His face took on a pained expression. ‘O’Dowd,’ he said, ‘I’m no good at this. I’m good at being insensitive and blunt and sarcastic, and you would have me believe I’m rather good in bed. But I can’t do sweet talk, you know that.’
‘Just tell me how you feel about me. Tell me how you feel when you look at me.’
He sighed. He took off his glasses again and moved his hands up to cradle her face. ‘I look at you and I feel happy. I think about you and I feel happy. I talk to you and it makes me happy. It’s not a feeling I’ve had very often in my life, and I’d like to hang on to it. Will you please marry me, even though I can’t imagine why the hell you’d want to, so I can stay feeling happy for the rest of my life?’
She tilted her head. ‘Better. But you forgot the bit about love.’
Jesus
, he said.
She waited.
He ran a finger along her cheek, like he’d done the first evening. ‘I love you, O’Dowd, a hell of a lot more than I love myself. I have no idea how it happened, but I’m pretty sure it’s entirely your fault – and frankly, it terrifies the daylights out of me. Good enough?’
She touched her lips to his. ‘Yes. Yes it is, and yes I will. But we’ll both make the arrangements.’
The following day she phoned Alice and told her she’d like to visit Edinburgh for a couple of days. A week later she travelled alone to Scotland, booked in to the B&B that had been arranged for her, and took Alice and Lara out to dinner. The next day she met Alice at Wonderland Design and the two of them went to lunch at a café around the corner.
‘I have news,’ Helen said, as soon as their food had been served.
Alice was precisely as dumbfounded as
she’d expected.
‘You’re getting
married?
But who is he? How long have you even
known
him?’ Her face changed. ‘It’s not Frank, is it?’
‘It’s not Frank,’ Helen said. ‘I’ve known him forever. It’s just taken us a while to get to where we are.’ She paused. ‘It’s Breen, my old boss.’
Alice’s mouth dropped open a little wider – and then she smiled. ‘Nice one, Mum. You got me. I totally believed you.’
‘I’m not joking. We met up the day of Granny’s funeral—’
‘Granny’s funeral? That’s only a few weeks ago.’
‘Actually, it’s over two months.’ Helen looked down at her spaghetti Bolognese. ‘I know it seems sudden, and it took us both by surprise. After your father, I never thought I’d feel like this again. Frank was wonderful, and I tried really hard, but it just didn’t happen.’
‘But your old boss – you always
hated
him. I remember how mad you’d be after he’d been on the phone.’
‘I know. We had a … volatile working relationship.’ Helen smiled. ‘But I don’t hate him now.’
Alice poked at her baked potato. ‘And you’re not going to do another runner?’
‘Very funny.’
‘Well, you’ll never cease to amaze me,’ Alice said, reaching for the salt. ‘Sometimes – most times – I feel like I’m the mother.’
Helen laughed. So happy he’d made her, so unbelievably happy. ‘Sorry about that.’
Alice didn’t laugh back. ‘I just hope you know what you’re doing, Mum. Really.’
‘Oh, I do.’ Oh, she did.
When she got back to Ireland, she wrote to Sarah.
Are you sitting down? If not, sit down. I’ll wait.
I’m in love. I’m truly,
madly, deeply, laughably, ludicrously in love. (You see? It needed a chair.) What’s more, I’m getting married. And here’s the killer – it’s Breen. Remember Breen, my main editor for years? Yes, you do remember him, because when you wrote your prissy first few letters to me you sent them care of him.
He annoyed the hell out of me, I often ranted to you about him, and the feeling was mutual. He was so bossy and crotchety – never ONCE did he say anything positive, even when I submitted something that was so bloody good he couldn’t find anything to give out about. Probably annoyed him more. But we managed not to murder one another until he took early retirement, ten or eleven years ago.
And since then I’ve bumped into him now and again – I might have mentioned them – but I hadn’t seen him for a few years, and then I met him again, in the cemetery of all places, on the day of my mother’s funeral. And long story, but we ended up going out to dinner later in the week – and it just happened, it just came crashing into us, and it’s blissful. I’m fifty-six and I’m head over heels in love with the last sixty-eight-year-old in the world I thought I’d end up with. You have my permission to howl with laughter.
I told Alice, I’ve just got back from Edinburgh. She thought I was joking, which is perfectly understandable. I hope I haven’t traumatised the poor girl. I think she’ll be OK when she gets over the shock.
Sorry I haven’t been in touch. Blame my happy, distracted heart. Better still, blame Breen. He can take abuse, he gets plenty from me – he can still annoy the living daylights out of me. I know, it makes no sense, and I don’t care.
We haven’t made any
wedding plans yet, but it’ll probably be soon, and small and quiet, and maybe not in Ireland. I’ll keep you posted.
Hope everything’s well. How’s your father doing? Catch me up when you get the chance. Oh, and I’m delighted to hear about your story-writing venture – I promise to offer no advice whatsoever, not that you’ll need it. I have a feeling that Martina and Charlie’s stories will flow out of you.
Must go – Breen is due in half an hour and my insides are melting in anticipation. If the old bitter and twisted Helen Fitzpatrick could hear me she’d slap my face.
H xx
PS Thank God I didn’t marry Frank. I would have had to leave him, which would probably have destroyed him even more than my running away from the wedding. Did I tell you that he came to the church for my mother’s funeral? Poor sweet doomed Frank.
PPS Breen calls me O’Dowd. Isn’t that too quaint for words?
PPPS Helen
Breen. Swoon.
D
ear Helen
Very surprised at your news, but also very happy for you. It sounds wonderful, and congratulations. Yes, I remember you mentioning your old editor once or twice.
Neil has met someone new too. Her name is Maria. He told me two weeks ago, and the children met her for the first time last weekend. She gave Stephen one of those Game Boys, which I imagine was Neil’s suggestion, and which of course won Stephen over completely. I wasn’t altogether pleased – Neil is well aware that I’d much prefer to see Stephen out and about or playing the piano than hunched over a silly electronic game, but I can hardly send it back.
Martha got a nail-salon set, so she and her friends have been painting and primping since it arrived. It seems a little grown-up for twelve-year-olds – surely they’ll be using makeup long enough. But again, what can I say without sounding bitter and twisted?
Oh dear, I’ve just read
over the last bit and that’s exactly how I sound. I suppose, if I’m honest, I’m a little jealous of Neil’s new woman, although that sounds like I’m sorry we split up, and I’m not. I think it’s just a case of wanting what I haven’t got.
And it doesn’t help that poor Dad is getting so forgetful. The other day he took all the photo albums from the press and piled them up on the garden seat. Thank goodness I discovered them before the rain came. And he forgets to put socks on, and he doesn’t shave unless I remind him, and lots of other things. But at least he’s with me and I can look after him.
Work is fine, but it’s not like it was when I was there five days a week: now I almost feel like I’m trespassing when I go into the kitchen. I have to keep things as Josie likes, rather than the way I’d have them.
Sorry, just ignore me, I’m feeling a bit fed up. It seems like everyone else has someone except me. Feel free to tell me to pull myself together – I probably need it. But I
am
happy for you, really I am. It’s wonderful.
love Sarah xx
PS On a more positive note, I’ve sent in the first Martina and Charlie story to Paul and I’m waiting to hear his reaction. I enjoyed writing it, but I have no idea how good or bad it is. Time will tell.
The sitting-room door opened and Stephen walked in. ‘Mum, Grandpa did a number two and never flushed the toilet.’
‘Did you flush?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good boy. Where’s Grandpa now?’
‘He’s in the garden, but it’s raining and he has no coat on.’
She folded the pages of the letter and slipped them into the waiting envelope. ‘I’ll be right out.’
This was her
life now.
‘I
do,’ she said, becoming a wife for the second time.
It was the top of Scotland; it was the middle of October. Helen wore the same black dress she’d put on for their first dinner date eight months earlier, and a green velvet wrap borrowed from Alice, and horribly expensive flat silk pumps, to keep her an inch shorter than him. And the beautiful, beautiful necklace he’d given her the night before.
The church was tiny and ancient, ten knobbly wooden pews rubbed shiny by the elbows and rear ends of generations of mass-goers, an aisle running between them that had taken her fourteen bridal paces to cover. Its walls were thick enough to keep at bay the sharp wind that howled outside and the rain that pelted at the gorgeous little stained-glass windows, and its granite altar was slightly smaller than the average dining table.
Alice, standing on her mother’s left, wore a pale grey trouser suit. Her newly blonde hair, long enough for the past few years to gather up, had been caught on top of her head with a triangular ivory clip, a style that managed to make her look both younger and older than her twenty-seven years.
The church held just three
other occupants: the groom, the priest and the priest’s niece Lara, whose suggestion the location had been. ‘It was my local church growing up,’ she’d told Helen. ‘Uncle Peter has been there forever – he baptised all of us, and gave us communion and confirmation. He’s a darling.’
Breen had been bemused at Helen’s choice of wedding location. ‘Aberdeen? In October? Could you possibly have found any place more remote?’
‘It’s not a bit remote – there’s a direct flight from Dublin. Alice has been there with Lara, and she loved it. And I want to go away. I don’t want to get married in Dublin.’
He didn’t ask why. He knew why.
After the ceremony the little bridal party ran from the church through the wind and rain to the two waiting cars. They drove in convoy through the streets to the restaurant where Lara had waitressed every school holiday since she’d been old enough, and after the meal and the toasts, and the cake that Breen –
Breen!
– had insisted on, the two couples said goodbye to Uncle Peter and dashed across the road to the hotel where they were staying.
And later, lying awake in her sleeping husband’s arms, Helen Breen listened to the storm that continued to rage outside the window of their room, and she recalled again her first wedding day, twenty-eight years earlier.
Another church, another man. She remembered her happiness that day, unaffected by her parents’ disapproval – she hadn’t cared how they felt, all she’d cared about was Cormac. She wondered what her parents would make of Breen. Probably approve: unlike Cormac, he was solvent and well educated. And when you thought about it, it was her mother who’d finally brought Helen and Breen together.
She turned her head and regarded
his face, or what she could make out of it in the almost pure darkness of the room, and marvelled again that it had become so dear to her. She ran her fingertips lightly across his skin, feeling the tiny indentations of the pockmarks in his cheeks, the prickle of stubble on his chin, and he murmured and stirred, and gathered her closer to him.
And sometime during the night, the wind died down and the rain stopped and she slept, and didn’t dream at all.
Sarah
It’s done. Say hello
to stupidly happy Helen Breen, currently honeymooning in Cornwall, as you can see from the picture on the other side. Weather mixed, beaches beautiful. We’re walking and eating cream teas (he needs fattening up) and reading, and being horribly competitive with the Independent’s cryptic crossword. Home next week, when normal life will resume. Hope all’s well.
H xx
‘W
hen someone his age gets Alzheimer’s, the progress is usually very rapid. I’m afraid you’ll see big changes quite quickly. I’ll drop by anytime I’m passing and see how it’s going, but you’ll need to consider putting him into full-time care sooner rather than later.’
‘How soon?’
The doctor hesitated. ‘Hard to be precise, but I would say we’re talking weeks rather than months.’
Her father called her Dorothy, which had been his late mother’s name, or Laura, his only sister, who’d died in a road accident at eighteen, years before Sarah had been born. He sat for hours without speaking, or roamed the house agitatedly – unable to tell her, when she asked, what he needed. He forgot words constantly, or used the wrong ones.
He stayed in bed each morning until she went into his room and helped him out of his pyjamas and into the tracksuit bottoms and loose sweaters that seemed most comfortable for him now. Once a week he sat in the bath while she washed him, like she’d washed Martha and Stephen as young children.
The children adapted
astonishingly well. Martha, thirteen since May, read to him from the daily paper; ten-year-old Stephen sat beside him on the couch as they watched cartoons, or walked with him on milder days around the garden. Sarah marvelled at their capacity to accept what she struggled to come to terms with as she mourned the disintegration of his mind, the breakdown of the man she’d loved and depended on all her life.
He became incontinent. He wandered out of the house one day when she was preoccupied with dinner preparations, and was missing for three hours. He was finally discovered by Brian, sitting at a bus stop four miles away, and refused to return home, insisting that Brian was a stranger, until Christine arrived.