She reached out and curled her fingers around his arm. It was solid as a stone. ‘I’m just two doors down,’ she said. ‘I’m supposed to exercise.’
‘You can still do that – I told you I’m not carrying you.’
They moved off slowly. She was acutely conscious of the stains on Alice’s old tartan dressing-gown. Her face was damp with sweat from dragging herself up and down the corridor. She must smell ripe, no proper shower or bath since they’d brought her in five days earlier, her hair probably cocked up all over the place.
Breen looked straight ahead as they walked, tapping the point of his big black umbrella on the vinyl floor. His hair was cut very short, as always, and more grey than dark brown now, which did it no harm. He smelt of the outdoors, the bottom half of his raincoat spotted with drops.
It occurred to Helen that apart from the handshake they must have exchanged on first meeting – at that Christmas party, aeons ago – this was the only time she’d made physical contact with him. He was an inch or so taller than her, no more.
A nurse swung out of a ward and walked briskly down the corridor towards them. She darted a look at Breen before scurrying past, her shoes squeaking.
‘So what’s wrong with you?’ he asked.
Typical: in like a bull. She should tell him she’d been given six months, watch him deal with that. ‘Meningitis,’ she said. ‘I’m on the mend, going home in a few days.’ No response. Same old master of small-talk. ‘How’re things with you?’ she asked.
‘Fine. Still here.’ His shoes were brown suede, and scuffed, which surprised her.
‘I saw you,’ she said, ‘last week, just before I got sick.’
He threw her a pained look. ‘I suppose I’m to blame then.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself. You walked by a restaurant I was sitting inside.’ She didn’t mention the woman he’d been with, and he made no further comment.
They crawled past the first door, which was open. Helen glanced in and saw a bald man sitting on a bedside chair in dark green pyjamas, magazine splayed on his lap as he gazed instead at the wall in front of him. The absence of privacy, and dignity, that hospitals afforded.
They walked on, Helen conscious that she was leaning heavily on Breen’s arm, glad of its stability. A man in blue scrubs wheeled an empty trolley past them, whistling a tune she knew but couldn’t place.
‘I come across your pieces now and again,’ Breen said. ‘You’re still well able to stick the knife in.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she told him. ‘How’s retirement?’
He turned his head then to look directly at her, the way she remembered he’d always done. She’d forgotten how blue his eyes were. ‘It’s Hell,’ he said mildly. ‘Thanks for asking.’
She was thrown. Was he trying to be funny? Did he expect her to laugh? He hadn’t sounded like he was making a joke – there wasn’t a trace of a smile on his face. The silence sat between them until they reached her door.
‘This is fine,’ she said, releasing his arm. ‘Thanks.’
‘Want me to walk you in?’
‘No … thank you.’
‘So,’ he said, ‘home soon.’
‘Two or three days, they tell me.’
He nodded. She felt awkward, standing there with him. They weren’t meant to be polite with one another; they worked better when they were getting under one another’s skin. He had no call to tell her his retirement was Hell. What was she supposed to do with that?
He pushed the door open, stood back. ‘Take care,’ he said. ‘Look after yourself, O’Dowd.’
‘You too.’
She shuffled inside. The door closed with a gentle swish. She heard his umbrella tapping its way down the corridor. She wondered who he’d been visiting.
Two days later her mother drove her home. Half an hour after she’d left, as Helen, showered and powdered and in a clean T-shirt, was about to climb into the freshly made bed, the doorbell rang. She looked out of her bedroom window and saw a florist’s van parked by the path. Frank, any excuse for a bouquet.
But the blue bowl of three forced white hyacinths wasn’t from Frank. She opened the little envelope and read, Don’t let me catch you in there again in Breen’s impossible scratchy writing.
He must have rung the hospital to see if she’d been sent home. And he must have looked her up in the phone book to get her address – she doubted he’d have remembered it from his days as editor, if he’d ever known it.
She brought the bowl upstairs and set it on her bedroom windowsill. She climbed into bed, her feet finding the hot-water bottle her mother had filled while Helen was in the shower. She closed her eyes and inhaled the tumbling, glorious scent of the flowers, and drifted off to sleep.
1991
Sarah
‘Hold it higher, like this.’ Sarah took the hand that held the sieve and raised it six inches. ‘That way, the flour will get mixed with air while it’s falling into the bowl.’
‘Why does it have to get mixed with air?’
‘Because air will make the buns lovely and light.’
‘Why is it not coming out?’
‘You have to tap the sieve gently, like this.’
Martha pushed Sarah’s hand away. ‘I’ll do it.’
Sarah watched the flour falling in little clouds, most of it landing in the bowl beneath. There was flour in Martha’s hair, a smear of margarine on her cheek. The table was gritty with caster sugar. There were eggshells on the floor, and a scatter of flaked almonds.
The radio was on, Madonna singing about moving to the music on the dance floor. A few minutes earlier, a newsreader had announced the release after sixteen years in prison of the Birmingham Six. On the far side of the room Stephen was sprawled on his stomach, watching a little wooden train as it clacked around on its circular track.
It was half past four on a March afternoon, the rain beating against the window, the wind whipping the branches of the cherry tree – which only, Sarah thought, made it feel cosier inside the Aga-warmed, fragrant kitchen.
‘Mum, what does a-e-r-a-t-e spell?’ Martha had finished sieving and was now bent over the open recipe book.
‘Aerate. It means to fill something with air, or let it breathe. That’s what we’ve just done with the flour – and look, see how I’m stirring the mixture very gently with my spoon? That’s called folding, so the air doesn’t get pushed out again.’
She’s so interested in cooking and baking, she’d written in her last letter to Helen. I’d love to get her a few child-friendly cookbooks, but I can’t find any. The language in all of my books is too advanced and I have to keep simplifying everything for her.
As they were spooning the mixture into bun cases, the phone rang. ‘I’ll get it,’ Martha said, dropping her spoon and scrambling to the floor. Less than a minute later she was back, deflated. ‘It’s Grandpa.’
Not the man she’d been hoping for. Sarah slid the baking trays into the Aga and closed the door. ‘Leave everything. I won’t be a minute.’ She wiped her hands on her apron and went out to the hall.
‘I’m heading into town,’ her father said. ‘I could pick up a takeaway and drop it in to you on the way home, if you wanted a night off cooking.’
‘I have a chicken in the oven,’ she told him, ‘and we’re making buns for dessert. Come and eat with us.’
He’d defied all their expectations, as healthy now at eighty-one as he’d been when his wife had died thirteen years earlier. Showing no sign of being unable to cope alone – on the contrary, he’d been her rock when Neil had left, when she’d woken the following day and the horror of what had happened had sunk in. Her father had been the first person she’d turned to.
He’d taken her tearful phone call, then hung up and packed a suitcase. Far from coming to live with them as someone who needed looking after, he’d moved into the spare room and taken over. Shooing her out to work each morning, looking after the children as best he could, steering her through t
he first terrible days and weeks.
He’d been there at the end of every day, when the hurt and the rage and the loneliness had become too much for her to bear alone, when she’d wept on his shoulder and tried to make sense of it. He’d made her hot chocolate and told her bad things sometimes happened to the ones who least deserved it.
He’d stayed with them until she found a neighbour to look after Stephen, and then he’d driven the five miles back to his own house, promising to return each morning to take Martha to school until a more permanent arrangement could be put in place.
Life had moved on, four months had passed since that terrible evening, and Sarah had adapted to her changed circumstances as best she could. The nights, of course, were the worst, full of memories and regrets and silent longings. However much she despised Neil’s betrayal, and despite their lack of intimacy in the months leading up to his departure, she found herself mourning the physical absence of him, the smell of him, the sound of his breathing in the dark.
And her desire for another child hadn’t dissipated, far from it. There were times in her loneliness when she wished he’d left her pregnant. Would it have distracted her from her melancholy, or would the idea that she was carrying a child whose father had abandoned them have made it worse? But torturing herself with what-ifs did no good: it hadn’t happened, and now it was never going to happen, and this added its own layer to her sadness as she pushed herself through the days and endured the loneliness of the nights.
Christine, naturally, had been appalled.
‘Oh, Sarah, the bastard! How could he have done that to you? And Noreen – I can’t believe it. Brian will be mortified, just mortified, when I tell him. And to think I got that woman a present for her birthday – and you shared your party with her, and all the time … God, I could hang for her, for the two of them.’
I’m so very sorry, Helen had written. He must be nuts, not that that’s any comfort. I’m glad your dad is staying with you. Be strong, like I know you can be. Be good to yourself. Hug those children.
She’d sent a box of notelets with watercolour birds on them in blues and greens and greys, and a thin slab of chocolate so dark it was almost black, and a pair of soft leather gloves the colour of blueberries. Sarah had pulled on the gloves and tried to feel something other than wretched and angry, but it seemed unlikely that she would ever be happy after this, ever want to smile again.
There had been no word from Neil for at least a fortnight. With Stephen’s third birthday approaching Sarah had felt torn – knowing, despite what had happened, that he would want to be at the party, and willing him to show up for the children’s sake, but dreading having to face him again.
She’d told Martha and Stephen that he’d got a new job far away. It was the best she could come up with, and they’d seemed to accept it readily enough. Inevitably, though, they also looked for Noreen.
‘Where is she?’ Martha had demanded. Five years old and not yet aware that her father had broken her mother’s heart. ‘Why isn’t she coming?’
‘She had to go away,’ Sarah told them. ‘She won’t be looking after you any more.’ Seeing their faces crumple, she’d felt a dart of pure hatred for Noreen. Had she cared so little about them? Had it all been an act to snare their father? How could she destroy their trust in her, how could she wound them like this?
A few days before Stephen’s party, when Sarah had all but given up on him, Neil had finally phoned.
‘It’s me,’ he’d said – and even though it wasn’t wholly unexpected, the sound of his voice had brought all the hurt rushing back. ‘I’d like to see the children. I’d like to come to the party, if that’s alright. I’m assuming it’s on Saturday.’
Sarah had clenched the receiver, tried to keep her voice from shaking. ‘You have to come alone.’
‘I will. And, Sarah … we need to talk, to sort things out.’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m not ready for that. I don’t want to talk to you. You’re coming for the children, that’s all.’
A brief pause. ‘OK.’
It had been horrible. She hadn’t been able to look at him, had barely been able to acknowledge his presence. He’d given Stephen a far-too-expensive wooden train set, and Martha a pink coat that Sarah had seen immediately would be outgrown in a month. He’d hovered on the edges of the party, ignored by Sarah’s father and Christine, for the best part of an hour.
Sarah had felt his eyes on her as she’d poured lemonade and distributed ice-cream, as she’d stood beside Stephen when he was blowing out the three candles on his gingerbread house. When Neil eventually made his excuses and left, the composure she’d managed to keep up all day had crumbled.
‘Won’t be long,’ she’d said brightly, throwing Christine a look as she’d made her way from the room, weeping upstairs in her sister’s arms, her father holding the fort until she’d felt able to patch herself together again.
The following week a letter had arrived. He’d asked to see the children one day a week, more if Sarah agreed. He’d told her he would meet them alone if that was what she wanted. Noreen’s name hadn’t been mentioned, but the address at the top of the page was hers.
Sarah had waited several days before writing back: You can have them on Saturday afternoons from two till six. I would prefer if you met them alone, and I would also appreciate if you didn’t bring them to that house. I haven’t told them why you left, just that you had to move for a new job and you don’t know when it will finish. Please don’t contradict this.
How horribly impersonal the words sounded, addressed to the man she’d been married to for so many years. Her first letter to him, she realised with a shock. In all the time they’d been together, they’d never been separated for long enough to warrant a letter.
The following Saturday he’d arrived promptly at two. At the sound of his car pulling up the children had screamed with delight and rushed outside. Sarah could hardly look in his direction as they’d scrambled in, as she’d buckled them into the two child seats.
‘Have them home by six,’ she’d managed to say, before turning back into the house, a list of jobs lined up for her so she wouldn’t fall to pieces, Christine and the boys due at five to further distract her.
The afternoon had dragged, as long as a century. Halfway through her first job – cleaning the windows – she’d dropped her cloth into its bucket and gone inside to pull the photo albums from the sitting-room bookshelves. She’d sat on the couch flicking through the pages, reliving the years of memories they contained.
Their wedding reception in Uncle John’s hotel, her empire-line dress, so demure and pretty with its high lace neck and long sleeves, her hair coaxed into unfamiliar curls with rollers that had dug into her head the night before.
Neil wearing a grey suit – look how long his hair had been then, and the ridiculous sideburns – his arm around her waist as they stood under a beech tree, her impossibly happy smile, head tilting towards his shoulder.
Her mother in a lemon dress and matching coat, Christine in a loose blue frock that didn’t hide her seven-month pregnancy bump.
Their honeymoon in England, non-stop rain for three of the seven days. York Minster in the rain, Manchester in the rain. In a Blackpool restaurant with an entire lobster on a plate in front of her. Neil holding a bingo card up to the camera, laughing. She couldn’t remember how much he’d won.
Their first Christmas as man and wife, Sarah’s parents – her mother’s last Christmas – and Neil’s mother gathered around the dinner table, coloured tissue-paper hats pulled onto their heads, plates of plum pudding in front of them.
The weekend in Paris they’d treated themselves to for their first anniversary, Sarah standing in a lime green beret on the steps of Notre Dame, and sitting on a stool in Montmartre, giggling as someone drew the caricature they’d left behind them in the hotel.
Her thirtieth birthday party, her father and Christine beside the cake with glasses in their hands, Christine pregnan
t for the second time, two-year-old Aidan perched on his grandfather’s lap.
Neil in shorts and T-shirt on a beach somewhere – Wexford? Cork? – the blue jumper she’d knitted him slung over his shoulders, his hair cocking up in wet points.
Martha, almost two albums full of her first few months. In Sarah’s arms, in Neil’s arms, in everyone’s arms. Happy, happy days, a child for them at last.
More happy days, her abdomen swelling with Stephen, Neil with a protective arm around her as they’d posed on the main street of Naas a month or so before she was due – shopping for a bag, as far as she could remember, that she could bring to the hospital, and probably some decent underwear too.
And then Stephen’s arrival, a few moments after his birth, her exhausted, ecstatic, tear-blurred face as she’d cradled him, Neil looking on, shell-shocked.
There were no photos of her fortieth party: they’d all been burnt before they’d made it into an album, along with any others of Noreen. Sarah and Christine had done it one evening, about a fortnight after Neil’s departure, when Sarah had still been a wreck.
When Christine and the boys arrived, it was an effort to pull herself out of the past, to put on the kettle and produce the biscuits she’d made with the children for their cousins that morning.
‘You OK?’ Christine had asked, her voice slipping under her sons’ chatter.
‘Just a bit melancholy, that’s all, looking at old snaps.’
Christine had squeezed her hand. ‘You still have plenty of happy memories with the kids, and plenty more to make. Don’t forget that.’
At six o’clock, as she and Christine had sat on the garden seat wrapped in blankets and watching the boys kicking a ball around, the doorbell had rung.
Christine had got to her feet. ‘I’ll go.’
Sarah had let her, grateful that she didn’t have to face him. She’d listened but couldn’t hear how her sister greeted her brother-in-law – or maybe there’d been no greeting, just a stiff nod or a glare as she’d ushered in the children.
Inevitably, they’d wanted to see more of Neil, so Sarah had reluctantly agreed to an overnight visit every second weekend, although the thought of them spending any time under Noreen’s roof, the idea of their old childminder having any role in the family unit, turned her stomach.
Something in Common Page 24