Chapter 11
Once she’d unpacked, Patricia decided she’d walk down to Grafton Street and call into Marks & Spencer to pick something up for Quinn.
A care package of quality tea and treats perhaps.
Or maybe a lumbar support cushion like her mam had might be of more use, although she might be hard-pressed to find one in Marks!
How was Mam getting on? The thought popped unbidden into her mind. She’d promised herself she’d switch off while she was here and not worry, but that was easier said than done. Her brain felt as though it had been conditioned to worry from the moment her children were born.
She wrapped her arms around herself, no longer seeing the treetops.
The very thought of her children or Mam finding out about the story she’d told the chatty receptionist, Bronagh, as she’d checked in made her face flame and her body shiver.
She wasn’t an unhinged fantasist. If anything, she was a very sensible and solid sort of person.
But she’d been given an opportunity, a brief window for a second chance, and she didn’t intend to waste it.
Besides, where was the harm? Her glamorous persona was a harmless white lie and she wouldn’t be hurting anyone.
What she’d told Bronagh about needing a break was true. This wasn’t a holiday she’d sought out. It had landed in her lap in a roundabout way, with Jeannie, the public health nurse who visited weekly, having found her mam a room for a week in a residential care home.
‘A change of scenery will do Margaret good, Pat, and you need a break,’ Jeannie had said. ‘Monday to Friday. You know yourself how fast the week’s go by. It will fly by for Margaret.’
Patricia hadn’t immediately accepted the offer because it smacked of dumping her mother with strangers.
At least it had until, at Jeannie’s urging, she’d gone and checked the facility, called Sunny Skies, out for herself.
The very name had sounded dubious, but to her surprise it wasn’t a facility at all.
Rather, it was a welcoming home away from home.
The moment she’d seen the late-blooming roses in the large south-facing garden, her abandonment guilt had been shooed away.
Her mam had always loved her garden and, from what she’d seen, the other residents appeared well cared for and the staff patient and kind.
So it was that a disgruntled Margaret Dunne had gone to stay at a residential care home on the edge of Dublin for the week.
‘Think of it as a little holiday, Mam,’ was how Patricia had framed it.
Margaret Dunne’s body might be failing her, but her mind was still sharp as a tack.
Her lips had been pressed together as she’d been delivered into the care of a smiling nurse manager earlier that morning.
A smile had split her face, however, upon seeing the garden, just as Patricia had hoped it would.
She’d kissed her mam’s papery cheek goodbye and left with a clear conscience and the image of her sitting amongst the roses with her face upturned like a sunflower.
Their heady fragrance still seemed to tease her nostrils now.
Although that was fanciful. It was likely the room freshener she could smell.
As for the costume-designer part of her story, well, again there was an element of truth lurking there. Albeit only a smidgen.
Patricia had left school with her heart set on becoming a costume designer. While other children’s hopes and dreams had chopped and changed throughout their schooling, hers had remained steadfast, the seed planted early on by a childhood treat.
As an only child, she’d received more treats than most of her friends, but a trip to the Abbey Theatre to see The Children of Lir performed was something special indeed.
And oh, what a magical experience it had been.
Whenever she thought of that wondrous outing, the smell of boiled wool from her new winter coat tickled her nostrils and she felt the pinch of leather from the smart T-bar shoes bought that very morning.
The sensations were sharp, but she couldn’t remember for the life of her what the treat had been in aid of.
A birthday perhaps? She could, however, recall being seated at a table in the café before the show, instinctively sitting up like a little lady as she nibbled her teacake as though it were only yesterday.
Afterwards, they’d tagged onto the end of the queue outside the theatre, all chattering excitedly, and she’d soon found herself sandwiched between her mam and dad in the darkened auditorium.
This particular memory conjured the rustling of sweet wrappers and the minty taste of the humbug her mam passed her.
When the curtain had gone up, her eyes had been out like organ stops and she’d quickly become enthralled by the marvellous story unfolding on the stage.
Patricia, along with every other child in the theatre, had been mesmerised by the royal children in all their finery being transformed into swans by their evil, jealous stepmother, Aoife.
She’d cheered so loudly when Aoife got her comeuppance that her throat still felt scratchy at bedtime.
Lying in bed that night, it occurred to her that somebody must have sewn the costumes the cast wore.
She thought about the feathery swan suits and how they’d brought the story to life.
After that outing, she’d asked her mam, who was competent with a sewing machine, to teach her how to sew.
Mrs Dunne had obliged and every chance Patricia got she whipped up dress-up costumes from outgrown or unwanted clothes her mam sourced for her.
Her creations allowed her and her friends to enter magical worlds of make-believe.
As a teenager, she’d fallen in love with the cinema, meeting her friends there each Saturday afternoon and being transported into different worlds far removed from suburban Dublin.
It had never crossed Patricia’s mind that she’d do anything other than make wonderful costumes that brought characters to life.
Boredom simply didn’t exist in her world as she whiled away hours sketching, cutting out and repurposing whatever she could get her hands on.
She wanted to be responsible for giving others the same feeling of wonder she’d first experienced in that darkened theatre.
Her parents, however, were practical people and costume designer seemed a whimsical sort of career.
So when she voiced her ambitions, the idea was pooh-poohed.
There might have been the odd extra treat, but the weight of expectation can sit heavily on the shoulders of an only child and Patricia was a good and obliging girl.
She loved her mam and dad and trusted them to know what was best. So she said goodbye to her dream, deciding it had only ever been a pipe dream anyway, and concentrated on honing her typing and shorthand skills at secretarial college.
All the while, she wished she were running her fingers over fabrics instead.
The course would lead to a good job until she met her future husband, her mam assured her.
Secretarial work was merely a stopgap because, after she married, Patricia would be starting a family of her own and there’d be no time for working.
Her dad had peered over the top of his newspaper and nodded his agreement to all of this.
And, as though her mam had gazed into a crystal ball and seen the future, that was exactly how things panned out.
Patricia graduated from her course and secured a position working for David Harte, an accountant on his way to partnership at a very important Dublin firm, much to her parents’ delight.
Her mam, in particular, watched proudly as she sailed out the door each morning in her pastel twin sets — mint green on Monday, yellow on Tuesday, pink on Wednesday, powder blue on Thursday and lilac on Friday.
All sewn by her own hand on the weekends.
Patricia never confided in her mam that she felt as though she were being slowly suffocated each morning when she pushed open the door to Ainsley Moore Accounting.
Figures did not hold the allure that fabric did and her days were dull, dull, dull.
The hours between 8.30 and 5.00 were filled with taking dictation, typing, filing, fielding phone calls and managing Mr Harte, whose flirtatious banter she paid little attention to.
It was par for the course. All the bosses carried on like that with their secretaries, or so she’d thought.
Until one day Mr Harte asked her to go for a drink with him after work.
Patricia looked up from the typewriter, noticing the dimple in his cheek for the first time.
When he smiled down at her, she decided his eyes were a rather nice shade of brown.
‘Call me David,’ he’d said, holding her coat out for her before she’d even agreed to go.
His confident assumption had been attractive to her. She was used to being guided in the right direction and, putting the cover on her typewriter, she’d stood up and allowed David to help her into her coat. In her mind, it was a foregone conclusion she’d go for that drink.
Falling pregnant after only a few months of courting hadn’t been.
Patricia stepped away from the window of Room 8.
The past was the past. There was no point regretting decisions made because they couldn’t be undone.
Besides, there had always been moments along the way that shone.
She crossed the room to the foot of the bed, enjoying the feeling of her stocking-clad feet sinking into the thick pile carpet.
From the top of her case she unearthed the folded garment she was searching for—a ruby-red swing coat, and smiled.
She knew exactly what sort of character would wear this piece.
She would be confident. Feisty. Fearless. Expectant of attention.
And for the duration of her stay at O’Mara’s, that was exactly who Patricia intended to be.