The Ballroom Café (12 page)

‘This thing? Picked it up in a charity store. My Barry invested all our money and this is the way it has left me: skulking around charity shops, looking for something decent to wear.’

‘We are all finding it hard, Wendy; that is why I am running the café, to keep a roof over our heads.’

‘Ah, but you have family around you; we were never blessed with children.’

Ella looked alarmed. ‘You mean my sister, Roberta.’

‘Your daughter. You are so lucky.’

‘Debbie is just working here for a few months. My daughter died when she was very young.’

Wendy stretched over and took Ella’s hand. ‘I am raising ghosts, like kicking a bunch of dead leaves. I am so awfully sorry.’

‘You weren’t to know, Wendy, you weren’t to know,’ Ella said, pulling her hand away too quickly. ‘Will you have another coffee?’ She knew it was a pathetic effort to cover her discomfort.

‘No, I think Muriel has arranged a tour. We must follow the boss.’

Ella stepped out from behind the counter to say her goodbyes to the Guild women, who had begun to push back their chairs and ready themselves for the off.

‘We made in a few hours what we normally make in two days. Muriel Hearty wrecks my head, but she is good for the pocket,’ Ella told Debbie, as she tidied up the last tables. ‘We might as well close up for the day, because there is nobody left in Rathsorney to have a cuppa after this morning. C’mon, I will show you your room.’

Ella led the way to the next landing. ‘Sandwiched between the warring sides you are going to be, but at least we will be quiet. Don’t mind my sister; just stay out of her way, and if you are using anything in the kitchen, make sure it is from one of my cupboards.’ She stopped, her hand halfway to the brass doorknob. ‘It makes us sound really odd, doesn’t it?’

‘What family isn’t a little bit odd?’

‘I suppose.’

She waved Debbie into a small, light-filled room with rich mahogany furniture and a bed covered with a bright-pink duvet. There was a chair at the small dressing table by the window and a television on the chest of drawers.

‘It’s like Mom and Dad’s room back home: furnished with such taste.’

‘I can’t take any of the credit. My mother picked out all the furniture in the house, spent my father’s wages on furnishings. She said they would last, that was her excuse; I suppose she has been proved right. I usually have dinner at six; I will put your name in the pot, unless otherwise told.’

Ella was already halfway down the stairs when Debbie stepped out onto the landing to collect her case. The other doors had large ‘private’ signs, old and crooked, secured with nails. On the wall, a framed black and white photograph showed a happy group on the front steps of Roscarbury Hall.

Placing her hand on the brass knob of one of the doors marked ‘private’, it clicked loudly, so that she sprung back. Gingerly pushing the door, she formed an excuse in her head. The dark landing left behind, she stepped into a big room with floor-length windows. Heavy net curtains blotted out the landscape and formed a barrier, the light filtering through in spots.

Shivering from the chill lingering in the room, Debbie ran her hand across the purple eiderdown covering a heavy brass bed. A block mahogany wardrobe took up one corner. Her heart thumping, she tiptoed across the room, taking in the faded blue wallpaper, the clothes neatly folded on a chair, the big silver boxes on the dressing table. She wanted to sit, take time to sift through. She might have chanced it, but a shriek of laughter from outside made her panic and rush back to the landing, like a mouse scuttling away at the glimpse of a cat. Nipping into the bathroom to take her breath, she splashed cold water on her face.

Tantalised by the other door, she hesitated again on the landing. Stretching to turn the knob, she peeped in. A similar room with long windows, it was furnished in muted, warm tones of orange and peach and was full of bric-a-brac, piles of old newspapers and one shelf of very large handbags. The bed was covered in differently coloured cushions and a glass decanter on the bedside table was full. When her phone rang, Debbie jumped, twirling around and sprinting to her own room.

‘Deborah, it is Dr Lohan.’

She closed her eyes and listened.

‘Debbie, you’re running out of time. You need to come home. Soon you won’t feel as well as you do now; you need to come back,’ he said.

‘I want to stay here a few more weeks.’

‘Two weeks, Debbie, no more than two. The hospice bed is ready. I can’t hold it any longer than that. You need to be with people who can look after you.’

‘OK.’

She sensed the exasperation in his voice. ‘Are you taking your medication?’

‘There’s so much of it.’

‘Debbie, you need to. It may keep you stable while you’re over there.’

‘OK, but I feel sick all the time.

‘That’s to be expected at this stage. It’s time to come home.’

‘All right.’

Slumping down, she rolled into the soft hollow of her bed and, tired, she fell into a sort of half doze.

*

When she woke up, Debbie set off walking across the parkland, not sure where she was going. Where Iris had dug out the rills near the house, the water was flowing, but already the cherry blossom was surfing, waiting to dive and clog up the channels once again. McInerney’s brown cat slipped quickly past, darting fast glances as it made for the far wood. Two weeks: enough for the grass to grow and need cutting, for the fuchsia to start its buds, for the tulips to go bald. Two weeks: that was when her insurance on the apartment was up for renewal, when the solicitor said the probate would be through on her father’s estate. Two weeks: the right amount of time for a small holiday.

Iris called out and waved from where she was digging out the rill that flitted across the land to the far lake. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘I just needed some fresh air.’

She saw a group of children scurry past the gates, late and deep in chat. Old man MacCreevy was leaning on his walking stick by the bridge, like he did most fine days, before limping up the avenue for a cup of tea: two sugars, no milk.

‘Ye are not closed, I hope,’ he asked anxiously.

‘Ella has just opened up. The kettle is boiled.’

‘Enjoy the fresh air. It will do you good. Ninety years and I put it all down to the clean air. Nothing like it.’ The old man paused, his face pinking with embarrassment. ‘I’m a bit of a straight talker. I was sorry to hear about yourself.’

‘Thank you. You’re lucky.’

He stopped shuffling. ‘I would say lonely. There is nobody around these days I would want to knock around with. All gone. Anyway, I will have my tea and the Madeira cake, like my mother used to bake it.’

Tremors fluttered through him as he set off shuffling, only slowing his sliding pace to round a pothole, every step deliberate and careful, lest he trip.

Debbie crossed to the bridge. The water, swelled by the rains and the mountain, flowed noisily between the rocks on the way to Rathsorney and beyond. Two weeks was no time, she knew, to find her mother.

*

Bowling Green, October 1968

Debbie imagined Mommy had taken her beautiful ballgown with her when she left. She had only seen it on her once, the week before she disappeared. It was the night Debbie stole to the porch to sit on the rocking chair.

Wrapped up in a dark-grey blanket, quietly rocking, she saw Mommy in the garden. Dressed in a stunning gown, Agnes drifted around the small front patch, like a woman greeting her guests at a ball. Transfixed at her loveliness and the strangeness of her behaviour, there was an awful worry in Debbie that Mommy would spy her. She hunkered under the blanket, keeping a slit open, so she could see what was going on.

Agnes, her three-strand pearl and silver necklace and matching earrings glinting in the half moonlight, was humming to herself, moving between the raspberry canes and the pavement, as if she were waiting for somebody.

Fear flushed through Debbie. She should call her father, but she was more afraid of his reaction, if she exposed her hiding place.

Debbie had never seen the dress before: navy blue with silver beads on the bodice and around the hem, twinkling as she swished across the flowerbeds. Agnes paced the perimeter of the front garden, once stepping on to the footpath and scuttling back onto the grass. She seemed to fixate on the space where the sunflowers were planted, kicking the ground.

Her frustration rising, she fell to her knees to draw her hands across the packed earth, before taking her silver sandals and digging the heels into the ground in an attempt to pierce it. Debbie could hear her sobbing and muttering, but even when she stiffened her whole body and strained her ears, she could not make out what her mother was saying.

She imagined she could run to her and hug her, and Mommy would be so relieved to see her daughter, she would ignore the fact she should be in bed and forget to get cross.

But Debbie could not move. She saw the despairing strength as her mother hit against the ground, intent on digging up the garden in the middle of the night. A dog began to bark in the distance. Agnes stopped briefly and pretended to be fixing her hair when a car swept by. Debbie saw her face was streaked where her tears had made rivers through her thick make-up; mud was caked on her forehead. She looked straight at Debbie, or so the little girl thought. Agnes’s eyes were blank; there was no flicker of recognition. Debbie, trying to massage away pins and needles, was making the chair shake, but Agnes, though staring straight at the porch, did not seem to notice.

‘Aggie, Aggie; what are you doing?’ Rob Kading rushed out on to the veranda in his underpants.

Agnes spiked her heel into the earth, pulling at the grass.

‘Agnes.’

Rob stood for a moment, suspended between the normality of watching the garden from his veranda and the knowledge that Agnes would more than likely react badly when he tried to persuade her inside. Tentatively, he stepped off the veranda.

‘What is it, Agnes? Have you lost something?’

She did not answer, but her attempt at digging became more frenzied.

‘Can I help at all?’

He got down on his haunches, but she did not register his presence, until he placed his hand on her arm.

‘I want to dig it up; I have to.’

‘Dig what up? There’s nothing there.’

She did not answer, stabbing her sandal into the earth beside his hand.

‘Steady on, Agnes. Why don’t we go inside?’

‘I have to dig it up.’

Placing his two arms around her, he made to haul her to her feet, but she pushed him away.

‘Agnes, you’re spoiling your lovely dress.’

She looked down at the dress, touching the sequins. ‘I sewed it nicely.’

‘You did. Let me see it in the proper light of the sitting room.’

She dithered, before a smile came over her face, lighting up her eyes. She stood up, offering her hand to Rob, as if he had asked her out on the dance floor. Sweeping up her sandals, now worn and dirty, he slowly led Agnes to the veranda.

When they walked inside to the sitting room, Debbie uncurled herself from the rocking chair and peeped through the window, as Rob held his wife in his arms and slowly rocked her to sleep, until he was able to put a blanket over her and a cushion under her head.

It was then that he came back out on the porch.

‘You shouldn’t be spying on your mother. Go to bed at once.’

Debbie stepped out of the shadows.

‘Bed now,’ he said, turning to the kitchen.

She followed him, slipping quickly past the sitting-room door, lest her mother wake up.

Ella was sipping her tea from a china cup when she saw Fergus Brown walk up the avenue. His step was slow and deliberate, his walking stick more of an accessory than essential equipment. She could tell his distinctive lumber anywhere, leaning too much to the right. She felt a flutter of excitement that he should have returned to Roscarbury Hall.

She watched him as he doffed his cap to two young girls, causing them to giggle. Draining her cup quickly, she fixed her hair with two hands and applied a slick of lipstick.

Slightly out of breath, Fergus Brown stepped into the hall. Sitting in the old oak captain’s chair, he took off his hat. It had taken him fifteen minutes to walk from his house; he had to allow for the same back, which would give him a leisurely half-hour break here.

For one hour a day, Fergus Brown could be himself. The rest of the time, he had to look after Margaret, when he was a babysitter, cleaner, servant and a major annoyance to his wife of thirty-five years. He knew that, because she never stopped telling him so. For one hour a day, and a Saturday afternoon, he left his home, seeking out conversation and company, sometimes just peace and quiet, among a happy gathering where he could feel part of a world less demanding of his attention.

When he heard that Roscarbury Hall had opened up its doors, something stirred inside him, an interest reignited. Ten years previously, he had met Ella O’Callaghan at a choral society recital in the hall in Gorey. Margaret was busy behind the counter, helping with the teas, and he was at a loose end.

At first, he noticed the way she dressed: folds of fabric flowing around her thin hips as she walked on moderately high heels, so that from behind she would pass as younger. He made sure to sit beside her.

‘Fergus, how are you?’

‘Very well.’

‘You don’t know me?’

‘I am not sure.’

‘Ella O’Callaghan.’

‘How silly of me. So nice to see you again.’

He remembered he was taken aback when she said her name and tried not to show it. The last he had heard of her was when he was working abroad and his mother said she had gone slightly mad. Both the sisters had, after tragedy on tragedy had been heaped on them. Too much of a gentleman to allude to the past, he enjoyed her company and the whiff of her perfume every time she leaned towards him, her big eyes wide, her warm smile giving her face a much younger aura. In dark moments in the decade that followed, as his wife slipped deeper into a greyness of the mind, he often fell back on the badly lit room and the serene woman beside him, wearing royal blue and green and smelling of exotic perfume.