Arrival
Arrival
THERE WAS NOBODY TO MEET HER IN GALWAY. HER mother had said Frances would collect her, but her aunt was nowhere to be seen. Ellen hadn’t set eyes on her since Granddad’s funeral six or seven years ago, and only intermittently before that. She thought she’d recognise her, just about, but there was no sign of anyone who looked remotely like her.
After hanging around for fifteen minutes she found the address she’d tucked into her jeans pocket, just in case, and showed it to a ticket clerk, a tired-looking woman with colourless hair and holes in her ears but no earrings. She glanced at the address and shook her head.
‘Ask Paddy,’ she said, indicating a stocky uniformed man by the door. He took glasses from his pocket and peered at the paper. ‘That’s right across the city,’ he told Ellen. ‘Too far to walk with luggage. You can pick up a bus at Eyre Square: show the address to the driver.’
Forty minutes later she stood outside her aunt’s house. Number 9 was a semi-detached in a row of identical others, or nearly identical. Different colours on the doors, windows curtained or left bare, but basically the same house repeated, two-storey with red brick below, pebbledash above. Twenty or so houses in total, the end ones curving in towards each other to form a cul-de-sac.
A few skinny boys kicked a ball about on the road, ignoring Ellen. Two women stood talking over a low straggling hedge a few doors up from number 9, one with arms folded, the other dragging on a cigarette. They’d broken off their conversation to stare at Ellen as she’d trudged past, and now she could sense them behind her, still watching.
She studied the house. They’d come back here after her grandfather’s funeral, but she didn’t remember it. Its front door and window frames were dark green. Two metal gates, a narrow cement path leading from the smaller one to the front door, a rectangle of neatly mown lawn to one side of it, gravel to the other. A blue Volkswagen Beetle was parked on the gravel, its body scratched and dented in several places, some of the dents rusting.
She pushed open the gate and walked up the path to the front door. There was no doorbell or knocker so she rattled the brass letter-box. Up close, the green paint was flaking.
No response. She tried again, and still nobody came. She took the address from her pocket – yes, number 9, and the road’s name displayed on the first garden wall she’d passed. It was the right house, but nobody appeared to be home.
Or had her aunt changed her mind, decided not to put Ellen up after all? Was she inside right now, waiting quietly until her niece went away? But where could she go? She knew nobody else in the city, not a soul. She stifled a flutter of alarm. She set her rucksack on the doorstep and crossed to the side passage. She saw a metal dustbin, a big black bicycle attached by a chain to a drainpipe, and a huddle of coal bags.
She stood uncertainly, biting a nail until she remembered she was trying to stop, and whipped it from her mouth. She didn’t want to go around to the back in case her aunt was hiding from her there, but what choice did she have? She took a deep breath and walked down the passage and rounded the corner.
And stopped dead.
The garden was magnificent. Filled with colour, even this late in the year, a riotous mix of flowerbeds and rockeries and shrubs, with a crazy-paving path taking a winding course through it. A shed on one side, its door ajar, was completely covered in some vigorous climbing plant.
A strip of concrete ran along behind the house, three-foot wide or so. It held a wooden seat, silvered with age, on which a pair of fur-trimmed slippers sat. Birds darted at a feeder suspended from an overhanging branch of a neighbouring tree.
It was a haven, rich in fluttering and buzzing, and heady with scent. In such a busy space it took her a minute to spot the figure in a wide-brimmed sunhat kneeling by one of the rockeries, her back to Ellen. The ridged soles of wellingtons showed beneath a substantial backside. Brown corduroy trousers, a checked shirt tucked in. Ellen heard the small clank of metal against rock.
‘Aunt Frances?’
The head swung around to reveal a face, weatherbeaten and beakish. ‘Yes?’ The word barked out, and accompanied by an expression of deep suspicion.
‘I’m . . . Ellen. I’m . . . coming to stay with you.’
The suspicion was replaced by outrage. ‘Today? You were to come tomorrow! Your mother clearly said Monday!’
‘Oh . . . I’m sorry. There must have been a mix-up. My job is starting tomorrow.’
The frown didn’t budge. ‘How did you get from the station?’
‘I . . . took a bus.’
Her aunt tutted, looking even more put out. ‘Why didn’t you ring me?’
Ellen felt under attack. Everything sounded like an accusation, when she had done nothing wrong. ‘Sorry – I didn’t have your number, just your address.’
More tutting. ‘Your mother has my number – why didn’t she give it to you?’
‘. . . I don’t know.’ Because you were supposed to pick me up , she shouted in her head.
‘Where’s your luggage? You must have luggage!’
‘I left it by the front door.’
‘Well, go and get it, for goodness’ sake!’
Ellen scuttled away. At least it looked like she had a roof over her head – but how on earth was she to get on with this snapping creature? Would she have to spend all her time out of the house, just to avoid her? Thank God it wasn’t going to be for long.
When she returned, her aunt was heaving herself laboriously to her feet. ‘Can I help?’ Ellen asked, stepping forward – but she was flapped away impatiently: ‘I can manage!’
Once upright, her aunt walked in a swaying, waddling way to the garden seat and lowered herself onto it, pulling off the hat to reveal yellow hair that sprang from her head in peculiar little tufts – had it always been that colour? ‘I have arthritis in the hips,’ she pronounced, somehow making that sound like Ellen’s fault too. ‘I refuse to let it stop me doing what I want.’
She was short, with pouched watery blue eyes, and a pointed nose that looked like it had strayed there from a larger face, and a small pale mouth. Apart from a broad midsection, her figure was neat.
She didn’t resemble Ellen’s mother in the least. Not one common feature could Ellen see, except for a shared eye colour, although her aunt’s were a paler blue. They even dressed differently; Ellen had never once seen her mother in trousers.
There was twelve years between them, which would make Frances sixty-eight now. There were two brothers younger than the girls who’d emigrated to Australia years earlier and never returned home.
Her aunt shucked off her wellingtons and wriggled a foot into one of the waiting slippers. A smudge of earth sat on her left cheek. ‘When did you eat?’ she asked.
Ellen thought of the apple on the bus. ‘Er, I had lunch.’
‘What time ?’
‘. . . Around two o’clock.’
‘Dinner is at half six. You’ll have to wait till then.’
‘I can go out and eat if you like. Seeing as how you weren’t expecting me, I mean.’ She was starving, and half six was ages away. She could get fish and chips somewhere.
Her aunt pushed on the second slipper. ‘No need for that. I roast a full chicken on Sundays so I have leftovers for other dishes. There’ll be plenty for you.’ She threw Ellen another sharp look. ‘I hope you’re not a fussy eater. I can’t abide fussy eaters.’
‘No.’ Not that she’d dare admit it if she was.
‘You can empty those weeds into the bin at the end of the garden,’ her aunt said, pointing to a blue basin by the rockery, ‘and then put the things back into the shed, and follow me in.’ Without waiting for a response she levered herself off the seat and disappeared into the house, wellingtons standing where she’d left them.
The kitchen was small and painted apple green. A chipped white sink under the window, a cooker in a corner, a tall slim cupboard, a square table against a wall with a single chair tucked under it. A yellow Formica counter ran along the opposite wall, a fridge and a twin-tub washing machine beneath, along with open shelving on which crockery and pots and pans were stacked.
The table was draped in dark blue oilcloth. A newspaper was folded open at a crossword. A calendar with a picture of a mountain hung crookedly from a nail, still showing August.
Her aunt was chopping an onion at an alarming rate. A frying pan waited on the cooker, a wedge of yellow fat pooling on it. ‘You might as well go up and unpack,’ she told Ellen. ‘Your room is next to the bathroom.’
Ellen hauled the rucksack up a narrow staircase with a brown strip of carpet running along its centre. She stood on the landing and located the bathroom, and opened the door beside it.
The walls were papered in grey, with twining green vines and purple grapes. One strip of paper had peeled away from the top and dangled above the window. There was a single bed with no headboard, a small heap of blankets and a flat pillow sitting on the bare mattress. A large wardrobe, ludicrously big for the room, was crammed between the foot of the bed and the window. A kitchen chair, the partner of the one downstairs, was the only other furniture. The floor was wooden, with a thin blue mat by the bed.
There was nothing else. No locker, no reading lamp, no mirror, no dressing table or chest of drawers. The ceiling bulb had no shade; the window was uncurtained. Ellen lifted the bedclothes and found a tan stain in the centre of the mattress. She opened the wardrobe – the door stuck until she tugged sharply – and a musty smell rushed out. Three wire hangers hung from a rail, a single black sock dangling from one of them.
She sat on the edge of the bed and thought of the bedroom she’d been so delighted to leave, with its bookshelves and matching wardrobe and dressing table, and its armchair and frilled bed linen. This one was definitely a step down, but it would have to do until Claire came.
The bathroom next door wasn’t much better. A large cast-iron bath had a damp towel slung over the side and a short rubber hose attached to its taps. Two pairs of enormous grey knickers hung from a makeshift clothesline above the bath. A bar of cracked soap sat in a small puddle by the sink taps. A faint but definite smell of urine hung in the room. Ellen did what she had to do and hurried out, shaking her hands dry.
Back in the little bedroom she propped her toilet bag on the windowsill and stacked her books beside it. She dropped her rucksack on the floor by the wardrobe – did she dare to ask for more hangers?
She turned her attention to the bed. She threw off the bedding and heaved at the mattress until she managed to turn it over. No stain on this side, at least. She went out to the landing and located the hot press and rummaged among a jumble of linens until she found single sheets and a pillowcase. The blankets were threadbare: just as well she’d be moved out long before winter.
But in the meantime she had to eat – and a savoury smell was drifting up the stairs now and making her mouth water. She made the bed and lay on it and read until her watch said twenty-five past six, and then she ran a comb through her hair and went downstairs.
‘I was just going to call you,’ her aunt said, carving chicken. ‘Fill that jug with water and take out the butter.’
The table had been set with mismatched crockery, and another chair had joined the first. Ellen did as she was told while her aunt lifted plates from the rack above the cooker with a tea towel. ‘I assume you can cook,’ she said.
Ellen’s heart sank. Another reason for a scolding. ‘I’ve never really had the chance. I mean, Mam does the cooking.’ She could hear how pathetic it sounded. Twenty years old, and her mother still making her dinner.
Her aunt regarded her grimly. ‘Every girl should know how to cook. I’ll teach you while you’re here,’ and Ellen’s gloom deepened, imagining orders being rapped out while she scurried about, scalding herself and burning everything else from sheer nervousness.
But her aunt knew how to cook, no denying it. The chicken was wonderfully tender and succulent, its stuffing flavoured with something tantalising Ellen couldn’t identify. Cauliflower was cloaked in a rich cheese sauce; potatoes were golden and crunchy outside, fluffy within. At least she’d eat well while she was here – although losing weight might be difficult until she and Claire had their own place.
‘It’s delicious,’ she said.
‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ her aunt responded, but without the sharpness that had accompanied every other remark. Ellen gave up and ate hungrily, wondering if she dared ask for a lamp for her room.
‘More chicken?’ her aunt asked eventually. ‘Another potato? More carrots?’ and to every enquiry Ellen said yes please.
She waited until they’d both finished eating before venturing her request. ‘Aunt Frances, I wonder if – would there be a lamp anywhere I could take for my room?’
Her aunt stared at her. ‘A lamp? There’s one on the locker. Didn’t you see it?’
What locker? Could her aunt’s mind have started wandering? She’d already got Ellen’s arrival day wrong, and now she seemed to be imagining bedroom furniture where none existed. ‘I didn’t see a locker, just the bed, and a big wardrobe, and a chair.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake – that’s the wrong room!’
It was Ellen’s turn to stare. ‘You said beside the bathroom.’
‘The other side! I meant the other side!’
Ellen felt a sudden flare of anger. ‘Well, I wasn’t to know that,’ she said, as forcefully as she dared. ‘I’m not a mind-reader.’
Dead silence followed. She’d overstepped. She decided she had nothing more to lose. ‘Aunt Frances, I’m sorry. I’m grateful for your offer to keep me, but since I arrived I’ve been feeling that maybe you don’t really want me here, so I can tell you that it won’t be for long. A friend is moving to Galway soon, in the next few weeks, and we’re going to find a flat together. If it’s OK, I’ll stay here until then, but I’ll try to keep out of your way as much as I can.’
More silence followed. They regarded each other across the small table, and then her aunt gave a long sigh.
‘Listen,’ she said wearily, ‘I’m sharp. It’s my way. It comes out like I’m cross, but the only person I’m cross with right now is me. It’s clear I made a mess of things. Your mother wouldn’t have got the day wrong, so I was the one who muddled it, and you had to find your way through a city you don’t know. I’m very cross about that, and I’m sorry that you felt I was annoyed with you. And then I sent you up to the wrong room, and that was my fault too for not making it clear.’
‘Well, maybe I should have—’
‘But the thing about me,’ her aunt went on, as if Ellen hadn’t spoken, ‘is I always speak the truth, and I’ll own up if I make a mistake. I have no problem with you staying here – it makes perfect sense when I have the room. I expect you to help out a bit in the house, clean up after yourself and that, and I would be happy to teach you to cook, if you’re willing to learn – but you’re young, and you’re out on your own for the first time, so you need to make the most of that too.
‘Now,’ she went on, pointing her fork at Ellen, ‘I’m not your mother, so I won’t be watching out for you. I’ll give you a key and you can come and go as you please, as long as you show up in time for dinner when you’re eating here and you don’t wake me if I’m in bed when you get home. And if you get yourself into trouble – I think you know the trouble I mean – you needn’t come crying to me. Is that all understood?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Now, have you anything to say, anything to ask me?’
Ellen searched for something, and found it. ‘Your garden is beautiful. I’d really like to help out there, if you let me.’
There was a further small softening in her aunt’s face. ‘I would like that very much.’ She set down her fork and put her hand out. ‘Will we start again?’
Ellen, feeling slightly ridiculous, shook the offered hand – and the gesture, foolish as it seemed, brought a kind of change into the room. It felt like a settling, and the beginning of an understanding. Her aunt had opened her home to a niece she scarcely knew. Maybe she’d felt obliged, but she’d still taken Ellen in.
‘Welcome to Galway,’ she said now to Ellen. ‘I hope you’ll enjoy your time here.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And call me Frances – Aunt Frances makes me feel like a dowager in pearls.’
Ellen had to suppress a smile. Her aunt, still wearing her gardening clothes, a trace of earth faintly visible yet on her cheek, was as far from a dowager, pearls or no pearls, as it was possible to be.
Afterwards they washed up together, listening to the radio. ‘Those men sound like girls,’ Frances complained when the Bee Gees came on, and Ellen told her that her friend called them cats in a sack, and this prompted a sudden bark of laughter from her aunt, and more tension disappeared.
When the kitchen was tidy Frances brought her up to the bedroom that was bigger and brighter and altogether more inviting than the other. The bed, a double, was already made, and swaddled in a thick eiderdown. There was a wardrobe with lots of hangers, and a chest of drawers, and a small armchair in the corner.
And sitting on a bedside locker, along with a lamp, was a transistor radio. ‘Is that for me?’ Ellen asked.
‘If you want it. It’s old, but it still works.’
‘I’d love it.’ She could listen to Radio Luxembourg every night.
‘And the other room is there if any friend wants to come for a night.’
‘Thank you.’ It wouldn’t be needed, not once she and Claire were sorted.
‘I leave the house at half seven in the morning,’ Frances said, ‘so make your own breakfast, and tidy the kitchen after you.’
‘I will.’ She wondered what work her aunt did: she had no recollection of her mother mentioning it. That enquiry could wait for another day. Instead, she named the street the bookshop was on. ‘How long should it take me to walk there in the morning?’
‘Half an hour if you don’t dawdle. I’ll say goodnight then. Good luck with the new job – I hope it’s to your liking.’
‘Thank you.’
Left alone, Ellen opened her rucksack – and sitting on top was the package her mother had given her that morning, which Ellen had completely forgotten about. To wish you well with the job , her mother had said. Ellen pulled off the wrapping – and found, to her amazement, a Sony Walkman.
They’d cost a whopping two hundred pounds when they’d come out two years earlier, and she didn’t imagine they’d got much cheaper in the meantime. She thought of the scrimping and saving it must have required for her mother to afford it.
She took the Walkman and its accompanying earphones from the box. She pressed buttons and opened the compartment to hold a cassette tape. She turned it over, this magical thing that allowed you to listen to your music wherever you went. Pretty much the best gift she could have been given – and it had come from her mother, of all people.
She thought of how things had been between them since the worst thing had happened, how she’d quietly shut her mother out, and how her mother had never challenged her on it. So much left unsaid, so much piled-up hurt and anger.
Leaving her this morning, it had been all Ellen could do to give her the briefest of hugs – and now here was this unexpected extravagance. What was she to make of it? How was she to respond?
She set the Walkman on the locker. She would get batteries for it tomorrow. She’d ask her sister Joan to find someone travelling to Galway and give them Ellen’s box of tapes to bring along.
She would send a thank-you card to her mother. She couldn’t move beyond that, couldn’t consider the possibility of forgiveness. Not yet. Maybe never.
She switched on the transistor Frances had given her, careful to keep it low. She listened to Debbie Harry singing about a heart of glass. The reception was tinny, but she didn’t care.
She unpacked, stowing her clothes in the wardrobe, arranging her shoes under the window. She shook the creases from the shirt and skirt she’d decided on for her first day of work and draped them over the wardrobe door.
The thought of the following day brought a return of her earlier excitement. She was here, she had arrived – and after a shaky start, she felt she could cope with living with Frances.
She was ready for whatever Galway had in store for her.