The Ballymara Road (34 page)

Now it was Alice’s turn to cry.

Mrs McGuire slid the cup of tea that Mary had poured across the low table towards Alice, and handed the baby to Mary.

‘Here, drink this,’ she said, passing a cup to Mary and lighting herself a cigarette.

She felt compelled, always, to make Alice suffer for what she had done to her family, but, being a kind woman at heart, she felt bad afterwards.

Leaning back in the chair and taking a deep pull on her cigarette, she thought through what tomorrow would now hold. We will have to leave early, she thought. I have tonight. I have this one night finally to get even with Maisie.

While she pondered, she looked across the road and watched Mr O’Hara as he locked up the butcher’s shop. It was why she had chosen this table. She and Maisie used to stare at this very table and imagine which cakes they would order, when they were ladies, taking afternoon tea in the hotel.

She was meeting him again, tonight, at O’Connolly’s pub.

The lives, and the demands, of the younger generation were exhausting her. She was too involved. They were far too dependent upon her. Most of the time, she didn’t mind at all. But the arrival of Sean, with Alice, in America had altered things. He had let her down, broken her heart. Mary’s willingness to be complicit in their deceit had surprised her. The disappointment she felt in her son, for leaving his wife and daughters, never faded.

She had spent too long being a hands-on grandmother and, in the process, had lost much of her own life. Tonight, she would take some of that back. She would be daring, do something that no respectable woman, at sixty years of age, would even consider. If her friends in the village knew what she was planning, they would disown her.

To hell with them, she thought. Just one night, that’s all I want. Just one. I want to remember the last time I ever slept with a man. I want to grow old, thinking: that was it. It was him. It was there and it was then and I loved it.

She looked at her daughter and at her fake daughter-in-law. Mary was tucking the blanket around the baby in the carrycot.

‘Right, Mammy. I’m off to pack. Alice, are you OK?’

Alice looked anything but OK.

Mrs McGuire answered for her.

‘She has to face her own healthy little boy, Mary, and the women she deserted and the families she destroyed and the stepdaughter she left distraught and stunned into silence by her own grief when Kitty died. Where was Alice then? Why shouldn’t she be all right? I hear Alice has always been good at getting her own way, so she shouldn’t worry. Liverpool will be a breeze, won’t it, Alice?’

‘Mammy, enough, stop. You are only acting like this because Sean isn’t here.’

Mary was shocked at the way her mother was behaving. Mary didn’t like what Sean and Alice had done any more than her mother did. Every time she attended mass she prayed for their forgiveness, and she saw her job as acting as referee, to keep the peace as far as that was possible. It had been Mary’s idea to bring Alice along. It was an act designed to involve her and make her feel part of the family.

‘I for one am very glad you are here with us, Alice.’ Mary threw a look to Mrs McGuire that said, stop, now.

Alice didn’t bother to say anything. She thought of the fifty thousand dollars she had drawn from her bank account and had used to line her suitcase. Sean had entrusted her with the money that Henry had paid them for the house. She didn’t have to return to America at all, nor put up with the likes of Mrs McGuire, nor Sean’s demands for another baby. Fifty thousand dollars was a huge sum of money. With that amount she could be set for life in England. Even as she had placed the bundles in her suitcase, she had failed to acknowledge to herself that this was her intention all along.

As the lift door closed on Mrs McGuire, Alice whispered, ‘Go to hell, you witch.’

That night, as Alice lay in bed, she hatched her plan. There was no court that would refuse a mother custody of her child. She would return to England with Mary and then claim back her son. Mrs McGuire might be no Kathleen and Sean no Jerry, but Alice had burnt her boats. She knew that neither Kathleen nor Jerry would ever want to know her again. She was alone now. She would take Joseph away and the two of them would find a little house, over the water in Birkenhead, or one of those nice suburbs, and they would live a quiet, gentle life, just Alice and her boy.

He already had her drink waiting when she arrived at O’Connolly’s.

He was sitting at the corner table, as far away as possible from the toilets and the jukebox. For the first time since they were kids, she thought he looked nervous.

‘I got ye a gin and orange squash, the same as before. Is that all right, now?’

He had stood up to greet her and removed his cap as she approached the table. Waiting for her reply, he stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray, rolled up his cap and stuffed it deep down into his pocket. His black waistcoat strained against buttons that threatened to pop. The thought crossed her mind that it had been many a year since he had last worn it.

‘Aye, that’s grand, thanks. If you don’t mind me saying, I need that right now and another to follow, after the day I have had.’

He picked up his Guinness. ‘Aye, well, for a long time now mine has been much the same as every other day. There are never any surprises for me. It does always come as a great shock, I suppose, when a customer dies and hasn’t paid their bill, but that is as bad as it gets.’

They both burst out laughing. She realized it wasn’t something she did very often any more. Laugh. She was often concerned, busy, useful, needed, but not for herself, always for someone else. As their laughter abated, she looked into his eyes. She didn’t see a sixty-year-old face, laughing back at her. She saw the face of over forty years ago, just the same. Unaltered. Hidden by extra weight and some wrinkles, it might have been, but she looked through that to the boy she had known before.

Be bold. Be bold. The words raced through her mind as they weighed each other up.

He still has nice eyes, she thought.

She has the figure of a woman half her age, he thought.

She knew he would be shy. He would have no idea of her wild thoughts or crazy intentions. If she weren’t bold, she would lose her nerve and change her mind.

Be bold.

She leant across the table to say the most daringly outrageous words she had ever uttered, but, even as she began to speak, she had no idea what those words would be.

He surprised her and spoke first.

‘Ye are a sight for sore eyes and one that hasn’t left my mind for these forty years gone, now, do ye know that?’

‘But you married Maisie,’ she replied, very matter-of-fact.

‘Aye, ’tis true and, sure, I was the father of a child that grew in the womb for two years. I was a stupid fool, easily led, and what lad isn’t? But I will tell ye this: there was only one woman I wanted to marry and, God knows, I paid the price for my mistake every day for years. God rest her soul. She couldn’t help it but, sure, nothing good comes from trickery, now does it, and so I feel no guilt.’

Mrs McGuire’s heart was beating like the wings of a captive bird. ‘No, I suppose not. I couldn’t forgive ye for years.’

‘Sure, didn’t I know that. Ye bought yer meat in Castlefeale. Now that’s a woman with a grudge, I’d say.’

Mrs McGuire turned round to look towards the bar and saw that, as she had guessed, they were under close scrutiny from Mrs O’Connolly, who repeatedly wiped the same section of the counter.

She turned back to face him. Be bold. She took a deep breath. This would be it. Her chance.

‘Do ye have any gin at home? Because if ye do, why don’t we pop back there for a drink, without Mrs O’Connolly watching? We can catch up on some of the fun we missed out on, forty years ago.’

It took him what felt like forever to respond. ‘Jesus Christ, I missed out altogether all these years, didn’t I just?’

Less than five minutes later, they sneaked in through his back door, giggling like a pair of errant teenagers. Thirty minutes later, they were in his bed.

At four in the morning as he lay next to her, gently snoring, she thought to herself, so this was it. It was here.

She gazed out of the window and listened to the rain gently fall, as it so often did. The window was open wide. She grinned to herself and thought, Holy Mother, I hope next door didn’t hear me. But instead of feeling washed in shame, she felt exhilarated and half hoped that the neighbours, the miserable, God-fearing, mass-four-times-a-day O’Byrnes, had heard her after all.

She looked at the outline of his body, older and heavier but still fit and healthy, and thought to herself, I want a life of no surprises. I’m not going back to America. From now on, I’m going to squeeze two days into each one, to make up for lost time.

He opened his eyes and saw her leaning over him.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘It was real, then. I thought maybe I had been dreaming.’

She smiled. Be bold.

‘How about I don’t go back to America, but stay here in the village? Would ye like that? Would ye like more nights like this?’

He reached up and pulled her down to him. ‘No, I’m not dreaming, that’s for sure I’m in fecking heaven.’

She laughed, as she hadn’t done in a very long time. She felt like a girl. It was as though her wrinkles and her age were nothing to him. As she spoke she stroked the base of his neck and traced around the outline of his lips.

‘It’ll be a shock for them all, but, God, who helped me when I had my kids? No one. ’Tis time they learnt to manage without me. God knows, for sure, I’ll be dead in ten years or so. I haven’t much time left.’

And they made love again. Not as they would have done as teenagers, but gently and slowly, with a passion so intense that she knew she could never handle the sadness of knowing when it was to be the last time.

HARRIET KNELT AT
the foot of the headstone with a bunch of floppy-headed, deep-burgundy roses, which she had cut from the Priory garden just that morning. Annie O’Prey had wrapped wet newspaper round the base of the stems to keep them fresh but now that Harriet was at the graveside, she felt silly. Despite that, she was glad of the five minutes to sit down. The following day was the Rose Queen competition and parade, the first of what Harriet hoped would become a regular grand day of festivities, for everyone who lived on the four streets.

‘Do you know, Anthony, no one who lives here has ever had a holiday. The Rose Queen fête is something for everyone to look forward to and to plan for. And it is great fun for the kids.’

‘You are right, Harriet, and you always are.’ Anthony had smiled. ‘Just don’t overwhelm yourself. It is a massive undertaking, if you don’t have enough help.’

Even Harriet had been amazed at how many women had stepped forward to volunteer their services. Lots had their own ideas and Harriet had relished every minute of taking on the role of event co-ordinator.

This was the last quiet moment she would have until it was all over, so it seemed as good a time as any to pay her visit to Bernadette.

Annie had told her, ‘There’s an old pickling jar on Bernadette’s grave. Brigid put it there. She was always leaving flowers. She thought none of us knew it was her but we knew, all right. I don’t think it has cracked. You can put some water in from the fountain.’

‘Do Jerry and Nellie visit the grave, Annie?’

‘Oh Jesus, now, Jerry is there all the time. He always was, even when he was married to Alice. I shouldn’t think she knew but, God only knows, I cannot even tell you the number of times I have seen that man standing there.’

‘He must have loved her very much,’ said Harriet.

‘Loved her? Well now, listen while I tell ye. If I lived to be a hundred, never in all my life will I have known two people who loved each other as much as they did. It was as if the sky had fallen down, the day she died. Oh God, now you’ve set me off.’

And here Harriet was, at the grave of a woman people still spoke of as if she had died just yesterday and who appeared to have been one of the nicest women ever to have lived.

‘These are for you, Bernadette,’ Harriet whispered, as she placed the roses in the jar and looked carefully around to see if anyone was listening.

Kneeling back on her heels, she sat still for a moment and gradually became aware of the noise around her. Traffic passed by on the road, the cranes were lifting their loads down on the docks, tugs were tooting angry horns, and yet she felt as though she were in an oasis of peace and tranquillity.

Tentatively, she began. ‘I just wanted you to know that I think the world of Nellie and I know she is hurting. Nana Kathleen is just the greatest woman, Bernadette, and everyone does their best, but I think you know that Nellie and I have a special bond. We are a similar age, you and I, Bernadette, and I think Nellie knows that. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I will do my utmost for your little girl. My eye will always be on your Nellie and my heart will always be full of care for her.’

Harriet felt guilty for what she was about to say, but she knew, in her heart, that there was another reason she had visited the grave.

‘Bernadette, Nana Kathleen and the women, they say you are like a guardian angel to everyone on the four streets. I think that’s true, because I felt it. I know you and Jerry were very much in love too. I would so love to have someone special of my own. I always have. Just someone I can love and who would love me back. My mammy told me to find myself a nice Irish boy, but I don’t care about things like that. I would just love someone kind. Bernadette, I think I have found someone I would like to get closer to, if you can be my guardian angel too.’

As Harriet spoke, it was as though a feeling of utter serenity and optimism swept over her. Without understanding why, she knew, without any doubt whatsoever, that the wish she had made to Bernadette would come true.

He will be mine and I will be happy, she thought.

Over at number forty-two, Maura Doherty felt that if she never saw another scone or jam tart again, it would not be too soon.