Friday

Zarek turned over and checked his bedside clock. Half past seven, and he didn’t start work till eleven. He stretched each of his limbs in turn, working clockwise from his left leg. He drew circles with his ankles, three in one direction, three in the other. He cracked the knuckles on both hands. He lay on his back and studied the ceiling, and decided that he had to stop living a lie.

He was twenty-five years old, not some adolescent who couldn’t see his way and didn’t know what he wanted. Zarek knew what he wanted. He’d known for a long time. He’d known for years, but he’d been afraid to admit it, even to himself.

And then he’d come to Ireland, and his life had changed, everything had changed. And now he knew what had to be done, which didn’t make it one bit easier. The prospect of admitting the truth was a terrifying one. Zarek had no idea what would happen once he took a step down that path, but he had to take it before the uncertainty destroyed him.

He’d do it as soon as the next opportunity presented itself. He’d say what had to be said, and he’d live with the consequences, whatever they may be.

He put out his hand and turned on the radio, and listened to a man speaking much too quickly. After thirty seconds the only words Zarek had caught were “Dublin,” “everyone” and “following.”

He closed his eyes and wished the man spoke Polish.

—————

“Carmel,” Meg said, “could I have a quick word before you go?”

She was going to tell her not to bring Barry back. In the three days he’d been at the playschool he hadn’t once opened his mouth, except to whisper to Carmel anytime he wanted to use the toilet. He ignored the other children apart from Emily, who built Lego towers for him and kept up a running commentary when she made a jigsaw. “See, this is the horse, it goes here, an’ then you put the tractor in this place, or no, this one, an’ the farmer goes in here…”

Barry wouldn’t touch the apple pieces that Meg fed them at break time. He didn’t join in with the singing or the dancing, or the clapping. He listened to the stories that Meg read, leaning into Carmel’s side and sucking his thumb doggedly, but he didn’t volunteer any answers to the questions she asked the children afterwards.

And he flatly refused, each morning, to allow Carmel to leave. Of course Meg wouldn’t be happy with that, she wouldn’t want a mother around all the time. Carmel waited for both of them to be sent packing.

“I was wondering,” Meg said, “if you’d be interested in making this official.”

“Official?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t be able to pay you very much. I was thinking sixty euro a week—twenty a day—but it would be cash in hand, you wouldn’t be paying tax on that.”

Carmel struggled to understand, sixty euro hammering in her head. “You’re askin’ me do I want a job.”

Meg smiled. “Sorry, I’m not explaining myself very well. Yes, I’m offering you a job. You’ve made life so easy for me since you’ve arrived. You’ve everything tidied away before the kids are even collected. You tie laces and wipe noses and mop up spills, you do anything that needs to be done.”

“I jus’ like keepin’ busy,” Carmel said. “It’s nothin’, I don’t even notice I’m doin’ it.”

Sixty euro.

“Well, I’ve noticed,” Meg said, “and it’s been a huge help to me. Since I started this playschool in September I’ve been struggling. It’s really too much for one person; I need another pair of hands. Are you interested at all?”

Carmel licked her lips, which had suddenly gone dry. “I thought you were goin’ to throw us out.”

Meg looked at her in surprise. “What? Why on earth would I do that?”

“’Cos Barry is so quiet,” Carmel said. “He don’t mix much, and ’cos he don’t let me go home. I thought you mightn’t want us here.”

Meg laid a hand gently on Barry’s head. “He’s a great boy,” she said softly. “He’s a credit to you. He’ll just take his time, that’s all, and he’ll find his voice when he’s ready.” She smiled at the little boy. “Won’t you?”

He sucked his thumb and gazed back at her.

Carmel’s eyes had begun to feel hot. She blinked hard. “You’d pay me sixty euro a week,” she said, “for three mornin’s.”

“I know it’s not much,” Meg said, “but—”

“It’s fine, it’s plenty,” Carmel broke in. “I’d love to. Honest to God, I’d love it.”

A job. She’d just been offered her first job, in this colorful, noisy room that was going to help Barry find his voice. She was going to come here three mornings a week and help out, doing what she’d been doing anyway, without thinking, for the past three days. What was wiping a few noses and tying a few laces, and putting jigsaw pieces back into boxes? It was nothing, it wasn’t work at all.

She was going to get €60 every week for doing nothing. And she was going to be with Barry, they were going to be together.

“Thank you,” she said, hearing how feeble it sounded. Wanting to throw her arms around Meg, wanting to spin cartwheels around the room. “I’d really love it.”

“That’s great,” Meg said. “I’m delighted. And I can’t promise anything, but if it works out we might take on a few more children after Christmas, when there’d be two of us, and Barry could come five days a week, and I could pay you a bit more. How does that sound?”

“Fine, that sounds great.” Carmel felt the happiness erupt in her. She got to her feet quickly, afraid that Meg was going to change her mind. “We’ll be goin’,” she said. “Let you finish up.”

“Hang on a sec,” Meg said, walking to the door. “I’ll be right back.” She left the room.

Carmel crossed the floor and lifted Barry’s jacket down from its red plastic hook. A white label had been fixed to the wood above the hook, and it said BARRY. The room was full of white labels, all with a word written on them in black marker, all stuck with squidgy blue stuff to various objects.

Carmel had copied table and chair and door onto a page with a crayon as Meg had read a story earlier. She’d drawn a corresponding picture beside each word, and the page was folded in her pocket now. Next week she’d do window and blackboard and wall, and after that she’d start on the books that had a different word and picture on every page.

Meg reappeared. “Your first week’s wages,” she said, holding out three €20 notes.

“Ah no.” Carmel backed away. “I wasn’t started yet.”

“Of course you were; we just didn’t know it.” Meg folded the notes and pushed them into Carmel’s hand. “Go on, I insist. I won’t feel I’ve been taking advantage.”

On the way home—home!—Carmel bought a biro and a ruled copybook, a book with a chicken on the front and a small tube of jellies for Barry, a packet of flower seeds, a bag of potatoes, a turnip, a chicken, and a bottle of whiskey. She’d seen whiskey at the back of a kitchen press, so she knew what kind he drank.

She reached the house and stopped at the gate. Barry looked up at her.

“Jus’ a sec,” she said.

She gazed at the redbrick façade, at the place where they lived now. Number 17, Walnut Grove. The house where Ethan had grown up. The house she had keys for.

“Tell you what,” she said, “let’s have a quick lunch and then go to Granddad’s shop, okay? I have to tell him somethin’.”

She was bursting with it, she couldn’t wait till he got home from work. She was dying to see his face when she told him. She wanted him to be glad he’d taken them in, to be glad she was the mother of his grandchild.

—————

She was alone, leaning against the radiator under the window, arms crossed over her chest, looking towards Pauline’s ancient orange carpet that was patterned with tiny brown stars, her dark hair curtaining her face.

The small room was crowded with Pauline’s neighbors and friends, stopping off on their way home from Kevin’s removal. They stood around or perched on chair arms, balancing cups and glasses and plates. The air was thick with perfume and coffee and hard-boiled egg, and humming with various subdued conversations.

Audrey threaded her way through the room with Pauline’s biggest teapot, topping up cups as she went. She reached the radiator.

“A hot drop?”

The woman lifted her head, and Audrey was struck by how lost she looked. She regarded Audrey dully for a few seconds before recognizing her.

“Oh, hello…no, thanks.”

Her cup sat by her feet on the carpet, hardly touched. A whitish film had settled on the surface of the tea. Audrey cradled the teapot and leaned against the wall next to the radiator, and the two of them remained silent for some time.

When the woman eventually spoke, Audrey had to lean sideways to hear her.

“Kevin was like a second big brother,” she said. “He didn’t talk to me as if I was a child. He taught me how to tie laces, just before I started school. I didn’t know there was anything different about him, I just thought he was wonderful.” She stopped then, and shook her head. “It’s so unfair.”

Audrey said nothing. In the far corner of the room a sudden laugh erupted, and was cut off abruptly.

“How is Pauline?” the girl asked, raising her head to look at Audrey again. “I can’t talk to her properly, with all the…”

Pauline was in the kitchen, surrounded by Sue and her family, and more callers. “She’s bearing up,” Audrey said, hearing how pathetic it sounded. What else could you say though? This girl didn’t want to hear that Pauline was completely shattered, that when she looked at you she didn’t see you, because her grief blocked everything out.

Kevin, it turned out, had suffered a massive heart attack in the water. He’d died from that, not from drowning. Not that it made any difference now.

“It’s not fair,” the woman repeated, her voice still low but urgent now. “Why Kevin, for God’s sake? Where’s the sense in that?” She rubbed her face. “God, sometimes I just…” Her voice trembled and she trailed off, bowing her head again, breathing deeply.

“I know,” Audrey murmured, putting a tentative hand on her arm. “There’s no sense to it.”

“My brother died,” the woman said then, “a few years ago. He was twenty-four.”

“Oh,” Audrey said, recalling Pauline’s upset at the time. “Oh, I’m so—”

“It’s just cruel, to snuff out somebody’s life, just like that. What kind of a God does that? Ethan didn’t deserve it—and Kevin didn’t deserve it either.”

“No.”

“I blamed my father,” she said, half to herself. “On some level I think I still do, but…” She stopped again, and looked apologetically at Audrey. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be saying all this, we hardly know each other.”

“I’m Audrey.” Putting out a hand, which the woman took.

“Val,” she said. “I know your name, Pauline often mentioned you. You were good to Kevin.”

Audrey demurred, but the woman said, “No, you were. She was very thankful. He used to chat to you over the hedge all the time, she said.”

The tears rose in Audrey’s eyes then, and she fished a crumpled tissue hurriedly from her sleeve and pressed it to her face. “He did,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Val said. “I didn’t mean—”

“No, no, no—” Audrey blew her nose and got to her feet, pushing the tissue back up her sleeve. “Well,” she said, attempting a smile, “I’d better get on. So nice to finally meet you.”

She left the room as quickly as the crowd allowed and set the teapot on the draining board in the kitchen. She walked straight out the back door, avoiding anyone’s eye, hoping nobody was taking any notice of her as she pulled it closed.

She took great gulps of the night air, feeling the frosty nip of it steadying her somewhat. Winter on the way. She walked to the hedge that divided Pauline’s garden from her own, and she stood where Kevin had so often stood—and the thought of him undid her again, and she bent her face into her hands and allowed the tears to fall.

Val was right, it was cruel. It was senseless and tragic and so unfair. Audrey cried in noisy, messy sobs, leaning up against the hedge where Kevin had stood so often.

When her tears eventually abated, when her sobs lessened, she inhaled deeply again and again, trying to steady her breath. Her nose ran, her face was wet, everything inside her head felt heavy and cloddy. As she rummaged for a tissue again—not that it would be much use at this stage—the kitchen door opened behind her.

She turned to see a man coming out, his frame silhouetted against the light from the kitchen, his features indistinguishable in the darkness of the garden. She swiped at her eyes quickly with a sleeve, willing him to go away and leave her alone.

Instead he walked straight over to her. She attempted to regain her composure as he approached, as she recognized him. He reached silently into the breast pocket of his jacket, drew out a large white handkerchief, and handed it to her.

Audrey accepted it wordlessly and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Eventually, when she felt a little steadier, she looked back at him.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was thick, as if she had a heavy cold. Her throat hurt from sobbing.

“Paying my respects,” he replied mildly—which, of course, wasn’t what Audrey was asking at all. Had he taken her literally just to annoy her?

Oh, who cared? She folded his handkerchief and pushed it into the pocket of her skirt. “I’ll wash it and return it.”

“Keep it,” he said, his gaze directed now towards the bottom of the garden. “I have lots more.”

The air was becoming steadily chillier, but Audrey didn’t feel ready to return to the house. She looked a fright, she was sure, her hair every which way, her eyes swollen, her cheeks burning, but out here in the dark it didn’t matter.

“I assume,” he said then, “what you were asking was how do I know Pauline.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Audrey replied. It felt surreal, holding this quiet conversation with him in the darkness.

“She was my housekeeper,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “After my wife died she kept house for me and my children. She was with us for ten years. They both were, her and Kevin.”

In her befuddled state, it took several seconds for the implications of his words to sink in. Audrey was dumbfounded. This was the man Pauline had worked for, the man she’d held in such high regard?

He was so good to us, she’d often said to Audrey. So generous. He paid me well over the odds, and insisted on us eating dinner with them before we went home in the evening. Up to his eyes with his business, but always a kind word for Kevin.

Good? Generous? Kind? The man who’d been cranky and—yes, downright rude, the first few times Audrey had encountered him? Of course he’d changed a bit since then, he’d mellowed somewhat, but still.

“And you?” he asked, turning to face her. “What’s your connection?”

“I live next door,” she told him, indicating her house absently, still astounded at his revelation. Still piecing it all together. “So Val is your daughter.”

A beat passed. “You know her?”

“Only to say hello to, if I passed her on the road when she visited this house. I met her properly just this evening. She’s in the sitting room.”

“Yes,” he said—and Audrey remembered that Val had given the distinct impression that father and daughter weren’t on the best of terms. I blamed him, wasn’t that what she’d said? She blamed her father for her brother’s death, whatever she meant by that.

His son had died. First his wife, then his son—and somewhere along the way, he’d become estranged from his only remaining child. If anyone had earned the right to be grumpy, it was him.

“My grandson has started playschool,” he said then, “thanks to you.”

It took her a second to switch subjects so utterly. She’d completely forgotten about his asking her if she knew any playschools. “That’s good,” she said.

His grandson. Yes, the small clothes she’d seen him buying. But he wasn’t Val’s child, was he? Whenever Val had come to Pauline’s she’d been alone—surely if she had a little boy she’d have brought him to visit her old housekeeper?

Oh, it was too complicated to figure out, and none of Audrey’s business anyway. She gave a slight shiver, and immediately he said, “You should go inside.”

But Audrey couldn’t face it yet. She still felt fragile, as if the tears might erupt again at any second. “I’ll stay out here a little longer,” she said, “but you go in if you want.”

To her great surprise he took off his jacket. “Here,” he said, “throw that over your shoulders.”

“No, really, I—”

“Go on,” he said, “it’ll keep you warm. I don’t feel the cold.”

Audrey took it, too weary to argue, and draped it across her shoulders, and the warmth of it—the warmth of him—settled into her. It smelled of peanuts.

“Thank you,” she said. They stood in silence for a few minutes, listening to the muffled buzz of conversation from the house. When the silence between them stretched, Audrey stole a glance at him. His hands were in his pockets and his gaze was off down the garden again. Was he remembering his son, or his wife?

She thought of her irritation with him, how she’d dreaded each visit to his shop. Well, she’d had reason enough, she supposed, not to want to meet him.

But look at him now. Look at the two of them, standing together peaceably, if not exactly happily. Nothing like a tragedy to remind you what was important, and what didn’t matter at all.

Eventually she slid his jacket from her shoulders and handed it back. “Thank you. I think I’ll go in now.”

He accepted the jacket wordlessly. She left him there and went through the kitchen, squeezing Pauline’s shoulder on the way and telling her she’d see her in the morning. She walked back to her house and let herself in quietly, and gathered Dolly into her arms.

She stood in her dark kitchen and looked out the window, but most of Pauline’s patio was hidden from her view by the dividing hedge. She turned away.

“Let’s go to bed,” she whispered to Dolly, and the little dog licked her face.