The Fall Girl (25 page)

‘No thanks,' he says, his back to me, ‘but maybe you'd look in on your mother before you leave. She's not feeling the best.'

‘After the way she spoke to me last night! Forget it.'

‘All she asked of you was that you be here for your tea whenever Father Vincent comes over. Where's the harm in that?'

‘Why did she ask, if she wasn't prepared to take no for an answer without insulting me left, right and centre? Why not just order me about like she used to do when I was a child?'

‘More to the point,' he says, turning to me, ‘why not say
yes
once in a while? Why do you make a song and dance about everything you're asked to do?'

‘I don't.'

‘You do.'

‘Why do you always take her side? How come you never see my point of view?'

He picks up his can and starts watering the tomatoes. His eyes look weary. ‘I do … at times, but it's hard. You make no effort whatsoever to get on with your mother. As a matter of fact, you seem to do everything you can to pull against her.'

‘Because she's a bloody dictator and I've no intention of being her puppet any longer.'

‘Arragh, you're living in the past, Frances. She's not trying to run your life for you. She asked you to tea, that's all. It was a simple request.'

‘I'm always the one to blame,' I say, opening the greenhouse door. ‘All this misery – it's down to me.'

‘Frances,' he sighs. ‘Frances, wait a minute. Frances …'

Nuddy Neary is standing just beyond the chapel gates. He doesn't even bother sticking out his thumb any more. Everyone knows that when he stands there with a gormless grin on his face, he's looking for a lift into town. I hate having him in the car – he gets on my wick – but if I don't stop, I'll be the talk of the village.

‘Good lassie yourself,' he says, getting into the passenger seat. ‘You're early on the go this morning.'

‘Mmm.'

‘A spot of shopping, I suppose.'

‘No.'

‘Or is it retail therapy they call it nowadays?'

Give me strength, I think, turning on the radio.

‘You're looking well anyway.'

‘Thanks.'

‘So likely you're not on your way to the doctor's.'

‘No, Nuddy. I'm a hundred per cent, thank God.'

‘And it's a bit early in the day to be
doing
lunch.' He laughs with a snort. ‘Have you heard that one?'

‘What?'

‘
Doing
lunch,' he chuckles. ‘Doesn't it sound odious stupid?'

‘It does. And no, I'm not doing lunch.'

‘Are you visiting someone in the hospital?'

‘No. Where do you want dropping off yourself ?'

‘Ah, don't worry about me. You can drop me off wherever you're parking.'

‘I'm going to the school. That's the far side of town.'

‘Are you not a few days early?'

‘If you must know, I've a couple of jobs to get sorted before we reopen.'

‘Oh,' he says, ‘I never thought of that.'

‘Well, there you are,' I say, hoping that now he's managed
to drag the information he wanted out of me, he'll shut his trap.

‘Have you much to do?'

‘Enough,' I say, turning up the volume.

‘Like what?' he asks, raising his voice.

‘Just bits and pieces,' I snap.

When he keeps his mouth shut for a mile or so, I'm pretty sure he's taken the hint.

‘Will you be cleaning blackboards and battering the dusters off the walls?'

‘I don't have a blackboard or a duster in my office.'

‘Right enough, you wouldn't. I suppose you have a typewriter.'

‘No. A computer.'

‘A computer! Oh, I say. Very cutting-edge altogether.'

By the time he gets out of the car, I'm ready to scream.

‘I'll see you so,' he says, closing the car door.

‘If I ever see you again,' I say to myself as I watch him plod off, ‘it'll be too bloody soon.'

As it turns out, it's the following night at my mother's wake. There must be a hundred people in the house at any given time. There's a constant queue on the stairs leading to her bedroom where she lies as stony-faced in death as she was in life. My father is sitting by the bed shaking hands with everyone who enters the room. Nancy has taken over the kitchen and is keeping the tea flowing all night. I can't sit down, so I mooch around from one room to another, picking up empty teacups and listening. Everyone is in shock.

‘I was only talking to her the other morning.'

‘She was the picture of health the last time I saw her.'

‘Isn't the heart a fickle apparatus too, the way it can stop on you just like that.'

‘And Joe says she didn't have any problems with blood pressure and that her last blood test showed that her cholesterol was low.'

‘He's in an awful bad way, God bless him.'

‘What exactly happened anyway?'

‘She complained to Joe yesterday morning about feeling weak, so he told her to have a rest and stay in bed. Around one o'clock, she said she was feeling a bit better and asked him to bring her up a cup of tea. He was standing by the cooker waiting for the kettle to boil when, next thing, he heard an unmerciful thud. She'd collapsed on the bedroom floor.'

‘Isn't that shockin'?'

‘Ah now.'

I don't feel comfortable when they come up to me and shake my hand. I've no right to accept their sympathy, because I don't feel sad. I feel numb.

To escape the unwanted attention, I slip out to the back garden for a breath of air and a bit of peace. I sit down on the grass behind the shed where no one can see me. Nuddy and one of the postmen my father worked with before he retired come out for a cigarette. Nancy won't let anyone smoke inside the house. Unaware of my presence, the two men start chatting.

‘Are you a relative?' Nuddy asks.

‘No, indeed I'm not. I'm a friend of Joe's.'

‘You're from about so, are you?'

‘I am. Castleowen.'

‘Oh aye.'

‘I worked with Joe on the post for years.'

‘Is that right? So you'd know him well then?'

‘Oh I do, and a nicer fella you wouldn't meet.'

‘You're right there. He is, he is,' Nuddy says with certitude. ‘He's sound as a pound.'

‘He's a broken man tonight.'

‘Aye, the poor unfortunate,' Nuddy sighs. ‘Did you know herself at all?'

‘Not really, no. I might have met her once or twice, but I was never really talking to her.'

‘Oh, indeed you weren't. She didn't talk to too many, the same one.'

‘It was like that, was it?'

‘I suppose I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but I have to say: I was never that gone on the woman.'

‘I heard she was a bit stand-offish all right.'

‘A bit, me bollocks. Talk about tuppence-halfpenny looking down on tuppence.'

You're not as thick as you look, Nuddy, I think, as I twirl a blade of grass around my finger.

Gone on her or not, Nuddy attends her funeral along with half the parish. Father Vincent concelebrates the Mass with the parish priest, and Nancy reads the first and second readings, as well as the responsorial psalm, because I've refused to do either and my father isn't up to it. People remark that I'm a tower of strength and that it's a blessing for my father that I'm still living at home, because otherwise he'd be lost.

‘Isn't she marvellous,' Mrs Scully says about me to Nancy, ‘the way she's holding it all together for her father?'

‘I don't think it has quite sunk in yet, has it, Frances?' Nancy says, rubbing the top of my arm.

Later that night, when my father and I are alone in the house, he starts talking about the funeral, how proud my mother would have been at the turnout.

‘You were well represented too,' he says, stirring his tea.

‘What?'

‘All them teachers you work with – it was nice of them to show up.'

‘They didn't go for
my
sake.'

‘What do you mean? They hardly went for mine, did they? Sure, I don't know any of them.'

‘They went for themselves.'

‘What's wrong with you, Frances? Why do you talk like that? Can you not show a bit of gratitude to anyone for anything any more?'

‘Why do I always have to be the grateful one? They were there out of duty, Daddy, not out of concern for me.'

‘Lord God,' he says, looking up at the ceiling, ‘you have some awful funny notions, wherever you get them.'

Not another word passes between us as we nurse our half-drunk cups of tea. I don't feel like finishing mine. All I want to do is lie down and sleep. I'm jaded. But I can't get up and walk away from my father. He looks so lonely.

Closing my eyes, I rest my head in my hands. She's gone, I think, remembering how as a child I used to dream about what my life would be like without her. Night after night, I'd lie in bed, imagining how that day at the
Feis
would have turned out if I hadn't had a mother. I pictured myself on the stage doing the reel in Lesley's red dance costume. Daddy is smiling up at me from the crowd. Afterwards, when I'm awarded the gold medal, Lesley skips across the stage and hugs me. She's wearing her silver medal on a green ribbon, like a necklace. She doesn't mind being second best. Daddy
says I can invite her round for tea. Afterwards, we spend the evening playing – making a den in my bedroom, chasing each other up and down the stairs in a game of tag, sliding down the banister, jumping in puddles – all the things my mother forbade me to do.

My young head prayed that she'd die. My older head is glad that she has. The only catch is, I can't taste the freedom I've been longing for since I was eight years old. It's no longer there for the taking, because the wedge my mother so artfully lodged between my father and me still lingers – in the silence that surrounds us, in the lack of mutual understanding, in the resentment I feel towards him for grieving for her and in the resentment he feels towards me for not.

‘I'm going to get it hard to climb the stairs tonight,' he says, pulling himself out of the chair as if his back was made of cement.

After he leaves the room, I break down in tears, because I know now that whatever my father and I had all those years ago is gone. And it's never coming back.

‘You might forgive me,' I weep, picking up my mother's photo from the top of the dresser, ‘but I will never forgive you. Never.'

The only forgiveness I've ever wanted is Lesley's. That's why I turned up at the school reunion a few months ago, to see if she had forgiven, or could forgive me.

‘Lesley's in Australia,' Orla says, when I run into her in the lobby of the hotel. She's the only one who stops to chat with me. ‘She married an Australian guy, Craig, two years ago.'

‘Good for her.' I hope she doesn't notice the effort in my smile.

‘She landed on her feet there: her hubby's loaded; owns a couple of restaurants.'

‘Very nice.'

‘Simon is working for him. Imagine; he's eighteen now.'

How could I forget?

‘When did you last see them?'

‘Four years ago in Manchester. It was myself and Dave's fifth wedding anniversary. We flew up from London and stayed with them for a weekend. You should've seen Simon; drop dead gorgeous – a dead ringer for his daddy.'

‘And what about Lesley?'

‘She looked a million, the bitch,' she says. ‘I swear, only she had started going out with Craig, my Dave would have ended up dumping me and proposing to her. It was his first time to meet her. He thought she was a howl.'

‘I'd say so. Does she ever come home?'

‘Nah! Not since her mum died. Anyway, what's the crack with you?'

‘Oh, I'm fine.'

‘What are you at these days?'

‘I'm working here in town.'

‘Doing what?'

‘School secretary.'

‘And?'

‘And what?'

‘What's the story?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Any man? Any kids? Where are you living?'

‘No man, no kids. And I'm living at home.'

‘I see,' she says, shifting from foot to foot and looking round her. ‘Oh look, there's Jackie. I'd better go and say hello. Might see you later though, right?'

‘Right.'

I don't bother going in for the meal. I'm too upset. It's not that I don't wish Lesley well – of course I do – but I had my heart set on seeing her again and rekindling our friendship. I hoped that perhaps she might have had similar feelings about meeting me again.

Why hadn't I listened to my father? – reunions were not for the likes of me.

‘You'll find,' he said, ‘that the only ones who'll show up will be them that's landed on their feet, careerwise … moneywise. People – they only parade success.'

‘Don't worry,' I told him. ‘Failure will stay at home where failure belongs.'

But as the days passed and the reunion date approached, the questions that had been prodding me from the day I'd received the invitation started doing hornpipes in my head. What if Lesley turned up? What if she was hoping to see me? What if she was willing to forgive? Looking for forgiveness? What if I found the courage to tell her the truth? What then? What had I left to lose?

Today I received my first letter since my arrival here – from Father Vincent no less. I couldn't stop laughing at first, but then I cried.

Dear Frances,

I hope this letter finds you in good health, physically, mentally, and, most importantly, spiritually. I am writing to you about a matter that will hopefully assist you in sorting out your future, as I am sure, at times, it may look bleak.

While I was visiting Nancy in Crosslea last week, I dropped in to see your poor father, who, I must tell you, is a much-troubled man. He and I spoke at length about your situation and of the possibility that you'll be discharged from the hospital either before Christmas or early in the New Year. Of course, we don't know what plans you have, if any, but I would imagine that returning to Crosslea would be not only unwise but also very difficult for you, in light of what's happened. Given the utmost respect I have, both for your father and your mother (RIP), I have gone to great lengths to find you a new home and job. A very dear friend of mine, Fr O'Malley, who is a parish priest in Bloody Foreland, happens to be looking for a live-in housekeeper, as Miss McDonnell, his current housekeeper, is retiring next month. I have told him about your background and he is willing, as a special favour to my good self, to hold the vacancy open for you until you are discharged. I don't know if you have ever been, but I have visited the area myself many times and I can assure you that Bloody Foreland is not only very picturesque but also home to the country's most welcoming people. It has the added advantage, of course, of being a long way
from Crosslea and therefore no one would know who you are. And wouldn't that be a blessing?

There would be no problem, whatsoever, if your father wanted to visit you at the house, and even stay a night or two. Nancy thinks that it's an ideal solution and has passed the details of this offer on to your father, who, she tells me, is very anxious that you accept it.

I would ask you to let me know if you're interested as soon as possible, as Father O'Malley has been good enough to postpone advertising the job until I get back to him with your reply.

Until I hear from you, take care of yourself and God Bless.

Yours sincerely

Fr Vincent