Moving On

Anticipation

Anticipation

HER TEA HAS GONE COLD. SHE WONDERS HOW MANY cups she’s wasted over the years, made and then forgotten as she’s tapped the keys of her laptop or sat lost in thought, trying to puzzle her way through a roadblock in a plot while tea has cooled in a cup.

Today she’s not typing or sitting; she’s standing in the littlest bedroom that became her writing room after the girls moved out, and she’s preparing to pack up the contents of her bureau, a task she’s left till last. She found the bureau in a charity shop over twenty years ago, and its drawers and cubbyholes harbour many memories.

Packing again, moving house for what she hopes – no, she knows – will be the last time. Tomorrow she will leave the home she loved best, of all the places she’s lived, and today she’s lost in the past, and her tea cools.

She sets the cup back on the windowsill and makes a start. From one of the little nooks in the top of the bureau she takes a notebook, its cover dark green with a flowery print. She traces the inscription on the flyleaf, its ink faded with age. They were children, two children playing at love.

In the pocket inside the notebook’s back cover are letters written in different hands, all precious, all folded and stored there over the years. She unfolds them carefully and rereads them now, tears brimming as the words conjure long-ago emotions.

In the same pocket is a newspaper clipping of the Irish fiction bestseller list from almost twenty years ago, her first book sitting at number ten. Seeing it listed there prompts a stir of the old excitement. Its publication had been the beginning of something, when she’d thought herself too old for any more beginnings. So much still ahead, and she’d had no idea.

In a week she’ll be fifty-nine. At twenty she’d considered herself so grown-up. She shakes her head, smiling. How little the young know, and how wise they fancy themselves to be.

She returns the clipping and the letters to their pocket. She closes the notebook and places it into a waiting box. In the next nook is a cork, which she lifts out and sniffs. Keep the cork , she hears Alf saying, and she did keep it. Her first-ever champagne, popped open to mark a bittersweet day, years before any of the books. She adds it to the box.

In a small drawer she finds a page from a magazine that she meant to frame and never got around to. Her first-ever press ad, for a yogurt aimed at weaning babies. She remembers buying extra copies of the magazine, sending the page to Danny and Frances and Joan and her mother.

An hour or so later, as she’s closing the last box, her phone rings. She pulls it from her pocket and sees Juliet’s name.

‘Hello, darling.’

‘Mum – we’re just leaving now, see you soon.’

‘Wonderful. Drive carefully.’

‘I will. Any word from Grace?’

‘Not yet.’

Her last phone conversation with Grace had turned into a row. At twenty-seven, Ellen’s younger daughter could still be volatile – and when she told her mother that Tom wanted to take a year out to travel the world, Ellen made the mistake of saying that it sounded like a good idea.

‘A good idea? Really? It’s fine for Tom – he can take leave of absence. What am I supposed to do with my clinic, pack it up until we come back?’

Ellen should have backed off and left it at that, but she didn’t. ‘Maybe you could get someone to stand in.’

Another mistake. ‘Right – like vets are floating around just waiting for a job offer! Have you forgotten when I tried to find someone to go into partnership with when I was starting up? You haven’t a clue!’

And on she went, taking her frustration out on her mother, like so often before. Since then there’s been no response to any of Ellen’s voice messages – were they even listened to? Will Grace show up this evening?

After saying goodbye to Juliet, Ellen brings the boxes downstairs and stacks them with the others in the hall, and then she push-pulls the empty bureau out to the landing. A lot of the furniture has already been moved; the rest will be transported tomorrow. Now the house feels hollow when she walks through its rooms.

She enters the bedroom that used to be her aunt’s and looks down at the back garden. She remembers her first sight of it in 1981, and Frances on her knees, digging weeds out of the rockery. How strange it will be to see a different garden when she pulls apart other curtains every morning.

She’s just out of the shower when her phone rings again. She looks at the name and smiles.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey yourself. How are things?’

‘Great. I emptied the bureau.’

‘Finally. Don’t dream of trying to move it.’

‘I just pulled it out to the landing.’

She hears his long sigh. ‘I can’t turn my back for an instant.’

‘I’m fifty-eight, not ninety-eight. I’ll have you know I’m still young enough to move furniture.’ But she’s laughing. Every day he makes her laugh.

‘Just don’t come crying to me when you slip a disc. You all set for this evening?’

‘Why? Is something happening?’

‘Very funny. You’re hilarious. When can we expect you?’

‘About half an hour.’

‘Love you,’ he says.

‘Love you more. See you soon.’

Her heart is too full for all the happiness. It spills over; it fills all the spaces in the hollow house. Tomorrow they are moving into the cottage closer to the sea that they came across six months ago and instantly, jointly, loved. They are going to live there for the rest of their lives, and they are going to be monumentally happy. Abundantly happy. Stupidly happy.

She dries her hair and pins it up with the big tortoiseshell slide Juliet had taken off and given her, one time Ellen admired it. She dusts powder on her face and adds lipstick, and gets into the black dress Juliet had insisted she splash out on. As she slides her feet into red shoes she hears Claire saying At least one pair of red shoes should feature in every woman’s wardrobe . Claire, who knew it all, or thought she did.

In the kitchen Ellen checks that she switched off the cooker before phoning a taxi. As she hangs up, her eye is caught by the cardboard box on the worktop. She looks at the books inside; twelve copies, all the same. She lifts one out and runs a hand over the cover. Her happiest book yet, every word flooded with love.

Ten minutes later, a car horn sounds outside. She pulls on her coat and leaves the house.