Masters of the House (17 page)

The end of the holidays in September would coincide with
the return of their father from the institution where he had been undergoing treatment. Matthew and Annie gathered that the psychiatrist had had one or two conversations with Auntie Connie, in which he had described himself as unhopeful. He said he hoped to be able to call after Dermot's return and explain to them more fully what the man's mental state was and what they could do about it. Meanwhile the family, though unconsciously, rejoiced in his absence and had Auntie Connie's undivided attention because Rob was back on the rigs. “And it's not as though he needs his old mother,” she said, “or would pay any attention to what she told him. A grown man thinks he should go his own way and make his own mistakes.”

Rob turned up again at the beginning of September, a few days before their father was due back. Auntie Connie hadn't quite known when to expect him because, as she said, he was “no great letter writer,” so it was as much of a surprise to her as to the rest when he turned up on the back doorstep. What was more of a surprise still was that he had a woman with him.

“This is Grace, Ma,” he said, with a touch of bravado to mask embarrassment. “A friend.”

Matthew noticed a quick tightening of Auntie Connie's lips before she stood aside.

“Come in, Grace,” she said.

They all crowded into the kitchen, and there introductions were made. Grace seemed to find it easy to remember which of the children was which, so perhaps she had been coached a little in advance. But it was much too crowded in there, so the younger ones were sent out to play and the older ones went through to the living room, where Auntie Connie busied herself clearing the armchairs and the sofa of children's books and toys and then set Annie to making tea for them all.

“Isn't it nice here?” said Grace at the window. “It's a lovely house, and then you've got country right on your doorstep. It's not how I imagined Leeds at all.”

“We think it's nice,” said Matthew.

So Grace, apparently, was new to Leeds. Matthew and Annie both liked her right from the start. She was quite a short person, especially beside Rob, but she was plump and vivacious—positively bubbling when the subject matter was kept light. Her mouth was small but curved upwards in a rosebud bow as if she was perpetually amused by life and her part in it. She had no particular clothes sense, but no need of it, either. Her presence was in her body and her smile, and both were inviting. There was no tightness about her body, no calculation in her mind. A greater contrast with Carmen O'Keefe could hardly be imagined.

“I liked Grace right from the start,” Annie said in 1993, when she and Matthew and Jamie were chattering over tea and biscuits in the kitchen, waiting for Greg to arrive from the Northeast.

“So did I,” said Matthew. “And she's been the making of Rob.”

“She said I could go and live there,” said Jamie.

Annie looked at him with something like jealousy in her face.

“You're coming to us,” she said firmly. “Ted and I both want to have you, and the children will be over the moon.”

Annie and her family lived in a meagre little house on a commercially built estate, with paper-thin walls and tiny bedrooms. Yet it had never occurred to her not to offer Jamie a home. She was the only one of the family who could provide him with the proper stable background.

“Oh yes, I'm coming to you. I wouldn't want to go to university in Leeds, where I would know half of the other students
already. But it was nice of her to ask, I thought. And I'd have been quite happy there.”

“She has the knack of making people happy,” said Matthew.

But back in 1979, they were just beginning the process of getting to know her.

“So you don't know Leeds, then?” asked Auntie Connie, her eyes interestedly summing her up. Annie knew then that there were conflicting hopes and fears going on in her mind.

“Never been here in my life. Tell you the truth, I imagined it was all grime and heavy industry.”

“Grace is from Grimsby,” put in Rob.

“Grimsby?” said Auntie Connie. “Is that fish?”

“Yes, Grimsby is fish.”

“So that's where you will have met, then: when Rob was on his way to the rigs?”

The two turned and smiled at each other intimately.

“Got it in one, Ma!” said Rob, pulling his eyes away. “I told you Ma would be curious, Grace.”

“Of course she'd be curious!” said Grace, with her ringing laugh. “What mother isn't curious about her son's girlfriends?”

Mrs O'Keefe's mouth tightened again.

“I'm not sure I like the idea of girlfriends. Rob is still a married man, you know.”

Rob was more relaxed now and simply laughed.

“Give it a rest, Ma! Carmen's gone off, and she won't be coming back. If she did I'm not sure I'd have her back.”

“Well, I'm glad you've seen the light!” said Auntie Connie. “But that's not to say you should get someone else in her place.”

“How did you meet?” asked Annie hurriedly, setting out cups and saucers round the table. Auntie Connie's religion was still a rather unpredictable factor in their lives, and she judged
that a little lecture on Catholic Marriage was a possibility, for all that she had obviously disliked Carmen.

“Oh, I've known her for a time, haven't I, Grace?”

“Just to nod to and swap a joke with.”

“Grace's on the other side of the counter at this marvellous transport caff, just outside Grimsby. I always stop there on my way to the rigs. They serve the best ham and eggs I know.”

So that accounted, more or less, for Grace: She had served Rob his ham and eggs over the years. Presumably recently, or at some time, friendship had ripened, but it was difficult to ask about that without seeming to want a blow-by-blow account.

“So now you've come to have a look at Leeds, have you?” asked Auntie Connie.

“That's right,” said Grace, perfectly relaxed. “I've been working all summer because the others in the cafe have children with school holidays. So I arranged to take the weeks I was due for when Rob came off the rig.”

“I hope she's going to like Leeds,” said Rob. “Then mebbe she'll stay.”

It was said with deceptive casualness. His mother looked concentratedly down at the teapot she was pouring from, making an effort to say nothing.

“That's a bit of a maybe still,” said Grace, “but I'm sure I'm going to like Leeds. I do already. And I like this house, too.” She looked around the room. “It's such a
family
place, so lived-in. . . . I'm sorry. I'm forgetting that you just lost your mother. And your dad is—”

“Yes,” said Matthew and Annie together.

“Oh, we're getting the family together again, never fear,” said Auntie Connie. “And a house with children in it is always going to have a nice, lived-in feeling.”

That remark showed them plainly that Auntie Connie was pulled in two directions.

Rob stirred in his chair.

“There you go again, Ma! Yes, I
know
my house never had that feeling.”

“I didn't mean that, my boy! Don't take me up like that.”

“You've said it often enough before. Well, I always wanted children, but thinking about it now I wonder if it would have been a good idea. I can't see a child with Carmen as a mother having much of a chance.”

“Well, at least your eyes are open to Carmen at last,” said his mother, her mouth once again working in little twitches of disapproval. “It used to drive me mad, the way you couldn't
see
.”

“I saw more than you think,” said Rob, taking a big draught of his tea. “Being away on the rigs so much of the time, I didn't think I had the right to object. But this isn't talk for children's ears. Let's bury Carmen, shall we?” Matthew jumped and then looked around hoping nobody had noticed. “It's not a nice subject. And as to having children—well, it's not too late!”

Grace punched him in the ribs and laughed. And Annie noted that when he said this, Auntie Connie did seem torn. She screwed up her lips, but there was something in her eyes that told Annie that she longed to have grandchildren.

Auntie Connie said to Grace, “So you've not been married yourself? You've no children?”

“I've been married, but I've not had children. It was a very brief marriage. I found out in a matter of weeks it'd been a dreadful mistake.”

“So you're . . . divorced, are you?”

“Oh yes. I'm not a Catholic, by the way.”

“I see.”

Rob shifted uneasily in his chair.

“Come off it, Ma! The world has changed. Catholics have changed. Even Catholics in Ireland have changed! I noticed that when I went back last time. The priests aren't the tyrants they once were—or if they are, most people just decide to go their own way. You've got to go with the times, too. You can't stay back in the old days, when the priests and bishops told you what you could read, what you could do, and what you could think!”

It was a very long speech for him, and he sank back in his chair. His mother sighed.

“There's some things I wouldn't want to go along with. What is right and wrong doesn't change.”

Grace put on her most serious face.

“I think we should tell your mother what the position is, Rob,” she said. “So everything's out in the open. We wouldn't be asking her to approve, just telling her, so she knows.”

“Well, you tell her, love.”

Grace turned to Mrs O'Keefe.

“Rob and I are . . . together now. I mean while he's back on land, as a sort of trial. It happened when he was on his way to his tour of duty in July. Like I said, before we'd just swapped greetings and jokes, but when he stopped at the cafe in July, business was slack and I was there on my own and we really had a good talk and—well, one thing led to another, you know how it is.”

Rob put in hurriedly: “Ma, don't look like that. Grace doesn't mean it ever happened to you, she means it's how it often happens, and you must know it does. Even in Ireland it does!”

His mother's lips remained pursed.

“Anyway,” Grace resumed, not too disconcerted, “we don't know yet how serious it is. But I've got to say it is beginning to
feel serious at the moment. We know we can't get married. For myself, that doesn't matter all that much. I think before long, if we're together permanently, Rob might want to, and if Carmen turns up wanting a divorce or agreeing to one, then that might be what happens.”

“Divorce isn't p—” began Mrs O'Keefe.

“Ma, divorce is possible for
me,”
said Rob firmly.

“Anyway, there's not much point in speculating about that, is there?” said Grace, putting aside the serious mood and reverting to her normal self. “She hasn't turned up, and she's probably perfectly happy with things as they are. And I must say I am, too. If I decide to move in with Rob permanently, I'll pack in my job and look for one in Leeds. Someone who can do a good fry-up is never out of work for long. Or I might try upmarket and go for a proper restaurant or hotel job.”

“So you're a good cook generally, are you?” asked Auntie Connie, feeling this was an uncontroversial subject.

“Other than fry-ups? Yes, I am. Ask Rob. And I'd quite like to try my hand at something foreign and difficult. Of course we wouldn't want to have children until we were quite sure that things were working out.”

“Before long I'm going to have to think of a job on dry land,” said Rob. “I'm not getting any younger.”

“If you'd got one sooner—” began Auntie Connie, but then she stopped, her thoughts written all over her face.

“Right, Ma. What you were going to say was, if I'd got one sooner, Carmen might have kept on the straight and narrow and our marriage might not have ended in disaster. And then you wondered whether it was true, and whether you'd have wanted that, even if it was true. The fact is, Ma, Carmen would have had other men even if I'd been home with her a hundred per cent of the time. Maybe, without realising it, that's why I kept
on with my job on the rigs. It was less painful being away than being around and unable to stop it.”

Mrs O'Keefe shook her head.

“It's wicked to say I wouldn't have wanted your marriage to succeed. It's true I knew from the start she wasn't the woman for you, but once you were married—well, of course I'd have done anything to keep you together.”

“Maybe, Ma, maybe. We won't argue about it. Anyway, the fact is, now I've got a girl who's a million times better than Carmen, so let's forget her, shall we? Oh, before we do—”

He had begun rummaging around in his jacket.

“Yes?”

“When I got home yesterday I found this from the insurance company.”

He had dived around in his inside pocket and produced what the children could see was a cheque. He handed it over to his mother, and when she had looked at it she raised her eyebrows.

“You can't keep this.”

“Of course I can't keep it, Ma,” said Rob disgustedly. “It's the insurance money from her mother's death. As a matter of fact, I was tempted to send it back with ‘Not known at this address' on it.”

“You couldn't just do that,” said Grace. “Whatever Carmen is, that money's hers by right. You've got to make some effort to get it to her.”

“Couldn't you go to a lawyer and see what's best to do?” asked Mrs O'Keefe.

Rob shook his head.

“I never had any truck with lawyers, and I don't want to have.”

“I bet if you had an accident on the rig you'd go to one quick enough to get compensation,” Grace pointed out.

“Anyway, what I thought was I'd write to the insurance company, returning the cheque and explaining the position. I was wondering if young Matthew could help with that.”