Whitethorn Woods (31 page)

   "No, I'm into singing. Do you know anywhere I could get a gig, by any chance?"

   It's a funny old life. It turns out that Ken's students were having a disco in the art college the following night. Their live guy with a guitar had let them down. We had an audition in the cab. I sang three numbers for him and Ken said fine, I was hired and he gave me the address where I should show up. He asked me if I had a girlfriend because there would be a nice do afterwards.

   I said I had a nice girlfriend called Chrissie, and maybe he could take Emer to celebrate her having got the job in the gallery. He looked as if he had never thought of doing anything like that.

   You know, Emer was right.

   Men don't need women to stand by them, that's not what they need at all. They need someone to give them a boot up the bum when all is said and done.

   And magic well or no magic well, I'd have been unlikely to get that from St. Ann.

I've always loved looking up things, silly facts, useless information. If I only had a computer I'd be at it all day. If we were the kind of people who would go to a pub quiz I bet I'd do well, even win prizes. If only I had had the nerve to try and get on
Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire?
I think I would have done quite well. Honestly I do. I've often got all the questions right when the real contestants didn't know them.

   Brainbox Pearl, they used to call me at school, but that was just at school. Girls in my street didn't go on for what was called further education. My family had come over from Ireland to make a fortune in England like so many Irish did during the 1950s and 1960s. We were originally from a place called Rossmore, which was a very poor sort of place back then. But it has changed utterly now. You wouldn't believe the style some of my cousins live in back there now. My Bob was originally from Galway, we met at an Irish ceilidh dance.

   My dad worked on the roads and we all got jobs in factories or shops, and were considered dead lucky not to have gone into service in houses like our mothers had back in the old country, as they called it. We all married at nineteen. By the latest. It was just what you did.

   Just like everyone else here we had two children by the time we were twenty-one. We all went out to work automatically, none of the men we married could earn enough to run a household singlehanded. Nobody complained.

   We were much more English than Irish. We supported English football teams, Bob and I did. Once a year we took the train and the boat and then another train back to Rossmore. My first cousin Lilly was exactly the same age as I was. They were very poor in those days and she used to envy me what she called my smart clothes.

   Smart clothes! My mam dressed us from mail-order catalogs. They used to laugh at our English accents when we went back to Rossmore but we didn't mind. Our gran was very nice, she used to make Lilly and me go up to this well in the woods where they had a statue of St. Ann and pray that we get good husbands. It was even more important for me to pray hard, because of living in England, where I might meet someone outside the faith.

   And it must have worked, the holy well, because of course I met Bob, which was great, and Lilly met Aidan, which was also great. Back in those days we didn't have the money to go to each other's weddings, but we were both very happy and we wrote each other letters a lot about our lives.

   I was expecting Amy at about the same time as she was expecting her first baby, Teresa, so we had a lot of things to write about. Then the most terrible thing happened.

   I mean, it's like something that happens to other people, not anyone you'd know. Someone stole Teresa right out of the pram and she was never found and never ever brought back. The poor little dog was barking away and there were hundreds of people in the street but nobody saw anything.

   Nothing was ever the same after that. I mean, I couldn't keep talking to her and telling all about Amy after all she had been through. Then after Gran died we didn't go back to Ireland anymore. We lived a very happy life here in the north of England, and when John was born everything seemed complete.

   We did the Pools first every week, and then the Lottery, and we planned how to spend all that money when we won it. There would be a cruise of course first, then a villa on the Mediterranean and a big house on the posh side of town here; there would be a nice small house with a garden for our parents. As for the children! Well, all the plans we had for them!

   They were going to go to the most expensive schools, have music lessons, dancing classes, learn to ride ponies, to play tennis. They were going to have everything we never had. And more still!

   To be fair to us we did more than dream for our children, certainly Bob and I did. We knew that the big win just might not happen and we desperately wanted them to have more chances than we did. So we had a fund and every week we put aside a sum for them. Ever since they were born. And a nice little sum grew for Amy and John.

   I had read in a book that you should give children plain classic names if you wanted them to get on. The names that we liked might be dead giveaway, working-class names later on. So Amy and John they were. Two gorgeous children, but then everyone thinks that about their own.

   They got a brand-new bicycle each when the time came, not broken-down reconstructed ones. We took them to theme parks and on their birthdays they could ask friends round to the house and we got them burgers and a video. We got John a computer, which he kept in his room. I would love to have used it but John was a very knowledgeable fifteen-year-old and I didn't want to mess it up on him.

   We sent Amy to a very expensive secretarial college. The fund was stretched greatly for these two things because I worked on the checkout at a supermarket and Bob was a van driver and these are not jobs that pay hugely well. But in fact it was a great investment for the children.

   John turned out to be very gifted in technology and got a great job in what they call IT so it had been well worth getting him that computer at an early age. Amy's expensive secretarial course was a great investment as well, she got a very fancy job as a receptionist in a big company and then moved even further upwards to be somebody's personal assistant.

   Both of them in London! Imagine!

   They came to see us the odd time but of course they didn't bring their friends home anymore. They lived their own lives, independent, successful, that's what we had struggled so hard for. I mean, we knew they couldn't bring people back as a matter of course, not to our little terrace. And by the time Amy was twentyfour and John was twenty-three they were both living in flats with other young people, which was as it should be.

   A few of our friends asked Bob and myself what we were doing for our twenty-fifth, for our silver wedding. We said we didn't know because we knew the children must have planned something for us. They knew the date well, April 1, because we always used to celebrate it when they were young.

   April Fools' Day!

   Imagine, we made the biggest promise of our life on that day, wasn't that typical? we would laugh. We would get them a big ice cream cake, enough for everyone to have second helpings. Our friends in the street and Bob's sister and my cousin had all organized big silver wedding parties when it was their anniversaries. These had been great gatherings, where we played the records of songs that were popular back when we were married first.

   I wondered where John and Amy would choose.

   The family and friends already knew and I realized that they were only asking us about it to make the surprise even greater for us when it happened. Because we were so used to saving for the children's fund anyway, we had put a bit away and I got Bob a new dark gray suit and a smart white shirt, and myself a navy crepe dress and a matching handbag. Surely we would be smart enough for anything they could spring on us.

   The time was getting nearer and there was no hint about what they had planned. In fact Amy was keeping up the fiction in a big way, saying that she and Tim, that was the man she was personal assistant to, if you know what I mean, would be going to Paris that weekend. I pretended to take her seriously. Just as I pretended to think John was going deep-sea diving with some of the guys in his office, he told me that he had bought a new wet suit and all the gear.

   Two days before, I began to worry. Two couples we knew had asked us to have supper with them, one in an Indian restaurant, one in an Italian.

   They said the day should be marked. And when I said that it would be, I got a look I didn't like. I decided I had better clear it all up one way or another before Bob got too disappointed. He was trying his suit on every second day and admiring himself in the bedroom mirror. I rang Amy at work.

   "Oh, Mother," she said—she used to call me "Mam" but it was "Mother" now.

   "About your weekend," I said. "Are you really going away, love? I mean, this weekend?"

   She was on her high horse at once. "Now, Mother. Please. Up to now you never interfered, you always let me live my own life, don't tell me that now you've joined in the general hue and cry about Tim. His marriage is dead, Mother, there's nothing hole in the corner about our going to Paris. Please don't join in the general chorus against it all . . ."

   I told her that I hadn't intended to criticize her trip to Paris, I hadn't even known whether Tim was married or not. That wasn't why I was ringing, certainly not.

   "So why
were
you ringing then, Mother?" My daughter could be so sharp. So very hurtful.

   I blurted it out. "Because I wondered, had you forgotten our silver wedding on Saturday?" I said before I could stop myself.

   "Your
what
?"

   "Your dad and I will have been married for twenty-five years. We thought that maybe you and John were going to . . . well, had arranged something for us, like a party. It's just that the neighbors keep asking and you know . . ."

   I heard her catch her breath sharply. "Oh, Mother, yes. April Fools' Day. Oh, God, yes . . ." she said.

   And I knew then that she really had forgotten. And that John had forgotten. And that there would be no party.

   And it was Thursday, too late for us to invite anyone and make a celebration. Bob's heart would be broken, he had always found it harder than I did that his little girl didn't come home that much and see her parents these days. He had so looked forward to wearing his new suit and he was going to sing "You Make Me Feel So Young." He had speculated that they might have rented the room over The Yellow Bird pub because he had heard there was a function there on Saturday.

   I thought about Bob's sister, who was always inclined to be a bit critical of our children, and my bighearted cousin, and the marvelous parties they and their families had arranged. And I thought about my navy crepe dress and the matching handbag. About the years of sitting in a draft at the checkout at the supermarket to make more money for the fund. I thought about how the fund had paid for that good jacket when she was going to the interview for her first job, and how their friends had always been invited into this house to have birthday feasts for Amy and John. I thought about the long hours Bob had put in on the road when his eyes were red and tired and his shoulders stiff in order to get the bicycles and the radios and then the CD players. I thought about all those journeys to Legoland and the wildlife parks. I remembered the day trips across the Channel to France.

   And I felt for one dangerous moment as if I didn't care if I never talked to either Amy or John again.

   Then I pulled myself together sharply. What had it all been for, a quarter of a century of saving and working and holding a home together to give them more than we had ever known? It couldn't end in a petulant sulk like this. I had to get them out of this big failure on their part, reassure them that it didn't matter. I must speak quickly before Amy started to apologize.

   So I interrupted her just as she was assembling her speech. "You see, your dad and I are going away together for the weekend so we wanted to be sure that you hadn't made any other plans . . ."

   "Mother—I'm so sorry . . ." she was interrupting now. But I must not let her apologize.

   Everything would change if she did.

   "So, that's absolutely fine, then, and if you are sending flowers could you send them to your dad's sister for us, as we'll be away."

   Amy gulped. "Yes, of course, Mother."

   "And we'll keep the real celebration for the pearl."

   "The pearl?"

   "Well, that's what we always thought, your dad and I, the silver wasn't important for us. But what with my name being Pearl and everything, the big showy party would be on our pearl anniversary . . ." I beamed goodwill and anticipation down the phone.

   "Which is . . . um . . . ?" my daughter asked.

   "The thirtieth, of course," I said cheerfully. "Only another five years, so you and John had better get planning. We'll make that the party of all time."

   Her voice was full of gratitude. "Thank you, Mam," she said. Not "Mother," I noticed.

   Then I thought of where I would take Bob for the outing and booked us a weekend in Blackpool. Bob's sister would be impressed with the flowers. I knew the bouquet would be guiltily enormous. When all was said and done it was much better than allowing myself to wallow in self-pity.

   They didn't call me Brainbox Pearl at school for nothing.

In the office they used to call me Generous John.

   It had all to do with a silly tradition I established; it was just that every Friday I offered everyone a drink of fizzy wine and some smoked salmon on a biscuit at my desk. It started the weekend off well. People who had nowhere to go enjoyed it; those who were going somewhere always stopped by for a while and it was much better than getting smashed in a pub like a lot of other offices did. And for the cost of two or at the most three bottles of something not too pricey. For this and one packet of Marks & Spencer's smoked salmon, a few water biscuits and a chopped-up lemon I got the reputation of being one really generous guy.