It seemed to Maggie Ryan that she had been matching things all her life, from simple socks and underwear in drawers and linen baskets to table mats and table settings and menus, furniture, curtains and clothes, to the more complex choice of the perfect gift for the people she cared about, or the talents of her children with school subjects and hobbies. Matching people was another matter as it always tended to get a bit more complicated. Bringing people together, however, was what she was good at, and something that she actively enjoyed. She smiled thinking about today’s big Sunday lunch with family and friends gathered around her rather ancient dining table.
As she looked out over the square of elegant red-brick Georgian houses that formed a neat rim around the lush hedges and greenery of Pleasant Square, she smiled again. ‘Pleasant’ was the perfect word for it, she thought, this historic square with its old family houses tucked between Leeson Street and Ranelagh where she had lived for thirty-two years. She and Leo had raised their family here, opposite the east gate of the park with its tantalizing view of the herbaceous borders and flower beds.
The square itself, though not very big or imposing, was still considered one of Dublin’s most desirable places to live, and the houses that surrounded it architectural gems. Verdant oak, ash, beech and chestnut formed leafy pathways through the small park, enjoyed by generations of the square’s inhabitants. Pleasant Square’s appearance had barely changed over a century and a half and Maggie couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
She glanced at the ‘Sold’ sign outside number 29, on the corner opposite. She had to admit she was curious to know who had bought the O’Connors’ house. It had gone to auction about two weeks ago. Over the past month streams of visitors, would-be purchasers and inquisitive locals had viewed the three-storey home. Property prices in the city had literally gone through the roof and an old house with character so near town coming on the market was bound to attract interest. Despite being rather ramshackle and a bit run-down the house had sold for a fortune and rumour had it that the purchaser was a man of property, a wealthy investor. Whoever the mysterious buyer was, he had made a wise decision!
She remembered moving into this house, number 23, when she was a bride, Leo Ryan sweeping her up into his broad arms and insisting on carrying her up the steps and across the threshold, the two of them racing up the stairs and along the landing to the huge bedroom and the big bed, where they had stayed for hours, scarcely believing that they were man and wife and were now legally able to sleep together.
The house had been let as flats for years and was much the worse for wear when they first saw it, but Leo, with his eye for investment, had seen the potential. Over time they had both worked to restore the old house to its original condition, junking flimsy partition walls, sinks and two-ringed gas hobs, replacing multicoloured carpet and lino with polished floors, restoring original plasterwork and revealing the magnificent boarded-up fireplaces in the drawing room and dining room. Year by year they had turned a house full of tatty bed-sits into a comfortable family home as they worked and raised their three daughters.
The girls were grown up now. Grace, Anna and Sarah were independent young women, bright, beautiful, kind and good-hearted, just as daughters should be. She was proud of them, all so different. Grace, an architect, wrapped up in her career; Anna lost in the world of literature and academic life; and Sarah, who was still struggling to find a niche of her own but was devoted to her small five-year-old daughter Evie, who was the apple of her grandmother’s eye. She loved them dearly but she had to admit their single state perplexed her.
Sometimes she wished that she could stop the clock, turn back time, have Leo alive again, back beside her, the children still young. But it seemed nothing could stay the same: Detta and Tom O’Connor deciding to move to England to be near their son Cormac and his family and selling up was just another example of it. Soon a new neighbour would be moving into the old Georgian house on the square. It was stupid for her to get sad and emotional about it. Pull yourself together, she told herself. You’ve a busy day ahead. She’d invited everyone for lunch to say a fond farewell to Detta and Tom before their big move to Bath next week. Lord knows they deserved a nice meal and a proper celebratory send-off from the square.
Grabbing the Sunday newspapers off her doorstep she retreated to the warmth of the kitchen and the promise of a quick read, a mug of fresh roast coffee and two slices of wholemeal toast with honey before ten o’clock mass. Then she would come home and pop that enormous leg of lamb she’d got from John Flanagan the butcher into the oven with a few sprigs of rosemary from the garden and begin the preparations for lunch.