Moving On

Friends

Friends

ON HER WAY HOME FROM WORK THE NEXT DAY SHE called Claire from a phone box, reluctant to ask Frances if she could use her phone. Not yet, not till they were better acquainted.

‘How’s the job?’ Claire asked.

‘Great. I love it.’

‘How’s the weird boss man?’

‘He’s lovely. He’s our age, and not a bit weird.’

‘Well, that’s a relief. Good-looking?’

She considered. ‘Not drop-dead gorgeous, but not bad.’

‘Fancy him?’

She laughed. ‘Claire Sullivan, you have a one-track mind. I’m too busy settling in to fancy anyone yet. But guess what – I ran into my old best friend.’ She described her encounter with Danny and their arrangement to meet for drinks during the week.

‘Forget your boss,’ Claire said. ‘This is much more promising.’

‘Not Danny – he’s like a brother. Anyway, he might well have a girlfriend.’

‘So what? All’s fair in love and war.’

‘No, I wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t either.’

‘Course I wouldn’t. What’s your aunt like?’

‘She’s fine. I’ve told her it’s just temporary, until you come up.’

‘I miss you.’

‘Me too. Danny is keeping an eye out for a flat for us.’

After dinner she worked for an hour in the garden with her aunt, digging bindweed from the herb patch while Frances talked.

‘I’m the housekeeper in a family-owned country house hotel three miles out. Mornings only, Monday to Friday. I’ve never worked anywhere else – I started there as a chambermaid when I left school, and after that I was in the kitchen for years.’

‘You were the cook?’

‘Eventually. I worked my way up.’

‘That must have been interesting.’

‘It was demanding, and interesting too. I was on my feet all day, from breakfast to dinner, but I met some lovely people.’ She shook earth from a weed root and dropped it into her basin. ‘ There was a man from Ghana working in the kitchen with me for a few years, Isaac his name was. He had a heart of gold, and so diligent.’

‘How did he come to be living in Ireland?’

‘His mother was an Irish missionary. When his father died she brought Isaac back here.’ She chased a strand of bindweed and eased up the root. ‘Anyway, when I turned sixty I decided I’d had enough and I asked if they could give me something part-time, so they made me housekeeper. I’m happy enough with it. It gives me more time in the garden.’

She stopped then and sat back on her heels. ‘How are you getting on,’ she asked, ‘since your father left?’

Ellen teased bindweed from around a herb whose name she’d been told but had forgotten. ‘We’re managing,’ she said, hoping Frances would leave it at that, but she didn’t.

‘Your mother is doing the best she can.’

The sisters must have talked about it in their weekly phone calls. Ellen’s mother must have told her sister of Ellen’s coldness towards her since the split, and Frances had taken it upon herself to fix it.

‘I know you found it hard, but so did she, left with two teenagers on her own. It wasn’t easy for her, having to find work again after years of staying at home to raise you and Joan.’

She hadn’t had to find work: it had been handed to her. In the days that had followed her husband’s departure, the parish priest had called to the house and spoken with her in the sitting room. He’s offered me a job , she’d told the girls after he left. He’s chairman of the school board, they need a secretary , and Ellen had hated that too, the thought that she’d been taken in out of pity by the very school, a boys’ primary, where her husband had been principal. She was now the deserted wife, a charity case who needed help to support her daughters.

Ellen’s father had left his job as well as his family. He’d left his entire life behind, and nobody from his side – his parents, his cousins – had made contact since then. It was as if he’d packed them up too, with the rest of his belongings.

‘She’s doing the best she can,’ Frances repeated, and again Ellen ignored it. A short silence fell, but it didn’t last.

‘Growing up, she was different,’ Frances said. ‘Distant, moody. Wouldn’t look at any of us some days, and none of us could figure out what we’d done. But we always made allowances: being the youngest she was indulged, so we’d say nothing and wait till she came out of it.’

Ellen sat back on her heels. ‘Frances, I really don’t want to talk about her. Can we please not?’

A beat passed. ‘As you wish,’ Frances said, ‘but if the time comes that you want to know more, you can always ask me. Go in and get scissors from the kitchen drawer,’ pointing to a clump of chives, ‘and cut a few of those. I’m doing stuffed tomatoes to go with the fish.’ And that was that.

After dinner on Wednesday Ellen made her way to the nearby roundabout, where Danny was waiting with two others.

‘James and Fergus,’ he said, ‘my housemates.’

‘You’re the long-lost friend,’ James said. Shorter and broader than Danny, curly dark hair, a beard on the way. Fergus was boyish, clean-shaven, brown hair past his shoulders. His T-shirt read Get Up Stand Up beneath a picture of Bob Marley. His jeans hung loose on his slight frame.

On the walk to the college they told Ellen that they were studying law, like Ben’s brother. She asked if they knew a McCarthy student in his final year.

‘Everyone knows him,’ Fergus said. ‘He’s very active in the Students’ Union, always fundraising for something. A few weeks ago he organised a big march against apartheid. It made the news.’

‘I saw it on telly.’

‘What’s his brother like?’ James asked.

‘Friendly. Very nice.’

They were easy to talk to. They asked about the bookshop and said she must come to dinner at their house some night. ‘We might even rise above beans on toast,’ Fergus told her. It felt good to be out for the evening: shame Claire was missing it.

The college bar was small and plainly furnished, and full of students even on a Wednesday night. Ellen was introduced to a few more, male and female, and one of the girls perched for a while on James’ lap, and Ellen wondered if they were together until she got up and wandered away again.

Everyone was drinking beer, which they told her was mandatory for students and which was all they could normally afford. She bought a round for her three companions, ignoring their protests. ‘I’m in paid employment, I’m earning money,’ she told them, although the employment hadn’t actually paid out anything yet.

It was fun. Despite her non-student status she felt like she belonged, like she’d been accepted. At ten she got up to go, conscious of work in the morning, and Danny said he’d be off too. ‘I have a nine o’clock lecture,’ he said. ‘I’ll be sensible, not like these reprobates.’

‘You should see him on a Saturday night,’ James put in. ‘He’s the worst of us,’ and Danny laughed and didn’t contradict him.

‘We should make this a habit,’ he said on the way home. ‘Wednesday-night drinks.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘I told my folks about meeting you. They said to say hello.’

‘Tell them I said hello back.’

What did she remember of them? His mother smelling of apples, colour in her cheeks, hands warm in winter or summer, sending Ellen home with a wedge of cake or half a dozen homemade biscuits in a paper bag. His father, tall and dark-haired and grey-suited, worked in the post office. They’d had a blue car with a tartan rug on the back seat. Bit by bit, it came back to her.

She wondered if he’d told them of her father’s departure. She didn’t ask. At the roundabout he took her road, telling her he’d feel better if he saw her home. He hugged her again at Frances’ gate. Light, quick, like the last one. ‘Same time next week,’ he said, and off he went.

The house was in darkness, no sound from within. She let herself in quietly and tiptoed up the stairs. Lying in bed, she heard rain begin to patter against the window. She closed her eyes, but still felt wide-awake. She hadn’t slept through the night for a year after her father had walked out on them, and four years later she still had some broken nights. They would ambush her out of nowhere, and here came another.

She reached out in the dark and fumbled for the little transistor and switched it on low, and listened to Barbra Streisand singing about a woman in love.

Not yet , she thought. Still looking. Still hopeful.