by Maeve Binchy
“Tell me, Fiona.”
“No, I won't. I can't.”
“Why can't you? We used to tell each other everything. I told you about the first time I ever went to bed with a fellow and he was so appalled by all the safety pins in my underwear it nearly turned him off. And you were great. You understood.”
“I know, but this is different.”
“And you told me about Shane and I understood. Why can't I understand now?”
“It's about Shane. It's all about bloody Shane.”
“But he's dead, Fiona. You must know he's dead.”
“How did you know?”
“I saw it in the paper.”
“And you said nothing to me?”
“I waited for you to say something to me and you didn't, so I thought you just didn't want it mentioned.”
“I felt nothing about him when I heard. I was the one who identified him to the Guards.”
“You actually went to see his body? Oh, my God!” Barbara was shocked.
“No, I phoned the Guards.”
“And what did you feel?”
“Nothing. Nothing for him. I didn't care if he lived or died.”
Barbara's kind face was stricken.
“Oh, sit down, Barbara. For God's sake, sit down and have an Irish coffee.”
“I haven't had an Irish coffee in weeks. Remember the kingfisher-blue dress, a size too small.”
“Forget the bloody kingfisher-blue dress. There isn't going to be a wedding.”
“Then I'd like a large brandy,” Barbara said.
“Mother?”
“Is that you, Carl?”
“Yes, Mother. You're going to be fine.”
“I'm sorry, Carl.”
“What for, Mother? It was all an accident.”
“Yes. I'm sorry for not just dying there and then and leaving you all to get on with your lives normally.”
“Mother, you're going to be fine, and we are all delighted that it wasn't too serious.”
“I'm sorry for what I said.”
“We all say things we don't mean.” He patted her arm.
“I didn't wish to be hurtful,” she said.
“Neither did I, Mother.”
Rosemary closed her eyes. Carl left the room.
Outside the open door his father sat in a wheelchair pushed by Ania.
“Thank you, son,” Bobby said, with tears in his eyes.
“No, Dad, it's the truth. We all do say things we don't mean,” Carl said. But his face was cold. They all knew that Rosemary Walsh had meant exactly what she said.
Declan was cleaning his shoes in the kitchen at St. Jarlaths Crescent.
“Mam, will I do your shoes for you? I'm doing my own.”
“No, Declan, but you could do something for me?”
“What is it, Mam?”
“Could you tell me what's wrong between you and Fiona?”
“What do you mean, what's wrong?”
“She came back here the other night with Dimples. She'd walked about ten miles around Dublin and back and she had been crying her eyes out.”
“And did you ask her why?”
“I didn't like to. I thought you and she might have had a row.”
“No, we didn't,” he said simply.
“If you could have seen her! She just handed Dimples back to me and walked down the crescent. She was bent over, as if she were in pain.”
Declan had stopped brushing his shoes.
“It will all be sorted out by Monday,” he said, speaking like an automaton.
“Oh, Declan, if something needs to be sorted out why for the Lord's sake wait until Monday?” Molly Carroll asked.
“That was what was agreed.”
In Dun Laoghaire, ordinary people with ordinary lives enjoyed the summer evening by the coast. They went for long, healthy walks the length of the pier. Some of them got into yachts and went out into the bay. Others settled into small restaurants.
Only Barbara and Fiona seemed out of touch with the gentle summery feel of it all.
“Tell me again,” Barbara said. “You feel nothing over Shane. You love Declan, but you can't marry Declan because you don't trust your judgment? Is that it?”
“Well, that's a way of putting it.”
“I've listened to you for half an hour, Fiona, and I'm on my second large brandy. I can't understand what you're saying. I've tried to sum it up. Am I right or am I wrong?”
“Basically right.”
“Then you are quite totally mad,” Barbara said.
“Why? I made one bad call. I might be making another. What's so hard to understand about that?”
“Well, where do I start?” Barbara said. “I could start by saying that Shane was a sniveling loser. A drug addict who hit you. Who dug deep and found the victim side of you. That's Shane. Declan is Declan. Mad about you, funny, good, kind, wise. You have never been so happy and positive since you met him. You could take on any job. He builds up your confidence. Look, why am I telling you all this, trying to sell him to you? I bet he doesn't know any of this.”
“I tried to tell him, but he said the past was over. I don't think he understood—he made me promise not to say anything more until Monday.”
“Because he's normal, that's why. Who could understand your rantings and ramblings?” Barbara called for the bill. “You're going to talk to him now!” she said.
“No, he said Monday. That's what was agreed.”
Barbara took Fiona's mobile phone. “Hi, Declan, Barbara here. Fiona and I are in a pub in Dun Laoghaire. Can you get here?”
Fiona looked like a guilty child.
Barbara continued, “It's important that you know she didn't tell me. I guessed. She's still bleating on about doing nothing until Monday. Monday! God, Declan, we'll all be dead by Monday. Could you come out here quickly? I'll try to hold her down until you get here.”
Barbara stood and watched as Declan and Fiona joined the groups of ordinary people walking in the evening sunshine. She knew that neither of them could see the sea or the little boats bobbing up and down. They weren't aware of the other people: the man selling balloons, the children eating huge ice cream cones. But they walked close together and seemed to be talking to each other. Barbara sighed.
It was going to be all right. They had just looked at each other and said nothing when they met. That was a good sign.
Oh, well, she would walk some of the way home. She had to get rid of three hundred-plus extra empty calories she'd drunk. It looked as if the kingfisher-blue dress might be needed after all.
“My legs feel a bit wobbly,” Fiona said. “Could we sit down?”
Declan guided them to a stone seat. He sat there and held her hand.
“You do know what it's all about?” she said after a while.
“No, I don't, to be honest.”
“But I toldyou. I explained for hours.”
“I didn't understand it fully”
“What did you think it was?” she demanded.
“Nerves,” he said simply.
There was a silence.
“I don't have nerves,” Fiona said eventually.
“Good. Because neither do I. I am so sure we'll have a great marriage.”
“We can't marry.” Her voice was very level and calm.
“Why not exactly?”
“Because I once made a very stupid choice and fell in love with the idea of getting married and roaming the world. I'm afraid I'm doing it all over again.”
“But we're not roaming the world. We're going to settle down here. We're meant to be putting a deposit on a flat this week.”
“No, Declan. Too much has happened.”
“And did it all happen since we agreed to get married?”
“In a way, yes. Shane died.”
“Shane?”
“The fellow I went off with to Greece. Remember, I tried to tell you …”
“And I said what had happened in our past wasn't important.”
/> “But it is, Declan. It's what shapes us.”
“Well, then, I was poorly shaped. I hardly had a past.”
“And I had Shane.”
“This fellow you fancied way back? Were you upset because he died?”
“I swear I couldn't have cared less.”
Declan's honest face was almost at the end of trying to understand all this.
“What has this to do with us? We don't have a difficult relationship. We want the same things—or I thought we did. Where's the similarity?”
“I might be making an equally stupid decision. In a few years’ time I might care nothing about you. It's just the way I'm made. My mad personality.”
“It's up to me to make you keep loving me,” Declan said.
“No, if it were only that simple. I'm a damaged person, incapable of making decisions. It's better that I don't make any ever again.”
“You've got to help me here, Fiona. I'm focusing. I'm concentrating, but I still don't get it.”
“I'll tell you the whole story again, then,” she said.
“Will you tell it slowly this time? Please, Fiona?”
She actually smiled. “I will,” she said. “And if I go too fast, slow me down.”
• • •
And so everything was back on track. Nobody had been told anything of what went on out by the sea, what was said, what was not said and what was patted down.
The wedding dress fittings were cheerful. The waistcoat was made. The hall was decorated. Brian Flynn was duly licensed to serve alcohol. The twins brought tasting menus to the Carrolls’ house so that everyone could decide what they liked and what they didn't. The two mothers brought their shoes to be stretched. Ania managed to wrestle from Fiona that if she were at a theoretical wedding, and she were the theoretical bride, she would love some heavy cut-crystal tumblers or a cut-glass bowl, and Ania ran off and bought both, as there was enough cash in the fund.
Declan suggested that Fiona find out where Shane's grave was.
“It's making too much of him,” she said.
“You loved him for a while. He deserves some kind of good-bye,” Declan said.
His mother had no idea who she was.
“There were so many girls,” Shane's mother said on the phone, “and for what, in the end?” But she told Fiona where the grave was, and she and Declan went to see it. The headstone was not yet up. Just a simple cross and the number of the plot. Fiona laid flowers on it.
“I'm sorry you didn't have a better life,” she said.
“May you sleep in peace,” Declan said.
And oddly, she did feel better as they left the big city graveyard. Somehow peaceful.
Rosemary Walsh was very bruised and battered, but recovering.
Bobby came to see her every day. Ania had offered to wash her nightdresses, but Carl had been adamant.
“You're going to be her daughter-in-law, not her carer,” he said.
“But a good daughter-in-law would be happy to care for a sick woman.”
“Dad can take the nightdresses and send them to a laundry.”
“It would be such a little thing,” Ania said.
“To me, it would be a big thing,” Carl said.
He went to see his mother once a week and helped his father organize the move.
On one of his hospital visits he brought an inventory of what they had in the big house looking out over the bay: furniture, paintings, glassware, ornaments.
“You can take about a fifth of this, Mother,” he said.
Immediately she began to complain.
“Dad says he doesn't mind what he takes but that possessions are very important to you. You collected them over the years. So just let me know and I will arrange that they be transferred.”
“But it's not at all certain that we really want to move. We might rent something.”
“Dad has bought it, Mother. And you can't go back to the old house. You couldn't manage the steps either.” He spoke as if her injuries were of no remote interest to him.
“Will you always hate me, Carl?” she asked.
“No, indeed, Mother. I don't hate you at all,” he said in a flat voice with no tone of reassurance in it.
Frank Ennis came to discuss the accident with Clara.
“Will we sue Mrs. Walsh?” he said.
“I think not, Frank. The woman could have broken every bone in her body. Her husband has serious heart failure. Hardly likely to be helpful to him.”
“But she did knock it down.”
“Oh, I know she did, but not deliberately.”
“That's not the point. They will have plenty of insurance.”
“So have we.”
“But we're blameless. There was even a sign warning people. I checked.”
“Leave it, Frank. We're well covered. I checked that too.”
“You don't know how to save a no-claims bonus,” Frank said, shaking his head.
“No, I'm glad to say I don't,” Clara agreed.
“What are you wearing to the wedding?” he asked suddenly.
“A moss-green dress with a black hat with ribbons of moss green around the hat.”
“Sounds lovely,” he said.
“It's not bad, certainly. And you, Frank, what will you wear?”
“Well, it does say Dress Smart Casual. I wish I knew what that means.”
“I think it means no jeans,” Clara said.
“That wouldn't be an option,” Frank said seriously. “But I was wondering about wearing a blazer.”
“A blazer? Like with brass buttons and everything?”
“No. It has ordinary cloth-covered buttons,” he said. He looked very unsure.
Clara was touched, despite herself, and decided to be kind. “And light-colored trousers?” she suggested.
“Exactly. I thought of pale gray and an open-necked shirt and a cravat.”
“God, Frank, you'll be beating them off you with a stick!” she said.
Vonni arrived three days before the wedding.
She looked older than Fiona had expected. Or maybe it was that this was Vonni in unfamiliar territory. If she had been back in Aghia Anna among all the people she knew, greeting everyone and busy about her work, it might have been different. Here, she was in a totally changed Ireland, in a capital city she hadn't seen for decades. Her only friends were Fiona, Maud and Simon. She looked bewildered, which was something Fiona had not seen before.
Fiona had arranged for Vonni to stay with Muttie and his wife, Lizzie, where the twins lived. It had been touching to see how eager they were to see her again and show her their city. And proud that she would be at their first professional wedding engagement.
Maud and Simon had gone to the airport to meet her and chattered the whole way back to St. Jarlaths Crescent, where Vonni met Muttie and Lizzie, and then Declan and his parents, and finally Fiona. Fiona had arranged to take Vonni out for a meal to catch up.
They went to the Early Bird meal at Quentins, where Vonni almost fainted at the prices. It was all so expensive, this new Ireland, compared to the country she had left. They talked long and affectionately of Tom and Elsa and the new baby. Who could ever have foreseen any of this? And of David, who now got on well with his mother and was finally doing what he liked to do with his life. They were surprised that some woman hadn't pinned him down. He would be ideal husband material.
They talked of Andreas back in Aghia Anna, and his brother, Yorghis, and how Andreas's son, Adoni, had taken to the business so well. How he was going to marry Maria, and they were so good working together.
“The same Maria that David taught to drive!” Fiona cried.
“The very one,” Vonni agreed.
And Fiona touched lightly on the forbidden world of Vonni's son. A blank look came across Vonni's face. So no change there, then.
“I'm not trying to pry. I just wondered if there was anything at all?”
“Nothing of significance. No.”
So they left that
and Vonni touched gently on the closed subject of Shane.
“Did he ever come back to Ireland?” she asked.
There was a silence.
“Sorry,” Vonni said, “I shouldn't have mentioned him.”
“No. No problem. He didcome back to Ireland. To die.”
“Merciful God,” said Vonni.
“Yes. He died in a dirty bedroom from a drug overdose.”
“What a waste of a young life,” Vonni said.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“You're not upset, then?”
“No, in fact I'm shocked at how un-upset I am.”
“That part of your life is over. That's why it hasn't any power to hurt you anymore.”
“I believe that now. Declan convinced me.”
“You told him about Shane?”
“Yes. Declan is remarkable.”
“You're very lucky, Fiona. He is special, just like you wrote to me when you met him first. You'll be very happy.”
“I don't deserve it.”
“Yes, you do. You had guts when you needed them. You are kind to people. Don't be so quick to put yourself down. That was one of my faults too.”
“Are you better now?”
“I think so, yes. I've stopped blaming myself that my sister doesn't like me. It's not my fault anymore.”
“You're not going to see her while you're here?”
“No. I don't think we'd have anything to say to each other.”
“I could go with you on the train tomorrow if you like?” Fiona offered.
“Two days before your wedding! You have a million things to do, Fiona.”
“I don't, as it happens. We could have lunch with her and come back that evening.”
“No, Fiona, honestly. It's a long way to travel to have two old ladies sit and look at each other with disapproval. No, we'll give it a miss. I'll just continue with the Christmas and birthday cards.”
“And does she …?”
“Not anymore. She used to send postcards from places, just showing off that she visited Rome or New York. But she doesn't even bother now.”
Vonni was resigned so Fiona changed the subject.
“Right, we'll take you on a tour of Dublin instead. There's a get-on, get-off bus we could try.”
“Correct me if I'm wrong, Fiona, but isn't that what all buses are? You get on them, you get off them?”