Nora Webster (18 page)

CHAPTER NINE

N
ora said nothing to anyone about what had happened at Gibney’s, not even that she was considering selling the house and moving to Dublin with the boys. She smiled at the thought of them seeing a For Sale sign on the house, or an advertisement for it in the newspapers. She had sent a note to Miss Kavanagh saying that she was ill; she would not bother sending another note to William or Peggy or Elizabeth saying that she was not coming back. They would have to find out. For them it would hardly matter, although they might not, she thought, want people in the town to know that she had been badly treated in the office. She knew that Conor had told Fiona that she had not been at work, but Fiona had not asked her about it.

One Friday evening at the end of that October, when Fiona and Aine were both home, Una arrived to show them all her engagement ring. Catherine, when Nora had phoned her a few days earlier from the booth on the Back Road, had told her that Una and Sea
mus had been to stay. She and Mark had liked Seamus. She added that Una had told her how nervous she was about mentioning the engagement to Nora. Una, she said, did not know how Nora would respond, since it was all so soon after Maurice’s death. Nora had a visit too from her aunt Josie, who said that Una was going to marry Seamus in the New Year and her only worry was how Nora would deal with the news.

“Your sisters are afraid of you,” Josie said. “They always have been. I don’t know what it is.”

Nora began to have little patience with her sister and to feel nothing except a dry irritation about her and her fiancé, and a remote amusement at the news she had received from Elizabeth about Una and Seamus in Wexford and Rosslare cavorting like two people half their age.

“Oh, I heard all about the ring,” she said when Una appeared and showed it to her. “I believe Tara Reagan loved it, or so she said.”

“I suppose Elizabeth Gibney told you that.”

“The whole town told me,” Nora said.

“Tara Reagan is such a fool.”

“She knows a good ring when she sees it,” Nora said.

Una looked at Fiona and Aine as if to say that she had always expected this to be difficult.

“Anyway, that is great news. Catherine told me and Aunt Josie told me as well. Everyone told me. So I know all about it. Congratulations!”

Una blushed.

“I was going to tell you a few times when I saw you and then I thought I’d wait and leave it.”

“Oh, no hurry. As I said, the whole town is talking about it, so I only needed to go out of the door to hear about it.”

Una, she saw, wanted to leave, but had come to the house to win Nora’s approval and to do so in the softening presence of Fiona and Aine. She wanted, Nora thought, to be able to phone Catherine and Josie and tell them that she had finally broken the news to her sister and it would all be easy now. Nora felt the weight of them all talking about her, all of them thinking that she might in some way object to her sister getting married or say something stinging to Una about it. She wished now that she felt like saying something helpful, but she could not think what it might be. But she also wished that the three of them might go, the two girls back upstairs or to the other room, and Una to her own house. The longer they stayed expecting something from her, the closer she came to feeling a sort of rage that she knew stemmed from her encounter with Miss Kavanagh and from not sleeping well since she had walked out of the office. But it also came from Una herself, and from Fiona and Aine.

“I hear he’s in the bank,” Nora said. “Is he the manager?”

“Well, no,” Una said.

“I heard that some of the best become managers quite young.”

“It’s a lot of responsibility,” Una said.

“And is that why he hasn’t been married before now as well?”

Una reached for her handbag and made to stand up.

“I suppose he didn’t meet the right woman,” Fiona said. “Until our Una came along.”

“I see,” Nora said.

She realised that she had gone too far. Once more, she tried to think of something to say to relieve the situation quickly, but she could think of nothing. Aine crossed the room and left.

“But it’s great news,” Nora said, “and I’m really looking forward to meeting him.”

Una tried to smile. Fiona stared at Nora.

“Well, I must be going anyway,” Una said.

She walked out of the room, followed by Fiona.

On Monday night Mrs. Whelan called and Donal led her into the back room.

“Now, I have a message for you from Peggy Gibney herself. She said that she would love to see you tomorrow in the afternoon. If three o’clock would suit you, she said, that would be fine, but, if not, then four.”

“Oh, I’m not well enough to go out, Mrs. Whelan.”

“And Elizabeth misses you. I was told to tell you that.”

“I’m sure. But I’m not well enough to go out of the house at all.”

“So, what will I say to Mrs. Gibney?”

“That I’m not well enough to go out, but it’s nice that you called, and that you and I had a cup of tea.”

“Oh, I couldn’t, Mrs. Webster.”

Nora insisted on making tea. It occurred to her once more that it might not suit the Gibneys to have it known that they had bullied Maurice Webster’s widow and run her home. She did not know the name of the young girl who had witnessed the final scene with Miss Kavanagh but she imagined that she would have told everyone in the office. Soon it would reach the few people in the town whose opinion the Gibneys might care about.

As she carried the tray into the room, she made every effort to seem sprightly and in perfect health. She hoped that Mrs. Whelan would report to the Gibneys that she did not believe there was anything at all wrong with Mrs. Webster.

Two days later, Sister Thomas arrived. She was more frail than she had appeared on the strand at Ballyvaloo.

“I wanted to see you before the boys came home from school,” she said once she was sitting in an armchair in the back room. “Now, I found out everything. You’d be surprised who comes to the convent. Nothing escapes us. Or maybe some things do, but they are always things we have no interest in. So I heard everything, down to the scissors. She is one of God’s children, Frances Kavanagh, and very holy. If people only knew! So I spoke to Peggy Gibney and she may tell you herself what I said. And she assembled all of them, her family and your friend Miss Kavanagh. And, strangely enough, they are all afraid of her. I don’t know why because she is very gentle. And she may tell you the whole story. I told her that she could. She has never told anyone, but I think she wants to tell you. And you can go and see her tomorrow.”

“I don’t want to go back there.”

“She has a new offer for you, and don’t turn it down. And also I have one thing to ask you. Could you be nice to your sister?”

“How do you know about that?”

“She came into our little chapel where you came after Maurice died when you wanted to avoid people. And I saw her and I have always had a soft spot for her, the way she was left alone after your mother died.”

“And what did she say about me?”

“Nothing, or nothing much. But enough. So I have to go now because I am busy. And you have two things to do. See Peggy and look after Una. And maybe say a prayer for all of us too.”

She moved slowly towards the hallway.

“I don’t know what to say,” Nora said. “I don’t like people knowing my business.”

“Your mother was the same. I knew her when she sang. She was
a wonderful singer, but it was the pride, or the not liking people knowing her business, that made her difficult. And that did her no good. Now, you are more practical. And we should all be grateful for that.”

“You want me to go and see Peggy Gibney tomorrow?”

“I do, Nora, at three or four, or in between.”

“I will then.”

“And you’ll invite Una and her fiancé up to the house to meet the boys. A wedding is a very cheerful thing and they might enjoy hearing all about it.”

Nora opened the front door for her, and as she made her way laboriously down the steps, she said, “All I hope is that things will be simpler in heaven. Say a prayer that things in heaven will be simpler.”

When Mrs. Whelan answered the door, she whispered that she had told Peggy Gibney that Nora was too sick to visit.

“Will I tell her you got better?” she asked as she took Nora’s coat.

“If you like.”

Peggy Gibney was sitting in exactly the same chair as the last time. There was no book or newspaper nearby. Nora wondered if she sat there all day every day in this shadowy room, with the evergreen trees swaying outside the window, thinking her thoughts, being served tea at intervals by Mrs. Whelan.

“Here we are again, Nora, then,” she said, speaking like a doctor to a patient who had come to have her bandages removed or her blood pressure taken.

Nora looked at her coldly.

“There has been war in this house,” Peggy said. “Elizabeth is developing a very sharp tongue, but of course I blame Thomas. It’s one way of blaming my husband without having to say so. William Gibney Senior has enough on his plate, what with all the changes afoot, without being blamed too. And Thomas can take it, of course.”

“Peggy, I have no idea what you are talking about,” Nora said.

Peggy put her finger to her lips, stood up and went stealthily to the door and opened it suddenly.

“Maggie, we need some privacy now,” she said. “If we want tea later, I will find you in the kitchen.”

She sat back in her chair.

“Nora, you’ll have to tell me what you want. And then I’ll get it for you.”

“Nothing,” Nora said.

“Sister Thomas said that I was to tell you to get down off your high horse if you were on it.”

“I don’t want anything, thank you.”

“All of them say, except Elizabeth, that is, that Francie Kavanagh is an invaluable office manager. She knows the company inside out, which is why she doesn’t need things written down. And she can be abrasive, or so I’m told, because if she wasn’t, nothing would get done. My husband and Thomas think the world of her. In my opinion she is a rip and a Tartar, but no one listens to me, so even Elizabeth doesn’t know that I agree with her. Now, I said that no one listens to me, but every so often I lay down the law in this house. What I do first is I close the kitchen. They can eat where they like, but they will get nothing here. And then I wait. And then I tell them what I want and I get it. So all you have to do is tell me what you want.”

“I want to work only in the mornings and I will work under
Thomas and Elizabeth, but Miss Kavanagh cannot be allowed even to look at me. I think I can do the same amount of work, but I might need some help. I will take a small cut in salary, but not much.”

“Done,” Peggy Gibney said. “Come over here early on Monday morning and you and Elizabeth can arrive together.”

“What does Sister Thomas have to do with this?”

“That’s a long story, Nora, from long ago.”

“Was that when you were going out with William?”

“You were the only one who knew because William said that you overheard the argument he had with his father. And we always appreciated that you told no one. I was to go to England. That was what William’s father said. You know that. So I went to the nuns at St. John’s to ask them where I might go. And Sister Thomas had just arrived at that time. Oh, she was very different from the other nuns. She had worked in England, you know, and seen it all, the Irish girls coming. She worked for Michael Collins, you know. Nuns were great messengers and she was one of his messengers. Did she never tell you about it? Oh no, I suppose because you were in Fianna Fáil.”

“Maurice was, and Jim. Jim still is.”

“I suppose because of that she might not have mentioned Michael Collins. Anyway, she came over here and in this very room she threatened William’s father. She said she would go to the bishop, whom she had known years before, and they would close all the church accounts with Gibney’s. She said that she would ask the bishop as a personal favour to call to the house too, unless the matter was sorted to her satisfaction. William and myself were to marry, she said, which was what we wanted, of course, even though the Gibneys didn’t think I was good enough. And that was the end of all our problems. I told Sister Thomas then that if she ever needed
anything in return, she was to come to me. And she waited all these years. So you can see why I could not refuse her. If it wasn’t for her, William Junior would have been in an orphanage or would have been adopted in England, and I don’t know where I would be.”