Nora Webster (15 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

O
nce the summer came, Fiona went to London, where she got work in a hotel in Earls Court, and wrote to say that she was enjoying life. The clothes shops, her letter said, were the best in the world and the Saturday markets were like a dream. London was better than she had ever imagined. Aine wrote too from the Kerry Gaeltacht to say that she had met a man who remembered her father and her uncle Jim when they were learning Irish nearly forty years before. There was even a woman, she said, who had taken a shine to Uncle Jim all those years ago, but, as the woman put it, he was too slow, and so she had married someone else.

The boys went to the tennis club most days. Conor was always waiting for her when she came in; she could see him watching out from the window as she approached the house. She knew that he was too young to be at home on his own and she tried to make sure that he went to friends’ houses until Aine came home in August from the
Gaeltacht, when she could look after him, or at least be there if he came home during the day.

On Saturdays and Sundays, if the weather was fine, Nora drove with the boys to Curracloe or Bentley, and once ventured south to Rosslare Strand. It was hard to imagine that just over a year earlier they had been in the house in Cush as though nothing would change. She was worried that, on the strand in Curracloe, the boys would look north and think of the narrower, stonier strand at the foot of the cliffs that they had known all of their lives. But instead they were most concerned about where Nora would put the beach rug down, finding the right place among the dunes that was sheltered enough. Conor wanted to stay close to her; she was unsure whether she could lie down and read a book or the day’s newspaper or whether she should not try to see instead what he wanted to talk about, or what he wanted to do. Donal brought a book about photography that his aunt Margaret had given him and was content as long as it was agreed that he would not have to go into the sea and they would be back in town by six o’clock when he usually wanted to go to the tennis club.

It was strange, she thought, that she had never before put a single thought into whether they were happy or not, or tried to guess what they were thinking. She had looked after them until the time came when that was difficult. Maurice had wanted her with him when he was in hospital in Dublin after his first heart attack; she could not have denied him that. She could not have left him alone in the hospital. She remembered his eyes watching out for her as she arrived every day, the sense of panic giving way to relief, and then her worry each night as she left him. She knew how lonely he would be. He must have known how serious it was. But she was not sure; he seemed to believe he was being moved home because he
was recovering. He must have known, though, that she would not have spent all that time with him in Dublin if he had not been dying.

She noticed then that Conor was watching her.

“Are you going for a swim?” he asked her.

“In a while. Why don’t you go down and check if it’s warm enough?”

“And if it’s not warm enough?”

“We’ll still go in. But at least we’ll know.”

This was, she thought, a time that she would come to treasure in the future. In a year or two, Donal would not come with them. Perhaps he only came now because he guessed how much she wanted him to. He had a way of reading her mind or sizing up a situation that Conor did not have yet, might never develop. Donal would have known, or almost known, that she was just thinking about Maurice. Conor, on the other hand, would be completely unaware of everything except what was happening now in front of him, or what was coming next. Being with Donal sometimes made her afraid, but being with Conor could make her even more afraid, afraid for his innocence, his sweet loyalty, his open need to be taken care of.

When Fiona returned from London, Nora invited Jim and Margaret and Una to come and have tea. Una told her that she would drop in early when she had finished work but she could not stay for tea. She did not give any explanation.

Once Una arrived, Fiona carried down all the new clothes she had bought in London. Nora had noticed a large suitcase when she met her at the railway station but Fiona mentioned nothing of her purchases. She had bought Nora a very discreet pair of earrings, a blouse for Aine and books for the boys. Now, however, once
Una was in the house, it was clear that she had bought a number of colourful dresses and skirts and blouses, many of the dresses and blouses low-topped and made of light fabric. Una encouraged her to go out of the room each time and come in wearing something new from London. She commented on each thing, saying that Fiona was developing a very fashionable look, especially when she wore the hoop earrings she had bought and a scarf on her head. Aine joined in, suggesting various combinations and accessories, and standing up at times to fix her sister’s hair. There was one russet-coloured dress in a light cotton fabric that both Una and Aine admired; they suggested that Fiona wear it with the earrings and a russet-coloured scarf around her head with no stockings and light sandals.

“If you wore that to mass, then the whole town would look at you, that is all I have to say,” Una said.

“It would be very nice for Sundays,” Aine said.

“You are not going to mass in this town dressed like that,” Nora interrupted.

The three others turned and stared at her as though she was an intruder in the room.

“Well, it wouldn’t work unless it was a hot day,” Una said. “I mean, the material is very light. But the look is wonderful.”

Nora interrupted again.

“It might be wonderful in London, or in a magazine, but not down here.”

All three of them glanced at her and then each other. It was obvious that they had recently been talking about her, or they had written to each other about her. During the time when Maurice was sick and the boys were staying with Josie, Una had lived in this house with Aine and they had sometimes seen Fiona. What was strange now was that this was the first time Nora had been in the room with
just the three of them since Maurice’s illness. It was like being in a room with people who knew each other in ways that she did not, who had a language in common but, perhaps more importantly, could understand each other’s silence.

It struck her in that second that Fiona and Aine knew more than she did about Una’s romance, that she had told them who her fiancé was and what her plans were. Even though there were twenty years between Una and the girls, their time together had bonded them. They had spoken about clothes and their lives with ease as though they were sisters. They had excluded Nora, as they did now; or perhaps, she thought, she had excluded them. She felt many years older. The bond between them was in the open, a bond that had arisen so naturally that Nora felt that none of them even realised it existed. It must have come into being because of Maurice’s absence as much as her own, and it must have been a way of masking the pain the girls felt. Nora crossed the room without looking at them and went to the kitchen.

When Jim and Margaret came and the boys appeared, it was easier. Margaret had no interest in clothes and was merely glad that Fiona had arrived safely home. Once Una left and Margaret went into the front room to talk to Donal, Aine and Jim talked about various places on the Dingle Peninsula, the families whom Aine had met in Ballyferriter and Dún Chaoin and how Jim might have known members of the earlier generation. Nora noticed a light coming into his eyes when the name of a place or a person was mentioned. Jim was in his mid-sixties now; he was fifteen years older than Maurice. He was working in the same job as always. He had been a messenger in the War of Independence and was interned in the Civil War. Those years of excitement, followed by summers spent on the Dingle Peninsula, must, she imagined, be for him like things from the
distant past. He was the most conservative man she knew. He had been thus since she had met him.

Margaret, because she worked for the county council, earned more money than Jim and had even fewer needs. Paying for Aine’s school and giving pocket money to Fiona and the boys pleased her, gave her a stake in how they lived and what they planned to do in the future. It amused Nora, as they sat down to eat, to watch Fiona describing the cultural sights of London with her aunt and uncle rather than Saturday stalls and cheap clothes shops. Fiona had been to a Shakespeare play in which some of the actors had been in the audience and had jumped up at the most unexpected moments.

“How d-did you know they were actors?” Donal asked.

“That’s exactly what I was going to ask,” Margaret said.

“They were in costume and they knew their lines,” Fiona said. “But it was a big shock when they stood up.”

“Well, I hope that doesn’t catch on,” Margaret said. “Then you would never know where you were. The man beside you could be ‘The Bull’ McCabe.”

“No, I think it’s just done in London and it’s new,” Fiona said.

There was a discussion about Aine’s Latin grinds, with Margaret insisting that she take more grinds at both Christmas and Easter so she could be sure of getting through. Then the subject changed to cameras and the best way for Donal to buy film and have it developed.

“You could take over the communion and confirmation photo business from Pat Crane and Sean Carty,” Jim said. “Put an ad in
The Echo
saying that you intend to undercut them by half.”

“Or you could add colour,” Fiona said.

“I d-don’t like colour,” Donal said solemnly.

“No, he only likes black-and-white,” Margaret said.

No one had asked Nora about Gibney’s or made the smallest reference to it. No one referred to Jim’s job either, or to Margaret’s. Everything was focussed on the four children, on their future. Every word they said was taken up by their aunt and uncle and considered and commented on. Conor’s complaint about his tennis racquet, his remarking that one of his friends had a better one, was treated with seriousness and sympathy. Whether it was safe for Fiona and her friends to hitchhike to Dublin was debated and then the price of weekend return train tickets versus day returns and then the price of the bus journey.

By the time the evening was over Nora felt that she knew more details about the lives of her children than she had found out in months. Jim and Margaret had ensured that there was no silence and that everything discussed seemed natural and of immediate interest to one of the children. The fact that Donal and Conor were alone in the house when she was at work, when they were not in the tennis club, was never mentioned, however, nor the fact that Miss Kavanagh was beginning to treat her with the same level of shrill contempt as she treated the most despised members of the female office staff. It had been an ordinary evening, the first in a long time, and Nora was almost grateful for it as she went to bed.

In work the following Monday Elizabeth was busy avoiding calls from Roger and then frantically waiting for them. Twice or three times she spoke to Ray and when she put the phone down she discussed with Nora the chances of someone telling Roger about Ray, or of meeting Ray, at some rugby dance or in some golf club bar while she was accompanied by Roger.

“The thing is, I like both of them,” she said. “Roger is so
dependable and he is a member of every club under the sun and he’s very well-spoken. But I’d be bored to death down here without Ray. I don’t know if you can imagine an evening spent with Old William, Little William and Thomas going over business strategy. They drone on even while we are eating. No wonder my mother never leaves the house, it’s the result of the shame of being so bored. I don’t know what the three of them are talking about at the moment, but they have plans afoot. They talk for hours and hours and write out lists and figures. You’d think they were running the country.”

As Elizabeth’s romantic life became richer and more complicated, she spent more and more time on the phone discussing its implications with her friends. Soon, the set of invoices for which she was responsible piled up. Nora spotted her one Friday morning stuffing envelopes with invoices that she did not note in the ledger. Even though Elizabeth did not speak to Miss Kavanagh or work directly for her, each week the ledger with the list of invoices sent out had to be brought to Miss Kavanagh’s office to be checked by her with punctilious care. Despite her time on the phone, Elizabeth normally made no mistakes in her work. Nonetheless, there were often queries, but since Miss Kavanagh was not allowed to speak to Elizabeth, then she often spoke to Nora in a tone of barely controlled rage, asking her to pass on what she had said to Miss Gibney. She sometimes sent in one of the office girls with instructions to stand in front of Miss Gibney until she put the phone down and then get some details about invoices that Miss Kavanagh needed.