Authors: Marita Conlon-McKenna
‘You don’t start till the nineteenth of January, so I’m sure you’ll have somebody signed up by then,’ assured Joy as they walked the beach.
‘Joy, I can’t believe that I’ve actually got through a second Christmas and almost a second New Year without Liam,’ Alice said. ‘This time last year everything was so fecking awful, and I was so scared about everything, thinking: how could I possibly face anything without him? I was so depressed. Some days I wished Liam had died. Being a widow must be easier than just getting dumped. It drives me crazy to think of Liam not only living about three miles away from me with bloody Elaine, but the two of them in bed, or watching TV, having breakfast or shopping; his life just going on.’
‘That will pass,’ Joy promised, ‘honestly it will. Eventually you genuinely start to forget about him. And he’ll mean less and less to you.’
‘I hope so!’
‘The New Year after Malcolm and I separated Beth went to stay with him in London for a few days. It was awful. I was on my own. I came down here and sat and moped and felt really miserable. I got utterly pissed … drinking on your own is never a good idea, and I remember this desperate urge I had to stop everything that was going on … I wanted to swim. The beach was deserted.’
‘Joy?’
‘I know … I swam out and it was bloody freezing … I went out as far as I could up to my neck … I just wanted the pain of it all to end … I was up to my neck with water … I could taste the salt water in my mouth and nose and my throat, and then suddenly I thought of Beth … Beth having to live in England with Malcolm and Linda. And of my mum, and my sister and brother and their families, and I bloody well got sense and turned around. I remember a wave
catching me and throwing me off my feet, and thinking … I’m going to drown! And panicking, and frantically trying to get my breath back and stand and save myself. Somehow I managed to wade in. I was so cold, I thought I’d die of hypothermia. Somehow I must have crawled back up to the house, and I was crying and blubbing and so happy that I was OK. I remember stripping off and wrapping myself in the duvet and sitting in front of the fire, and even though I was alone, thinking: this is the best New Year ever … I can begin again.’
‘I’d no idea,’ Alice said, stopping in her tracks and hugging Joy. ‘Absolutely no idea.’
‘I suppose I didn’t want to talk about it. I remember I almost got pneumonia out of it. I told everyone I’d got the flu. And you all fussed about me, and my sister Maria insisted on coming to stay and minding me till I felt better.’
‘Promise me, no more crazy swims!’ said Alice, a shiver going through her as she took in the strength of the waves and the isolation of the beach on a cold winter’s day.
‘Alice, I love life too much … every day is special … and I know it. Now, come on, let’s head back and heat up some soup … I’m flipping freezing and my toes are going numb.’
‘
The Sound of Music
is on TV this afternoon.’
‘Well, we can’t miss that!’
On New Year’s Eve they debated walking to the local pub for a few drinks and some pub grub, but instead opted for staying in and feasting on Joy’s legendary spicy chicken curry with all the trimmings.
‘Alice, go and check … I’m sure there’s a packet of poppadums in the cupboard, and some chutney in the back
of the fridge from Halloween! Let’s hope that they’ve not gone out of date!’
‘Two weeks to go, so we’re fine.’ Alice beamed as she set the table and tried not to interfere with what Joy was doing.
‘Wow, that’s hot,’ she declared thirty minutes later when they sat down to eat, two candles setting their shadows dancing on the wall, the sound of the sea outside in the darkness. Thank heaven for the chilled beer they’d bought in the local off-licence. The curry was hot … really hot … Joy had been a bit heavy-handed with the chillies and curry spices, but it was good.
‘That’s the way I like it,’ Joy insisted, wiping her eyes on her tea towel as she filled two huge glasses with iced water for them.
Afterwards they curled up on the two armchairs with a bottle of wine, happy in each other’s company, while Lexy snored softly on the floor.
‘Did I tell you Malcolm is getting married again?’
Alice didn’t know what to say. Joy rarely mentioned her ex.
‘Apparently he’s dumped the lovely Linda and his two boys, and is now madly in love with a Russian girl called Sylvia. Poor eejit to get involved with the likes of him!’
‘I’m sorry, Joy.’
‘Don’t be! Malcolm’s ancient history! As far as I’m concerned the only good things Malcolm ever did were to father Beth, and, I suppose, agree to buy this place.’
‘It’s a great house,’ said Alice, raising her glass.
‘I fell in love with it the minute I saw it, even though it was pretty trashed, with peeling paint and broken windows. And it was a horrible yellow-beige colour with high windows and a disgusting bathroom and grey concrete patio. Malcolm
kept saying he wasn’t sure we needed a holiday house, but I talked him into it, insisting it was a bargain, and would be a great place for the summer and weekends, as it was only an hour and a half from Dublin. I suppose I imagined long hot sunny days here on the beach with my husband and a few kids around, my own mini-Kennedy compound.’
‘You were lucky to find it!’ laughed Alice.
‘OK, I didn’t exactly get the rounders team on the lawn and the happy family set-up, but it’s always been such a special place to me. I guess that’s why I dug my heels in and refused to let Malcolm sell this place when we split up. It was bad enough having to give up that lovely old house in Ranelagh and downsizing to Shankill with Beth.’
‘You’ve a nice house,’ soothed Alice.
‘I know, it’s fine, but having this place to escape to is my sanity saver. OK, I need to rent it out during the holiday season to pay the mortgage, but the rest of the year it’s mine, my retreat from the big bad world and what is going on there.’
‘And mine, too,’ agreed Alice.
‘You know you can always come down here if you want to get away, Alice … just hop in the car and drive here if things get too much for you. I’m serious.’
‘Hey, it’s getting late!’ warned Alice, noticing the clock. ‘We’re coming up to twelve.’
‘I’ll open another bottle of wine. We’re not going to sit here with empty glasses ringing in the New Year.’
‘Looks like someone is having a party in the big bungalow further down the beach.’
‘That’s the Reynolds. I saw some of the kids earlier today around the place. They always have great parties.’
‘Hey, they’ve got fireworks.’
Alice and Joy went outside to watch as the fireworks banged and lit up the darkness, rockets and Catherine wheels and giant snakes of vivid colour flashing and whizzing across the sky. They hugged each other when the local church bell rang out midnight and some of the ships at sea began to sound their horns.
‘Happy New Year!’ said Joy. ‘Here’s to us!’
‘Happy New Year!’
Alice texted all her family, wishing them good things for the year ahead, and Beth managed to sneak a phone call to Joy, while the ward sister was busy with a patient.
‘Poor Beth, the hospital casualty is already full of drunks!’ Joy laughed.
‘She’s a wonderful nurse, so like you, and good with people.’
‘But with a strong stomach. You know me. I faint at the sight of blood, whereas Beth is always cool and calm in a crisis. I suppose she gets it from Malcolm!’ Joy paused, noticing Alice was reading a text. ‘So what’s Liam doing for the New Year?’
‘The kids say he and Elaine have gone skiing to Austria.’
‘I thought he had no money?’
‘I don’t know.’ Alice shrugged. To be honest she didn’t really care too much what Liam did any more.
As the fireworks died down they went back inside.
‘Resolutions?’ quizzed Joy. ‘Have you got any?’
‘Well, obviously I really want to make a success out of my little cookery school, perhaps even grow it!’ Alice admitted. ‘The other thing is to try not to bad-mouth Liam in front of the kids. What about you?’
‘I’m certainly not giving up bad-mouthing Malcolm, because he so deserves it! No, my New Year’s resolution is to try to be kinder to everyone and to slow down and listen before I jump in to talk.’
‘What about Fergus?’ pressed Alice.
‘Well, I suppose I need to give him a chance. He gets on great with Beth, which is the important thing, and it’s nice to have someone in my life again …’ Joy raised her glass. ‘Enough about me. Here’s to you and your cookery school,’ she toasted.
‘And here’s to us!’
‘Are you going to be OK, Mum?’ Tessa asked, fussing around Florence Sullivan upstairs in the bedroom before she left. ‘I won’t be too long at my cookery class, and if you need me my phone will be on.’
‘Honestly, Tessa, will you stop all the worrying and go and leave me in peace? I want to watch
EastEnders
, and then that new detective programme on BBC. I’m quite capable of being left on my own at night, you know!’
‘I know,’ Tessa apologized, giving her elderly mother a hug while secretly checking that the portable phone was beside her bed, and that her personal alarm was on, and that she had a drink nearby, and that there was nothing that she could fall over underfoot.
Outside, as she pulled on her jacket and grabbed her car keys, Tessa Sullivan asked herself how she had become such a fusspot, constantly worried about her mother and what might happen to her! It had been two years since her mother Florence had suffered a heart attack and fallen down the stairs here at home. She’d given them all such a fright, and Tessa could remember racing through Heathrow Airport’s
Terminal 1 with tears racing down her face as she tried to catch the last Aer Lingus flight back to Dublin from London that night. Her brother Donal had come back from San Francisco, and her sister Marianne had arrived from Hong Kong.
For a week the three of them had sat beside their mother’s bedside wondering if Florence could possibly survive such a massive heart attack. But their eighty-year-old mother was made of strong stuff, and a week later was sitting up in her hospital bed sipping a mug of tea, thrilled to see her three children together for once and back in their home town. She’d given them all a right fright, but the doctors and nursing staff made it quite clear that the next time she might not be so lucky, and that in their opinion Florence would no longer be able to live on her own.
It had come as a shock to them all, as up to now their mother had stubbornly defended her independence. They all knew that it was difficult for her, being a widow and having all her children living overseas, but she had become an intrepid traveller and loved visiting them: spending a few weeks in the US with Donal and his boys, or with Marianne and her young family in their luxurious home in Hong Kong. She loved her regular trips to London, too, and she and Tessa had travelled all over England: from the Lake District to the beautiful Regency town of Bath, from Cornwall to the home town of the Beatles in Liverpool. Florence Sullivan was interested not just in the places around her, but also the people. Now Florence faced two choices: she could go into an old people’s home, or one of the family would have to return home to care for her. Confining their mother to an old people’s home, they all decided, was not an option.
*
They had argued and reasoned and weighed up the implications for all of them. Donal had only just been made a professor lecturing in bio-chemistry at Stanford University in California. He couldn’t just go and throw up such a position, as it would be impossible for him to get a similar one back home. Also, since his divorce from Leigh Anne, if he wanted regular access to his two sons he needed to be in the US where he could see them regularly.
Marianne’s husband had a big job working for Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong. They had a great house and lifestyle, and with a thirteen-year-old, a ten-year-old and an eight-year-old there was no question of Marianne being the one that could come home. So it had fallen on Tessa to volunteer to give up her job as a human resources manager at Bridgetown & Murrow and return to Dublin.
In her late thirties, Tessa was still single and childless and not even in a relationship, so it made utter sense as far as everyone was concerned that she throw her life up in the air and return to Dublin. She had sublet her pretty garden flat in Notting Hill Gate, and loaded up her cream and black Mini Clubman, and taken the car ferry back to Dublin to mind and care for their mother. With no dependants, the onus was on her to be the one to do the decent thing and put her own career and life on the back boiler. That had been almost two years ago, and somehow she had fallen into a dull pattern of routine and caring. She had managed to find a part-time job three mornings a week in a small recruitment company off Baggot Street. Two of those mornings Lilly, their Moldovian home help, came in to do a bit of cleaning and to care for
Florence, while on Wednesdays Florence went to the local community centre’s over-seventies club, where there were activities organized and the old people got a three-course lunch. Minding her mother involved a fair bit of juggling but, with kind-hearted Lilly’s help and willingness to do a few extra hours the odd evening, Tessa somehow managed it.
She loved her mother – but she had sacrificed so much of her career and her freedom and financial independence by moving back to Ireland. She had tried to reconnect with many of her old friends from when she was younger, but most of them were married and busy with families of their own. She knew they pitied her. Some days she ached with regret for all the lost and wasted opportunities.
‘Mum, I won’t be long,’ she called, closing out the hall door.
It was raining slightly, and she put on the windscreen wipers as she reversed the car out of the driveway. She was rather nervous about tonight, and didn’t know why she had signed up for cookery lessons. It was hardly as if she was entertaining madly while living back home in the four-bedroom 1950s home in Mount Merrion where she grew up. Still, cookery had always interested her, and being able to produce good food with a bit of a twist was a skill she would really like to learn.