Moving On

Ireland

Ireland

IN SEPTEMBER SHE ASKED LEO IF HE’D COME WITH her for a few days to Ireland. ‘They think I’m making you up,’ she said, and he said in that case he’d better go. They flew to Shannon, where her brother-in-law Seamus picked them up, and within thirty seconds he and Leo discovered a mutual love of rugby, and all the way home Ellen sat back and left them to it, and willed her mother to be nice to him.

She was. ‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Leo,’ she said, wearing an unfamiliar lilac dress that brought out the blue in her eyes. ‘Please call me Patricia. Do come in.’

She was like the Queen, leading him into the sitting room that smelt of polish. She’d lit a fire although the day was warm, and little dishes of olives, black and green, sat on the coffee table. Ellen never remembered them eating olives.

Kevin was there, looking too warm in his suit. He stood as they entered and Ellen made the introductions. He welcomed Leo to Ireland. ‘Your first time?’

‘No – I’ve been to Dublin a few times on business. My first time in the west.’

‘Would you like a whiskey?’ Ellen’s mother asked Leo, and when he said yes a bottle of Jameson was produced, and a little bowl of ice, and paper serviettes. Watching her fussing about, Ellen realised her mother was nervous. Kevin must have been drafted in for moral support.

She was touched. It felt like an act of kindness, directed as much towards Ellen as towards Leo. She needed to let go of the past, now that she was looking to the future with Leo. Again she remembered Frances’ words: She’s doing the best she can.

Kevin proved a godsend. ‘Twelve of us,’ he told Leo, ‘went to London one summer, working on the buildings. We would have been eighteen or nineteen, we all had a year of college done, and no building experience. Cricklewood,’ he said. ‘Twelve of us in a three-bedroom house. Good times. Great history in London. You were born there?’

This led on to Leo’s English-French ancestry, and that in turn prompted an account of the trip Ellen’s mother and Kevin had taken to Normandy, and with every minute that passed, Ellen could feel her own tension being elbowed aside by relief and happiness.

Seamus reappeared for dinner with Joan, Ivan having been deposited at his other grandparents’ house for the evening. Ellen noted Joan’s sidelong glances at Leo, and she felt a quiet pride. Look who I got , she thought. Look who loves me.

He loved her. She was loved, and she loved him.

Her mother put them in separate bedrooms, as Ellen had known she would. ‘Better keep our distance,’ she told Leo, who was highly amused but went along with it. In the morning they picked up a rental car and drove to Galway to meet Frances, who fed them bowls of carrot and coriander soup and warm brown soda bread.

‘No Irish blood in you at all?’ she asked Leo, and he said not that he knew of, and Ellen couldn’t tell what Frances thought of him. Hard to know what impression she was forming.

She told Ellen she’d given up her big black bicycle. ‘It was getting too much,’ she said. ‘I gave it to a friend.’ Her job was already gone, and now the bike. Seventy-two at the end of the month: not old, but the years were showing. She still had the battered blue Beetle – Ellen hoped it didn’t get out too often. On the few occasions she’d travelled in it with Frances to visit her grandparents’ grave, she’d been very glad to emerge alive.

‘You go and admire the garden,’ Frances told Ellen afterwards. ‘Leo will help me wash up,’ and Ellen threw him an apologetic glance before obeying. The garden was looking better than ever, Frances having all the time in the world now to tend it. Some day, Ellen thought, she’d have a garden like this.

‘Your aunt would have done well in the Gestapo,’ Leo remarked on the way back.

‘Was it awful?’

‘It was very thorough. I thought she was going to look for bank statements. She made it clear how highly she thinks of you – and there was a veiled threat about all sorts of vengeance if I ever do you wrong.’

‘Gosh.’

They were due for dinner at Joan and Seamus’ house that evening. Ellen was dying to see the changes in Ivan, nearly nine months old now. Beginning to pull himself up to standing, Joan had reported on the phone, the youngest of her work colleagues’ babies to do it. One day, Ellen thought, she and Leo would have a child. She couldn’t wait.

They went to Rome for Christmas. ‘I prefer it in the winter,’ Leo said. ‘Not so crowded.’ Ellen was relieved he hadn’t suggested they go to France to spend Christmas with Marguerite, although she would have liked to meet his half-brothers.

They stayed in a hotel that delivered breakfast in bed each morning, and afterwards they soaked in a sunken bath before piling on layers and going out.

They walked over cobbles grown shiny and smooth with age. They gazed at sculptures and frescos and paintings, and Ellen felt overwhelmed at the abundance of beautiful things to look at. They climbed ancient stone steps and flung a scatter of coins into the Trevi Fountain and walked through the Forum, and she insisted on waiting in line (not too long) to marvel, neck craned, at the glory that was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

And one evening, as they strolled back to their hotel after dinner, she pulled him into a doorway and relived the kiss she’d fantasised about after meeting him in Paris, and the moon beamed down as it had in her imaginings, and his mouth tasted of cognac.

On Christmas Day they ordered room service and ate pizza in bed and watched It’s a Wonderful Life with Italian subtitles on television. He gave her diamonds again, stud earrings this time that twinkled in the light, and she told herself it was too soon for a diamond ring, and they were in no hurry.

She gave him a hardback copy of The Old Curiosity Shop she’d found in a secondhand bookshop in Covent Garden. The edges of its red cover were frayed, its wafer-thin pages yellowed and blotched with foxing. Matthew Goody 1848 was inscribed in neat handwriting on the yellowed flyleaf, the ink faded to pale brown, and even though she knew he would never read it, she simply hadn’t been able to resist.

‘Wonderful,’ Leo said. ‘Thank you, my darling.’