Better Together (44 page)

‘That’s a good idea,’ she said.

‘Great. Well, how about we make it soon?’

‘Whatever you like.’

‘Tonight?’

She looked startled.

‘Unless you’ve better things to do?’ asked Joe.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I don’t.’

‘D’you want to give the Riverview another chance?’ he asked.

‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘I’m not a Riverview kind of girl. DJ told me about a nice Italian off the main street . . .’

‘Siciliana?’

She nodded.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘I like Italian. Seven thirty?’

‘Perfect.’ She was astonished at how composed she was outwardly while inside she was bubbling over with excitement. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

‘So am I,’ said Joe, and then he looked away as Josh came scampering over to them.

‘Well?’ asked Joe. ‘Man of the match?’

‘Totally,’ said Josh. ‘Are we going home now? I’m absolutely starving, and Mum said she was making sausage and mash for lunch.’

‘Lucky you,’ observed Sheridan. ‘I love sausage and mash.’

‘You can come if you want,’ said Josh. ‘Can’t she, Uncle Joe?’

‘It’s OK,’ said Sheridan, before Joe had time to answer. ‘I have other stuff to do, Josh. I can’t make it for sausage and mash. But thanks for asking me.’

‘That’s all right.’ Josh beamed at her. ‘I’m trying to be helpful. Uncle Joe said he’d have to find a way to have dinner with you again, and so I thought I’d ask and make it easy for him.’

‘Josh!’ Joe’s face was an agony of embarrassment, and Sheridan burst out laughing.

‘What?’ Josh looked at his uncle with injured innocence.

‘Your uncle is meeting me later,’ she told him. ‘We’ve sorted that out.’

‘Good,’ said Josh. ‘’Cos he definitely fancies you.’

‘Oh my God.’ Joe groaned. ‘C’mon, young Meagher. I’d better get you home, before you ruin my hard-man reputation completely.’

‘Ah, leave him be.’ Sheridan grinned. ‘I think he’s bringing out your softer side. And I like it.’

‘I don’t have a soft side,’ said Joe. ‘As Josh should know.’ He ruffled his nephew’s hair, and Josh wriggled away from him.

‘Stop,’ he said. ‘You know I hate it when you do that.’

‘I used to hate it too,’ admitted Joe. Then he looked enquiringly at Sheridan. ‘Would you like a lift home?’

She didn’t want to let him out of her sight. But she was hot and a bit sweaty and didn’t want to perspire all over his car. So she said that she was going to run home, then have a shower. Joe told her that he admired her fitness and that he’d have to take up running himself. He’d become a bit of a corporate animal over the last few years, he said. He wasn’t as fit as he’d once been. Sheridan said he looked fairly fit to her, and he said that maybe she could work out a plan for him, and both of them kept looking into each other’s eyes until Josh demanded that they break it up because he was absolutely starving and wanted sausage and mash right now.

Sheridan waved as the two of them walked to the car park. Then she stretched her legs again. She was feeling so full of energy and excitement she thought she could do another ten kilometres. She thought she might need to, to work her excess spirits off.

Nina had just come out of the other studio when she saw Sheridan jogging through the entrance to the guesthouse. It was the first time she’d ever seen her dressed in running gear, and she couldn’t help thinking that despite Sheridan’s claims that she ate like a horse and that her thighs were too big and that her shape was all wrong, she looked very fit.

She raised her hand and waved at her long-term guest. Sheridan jogged up to her and then stopped, breathing heavily.

‘I’m so out of shape,’ she said. ‘My legs are killing me.’

‘I was just thinking that you looked great,’ Nina told her. ‘All sort of strong and Amazonian.’

Sheridan laughed. ‘I’d lose a battle with a kitten right now,’ she said. ‘They always tell you to work up to a run, but it was so gorgeous this morning that I set off and couldn’t stop. Well,’ she corrected herself, ‘I did stop for a while to watch the boys’ under-nines GAA match.’

‘And you ran back from that?’ asked Nina.

Sheridan nodded. ‘Via the newsagent’s to buy a Lucozade Sport and the paper,’ she said. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she told Nina about being left on her own the previous day.

‘You’re joking! You poor thing. You must have been exhausted when you got home. You should’ve called up to me. I’d’ve made you something to eat and looked after you.’

‘That’s really sweet of you,’ said Sheridan. ‘But I flaked out in front of the telly and ordered a takeaway. Maybe that’s why I felt I had to go running today. I was the world’s unhealthiest woman last night.’

‘You had a right to be. D’you want to come up to the house now, have a cup of coffee?’

‘I’m a puddle of sweat,’ said Sheridan. ‘I have to shower before I do anything else.’

‘Drop up to me afterwards,’ said Nina.

‘OK. That’d be lovely.’

Sheridan went into her studio, showered for the second time that day, and dressed in a loose T-shirt and cargo pants.
She brought her copy of the
Central News
up to the guesthouse with her so that she could skim through it while they were having coffee.

When she arrived, though, she realised that there wouldn’t be a chance of skimming through anything, because Nina led her into a small sitting room where a table was covered by brightly coloured cartons and boxes filled with papers, padded envelopes and various bits and pieces.

‘It’s for the Spring Festival,’ Nina explained. ‘Because it’s our tenth, we’re doing a retrospective exhibition in the community centre. Perry Andrews asked us to see if we had any old photos and news clippings about the town. I have loads, because my mother was a complete hoarder. My father and my grandfather both liked taking photographs. Obviously Grandad’s are old and grainy and there aren’t that many of them. My dad had an old Kodak, but he loved it and took plenty of snaps. So I thought I’d go through them today and see if I could pick out some good ones.’

‘What a great idea,’ said Sheridan. ‘I love old photos. It’s so interesting to see places as they were years ago. I bet Ardbawn was very different.’

‘Oh, the town has changed immensely, especially over the last twenty years,’ said Nina. ‘You wouldn’t recognise it.’

‘D’you need some help?’ asked Sheridan. ‘I’ve no idea what everything is, but I have a good eye for interesting photos.’

‘That’d be great,’ said Nina enthusiastically. ‘Perry wants them by tomorrow, and I was panicking a bit because I’ve got eight people staying in the house tonight, as well as a fisherman for the other studio. Some help would be wonderful, if you’re sure you don’t mind.’

‘I’ll enjoy it,’ Sheridan told her.

‘In that case, finish your coffee and then we can get stuck in,’ said Nina. ‘There’s lots to go through and Perry’s a stickler for the very best.’

‘Then that’s what he’ll get,’ said Sheridan as she drained her cup.

Nina had been right about Dolores hoarding stuff, Sheridan thought as she sat opposite the guesthouse owner and began going through the contents of the red carton nearest to her. It was full of yellowed newspaper cuttings from the 1940s and 1950s, with photographs of women wearing headscarves and men in gaberdine coats.

‘This is fantastic,’ Sheridan said as she read a report about a dance in the church hall fifty years previously. ‘Are these from a local newspaper? Was the
Central News
going that long ago?’

‘I think the paper back then was called the
Farmer’s Friend
,’ replied Nina. ‘This was essentially a rural community. The only big employer outside of the farms was the local creamery.’ She went on to talk about her father’s job there, and his subsequent accident. ‘Not that I remember much about that,’ she added.

‘These days he probably would’ve got massive compensation,’ observed Sheridan as she continued to flick through the cuttings.

‘I guess so,’ Nina agreed. ‘I’m not a big fan of the whole compensation culture thing, but the truth is that Dad loved his job in the creamery and I don’t think he was all that keen about working in the guesthouse. Unlike Sean,’ she added.

‘What’s the story on Sean, if you don’t mind talking about
it?’ Sheridan asked casually, remembering that her horoscope advice to Nina for the week ahead was to focus on what was important to her.

‘He wants to come back. And part of me, most of me, wants it too. Yet when he suggested that he should come back now, I couldn’t say yes.’

‘Does that mean it’s a no, then?’ Sheridan couldn’t help being pleased for Nina. She was convinced the older woman would be better off without her philandering husband.

‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ Nina sighed. ‘I love him no matter what. But is that enough? I want to act with my head as much as my heart. I want to be sensible about this.’

‘I think you’ve been very sensible so far,’ said Sheridan.

‘Thank you,’ Nina said. ‘Part of my problem is that Sean was the first guy I was ever in love with. I fell head over heels for him. He was one of the most eligible men in Ardbawn and I married him. There’s a part of me that thinks I did it just because I could.’

‘I wonder, is it possible to separate being in love with fancying someone like crazy?’ mused Sheridan.

‘Have you found someone in Ardbawn to fancy like crazy?’ enquired Nina, and was rewarded by seeing confusion on Sheridan’s face. She looked at her quizzically and Sheridan, whose every thought was dominated by her date with Joe, told her about him. She didn’t tell the guesthouse owner the full story of her investigations at March Manor and the subsequent disaster that had been their first date, but simply said that she was looking forward to dinner at Siciliana’s later.

‘I don’t know him well.’ Nina’s head was bent over a pile of photos. ‘But I’m sure he’s a nice man.’

‘I think he is,’ said Sheridan, while thinking that calling
someone ‘a nice man’ was damning them with faint praise. ‘I know I’m biased against his father, but Joe seems great. He takes his nephew to GAA matches every weekend and he seems to work extremely hard in the company. Plus he found a job for Conall Brophy, which was amazingly kind of him.’

‘And he’s very good looking,’ added Nina as she glanced up from the photos.

‘That too,’ agreed Sheridan. ‘They’re all good looking in that family.’

‘Have you met them all?’ Nina looked startled.

‘I’ve met Sinead and Peter,’ said Sheridan, although she still didn’t give the details of her first meeting with them. ‘Sinead was dressed up for a dinner or something, she looked classy and sophisticated. And Peter is nearly as handsome as Joe. I haven’t met Cushla, though someone once said to me that she was the most attractive of all.’

‘Excuse me for a moment.’ Nina got up from the table and walked out of the kitchen.

Sheridan looked after her in surprise. Nina had seemed upset, but for the life of her she had no idea what she could have said to bother her. She was an odd woman, thought Sheridan. Warm and friendly one minute, distant and self-centred the next. Of course she was under stress because of her marital situation, and Sheridan supposed that this was enough to make anyone act strangely from time to time. All the same, she couldn’t help thinking that Nina was one of the most complex people she’d ever met.

Nina was totally shocked to hear that Sheridan Gray was going on a date with Joe O’Malley. For starters, she’d thought
that Sheridan’s antipathy towards Paudie would have been enough to keep her away from his son. And she couldn’t imagine Paudie being too enamoured with the fact that Joe was having dinner with a woman he’d made redundant. It seemed wrong to Nina. But then, she admitted to herself as she sat on the edge of her bed, everything to do with the O’Malleys always seemed wrong to her. Except, in many ways, Paudie himself. She knew that he was a good man. She’d always thought so. But that wasn’t enough in the whole scheme of things.

She picked up the hairbrush from the dressing table and began to brush her hair. A hundred strokes, as Dolores had taught her. Not that she ever bothered with giving her hair a hundred strokes in the normal course of events. But she sometimes did it when she was stressed. It helped to soothe her. It was helping now. She felt herself drifting into a trance, not thinking of anything other than the feel of the brush through her hair. And then the doorbell rang.

She was startled back into the present and realised that it was nearly two o’clock, and that the first of her guests had probably arrived. She left the brush on the dressing table, hurried downstairs and opened the door, a welcoming smile on her face. And after that she didn’t have time to think about the O’Malleys or Sheridan Gray or anyone else, because she was too busy doing her job to allow her mind to wander.

Sheridan had remained in the sitting room when Nina went upstairs, and she was still there when she heard her welcoming her new guests. She supposed she should leave, although she was enjoying going through the pictures and cuttings. It
didn’t matter to her that they were of and about people she didn’t know. She’d always been fascinated by old stories and photographs. There were old sports reports too. She’d read some of them, thinking that while the language the reporters used might have changed (no chance of the 1958 losing football team being called muppets, despite the fact that they’d apparently played abysmally), the passion and enthusiasm for their sports hadn’t.

She placed the items she’d decided would be interesting for the exhibition on one side and put the lid back on the cardboard box. She decided to move it out of the way so that Nina wouldn’t bother going through it again. As she did, she tripped over another box that had been half way under the table. The box tipped over and its contents spilled out on to the floor.

‘Oh, crap,’ she muttered as she started to gather them up again. ‘Why am I so bloody clumsy?’

There weren’t any newspaper cuttings in this one, just masses of photos and a few silly items that looked to Sheridan as though they’d come from old Christmas crackers – there was a plastic fish that was meant to gauge your mood by changing colour and curling up in your hand to indicate how you were feeling; a set of sewing needles, still pristine and gleaming; a First Holy Communion medal (inscribed
Christine Fallon
and the year 2000) and a small mirror in a jewelled frame. Sheridan couldn’t imagine why on earth Nina would keep such rubbishy items (although the communion medal was clearly of sentimental value), though she knew that Alice too had often kept silly things for ridiculous reasons. Although in her mother’s case her mementos were somewhat different – the programme from Con’s first competitive match; a
pennant that Pat had been given by a visiting soccer team; a pair of gloves that Matt had worn the day he’d scored a winning goal . . . and a lock of Sheridan’s hair. When she had first discovered Alice’s stash, she’d felt let down by the fact that she hadn’t had anything winning to contribute to it, but now she couldn’t help thinking that keeping a lock of hair was more appropriate than a pair of gloves. Mothers worked in mysterious ways, she thought, as she put things back into Nina’s box. You couldn’t really get inside their heads.