A Week in Winter (7 page)

‘So that’s the first thing you must do – get some driving lessons from Dinny in the garage and do the test. Can you grow things?’

‘What kind of things?’

‘We should have our own produce here: potatoes, vegetables, fruit. We should have hens, too.’

‘Are you serious?’ Sometimes Rigger thought that Chicky was certifiable.

‘Completely serious. We must offer visitors something special; make them feel that this place is providing their food rather than just going into town and buying it all in a supermarket.’

‘I see,’ said Rigger, who didn’t see at all.

‘So I was thinking that if I called you my manager and paid you a proper wage you might feel you have more of a stake here. It won’t just be a place where you are hiding out. It would be a real job with a real future.’

‘Here? In Stoneybridge?’ Rigger was astounded that anyone could see
his
future in these parts.

‘Yes, here in Stoneybridge indeed. It’s not as if you’re likely to be able to go back to Dublin at any time in the near future. I hoped you might want to put down some roots here, make something of yourself.’

‘I’m grateful to you and everything but—’

‘But what, Rigger? But you see a glittering future for yourself in Dublin stealing great sides of beef and beating up decent butchers who try to protect their business?’

‘I didn’t beat up anyone,’ he said indignantly.

‘I know that. Why else do you think I took you on? You saved Nasey’s life, he says. He was determined you should have a fresh start. I’m trying to give it to you, but it’s difficult.’

‘Do you like me, Chicky?’

‘Yes, I do, actually. I didn’t think I would but I do. You’re very good to Queenie, you’re kind to the kitten, you have a lot of good points. You’re very young. I wanted to get you some skills and see that you have a bit of a life. But you just throw it back at me and say that a life here is worth nothing at all. So I’m a bit confused, really.’

‘It’s just not what I thought my life would be,’ he said.

‘It’s not what I thought
my
life would be either, but somewhere along the line we have to pick things up and run with them.’

‘At least your bad luck wasn’t your own fault,’ Rigger said.

‘It probably was in some ways.’ She looked away.

‘But your husband being killed and all – you weren’t to blame for that.’

‘No, that’s right.’

‘I’d be happy to be your manager if you’ll still take me,’ he said, after a pause.

‘We start to dig the vegetable garden tomorrow morning, and your first driving lesson will be with Dinny tomorrow afternoon. You’ll start to learn the rules of the road tomorrow night. Miss Queenie will be in charge of that.’

‘I’m up for it,’ Rigger said.

‘And I’ll open a post office account for you and put half your wages in each week and give you half in cash. That way you can buy some nice clothes and take a girl to a dance or whatever.’

‘Can I tell my mother and Nasey?’

‘Oh yes, of course you can. But I wouldn’t hold out any hopes about your mother.’

‘It will be the first bit of good news she ever had about me,’ he said.

‘No, she was delighted with you way back when you were born. She wrote and told Miss Queenie all about it. You were six and a half pounds, apparently. But things are different now. Nasey says she needs to see a doctor; it’s kind of a depression but she won’t hear of it.’

Chicky thought she saw tears in Rigger’s eyes but she wasn’t sure.

The driving lessons went well. Dinny said that Rigger was fearless but reckless, quick to react but impatient. The rules of the road were a trial, but Miss Queenie loved testing him each evening.

‘What does a sign like a circle crossed out mean on the outskirts of a town?’ she would ask.

‘That you can drive as fast as you like?’ Rigger suggested.

‘No,
wrong
, it means you can drive at the national speed limit,’ Miss Queenie cried triumphantly.

‘That’s what I meant.’

‘You
meant
drive as fast as you like,’ Miss Queenie said. ‘They would have failed you.’

He passed the test with no problem.

He drove Miss Queenie everywhere: to her appointments with Dr Dai, to the hospital for a check-up, to the vet to have Gloria spayed.

‘It seems a pity for her not to have kittens of her own,’ Miss Queenie had said as she stroked the little cat on her lap.

‘But we’d only have to find homes for them, Miss Queenie. We couldn’t have a house full of cats when the visitors come.’ He realised that he was beginning to think of himself as part of the whole project.

‘Would you like children of your own one day, Rigger?’ She always asked strange, direct questions that nobody else did.

‘I don’t think so, to be honest with you. They seem to be more trouble than they’re worth. They’d only end up disappointing you.’ He knew he sounded bitter, and tried to laugh and take the harm out of it. Miss Queenie hadn’t really noticed.

‘We would have loved to have had children, Jessica, Beatrice and myself. We could always see our children playing around Stone House, which was silly really because if we
had
married we wouldn’t have been living here any more. It was all a dream, anyway.’

‘And was there ever anyone you particularly would have liked to marry, Miss Queenie?’ Rigger amazed himself asking her such a thing.

‘There was one young man . . . oh, I would have loved to marry him, but sadly there was TB in his family and so he couldn’t marry at all.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it was a disease of the lungs and people could catch it and it would pass on to the children. He died in a sanatorium, poor, poor boy. I still have the letters he wrote to me.’

Rigger patted her hand and, embarrassed, he patted Gloria’s head as well. They drove on in silence until they arrived at the vet.

‘Don’t worry, Gloria. You won’t feel a thing, pet. And anyway, there’s more to life than just sex and kittens,’ Miss Queenie said reassuringly as she handed the purring cat over.

The vet and Rigger exchanged glances. This wasn’t the normal conversation in the surgery.

While Gloria was being seen to, Rigger and Miss Queenie drove off to do items off Chicky’s list. Rigger marvelled at how many people knew him by name in Stoneybridge and the surrounding countryside. Surely his mother would be pleased to know that he was so accepted in this place where she had grown up.

But still there was no word from her.

He had written to Nuala telling her about the day-old chicks they had bought and had to protect from Gloria, who wanted to practise her hunting skills; and how hard it was to dig potato drills. He told her about how the builder was going to charge a fortune to make a walled garden, so Rigger had built it himself, stone upon stone, and raised growing beds. How every time he dug a hole to plant something, Gloria arrived and sat in it, gazing at him seriously. Despite that, now there were shrubs and plants grown up against the wall, which was called espalier. They had runner beans and courgettes and whole rakes of salads and herbs.

He did not tell his mother about the lovely girl called Carmel Hickey, who was studying hard for her Leaving Certificate but could be persuaded to go out to the cinema or for a drive down the coast with Rigger.

Some of the neighbours, and indeed her own family, worried that Rigger lived in Stone House with the two women.

Chicky laughed. People said that it looked odd, that was all. But she dismissed it and life went on easily for the three of them, working long hours and coping with people who didn’t turn up on time or at all. She taught Rigger to make the kind of meals that Miss Queenie liked: little scones and omelettes. He mastered it quickly. It was just another thing to learn.

Rigger sometimes asked Chicky’s advice about what girls liked. He wanted to give Carmel a treat. What would she suggest.

Chicky thought that Carmel might like to go to the fair-ground that came every year to a nearby town. There would be fireworks and bumper cars, a big wheel and a lot of fun.

And apparently Carmel liked it a lot.

It was touching to see Rigger getting dressed up to take his girl out in the old van. Chicky sighed as she saw them heading off by the cliffs. Rigger didn’t drink so she never worried about there being any danger ahead. She could not have foreseen the conversation a few short months later.

Carmel was pregnant.

Carmel Hickey, aged seventeen and about to sit her Leaving Certificate, was going to have the child of Rigger, who was eighteen. They loved each other, so were going to run away to England and get married. Rigger was very sorry to let Chicky down and leave her like this, but he said it was the only thing to do. There was no question of a termination and Carmel’s parents would kill them both. There would be no tolerance in the Hickey family.

Chicky was unnaturally calm about it all.

First thing she said was they must tell nobody. Nobody at all.

Carmel was to do her exams as if nothing was wrong. Then, in three weeks’ time when the exams were over, they could get married here, in Stoneybridge, and take it from there.

Rigger looked at her as if she was mad.

‘Chicky, you have no idea what they’ll be like. They’ll skin me alive. They have such hopes for her: a career, a life and eventually a great catch as a husband. They don’t want her married to a dead end like me. They’d never stand for it, not in a million years. We
have
to run away.’

‘There’s been far too much running away,’ Chicky said. ‘Your mother ran away from here. I ran away. You ran away. It has to stop sometime. Let it stop now.’

‘But what can I offer Carmel?’

‘You have a job here – a good job – you have savings already in the post office. I’ll let you have that cottage beside the walled garden. You can make a home there. You will be providing all the produce for Stone House and for anyone else you can sell it to. You’re a genuine businessman, for God’s sake. These days they’d be hard put to find anyone so ready and able to make a home for their daughter.’

‘No, Chicky. You don’t know what they’re like.’

‘I
do
know what they are like. I’ve known the Hickeys all my life. I’m not saying they’ll be pleased, but it beats the hell out of getting the Guards to find you in England or asking the Salvation Army to trace you.’

‘Married? Here in Stoneybridge?’

‘If that’s what you want then yes. I think you’re both too young. You could get married much later, but if you want it now then leave Father Johnson to me.’

‘It won’t work.’

‘It will if you say absolutely nothing and just get that house done. You have to have it ready to show to the Hickeys the day you tell them that Carmel is pregnant.’

‘Chicky, be reasonable. If it were going to work, we can’t do all this in three weeks or a month.’

‘If I tell the builders that Stone Cottage is the priority then we can. And you can take some of the furniture we have stored here.’

He looked at her with some hope in his eyes. ‘Do you really think . . .?’

‘We haven’t a minute to waste, and don’t tell your mother either. Not yet.’

‘Oh God, she’s going to go mad too. More bad news.’

‘Not when she hears it as a package. Not when she hears that you have a house, a proper job and a bride. Where’s the bad news there? Aren’t these the things she always hoped for, for you?’

Carmel Hickey proved to be amazingly practical. She swore she would focus entirely on her exams while saying that she wanted to learn bookkeeping and commercial studies as a career. She insisted that Rigger spend every waking hour getting Stone Cottage up and running. She seemed vastly relieved that they were not going to catch the emigrant ship and live on nothing in England.

Carmel had every confidence in Chicky, even to the point of keeping Father Johnson on side.

And Carmel was right to be confident. By the time the Leaving Certificate exams were over, Father Johnson had been convinced that a good Christian marriage to be solemnised between two admittedly very young and very slightly pregnant people was a good thing rather than a bad thing.

And when the Hickeys began to wail and protest, Father Johnson was reproving and reminding them not to stand in God’s way.

The Hickeys were somewhat mollified after their first tour of Stone Cottage, and the evidence that Rigger appeared to be his own boss rather than just Chicky’s handyman. They had to admit that the place was very comfortable and what they called ‘well appointed’.

Gloria had decided to come and dress the set. She sat washing herself by the small range, giving the place an air of domesticity. Old lamps that the Miss Sheedys had once loved had been taken out and polished, rugs had been made by cutting out the better bits of old carpets and everything was brightly painted.

The wedding would be small and quiet. They didn’t want any show.

Nuala wrote one short letter and made one brief telephone call to wish them well but to say that she wouldn’t be able to come to the wedding.

‘Ah Mam, I’d love you to be here to meet Carmel and to see our home.’ Rigger hadn’t believed that she would refuse to come.

‘I’m not able to, Rigger. It wouldn’t work. I send you both my good wishes and my hopes for the future. I’m sure I will come one day and visit you another time.’

‘But I’ll only have one wedding day, Mam.’

‘That’s one more than I had,’ Nuala said.

‘But why are you still against me, Mam? I did what you and Nasey said I should do. I made a life here. I worked hard. I gave up all that stupid way of going on.
Why
won’t you come and see us getting married?’

‘I failed you, Rigger. I gave you no upbringing. I couldn’t look after you or guide you. I let you make a mess of your life. I have no part of what you have become. You did all that without me.’

‘Don’t talk like that. I’d be
nothing
if it weren’t for you. I was the eejit who wouldn’t listen. Please come, Mam.’

‘Not this time, Rigger. But maybe one day.’

‘And about the baby . . . if it’s a girl, we were going to call her Nuala.’

‘
Don’t!
Please don’t do that. I know you think it would please me but truly I don’t want it.’