Authors: Roisin Meaney
She gives herself a shake and puts her head round the sitting-room door. Daddy is reading the paper, as she knew he would be. ‘Dinner’s ready, Daddy.’
He puts down the paper and smiles over at her. ‘Right, love.’
Lizzie’s stomach rumbles again as she walks back into the kitchen; you’d swear she hadn’t eaten for a week, instead of just over four hours ago. Right now she could eat a horse
if someone served it up on a big dinner plate with carrots, peas and a baked spud dripping with butter. Maybe a dollop of Ballymaloe relish on the side.
She’s never been in hospital except as a visitor, and never stayed in bed for longer than two days. She’s never broken a bone, never even cracked anything. Every three months she
donates a pint of brimming-with-goodness blood to her local clinic, and she never feels faint afterwards. (Of course she always has the bottle of Guinness they provide, just to be on the safe
side.) She hasn’t seen the family doctor in so long, she’d probably walk past him in the street. She’s the healthiest person she knows, and she knows quite a lot of people after
forty-one years of living in the same biggish Irish town.
Healthy, engaged, steady job, everything mapped out for her. There is no earthly reason for her to feel unhappy and frustrated and desperately lonely; to be convinced, as she takes her seat at
the table and smiles across at Tony, that if something doesn’t change very soon she’ll curl up and die. That she’s been slowly dying for a very long time.
How has she come to this? When she was growing up she had lots of friends, and even a few boyfriends. She had her share of Valentine cards and oh-my-God-there-he-is crushes, and bags of vinegary
chips after the pictures and goodnight kisses a few doors down in case Mammy was looking out.
But one by one the friends drifted, most into marriage, one into a convent, one to Australia, two to London. The boyfriends drifted too – they never seemed to last longer than a few weeks;
and except for one, whom she secretly mourned for a while, Lizzie waved them all off happily. They left no space in her life; her heart was still annoyingly intact.
She longed for a bit of real, honest-to-God heartbreak; something that would have her polishing off a whole pound of Milk Tray and bawling her way through a box of tissues, the ones with aloe
vera so her nose wouldn’t go too red and raw. Or maybe she’d go off her food and take to the drink; yes, that might be more tragic. Sometimes she imagined a mild breakdown –
nothing too scary, just a few weeks in bed with a pack of Prozac and Mammy running upstairs with trays of steamed fish and Complan. But it never happened. No one was ever interested enough in her
to break her heart.
And then she went to work at Julia O’Gorman’s restaurant, and five years after she started, Tony O’Gorman came home from Scotland to work in the family business and they
started going out. And six years later they got engaged.
And they’ve been engaged for eleven years. As the Americans say, do the math.
They made plans. Of course they made plans. Like any engaged couple, they settled on a date and booked the church and the hotel and pored over travel brochures for the honeymoon. And then, two
weeks before the wedding, as Lizzie was struggling into the dress for the final alterations, Tony’s father dropped dead in the kitchen one morning, so of course they cancelled.
They rescheduled for a year later. This time, a burst pipe flooded the restaurant, forcing it to close down for a couple of months while the refurbishments were done. They couldn’t leave
Julia on her own at a time like that – of course not.
The third time, six years into the engagement, they got as far as three days before the wedding. The bridesmaid was dressed, the holiday in Wales was booked, the flowers were ordered, the
presents were piling up in the sitting room, Lizzie’s weight loss was coming along nicely. Then, in the middle of
The Late Late Show
, the phone rang. When Daddy answered, a
distraught Julia O’Gorman told him that Tony had been rushed to hospital with appendicitis. Lizzie wanted to go ahead and get married in the hospital, but Mammy wouldn’t hear of it.
After all those lovely presents, she’d never be able to hold her head up in Kilmorris again if they didn’t give everyone a good day out.
The time after that, it was Daddy’s hernia. And then came the Big Row: Lizzie in tears, insisting they set a new date, and Tony refusing to plan anything under duress –
couldn’t Lizzie see this was the busiest time in the restaurant, his mother wasn’t up to it, hadn’t they all the time in the world? They made up, of course they did; but for a
long time after that neither of them mentioned the W-word. They went out every Sunday night as usual (the only night the restaurant was closed, and both of them were off), and Tony came to dinner
every Thursday evening, just before Lizzie went on duty at half seven; but the subject didn’t come up between them again for at least a year after the Row.
And then, every now and again one or other of them would say, ‘We should really set a date,’ and the other would agree that they really should, and somehow it never got beyond that.
One day they’ll probably just elope, and Mammy will have to lump it, and that’ll be that.
And Lizzie is dying. Healthy, employed, engaged Lizzie O’Grady is dying of boredom and frustration and impatience, and with the effort of trying to hide it all and pretend that everything
is fine, just great, and that she’ll be married any day now to the love of her life.
‘Pass the bread to Tony, Lizzie.’ Mammy points towards the plate of sliced bread that’s positioned exactly halfway between Tony and Lizzie. She thinks of the Pope and picks it
up and holds it out to Tony.
He pats his stomach like he always does. ‘I shouldn’t, but I will; can’t resist your bread, Maura.’ He smiles over at Mammy, and Mammy smiles back at him like it’s
the first time she’s heard it. Sometimes Lizzie wonders if Mammy loves Tony more than she does; he’s the son-in-law she prayed to St Jude for, years ago, when all of Lizzie’s
friends were settling down.
But Lizzie loves him too – of course she does. She’d hardly have stayed engaged to him for eleven years if she didn’t, for goodness’ sake. Isn’t he decent and
reliable, and doesn’t he always remember her birthday, and aren’t vouchers much better than something she mightn’t like and might have to bring back on the sly or wear to please
him? And isn’t he good to his mother, insisting that she always comes first? That’s what sons are supposed to do, aren’t they? That’s what she’d want
her
son
to do.
Not that she’s likely to have any now.
But she can’t blame Tony for that; it’s hardly his fault that they’ve left it too late for children – she had a say in it too, didn’t she? So why on earth does she
feel trapped and suffocated and locked away in a tower with no door, sitting at her little high-up window looking out at the world? Rapunzel with shoulder-length brown hair; fat lot of good
that’d be when the prince arrived. She’d have to jump out the window to him – probably break her leg, or land on him and squash him to death.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Tony pops a bit of sausage into his mouth.
Lizzie lifts her cup and shakes her head. ‘Just something I saw on telly last night. How was work today?’ And he begins to talk about the restaurant, and she looks across at him and
sees his honest face and reminds herself that this man has chosen her, out of all the single females in Kilmorris, to share the rest of his life with. Her Tony.
After dinner Mammy says, ‘Lizzie, get the cake,’ and she takes her lemon poppyseed cake from its tin and cuts a slice for everyone. Tony beams as she puts his slice in front of him.
‘Another delicious cake, Lizzie; I’m a lucky man.’
Mammy beams back at him as if she’d baked it. ‘She’s great at the cakes, all right; I don’t know when I had to bake one last.’
And Tony, right on cue, says immediately, ‘I’m sure it would be just as good, Maura; she didn’t steal it.’
Lizzie eats her slice and watches them saying exactly the right things to each other. Funny, how things work out. She left school after Leaving Cert and got a waitressing job in
O’Gorman’s – just for the summer, to make a bit of cash for the year she was going to spend travelling with her friend Síle. Then she was going to come home and start
working as a baker.
Baking is her passion. It’s all she ever wanted to do. From the time she realised that you could put together a lot of things that couldn’t be eaten on their own, and add a bit of
heat, and produce something delicious, she was totally hooked, happiest up to her elbows in flour and surrounded by spices and bowls of beaten eggs, and little bags of sesame seeds and caraway
seeds, and books with oven-temperature charts inside their front covers. She made her first Christmas cake at eleven, nearly delirious from the smell of fruit soaking in dark rum, and from then on
Mammy never baked another one. Now Lizzie makes eight cakes every October, for various relatives and neighbours.
She has a stack of books beside her bed, and every one of them is totally dedicated to the art of baking. Each night she devours them, poring over the ingredients of cottage cheese dill bread,
learning the difference between
biscottentorte
and tiramisu, licking her lips over summer berry strudel. She bakes as often as she can, whenever she and the kitchen are free at the same
time. As well as keeping Mammy and Daddy well stocked up, Lizzie bakes for everyone else, too. When she goes to visit friends, she brings a cake; if the friends are married with children, they get
a bag of cookies or buns. When Mrs Geraghty up the road had a stroke Lizzie visited her with a plate of light lemon squares. When Louise and Derry got engaged, they asked her to make a cake in the
shape of a plane for the party; they’d met on board an Aer Lingus flight to Rome. To date she’s made cakes for six weddings, eleven christenings and countless birthdays.
When she started, she experimented all the time. She wanted to conquer the mysteries of baking – find the perfect temperature to rise yeast at, get the balance just right between sweet and
tart in a strawberry rhubarb pie, stop those blasted cherries from sinking to the bottom of her fresh cherry cake. She had her share of disasters – every so often Jones would sniff at his
bowl and wonder what on earth he was being dished up, or Daddy would be emptying the kitchen bin and discover a plastic bag that felt mushy and warm. But she learnt as she went along.
And the plan always was that one day she’d stand in her very own bakery, and people would make a special detour for a loaf of her four-cheese-and-onion bread, or a box of her triple
chocolate chunk cookies, or a warmed slice of her Spanish tortilla tart. She’d have a little counter at one side where people could sit and eat, and she’d take orders for birthday cakes
in the shape of racing cars, and wedding cakes with each tier a different recipe. And children would stand on the path and breathe in the aromas that wafted out, and beg their mothers for a bun.
Oh, she had it all planned.
Except that, before she found a way to tell Mammy and Daddy that herself and Síle were heading off after the summer, Síle decided to go to college instead of Europe, and Lizzie
couldn’t face the prospect of going alone. She thought she might as well stay on at O’Gorman’s while she decided what her next step should be; better to be earning a few quid than
sitting at home doing nothing.
It simply didn’t occur to her to go ahead with the baking plan; she still yearned to see a bit of the world – she’d never been further than Dublin – and she knew that,
once she started baking for a living, that’d be the end of her travel plans. So she whiled away the hours in O’Gorman’s imagining herself on a beach in Greece or picking grapes in
France or climbing a mountain somewhere in Africa. She was desperate for a bit of excitement, but she couldn’t bring herself to make the break on her own.
On her way home from work after telling Julia O’Gorman that she could stay on for a while, Lizzie opened a savings account. She promised herself it was just till next spring; then
she’d definitely take off – on her own if she had to.
But somehow it never happened. In the spring Julia made her head waitress, Monday to Friday, eight to four – this was before they started doing evening meals – with a series of
teenagers to train in and keep an eye on, and a stream of regular customers who felt safe in the unchanging world of O’Gorman’s, where you had your dinner in the middle of the day and
you went home to your tea. And Lizzie stayed on, because the longer she put off her round-the-world adventure, the further away from her it seemed to go.
She didn’t find anyone else to go travelling with – her friends were well settled into relationships, or had already moved away, or were in the middle of their studies – and
when it came down to it, she just couldn’t face the notion of heading off alone. The furthest she got with her plan to become a baker was going around the three bakeries in Kilmorris and
asking if they needed any help. None of them did, and she hadn’t a clue where to go from there.
And so it went. Occasional visits to the cinema, on her own or with whichever of her increasingly rare boyfriends happened to be on the scene; the odd coffee with one or other of her old pals
who squeezed her in between ballet runs and music lessons; and evenings at home with Mammy and Daddy and crosswords and telly and Scrabble and how was your day and have some more cabbage,
it’s not worth keeping this bit and I hate to throw it out and my knee was at me again last night and will you get some white pudding for the dinner.
And now here she is, engaged for the past eleven years to the son of her mother’s best friend, and still dreaming about becoming a baker. As she changes into her black skirt and white
blouse after dinner, Lizzie suddenly thinks:
Maybe it isn’t too late.
What has she got to lose by giving it another go – finding out more about what steps she should be taking?
Really, she gave up far too easily last time. She’s never even talked about it with Tony; by the time he arrived on the scene, her dream was well tucked away. But she’s so much more
experienced now . . . Zipping up her skirt, she feels a flutter of hope.
Maybe it isn’t too late
.