Kitty couldn’t believe how the time had flown. Their teacher, Alice Kinsella, really knew what was what about cooking. A pretty woman, she had a nice way about her, spoke slowly and clearly, and explained everything very well. The class was a bit of a mixed bag: that pretty girl with her make-up and false fingernails, and those two sisters who seemed to spend their whole time laughing and joking about their husbands, and as for that poor widower! The poor man hadn’t a clue! The crater could barely peel a potato, let alone cook one! Well, it certainly was interesting, and a bit different from the other classes she’d done over the years.
The last cookery class Kitty had attended had been when she was about sixteen and was part of her home economics course when she was in school. She could still remember the greasy mutton stew Sister Patricia had made them all cook, and the brown bread, scones, potato soup and gammon and cabbage. Sister Patricia, red-faced and sweating, told them she was preparing them for their lives ahead. God be good to the poor old nun!
Martello Avenue was very nice, an old-fashioned kind of road, and the Kinsella woman certainly had a fine big house. Kitty couldn’t imagine what it must be like to work in such a bright modern kitchen with those big windows overlooking the garden and comfy chairs and big table and island. It was another world compared to her old kitchen, she thought, as she locked the Ford Fiesta and came in home. She’d put some of the meat and potatoes in the microwave and reheat them. She passed the sitting room. Larry was sitting watching Sky Sports on TV, his feet up on the footstool she had worked so hard on upholstering last year. The newspapers were scattered around the floor. He must have fallen asleep. It drove her mad, and she resisted the urge to go in and switch off the TV and headed for the kitchen instead.
She sighed as she looked around. It was a good size. They’d raised five kids in this kitchen. All had sat around the big pine table, eating and doing homework and school projects. Now they were grown up and gone, all living relatively close by, and Larry and herself had their three grandchildren. Jack and Roísín were usually dropped in with barely a moment’s notice for their granny to mind, and on a Thursday she took little Danny for the day, as her eldest daughter worked in the laboratory in Beaumont Hospital. Caroline, their daughter-in-law, was due in about ten days, and then there would be another new baby in their family. Kitty had a high chair in the corner, and a basket of toys for the kids to play with downstairs, and the old cot set up upstairs.
She put on the radio and divided up what she had cooked. The rest could keep till tomorrow. It smelled great, and she set the timer on the microwave. OK, so there were no fancy ovens or cookers in this kitchen, and the lino was worn through on the floor, and the doors on three of her kitchen presses were loose. Also, you had to stand at the sink to look out of the window at the back garden with its washing line and shed and patio, which she supposed was the old way of doing things.
Larry, when he retired first, had talked about fitting a new kitchen, doing a bit of redecorating around the house, but it had never gone any further than looking at a few brochures. She was all up for it, and then Larry had stopped … sat in front of the TV and done nothing, like he always did. The two of them had had all kinds of plans for when the kids were finally grown up and independent and Larry was retired from his job in the civil service – forty years working in the Department of Health – on a good pension. They were going to visit her sister in America, go to Rome and see the Vatican, spoil themselves and eat out once a week, buy a new car, take trips, go on some of those special midweek deals that the hotels were always advertising, hire a boat, cruise the Shannon, and learn to play pitch and putt.
So many plans they’d had, and in the end she had given up raising things with Larry as it annoyed her so much when he told her he was too tired, and he wasn’t going wasting his hard-earned retirement fund on some stupid thing or another.
All Larry wanted was a few drinks on a Saturday night in the local pub, and to spend the rest of the time watching sport. Didn’t matter if it was football or GAA or the racing or even golf, he would settle himself on to the couch and not budge till 11 p.m. most nights. Two birthdays ago the kids had bought her a small TV of her own to use in the kitchen, as she never got to see any of her programmes any more, and last May she’d gone to Rome with a group from the parish. She had had enough of waiting around for her husband!
She grabbed a place mat and sat down at the table to eat the beef and some of those nice potatoes. She’d have a slice of the pear tart with her cup of tea after.
Larry came in.
‘Are you making tea?’ he asked.
‘In a while.’ She kept eating.
‘That smells good,’ he said, curious, looking at her plate. She’d left him a chop and some mash for his dinner earlier.
‘Bit of fillet of beef and some potatoes … it’s very tasty,’ she said. ‘Made it at the cookery school I’ve joined.’
‘Cookery school?’
‘Larry, I told you I was doing another night class … something useful … you just didn’t listen to me. We made a lovely pear and almond tart for dessert. You can have a piece of it with your cup of tea if you want.’
‘That would be nice,’ he said, scooting back out. ‘I’m in the middle of watching the snooker. Will you bring it in to me?’
She wanted to say, ‘I will not bring it bloody well in to you,’ but wasn’t in form to have a fight with him. Larry was never going to change, and she just had to put up with it. She took out her recipe sheet from the night.
Not bad at all. On next week’s ingredient list chicken breast and that crab thing were on the menu. Sounded good!
It was strange doing the classes on her own … every year she had done night classes with her best friend, Sheila O’Leary, both of them glad of a night out and a chance to escape their stick-in-the-mud, stay-at-home husbands. Poor old Martin suffered with chronic arthritis in his back so at least he had some excuse compared to Larry! She and Sheila were a right pair, and had been friends since they had their first babies, Clodagh and Melissa, around the same time. Sheila was always up for everything. She’d restored a whole mahogany sideboard last year. She laughed, thinking of Sheila with a mask on, injecting all the woodworm holes with some kind of chemical, and the two of them wondering where the woodworms would escape to. They’d had a great few days in Rome in the spring with the rest of the parish group. They’d seen the Coliseum, the Vatican, and the Trevi Fountain, but now poor Sheila was laid up in the hospital. They’d diagnosed breast cancer, a small lump, last year and removed it – but now it had spread. Sheila was in having her treatment. Kitty hated seeing her sick. Sheila was strong, a big woman. The medicines would work, and she’d get better, and the next time the two of them would go to Paris. Climb the Eiffel Tower. See the Mona Lisa. Go to mass in Notre Dame. She’d bring Sheila up a bit of tart tomorrow – the hospital food was awful – and tell her best friend all about the new class and what she was missing.