Minding Frankie

by Maeve Binchy

  “Well, hello!” she said. “How did you get in? It isn’t visiting time.”

  “Am I interrupting you?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m reading about how to put more zing back into my marriage, as if I knew what either zing or marriage was!”

  “I came here to ask you to marry me,” he said.

  “Oh, Christ, Noel, don’t be such an eejit. Why would I marry you? I’ll be dead in a few weeks’ time!”

  “You wouldn’t say the baby was mine if it wasn’t. I would be honored to try to bring her up.”

  “Listen, marriage was never part of it.” Stella was at a complete loss.

  “I thought that’s what you wanted!” He was perplexed now.

  “No. I wanted you to look after her, to be a dad for her, to keep her out of the lottery of the care system.”

  “So will we get married, then?”

  “No, Noel, of course we won’t, but if you do want to talk about looking after her, tell me why and how.”

  “I’m going to change, Stella.”

  “Right.”

  “No, I am. I was up all night planning it. I’m going to go to AA today, admit I have a drink problem, and then I’m going to enroll to do a business course at a college and then I’m going to find a flat where I can bring up the baby.”

  “This is all so sudden. So spur-of-the-moment. Why aren’t you at work today anyway?”

  “My cousin Emily has gone to Hall’s to say I have a personal crisis today and that I will make up the time next week by going in one hour earlier and staying one hour later every day.”

  “Does Emily know about all this?”

  “Yes. I had to tell someone. She was very cross with me for walking out on you.”

  “You didn’t walk, Noel. You ran.”

  “I am so sorry. Believe me. I am sorry.”

  “So what has changed?” She wasn’t hostile, just interested.

  “I want to amount to something. To do something for someone before I die. I’ll be thirty soon. I’ve done nothing except dream and wish and drink. I want to change that.”

  She listened in silence.

  “So tell me what you’d like if you don’t want us to get married?”

  “I don’t know, Noel. I’d like things to have been different.”

  “So do most people walking around. They all wish things had been different,” he said sadly.

  “Then I’d like you to meet Moira Tierney, my social worker, tomorrow evening. She’s coming in to discuss what she calls ‘the future’ with me. A fairly short discussion.”

  “Could I bring Emily in? She said she’d like to come and talk to you anyway.”

  “But is she going to be a nanny figure? Always there hovering, making all the decisions?”

  “No, she’ll be going back to America soon, I think, but she has made me see things more clearly.”

  “Bring her in, then. Is she dishy? Could you marry her, maybe?” Stella was mischievous again.

  “No! She’s as old as the hills. Well, fifty or forty-five or something, anyway.”

  “Bring her in, then,” Stella said, “and she’s going to have to talk well to deal with Moira.”

  He leaned over and put the flowers in a glass.

  “Noel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks, anyway, about the marriage proposal and all. It wasn’t what I had in mind but it was decent of you.”

  “You might still change your mind,” he said.

  “I have a tame priest in here. A very nice fellow. He could do it if we were pushed, but actually I’d prefer not to.”

  “Whatever you think,” he said, and touched her gently on the shoulder.

  “Before you go, one thing … how did you get in outside visiting hours?”

  “I asked Declan Carroll. He lives on my road. I said I needed a favor, so he made a phone call.”

  “He and his wife are having a baby at the same time as I am,” Stella said. “I always thought the children might be friends.”

  “Well, they might easily be friends,” Noel said.

  When he looked around from the door he saw she was lying back in her bed, but she was smiling and seemed more relaxed than before.

  He set out then to face what was going to be the most challenging day of his life.

  · · ·

  It was hard to go into the building where the lunchtime AA meeting was taking place. Noel stood for ten minutes in the corridor watching men and women of every type walking down to the door at the end.

  Eventually he could put it off no longer and followed them in.

  It was still very unreal to him but, as he had said to Emily, he had to get his head around the fact that he was a father and an alcoholic.

  He had faced the first and he could still recall the glow in Stella’s face this morning. She hadn’t thought he was a loser and a hopeless father for her baby.

  Now he had to face the drinking.

  There were about thirty people in the room. A man sat at a desk near the door. He had a tired, lined face and sandy hair. He didn’t look like a person who was a heavy drinker. Maybe he was just part of the staff.

  “I would actually like to join,” Noel said to him, hearing, as he spoke, his own voice echoing in his ears.

  “And your name?” the man asked.

  “Noel Lynch.”

  “Right, Noel. Who referred you here?”

  “I’m sorry? Referred?”

  “I mean, are you coming here because of a treatment center?”

  “Oh, heavens no. I haven’t been having any treatment or anything. I just drink too much and I want to cut it down.”

  “We try to encourage each other to cut it out completely. Are you aware of that?”

  “Yes, if that were possible, I would be happy to try.”

  “My name is Malachy. Come on in,” the man said. “We’re about to begin.”

  Later in the day Noel had to do his third confrontation.

  Emily had made an appointment for him with a college admissions supervisor. He was going to sign up for a business diploma, which included marketing and finance, sales and advertising. The fees, which would have been well beyond him, were going to be paid by Emily. She said it was an interest-free loan. He would repay it when he could.

  She had assured him that this was exactly what she wanted to do with her savings. She saw it as an investment. One day when he was a rich, successful man he would always remember her with gratitude and look after her in her old age.

  The admissions supervisor confirmed that the fees had been paid and that the lectures would start the following week. Apart from the lectures, Noel would be expected to study on his own for at least twelve hours a week.

  “Are you married?” the supervisor asked.

  “No, indeed,” and then almost as an afterthought Noel said, “but I’ll be having a baby in a couple of weeks.”

  “Congratulations, but you had better get a good bit of the groundwork in before the child arrives,” said the admissions supervisor, a man who seemed to know what he was talking about.

  That evening at supper Josie was eager to discuss the thrift shop and its possible opening date. She was excited and alive.

  Charles was in high good form too. He wasn’t going to have to give Caesar back to Mrs. Monty, he was going to have this big celebration at the hotel, he had more plans for dog walking and dog exercising and he had been to a local kennel.

  But before the conversation could go down either route—thrift shop or dog walking—Emily spoke firmly.

  “Noel has something important to talk to us about, perhaps before we make any more plans.”

  Noel looked around him, trapped.

  He had known that this was coming. Emily said they could not live in a shadowy world of lies and deception.

  Still, he had to tell his parents that they were about to become grandparents, there was no marriage included in the plans and he would be moving into a place of his own.

&nb
sp; It was not news he was going to find easy to break. Emily had suggested that he might pause before using the same opportunity to tell them that he was joining Alcoholics Anonymous and that he was registering as a student at the college.

  She wondered whether it might not be too much for them.

  But when he began his tale, sparing nothing but telling it all as it had unfolded, he felt it was easier and more fair to tell them everything.

  He went through it as if he were talking about someone else, and he never once caught their eye as the story went on.

  First he told of the message from the hospital, his two meetings with Stella, and her news—which he had refused to believe at first but realized must be true; then he told of his intention to meet the social worker and plan for the future of the baby girl, whose birth would also involve her mother’s death.

  He told them how he had tried to give up drinking on his own and had not succeeded, that he now had a sponsor in AA called Malachy and would attend a meeting every day.

  He told them that his job in Hall’s had been depressing and that he was constantly passed over while younger and less experienced staff were appreciated because they had diplomas or degrees.

  At this point he realized his parents had been very silent, so he raised his eyes to look at them.

  Their faces were frozen with horror at the story he was telling.

  Everything they had feared might happen in a godless world had happened.

  Their son had enjoyed sex outside marriage and a child had resulted and he was admitting a dependency on alcohol even to the point of getting help from Alcoholics Anonymous!

  But he would not be put off. He struggled on with the explanations and his plans to get out of the situations he had brought on himself.

  He accepted that it was all his own fault.

  He blamed no outside circumstances.

  “I feel ashamed telling you all this, Mam and Da. You have lived such good lives. You wouldn’t even begin to understand, but I got myself into this and I’m going to get myself out of it.”

  They were still silent so he dared to look at them again.

  To his amazement they both had some sympathy in their faces.

  His mother’s eyes were full of tears, but there were no recriminations. No mention of sex before marriage, only concern.

  “Why did you never tell us this, son?” His father’s voice was full of emotion.

  “What could you have said? That I was a fool to have left school so early? Or that I should put up with it. You were happy at work, Da. You were respected. That’s not the way it is at Hall’s.”

  “And the baby?” Josie said. “You had no idea this Stella was expecting your child?”

  “None in the wide world, Ma,” Noel said. And there was something so bleak and honest in his tone that everyone believed him.

  “But the drink thing, Noel … are you sure that it’s bad enough for you to be going to the AA?”

  “It is, Da, believe me.”

  “I never noticed you drunk. Not once. And I’m well used to dealing with drunk people up at the hotel,” his father said, shaking his head.

  “That’s because you’re normal, Da. You don’t expect people to come back from work half-cut, having spent two hours in Casey’s.”

  “That man has a lot to answer for.” Charles shook his head with disapproval for Old Man Casey.

  “He didn’t exactly open my mouth and force it down,” Noel said.

  Emily spoke for the first time.

  “So we are up to speed on Noel’s plans now. It’s going to be up to us to give him all the support we can.”

  “You knew all this?” Josie Lynch was shocked and not best pleased.

  “I only knew because I can recognize a drunk at fifty feet. I’ve had a lifetime of knowing when people are drunk. We don’t talk about him much, I know, but my father was one very unhappy man and he was miles from home with no one to help him or advise him when he had made one wrong decision that wrecked his life.”

  “What decision was that?” Charles asked.

  This evening was full of shocks.

  Since Emily’s arrival there had been no mention of the late Martin Lynch’s drinking.

  “The decision to leave Ireland. He regretted it every day of his life.”

  “But that can’t be right. He lost total interest in us. He never came home.” Charles was astonished.

  “He never came home, that’s true, but he never lost interest. He probed it as if it were a sore tooth. All he could have done if only he had stayed here. All of it fantasy, of course, but still, if he’d had someone to talk to …” Her voice trailed away.

  “Your mother?” Josie asked tentatively.

  “No joy there, I’m afraid. She never understood what a hold drink had on him. She just told him to stay away from it, as if it were a simple thing to do.”

  “Could you not talk to him? You’re great at talking to people,” Charles said admiringly.

  “No, I couldn’t. You see, my father didn’t have the basic decency that Noel here has. He could not accept that in the end it was all up to him. He wasn’t half the man Noel is.”

  Josie, who had in the last half hour been facing the whole range of disgrace, mortal sin and shame, found some small comfort in this praise.

  “You think that Noel will be able to do all this?” she asked Emily pitifully, as if Noel were not even there.

  “It’s up to us to help him, Josie,” Emily said as calmly as if they were discussing the menu for tomorrow’s supper.

  And even to Noel it didn’t seem quite as impossible as it had when he had begun his explanation.

  · · ·

  “Stella, I’m Emily, Noel’s cousin. Noel’s gone to get you some cigarettes. I came a little early in case there’s anything I should know before the social worker comes.”

  Stella looked at the businesslike woman with the frizzy hair and the smart raincoat. Americans always dressed properly for the Irish weather. Irish people themselves were constantly being drenched with rain.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Emily. Noel says you are a rock of sense.”

  “I don’t know that I am.” Emily seemed doubtful. “I came over on a whim to learn about my late father’s background. Now I seem to be up to my neck in organizing a statue for some saint who has been dead for centuries. Hardly a rock of sense …”

  “You’re very good to take all this on as well.” Stella looked down somewhat ruefully at the bump in her stomach.

  “You have enough problems to think about,” Emily said, her voice warm and sympathetic.

  “Well, this social worker is a bit of a madam. You know, interested in everything, believing nothing, always trying to trip you up.”

  “I suppose they have to be a bit like that on behalf of the child,” Emily murmured.

  “Yes, but not like the secret police. You see, I sort of implied that Noel and I were more of an item than we are. You know, in terms of seeing each other and everything.”

  “Sure.” Emily nodded approvingly. It made sense.

  There was no point in Stella telling a social worker that she hardly knew the least thing about the father of the child she was about to have.

  It wouldn’t look good from the start.

  “I’ll help to fill you in on all that,” Emily said.

  At that moment Noel came in, closely followed by Moira Tierney.

  She was in her early thirties with dark hair swept back with a red ribbon. If not for her frown of concentration, she would have been considered attractive. But Moira was too busy to consider looking attractive.

  “You are Noel Lynch?” she said briskly and without much enthusiasm.

  He began to shuffle and appear defensive.

  Emily moved in quickly. “Give me your parcels, Noel. I know you want to say hello to Stella properly.” She nudged him towards the bed.

  Stella held up her thin arms to give him an awkward combination of a hug and a peck on the
cheek.

  Moira watched suspiciously.

  “You and Stella don’t share a home, Mr. Lynch?” Moira said.

  “No, not at the moment,” he agreed apologetically.

  “But there are active plans going ahead so that Noel can get a place of his own to raise Frankie,” Emily said.

  “And you are …?” Moira looked at Emily inquiringly.

  “Emily Lynch. Noel’s cousin.”

  “Are you the only family he has?” Moira checked her notes.

  “Lord, no! He has a mother and father, Josie and Charles …,” Emily began, making sure that Stella could hear the names as well.

  “And they are …?” Moira had an irritating habit of asking a question the wrong way round, as if she were making some kind of disapproving statement.

  “They are at home organizing a fund to erect a statue to St. Jarlath in their street.”

  “St. Jarlath?” Moira was bewildered.

  “I know! Aren’t they wonderful? Well, you’ll meet them yourself. They’ll be in tomorrow to see Stella.”

  “They will?” Stella was startled.

  “Of course they will.” Emily sounded more confident than she felt.

  Josie would take a lot of convincing before she arrived to see the girl who was no better than she should be. But Emily was working on it and the important thing just now was to let the social worker see that there was strong family support.

  Moira absorbed it all as she was meant to.

  “And where do you intend to live, Mr. Lynch, if you are given custody of the child?”

  “Well of course he will have custody of the child,” Stella snapped. “He’s the child’s father. We are all agreed on that!”

  “There may be circumstances which might challenge this.” Moira was prim.

  “What kind of circumstances?” Stella was angry now.

  “A background of alcohol abuse, for one thing,” Moira said.

  “Not from me, Noel,” Stella said apologetically.

  “Naturally, we make inquiries,” Moira said.

  “But that is all under control now,” Emily said.

  “Well, that will be looked into,” Moira said in a clipped voice. “What kind of accommodation were you thinking of, Mr. Lynch?”

  Emily spoke again. “Noel’s family have been discussing nothing else but accommodation. We are looking at this apartment in Chestnut Court. It’s a small block of flats not far away from where he lives now.”