The People Next Door (22 page)

‘The ice cream is out of this world.’ He described the churches and galleries. ‘You don’t know where to look, there’s so much to see. Even if you’re not big into art, you have to be impressed.’ And the Italians: ‘Very friendly, very dramatic. Good sense of humour.’

‘I really wish I could have gone.’

‘So do I.’ He smiled as he cracked a claw and scooped out the meat.

Yvonne told him about Dolores going to Venice for her anniversary. ‘They took loads of photos but their camera fell into a canal on the last day. She brought me a bottle of wine, which made me feel quite guilty.’

He told her about his landlord’s decision to sell the house in Dublin. ‘I’m not too upset really – it’s high time I invested in one of my own.’

‘But they’re so expensive now, especially in Dublin.’

‘Mmm. I might have to move out a bit, start commuting.’

They had plenty to talk about, plenty to keep them chatting over his beef stir-fry with baby sweetcorn, onions and pepper strips on a bed of basmati rice and
her fillets of plaice with pumpkin wedges and creamed leeks. Lots to say as he sipped dessert wine afterwards – he loved dessert wine, she detested its syrupy sweetness – and took a forkful of her lemon cheesecake.

So it wasn’t until their coffee had been poured and Yvonne was dipping her mint chocolate straw into the steaming liquid that Greg said, ‘There’s something I want to tell you – and ask you.’

She bit off the melting dark chocolate tip. ‘What?’

Greg stirred his coffee. ‘I’m not quite sure how to say this, really.’

‘Sounds serious.’ Yvonne crunched the rest of the straw, watching him. ‘You look serious.’

‘Well, it is fairly serious.’ Greg put down his spoon and laced his fingers together. They were very brown against the white tablecloth. He took a deep breath, then let it out again and said nothing.

Yvonne swallowed her chocolate and stared at him. ‘Greg, what is it? You’re making me nervous. There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ Please God don’t let him have a terminal disease.

He smiled quickly. ‘No, nothing at all, nothing wrong. I’m just not sure how to put it, that’s all.’ And before she had a chance to respond to that, he said, all in a rush, ‘The thing is, Yvonne, I’m in love with you – I have been for ages, for years, really – and it would make me extremely happy if you would consider marrying me.’

The teacher was from Australia. He was tall, gangling and young – mid to late twenties, Dan guessed. His name was Douglas. He told them he’d worked as a junior chef on a cruise ship for four years. ‘Then I got sense.’ Some polite laughter. ‘I got a job in a hotel in Melbourne, worked my way up to head chef – and then I met an Irish girl. She dragged me back here.’

Dan glanced around. Three other men, the rest female, as far as he could make out. Maybe a dozen altogether. He couldn’t see everyone – the room was too long and narrow. People stood in pairs, two to a table. The woman beside him was in her sixties or thereabouts. They’d introduced themselves a few minutes earlier, just before the class began.

‘I’m Judy.’

‘Dan.’ He’d nearly said ‘Punch’. Ali would have appreciated that.

Douglas showed them how to measure a level teaspoon, how to rub margarine into flour – ‘Lift it, let the air in’ – how to mix liquid into dry ingredients,
how to knead – ‘Keep it light, don’t hammer it, use the heel of your hand.’

By the end of the first session they’d all produced a dozen scones. Dan had heard about Judy’s husband, who had multiple sclerosis, and her two cats, Tigger and Tux. ‘Short for tuxedo – he’s black and white.’

He told her about Picasso and about his job. He didn’t mention his wife running off with his uncle, then discovering she was pregnant with Dan’s baby. He figured he might save that for the second night.

Judy’s scones were slightly overdone. Dan’s had turned out pretty well, according to Douglas. ‘Well done, mate, nice and light.’

It wasn’t until they were leaving that he saw her near the back of the room, gathering up her things.

He waited at the door. ‘Small world.’

Clara smiled. ‘Hi Dan. Spotted you earlier. Mum mentioned you were doing classes, but I’d no idea they were these ones. What did you think of tonight?’

They walked along the corridor together. ‘I enjoyed it.’ He held up his bag. ‘Douglas said my scones were nice and light.’

Clara laughed. ‘Well done – mine weren’t too bad either.’

They reached the door. Clara scanned the cars. ‘Did you drive?’

‘Nope, it was such a nice evening I walked.’

‘Me too.’

On the way home, they talked about Grainne’s news and agreed that it was terrible. Clara told him about her friend Siofra’s month in France.
‘She was on a volunteer project. They were helping to build a youth centre in a village in the south.’

He told her about a week in Ennis with friends. ‘We went fishing and I caught a wellington and half a suitcase.’

She talked about her weekend on Inis Meán. ‘We didn’t get a wink of sleep. It was wild.’

When she flicked her hair or lifted a hand to push it off her face, he smelled lemons.

As they turned into Miller’s Avenue, Clara said, out of the blue, ‘I’m sorry about your wife, by the way.’

Dan was touched. ‘Thanks.’

There was a short silence and then Clara said, ‘I broke up with a boyfriend not so long ago.’ Then she added quickly, ‘But of course that’s nothing like your situation.’

They reached his gate. Dan pushed it open. ‘Well, see you next week.’

‘’Bye, Dan.’ She lifted a hand. ‘Hope the scones go down well.’

They had two each for supper, with gooseberry jam that Dan had bought in the market. Kieran was impressed. ‘Very light, very tasty, well done. I’ll soon be out of a job.’

She was too young for him. Not that he was looking for anyone – far from it. But even if he had been, she was much too young.

Pretty, though, and she’d smelled great. And she’d just split up with her boyfriend.

But much too young.

There was a tumour in Grainne’s head. It had been there for quite some time, growing quietly, and now it was too big to cut out. There was nothing to be done. Grainne was going to die, probably in the next six months.

Dr Lynch had put it much more tactfully, of course, in his surgery, where he’d summoned them to give them the news from the hospital. But that had been the gist of it.

Justin had phoned his sister Ann in Spain and his father William, living in Limerick now. Ann was going to come over as soon as Justin thought he could broach the subject with Grainne.

William, on the other hand, had told Justin he’d feel uncomfortable visiting – and he guessed Grainne wouldn’t appreciate it either – but he asked Justin to keep him informed of her progress.

Grainne had taken the news very badly. She’d hardly left her room in the ten days since Dr Lynch’s gentle announcement, even though she was still perfectly mobile. She lay in bed, stared at the opposite wall and hardly responded when they talked to her.

She ate very little, would probably have eaten nothing if she hadn’t had to take some food with the tablets she’d been prescribed. A slice of the quiche she loved came downstairs barely touched. A little dish of ice cream was left to melt, ignored, until Justin took it away. She hardly looked at the bowl of black grapes – her favourite fruit – that sat on her bedside locker for days, until they started to shrivel and Kathryn took them away.

The tablets were mostly painkillers. ‘That’s really all we can do for her,’ Dr Lynch had told them. ‘Just keep her as comfortable as you can, and in a few months, if need be, we can see about getting her into a hospice.’

But Justin was having none of it. ‘We’d rather have her at home,’ he told the doctor. ‘We can manage.’

‘We can manage, can’t we?’ he asked Kathryn later that evening. ‘We can talk to those daffodil nurse people – we can get someone in to help if we have to. And Ann will come over to stay for a while if we need her later, I know she will.’

And Kathryn had said yes, of course they’d manage.

She wouldn’t have wished this on her mother-in-law for the world, no matter how strained things had been between them. What a horrible thing to happen to anyone. Hard to believe that this time next year, barring some kind of miracle, Grainne wouldn’t be with them.

Justin had told his superiors the news at work and he’d been given compassionate leave for the next couple of weeks, and part-time hours after that for as
long as he needed them. His plans for a career change had, of course, been put on hold.

Funny how things worked out.

Kathryn sipped her peppermint tea. Grainne wasn’t the only one who’d lost her appetite lately: none of them was eating right. When had she and Justin last sat down to a proper meal together? Kathryn found the peppermint tea soothing when she couldn’t face cooking or eating.

She was looking forward to seeing her sister-in-law again. They hadn’t met since Justin and Kathryn’s trip to Spain two years before. She wondered how Grainne would react to the prospect of seeing the daughter she’d disowned so long ago. Maybe the knowledge that you were dying softened you, let you put aside old quarrels. They’d have to wait and see when Justin found the right time to broach the subject of Ann’s plans to visit her mother.

Kathryn lifted her cup, inhaled the minty steam. The one good thing about all of this was how it put everything else into perspective. It made her realise that whatever had gone on with Justin over the last few months wasn’t the huge thing she’d made it out to be, not compared to this.

From now on, Kathryn was going to look to the future, forget what may or may not have happened in the past and move on. Accept that she’d never know what Justin had done and live with it. She loved him, and she knew he loved her too.

The oven pinged and she went to take out the tray of almond cookies that Grainne used to love.

She yanked out a clump of mint and added it to the small pile at her feet. The smell was heavenly – pity about the taste. And pity the plant didn’t behave itself. Crowding out the rest like that till they could hardly breathe.

‘Disgraceful,’ she told Magoo, and he wagged his tail at her.

She sniffed the air. Was there a hint of autumn about the place? She enjoyed its tang, the smell of bonfires and the crackle of leaves, the frosty morning air.

Magoo snuffled around her, sniffing at the grass. Pawing at the freshly turned earth.

‘What do you think?’ Yvonne asked him. ‘Will my herbs survive, or are they doomed?’

His tail wagged again. He liked being spoken to.

‘So anyway, remember I told you about Greg?’ Yvonne said. Magoo sat, his tail thumping the ground. ‘You know Greg – he throws your ball.’

Magoo barked.

‘Yes, you remember him. Nice man, comes and
takes me out to dinner sometimes.’ She pulled out another clump of mint. ‘Well, he’s asked me to marry him. What do you think of that?’

She put her head to one side, looking at Magoo.

‘What’s that? What did I tell him? Well, I said I needed time to think.’ She dug some more, then looked at him again. ‘That was OK, wasn’t it?’

He barked again, pushed his head into her hand.

She ruffled his hair. ‘So now I’m thinking about it.’ She pulled his ear gently. ‘But you know what, Magoo?’

She stopped. The air was very still. Somewhere a bird was singing the same little tune over and over.

‘I’m thinking I might say yes.’ She put a hand around his long jaw. ‘But don’t tell anyone.’

She hadn’t mentioned the proposal to Clara or to Kathryn – well, poor Kathryn had her hands full with Grainne right now. She didn’t want to say anything to anyone until she’d made up her mind, until she’d decided whether she wanted to spend the rest of her life with Greg.

Was he her closest friend? He was certainly her closest male friend. She loved him, didn’t she? She looked forward to seeing him. He was good to her, very generous and dependable – oh, you could depend your life on Greg. He’d be good to Clara too, they’d always got on.

So there was every reason for saying yes. It made perfect sense. She put down her fork and sat on the grass with an arm around Magoo’s neck.

Greg’s wife. Going on holidays together. Sitting down to dinner every night, telling each other about
the kind of day they’d had. Getting into the same bed a few hours later.

She wondered what kind of lover he’d be.

She heard a door sliding open on next door’s patio. Footsteps, then clattering. The tenant – what was his name? She’d forgotten – cleaning the barbecue. He was a great man for a barbecue. She heard out-of-tune whistling. Was he wearing that awful hat? The hedge was too high for her to see. Imagine, they hadn’t met yet – he’d moved in months ago.

And Dan with his cookery classes, Clara doing them too, as if she needed them. She’d come home from the first class with a bag of lighter-than-air scones. She’d been baking scones since she was twelve. Yvonne asked her if she’d seen Dan and Clara said, ‘Yeah, he was there. We walked home together.’

Yvonne heard the tenant’s footsteps going into the house again. She stood up gingerly, easing the pins and needles out of her calves. Then she picked up her fork and turned to Magoo. ‘I suppose you want feeding.’

He barked again, happily.

In the second class, they diced onions and carrots, crushed garlic, stirred cream into stock and made soup, then toasted cubes of day-old bread for croutons. In the third, they made dough, cut tomatoes, sliced mozzarella, chopped mushrooms, scattered herbs and went home with pizza.

In the fourth, they beat eggs and sugar together, squeezed lemons and lined tins with pastry, then poured in the filling and baked tarts. And it was raining.

People tended to keep to the places they’d taken up at the first class, so Dan and Judy had become a couple. Judy told him about her mother’s Christmas cakes. ‘She was famous for them, kept half the neighbourhood supplied. She baked them in August, two at a time. Took about a week. She put dark rum into them. The kitchen smelled like a brewery.’