Chestnut Street

  He held his head slightly on one side.

  Nuala had savings.

  Every week she put a little money into her building society savings account. Over the years it had mounted up. It was for a rainy day. Nuala looked at all the hope and longing in Katie’s face.

  The rainy day was obviously here.

  “I can help you both with the deposit,” she heard herself say.

  Tom bounded across the room.

  “What a mother-in-law-to-be,” he said.

  “It’s only a loan, Mum,” Katie said, her eyes shining.

  “It’s a beautiful house, Nuala—you’ll love it—and only an hour’s drive away,” Tom promised.

  It was indeed a beautiful house; it had three bathrooms if you called the shower room downstairs a bathroom. It had a patio with a barbecue, a kitchen that would not be out of place in a gourmet restaurant, a turning circle in the front, room to park five cars, at least.

  It was a very smart address, and one hour and forty-five minutes away from Nuala’s house, whatever kind of car you were driving.

  Nuala wanted to say a lot of things.

  Like that they would be crippled by the mortgage.

  Like it was too far away for her to visit or for them to come to her very often.

  Like a young couple didn’t need such a home.

  Like the price of houses might fall. What then? They would be left paying for a house that could never realize the amount of money they had paid for it.

  But Nula said nothing like that.

  She saw the way they stroked the house as if it were a big family cat, she saw the hope and the future in their eyes.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, and they hugged her tight.

  So they moved in, and it was all too soon to plan the wedding because they were so busy and exhausted setting up the consultancy, entertaining possible clients, going to first nights and gallery openings and networking with the right type of people.

  Nuala wondered when they would fix a date but she said nothing. She came to lunch in the big new house occasionally and her own house was always open to them.

  Katie sometimes dropped in to Chestnut Street.

  They would have a big bowl of soup, which Katie said was very comforting. She and Tom seemed to live on sushi and canapés these days.

  Katie sounded tired. She missed teaching, but the business was everything; it had to be built up and they were getting top-scale clients now.

  She began to talk about a big Christmas housewarming party they would have two weeks before the day itself. The invitations would go out early—it was going to be a hot ticket.

  They would have a theme of black and lime green, all the candles and the linen and the ornaments on the Christmas tree in these colors.

  “What on earth will I wear to the party, I wonder?” Nuala asked.

  “Oh, Mum, you won’t come. You’d absolutely hate it, all kinds of awful people braying and shouting, and Tom and I will be so busy flitting around we won’t be able to … no, you’d really and truly be wiser to avoid it.”

  Nula said nothing.

  She did not say that since all her savings had gone into that house the least she could expect was to see the house being warmed.

  She did not say she was disappointed, insulted or upset.

  She clung to the notion that it was wiser to say nothing at all.

  Her silence upset Katie.

  “I mean you don’t want to come or anything, Mum, do you? Better come on a day when we can talk and everything?” Katie’s face was anxious.

  Part of saying nothing was to avoid looking like a martyr, so Nuala put on her happy face.

  “No, sweetheart, it’s a relief, actually. I’d much prefer to go for a nice relaxed meal with just the two of you,” she said.

  “Oh, Mum, I knew you’d feel like that—it’s just Dad that’s being a real pain about it all.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, he actually heard about the party from someone and says that he is insulted that he wasn’t asked. So of course we had to send him an invite. I told him like I told you what it was going to be like, but nothing will stop him—he’s coming and he will be so out of place.”

  Michael telephoned Nuala at work.

  “One cup of coffee on your way home?” he begged.

  “One cup,” she agreed.

  “When are those two getting married?” he asked when she sat down. His face looked tight and angry.

  “Katie and Tom? Oh, when they can afford to have a big wedding, I imagine.”

  “Is the house in her name?”

  “I’m sure if you asked Katie she would tell you all this.”

  “I never see her—she’s become impossible to find. Then there’s this party … you’re not going to it, I gather.”

  “It’s not really my sort of thing.”

  “What is your sort of thing? I’ve never known.” His face was red, as it always was when he was picking a fight.

  But these days she didn’t try to placate him.

  “You never tried to find out,” she said mildly, without accusation. Just as if it were a fact.

  “So tell me now.”

  “I suppose I want a peaceful life and I want our only child to be happy and make the right choices.”

  “So you lend them money to buy that white elephant of a house?” he said with a sneer.

  “It’s what they want.” She was still calm, unfussed.

  “We all want things we can’t have or shouldn’t have. That house is an unexploded bomb. Property is beginning to get shaky, houses aren’t getting their prices.”

  “Did you invite me to have coffee with you to discuss the economy, Michael?”

  “And that fellow’s job prospects are way out of line. There’s a recession coming; he’ll lose everything. I just want to know if Katie’s safe or if she’s tied into it all with him.”

  “Well, ask her, Michael—please don’t ask me. I don’t know anything.”

  “Are you sure you don’t have a partner or something? I have never known you so … I don’t know … so confident, so sure that you’re right about everything.”

  “I’m off now,” Nuala said.

  She thought about it on the way home. Saying nothing had certainly been the right way to go with Michael. In the bad old days she had ranted at him, begged him to change his ways; now she was cool and vague and said very little. It was working amazingly well. He would have come home with her had she shown the slightest encouragement.

  But then she didn’t want that at all now.

  But was it right to say nothing to Tom and Katie? That was the question.

  There was a message on the machine at home.

  Tom’s parents were popping in unexpectedly and there was nothing in the freezer, nothing they could offer them. They couldn’t get away from the office. Could Mum ever send round one of her marvelous supper dishes in a taxi?

  It would be so marvelous.

  Nuala found a beef casserole in the freezer and some spiced red cabbage. She put twelve small potatoes into a bag and called the taxi firm that Tom and Katie used.

  There was an embarrassed pause.

  “I’m afraid they no longer have an account with us,” the voice said.

  “But they didn’t tell me?” Nuala was astounded. “I’m Katie’s mother. I know they are great customers of yours—can you check again?”

  “I have checked—they’re on stop.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just that there’s no account,” the voice said sympathetically.

  “Like they haven’t paid the bill?”

  “I have no idea,” the voice said.

  Nuala found a local taxi man and paid him a small fortune to take the food across the city.

  “This must be an important meal,” he said as he carried it into the back of the car.

  “I think it’s deadly important,” Nuala agreed.

  She sat by the fire and wondered.
>
  Was this dinner a bid to get Tom’s parents to invest more?

  Was Michael right about the price of property being on the slide?

  Was Tom flying much too high?

  Was it time to say something, and, if so, what would it be?

  Nuala managed to wait until lunchtime next day before she rang her daughter.

  She knew at once from the sound of Katie’s voice.

  “I just hoped that the beef casserole was all right?” Nuala asked brightly.

  “It was terrific, Mum, as usual,” Katie said in a flat voice. “And I’m so very sorry you had to send your own taxi. There was some kind of mixup or confusion in our firm—we’re changing them anyway.”

  “How did the dinner go? Tom’s parents in good form?”

  “Not really, Mum. They’re not like you, they’re like Dad. Difficult and they’re full of views and what people should do and what they should have done.”

  “Oh, and what was their main problem?” Nuala asked.

  “They want us to cancel this party, Mum. We’ve been working on it for months. They say it’s ludicrous and that everyone knows we are broke. Everyone’s broke, Mum, it’s only by putting on a big show that you get them to have confidence in you. Tom’s mum and dad don’t get that. They say we should quit now. Imagine the humiliation of it. We haven’t an intention of doing that.”

  “And did it end all right?”

  “Not really—they’re not like you, Mum.”

  Two weeks after the party, which had not been the huge success that they had hoped for, Katie and Tom faced reality.

  Nuala listened as they told the story.

  They would sell the house quickly, as quickly as possible.

  They could get out of the office premises easily, since the man who owned the building was getting out of the country.

  Katie could get a job teaching. Tom would find something. Anything.

  Great Christmas ahead.

  “And where will you live?” Nuala asked.

  They would rent somewhere. A room, maybe. They were in very deep with the mortgage; even when they sold the house there would be more to pay. No room now for fancy living.

  Nuala took a deep breath.

  Years of saying nothing had paid off but now it was time to say something.

  “I’d love it if you were to stay here,” she said. “Eventually we could divide the house—you know, make one flat upstairs, one down. But for the moment would you come and spend Christmas here?”

  There was a silence.

  Tom shook his head.

  “I can’t, Nuala. I already owe you for the deposit, and I don’t know what kind of a job I can get and where and as what …”

  She paused.

  “They are looking for people to push trolleys in the hospital,” she said. “Maybe it’s not what you were looking for …”

  They both looked frightened and lost. She hoped she had not insulted him in a way that would put her on the side of the enemy, like his parents were already and Katie’s father too.

  Then she saw the hope in their eyes. “Oh, Mum, that would be great,” Katie said.

  At the same time Tom came towards her, tears in his eyes. No practiced charm anymore, just gratitude and love.

  “You were always so wise, Nuala, since the very start—I said it to Katie. ‘Your mother has all the wisdom in the world,’ I said. I’ll go to the hospital tomorrow and see if I can get the job and we would be honored to stay here. Honored, lucky and proud.”

  Christmas had often been hard since Michael left; now it looked a lot easier.

  She would go back to saying nothing—people seemed to regard it as wisdom.

  How wonderful.

  The first time I met her was when she had arranged to go on holidays to three separate places with three separate people all at the same time. She couldn’t say no to any of them. Not to Eve, who had just been jilted three days before her wedding and really needed a holiday companion; nor to her sister, who was considered too young to go abroad alone; nor to the crowd at work who needed one more to make up the number in order to get the reduction.

  She went nowhere that year, but stayed at home on Chestnut Street. The group went off without her, each paying a grudging two pounds extra; her sister sulked at an Irish seaside resort and said that the world was out there waiting if only she had been able to get to it; and Eve said loudly and often that this life was peopled only by other humans who let you down when you needed them.

  I think that Ruth hardly ever did anything in her life without trying to please someone, and with the strange justice of the world, she ended up pleasing very few people and making herself miserable. She is in hospital now, and that’s because she tried to please someone too, but a lot happened before she was admitted to the ward last week.

  Ruth was very, very funny about her job in the civil service; she always said that you were sacked automatically if you thought. Thinking was the one crime. If she saw how the work could be made easier for everyone she daren’t say it for fear of disapproval from seniors, who said the younger generation of service people were beyond talking about. If she saw how it could be done quicker they were all afraid that someone might be sacked; if she saw injustices and unfair promotions of people being passed over it was better to say nothing—you were branded a troublemaker and could be sent somewhere awful yourself.

  But Ruth was not able to sit forever saying nothing, and in an effort to help a much older man get the promotion he deserved, she did everything in her power and attempted a lot beyond it. She went around to his house and convinced his wife and himself that he was being humiliated, she told her own immediate boss, she threatened to tell the papers about it, and she begged people to sign a petition. With nine brave signatures on the piece of paper she was called in to the supervisor’s office and was told that the man was a hopeless alcoholic; worse, because he was a secret drinker, it was a choice between leaving him where he was doing little harm or getting rid of him. Now she had filled everyone’s heads with dreams of power and nightmares of corruption and nepotism. Reluctantly she listened to proof. It was too late: the man now felt it a matter of principle and resigned over it all; he died two years later.

  “He was nearly sixty,” we all told her hopelessly. “He would have had to die sometime from all that drink—his liver was very bad.”

  Sometimes her impulsiveness was less dramatic and worrying but equally misplaced. She went to see the headmistress of a school where I taught, saying that I would like Saturday mornings off and I looked tired and she wondered could the timetable be arranged to suit me. That was a beautiful one to try to explain away for a few terms afterwards. She kept ringing the ex-boyfriend of someone we all knew, saying that she suspected this girl was going to become a nun as a result of the breakup. Words will never describe the confusion and embarrassment caused by all this, but Ruth came out the loser anyway. She bought two tickets for a package holiday for her parents and cried for a week when they wouldn’t go on it at two days’ notice, and she lost her deposit to the travel agency, which made her parents feel terrible about it too.

  She took on the position of treasurer for a voluntary committee, was always late for meetings, kept losing the subscription book and saying, “Well, I’m sure you paid anyway,” and filling in the gaps with her own money. They took the treasury away from her and gave her publicity, and she would swear that posters would be up in pubs and shops but would get involved talking to someone with a problem in the first port of call and the rest of the propaganda never saw a wall at all.

  She was very reassuring, though. “Of course you should bring that dress back to the cleaner’s—I’ll come with you. You have to be firm; it’s better for everyone in the end.” But she wouldn’t come or couldn’t come, and you would be left looking foolish saying, Yes, yes of course chemicals could only do so much, yes indeed, sorry.

  She was the one who would volunteer to give a party for some returned emigrant, but he wou
ld be well back in the new land again before she ever thought of him, and yet all the time she meant well from the bottom of her big generous heart.

  There’s no point in saying I like her; everyone likes her. You couldn’t dislike someone as full of goodwill as that. She never talked much about herself, which is another rotten reason why you like people. She just said the job was beyond belief, but she got a lot of reading done, and was even thinking of doing a postal course in something during working hours. You never thought of saying that she should better herself, because she seemed just fine where and how she was.

  She was never boring about her men either, just exuberant. “Yes, it’s Geoff—remember I told you I met him in Killarney. He’s got the most dreadful friends who all call each other by their surnames, but that’s not the worst thing in the world, I suppose. They play a lot of squash. I’m terribly fond of him, and he gets on very well with my family … but you never know, do you?” And you don’t, because six months later it was, “Michael, a guy who was on this hike thing I told you about: well, he’s not what you’d call very responsible but he’s so kind and good and loves animals, and he is thinking of setting up a sort of dogs’ hospital in his area, if he could get a vet to work part-time for nothing. Do you know any vets, by any chance?”

  I was very surprised indeed when she asked two of us for a loan. She couldn’t say what it was for, but she would pay us back. Whoever said you shouldn’t lend money unless you can afford not to get it back was right, because we got some, and then we never saw Ruth anymore. She was too embarrassed to come anywhere we might be, and though it wasn’t the margin between survival and death, it was enough of a barrier to make us think, “What on earth can she have needed it for? And why can’t she pay it back?” And, you see, society being as it is, you can’t ring someone and say just that. They think, reasonably, you are pressing them for the money. So we never asked, and felt a bit cross, and a little bit anxious. But to be honest, I think more cross than anxious.

  She married the most unexpected man in the world. Oh, all right, doesn’t everybody, but Ruth’s marriage was out of sight. He was twenty years older than her, separated (or divorced or something vague enough to be mysterious), very wealthy and fairly well known in his own field. They got married in London and had a huge cocktail party afterwards where I hardly knew anyone, least of all Ruth, who was fawning and impressing and telling the most unbelievable things to people: “Yes, I used to work in administration, very interesting, very challenging, but of course I’ll have so much entertaining to do now I won’t be working anymore.” She gave me the money in an envelope quietly and furtively and said she was desperately sorry and that after two years there should be interest on it, but to thank Mary and give her the money and she hoped we hadn’t been starving.