CARA RINGS THE BELL to the rhythm that tells Grandma it’s her – brrr-brrr-b-b-brrrrrrrrrr – before using her key to open the front door.
‘It’s just me!’ She shuts the door behind her. ‘Grandma? It’s Cara. I brought you the paper!’
She can already hear the television going. ‘Today,’ says a bass voice with a British actor’s accent, ‘Peppa and her family are going on a picnic…’
Cara puts the paper on the kitchen table. ‘Phew,’ she calls, ‘windy day!’
The little television room is separated from the kitchen by a low archway. It’s a curtained and carpeted den with a fireplace and a green marble carriage clock on the mantelpiece. From her high-backed armchair, Grandma lifts her chin and puts a hand back over her shoulder, wiggling her fingers. ‘Hello Aunty Cara!’ Jem is hunched in the cave of her body, watching the screen.
A family of very bright pink pigs are sitting on a chequered picnic blanket. ‘Peppa loves strawberries,’ says the deep voice. ‘George loves strawberries. Everybody loves strawberries!’
‘Have you had your coffee?’
‘Yes, but I’ll have another.’ Grandma nudges Jem off her lap. ‘Oh Cara, did you not comb your hair?’
‘The wind.’ Cara smiles at Jem, her hands on her hips. ‘Are you not dressed young man?’
He smiles and shakes his head. ‘We made eggy bread!’
Grandma pushes herself up from her chair. She is wearing a summer blouse with straight-cut short sleeves, exposing big, rock-like wrists and elbows, the flesh caught between them like wet plastic bags. She is getting old. She is old – eighty-five last January. Eighty-five is old.
‘Well, would you ever?’ she says. ‘The nonsense they have on the television!’
Jem’s eyes grow round as though someone has slapped him. His mouth crumples inwards. ‘It’s Peppa Pig,’ he says. Then he frowns and gives a brave nod. ‘It’s a bit for babies.’
Grandma flicks Cara’s hair back behind her shoulders, ‘You need to take more care of your appearance, darling.’
‘What happened to your forehead Grandma?’ There is a square plaster stuck right by her hairline.
‘A scratch. Well, where are the girls? They’ll melt in the car. Bring them in!’
‘I left them at home with their daddy.’
‘Well, what a man. And he’s able for all that is he?’
Cara rolls her eyes, and stoops to push Jem’s hair back off his forehead. ‘Well, Mr McGoo are you going to get dressed or what? Your cousins are waiting for you. We’re going to go and see some baby rabbits today, won’t that be fun?’
Grandma bends, wincing a little with the strain of it, and touches Jem’s head. ‘Big boy,’ she says, ‘go on up and get dressed. Your mammy left clothes on the bed for you.’
‘Well, Jem, I don’t believe it! Can you get dressed all by yourself?’
Jem nods up at Cara – enormous dark eyes and that fine little squiggle of a smile.
‘Oh yes,’ says Grandma, ‘he’s a great big man… go on up now, darling, quick as a flash.’
‘We’ll time you,’ says Cara.
*
As soon as Jem leaves the room, Grandma’s face drops. There is a purplish tinge to her top lip.
‘Well, Cara,’ she says.
‘I brought you the paper.’
‘Well, Cara, I’m glad you’re here…’
‘Oh?’
On the screen, the pigs are lying on their backs on the grass, laughing, snorting and kicking their trotters in the air. She looks around for the remote control – there it is, on Grandad’s footstool.
‘Well your mammy rang me yesterday… don’t tell Freya, now will you?’
‘What did she want?’
‘Oh nonsense, you know. You wouldn’t believe the nonsense. “Mammy,” she says, “your Lily is going to win the Turner Prize!” You know how she can be.’
‘Oh, dear…’ Cara reaches for the remote control, and kills the screen. ‘What did you say to her?’
‘Oh, I rang off. It doesn’t bother me now, you know. I’m only glad your grandad never knew how really bad she became… What is it that’s wrong with her, do you think, Cara?’
‘We’ll never know, Grandma. No point dwelling on it… Do you think she’s in Dublin?’ Can Grandma hear it in her voice? The cold, trickling dread.
‘Oh, I don’t know, darling. I don’t know. She rented out The Morrigan, as far as I know. She might want it back now, I really don’t know. Don’t tell your sister now, will you? Poor Freya, you know how upset she gets.’
‘Have you been taking your iron, Grandma? Will I get you a Ferrograd C?’
‘You could darling, you could. Although Freya says not to take it with coffee… But there’s another thing now and see what you think of this… Well I don’t know, did Freya tell you about the letter?’
‘The letter?’
‘Dinny wrote a letter, you know about it, do you?’
‘I don’t think so…’
‘A letter to Aoife. You do. He wrote a letter. One of the days when he was really very down, Cara. He could be very angry in those last weeks, do you remember? You know it was difficult when his hands began to shake like that, and he wasn’t very happy about Aoife’s taste in art… oh, you know how he could talk sometimes, “No culture”. He could be very down about it at times. He asked me to post the letter, and “Oh yes,” I said, and when I came back then he asked, “Did you post that?” and “Oh yes,” but I hadn’t posted it.’
‘You didn’t tell me, Grandma.’
‘And I didn’t open the letter either, you know, until this morning.’
Cara lifts the medicine box down from the shelf above the fridge. ‘What did it say? Or do you want to tell me?’
‘Well, you know, he was very angry, Cara, and he said some very hard things, you know. I’ve torn it up now so no one will ever read those ugly things he said… but the thing of it is Cara, I think he could have been right about something and I’m glad I opened it…’
Cara opens the box – a bitter, hygienic smell. She lifts out a bottle of alcohol, aspirin, a sheet of cotton wool rolled in blue paper. ‘I can’t find your iron tablets Grandma—’
‘It was about our will, actually, you know.’
‘You might not want to tell me, Grandma—’
‘It was strange to read it, you know. It was hard, like. You know the way Dinny could talk? The way of his words, like. I could hear his voice, nearly. I remembered his hands. That was hard on him, wasn’t it? “Look here Aoife, you three girls have had the best of everything, and you are wealthy women…” And, well, think about this now, Cara – your Aunty Sinéad has no children, does she? And what does she want for? And your Aunty Aoife, well, that girl, she never did a thing in school – not a thing, Cara! And I think the teachers thought she was stupid, but Dinny said no, just lazy and wanting for nothing. He got her a job, and she had his name, you know, and that was it. You know we bought her that house? Before she was married? Just bought it outright, no mortgage or any of that. And then with Daddy’s name she got a lot of clients, you know. So, she is a very wealthy woman, Cara, though you wouldn’t always know it by the way she can go on… and what’s she going to do with it all?’
Grandma stands at the kitchen table, one hand making a trembling tepee on the waxed tablecloth, the other holding a letter, wobbly fountain pen covering both sides.
‘You’re out of iron tablets, Grandma.’ Cara tries not to look at the letter. She replaces the bottles and boxes – a tight roll of muslin, a tin of bandages, iodine – and slides the medicine box up onto its shelf. ‘I’ll get you the liquid one from the health shop. It’s easier on the tummy anyway. It’s just water, really. You mix it with juice.’
‘… so he made a very sensible suggestion. “Look here, Aoife, you three girls had the best of everything. Your mammy and I worked and worked for years, we had very little for a very long time” – that’s true, you know, we really hadn’t a penny – “and you never wanted for anything, Aoife, and you are a wealthy woman though you never did a day’s work in your life… it is unjust that you should inherit my life’s work after I go…” So, and now I think he’s right, he said he wanted to leave everything to the grandchildren – to you and Freya and your cousin Valerie… and I think, you know, I think I will do that. I think it is a very sensible suggestion. Because well, you know your mammy – Eileen will spend whatever she is given, on gurus and fortune-tellers and what have you, and you and Freya won’t see a penny of what she inherits…’
‘Sit down, Grandma,’ says Cara. Even as the nausea billows up into her throat, her belly gives a little leap. Her mortgage, summer camp fees, the overdraft… ‘Will I make you some tea or some coffee?’
Grandma lowers herself into her chair, but her voice rushes on, ‘And, now I have been thinking while I was sitting there with that little fellow, well, when Daddy died, well, Freya hadn’t had Jem yet. Oh, he would have loved him. My God, wouldn’t he have enjoyed that little fellow?’
‘Sit down, Grandma.’
Cara goes into the TV room, and pulls the curtains open, letting the yellow heat fall over her face through the diamond-crossed window. The truth is, given Grandad’s disgust for ‘whores’ and ‘sluts’, he would certainly not have approved of Freya coming home pregnant by a mystery father. It’s a thing Grandma has always glossed elegantly over. The daylight fizzes in over the thick green carpet, Grandad’s low, mustard-coloured armchair, the slump of his ghost still hollowing the worn seat, and all the different shades of foliage and florals upholstering the little TV room. Her grandma’s wealthy, but she hasn’t changed the decor since she moved in here. Every year she has the whole house repainted the same colours.
‘It’s a beautiful day, Grandma. Do you want to come to the petting zoo with us?’
‘Cara, stop flying about the place and sit down will you? I need to speak to you. Now, when your grandad died you had no children, and Freya neither – our little Jem wasn’t born – and I am sure that if he had known them, your grandad would have included them too. So, I’m going to call Davitt Dunlin on the telephone and ask him to come here to talk it over. He’ll understand. I’m going to talk it over with him. I think I’m going to divide everything between the three grandchildren and the four great-grandchildren. I think that’s the best thing to do. That’s the thing to do.’
‘Tea or coffee, Grandma, which?’
‘Tea, darling, please, thank you. No – coffee. Twist my arm. But tell me now darling, am I doing the right thing?’
Cara fills the kettle, slots it slowly into its stand and flicks it on to boil. How much would it amount to? Hundreds of thousands. Many hundreds of thousands. She could paint all day if she wanted to. She could get Denise a really beautiful violin.
‘Biscuit?’
‘Cara, I have been waiting for a full hour to talk to you about this. Now what do you think, tell me?’
Cara stretches up for the biscuit tin and puts it on the table.
‘Aren’t you a tiny little thing, Cara, up on your tippy toes like that just to get at the biscuits? Give it here.’
Grandma’s dentures grit as she tugs at the lid. She has thick fingernails, glossy like little beetle backs, tapered fingertips. She removes two jam rings and passes them to Cara, then takes a chocolate Bourbon for herself. She points a finger while she chews, swallows hurriedly. ‘Did you hear what I said about the will?’
Cara puts a cup of coffee down in front of Grandma. In her mind’s eye, she is separating the table scene into thin horizontals of light and larger blocks of shadow. ‘I heard you.’
‘Coffee. Lovely. It’s my only sin. Well? Am I doing the right thing Cara, what do you think?’
‘I think you should talk it over with Davitt Dunlin like you say. I don’t think you should talk to anyone else about it, Grandma. It’s your decision, you know? And you know yourself what’s best. It’s really not for anyone else to say.’ Before Grandma can reply, she says, ‘Grandma, could I borrow a picture of Grandad’s? You know the hare? Is it still hanging in his office? I don’t know why I thought I had a copy in my house.’
‘Yes, darling. Yes, of course. It’s still there, I’m sure. Go and get it. And keep it, will you? I never go in there anymore. I’d like if you hung it up or something. It’s only gathering dust.’
Cara pushes the newspaper towards Grandma. ‘I got you the paper.’
‘Good, thank you, darling. Well done. Hang the print in your little attic room there will you? I’d like that.’
‘There’s a supplement in there about Stoneybatter – apparently it’s gentrified now.’
‘What does that mean – “gentrified”?’
‘Well, posh, I suppose. It’s posh now. Look, they have a picture of Ard Righ Street and all. That’s where you grew up isn’t it?’
‘Ard Righ. Yes. Bring me my glasses, will you? By my armchair.’
Cara fetches the glasses for her, and passes her the property supplement. She watches Grandma slide her glasses on and draw her head back to look. With her eyes she traces Grandma’s contours – the soft, fuzzed line of her head and the curve of her neck. She imagines a little woodworm-like creature pulling streams of light around the rim of Grandma’s cup, the bubble curls of her hair, fixing all those shapes into pipes of white space against dark, hatched penmarks.
‘Well did you ever!’ says Grandma, and there is a stopping sound from the back of her throat, like a draining sink suddenly plugged. ‘That’s our house.’
‘Is it?’
Grandma holds the paper firmly in both hands and looks at it unmoving – the blind glint of her glasses, the downturned mouth. Still Cara’s eye is at work, translating her onto paper, the little light-bearing beetle running over her padded shoulder and the hill of her wrist joint, the craggy curtain of her cheek.
‘Mam always kept it so nice,’ says Grandma. ‘You can’t imagine how Mam kept the house. And fifteen children, imagine. The Cannons next door and the Doyles just over the road. Mrs Doyle had miserable luck with children – trouble getting them to take root and then two born dead, poor woman – but they had a little girl my sister Greta’s age – a scamp of a girl, actually – and they lost her when she was only seven. Set herself on fire playing with matches. Imagine.’
She lays the paper flat on the table, spins it around so that Cara can see. The photo is of a very small, dull brown terraced house with a red door.
‘And what Daddy grew there on that apron of earth we had… we had an allotment, you know, just around the corner. That’s what we called it, “our apron of earth”. Mam could make a feast from a few potatoes and a fist of herbs – a “blind stew”, we called it. My mother was an intelligent woman. An intelligent housewife. There’s a lot to be said for intelligence in housekeeping. People forget that.’
‘It looks so small, Grandma. How did you all fit?’
It makes sense, suddenly – how Grandma has made a smaller house within this big one – a tiny, hot kitchen and a burrow for a living room, while the big airy rooms remain unused.
Grandma takes her glasses off and puts them on the table. When she looks up her cheeks are alarmingly red. Her eyes sag in sudden exhaustion, showing the curve of her eyeballs, the strips of pale pink on the inner lids.
‘Exactly,’ says Grandma. ‘How could we all fit? Exactly.’
‘Are you alright, Grandma?’
‘Well, Jem!’ says Grandma, beaming. The child is standing in the doorway, arms poker straight by his sides and his chin lifted in pride. ‘Don’t you look very smart?’