When I was putting the spices back in the larder I found an old bottle of food colouring, left over from a Red Velvet Cake I made Cara a couple of Valentine’s Days ago. I swirled it against the light; plenty left. When I had diluted it in a little water, I brushed it on with my finger, dabbing round the edges of the biscuit faces, making a Jackie Kennedy bob on one, a lone quiff on another.
For ten minutes I sat over the crossword, letting the smell of the biscuits begin to circle round the kitchen. Mr. Wall came in just as I was taking the first tray from the oven. He didn’t speak until I had put it down; he was probably afraid to make me jump and burn myself. I glanced up at him as I shovelled them on to a wire rack to cool.
‘Might I have one of those?’ he asked. I made him a cup of Earl Grey to wash it down. He made no comment on my portraiture, just pronounced the biscuit ‘very tasty’. Perhaps he thought the red colouring was essential to the flavour. ‘Kate,’ he said suddenly, ‘has invited me to visit Boston next summer.’
‘Really?’
‘I could drop in on my uncle in Chicago as well. And of course there would be Win.’
‘Would you want to see her?’ It came out rudely.
‘I don’t think want is the right word,’ said Mr. Wall. ‘It would seem appropriate.’
‘I think it would have been more bloody appropriate for her to come to her daughter’s funeral.’
He blinked at me.
‘It’s probably not my place to judge,’ I jerked on, ‘but to miss it for a speech at a conference –’
‘But my dear girl,’ he interrupted, ‘the conference was neither here nor there.’
‘Kate said –’
‘Sometimes Win just can’t face things, you see. She used to run away from things that were much easier than…this occasion.’
‘Oh.’
Mr. Wall put his biscuit down. ‘She said in her letter, you know,’ he confided, ‘that she’d always been intending to invite Cara on holiday with her. To catch up. Become close again, you see, as two adults rather than mother and daughter.’
‘It wouldn’t have worked.’
‘Probably not.’
After a long minute I said, ‘It’ll be horribly hot in Boston. You’ll have to go without a vest.’
Mr. Wall gave a small grin and finished his biscuit.
‘I didn’t think you were into jetsetting.’
‘No, but at times like this they say it’s advisable to embrace change.’ He patted the crumbs on his plate into a little pile, then pressed his finger into it and raised it to his mouth. Sucking it clean, he rose to go.
‘Feel free to change your mind about – sharing the house and all.’ My voice came out as a bray.
Mr. Wall raised his thick eyebrows.
‘I mean it’s far too nice of you – no one would expect it – it’s not like I’m family.’
He looked at the floor as I flustered, then up at my face. ‘But you are my daughter’s friend,’ he observed in a tone of slight reproof. His gaze shifted to the biscuits again. ‘Might I be a glutton and take another up with me?’
I rushed to put two on his saucer, but he put one back on the rack again. ‘Delicious.’
I watched his slippers disappear up the stairs. I could not work out why I was so shaken. Only when I had washed up the bowl, knife, spoons, pastry board, and was pushing the brush at an obstinate lump of flour in the sieve, did my mind clear. Mr. Wall’s words pranced across it, sparkling. My daughter’s friend. He had practically capitalized it. He didn’t mean palsy-walsy friend, schoolfriend, housemate. He meant friend – in the way his generation used it, as a polite euphemism for all the subtle non-marital relationships they didn’t want to pry into. He knew. The little bastard knew all along!
I grinned into the orange suds. The sieve was clean enough; nod’s as good as a wink to a galloping horse, as my mother liked to say. I laid it on top of the dripping pile of crockery and wiped my hands on a damp dish-cloth. The phone had rung several times before I really registered it.
‘What you up to?’ Robbie’s tone was an uneasy compromise between compassion and cheer.
‘Nothing much,’ I said automatically, then decided not to bother lying. ‘Actually, I’ve been going through her stuff.’
This was a good phone-line; I could hear the little intake of breath before Robbie stopped himself from asking what I meant.
I went on. ‘Working out what to chuck, what to give to charity, that sort of thing.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ he asked.
‘No. I’m not sure any of my ideas are good.’
‘They say you should leave all that for a couple of months, till you’re feeling stronger,’ Robbie confided. ‘It was in that book I gave you, I saw it when I was glancing through.’
‘Well, I’m sorry I’m not doing this bereavement according to the manufacturer’s instructions.’ The sharp words were out before I had licensed them.
Silence on the line.
‘Sorry. I just hate being treated like an invalid.’
‘No, I wasn’t taking offence, actually,’ said Robbie, ‘I was just trying to think of something useful to say.’ After another gap he went on, ‘If you really feel ready to, you know, look through her things, then go for it.’
‘I’m not likely to be feeling any stronger in a couple of months,’ I told him, ‘so I might as well do it while everything’s still a blur.’
‘Right.’
‘Besides, if I don’t do it now, I’ll spend the next year tripping over Cara’s socks and magazines and pickle jars.’
Robbie got halfway into a breath of laughter. ‘So, you staying where you are, then?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘What’s keeping you there? Nostalgia?’
‘No,’ I said, nettled. ‘I just like it. Mr. Wall has asked me to stay.’
‘He the father?’
‘Not any more. He’s just him now.’
‘Suppose so.’
‘And I love the man.’ The words spilled out of my mouth, surprising me.
‘Yeah?’
‘He’s earned it,’ I tried to explain. ‘We’re not related, I don’t owe him a thing.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Robbie warily. ‘Didn’t think there was much room for men in your life.’
‘Ah, come on, don’t do the predictable male paranoia thing.’
‘How d’ya mean?’
‘I’m still the same woman as I was before I spilled the beans on Thursday; you don’t have to develop a castration complex all of a sudden.’
He let out a great hoot. ‘Fair enough.’ After a minute he added, ‘You seem to be coping surprisingly well, by the way.’
‘I’m sticking out,’ I told him.
‘Which accent was that meant to be?’
‘Belfast. But it didn’t work.’
‘Listen, hen, I’m just remembering,’ said Robbie. ‘The book said not to throw everything away, because you might regret not having things to remember her by later on.’
I was living in Cara’s house, with her father and cat, under the pictures and fluorescent stars we’d stuck up together, wearing the shirt she’d unbuttoned with her teeth. She was soaked into the walls, stained on the sheets, scratched on the bedpost. ‘I don’t think I’ll be short on memories,’ I told Robbie.
“Course not.’
I could tell this call was putting him under some strain, as it was me. I was used to sparring with Robbie always at arm’s length; it was unnerving to stand in the hallway of the big house with his voice in my ear. So I pretended I had a cake in the oven. He asked me to come walking in the mountains.
‘Next weekend would be better for that. We’re…sorry, I mean I.’ I took a breath. ‘I wish I could get used to not saying we.’
‘I think the word should be banned.’
‘Sorry?’
‘We is a myth; how can you possibly speak for anyone but yourself? Sheila says it all the time, it drives me nuts.?
??
‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘Actually, now,’ said Robbie, ‘I remember once in the staff-room you said “We thought” about some film, and I wondered who you were time-sharing a brain with.’
I laughed. ‘I didn’t! Shame on me.’
‘You probably didn’t even hear yourself say it.’
‘But Cara and I never ever thought the same thing about a film.’ Then I remembered the excuse about the oven; I hadn’t followed it through. ‘I’d better be having a look at that sponge, I suppose.’
‘See you Monday, then. Take care of yourself.’
I stood at the counter and ate one of the biscuits. Not quite spicy enough, but not bad. I carried the binliners out to the boot, two at a time; they were as heavy as treasure sacks. I went back for my handbag, and then, feeling its accustomed weight on my wrist, felt a surge of impatience. I emptied it out on the kitchen counter: what on earth had I been toting round all these years?
Purse and keys, fair enough. Steel-handled comb. Aspirin, antacid tablets, and sticking plasters, in case anybody needed them. A hairbrush, two combs. A big box of tampons. A spare asthma inhaler for Cara’s panics (bin it, go on, do it now before you think about it), half a tube of lozenges stuck together, two half-full packets of tissues (bin them all, you never get colds before Christmas). A worn-down ‘Raspberry Risk’ lipstick (whose?), a bus timetable, an out-of-date voucher for two pizzas for the price of one. Four biros of assorted colours; I began to test them on the corner of the newspaper, then told myself not to be so anal. I put my purse, keys, and one tampon in my pocket, then opened the top drawer, and swept everything else in. I was going to leave my handbag on the counter where it lay, but I thought Mr. Wall might think I had forgotten it and worry, so I squashed it into the drawer too.
My hands felt weirdly light as I went out the door. Passing the yard, I caught a glimpse of Mr. Wall standing at the top of the garden. I joined him, with a mutter of ‘Nice day.’
‘It is.’
The yellow cushion was still underneath the hammock; perhaps it would rot away slowly this winter, grass embroidering itself through the old brocade. The birdbath had dried up; while I was thinking of it, I went for the watering can and filled the stone bowl up. Mr. Wall was staring past me to the bottom of the garden. ‘Must do a final mowing one of these weekends,’ I said.
‘And we should get one of those tree surgeons in to take a look at the sycamore.’
‘Do you happen to know,’ I asked him, ‘which of them planted it? Kate or Cara?’
He looked over his glasses in slight bewilderment. ‘Oh, the girls were always grubbing about in the garden, burying all sorts of things.’
‘Were they?’
‘To tell you the truth, I think sycamores just plant themselves.’
I absorbed that. Then I asked, ‘Do you really think it could fall on the house?’
‘There’s always some danger with trees of that height. But I suppose,’ his eyes crinkling at the corners, ‘we could give it the benefit of the doubt for another year.’
The traffic was slow, but I rolled my window down halfway and concentrated on the breeze. Town was crawling with shoppers buying summer clothes for next year in the sales. I took a chance and left Minnie on a double yellow line on Stephen’s Green, since I’d only be a minute. I found a shop that sold stamps, and posted my handful of ID cards and returned letters. On my way to Oxfam with the first binliner bouncing and slipping on my shoulder, I thought I must look like Dick Whittington’s mother chasing after him to London with his clean socks. I swung the door open. Stooping women circled round the navy-blue section, and a boy kept trying to whip open the cubicle curtain to reveal his friend in a Victorian tails suit. I let my sack down beside the desk, and cast an apologetic smile at the woman reaching for her glasses. ‘Shoes and raincoats?’
‘Lovely,’ she said resignedly.
At the top of Grafton Street I paused, feeling the blood well out between my legs. Behind me a pair of horses shifted in their jangling traces as another tittering couple climbed into the carriage. The Jesus man didn’t seem to be here today, but one of his ‘The Way, the Truth, and the Life’ boards was resting against a lamp-post. Up and down the street poured the Saturday afternoon crowd; mothers bent on finding perfect autumn overcoats, old men in greasy tweed hats, bored suburban girls bringing £9.99 bargains to show off to friends over tea and Millionaires’ Shortbread. From here I could hear the familiar queasy mix of at least three buskers; that interminable ‘Annie’s Song’ on flute, I thought, and the man with the African drums, and a brass band. I watched the ground; the reddish bricks disappeared and reappeared as the feet and coats rushed over them.
Minnie would definitely get a ticket now. I realized that I didn’t care if she got three tickets and was towed away. The sound of the flute lifted for a bar or two above the clang of the brass band, and I was happy. Perversely, incredulously, momentarily happy.
When it was gone and the wave had dropped my feet down hard against the pavement, the crowd looked different to me. The shoppers were no more likeable, but they did have faces. It came into my head that everyone on this street had either gone through a loss more or less equivalent to mine, or would do by the end of their life. Some would have it easier, some worse, some over and over.
Imagine if a giant hand in the sky gestured us to stop, this minute, figures frozen halfway through a stride or a sentence, all along Grafton Street. If the hand gestured for us to tell what was really preoccupying us, then death would be on every second mouth: ‘My mam’s gone for more tests’, one would admit, and the next, ‘Well, my uncle and my teacher went last year’, and another, ‘Our first was stillborn’, and another, ‘I’ve a feeling this Christmas might be my last’. I wanted to make everyone sit down on the sun-warmed pavement, arranging their bags and bundles round them, and turn to their neighbour to talk of this huge headline hanging over us. Who have you lost to death, they would ask each other, who are you afraid of losing, who were you glad to see taken, and when do you think death might come for you? The brass band should be playing a triumphant funeral march, and the sun should be making skeleton shadows of our bodies on the gaps of pavement between the groups. The signs behind the polished glass fronts should say ‘How many shopping days left?’ It made no sense for us to be talking about anything else. And why did we pretend to be strangers when we were all webbed together by the people we had lost and the short future we had in common?
Through the crowd I saw a girl running down the street. Only the back of her; all I could make out was a rusty head of hair, catching the light whenever she emerged from a building’s shadow. Probably running for a bus, or twenty-five minutes late to meet a friend at Bewley’s. She had almost disappeared into the wide mouth of the crowd; I saw something moving but wasn’t sure if it was her. I would never know who or what she was running from or to. My eyes let her slip.
The crowd was swirling, no longer frozen in my vision. It was Saturday afternoon, and there were coats to be tried on and teacups to drain.
When I reached Minnie she was miraculously unticketed. On the hoarding twenty feet away, I noticed, someone had sprayed a huge pair of interlocked women’s symbols with smiley faces in the circles. I wouldn’t put it past Jo to go out spray-painting at night, once she’d changed out of her work drag. I glanced in the car window at the bulging binliners. It occurred to me now that it would make much more sense to bring them round to the Attic and see who wanted what. And if that wasn’t too awkward, I would consider staying for their wake thing. I was not going to have some crowd of dykes mourning Cara Wall in my absence.
I stopped off at the big house to collect the biscuits. When I was halfway to the car, I remembered Sherry’s toothbrush. I found it upstairs in the side pocket of Cara’s tote, in the middle of a coverless paperback called Murder Under Aegean Skies.
When I got to the Attic there seemed to be no one there. Only after my third set of knocks did Sherr
y open the door in a crumpled black shirt. ‘Sorry, Pen, we’re all out the back garden trying to get the barbecue lit.’
I let her glide her lips across my cheek, and handed her the toothbrush without a word. ‘Thanks,’ she said, staring at it. I walked past her into the hall, which was as shabby as ever; posters of art exhibitions taped up slightly askew, and a catnip mouse at the top of the stairs. Then I remembered the bags, and had to ask Sherry to help me bring them in. Her fine-boned wrists were surprisingly strong. ‘What is all this stuff?’
‘Cara’s clothes and magazines and so on,’ I said crisply. ‘I thought people might, you know –’
‘That’s a lovely idea.’ Sherry’s eyes were very green. ‘That’s so big of you.’
I ignored her and went back to the car for the basket of biscuits.
Fiona was in the basement kitchen, chopping up apples for the punch. She made me tea in a huge mug with a crescent moon on it, and introduced me to a friend from the History department called Ruth. Jo was not there; she had gone into town to look for nut cutlets for her fellow-vegetarians. The others were skewering sausages and watching the charcoal smoulder on the old bin lid they were using as a barbecue. I was introduced to five or six of them in a row, and instantly forgot their names, except for the fact that at least two of them were called Mary. Since the black bags were attracting some curious glances, I up-ended them on the lawn and told everyone to help themselves. Putting together a plateful of salad, out the corner of my eye I watched a couple of strangers poking through Cara’s clothes. Their movements were tentative. I felt for them, as they were clearly afraid to seem greedy, or, on the other hand, lacking in enthusiasm. One tiny woman tried on the ‘IF THE TRUTH COULD BE TOLD…’ T-shirt. When she saw me looking she started to pull it off, but I smiled at her and called out, ‘It suits you,’ so she kept it on.
Whatever Cara wore looked borrowed. In all her phases, from the theatrical to the sporty, she had seemed to me to be trying someone else’s image on for size. So as these women picked their way gingerly through the pile, it was as if they were reclaiming the skins she had stolen. Whereas Cara was naked now and travelling light at last; no tote to fill up with things she thought she might need or presents to lug home. I could imagine her grinning as she watched her clothes being passed out, spread all over Dublin, shared with exes in Cork, given to friends emigrating to America, slowly wriggling their way across the lesbian web. God only knew where that particular dress, for example – a red sleeveless one in scrunched silk that Sherry was tugging over her head – would end up.