Something in Common

by Meaney, Roisin

  The silence in the kitchen was shattered suddenly by a loud squawk. Christine took no notice, continuing to read.

  ‘Oh, let me.’ Sarah crossed to the pram and lifted out the warm, wriggling bundle. She cradled it against her, rocking and shushing and pressing her lips to the soft, damp cheek.

  ‘Needs a nappy,’ Christine said, not looking up. ‘I can smell him from here.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  She couldn’t get enough of him, wanted to smother him in kisses, tickle his fat little toes, press her face to the tight drum of his belly and inhale his sweet, powdery scent. Four months old and already well aware that his aunt adored him, she was sure of it.

  ‘Aidan,’ she whispered into his ear, and he hiccupped at her. Born nine months after Christine’s wedding, the honeymoon baby that Sarah had wished for, but hadn’t got. Some wives had all the luck.

  After they’d left, Sarah cleaned the kitchen and put on a wash. So little time on a Saturday to carry out all the jobs she didn’t get around to during the week. She remembered a time when all she’d wanted was to get married, have babies and give up working outside the home. But now that she had a job she loved, she was having second thoughts.

  Raising a family and going out to work was undoubtedly a challenge, but it was 1978, and mothers in the workplace were becoming the rule rather than the exception – especially since women could now earn as much as men, in theory anyway. And it would be a bit demoralising, wouldn’t it, if she had to go running to Neil anytime she needed money?

  So much was changing, with the eighties just around the corner. The way things were going, it seemed only a matter of time before married couples would be able to get contraceptives from their doctors. Not that Sarah would ever be looking for those, of course: the more children they had, the better. But she’d try to keep her job too, for as long as she could.

  Of course, she had to get pregnant first.

  She returned the empty laundry basket to the bathroom and went outside to cut the back lawn. She was married to a gardener who kept everyone else’s grounds looking lovely and never gave a minute’s attention to his own. Some days she spent more time in the garden than in the house, but she enjoyed it as long as the weather held out.

  Pushing the mower up and down in neat stripes, she thought about the woman who’d sent her the book. Impossible to know how she’d received Sarah’s letter, when she hadn’t sent a word in response. Mind you, the book was probably response enough. Take that, it said. Read it and see what I’m talking about.

  And in fairness, Sarah probably should have read it before she’d protested at the review. She’d begin it this evening, now that she’d finished The Girl with Green Eyes. Really, she couldn’t see what all the fuss had been about. Certainly Edna O’Brien’s writing was a little risqué in parts, but to have banned it, and even burnt copies of it, seemed a bit harsh.

  She raked up the cut grass and added it to the compost heap. But even if To Kill with Kindness wasn’t very good, there had still been no call for Helen O’Dowd to be so mean about it. She could surely have found one single positive thing to say, even if it was only to compliment the characters’ names, for goodness’ sake.

  She returned the mower to the shed and walked into the house, stepping out of her gardening shoes at the back door. Time for a quick shower before Neil got home. As she put a foot on the first stair, the phone rang.

  ‘Sarah,’ her father said, his voice thick with fear, ‘it’s your mother.’

  Helen

  Dear Miss O’Dowd

  Thank you for sending me To Kill with Kindness last week. No doubt you thought I shouldn’t have criticised your review without reading it, and you were quite right. And now that I have read it, I have to be honest and say that it didn’t really grab me. I found the plot a little thin, and none of the characters particularly appealed to me, especially the detective, whom I found slightly full of himself.

  I still feel, though, that you could have been a bit kinder towards it, maybe held back a little in your review, even if you couldn’t see any positives. I suppose I feel empathy for the author because I’m writing a book myself, and would hate to get a bad review like yours for it. Maybe when you’re writing your next review, if you can’t think of anything good to say, say nothing. Just a thought.

  Thank you again for the book. I’m assuming you don’t want it back, and unless I hear to the contrary from you in the next week I’ll bring it to my local charity shop. They’re always grateful for donations.

  Yours sincerely,

  Sarah Flannery (Mrs)

  Helen read the letter with growing irritation. What a ninny she was. If you can’t think of anything good to say, say nothing. How could Helen write a review if she said nothing? Such a load of bullshit – and what was with the ridiculous purple ink?

  She could just imagine Mrs Goody-Two-Shoes Flannery throwing compliments around like snuff at a wake, spreading happiness wherever she went, never a bad word spoken about anything or anyone. If Helen had to button her lip every time she felt like saying something that might upset someone, she’d be struck dumb most of the time.

  Mind you, there were plenty who’d probably prefer her that way. ‘You have a mouth on you,’ Breen had told her once, ‘that would scour toilets.’ As if he couldn’t let fly himself with a few four-letter words, as if he hadn’t turned the air blue on the rare occasions that Helen had dared to disagree with him.

  ‘This is an effing newspaper I’m running here,’ he’d bark. ‘I’m in charge, not some Johnny-come-lately who thinks she’s the next Hemingway. Don’t think I won’t give you your effing marching orders if you push me too far.’ Only of course he hadn’t said effing. And then he had the gall to point the finger at her if she dropped the occasional exasperated four-letter word into their conversations.

  But he wouldn’t let her go: he knew as well as she did that they were too good a team. Much as she hated to admit it, Breen was the sharpest editor she worked for. He spotted a hanging participle or a lazy reference at a hundred paces, and for all his guff, Helen knew he respected her work. Not that she wouldn’t drop him like a stone if she could afford to, ordering her around like he was God almighty. No wonder she felt compelled to push back against him now and again.

  He wasn’t all bad, though. The time Helen had had to turn down a commission because Alice had broken her wrist when she’d fallen from the monkey bars in the park, a courier had called to the house with a big blue elephant: most unexpected. And although Helen was reasonably certain that the idea had been Catherine’s, she’d still have had to get the go-ahead from Breen. Somewhere beneath his well-cut suit there beat a heart that wasn’t made totally of granite.

  She scanned Sarah Flannery’s letter again. I’m writing a book myself: Helen could imagine what sort of a happy-ever-after load of tripe that was going to be. Everybody being nice as pie to everybody else, nobody dying, nobody cursing, nobody so much as having a bad thought. She must remember Sarah Flannery’s name, make sure to get her hands on an advance copy. Of course, that was assuming any publisher in his right mind would want it, which sounded a pretty unlikely prospect.

  She tossed the letter and its envelope into the bin. Silly woman, nothing better to do than write preachy messages in poncy cards, in between embroidering a few cushions probably, and doing the church flowers.

  As she reached for a cigarette, the phone rang. She walked out to the hall and lifted the receiver.

  ‘Mrs Fitzpatrick?’

  The female voice was familiar – breathy, polite – but Helen couldn’t immediately place it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sister Aloysius here. It’s about Alice.’

  Damn, fuck, blast: another complaint. Helen decided to launch a pre-emptive strike.

  ‘I know she was quite late yesterday morning,’ she said, eyeing the cobweb that dangled from the far corner of the hall ceiling. ‘It’s totally my fault: I forgot to set—’

  ‘Mrs Fitzpatrick,’ the n
un broke in, more brusquely, ‘I’m not ringing you about Alice’s lateness, although I do think it’s important that she learn early on about the importance of punctuality.’

  Helen’s free hand balled into a fist: snooty frustrated bitch. She waited to hear what was coming, wondering what else Alice could have done to merit a call to her mother from the principal. Robbing someone’s sweets at lunchtime? Breaking someone’s crayons? Wasn’t that as bad as seven-year-old crimes got?

  ‘The reason I’m calling is to point out that Alice’s head is full of lice – in fact, she’s had them for several days now. I’d appreciate if you could attend to it, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  Lice? Helen’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘I realise you’re a busy woman, Mrs Fitzpatrick, but it really is essential that you keep an eye out – so easy for lice to spread within the confines of the classroom, as I’m sure you’ll understand.’

  Alice had head lice?

  ‘Mrs Fitzpatrick? Hello? Are you there?’

  Helen blinked. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You really need to keep an eye on Alice’s schoolbag.’

  Keep an eye on her schoolbag? Did it have lice too?

  ‘Miss O’Keeffe sends notes home on a regular basis, Mrs Fitzpatrick, dealing with various topics, one of which is to remind parents to check for head lice. She puts these notes into the schoolbags personally. Maybe you’re not aware of this.’

  Notes? Alice had made no mention of notes. Helen couldn’t remember when she’d gone through her schoolbag. Never, probably.

  ‘Thank you,’ she managed. ‘I’ll see to it.’

  She hung up while Sister Aloysius was still bleating, the little voice becoming fainter and fainter as the receiver moved further from Helen’s ear. She returned to the kitchen, her head buzzing with anger, although who it was directed at, she couldn’t have said.

  Alice, who didn’t bother passing on notes. Or Sister Holier-than-thou Aloysius, who no doubt took great pleasure in telling another woman that her child’s head was full of lice. Or buck-toothed Miss O’Keeffe, who probably warned the other children in the class not to get too close to Alice Fitzpatrick, with her dirty hair and her careless mother who didn’t bother cleaning it.

  But of course she herself was the one at fault. She was the mother who’d never bought a fine-tooth comb, despite dim memories, now that she thought about it, of her own mother drawing one painfully across Helen’s scalp on a regular basis. Jesus, she should have thought of a bloody fine-tooth comb: what kind of mother didn’t even own one? Useless, she was useless.

  She pulled a cigarette from the pack and lit it with trembling fingers. She paced the kitchen tiles, puffing angrily. Christ, to have that thrown at her at ten in the morning, for her not to have noticed that Alice had lice. Her insides heaved at the image of the tiny squirming things living on her daughter’s head, maybe for weeks.

  How had she missed Alice scratching? She must have scratched, with a head full of lice. How had she not seen them when she’d washed Alice’s hair on Saturday nights, Alice whingeing that she had suds in her eyes, that Helen was scrubbing too hard? She did scrub hard, for Christ’s sake. How had the little buggers survived?

  And if Alice had them, wasn’t there a chance that she did too? Her scalp crawled at the prospect. She scratched furiously at it – Jesus, that was all she needed. A trip to the chemist as soon as she’d put her face on: deadlines could go to hell.

  She stamped upstairs and wrenched sheets from beds, pulled pillows out of cases, yanked towels from rails. She brought her load back downstairs and dumped it in the twin tub. She attached the washing machine’s length of rubber hose to the kitchen tap and began to fill the drum, blood still racing. Where the hell was Malone when you needed someone to yell at?

  When the water was heating, she took the last of her toast to the bin and flung it in, on top of Sarah Flannery’s sugary-sweet letter. No lice in that household, you could bet your last cent. Checked her little darlings’ heads twice a week at least, had whatever necessary bottle or tube tucked away in the bathroom cabinet, just in case.

  She reached abruptly into the bin and pulled out the notelet and its envelope. She brushed away crumbs and sped through the purple words again. She dropped the notelet back on top of the crusts and grabbed a sheet of paper from the bundle that sat by her typewriter.

  She typed fast, without pausing. When she’d finished, she yanked out the page and read it rapidly, eyes darting along the handful of lines, before scribbling her signature at the bottom. She found an envelope among the scatter of magazines and newspapers on the table, and a stamp in the cracked cup on the windowsill.

  She’d post it right away. She’d drop it into the pillar box around the corner from the chemist. That should shut the silly cow up.

  Sarah

  She sat alone in the blessedly quiet kitchen. The table was piled with haphazard stacks of plates holding half-eaten sandwiches, and little wobbly pillars of coffee-stained cups, lipstick crescents daubing several rims. Just about every glass in the house was out too, along with the remains of the various cakes and tarts that her neighbours had delivered the day before, when the news had filtered out. Showing their sympathy with a Victoria Sandwich, saying sorry with a fresh cream flan or pear crumble.

  Neil was gone with her father, driving him back to the house where he would live alone now until his turn came to die, or until he became unable to live on his own any more, and moved in with one of his daughters.

  Christine had wanted to stay and help, but Sarah had insisted she go: ‘I’ll be fine. Neil will be back in a little while.’ This wasn’t true – Neil had been instructed to stay with their father for the rest of the evening, make him tea, pour him a drink, watch the news on television, anything – but Christine had Aidan to feed and put to bed, and Sarah had nothing else to do but clean up.

  For now, though, she sat at the table in the silent kitchen, her mind replaying the last heartbreaking week. An aneurysm, the doctors had said, no way of predicting it, her mother’s blood pressure normal at her last check-up just a few months before. It happened like that sometimes, they had been told.

  The past few days had blurred into one another, with Mam lying unconscious in a hospital bed, tubes pumping air and food and medicine into her from various beeping machines, and the three of them taking it in turns to sit with her, overlapping their visits to talk in whispers across the bed, as if she might hear them if they spoke any louder.

  Nothing much to do during Sarah’s evening shifts at the hospital but work her way through To Kill with Kindness, which, even in her distraught state, she could recognise as not very accomplished at all. She wondered how on earth anyone had thought it worthy of publication – what could they have seen in it? Helen O’Dowd’s assessment, she had to admit, had been pretty accurate, even if she’d worded it a little strongly.

  When she’d finished, Sarah had felt obliged to respond to the woman who’d sent her the book, although in her present state she had little enthusiasm for the task. Still, manners dictated that she acknowledge the book’s receipt and give her honest feedback.

  She’d written for the second time to Helen O’Dowd as she’d sat late at night in the too-warm hospital room. The following morning she’d given it to Neil to post on his way to work – and just a day after that, her mother had died.

  This evening sixty-three-year-old Martha Kelly lay in a wooden box at the top of the local church, and tomorrow they were lowering her into a hole in the ground, and Sarah couldn’t think about that. She got to her feet and began gathering plates and cups and bringing them to the sink. She turned on the radio and ran water and squeezed in washing-up liquid.

  Over the next forty minutes she emptied and refilled the sink several times, washing and drying and putting away, blocking out her thoughts with Fleetwood Mac and The Boomtown Rats and The Undertones.

  When a handful of plates remained, she ran out of washing-up liquid. She dried her hands and went to t
he pantry for a new bottle – and saw the envelope, propped on a shelf.

  This morning it had come, as she and Neil were leaving the house to go to her father’s. Her name and address had been typewritten, with no return address, no indication of its sender’s identity or whereabouts, apart from the Dublin postmark. She’d put it on the pantry shelf, out of the way of the busy day she knew was ahead, and she’d forgotten all about it.

  She took it off the shelf and considered it. Not a bill: she knew what they looked like. Not a letter of sympathy, nobody wrote those on a typewriter.

  She sat at the almost-cleared table and slit open the envelope with a buttery knife and pulled out the single sheet.

  Dear Mrs Flannery

  Many thanks for your advice about writing a book review. I’ll bear it in mind for the next time. In the meantime, I have some advice for you. Take your half-baked manuscript and tear it up – better still, burn it. If, as I suspect, you think it’s possible to write an interesting, credible book without anything bad happening, you are sadly mistaken. Bad things happen, Mrs Flannery – disease happens, rape happens, infidelity, terrorism, vandalism all happen in this real, ugly world of ours – and like it or not, it’s generally the bad stuff that makes for an interesting book. Therefore I suggest you take your little goody-goody clichéd characters with their happy little lives and stamp them out, Mrs Flannery, choke the life out of them before they send the readers of the world to sleep.

  And in future, if you don’t agree with one of my book reviews, despite not having bothered to read the goddamn book, I suggest you turn to the gardening page, or the cookery page, and try to forget all about it.