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Una pushed open the front gate and made her way up the path. She’d finished work early having asked Mr Hart if she might go home. She’d woken that morning feeling odd and as the day had stretched on she’d begun to feel decidedly unwell. The contents of her breakfast had been tossed up in the toilet and her throat was hot and aching. Her eyes were burning, and she couldn’t focus on the paperwork she was supposed to be typing. She was chilled one minute and fiery the next. A pink rash too had appeared in the creases of her arms, it alarmed her, and she’d desperately tried not to scratch at it.
A bout of flu no doubt Mr Hart had tutted, his tone suggesting she shouldn’t have come in to the office at all spreading her germs. He sent her home. She’d sat with her aching head resting against the window of the bus as it wound its way through the streets to the stop closest to home. She could do without getting sick. Her plan had been to race down to Dawson Street on her lunch break to pick up the copy of Modern Bride she’d ordered in. It was due to arrive today. Mammy had offered to sew her wedding dress and she wanted to get some ideas as to the latest styles.
The wedding dress could wait, and she shut her eyes briefly willing the bus to hurry up. All she wanted was to sleep.
How she made it up the stairs to her bed was a blur. So too were the events that transpired from then until her fever broke and she found herself in a hospital bed. She was in a ward with only one other bed. It was occupied by a young girl of about six or seven years who hailed from a small village in County Clare. She was tucked up in the bed across from Una. Her large eyes in her head showed she was very poorly. It was a mystery to Una as to what she was doing there.
It was explained by one of the kindlier nurses, her voice muffled by the mask she wore, she had Scarlet Fever and was to stay in the Cork Fever Hospital in isolation for the next three to four weeks at least. Where she’d caught the illness was a mystery.
Her only visitors during that time were her Mam and her Dad, they came once a week but even they were not allowed in to see her. They could merely stand at the glass and tell her the news. Mam told her they’d burned her bedding on the advice of the doctor who’d made the diagnosis before she was whisked away in the ambulance. Neither they nor Aideen was showing any symptoms thank the lord. Leo too, was fighting fit. They sent their love.
Una was grateful for those visits. They were her only link with the outside world. Her world consisted of hushed, no-nonsense voices, an all-pervasive smell of carbolic soap, and scratchy sheets. She knew too her mam would struggle bringing herself to the less than salubrious part of the city where the hospital was located. This wasn’t out of snobbery but rather fear. Fear of catching something like the dreaded tuberculosis which was raging through the city. The rest of the wards in the hospital would have been full of people afflicted with the illness.
It was such a strange time, she was sick yes, but still lucid enough to be lonely, homesick and terribly bored. What it must have been like for the little girl who shared the small space with her Una couldn’t comprehend. To be so little and so far away from home must have been terrifying. The nurse had confided that the girl Maggie, had rheumatoid fever on top of the scarlet fever and would be staying longer than Una. If indeed Maggie had felt frightened by the alien space, she found herself in she never said. In fact she barely strung a sentence together the whole time Una was there despite their proximity.
With nothing else in which to occupy her time Leo filled her thoughts. It was a form of torture not to be able to see him and she missed Aideen terribly even if she had been a moody mare this last while. She’d felt a distance growing between her and her sister over the course of the year. Una put it down to the difference in their circumstances. She was a young woman with a fiancé while Aideen, despite several advances had declined all her potential suitors. She was too picky by far and if she weren’t careful, she’d wind up an old spinster Una would think plucking at her sheets in irritation.
She thought it likely, although she’d never ask, and Aideen would never say that she was envious of her situation. She was jealous of the way in which Leo took up so much of her time these days. It was time previously reserved for each other and of course Leo, too had been as much a part of Aideen’s world as he had Una’s, from the time they were ten years old. The old saying three’s a crowd was true, however. One couldn’t conduct a romance with a third party in tow. Perhaps her sister had felt pushed out. She put herself in her sister’s shoes and decided that this must be the case.
She’d been so caught up in her own love affair she hadn’t spared the time to think about Aideen and how it must have affected her. She’d merely found her twins moodiness a selfish irritant designed to dampen her own happiness.
It was the way of life though wasn’t it? Things had to change, people grew up and fell in love. They got married and started families of their own. She made up her mind that she would talk to Aideen once she was well and home once more, to explain all of this to her. Tell her that just because she was going to start a new chapter with Leo didn’t mean that there wouldn’t always be a special place reserved for Aideen. They were part of each other after all. Two halves that made a whole.
Yes she resolved, she would smooth the waters over once she got home.
In between these musings she’d lie on her bed fed up with herself and her bland surroundings. She’d imagine where Leo was and what he’d be doing at different times during the day. Her mind would drift toward their wedding. No date had been set but still she’d imagine herself in a dress similar to that worn by Elizabeth Taylor in her May wedding to Conrad Hilton Jr. Aideen as bridesmaid would wear blue, it was her favourite colour. She’d get swept along in a tide of images depicting horse-drawn carriages and magnificent cathedrals where she and Leo would exchange vows.
She was not delusional though she and Leo were not royalty or Hollywood stars and the reality was her dress would be handmade by her mother. It would not be as voluminous as Elizabeth Taylor’s shimmery, satin affair but it would be pretty. The gown would be made with the sort of love money could never buy and she would feel every inch the beautiful bride. The ceremony would take place in St Peter’s Church where they had attended Mass for as long as they’d resided in Phibsborough—forever! As for her carriage, she had her fingers crossed Dad would be able to borrow his boss’s Bentley to drive her and Aideen to the church.
A honeymoon would be nice too. Una hadn’t seen much of life outside of Dublin. She didn’t think the odd stay down at her cousin Janet’s near Wexford counted for much. Connemara would be pretty, she’d seen pictures of it in springtime in a magazine when the purple heather had formed a glorious carpet around the lakes. Or if they saved enough money, they could cross the water and visit Wales, she had a second cousin who lived on a farm there.
Una would flush as she thought about what her nights might be like on her honeymoon. The lovemaking was something she didn’t know much about. She and Aideen had gleaned what little information they did have from the whispered conversations of girls at school. It was something she suspected that while initially a little frightening would ultimately be something she’d enjoy very much—if those yearnings she felt when she and Leo kissed were anything to go by!
The time passed as time does and the day came when Una left that white walled hospital room. She felt sad to be leaving little Maggie on her own but she couldn’t wait to escape the confines and she didn’t look back as she walked away from the building. Her dad picked her up in his new Anglia. This was something that had changed in the time she’d been in hospital. The family now had a car. It made Una aware that while she had been shut away life had indeed gone on.
The car was her dad’s pride and joy and he gave her a running commentary of the mechanics behind it as they pootled home. Mam he mentioned in between explaining how the gears worked, had organised a party tea. A celebration of their girl being well and coming home. Una walked through their front door already tired from the exertions of leaving the hospital and listening to her dad. She was pale and thin and felt like she’d been away for months, not weeks, but she was home.
She was greeted warmly and if things were off with Aideen and Leo she didn’t pick up on it. She never saw her mammy’s worried frown as she glanced from each of her daughters and back over at Leo. Nor did she hear the forced joviality in her dad’s voice as he tried to ward off the storm he knew was coming. The illness had left her drained and oblivious to the shifting sands of their relationship. They’d been sifted through and redefined while she’d been in hospital. But she knew nothing of this.