make a huge amount of difference, she had argued with Sean. It was not as if he was always missing school.

  ‘That’s not the attitude to have, Claire,’ Sean lectured. ‘We’re preparing our children for life – they’ve got to learn responsibility. After all, when he’s working he won’t be able to take days off to suit himself. And besides he has two months of holidays ahead of him.’

  ‘Look, Sean, Mum’s going to be on her own long enough. I want to stay with her for a while. Suzy’s going to be here. I want David here as well. God knows, Mum couldn’t have them to stay when Da was alive. I think they’d be good company for her just now.’

  ‘And what about me?’ Sean said plaintively, surprised by Claire’s vehemence. ‘I’ll be up there all by myself.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ his wife said dryly. ‘Weren’t you looking after yourself for a long time before you married me? And anyway it’s only for a week or two.’

  ‘Or two!’ he echoed, horrified.

  ‘Sean, my mother needs me and that’s final!’ Claire retorted sharply.

  ‘Well I know that. I’m not that insensitive! I just didn’t think you were going to stay for two weeks – that’s all. I suppose you’ll be wanting money.’

  ‘I suppose I will.’

  Sean had been huffy ever since and drove them down to the funeral like a demon. He was a dreadful driver. Most aggressive. It was as if he was in competition with every other driver on the road once he got behind the wheel. He changed gears like a rally driver and, in spite of Claire’s remonstrations, loved to put the boot down whenever he got the chance. He wouldn’t let her have the car so there was no point in her learning to drive.

  ‘We couldn’t afford the insurance for two and besides, I need the car for work,’ he objected when she broached the subject. ‘Sure what do you want to learn to drive for, anyway? Don’t I drive you anywhere you want to go? And aren’t there buses all over the place?’ He said this airily with the ignorance of one who had never, as she had done, stood in O’Connell Street on a cold wet day waiting for a bus.

  ‘If you don’t drive a bit more slowly we won’t get to the funeral alive,’ she remarked to her husband as he sped past a juggernaut. He had spent the previous ten minutes fuming behind it on a winding bit of the road.

  ‘Bloody juggernauts! Should be banned!’ he retorted, slowing down only very slightly. He had been very cool towards her and David since she had asked that her son be allowed to stay with her for the week and had told Claire that he would be leaving for Dublin immediately after the funeral. Hence her question at the graveyard.

  ‘Are you going straight home?’ she repeated patiently.

  ‘I’ll come back for a quick cup of tea,’ Sean decided. Claire smiled to herself. She knew Sean would never be able to resist coming back to see their former neighbours and showing off his children to them. Hadn’t she heard him telling Mrs Fitzpatrick outside the church that he held an important post of responsibility in the big school in Dublin in which he was now teaching. Mrs Fitzpatrick had been deeply impressed. But then Sean had made it seem as though he were a principal or something, instead of just an ordinary teacher with the extra responsibility of running the library.

  They walked out of the graveyard towards the waiting cars and out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Rosie and her two children. Claire’s heart lifted. Rosie really was the best in the world, driving all the way down from Dublin for the funeral even though she was so busy combining motherhood with her career. If it wasn’t for Rosie she would have gone mad up in Dublin, not knowing a soul. But then if it wasn’t for Rosie, she wouldn’t be comparing her marriage to her friend’s and finding so much lacking in her own.

  ‘Are you coming back to the house, Rosie?’ she called over. Sean marched straight on. His attitude towards Rosie had not improved over the years, nor hers towards him.

  ‘I’ll just leave the children over at Ma’s and then I’ll call in,’ Rosie promised. By the time she did arrive, the house was full of neighbours and friends come to convey their condolences and Claire was up to her eyes making pots of tea, passing round plates of sandwiches and brack and fruit-cake and meeting people she hadn’t seen for years. Molly accepted the condolences, sitting with back ram-rod-straight in her rocking chair, and Claire had the feeling that in a strange sort of way she was enjoying herself. The relief of knowing that Billy wouldn’t come staggering in disrupting the gathering was so liberating for her mother that Claire could sense the tension that she had lived with for so long was lifting already. She was glad. It’s about time she had a bit of peace in her life, she mused, as she waited for yet another kettle to boil.

  There had never before been so many people in the house. When Billy was alive they had rarely had visitors. On the Friday night that Claire and Sean arrived after hearing of Billy’s death in Ardkeen Hospital, Molly had set to with a vengeance and scrubbed and polished every piece of furniture, every ornament, everything. Claire had washed the net curtains for her mother on the Saturday morning and she got the strangest impression that Molly was scrubbing and cleaning Billy out of her life. Her mother’s pride wouldn’t allow the neighbours to come into anything but a spotless house. Despite the fact, as Claire had protested upon seeing her mother engaged in all this work, that you could already eat your dinner off the floor of the cottage. Then they had had to prepare for the hospitality after the funeral. Molly had made tea-bracks and tarts and of course some kind neighbours, in the old country tradition, had sent cakes and scones and the like.

  Claire and Suzy had got up at the crack of dawn to make plates and plates of ham, egg and salad sandwiches. Claire smiled to herself as she buttered another plate of tea-brack. Her thirteen-year-old daughter was great in a crisis, even to the extent of telling her mother how to make the sandwiches. ‘It’s the way we do it in Home Economics,’ she informed her mother grandly and with an air of supreme self-assurance, slicing the crusts off the sandwiches, cutting them neatly in four and arranging them on the plate in a nice design. Claire hid a smile of amusement. Suzy was enjoying secondary school and the start of her teens immensely. She s
wanned off each morning in her navy uniform. She adored the uniform and Claire was delighted she had to wear it, as Sean was not exactly generous when it came to buying his daughter the latest fashions. Clutching her leather schoolbag to her budding bosom, Suzy would stride off to school, humming her favourite Bruce Springsteen song.

  Sean had almost had a fit when he heard the words of the song on Top of the Pops one Thursday evening and saw his son and daughter singing enthusiastically as they watched The Boss gyrate sexily on TV. ‘Oooh, Oooh, Oooh, I’m on fire.’ Stony-faced, he switched off the TV, to howls of protest from his children, and informed them that in his opinion Top of the Pops was not a suitable programme for children and that in future it would not be allowed in the Moran household.

  Claire was furious and there had been an almighty row. ‘Oh yes! Take their side as usual!’ Sean flung the accusation at her angrily.

  ‘Someone has to,’ she raged. ‘You’re being totally unreasonable!’

  ‘Excuse me,’ her husband said coldly, ‘but some of that . . . that filth that is played on that programme is almost pornographic and you don’t seem to care that your children’s minds are being corrupted.’

  ‘Ah, for God’s sake, Sean! They said the same thing about Elvis when you were growing up, and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones when I was growing up. And we weren’t corrupted!’

  ‘I never looked at such rubbish,’ he said loftily.

  ‘Well maybe you should have!’ Claire angrily left the room, slamming the door after her. Her husband was outraged at her rudeness. Ever since she had started knocking around with that Rosie one again, she was getting these notions. Wanting to have her own cheque-book and a joint account, wanting to learn to drive. Wanting this that and the other for the children. Sure they’d never have a penny if that was the carry-on. In a foul humour, Sean began to correct exercise copies, scoring the pages with his red biro and muttering angrily to himself.

  Suzy had overcome the ban on Top of the Pops by going to her friend’s house on the pretext of doing a project, but David, who was still at primary school, had no such excuse, and his father, knowing of his son’s weakness in maths, undertook to give him extra tuition every Thursday night.

  ‘Mam?’ Her daughter interrupted her musings. ‘Is there any more of that tea-brack. Those two funny oul’ fellas in the wellingtons are after eating nearly a whole plate of it between them. One of them even put a slice in his jacket pocket. Imagine being so greedy!’ Suzy exclaimed. Claire knew exactly the men to whom her daughter was referring. She had seen Mickey Hayes and Paudi Leary standing at the back of the church and knew as sure as eggs were eggs that they would arrive back at the house. There wasn’t a funeral within a radius of fifty miles that they didn’t attend. It was a great way of socializing and there was always great eating and drinking at funerals. Claire had had no doubts at all that Mickey and Paudi would put in an appearance.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ a familiar voice enquired. Rosie appeared at the kitchen door.

  ‘Hi, Rosie. Thanks for coming.’ Claire hugged her friend warmly.

  ‘Hi, goddaughter!’

  ‘Hi, godmother!’ Suzy grinned at Rosie who was, in her eyes, nothing short of perfect.

  ‘Here’s the brack, and don’t give that pair another bite,’ Claire warned. ‘They’ve eaten a banquet already.’

  Rosie grimaced. ‘Paudi and Mickey?’

  Claire nodded, raising her eyes to heaven.

  Rosie gave a snort. ‘Do you know what that old goat Paudi said to me when I came in just now? “You’re the one that got away on me. I could have given ye the life of a lady.” He had the nerve to tell me that!’ They stared at each other and then Rosie was giving that familiar chortle and Claire and Suzy started giggling. The more they tried to stop, the worse they got, with tears streaming down their cheeks. They buried their faces in tea-towels to try to muffle their unseemly mirth.

  Then Claire had told Rosie the story Cis Maguire had told her about Mickey. During the mushroom season of the previous year, he went out one morning and found a fine crop of mushrooms and took them home. That night, after a few pints, he had invited Paudi to partake of some of his mushrooms and the pair of them had staggered home, cooked and eaten the mushrooms, started to laugh, and couldn’t stop. A neighbour called in on hearing the racket and found the two oul’ fellas sitting on Mickey’s bed as high as two kites, roaring with laughter, unable to stop. ‘Up ye boya!’ they yelled between guffaws, ‘How’s she cuttin?’ They had laughed the night through, quite unaware that they were under the influence of more than drink. Mickey, who had got short-sighted in his old age, had picked up quite a few magic mushrooms in his early-morning foray. By all accounts magic mushrooms were better than pot and the lads were enjoying the effects mightily. The neighbour told the whole story in Griffin’s shop the next morning.

  Sean walked into the kitchen with his empty plate and teacup and stopped short at the sight of his wife and daughter and Rosie convulsed with laughter. Disgusted, he turned on his heel and walked out. Claire met Suzy’s eye and then Rosie’s and they looked at each other for a moment and then they were off again even worse than before. It was the best laugh Claire had had in ages, she thought a little guiltily. After all, she had just buried her father.

  Lying in bed in the pink-painted room of her childhood Claire smiled at the memory. Across the room from her Paul Newman’s twinkling eyes had not dimmed with the passage of time. Suzy had been most impressed. Claire knew she had risen notches in her daughter’s opinion because she had a poster of a film star in her bedroom, even if he was aging. Sean wouldn’t allow the children to stick anything to the walls so Suzy had to be content with sticking her posters of Mel Gibson and Bruce Springsteen on to the inside of her wardrobe. Claire had had a row with Sean about that too. In fact, lately they seemed to do nothing else but row. She felt that the children’s bedrooms were their own, their one small part of the world where they could relax and be private. As long as they kept them reasonably tidy, Claire didn’t mind how they arranged the furniture, or what they put on the walls. Her own bedroom in Knockross had been her little haven. Billy had never crossed the threshold and it was there that she could escape to dream of Paul Newman rescuing her from countless imaginary disasters.

  Sean did not agree. It was his house, the upkeep of which was paid for by his hard-earned money and he was not having wallpaper ruined by posters and Sellotape. Claire had been so angry. Typical of Sean! Everything they had he considered to be his and he magnanimously shared it with her and the children. He did not subscribe to the theory that wives had equal rights in a marriage. He was the provider and he provided very well in his own eyes. It was not necessary for Claire to know what his salary was. He would give her what she needed. All she had to do was ask. For as long as they had been married, he had given her anything she asked for, for herself and the children and the house – if he deemed it necessary. He couldn’t understand how she was prepared to risk the good wallpaper in the bedrooms by allowing the children to mutilate it with Sellotape.

  Claire snorted in the bed as she remembered his argument. ‘Good wallpaper, my hat,’ she muttered angrily, forgetting that Suzy was asleep on a camp bed beside her. The girl didn’t stir as her mother lay crossly in bed visualizing the ‘good wallpaper’.

  They had bought it to replace some of the cabbage roses in the house after they had moved in. Claire had not succeeded in persuading Sean to have the house decorated before they moved. ‘We can do each room as we go along,’ he decided. When he got tinned corned beef for his dinner three days in a row because Claire refused to cook on the old cast-iron cooker he decided that maybe they did need a new cooker. She told him that she wasn’t unpacking one thing until she got new presses and new lino in the kitchen. With a deep sigh, he agreed to her suggestion that they go to the huge MFI store in Santry. Claire had spent a wonderful afternoon going around looking at all the furniture, the fitted kitchens, the bedrooms, the suites.
Of course in the end Sean rejected most of her choices and they ended up with the cheapest items but still, Claire was happy enough. She got presses for her kitchen and new beds with a wardrobe and desk ensemble for the children. These she persuaded her husband to buy by emphasizing how advantageous it would be for the children to have a desk in their bedroom for the purposes of study. Suzy and David had been thrilled with themselves. Compared to the Spartan decor of their bedrooms in Knockross, this was paradise.

  Claire also managed to persuade Sean to buy a new sitting-room suite, but he was adamant that they did not need a new dining suite, so Aunt Tess’s antique one would have to do. Still Claire felt that she had got something reasonable for the house. Sean felt so too because that was the only leeway he allowed her. He wouldn’t allow her to pick the more expensive washable wallpaper and the paper they bought had been a nightmare to put up. She had lost the baby because of that damned wallpaper.

  She hadn’t been feeling too good the particular Saturday. They had been papering the landing. Standing on a small table placed in the curve of the stairs, she had stretched up to stick the roll of paper that Sean had pasted for her on to the wall. A wave of dizziness had hit her and she lost her balance, fell off the table and halfway down the stairs. The next day she lost the baby.

  It took her a long time to get over that miscarriage. Instead of being relieved, she felt terribly guilty. That’s what she got for not wanting the child in the first place. It was God’s punishment. ‘Sure we can have another baby,’ Sean had assured her, dismayed by his wife’s grief and depression.

  ‘If you’d got the house decorated before we moved in, this wouldn’t have happened,’ she accused him bitterly. Let him share her guilt!

  ‘Claire! Haven’t I spent a fortune on the place for you?’

  ‘It’s not for me!’ she snapped. ‘It’s for us, the family. Stop going around as if you had done something wonderful by buying the few bits and pieces for the house. It’s the least you could do!’