‘I couldn’t turn him down,’ she’d told Sarah, ‘even though I had no idea whether he’d make it better or worse. But I figured he wouldn’t have the stamina to do much damage, and if it gave him a reason to get up in the mornings …’
As far as Sarah could see, Charlie was doing no damage at all. He couldn’t manage more than an hour or so in the garden on the fine days, but even with such slow progress there was sureness about the way he worked, confidence in his movements that spoke of some expertise as he clipped and pruned and weeded. Six months on, everyone was remarking on the difference he was making.
Everyone apart from Martina, of course, who seemed outraged at his presence in the shrubbery. Maybe she resented the newest arrival having the gall to get involved, however peripherally, in the running of St Sebastian’s. Since Dorothy Phelan’s death last year, Martina had become the nursing home’s longest-serving resident; probably felt Charlie should have asked her permission.
Poor Charlie, not physically capable of living on his own again – which meant, inevitably, that his house had gone on the market, needing to be sold to fund his nursing-home fees. Sarah had always thought it must be a terrible wrench, knowing that you’d seen the last of your old home. All the apple tarts or chicken soup in the world wouldn’t make up for that loss.
Her efforts to locate his cat in the spring had come to nothing, despite a hopeful start. The affable-sounding man from the garden centre had taken the nursing-home number and the cat’s description.
‘We’ll drop by anytime either of us is in the area and have a scout around,’ he’d promised Sarah. ‘We’ll let you know if we see any sign of it.’
And to give him his due, he’d rung back the following week, and the week after that, but he had no good news.
‘We’ve both dropped by a few times, went around the back and had a good look, but there’s no sign.’
Sarah had thanked him and told him not to worry about phoning again unless the cat was spotted. Her hopes weren’t high: what were the chances of the cat still hanging around a deserted house, months after anyone had fed it there? All she could hope was that it had been taken in by someone who’d seen it wandering about.
‘George and his colleague are still looking,’ she’d told Charlie – but she’d known by the resigned expression on his face that he had as little hope as she did, and her heart had gone out to him.
She added chopped onions to the casserole dishes, checking the time on the kitchen clock and wondering what was keeping the new junior. How long did it take to set a few tables for dinner? Bernadette would have had it done long before this. Two years since her retirement, replaced with a succession of lesser-paid juniors due to cutbacks, and Sarah still missed her cheerful efficiency around the kitchen. Another few minutes and she’d have to go looking for help to lift the casseroles into the oven.
She took jugs of stock from the fridge and spooned off the thin layer of fat that had formed on them. No matter, Una would reappear soon – and today Sarah wasn’t letting anything bother her. Today her maternity leave was beginning, with just three weeks to go until her baby arrived.
At the thought she felt another butterfly of nervous energy – all morning she’d been having queer little flutters. She poured the stock onto the meat and vegetable mixtures. They weren’t unpleasant as much as uncomfortable, more of a twinge than a flutter. She’d have a cup of peppermint tea when she got home. That would settle her.
Neil was coming with Martha to collect her. She hadn’t cycled to work since the fourth month, doctor’s orders. ‘We’re taking no chances with this one,’ he’d said, and Sarah had obeyed. If he’d told her to sleep with an ice block under her feet and live on raw onions for the duration of the pregnancy she’d have done it, so anxious was she to look after her precious growing baby.
But the only change to her routine he’d suggested was to stop cycling, so Neil, her father and Christine had been taking it in turns to ferry her to and from work. Such a nuisance she’d become: just as well she was finishing up today.
Another twinge as she added seasoning to the casserole dishes. Stronger than before, strong enough to stop her in her tracks and put a hand to her bump. Had she eaten anything funny? Was it a touch of indigestion? She walked slowly to the back door: maybe she just needed some fresh air.
And maybe she should phone the doctor when they got home, just to see what he said. She opened the door and stepped outside – and as she did, she felt a strong gush of warmth between her legs. She looked down and saw dark spatters on the pale grey gravel, below the mountain of her white apron.
Her heart stopped. She gripped the door jamb and held on tightly. Sweat popped on her forehead. ‘Martina,’ she called, in a voice that was far from steady.
***
Helen
I’m under strict instructions to send this postcard as soon as I can. As of yesterday, Tuesday, we have a son, Stephen, seven pounds two ounces. He arrived three weeks early but all is well. Sarah will write as soon as she can with details.
All the best
Neil Flannery
Dear Helen
Thanks so much for the beautiful little bootees and hat that arrived this morning – and I’m afraid you’re right: I didn’t for a minute think you’d knit them! And you’re so good not to forget Martha – she loves her pink umbrella, takes it everywhere, and I mean everywhere: it was floating in the bath last night!
Sorry it’s taken me over a week to write. Things as you can imagine have been hectic since they let us go home. I’m snatching the chance now, with both children asleep at the same time – minor miracle! Let’s hope I can get this done before all hell breaks loose again, or before I fall asleep myself!
Helen, it was terrifying. My waters broke while I was still at work, three weeks before my due date – in fact, it was the day my maternity leave was due to start! I was on my own when it happened – my junior was setting tables in the dining room – and I’d stepped outside for some air, and of course when it happened all I could think of was the other times, and I couldn’t bear the thought of things going wrong again. Thank goodness two of the residents were in the garden so I called them – and Helen, would you believe one of them was Martina, the one I’m always quoting who finds fault with everything! Well, I have to say she was simply wonderful. She sat me down and told me I was going to be fine, and she sent Charlie, the other resident, off to get help (you should have heard her ordering him around – I suspect she was in her element!). While we were waiting she actually patted my shoulder and said all the right things – it was just a baby, and women had been having them for thousands of years, and they came when they were ready, not when we were, and why should mine be any different – and you know, it was just what I needed to hear to stop me going hysterical!
Thank goodness our driver Dan was around. He drove me straight to the hospital with one of the staff nurses, who waited with me until Neil arrived, in a complete flap. He’d tried to call Christine and his mother so he could drop Martha off to one of them, but both of them were out, and then he couldn’t find my address book to get Dad’s number, so in the end he left Martha with a new neighbour we hardly know. Such a fuss I caused everyone!
Helen, what an experience – well, you know what giving birth is like. And I know it was terribly painful, and it seemed to go on forever, and poor Neil’s hand was black and blue from my squeezing it during the contractions – I’m surprised I didn’t break something – but when they laid Stephen on my chest and I looked at his squashed little face, I forgot completely about the pain and flooded over with emotion – well, you can imagine, you know how soft I am! My very own darling child, at long last – I could hardly see him for tears! (And yes, even writing this is setting me off again – I’m hopeless!)
The other great news – not that it can compete – is that Neil has got the maintenance job at the golf course, which he’s thrilled about, and Christine was telling me about a cousin of Brian’s who might
be interested in looking after the children when I go back to work in January. We’re going to meet her as soon as we can and see what she’s like. She’s been working in a crèche so it sounds as if she would be suitable. I hope she is – the fact that she’s Brian’s cousin makes her family, practically.
I can hear Stephen – he’s just woken up – just as well I’d pretty much finished this!
Thanks again, you’re a love,
Sarah xxx
Dear Alice
I’ve sure you’ve heard our wonderful news from your mum, but I wanted to send you your very own photo of our darling Stephen. He’s just adorable, with my husband’s eyes and my nose (so I’m told) – and just look at all that black hair! When we got Martha she was completely bald, so this baby is very different!
Everyone is mad about him: his three cousins (all boys) are delighted he’s a boy, and Nuala, my husband’s mum, is thrilled that we called him Stephen after her husband, who died ten years ago, just before I married Neil. Martha is very happy to have a new brother, but disappointed that she’s not allowed to wheel him around in her doll’s pram!
I hope you’re well, and that school is going OK. (Congratulations on the Inter Cert, by the way – you’ve probably forgotten all about it by now, but I was delighted to hear the news.) Your mum tells me you’re hoping to go to art college; really hope that works out.
I’m sending a picture that Martha drew for you. It’s an elephant, in case you don’t recognise it! She loves drawing too.
Well, it’s time to feed my little man – I can’t believe how hungry he is! – so I’d better stop.
Take care, Alice.
Love from an exhausted, but terribly happy, Sarah! xx
Helen
‘It won’t be the same without you.’
Breen eyed the glass in her hand. ‘How many of those have you had?’
‘Not as many as I’d need,’ Helen told him cheerfully, ‘to tell you what I really think of you.’
She was on her third generous whiskey, at the safe stage of inebriation. Happy enough to be pretty much at peace with the rest of the world, Breen included, and lucid enough not to mess it up by talking rubbish.
‘You must admit,’ she went on, ‘that we’ve had our moments.’
‘We certainly have. I’ve lost count of the times I wanted to strangle you.’
She laughed. ‘Not half as many times as I’ve wanted to push you off the nearest cliff.’
He gave a small smile as he raised his coffee mug to his lips.
‘You’re not drinking?’ Helen enquired. ‘Afraid you’ll lose the run of yourself and say something nice to me?’
The left corner of his mouth twitched. ‘Something like that.’
There were about fifty of them milling around the hotel function room that had been booked for the event. Pretty much the same crowd here tonight, she imagined, who had attended the long-ago Christmas party, but the surroundings were slightly more impressive than the newspaper office building.
The refreshments were better too: the departure of the newspaper’s longest-serving editor – twenty-six years of telling everyone what to do – clearly warranted something more exciting than a chicken drumstick and glass of cut-price wine. Goodbye and Good Luck, a banner proclaimed, hanging on the wall above the small but beautifully stocked bar.
Breen had noticed her dress – or, rather, he’d noticed the length of it. Helen had seen him taking it in as she’d approached. She had good legs, and the dress, hanging in her wardrobe since minis had been fashionable, made the most of them: an inch higher and her underwear would show. Let the fashion magazines with their longer hemlines get stuffed – she’d wear what she liked.
Breen, no doubt, disapproved. Look at him, with his snow-white shirt and dark grey suit: the essence of respectability. Not that he didn’t look well, even if it pained her to admit it. Still could do with taking the scowl off his face, though. She wondered where his wife was, why she hadn’t bothered to come to her husband’s retirement party.
‘You never once told me that you were happy with my work,’ she said. ‘In all the years I’ve been writing for you, I never heard a single positive comment.’
‘Fishing for compliments, O’Dowd? You disappoint me.’
O’Dowd again. He did it to annoy her, she was sure.
‘I never rejected anything you submitted,’ he went on, ‘even the ones I didn’t ask for. You were paid on time, and paid well. Isn’t that enough for you?’
‘Jesus,’ she said in exasperation, ‘you just can’t do it. You wouldn’t recognise an encouraging word if it hit you in the face, you cranky old bastard.’
And before he could respond to that, they were approached by one of Breen’s assistant editors, who slapped him on the back and asked loudly what he wanted to drink. Hoping, no doubt, to step into the soon-to-be-vacated slot, no replacement announced yet.
Helen moved away and wove through the crowd back towards the bar, to where the interesting-looking blond barman who’d caught her eye earlier was pouring drinks and opening mixers. Foreign accent – Scandinavian, maybe.
She didn’t talk to Breen again. She pulled up a barstool and introduced herself to Torvald from Norway, and discovered that he was tending bar in the evenings while he studied Celtic literature in Trinity.
She was still sitting there when Breen was presented with a set of golf clubs. She listened as he made a brief acceptance speech and joined in the clapping when he’d finished.
And by the time, an hour later, Torvald was helping her into her coat and whispering what he was planning to do to her, Breen had long since left the building.
***
Dear Mrs Flannery
Congratulations on your new baby, he’s lovely. Martha’s elephant picture is so cute. I drew our neighbour’s cat for her in return, I hope she likes it. We started looking after the cat when our neighbour got sick, but now he’s dead so it looks like we get to keep it.
My mother just shouted up that dinner is ready. She’s in a bad mood today. She was out at a party last night and I bet she got really drunk.
love Alice x
1990
Sarah
‘Martha, leave your brother’s plate alone. You know he doesn’t like you touching his food … Stephen, eat your yogurt, please, lovey – no, no honey in your hair, darling. Martha, you put that cracker down right now, or I’ll tell Noreen there’s no park allowed. I mean it.’
Breakfasts were hectic, with Neil usually gone to work and Sarah coping on her own till the cavalry arrived. Two-year-old Stephen at the stage where he was insisting on feeding himself, and not quite capable of carrying it off without mishap; Martha, almost five, starting school in September, and equally determined to inject her unique brand of mischievousness into the proceedings.
Sarah slapped toast onto a plate and cast around for the butter. ‘One of these days I’ll wake up and my hair will be completely grey.’
Martha regarded her mother’s light brown head with interest. ‘Who’ll make it grey?’
‘You will, you monkey,’ Sarah replied, dropping a hasty kiss onto her strawberry blonde curls, ‘you and your brother. But I still love you.’
She never tired of telling them; she drenched them with love from morning to night. Neil said she smothered them, but she didn’t care. She was their mother: she had every right to tell them how much they meant to her, every opportunity she got.
It frightened her sometimes, this overwhelming love. Its power terrified her. She would study other parents, in the supermarket or the doctor’s waiting room, or in a queue for the cinema, and she would wonder if they felt the same crushing weight of love for their children that she did whenever she looked at Martha or Stephen.
She wondered if Helen felt it for Alice. It didn’t come across in her letters: Helen rarely said anything positive about her daughter. In fact, her comments about Alice, who admittedly sounded like a handful, were mainly disparaging, but Sarah assumed that
was just Helen’s way. Of course she loved Alice – what mother didn’t love her own child?
As she was taking the marmalade from the fridge, a sudden smash made her wheel around. Martha’s cup lay in fragments on the floor, in a puddle of milk.
‘Oh, what happened here?’ Sarah cried, dropping the marmalade on the worktop and reaching for the dustpan and brush. ‘What did you do?’
‘My jumper just knocked it by an accident,’ Martha said, her voice wobbling. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose, Mummy.’
Sarah shovelled the shards into the pan. ‘I know you didn’t, pet, but you need to be a bit more—’
‘Morning, everyone!’
All three turned. Stephen’s chubby face lit up. ‘Nory!’
He reached his arms towards her – and Sarah tamped down the stab of jealousy as Noreen slipped out of her coat and crossed the room, laughing, to gather him up and hug him.
‘Haven’t you finished your breakfast yet, you scallywag?’ Without waiting for his reply she sat on his chair, set him on her lap and began spooning up the remaining yogurt – and he, the traitor who refused to let Sarah feed him, took it from her uncomplainingly.
‘My cup falled down,’ Martha told her. ‘It got all broke. Mummy putted it in the bin.’
‘Oh dear … Sarah, leave that, I can do it when you’re gone.’
‘All done.’ Sarah took the dishcloth to the sink and squeezed it out. ‘Neil might be back early, he’s not sure.’
‘No problem.’ Noreen regarded the two children. ‘So what’ll we do today? How about a picnic in the park?’
‘Yaaay!’
Cycling to work a few minutes later, her nose pink in the February chill, Sarah tried to recall what life had been like before Noreen’s arrival. Hard to imagine how they’d coped, given how invaluable she’d become to them.
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