Authors: Maeve Binchy
“It wasn't a misfortune,” Hilary said.
“No, indeed it wasn't. It's the greatest thing that could happen to anyone who didn't have it and I sure don't think I'm giving it either. My girls are so pissed off with me, they haven't a good word to say about me, I know.”
They were interrupted by Barbara, collecting for the “welcome back” present for Declan. It wasn't a tough job—Declan was very popular with staff and patients at the heart clinic. The two women each took out large euro notes.
“I went in to see him last night,” Clara said. “He's getting on fine. He'll be into a convalescent home next week.”
“I'd love to have gone to see him,” Hilary said.
“One day you'll have time for the rest of your life, but not yet.” Clara was comforting.
“Ooh, thanks.” Barbara was pleased with the donations. “You know that nice guy Tim has just given me a big note too. He said that good people like Declan should be made into national treasures. Imagine!”
“Maybe he keeps a romantic poet's heart in his tool bag,” Clara suggested.
“Do you think? Well, he certainly keeps a Polish phrase book and he's been practicing some phrases, like
tak
and
Dzien dobry,
over and over.”
“What do they mean?” Hilary was interested.
“No idea.”
“Maybe he's interested in Ania,” Clara wondered.
“No, I think it's her flatmate,” said Barbara, who always made it her business to know what was what.
Ania was having her English lesson from Bobby Walsh's son, Carl, in the waiting room. Their heads were close together as Ania struggled with giving somebody directions from this hospital to the center of the city.
“You go first along the main road and take the signs to Trinity College, and then you will see the university on your left. You keep walking on, then you see a big bank that was one time a parliament house. You could turn right here if you wanted to go into O'Connell Street. If you want to go shopping you should turn left past the front gates of the university and then you will find Grafton Street for the shopping—”
“Just ‘shopping,’ not ‘
the
shopping,’” Carl corrected gently.
“Why don't I just say, ‘I'm Polish, I don't know where anywhere is!’?” Ania asked, laughing.
“Because it's not true—you
do
know where everywhere is. I'm only aiming for perfection!” They were still laughing when Barbara came up to them for a contribution.
“Your father gave already.” Barbara wanted to be fair to Carl.
“No, no, I'm happy to contribute. Declan's marvelous.”
“I will make a big banner to say
WELCOME BACK,
“ Ania said, and Barbara thought she'd caught Carl looking at the little Polish girl with affection.
Hilary knew that something was wrong as soon as she turned the corner into her street. A small crowd of neighbors had gathered outside her house and there was smoke coming from the kitchen window. At first she found herself almost paralyzed with shock and
certainly unable to move her legs. Then she was running to the house shouting, “Mother, Mother!”
Neighbors and friends held her back.
“She's fine, Hilary. She's fine, not a scratch on her. Look at her over there in a chair.” And Hilary saw her mother, surrounded by well-wishers, drinking a mug of tea while neighbors went in. The fire was out by now, but they had called the fire service just in case. As she approached her mother, Hilary glanced at the damage. The curtains were gone, just torn shreds hung down, the kitchen wall through the broken window looked black. Her mother could have been engulfed in flames here. She could have burned to death in her own house.
Hilary knew that she must thank God that she had somehow escaped. Jessica was completely unfazed by it all.
“I can't understand the fuss,” she said, over and over.
“But, Mother, you could have been killed. You could have died in there!” Hilary was so relieved she was shouting now.
“But I did it for Nick. He said he would love a plate of chips like the old days. I said I'd make them. He went out somewhere and then the pan caught fire.” Hilary knew that Nick would never have allowed his grandmother near a chip pan.
“No, Mother, you can't have understood him properly,” she began and then she saw the figure of her son running down the road carrying two portions of chips. He had gone to get them for his grandmother, who said it would bring her back to the old days. Only then did Hilary let herself cry.
Later that night, when the window had been replaced and most of the burned shelves and scorched utensils thrown out, Hilary and Nick sat down to talk.
“I suppose we'll have to decide what to do,” Hilary said.
“Well, the carpenters are coming in the morning. I'll take Gran for a walk while they're here …”
“No. I mean long term, Nick.”
“How long term?”
“Well, she's not really able to cope, is she? She thought you meant her to
make
chips!” As if.
“You're always the one who says she's perfect, Mam. You go for anyone's throat if they dare to say otherwise.”
“Yes, well, maybe I've dug my head up from under the ground.”
“My mother, the ostrich.” Nick was affectionate.
“I know. I wonder why no wise young ostrich didn't tell the older ones that it just didn't work as a policy.”
“They probably tried, but the elder ostriches said, ‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ so they gave up in the end.”
“Have you wanted to say something to me about Gran?”
“No. I don't see a thing wrong with her. You're the one who is always whining and shuddering when Gran says something off the wall. I love it. I think it's cool.”
“You didn't know her when she was as sharp as a stick.”
“She still is in lots of ways. Here she is in bed with a mug of drinking chocolate and you and I are in here fussing ourselves to death over her. Who's sharp here, I ask?”
“I hate to see her losing it.”
“She's a really old ostrich, Mam. She's entitled to lose bits here and there.”
“At work they tell me that I should—”
“We can manage, Mam. I'll take more home tuition and go out less.”
“I can't ask you to put your life on hold.”
“Is it on hold? I have a great life at night.”
“Do you meet any nice girls?”
“I meet lots of girls, certainly, Mam, whether they are nice or not…now that's the question.”
“But is it a good place to meet them, in late-night clubs? I only ask out of concern for you, not because I'm interfering.”
“You never interfered, Mam. You were always terrific.”
“But you still can't spend all your daylight hours looking after your grandmother,” she said.
“Not all daylight hours, but a few more of them than I have been. I wouldn't walk away from the house and leave her on her own again.” He looked ruefully around their burned kitchen.
“Will we get any insurance, do you think?” Hilary wondered.
“Don't know. Those insurance companies are monsters about defending their own. They'll say Gran is a liability. I don't think we should even think about approaching them, to be honest, for fear of what we might draw on ourselves.”
“Like your gran being put into care, you mean?”
“Well, that's up to us to decide, not some faceless insurance company to insist on. And the time hasn't come yet.”
Hilary felt flooded with relief. She had been so afraid that Nick would turn on her and ask her to be realistic, tell her that for everyone's sake Gran should be looked after properly. And now it appeared that he was just as desperate as she was that Jessica should stay at home.
Hilary looked around the kitchen and smiled. What was it really but a few cupboards here and a lick of paint there? She could take on some extra bookkeeping work to pay for it. The main thing was that her mother had not been hurt or frightened.
She felt like jumping up and giving him a great clinging hug, but he would have said, “Get off me, Mam, you're mental, you are.” Instead she kept the conversation light. “You see, your generation is so lucky. You can more or less do what you like. We were all buttoned up and peculiar. Everything you ever read about us all back then was true.”
“It was just different.” Nick was forgiving. “You were obsessed by sex because you didn't get any. Now that it is all round the place, people are much more easygoing about it.”
“And it
is
all around the place, I imagine?” Hilary asked mildly.
Hilary bought Ania a bright-colored scarf as a thank-you gift.
“Why do you thank me, Hilary?”
“Because you are doing so much of my work for me and you never complain. You are so bright, you know, you could do anything.”
Ania was pink with pride and stroked the scarf as if it were the
finest fabric in the world. “Tonight I write to my mother. I will tell her all about this gift,” she said.
“You write every week?”
“Yes, I tell her about the new land where I live and all the people I meet.”
“And do you tell your mother about your love life?” Hilary wondered.
“No, but then, I don't
have
any love life. I had too much love life when I was in Poland, but not now. Now I work so much I have no time for love.”
Hilary smiled. “That would be a pity. You know the expression about love making the world go around.”
“Yes, but it turned my world upside down. I think perhaps I am wiser without it. Make money now and find love later.”
“But suppose he came along. What would you do? Ask him to wait ten years?” Hilary asked.
“Not ten, surely. Five, maybe. I want to buy my mother a little shop with a place to live up the stairs and a place to work down the stairs. She is a dressmaker, you see. If she had a name over the door and some garments in the window, then she would have respect, then the people in the town would not pity her.”
“I am sure they don't pity her now, Ania.”
“They do. They pity her because of me. I was so foolish. If only you knew. I made her such a disgrace in our part of the world. She could not lift up her head and look people in their eyes.”
“Lord, what did you
do,
Ania?”
“I believed a man who told me lies. You see, I thought if he said ‘I love you’ he meant it.”
“There's women all over the world doing that all the time. Men too,” Hilary said.
“But in your case your husband
did
love you.”
“Yes, yes, but that was different, years and years ago. The world has changed so much now. You know, last night I was talking to my son about how much sex there is all around the place. Imagine!”
“I imagine you would be a good person to talk to about such things. My mother never mentioned sex. Never once to me. She was much too upset.”
“And your sisters—did they talk to you?”
“No, because when it happened they were all so ashamed of me. They had married when they were seventeen or eighteen, both of them. They married the children of neighboring people. I had to love a man who came from miles away. A man who had come to our town to start a business.”
“And did he?”
“For a while, yes. But he needed money, so he married the daughter of a rich man.”
“Instead of you?”
“A dressmaker's daughter with no father alive? But I thought he loved me.” The girl's eyes were very sad.
“Possibly he did, in his way. People love in different kinds of ways.” Hilary was trying to console her.
“No, Marek never loved me. He just told me he did.”
“My friends thought I was mad to marry Dan. Several of them told me. Even on the night before the wedding.”
“But you were sure?”
“Yes, I was sure. And what's more, my mother was sure, which is why I can never let her go into a place with strangers. You do see that, don't you?”
“Of course you can't. And I will do all I can to help you,” Ania promised.
As Hilary went home at lunchtime she wondered how she could take Ania up on her offer. Maybe the girl would come one evening a week and sit with her mother. Or possibly go and make her lunch from time to time. Hilary could find the money that Ania badly needed to buy the little house with her mother's name on it. The business premises that would give her respect.
When she got home a carpenter was already installed in the
kitchen, sawing and hammering. Nick and Jessica were in the front room going through a photograph album.
“That was your mother's wedding day, Nick. Look how well he looks. It was one of the best days in our lives. In fact it was
the
best day until you arrived.” There they sat, companionably turning the pages, her mother making sense and Nick content in her company. Hilary breathed more easily. What was she worrying about? Her mother was fine. She didn't need Ania or any carer. She certainly didn't need to think about residential care.
Four days later her mother packed a bag and phoned a taxi to take her to the railway station. Nick had left just as Hilary came in, so there was nobody to ask what had brought this on. There was a lot of confusion when the taxi arrived and had to be sent away again.
“Where are you going, Mother?”
“To the south of England, to get your father to see sense and come home to us. He has a fine son here, Nick. It's time he got to know the boy properly.”
“Mother, Dad died. You remember. It was ages ago. He died and
she
married her next-door neighbor.”
“He must come back to his son.”
“Nick is his grandson, Mother.”
“No, that's not so. Don't you think I know my own family?”
“Nick is Dan's son. You remember Dan? My lovely Dan who died in a lake.”
“Stop telling me about all these people who are dead. I never heard of Dan.”
“You did, Mother. You loved him. You were great to him. You told Nick that the day I married him was the second-best day in your life.”
“You're very emotional, Hilary. I don't think this job suits you.”
“Don't leave me, Mother, please.”
“Well, I can't very well, can I? You've dismissed the taxi.” Her mother looked very put out.
“Hold on a bit, Mother. I have to make a call.” She went into her bedroom and called Nick on his mobile phone.