Something in Common (23 page)

Helen, after some thought, had sent her a tapestry kit.

‘She’s having a
baby?
’ Alice’s face had been full of disbelief. ‘Isn’t she as old as you?’ Ah, the tact of a teenage daughter.

‘Actually, she’s eight years younger than me. Not quite an old hag yet.’

Helen wondered
sometimes, lying alone in bed, if she would ever meet another man, ever have another relationship. Forty-five wasn’t old, far from it. She had years ahead of her, thirty or forty if she lived a natural life. Was she to spend it all alone once Alice had moved out, as she inevitably would? Was Helen destined to live out her days with just a second-hand cat for company?

No, not even the cat: they didn’t live that long. On her own, then, unless someone came along who liked the look of her – and how likely was that, with no social outlets, no friends to go hunting with, no opportunities at all to meet people, apart from the various Christmas parties thrown by the publications she wrote for, which she still avoided?

‘You’ll have another drop,’ her mother said.

‘Better not, thanks.’

The other dire possibility, of course, was that her parents would become dependent on her. She might be forced to have one or both of them living with her – and since she couldn’t see either of them moving willingly into her neighbourhood, she would probably be expected to return to their house: unthinkable prospect.

Maybe Sarah would take them into her nursing home. Or maybe her parents would totter on together without her help, dying conveniently in their sleep, preferably simultaneously, one fine night.

‘I hope that cat doesn’t have fleas,’ her mother said. ‘Especially if Alice is handling it.’

Helen was tempted then to tell the story of Alice’s head lice, and the phone call from the school principal. So long ago that was now – Alice had been, what, five or six?

‘Remember the fine-tooth comb?’ she asked.

Her mother frowned. ‘What?’

‘You used it to make sure I had no head lice. I remember how it dug into my scalp.’

‘You
did it to
me
,’ Alice put in. ‘I hated it.’

‘Why on earth would you bring that up now?’ Helen’s mother asked.

‘No reason. I just remembered it. Must have been the talk of fleas.’

She’d say
nothing. Whatever Gorbachev might believe, openness wasn’t always the best policy.

F
rom the sitting room there came a sudden shriek. Christine carried on tossing clothes from the top shelf of the hotpress onto the little heap that was growing on the landing.

‘Should we investigate?’ Sarah asked, looking anxiously downstairs.

‘Why? Oh, look,’ pulling out a little orange jumper, ‘Mam knitted this, remember? I must admit I always thought the colour was a bit sissy on Aidan, but everyone admired it.’

‘Well, I love it,’ Sarah said. ‘I’d put that colour on girls or boys. I’d have put it on Martha if I’d known you still had it.’

‘Would you? Sorry … Oh, here, these are sweet.’

Sarah took a miniature pair of blue and white checked trousers from her. Doll’s clothes they looked like, all the tiny garments Christine was pulling out. Had Martha ever been that small?

‘Oh God, look what I just found.’ Christine held up a little mustard and green striped cardigan. ‘I thought I’d thrown it out. Isn’t it vile? Gráinne made it for Paddy. The only times I put it on him was when we were visiting them. I’ll drop it into the next charity shop I pass.’

The relationship
between Christine and her mother-in-law had been strained for years, largely because Christine had refused to name any of her sons after their paternal grandfather. ‘I can’t stand the name Victor,’ she’d declared – and even though the remark had not, of course, been addressed directly to Gráinne, the message had been received.

No
further sounds came from the sitting room. Presumably nobody was dead or badly injured. Sarah bent with difficulty and began gathering the clothes into her arms.

‘Stop, I’ll do that.’ Christine closed the hotpress doors and scooped up the pile. ‘I think that’s everything – if I find any more I’ll drop them over to you. You can go through them in the kitchen: it’s warmer.’

Sarah followed her downstairs, holding tightly to the banisters. Feeling her way past each stair edge, unable to see her feet when she walked. An elephant, that’s what she’d become. A big fat happy elephant, or maybe a deliriously joyful hippopotamus. Giant breasts, huge bottom, enormous balloon of a stomach. A mother-in-waiting, twenty-seven days to go till her son or daughter was born.

Blooming, she felt.

As Christine passed the sitting-room door, she called: ‘Everything all right in there?’

‘Yeah.’ A ragged chorus.

In the kitchen she tumbled her armload onto the table. ‘Right, have a look while I put the kettle on.’

‘No tea for me,’ Sarah told her, beginning to pick her way through the clothes. ‘I’ll be going to the loo all night as it is.’

‘I remember that – it was awful. I was up every five minutes.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘I know you don’t – you’re the most uncomplaining pregnant woman I’ve ever met.’ Christine rummaged under the sink and pulled out a couple of plastic bags. ‘Here, you can put the ones you want into those. By the way, ye must be thrilled that Neil was taken on at the golf course.’

‘We are. It’s great news. They’re opening in the New Year.’ Sarah smiled at a little lilac T-shirt with a cartoon penguin on the front. ‘This is so cute. The only thing is, he won’t be able to take mornings off any more, so we’ll have to find someone to look after Martha and the baby when I go back to work.’

‘Have you anyone in mind?’

‘Not
yet, but we’re saying it to everyone we know, so hopefully we’ll get a recommendation.’

Christine took a blue cardigan from her and added it to the basket. ‘Brian has a cousin, Noreen. She’s a widow. Her husband died in a boating accident a few years back. You might remember.’

‘Can’t say I do.’

‘Well, anyway, the reason I mentioned her was that Brian was telling me lately that the crèche where she worked closed down, so she might be interested if she hasn’t found another job.’

In the act of folding a pair of pyjama bottoms, Sarah stopped. ‘She worked in a crèche? Has she children of her own?’

‘No, no children. She’s a bit older than us, mid-forties, I think. I haven’t met her all that much but she seems nice.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘Well, that’s the only thing. She’s on the other side of Naas, about twenty miles away, but I’m pretty sure she drives, so that mightn’t be a problem.’

‘Sounds promising. I’ll mention her to Neil, see what he thinks … Right, that’s it, thanks so much. And sorry that you have to run me home. I really must learn how to drive sometime.’

‘No problem. I’ll get the car keys.’

She disappeared as Sarah manoeuvred herself into her coat. One more week at the nursing home, then her maternity leave started. Five more lunches to cook, five more mornings of lumbering around the kitchen, her apron needing a pin for the past two months to keep it fastened at the back.

She regarded the basket of tiny clothes and imagined the little creature she’d be pulling them onto in just a few weeks. Never mind that it was a fortnight after her thirty-seventh birthday: she was fit and strong, and everything would be fine this time.

Her baby, her own flesh and blood, at long last. Was anyone as blessed as her?

‘Y
ou’re doing it
all wrong,’ Martina said crossly from her garden seat. ‘You’re cutting it back far too much. There’ll be nothing left.’

Charlie snipped off another twiggy stalk. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s been neglected for years, it needs a hard pruning.’

‘Well, the way you’re going at it, it hasn’t a hope of flowering next spring.’

‘Maybe not, but in the long term it’ll be healthier.’ He continued working his slow, shaky way around the bush, Martina glaring at him.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, after several seconds of silence. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

‘I still say you’re taking off far too much,’ she snapped.

‘You’ve made that perfectly clear, thank you. Now, unless you have anything more constructive to say, I suggest you keep your mouth shut.’

From the other side of the open kitchen window, as she chopped carrots for the lamb casserole, Sarah could hear their conversation quite clearly. If someone didn’t intervene soon they’d kill each other. Martina would stab him with the pruning shears, or Charlie would goad her to death.

Or maybe they secretly enjoyed the encounters. Martina had certainly never spent as much time outdoors as she did since she’d appointed herself guardian of the shrubs – and if nothing else, she was company for Charlie as he set about putting a shape on the much-neglected nursing-home grounds. He seemed well able for her.

Sarah
tipped the carrots into the casserole dishes, marvelling at the difference a few months had made. Charlie would never be robust – the pneumonia he’d been suffering from when they’d found him had weakened his heart – but as the weeks had passed he’d recovered enough strength to approach Matron, about a month after his arrival at St Sebastian’s, and offer to do a little light gardening.

‘I couldn’t turn him down,’ she’d told Sarah, ‘even though I had no idea whether he’d make it better or worse. But I figured he wouldn’t have the stamina to do much damage, and if it gave him a reason to get up in the mornings …’

As far as Sarah could see, Charlie was doing no damage at all. He couldn’t manage more than an hour or so in the garden on the fine days, but even with such slow progress there was sureness about the way he worked, confidence in his movements that spoke of some expertise as he clipped and pruned and weeded. Six months on, everyone was remarking on the difference he was making.

Everyone apart from Martina, of course, who seemed outraged at his presence in the shrubbery. Maybe she resented the newest arrival having the gall to get involved, however peripherally, in the running of St Sebastian’s. Since Dorothy Phelan’s death last year, Martina had become the nursing home’s longest-serving resident; probably felt Charlie should have asked her permission.

Poor Charlie, not physically capable of living on his own again – which meant, inevitably, that his house had gone on the market, needing to be sold to fund his nursing-home fees. Sarah had always thought it must be a terrible wrench, knowing that you’d seen the last of your old home. All the apple tarts or chicken soup in the world wouldn’t make up for that loss.