The Copper Beech (45 page)

‘I have a cousin coming home from America for a few weeks. She mentioned that in America there are places where you could get your hair done for near to nothing cost if you were letting people practise on you.’

‘Well, we do have a students’ night on Tuesdays; people bring in their own towels and we give them a style. They usually contribute five euros to a charity.’

‘Tonight is Tuesday!’ the woman cried triumphantly.

‘So it is,’ Katie said through gritted teeth.

‘So, could I book myself in? I’m Josie Lynch.’

‘Great, Mrs Lynch, see you after seven o’clock,’ Katie said, writing down the name.

Her eyes met the priest’s. There was sympathy and understanding there.

It wasn’t all champagne and glitter running your own hairdressing salon.

Josie and Charles Lynch had lived in 23 St Jarlath’s Crescent since they were married thirty-two years ago. They had seen many changes in the area. The corner shop had become a mini supermarket; the old laundry, where sheets had been ironed and folded, was now a laundromat, where people left big bags bulky with mixed clothes and asked for a service wash. There was now a proper medical practice with four doctors, where once there had been just old Doctor Gillespie who had brought everyone into the world and seen them out of it.

During the height of the economic boom, houses in St
Jarlath’s Crescent had been changing hands for amazing sums of money. Small houses with gardens near the city centre were much in demand. Not any more, of course – the recession had been a great equaliser, but it was still a much more substantial area than it had been three decades ago.

After all, just look at Molly and Paddy Carroll with their son Declan – a doctor – a real, qualified doctor! And just look at Muttie and Lizzie Scarlet’s daughter Cathy. She ran a catering company that was hired for top events.

But a lot of things had changed for the worse. There was no community spirit any more. No church processions went up and down the Crescent on the feast of Corpus Christi as they used to three decades ago. Josie and Charles Lynch felt that they were alone in the world, and certainly in St Jarlath’s Crescent, in that they kneeled down at night and said the Rosary.

That had always been the way.

When they married, they planned a life based on the maxim that the family that prays together stays together. They had assumed they would have eight or nine children, because God never put a mouth into this world that He didn’t feed. But that wasn’t to happen. After Noel, Josie had been told there would be no more children. It was hard to accept. They both came from big families; their brothers and sisters had produced big families. But then, perhaps, it was all meant to be this way.

They had always hoped Noel would be a priest. The fund to educate him for the priesthood was started before he was three. Money was put aside from Josie’s wages at the biscuit factory. Every week a little more was added to the Post Office savings account and when
Charles got his envelope on a Friday from the hotel where he was a porter, a sum was also put into the Post Office. Noel would get the best of priestly educations when the time came.

So it was with great surprise and a lot of disappointment that Josie and Charles learned that their quiet son had no interest whatsoever in a religious life. The Brothers said that he showed no sign of a vocation and when the matter had been presented to Noel as a possibility at the age of fourteen, he had said if it was the last job on earth he wouldn’t go for it.

That had been very definite indeed.

Not so definite, however, was what he actually
would
like to do. Noel was vague about this, except to say he might like to run an office. Not work in an office, but run one. He showed no interest in studying office management or bookkeeping or accounting or in any areas where the careers department tried to direct him. He liked art, he said, but he didn’t want to paint. If pushed he would say that he liked looking at paintings and thinking about them. He was good at drawing; he always had a notebook and a pencil with him and he was often to be found curled up in a corner, sketching a face or an animal. This did not, of course, lead to any career path, but Noel had never expected it to. He did his homework at the kitchen table, sighing now and then, but rarely ever excited or enthusiastic. At the parent–teacher meetings Josie and Charles had enquired about this. They wondered, did anything at school fire him up? Anything at all?

The teachers were at a loss. Most boys were unfathomable around fourteen or fifteen but they had usually settled down to do something. Or often to do
nothing. Noel Lynch, they said, had just become even more quiet and withdrawn than he already was.

Josie and Charles wondered, could this be right?

Noel was quiet, certainly, and it had been a great relief to them that he hadn’t filled the house up with loud young lads thumping each other. But they had thought this was part of his spiritual life, a preparation for a future as a priest. Now it appeared that this was certainly not the case.

Perhaps, Josie suggested, it was only the Brothers’ brand of religious life that Noel objected to. In fact, might he have a different kind of vocation and want to become a Jesuit or a missionary?

Apparently not.

And when he was fifteen he said that he didn’t really want to join in the family Rosary any more, it was only a ritual of meaningless prayers chanted in repetition. He didn’t mind doing good for people, trying to make less fortunate people have a better life, but surely no God could want this fifteen minutes of drone drone drone.

By the time he was sixteen they realised that he didn’t go to Sunday Mass any more. Someone had seen him up by the canal when he was meant to have been to the early Mass up in the church on the corner. He told them that there was no point in his staying on at school as there was nothing more he needed to learn from them. They were hiring office staff up at Hall’s and they would train him in office routine. He might as well go to work straight away rather than hang about.

The Brothers and the teachers at his school said it was always a pity to see a boy study and leave without a qualification, but still, they shrugged, it was very hard trying to interest the lad in anything at all. He seemed to
be sitting and waiting for his schooldays to end. Could even be for the best if he left school now. Get him into Hall’s, the big builders’ merchants; give him a wage every week and then they might see where, if anywhere, his interest lay.

Josie and Charles thought sadly of the fund that had been growing in the Post Office for years. Money that would never be spent making Noel Lynch into a reverend. A kindly Brother suggested that maybe they should spend it on a holiday for themselves, but Charles and Josie were shocked. This money had been saved for God’s work; it would be spent on God’s work.

Noel got his place in Hall’s. He met his work colleagues but without any great enthusiasm. They would not be his friends and companions any more than his fellow students at the Brothers had become mates. He didn’t
want
to be alone all the time but it was often easier.

Over the years Noel had arranged with his mother that he would not join them at meals. He would have his lunch in the middle of the day and he would make a snack for himself in the evening. This way he missed the Rosary, the socialising with pious neighbours and the interrogation about what he had done with his day, which was the natural accompaniment to mealtimes in the Lynch household.

He took to coming home later and later. He also took to visiting Casey’s pub on the journey home – a big barn of a place – both comforting and anonymous at the same time. It was familiar because everyone knew his name.

‘I’ll drop it down to you, Noel,’ the loutish son of the house would say.

Old Man Casey, who said little but noticed everything,
would look over his spectacles as he polished the beer glasses with a clean linen cloth.

‘Evening, Noel,’ he would say, managing to combine the courtesy of being the landlord with the sense of disapproval he had of Noel. He was, after all, an acquaintance of Noel’s father. It was as if he was glad that Casey’s was getting the price of the pint – or several pints – as the night went on, but he also seemed disappointed that Noel was not spending his wages more wisely. Yet Noel liked the place. It wasn’t a trendy pub with fancy prices. It wasn’t full of girls giggling and interrupting a man’s drinking. People left him alone here.

That was worth a lot.

When he got home, Noel noticed that his mother looked different. He couldn’t work out why. She was wearing the red knitted suit that she wore only on special occasions. At the biscuit factory where she worked they wore a uniform, which she said was wonderful because it meant you didn’t wear out your good garments. Noel’s mother didn’t wear make-up so it couldn’t be that.

Eventually he realised that it was her hair. His mother had been to a beauty salon.

‘You got a new hairdo, Mam!’ he said.

Josie Lynch patted her head, pleased. ‘They did a good job, didn’t they?’ She spoke like someone who frequented hairdressing salons regularly.

‘Very nice, Mam,’ he said.

‘I’ll be putting a kettle on if you’d like a cup of tea,’ she offered.

‘No, Mam, you’re all right.’

He was anxious to be out of there, safe in his room. And then Noel remembered that his cousin Emily was
coming from America the next day. His mother must be getting ready for her arrival. This Emily was going to stay for a few weeks apparently. It hadn’t been decided exactly how many weeks …

Noel hadn’t involved himself greatly in the visit, doing only what he had to, like helping his father to paint her room and clearing out the downstairs box room where they had tiled the walls and put in a new shower. He didn’t know much about her; she was an older person, in her fifties maybe, the only daughter of his father’s eldest brother Martin. She had been an art teacher but her job had ended unexpectedly and she was using her savings to see the world. She would start with a visit to Dublin from where her father had left many years ago to seek his fortune in America.

It had not been a great fortune, Charles reported. The eldest brother of the family had worked in a bar where he was his own best customer. He had never stayed in touch. Any Christmas cards had been sent by this Emily, who had also written to tell first of her father’s death and then her mother’s. She sounded remarkably businesslike, and said that when she arrived in Dublin she would expect to pay a contribution to the family expenses, and that since she was letting her own small apartment in New York during her absence, it was only fair. Josie and Charles were also reassured that she seemed sensible and had promised not to be in their way or looking for entertainment. She said she would find plenty to occupy her.

Noel sighed.

It would be one more trivial happening elevated to high drama by his mother and father. The woman wouldn’t be in the door before she heard all about his great future at Hall’s, about his mother’s job at the biscuit
factory and his father’s role as a senior porter in a very grand hotel. She would be told about the moral decline in Ireland, the lack of attendance at Sunday Mass and that binge drinking kept the emergency departments of hospitals full to overflowing. Emily would be invited to join the family Rosary.

Noel’s mother had already spent considerable time debating whether they should put a picture of the Sacred Heart or of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour in the newly painted room. Noel had managed to avoid too much further discussion of this agonising choice by suggesting that they wait until she arrived.

‘She taught art in a school, Mam, she might have brought her own pictures,’ he had said and amazingly his mother had agreed immediately.

‘You’re quite right, Noel. I have a tendency to make all the decisions in the world. It will be nice having another woman to share all that with.’

Noel mildly hoped that she was right and that this woman would not disrupt their ways. This was going to be a time of change in their household anyway. His father was going to be retired as porter in a year or two. His mother still had a few more years in the biscuit factory but she thought she might retire also and keep Charles company with the two of them doing some good works. He hoped that Emily would make their lives less complicated rather than more complicated.

But mainly he gave the matter very little thought.

Noel got along by not thinking too deeply on anything: not about his dead-end job in Hall’s; not about the hours and money he spent in Old Man Casey’s pub; not about the religious mania of his parents who thought that the Rosary was the answer to most of the world’s
problems. Noel would not think about the lack of a steady girlfriend in his life. He just hadn’t met anyone, that’s all it was. Nor indeed did he worry about the lack of any kind of mates. Some places were easy to find friends. Hall’s wasn’t one of them. Noel had decided that the very best way to cope with things not being so great was not to think about them at all. It had worked well so far.

Why fix things if they weren’t broken?

Charles Lynch had been very silent. He hadn’t noticed his wife’s new hairdo. He hadn’t guessed that his son had drunk four pints on the way home from work. He found it hard to raise any interest in the arrival next morning of his brother Martin’s daughter, Emily. Martin had made it clear that he had no interest in the family back home.

Emily had certainly been a courteous correspondent over the years – even to the point of offering to pay her bed and board. That might come in very useful indeed these days. Charles Lynch had been told that morning that his services as hotel porter would no longer be needed. He and another ‘older’ porter would leave at the end of the month. Charles had been trying to find the words to tell Josie since he got home, but the words weren’t there.

He could repeat what the young man in the suit had said to him earlier in the day: a string of sentences about it being no reflection on Charles or his loyalty to the hotel. He had been there, man and boy, resplendent in his uniform and very much part of the old image. But that’s exactly what it was – an old image. The new owners were insisting on a new image and who could
stand in the way of the march of progress?