The onset of winter irritated every ounce of Iris Lifford’s being. All that darkness, cold and rain, not to mention the glare of orange street lamps from early evening, made serious inroads in her otherwise relentlessly optimistic nature. It was impossible to keep the hallway dry and even the simplest trip to the shed for timber to light the living-room fire meant changing into boots and donning a scarf and coat. Her garden, so neatly manicured in spring and summer, and even rather glorious in autumn, lost all its power to please her as leaves shed for the winter descended into damp sludge on her paths and lawn. Colm usually rang from the offices of Reilly & Maitland to check on his mother in between meetings with clients. He was a good and attentive son who made sure that his mother never wanted for anything, financial or practical. If a drain was blocked or a gutter overflowing Colm would make sure that someone came to fix it and Iris never received a bill for any of the work. She was proud that she had raised a kind and gentle son. He was the best thing that she had done in her life. She was grateful that the horrible business with her husband’s financial dealings had not sunk them. With the help of a handful of loyal friends and relatives they had picked up the broken pieces and turned their backs on the disgrace of Patrick Lifford’s memory. Colm seemed to be doing well at his legal career and though Iris hoped he would make partner at Reilly & Maitland she had stopped mentioning the prospect to Colm. Her ambition on his behalf irritated him so she kept quiet, but she couldn’t stop herself willing it to happen.
She was polishing the brass fittings on her hall door when the early-morning phone call came. A grandson? Did Colm just say a grandson? Maybe it was time to take the hearing aid that nice doctor had given her out of the cupboard. There was only so long that she could deny that she was only hearing the odd word here and there and imagining the rest. Colm raised his voice and delivered the message more vehemently.
‘I know it’s sudden, Mam. To tell you the truth I’ve only known that Leda was pregnant for about six weeks and then she went into labour early and I just never got the chance . . .’ His voice tailed off and, given a modicum of leeway, Iris was like an animal sprung from a trap.
‘And just who is Leda, Colm?’
‘She is my girlfriend. Well, was my girlfriend for a few months at the start of the year. It wasn’t serious but she got pregnant and now . . . well, now we have a baby. His name is Tom.’
‘Well, I suppose I should be honoured that you got round to telling me at all.’
‘I was trying to get my head round it myself, Mam. I didn’t mean not to tell you. It wasn’t deliberate. He is gorgeous. Just wait until you see him.’
Colm’s effort at softening Iris worked somewhat.
‘I would quite like to see him if that wouldn’t be too much trouble to you and – what did you say her name was? Leda?’
‘Come over to the apartment, you can see him now. He is home from hospital. They discharge very quickly these days,’ Colm added, knowing how pathetically inadequate he must sound.
He knew his mother’s feelings were hurt but he had bigger problems on his hands. She would have to take her place in the queue for satisfaction behind Harry Reilly of Reilly & Maitland who was already firmly on the warpath. Unsolicited leave was frowned upon. In fact, even leave of the totally above-board kind was considered an absolute nuisance. Harry sounded as if he had adhered himself to the ceiling with disbelieving rage when Colm had rung that morning to announce that he would not be in that day and might not be in all week in fact. A baby son, whom he had neglected to tell anyone about, was the elaborate excuse. Well, you had to hand it to him for originality, Harry thought gruffly as he slammed the phone down on Colm.
An irate boss and a mother whose nose was out of joint were, however, falling down the list of worries occupying Colm. To those minor irritations he could now add the fact that Leda was, to all intents and purposes, missing. She had fled the apartment the very minute Colm had come back from work the evening before.
‘I have to get out of here or I will explode. I need air and not to be here listening to him crying,’ she said, tossing her head in the direction of Tom’s Moses basket.
‘When will you be back?’ Colm asked, but if Leda answered from beyond the slammed door Tom’s cries drowned it out.
Dear Jesus, he didn’t even know when she had last fed him. Maybe Tom’s cries were hunger but the stench that rose from the basket revealed that a change of nappy might be the best bet. Now some twelve hours later, having changed five nappies, given four bottles and had so little sleep that he thought his eyelids were about to go on strike, Colm was allowing himself to panic. Where was she? What if she didn’t come back? How would he and Tom manage? From his perch on the couch he watched his son gurgle contentedly in his sleep and his own body gave in to the pure exhaustion that overwhelmed him.
Iris let herself into Colm’s apartment with the key she kept for an emergency. She didn’t approve of the area where her son had bought his apartment, thinking it a little rough, even though she had to admit the apartments were in themselves quite beautiful. She had avoided visiting as much as possible, preferring her son to come home to her instead.
Today was different, to say the very least of it. She had spent the duration of the uncomfortable bus journey from the city centre in a heady flux of exasperation and anticipation. Colm had thrown a bombshell and she wasn’t sure if her temper or delight was going to win through, but as the bus neared the stop closest to Colm’s apartment the butterflies that unsettled her stomach gave some indication of the softness of heart that Iris Lifford had spent years doing her best to hide.
She picked her way through the babycare shop and supermarket shopping bags that littered his hallway. Nappies, Babygros still in their packets and baby bottles peeked from their packaging. There was even a clothes airer with some vests and blue baby blankets strewn at random on its rails. She followed the cries to the kitchen and she got the first glimpse of a small red-faced infant squirming and squalling on Colm’s shoulder. Her son was struggling with the sterilizer. The steam burned his hands as he wrestled the scalding bottles from their heated cauldron. She dropped her bag and her hands reached instinctively for the brand-new little person that would, she dared to hope, look utterly familiar.
Colm was relieved at the way his mother wrapped herself up in Tom, expertly giving him his bottle and patiently winding him as if she had had recent practice. For her part Iris was glad that Leda had been asleep when she arrived. Good manners may have dictated that she be up to meet her child’s grandmother, particularly in these most irregular circumstances, but Iris had to admit that she relished the chance to have Tom to herself. There would be time enough to meet and analyse this Leda woman who had insinuated herself into her son’s life and home. Once she had jotted down a feeding schedule from Colm and packed him off to bed to catch up on some missed sleep, Iris turned her attention to the shoddy state of the apartment. She noticed it had gone distinctly downhill since her last visit six or so months before. Colm had always sent his clothes out for laundering and ironing, an extravagance that the extraordinarily house-proud and parsimonious Iris could never condone. She poked her head into the washing machine while Tom slept and found the undisturbed manual and some detergent tablets. Time to put you into active service, she thought as she scoured the apartment, picking up dirty baby vests, bibs, sheets and tea towels that lurked in heaps on every chair and on the table and even on the floor (she discovered with disapproval). With one load washing and another gathered and waiting, Iris went to sort out the assorted babycare debris that she had passed in the hallway.
It became clear that someone without a single clue about what babies needed had gone on some kind of hormonal rampage in Mothercare. She was anxious not to judge Leda before they met but honestly this was insane. Apart from the ridiculous amount, twenty-three to be precise, of newborn Babygros and fifteen vests, there were at least another half-dozen bottles, not counting the full set that Iris had just arranged, six ounces of formula apiece, in a neat line on the door of Colm’s otherwise empty fridge. She abhorred the waste and the mess, but she had to admit she was relishing the chance to sort it all out.
First she unwrapped from the booty what she thought her grandson might feasibly need. It was a neat pile. Then she put together a bag of returns for Mothercare. She would take them back herself and exchange them for bigger sizes. They were bound to be understanding and probably still amused at the new mother who had bought them out of every tiny infant size that they had in stock. Receipts tumbled out on to the ground. She was puzzled at the fact that it was Colm who had signed for all the purchases. If he was there could he not have talked some common sense into Leda? She was, she had to admit, somewhat disappointed that Colm seemed to have inherited none of her sense of prudence.
The phone ringing jolted her out of her zealous bout of housekeeping. She was annoyed at herself because she had meant to take it off the hook so as not to interrupt the sleeping house. She pounced on its third ring without pausing to allow the caller to greet her.
‘Good morning. This is Colm Lifford’s phone. I am afraid he is unavailable at the moment but I can take a message.’
The spiky formality, when she had been expecting Colm’s calm and understanding voice, made Leda think about hanging up. Had he patched the apartment phone through to Reilly & Maitland? This sounded a bit like one of the nosy crew at the office reception desk, an unfriendly bunch she remembered from the short weeks that she had temped there.
‘Who is this?’ Leda asked with rising irritation.
‘This is Mrs Iris Lifford, Colm’s mother, and who may I ask is this?’
‘I’m a friend of Colm’s and I need to talk to him straight away.’
‘Well, that won’t be possible, I’m afraid. As I said, he is unavailable.’
‘Look, this is Leda Clancy. I need to talk to him about Tom.’
‘Did you say Leda? I understood from Colm that you were asleep here in the apartment!’
‘I’m staying with a friend for a while, not that it’s any of your business. Now can I speak to Colm?’
‘Listen here. If it has to do with my son and my grandson then it’s one hundred per cent my business. I’ll thank you not to take that tone with me, young lady.’
‘Just get Colm, will you?’ Leda snapped.
Iris put the phone down and took a deep breath. It looked as if Colm was still being incredibly tight-fisted with the truth. She knocked on her son’s bedroom door and she heard his progress as he shuffled towards the kitchen. His clothes were wrinkled and he looked immeasurably worse than when he had gone to bed some hours before.
‘Mam, is it Tom? Is he OK?’
‘Tom is fine, Colm. It would appear that the mother of your child is on the other end of the phone and not here in this apartment, recovering from a sleepless night. Perhaps when you have finished speaking to her you might fill your mother in on any details you may have omitted. I do not appreciate being taken for a fool.’