Chestnut Street (33 page)

“Did they see you, Eddie?”

“No. I got over the back, up beyond Kevin Walsh’s at the top and through the gardens … they’re watching from the other side. From the garden of Twenty-two.”

“Yes, Mitzi and Philip are on holidays. That would be why the house is empty.” Bucket knew all about his neighbors, their plans and hopes and dreams.

“It’s over, you know. You do know that?” Eddie seemed to be trying to beat the last bit of hope out of Bucket.

“Drink your tea, Eddie. Take plenty of sugar—it will give you energy.”

“Energy for what? To be shot in the head once I walk out that door?”

“Why will they wait until you walk out—if they know you’re here, they could come in for you.”

“No, apparently not. Nest said he has respect for you. He talks
all this kind of Godfather shit about respect; he said you never behaved badly to him in his years of coming here, and he’ll not shoot anyone in your house.”

“And is Nest the head of it all?”

“He is, yes.”

“Imagine,” Bucket said.

“I know,” Eddie said.

It was like a real father-son conversation. At last. At the end.

They talked about a lot of things, about Hugh, the accountant; about Helena, who would never be happy anywhere. About how Eddie had no money because he gambled it all and what he had stolen from Nest had all gone to pay off debts in a casino and how it would all be very different if he had it all over again.

“But you will,” Bucket said.

In the light that came in from the street lamp he saw the flicker of irritation cross his son’s face, as so often before.

“Have a sleep, Eddie,” Bucket begged. “We don’t start until seven-thirty in the morning.” He went to go upstairs.

“Don’t leave me, Father,” Eddie said.

“I’m only going up to get us pillows and a rug. Of course I won’t leave you,” said Bucket Maguire.

And he sat all night and watched his son sleeping on the sofa of Number 11, tossing and whimpering as he slept.

It was a gray, overcast dawn and Chestnut Street was waking up, as usual. Lilian would be leaving Number 5 to open the hairdressing salon up in the main street, Kevin Walsh might have an early-morning taxi booking to the airport, the Kennys in Number 4 would be going to Mass somewhere, Dolly from Number 18 would be coming back from her newspaper round.

It was time for Bucket Maguire to get on his bicycle, attach his
folding ladder, his basket of chamois rags and soapy liquid, and head off with his teetering wobble towards the main road. Except this morning it would not be Bucket who rode the bike, it would be Eddie.

With a long raincoat and Bucket’s old hat shielding his face, nobody would know the difference.

Once he got to the main road he was to chain the bike to a railing, roll up the hat and coat in the basket with the rags and catch a bus to the city center.

Bucket had been withdrawing money every week from the savings account. That had been part of his plan. So he had plenty to give to his son.

He thought he saw tears in the boy’s eyes, but he wasn’t sure.

“You mustn’t look round to say goodbye—that would blow it,” he told Eddie. “Don’t wave at me but nod and wave at everyone else you pass. I know them all, you see, after living here all these years.”

And he stood behind the curtain of his house and watched proudly as his son cycled the company transport past the people who were waiting to kill him and past the neighbors who all saluted him, thinking that it was the window cleaner going about his lawful business.

Berna hated the sound of him; she feared and distrusted every single thing about this man … this Chester, who was going to marry her only daughter. But she would have to be nice—she had never known Helen so adamant about anything in her life.

“If you start wrinkling up your nose at him, Mother, if you start being hoity-toity, I just won’t stand for it,” Helen had cried, flushed and excited, looking younger than her twenty-three years.

“I have no idea what you mean. What can there be to be hoity-toity about?” she had said.

But Helen was having none of it.

“He’s been married already and he’s nearly forty.… Don’t you think I know what you’re thinking.”

“Have I said anything, Helen? Answer me that.”

“You don’t need to, Mother, you have what Father used to call your snibby face on.”

“Your father often saw snibby looks where none were intended.” Berna smiled but her heart was heavy.

She knew that Jack too would have hated the thought of this Chester, with his overconfident, brash American accent, flying in tomorrow, to discuss the wedding plans.

Jack would have given him short shrift. What
would
Jack have done? He would have taken Helen for a long walk, he might have taken her out to a meal in a fancy restaurant, he would have laughed and teased her out of it.

Jack had died when Helen was fifteen. Eight years ago. Everyone said it was the worst time for a girl to lose a father. Not many people had said that for Berna, at thirty-five, it wasn’t such a great age to lose a husband. But then Berna had always been very good at looking as if she could manage.

Everyone saw how quickly she had learned to drive, got a job, kept the show on the road. If she shed long tears of loneliness and self-pity, nobody saw. Berna knew that people’s problems were not very interesting to others, so she kept hers to herself. Even this heartbreak over the older man that her only child was going to marry. She hadn’t told her sisters, friends or colleagues how she felt that life had dealt her another cruel blow.

All she knew was that she must keep up the appearances of friendship, since this marriage was most definitely going to happen. She owed it to Helen and to Jack not to break up the family because Helen was going ahead with the most unsuitable marriage in the world.

He had never been to Ireland before, Chester, who had been everywhere. Helen had met him in New York, and flown home after six months to tell her mother the exciting news. Now Chester was arriving in person. He was going to fly to Shannon and hire a car. He wanted to drive through the country, he said, get the feel of it. He’d be at their home on Chestnut Street in the afternoon.

He had sounded plausible on the phone, pleasant, polite, no fake Oirish accents, but that was probably part of his style. He was in advertising; obviously he knew how to manipulate people.

Still, this was no time for negative thoughts. Not now, when he was expected any moment.

She heard Helen cut short one of her many excited telephone
conversations, and run to the door. His car, parked outside, was a modest one, somewhat like the one that Berna drove herself, but then she remembered he had rented it here in Ireland. Back in the States he probably had a big flashy car.

She came to the top of the stairs and had to turn her head away when she saw the passion in the way they kissed, held each other and then stretched apart to look at each other with delight. How had Helen known about such desire? She hadn’t learned it in this house.

He had dark curly hair and dark, dark eyes. His smile was broad and went all over his face. He came towards her with both hands out.

“I’m far too old to call you anything but Berna,” he said.

How clever—he was admitting he was old. Knowing Helen was watching her, Berna forced her smile to be as broad as his.

“You are very welcome to our home,” she said.

They went into the sitting room, a small room, full of memories, pictures of Jack and Helen all over the place.

It must look very poor and shabby compared to his duplex … wasn’t that what Helen said he had? A flat with an upstairs in it in Manhattan.

But he seemed to like it. He praised all the right things, the lovely old mirror that had come from her own grandmother’s home; the first painting Helen had done, which was framed and hanging in a place of honor; the view of the little garden lovingly cared for. He liked it all, without gush, with apparent sincerity.
Apparent
. She must remember that word. He hadn’t got where he was without being able to act the part.

He was easy to talk to; there was no denying that. He didn’t keep fondling Helen, he asked questions and he volunteered information about himself. He said he wanted Helen and Berna to decide what style the wedding would be. It was to be their day, their choice.

At times it seemed unreal. Berna felt she was part of a film or a play, that she was talking to a stranger about some distant, strange event instead of her own daughter’s marriage. Once or twice she felt herself moving her hand across her forehead, as if she felt faint. He seemed to realize.

“Helen, darling,” he said suddenly. “This is only a suggestion, but honestly I think that Berna and I would manage better without you.”

Helen looked at him with disbelief.

“No, seriously,” he went on. “We are both trying so hard to please you, every word we say is like another shot in tennis … and we try not to look at you for your approval.”

Berna laughed. He had got it absolutely right.

“Where are you sending me?” Helen looked like a small child.

“You have a hundred friends of your own age—go off and tell some of them about your older man.” He laughed.

“Will you still be my older man when I get back? You won’t let her talk you out of it?”

“I’ll be here.”

They sat companionably by the fire. Chester told of his first wife, who had died, how they had been happy for three years but how she had grown remote from him, cold. How he had thought he would never love again until he had met Helen.

“I can’t give her youth and all that starting-out-together stuff, but I can take care of her. I think she’ll like that. You would have liked it, right?”

How did he know? How could anyone have known?

Chester looked around him, at the photographs, Jack waving from a yacht … a lot of their savings had gone on that little pastime. Jack in his three-piece suit; he had always gone to the tailor—Berna was the one who looked through the rails for bargains for herself. Jack talking with a crowd of film stars; he had loved hanging around with the famous.

The American’s eyes moved slowly from picture to picture as if he could read the years of neglect and loneliness. His voice was gentle.

“I’ll always be there for her. I know it’s a kind of father figure she wants … but I don’t mind. I’ll be there.” He sounded very dependable.

“More than her own father was a lot of the time,” Berna heard herself saying, to her own surprise.

Chester wasn’t going to go along that route, he wasn’t going to destroy a lifetime of carefully preserved memories.

“He was the man you both loved, wasn’t he?”

She reached out and patted the hand of this man who was going to be her son-in-law. She didn’t care that he worked in advertising and that he was much too old for her daughter. She knew with great relief that she was not going to have to be the voice of authority anymore. This wise man whom Helen had brought home would make all the decisions from now on.

He could start by planning the wedding.

“Where would you like it?” she asked him.

He had the sense not to say wherever
she
liked.

“I’d like about twenty or thirty people, here in this house. In your home,” he said.

And she knew that for the first time in their lives she and Helen would both be in complete agreement about something and put their hearts into it together.