A Time for Friends (29 page)

‘You’d love her and she’d love you.’ He smiled at his mother and she smiled back at him and Jonathan felt the tension drift out of his body and his eyelids began to droop
as he lay against the plump Gigli-print cushions he had accessorized the sofa with.

He had lied every which way to his mother about his abuse but his intention had been good. He had saved her from a grief that would have ruined her old age. That was more important than
anything. But he had shared his feelings with her and that made the huge bond they had even stronger. Articulating how he felt about being gay, as he just had, had been very empowering. He was a
human being who deserved to be treated with dignity and equality, just the way his mother treated him, and if people didn’t like it they could lump it. And he wasn’t a victim, he was
victorious
. Yes, victorious Jonathan Harpur who had put the past behind him and was ready to embrace his future, a future that hopefully he would spend with Leon at his side. Jonathan
slept peacefully on the sofa, and Nancy, content that she had broached the subject she had been dreading and had not had her
worst
fears realized, closed her eyes and joined him for forty
winks before the
Late Late
started.

Nancy lay in the warm hollow of her bed watching a sliver of moonlight through a chink in the curtains. She felt strangely at peace after her heart-to-heart conversation with
Jonathan. He was a very strong person, this son of hers, she thought proudly. And a very
good
person. Why could people not see beyond the labels they hung on each other? Why could they not
see the human being with the kind and loving heart? ‘Queers’ they called men like her son. How hurtful and derogatory. But they were the queer ones with their closed, judgemental minds
and hard hearts. Jesus would never call anyone queer, she reflected, knowing that much of the hardship her son and others like him endured was in the name of so-called ‘religion’.
‘Sure you wouldn’t say those awful names, Jesus?’ she said aloud to the picture of the smiling Sacred Heart that rested on her bedside locker. Her eyes lit up and an idea popped
into her mind.
Exactly,
she thought delightedly. ‘Thank you, dear Lord, for putting the idea into my head.’

She lay drowsily against her pillows watching the moonlight disappear as the wind began to rise and the spitter-spatter of rain against the window lulled her to sleep.

‘Good morning, light of my life.’ Niall nuzzled in to her and Hilary felt him harden against her.

‘I was asleep,’ she griped, annoyed at being woken up.

‘I’ll wake you up,’ he murmured, cupping her breast in his hand. Hilary’s heart sank. She just wanted to go back to sleep. Niall had been drinking the previous night at
his gig and she could smell the stale scent of beer off him and she just wasn’t in the mood for sex. All she craved was deep, uninterrupted sleep.

‘Can we do it tonight? I’m bushed. I just want to go back to sleep,’ she mumbled, turning over on her front and burying her head under the pillow.

‘We have a house full of teenagers tonight,’ he reminded her, disappointed.

‘Aw crap, I forgot about that. Tomorrow then,’ Hilary slurred drowsily. She was asleep in seconds leaving her husband frustrated and disgruntled.

The sound of the smoke alarm jerked her rudely from her slumber. For crying out loud, she thought in exasperation, how many times have I told him to keep the kitchen door closed when he’s
grilling? She glanced at the clock and saw that it was nearly eleven and groaned. She hadn’t meant to sleep in so late: Sophie’s friends were coming and the house had to be cleaned.
Hilary yawned. She supposed it might be too much to expect that the girls had made a start on their chores.

She threw back the duvet and grabbed her dressing gown and slid her feet into woolly slippers. It was raining. She could hear it hurling against the window and when she pulled up the blinds she
saw the wind bending the bare branches of the rowan trees that lined her street so that they looked like old crones with long streaming hair. Rivulets of water flowed down the windowpane, the sky
was dour, threatening sleet or worse, and she was glad she didn’t have anywhere to go today. Once the house was clean she was going to come back to bed and read the latest Anita Shreve. She
had treated herself to it ages ago but had never had the time to get into it.

She climbed the circular staircase that led to the recent attic conversion where the girls now slept in their own rooms, with a shared shower room and toilet. The square landing area that
separated their bedrooms was a cosy lounging space, designed by Jonathan, with a small two-seater sofa, bean bags, a bookcase, coffee table and TV. Did her daughters have any idea of how privileged
they were? Hilary wondered, remembering the bedroom with the one old-fashioned wardrobe and chest of drawers she had shared with her sister.

They had been so thrilled when Sally had bought a dainty dressing-table unit with three oval gilt-edged mirrors that could angle. That had been the height of sophistication and they had painted
their room in a creamy lemon and got new gold-coloured curtains that matched the colour of the gilt on the mirror and had been delighted with their new-look room. They wouldn’t have been able
to fit a bean bag, let alone a sofa or bookcase, into their little kingdom.

She saw the remains of Millie’s Chinese meal on the table, grains of rice like confetti against the dark green carpet. The cleaning up hadn’t begun yet, she thought grimly, marching
into the bathroom to pull up the blind before entering Sophie’s room. Her daughter was curled under the duvet; blonde hair streaming over the pillows, her favourite battered old teddy bear
poking out from under the quilt cover.

‘Sophie, get up.’ She shook her daughter none too gently.

‘Whaaa . . . uuuuhhh?’ Sophie blinked open a bleary eye and raised a tousled head from the pillow.

‘Get up and start tidying up. Look at this bedroom. It’s a disgrace. And so is that bathroom. There’s make-up marks all over the sink—’

‘Breakfast in five. Sophie, do you want a fried egg?’ Niall appeared at the bedroom door, a tea towel slung over his shoulder.

‘Yeah, Dad. Mam, will you chill—’

‘Those girls are not coming up here unless you clean up, do you hear me? Pick those clothes up off the floor and put them in your linen basket and put a wash on and make sure there are no
knickers and tights pickling under the bed.’ Hilary was in no mood to be told to ‘chill’.

‘
Maaam
!’ hissed Sophie and suddenly Hilary was brought back to a similar scene in her own teenage years and remembered Sally using the exact same phrase.
Oh God!
I’ve turned into my mother
, she thought, horrified.
I’m a middle-aged mother of teenagers, saying middle-aged things.
Her existential shock was interrupted by the arrival
of her eldest daughter.

‘What’s going on?’ Millie demanded. ‘I was
trying
to have a lie-in. It
is
Saturday after all.’

‘I told you we were doing a house clean today. You get that bathroom sorted – it’s a disgrace!’ Hilary retorted.

Niall threw his eyes up to heaven, exuding irritation with the three women in his life. ‘Millie, do you want a fried egg?’

‘Yep.’ She stretched.

‘Hilary?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Right, be at the table in five minutes,’ Niall said crossly, annoyed that there was an atmosphere to ruin his Saturday morning. Hilary followed him down the stairs.
‘Let’s all lighten up a bit,’ her husband suggested as she poured herself a cup of coffee while he began to fry the eggs.

‘That’s easy for you to say, Niall,’ she grouched. ‘I’d a very long day yesterday and when I came home from doing the shopping the pair of them were sprawled on the
sofa watching TV and the breakfast dishes weren’t even washed. I can’t do
everything
by myself. I work too. I need support.’

‘I support you,’ he said indignantly, flipping an egg and causing greasy spatters to land on the countertop and floor.

Not enough
, she wanted to say but she bit back the retort. ‘Did you phone Sue?’ She wiped the countertop.

‘I left a message but she didn’t get back.’

‘She’s going to have to pull her weight, Niall.’ Hilary couldn’t hide her annoyance.

‘I hear you, I hear you,’ her husband snapped, cracking another egg onto the pan for Sophie, who liked her egg sunny side up.

‘Well sort Gran’s clinic visit between you because I have a client consult in Drogheda that morning and I won’t be available.’

‘I told you, I’ll be in Canada.’ Niall glared at her.

‘Not my problem,’ Hilary retorted. ‘And she has an appointment with her geriatrician, her heart specialist and the optician in the next few weeks. I’ve marked the dates
on the kitchen calendar. You can give them to Sue.’

‘You know something, Hilary,’ Niall said coolly as he plated up the breakfast, ‘I’ve told you before there’s no need for you to work as hard as you do, and I wish
you’d ease back because you’re becoming a real grouchy pain in the ass.’

‘So you want me to be a stay-at-home housewife?’ she demanded, stung by his criticism.

‘Frankly, yes.’ He stared at her.

‘You know, Niall, it was the money that
I
earned that built that attic conversion, and it’s the money that
I
earn that means we can have that extra holiday abroad
and a decent car each. Don’t forget that.
And
I’m contributing to the account for the college fees. All I’m asking for is some cooperation and for everyone to muck in,
and for your sister to take
some
responsibility for her own mother, like I do for my parents. Not unreasonable, I would have thought. And as for giving up work or cutting back,
you
cut back and job share or something and
you
can be a stay-at-home husband.’ She took her plate and marched over to the dining table fuming. She wasn’t being
unreasonable . . . was she? She frowned, buttering a slice of toast.

‘Mam, can I have the money for my shoes? I’m going to go into town with Jilly this afternoon.’ Millie strolled into the kitchen in her PJs and fluffy slippers and put her arms
around her dad who was absorbing his wife’s backlash.

‘Sure,’ Hilary said calmly, and could see her daughter looking at her, waiting for the caveat ‘when you’ve finished cleaning’. But she said nothing, squeezing
ketchup onto her plate and taking a sip of coffee, for all the world like she hadn’t a care. Sophie flounced into the kitchen, glowering at her. Hilary ignored her and ate some white pudding
and mushrooms.

‘Dad, we’ve decided we’re going to go to see
The Talented Mr Ripley
. Will you give us a lift to the cinema?’ she wheedled. Jude Law was her new pin-up. All her
class thought he was ‘to die for’, and they were longing to see his new film.

Ha!
thought Hilary.
Glad I got out of that one.

‘How can I refuse the birthday girl, even though it was your birthday last Monday?’ Niall smiled at Sophie, handing his daughters their plates and taking his own and sitting down at
the table beside Hilary. ‘Breakfast OK?’ he asked warily a while later, unused to her uncharacteristic silence.

‘Lovely,’ she said with faux breeziness, taking another slug of her coffee and finishing off the last of her sausage. She stood up and went over to the counter and poured herself a
refill. ‘Anyone else want some?’ she asked, waving the percolator.

‘No thanks.’ Niall wolfed into his fry.

‘Uhhh . . .’ grunted Sophie.

‘Can I have more OJ, please?’ Millie asked, scrolling down through her texts. Hilary handed her the carton.

‘Excuse me, all,’ Hilary said politely, removing her plate from the table and putting it in the dishwasher.

‘Where are you going?’ Niall looked at her, surprised. The Saturday morning fry-up was traditionally a long leisurely meal when the family caught up with each other’s various
goings on.

‘Back to bed.’

‘Are you
sick
?’ he asked, perplexed, because she had just eaten everything on her plate.

‘Nope, just tired,’ Hilary responded coolly. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the girls look at each other, clearly incredulous.
What about the cleaning
? she half
expected them to ask. She didn’t give anyone the chance to say anything else. She took her mug of coffee from the counter and walked briskly from the room. She opened the front door, lifted
the morning paper from the mat in the porch and tucked it under her arm and went upstairs. She felt a giddy sense of liberation when she put her mug on her bedside locker and plumped up her
pillows.

Niall’s shirt was on the floor. She picked it up and brought it to his laundry basket in their en suite. It was almost full. She had planned to do a wash today and leave his shirts at the
laundry for ironing. But her plans had changed, Hilary thought grimly. She was taking the day off. Time out. Let them all manage without her for a day.

She gave herself a quick freshen-up, patted some moisturizer onto her face and padded back to the bedroom. The rain was hammering on the roof, an angry impatient beat. A low growl of thunder
echoed from the east.
Perfect
day for a duvet day, Hilary thought sliding into bed. Paper or book?

She dithered. Flick through the headlines and then settle down with the Anita Shreve, Hilary decided, snuggling down against the pillows and giving a luxurious stretch, watching the steely
melancholy sky continue to unleash its volley of rain. It was strangely soothing to watch, snug beneath her downy quilt, and now that she had decided to step back and let the household get on
without her she felt the tension she had been holding in every atom begin to float away.

‘Er . . . will I start hoovering?’ Sophie poked her head round the door ten minutes later.

‘Suit yourself,’ Hilary said, looking out over the top of her glasses.

Sophie looked so gobsmacked Hilary nearly laughed.