The Daisy Picker
Authors: Roisin Meaney
For Granny, the original Lizzie O’Grady,
and for my brother Michael.
Wherever they are, I hope they approve.
‘That you, Lizzie?’ Mammy, from the kitchen.
No, Mother, it’s the Queen of England. I got a key cut for her at lunchtime. Tell Daddy to put on a clean shirt.
Wisely, Lizzie O’Grady does not say this out loud. Peace at all costs, as Pope John XXIII always said. At least, Mammy says he always said it. Listening to her talking about him,
you’d swear they met every Friday for tea and scones at the Vatican café. ‘Peace at all costs, Mrs O’Grady,’ he’d say, passing Mammy the pot of raspberry jam.
‘Amen, Your Holiness,’ Mammy would answer, lowering her eyes in reverence and nearly getting a dollop of jam on the crisp linen tablecloth; that would take some penance.
‘Did you get the white pudding?’ Mammy again.
God almighty, I haven’t my key out of the door and the woman is looking for her white pudding
. Lizzie feels like telling her they were out of it at Tesco, but there was a special
offer on hamsters, so meet Bill and Bob. She grins at the thought of Mammy’s jaw dropping in horror.
Then she thinks of the Pope and pulls her key out of the door and turns her head towards the kitchen. ‘Yes, Mam, got it.’
Because the world would definitely screech to a halt if
the O’Gradys had to do without their white pudding on a Thursday night.
She hangs her jacket and scarf on the hallstand, beside Daddy’s second-best grey check and on top of Mammy’s powder-blue padded. Then she drops her Tesco bag-for-life and has a
closer look at the face in the hallstand mirror. Straight brown hair to her shoulders, with a fringe that wanders down to her eyebrows; unremarkable grey eyes. Long, dark lashes, though –
easily the best thing about the face. For the laugh she tried fluttering them at Tony once, when they first started going out, but he just looked alarmed and asked her if she needed Optrex.
Clear skin, thank goodness – she’s never really been spotty – with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, as if some careless painter had shaken his coffee-coloured brush
too near her. In an idle moment last summer she took an eye pencil and joined them up. Italy, if France had stuck out a toe and knocked it sideways a bit.
She used to be full of freckles, practically covering her nose and tumbling across her cheeks.
Thank God they’re nearly gone – but gone where? Off in search of adventure, I
suppose
.
Off to find a more exciting face.
She bares her teeth. Not exactly Hollywood-white, but straight enough; and most of her fillings are tucked away in the back. Lips could be
poutier, skin could be dewier; and who told those crow’s-feet they could park themselves there? Just because she’s forty-one, they needn’t think they have the right.
She supposes her face is normal enough – nothing that would make children run screaming from her in the streets, but nothing that would make anyone do a double-take either. In fact, no one
except Tony has looked twice at Lizzie for quite some time now; and he’s so used to looking at her that he probably doesn’t really see her any more, not properly.
Forty-one and still living at home with Mammy and Daddy. Big fat baby. Well, not literally fat – although the tummy could be flatter, and the thighs could not in all honesty be described
as firm; when she clenches her bottom the backs of them crinkle up horribly. She supposes it’s cellulite, and has decided to ignore it in the hope that it’ll go the way of the
freckles.
She hasn’t worn a bikini in over ten years, and she gave up sleeveless tops after the night she caught sight of a flabby arm in a mirror behind a bar and looked around to see who was
wearing the same top as her. She goes from a loose 14 to a tight 10, depending on her willpower and the season. Her appetite is depressingly healthy, and she walks only when the weather’s not
too terrible. She’s tried gyms over the years, and callanetics, and once she signed up for kick-boxing classes, but nothing’s grabbed her for long enough to make a difference.
One of these days she’ll tone up, definitely. Any day now.
She feels something bump against her leg and bends down. ‘Hello, fatty.’ She strokes the soft ginger coat, and Jones purrs and butts his head against her hand. She hefts him into her
arms and shows him the cat in the mirror.
‘Look at the state of you – you’re obese. I’m like Twiggy next to you. Aren’t you mortified?’
Jones nuzzles against her neck, not in the least mortified. Lizzie went to Limerick for a day’s shopping about six years ago and came back with a tiny Bustopher Jones mewing in a cardboard
box on the back seat of the car. She’d walked past a pet shop and there he’d been, standing up against the window, mouthing out at her. Lizzie had taken one look at the little pink pads
against the glass and fallen in love forever.
When she arrived home with him, Mammy ranted about fleas and ticks and dead birds and said Lizzie needn’t think
she
was going to look after him, God knew she had enough to do, and
she presumed Lizzie would be taking him with her when she got married – but he won her over in a week with his kittenish charm. Lizzie came downstairs one morning to find her standing over
him as he lapped up a saucer of sardine juice with his tiny pink tongue, managing a surprisingly loud purr at the same time. Mammy looked at Lizzie, arms folded across her dressing-gowned chest,
and dared her to comment. Lizzie had enough sense not to.
After a fortnight they stopped calling him Bustopher Jones and switched to Jones – he didn’t seem to mind. He was greedy and lazy and alarmingly stubborn, and Lizzie adored him. His
appetite was huge; on top of the three meals they fed him, Jones begged what he could from the neighbours, who were well used to his mournful mewing at their patio doors.
‘Lizzie? Are you there?’ Mammy is still waiting for her white pudding.
‘Coming.’ Lizzie puts down her giant cat and heads off to help Mammy with the Thursday-night dinner: rashers and sausages and soft fried eggs and white pudding, and Mammy’s
bran-laden brown bread, to keep everyone regular.
As she opens the kitchen door, the savoury smell of frying meat hits her nostrils, and her stomach rumbles in anticipation.
Mammy looks up from the spattering pan. ‘There you are. Any sign of Tony?’
Lizzie shakes her head, glancing at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s only twenty to.’
In all the Thursday nights he’s been coming to dinner at the O’Gradys’, Tony has never arrived before ten to six, or after five to. You could set your watch by him – him
and his Iced Caramels.
She puts her bag on the table, takes out the white pudding, peels away the plastic and begins to slice it thickly, the way Daddy likes it.
‘Any news in town?’ Mammy turns the rashers on the grill.
Not really – unless you count the earthquake, just before the volcano. And of course the flood didn’t help.
Passing her the sliced pudding, Lizzie racks her brain. ‘The traffic was heavy at the roundabout; it took ages to cross.’ Well, it was better than nothing. ‘And there was a big
queue at the cash machine by the library; I was sorry I hadn’t used the one on the square – I was frozen standing there. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, two weeks before
Christmas.’ She goes to the bread bin and takes out a quarter of Mammy’s bread. Tony will eat two slices exactly.
Mammy pokes at the sausages to make room for the pudding, and just as she fits them all onto the pan the bell rings. She puts down the fork and starts patting her hair. ‘That’ll be
Tony now. Will you let him in, Lizzie?’
No, I’ll shove a rope ladder out the landing window
. Lizzie opens the front door and Tony steps inside, rubbing his woolly hands together. He still isn’t wearing the
sheepskin gloves she got him for his birthday in October; probably saving them for the heavy-duty cold in January.
‘Hello, love. Isn’t it perishing?’ He brushes her cheek with frozen lips. ‘Nice and warm in here.’
In the kitchen, Lizzie watches as he goes to Mammy, who’s just pulled off her apron – ‘There she is’ – and pecks her cheek before presenting her with the bag of
Iced Caramels from his pocket. Mammy always takes them with the same mixture of surprise and delight, as if he’s never brought them before. As if he’s the only one who ever brings her
anything. As if she likes Iced Caramels.
When he first started coming to dinner, Tony asked Lizzie what sweets her mother liked. She told him, ‘The pink and white ones’; and when he arrived the next night with his bag of
iced caramels, she hadn’t the heart to tell him it was marshmallows she meant. Every Thursday Mammy takes the bag from him, and every Friday she passes them on to old Mrs Sweeny a few doors
down, who loves them.
‘Lizzie, take Tony’s coat, and call Daddy.’ Mammy is pouring a generous dollop of whiskey into a glass. ‘Desperate out, isn’t it, Tony?’ Lizzie hears Tony
agreeing about the desperate state of the weather as she hangs his coat and scarf in the hall. She wonders what would happen if he ever disagreed with Mammy, about anything. Or had three slices of
bread instead of two. Or turned up for dinner on a Wednesday night, just for a change.