Chestnut Street

  Maura wanted to reach out from the car and, with all the strength that remained in her weak body, deliver a stinging blow to her mother’s chin that would knock her senseless.

  “He lives in Wales,” said Brendan, amazed that people could be so stupid.

  “Not all the time,” Larry said diplomatically. “And if I were invited, I would love to come back here again and again and get to know you as I hope Maura and I will get to know each other too.”

  Maura looked at him weakly; this was worse than she had believed possible—now their expectations were really high. Three miles down the road he stopped and asked her to marry him.

  “You’re doing it out of pity,” she said.

  “No, I’m doing it because it’s right,” he said.

  “Ask me later when I’m better,” she said.

  “No. Tell me now.”

  “It’s only a day, one day out of our lives; yesterday wasn’t bad.”

  “If you think that wedding day was good, you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

  He told her that he wanted the church full of people in big hats like the one she had worn.

  It was only one of the many aspects of the dream they both shared.

  Fay barely knew that she had an uncle. He hadn’t come to her father’s funeral, he never got in touch with her and her brother, Finbarr, about anything at all. He had not been mentioned by anyone in the family.

  So it was a total surprise when she got the letter from a district nurse way at the other side of the city asking if Fay could become involved in the matter of her uncle, Mr. J. K. O’Brien of 28 Chestnut Street. Mr. O’Brien was, at present, in hospital and quite frail. He could be released only after a conference with a relative. Her name had been given as his only surviving relation.

  At first Fay was about to say it was a mistake. She didn’t know anyone in Chestnut Street, but then her name was O’Brien and on her mother and father’s wedding certificate the best man’s name had been written down as James Kenneth O’Brien. He could be her father’s brother. But why get in contact now?

  Fay was going to be twenty-five on her next birthday. What could explain the silence, coldness and distance of a quarter of a century? She would ask her own brother, Finbarr, but he was away. He worked as a steward on a liner and was often gone for months at a time.

  “Don’t get involved, Fay, I beg you,” her friend Suzanne advised. “You’re too kind, too easygoing. This old guy will want you to clean his house, wash his smalls, do his shopping, all in the name of family. But where was he when you needed him?”

  “I didn’t need him,” Fay said.

  “Yes you did, when they came and took the house from under you after your father died …”

  “To be fair, there were a lot of debts and he hadn’t paid the rent for a while,” Fay said.

  “Yeah, but a couple of hundred from Uncle James Kenneth would have helped.”

  “He might not have had it.” Fay was defensive.

  “If he lives in Chestnut Street he has it. Those houses are going up in value every day; remember that before you agree to do every hand’s turn for him, Fay.”

  The girls had been friends since school. They worked side by side in a dry cleaner’s and lived on dreams that one day two handsome, rich American men would come in to have their elegant suits pressed. Their eyes would meet the eyes of Fay and Suzanne and the next thing would be dinner, almost the next thing would be marriage and then there would be a life of ecstasy in Malibu.

  But these men never turned up, so Suzanne and Fay shared a bed-sitter and saved some money every week to spend on a holiday in Ibiza in case the American movie men had taken their sharp suits there instead.

  “I’ll go and meet the nurse anyway,” Fay said.

  Nurse Williams was brisk and to the point. Mr. O’Brien had suffered a mild stroke; they needed to be sure that there was someone to keep an eye on him, to make sure that he took his medication, that he ate sensibly and looked after himself. Often it was a matter of post-stroke depression, and if this were to be avoided they would need to be sure that he wasn’t left to wallow around on his own.

  “I don’t think you understand, Nurse. This isn’t a loving extended family. I never saw the man in my life, and he never remembered me or my existence until he needed me.”

  “He remembered you and agreed that we get in touch only after a lot of probing on our part and a great deal of reassurance that you would not be put out. We told him it would only be a formality.”

  “And would it? Be only a formality, I mean?” Fay asked.

  “No, to be honest, I think it would be more of a commitment, unless of course you could come to some arrangement with his neighbors.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Well, Mr. O’Brien has bad luck in one way. The neighbors on either side are absentee landlords, people who own the property but rent their places, so the cast keeps changing. Some teenager down in Number Eighteen feeds his cat for him. I know that there’s a nice, but fairly scatty, hippie girl nearby in Twenty-Six, and a rather earnest couple in Number Twenty-Five, but perhaps you could make further inquiries …”

  “What do they call him? ‘James’? ‘Jim’? ‘Kenneth’?” Fay asked.

  “I’m afraid they call him ‘Mr. O’Brien,’ even us. It’s what he wants,” Nurse Williams said apologetically.

  “Everyone?”

  “Yes, everyone.”

  “Heigh-ho,” said Fay.

  “I’m Martin O’Brien’s daughter, Fay,” she said to the small man in the hospital bed.

  “And where did he get a name like that for you?” the man said.

  “He and my mother baptized me Mary Faith. I chose Fay.”

  “Huh,” he said.

  “And what do people call you?” she asked.

  “You won’t be here long enough for it to matter,” the man said.

  “Are you normally this charming to everyone or is it only because I am your brother’s daughter that you’re making a special effort with me?” Fay asked.

  “Very droll, very smart arse,” he said. “Like your mother.”

  “She needed to be both to survive without a penny piece from Martin O’Brien. If it had no sense of direction and four weak legs Martin O’Brien put the housekeeping money, the rent and the electricity on it. That was the system.” Fay spoke without either bitterness or regret. It was the way things were.

  “All I need is for you to sign me out—you can go your own way then.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have a very great sense of duty. I can’t leave you alone to fall over and die.”

  “I haven’t a notion of falling over and dying. I’m still a young man. I’m only seventy-four years of age, I’ll have you know.”

  “You probably had no notion of having a minor stroke either. Can you let me have the keys? I’ll go to your house with Nurse Williams and we’ll see what has to be done.”

  “You’re not getting your hands on the keys to my house …”

  “Right, Mr. O’Brien, keep your keys, stay here, die in this hospital, let that child feed your cat till it dies. What do I care? I never gave you a day’s thought in my life up to this, or you me. Why should things change now?”

  “Are you normally as charming as this to everyone or is it only because I’m your father’s brother?” he asked.

  There was a hint of a smile on both of their faces. She held her hand out.

  “The keys, Mr. O’Brien, then?”

  “It’s Jim, Mary Faith,” he said sheepishly.

  “It’s Fay, Jim,” she said and headed off for Chestnut Street.

  “You’ll have to be prepared for the house to be in a terrible state—sometimes they are.” Nurse Williams had seen everything and knew it all.

  “What do we do if it is?”

  “Sanitation comes in if it’s really terrible,” Nurse Williams said, putting a handkerchief to her face as they opened the door of Number 28. But the place was fine, bare to the poin
t of being sparse. There were few pictures on the walls, chairs that had never been comfortable and never been smart. A very small television set and a very big old-fashioned radio stood beside each other on a table. Folded newspapers were piled high on a stool. Pale, faded and many times washed tea towels were stretched out on the backs of chairs. There was no smell of food or decay.

  A very small fridge held just butter and margarine. A kitchen cupboard held a lot of tins and packets.

  J. K. O’Brien of 28 Chestnut Street, no matter how upwardly mobile his address, did not live high off the hog. Fay thought of the near-tenement where her mother had brought her and her brother up. It was very poor compared to this, but there was more life in every floorboard there than there was here.

  What had the brothers quarreled over? Would Finbarr know? He was older—he might remember some row. Still, she must get down to the problem in hand.

  “It’s too big for one person, really. Would he be better to sell it and get a flat in sheltered accommodation?” Fay asked.

  “Of course he’d be better doing that, but do you think he will?” Nurse Williams knew people held on to places. “No, he’ll stay here until he drops.”

  “Should he live downstairs? He obviously doesn’t use that sitting room at all, and he could put a shower in the downstairs cloakroom.”

  “He’ll do nothing, Fay—we have to do it before we let him out.”

  “But who’d pay for it? He doesn’t look as if he’s got very much. I’ve got nothing at all …”

  “If he let upstairs he’d get plenty, but then who’d come and live with him, a complainer like that?” Nurse Williams tried to work it out.

  “What was his job before he retired?”

  “He worked in the post office, I think it says on his records.”

  “He’d have to have a pension from that, so he’d be well able to afford the shower. Can we get someone in your outfit to put the money up for it first and then tell him he has to pay for it?”

  “I’d say that would be best. I’ll get on to it from my end,” Nurse Williams said.

  Mr. O’Brien was outraged when he came home and heard that he would have to pay for the shower.

  “If you were an ordinary person, Jim, you’d have all that money back in a couple of months just by letting the upstairs as a flat. It would be paid in no time.”

  “But who would I have upstairs?” He sounded aggrieved and very annoyed.

  “Who indeed? I can’t think of anyone that would stay there for five minutes,” Fay agreed.

  Jim O’Brien was confused. “But didn’t you and that bossy nurse just tell me that the upstairs could bring in a great income?”

  “Yes, indeed it could, but only to someone normal, someone who didn’t grizzle about everything as soon as the door opened.”

  “You’ve trapped me!” he cried.

  “No, you see Nurse Williams and I thought you were normal; most people are. That was the mistake.”

  “Why did you think that?”

  “Because we didn’t know you, Jim, and how you are overinterested in everyone else’s life and behavior and oversecretive about your own. You’ve told me something about every single person in this street, how Kevin and Phyllis across in Number Two were devoted to each other, how Lilian in Number Five supports the whole household, how Miss Mack went blind, how Mitzi in Number Twenty-Two had a romance outside her marriage years and years ago, how Dolly’s mother overshadows her daughter over in Number Eighteen …”

  “Yes, but all things are true,” he blustered.

  “The thing is, however, that none of them know anything at all about you,” Fay said. “They don’t know where you came from, what you did as a living, how long you’ve been here. They didn’t know I was a relation; they thought I was a social worker.”

  “It’s none of their business,” he grumbled.

  “I agree, but I was asked in by the hospital to help them work out whether you could live on your own, so I have to do my job and find out for them.”

  “And what have you found out?” He was anxious even though he was hiding it.

  “That you’ll be much better off living on one floor, and that I’ll leave you my phone number for emergencies and I will call to see you every month. They’ll let you stay here, Jim.” She gave him a grin.

  “You’ve been very good in ways,” he said. “Badly brought up, of course, no manners or anything, but I suppose that was her fault. But still you came when you were needed—I’ll say that for you.”

  Fay looked at him for a long moment without saying anything. Then she spoke.

  “I don’t know what you have against my mother. Finbarr and I have nothing but good memories of her. She loved your brother; she said she knew he was a gambler when she married him so she only had herself to blame. She worked long, hard hours cleaning floors and stairways to keep food on our table and the rent paid.”

  “She was a vulgar woman who drank great big pints,” J. K. O’Brien said, as if that settled it.

  Fay looked at him in astonishment. “She worked her hands to the bone cleaning in order to pay for what she called her ‘entertainment,’ which was to take my father out on a Saturday and buy them two pints each in the local pub. She did that to the week before she died. And he died a year later of a broken heart. Whatever you heard bad of her it wasn’t from your brother.”

  He was silent now.

  “So, have we finished with each other now for a month, Jim? My telephone number at work is here on this piece of paper. I don’t have a phone at home, nor a mobile.”

  “Where’s home?” he asked suddenly.

  The first question he had asked about her during all the days of negotiation about him and his health, his house and his future.

  “I share a bed-sitter with my friend Suzanne, who works with me.”

  “How much does it cost?” he asked.

  She told him.

  “Is it very smart?” he asked.

  “No, it’s quite shabby, as it happens.”

  “So, would you and Suzanne like to come and live here at a cheaper rent?” he offered.

  Fay paused. “At no rent at all and it’s a deal,” she said.

  “At no rent?”

  “We’d keep an eye on you, do your shopping, tidy up the garden and cook you Sunday lunch every week,” she offered.

  “I could get a fortune for upstairs. You and that bossy nurse as good as said so,” he complained.

  Fay shrugged. “You could get a fortune, if you were normal, Jim.”

  “Yes, well that’s as maybe. And what do you and this Suzanne want to do with your lives? Or do you intend to go on working in this place forever?”

  “What place, Jim?”

  “The place you work in, a laundry or something, isn’t it?”

  He had almost remembered.

  “A dry cleaner’s, but you were near.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, we hope we’ll meet some gorgeous fellows who will marry us and take us away from all that steam and checking in dirty garments.” Fay managed a cheerful smile as she always did when talking about what had to be endured.

  “Where do you go to meet these people?” he asked, interested.

  “We don’t meet them all that much, Jim. We think about meeting them or we meet fellows who fall short of the mark in Ibiza every May.”

  “And what would you need to meet nice smart fellows?” He seemed genuinely interested.

  “I don’t know, maybe to be a bit smarter ourselves, brighter, you know, better educated, coming from a nicer kind of background, but since we can’t be that, then we have to hope to be lively and knock them out that way!”

  “Seriously, would you like to live upstairs?”

  “Only if there’s no rent, Jim, because if you’re not going to be a normal landlord, we can’t be normal tenants.”

  “But the cost of the bathroom downstairs?” he wailed.

  “Will add hugely to the value of this hou
se, Jim.”

  “When can you move in?” he asked.

  “Suzanne will have to come and vet you first,” she said.

  “No, Fay, no. We’re going to be clipping his toenails, feeding him porridge. No!”

  “We have a fantastic flat for free—come and see it.”

  “Nothing’s for free. We know this.”

  “It’s a respectable address; fellows will think we are something if we live in Chestnut Street rather than four flights up over a fast-food place. And we have a room each—think of what that might mean.”

  “Will you swear you won’t let him interfere in our lives or tell us long boring stories about the past?”

  “I swear, because it will be easy,” Fay said.

  They established house rules. The girls could come in and go straight upstairs without having to come in and check with Jim O’Brien each time. They were never going to tell him what time they were going out or coming back. They would make no loud noise upstairs or have parties without permission. They would cook a four-course Sunday lunch for him every week and invite a neighbor or two on each occasion so as to set up a social life for him.

  It worked amazingly well.

  It meant that Jim O’Brien got invitations out to other houses, which had never happened before. He came home full of tales about the various households he visited.

  The girls suggested that they all buy, between the three of them, a washing machine and a dryer, and everyone learned to use it. They bought a clothes rail and took lots of wire hangers from the dry cleaner’s.

  “Don’t iron his shirts,” Suzanne pleaded, so Fay taught him how to do them himself.

  A couple of months later they bought a freezer between them. Jim liked that and made neat little labels for everything they put in.

  He asked them about their lives. He was interested in Fay’s brother, Finbarr, the oceangoing steward.

  “Have you met him?” he asked Suzanne.

  “No, he’s never really at home, you see. What a life!” She sighed.

  “He’ll come home one day; they all do. Home and settle. You might fancy him, you know.”