Today Jo was the colour of buttered toast. She hauled herself up and made room for me on the edge of the hammock. Doubting it would take the pair of us, I leaned against it, watching Grace stalk invisible insects through the lettuce bed.
‘Nice tan,’ I remarked.
‘You should have come with us.’
I gave the politest explanation. ‘Term started weeks ago.’
‘Right, I forgot. Oh, I brought some copies of my photos from the trip,’ she added. ‘Left them in the kitchen.’
And then, for the first time in weeks, I saw Cara’s face whole, white in the sun, with the sharp widow’s peak and the uneven, laughing lips. It was usually impossible to visualize someone you lived with, I knew, because you had seen so many of their faces that they overlayered and cancelled out. But just then Cara’s came to me, sharper than a photograph.
‘You don’t have to look today,’ said Jo, her hot palm hovering on my elbow. ‘I just thought you’d like to have them, but you should put them away in a drawer till you need them.’
I nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. Would you…’
And down the garden path, in a brown satin dressing-gown, with bare feet that disappeared between the chrysanthemums, Kate picked her way. I hadn’t even begun working out how to tell her about her sister and me, and now she found me practically lying in a hammock with a woman whose old blue T-shirt read ‘Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle’.
‘Ah, hi, Kate, this is –’
‘We’ve met,’ she said, passing a mug of coffee to Jo.
I sat down on the baked grass. ‘Where d’you find the dressing-gown?’
‘In the closet in my bedroom. It’s my mother’s; too Katharine Hepburn for me.’
‘I thought you were sleeping,’ I commented, too accusingly.
‘The kids playing ball in the street kept waking me up. This kind soul has been giving me an update on Irish politics for the last fifteen years.’
‘Bet that didn’t take long.’
‘Well, I have to admit,’ said Jo, slurping her scalding coffee, ‘that I just ranted a bit about gerrymandering in the North, then hopped straight to the abortion referenda.’
‘Why does that not surprise me?’
‘Ah, Pen, you’re only a young thing; you can’t help being pig-ignorant about your country’s history.’
I watched Kate arrange herself on the wrought-iron seat, its white curlicues dragon-scaled from twenty years’ painting and rusting. She folded the satin round her knees and took a careful sip of coffee. My eyes took the measure of her: all the same features, but some blurred, some hardened, as if I had glanced away for a second in which she had aged fourteen years. Grace hurtled by; Kate jumped, then settled back against the uncomfortable bars of the seat. How ridiculously genteel the setting was; ladies paying calls on a summer afternoon. The copper beech beside the bench was pale yellow still, only the top few leaves on each branch having aged into brown.
‘Cara tried to claim the dole once,’ I said aloud. The other two glanced up, as if embarrassed by the name. I carried on: ‘She told them how hard up she was, how her father was an elderly widower who couldn’t help, how they lived in this rotting bungalow with no hot water. So the dole office sent an inspector round here and found Mr. Wall deadheading the roses. He was most embarrassed.’
Kate exhaled scornfully.
‘I suppose Cara’s argument,’ said Jo lazily, ‘would have been that she spent most of her days doing crucial voluntary work that the state should have paid for, so why not get them to fund her directly?’
‘Still sounds rather parasitical to me,’ said Kate, adjusting her dressing-gown.
Rage bubbled behind my forehead. I kept my mouth clamped shut until I could trust myself not to respond. Then I turned towards Jo. ‘Tell me what I missed in the way of my country’s history, so,’ I instructed her, shutting my eyes and breathing in a waft of new-mown grass from next door.
‘Well, the Pill train, for starters. I was there.’
‘Ah go on. That was centuries back.’
‘I was on it, I’m telling you. Belfast to Dublin with my knapsack full of pills and condoms.’ Jo shook back her sandy layers of hair. ‘And then the invasion of the Forty Foot gentleman-only bathing place by land, sea, and air. I’ve no head for heights or waves so I ran across the cliff and slapped my towel at an old fella who was covering his knick-knacks with one hand and making a fist at us with the other. Sarah, she was my’ – a flicker of the eyes – ‘friend at the time, she got a great photo for the Irish Women’s Liberation Newsletter.’
Kate was smiling, with appreciation or disdain, I couldn’t tell. I was suddenly uncomfortable under this stranger’s half-lidded gaze. Faking a yawn, I straightened up. ‘I’ve potatoes to put on; how are you at peeling, Jo?’
‘Famed in the four provinces.’
‘Don’t be expecting anything gourmet,’ I told Kate over my shoulder. We left her on the bench. I knew it was rude, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I dumped the ham in the biggest pot to boil and started scrubbing the carrots, while Jo stooped over the potatoes, cutting out the sprouting bits.
Her voice went soft so I knew she was going to talk about it. ‘Everyone at the Attic was shattered when they heard.’
‘I’m sure.’ Did I sound appropriately grateful?
‘We all got so depressed last night we had to have a toast party.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Have you never been to one?’ Jo glanced up through her faded fringe. ‘You must come over to the Attic more often.’
‘My job keeps me very busy,’ I said. I was damned if I was going to accept a sympathy pass to their touch-feely commune.
Jo returned her gaze to the potatoes. ‘Well, you buy two white sliced pan loaves – you need at least one per three people. Then you put the toaster in the middle of the table, sit very close around it, and eat hot buttered toast all evening, with tea to wash it down.’
‘Not herbal?’
‘Caffeine, tannin, milk and sugar. You have some funny ideas about us, don’t you?’
I evaded her eyes. ‘It sounds rather comforting.’
‘I’ll give you a ring next time. There’s nothing like group bingeing to make you forget your own problems.’
‘And remember everyone else’s.’
Jo’s mouth twitched into a momentary grin. ‘So what’s the sister like?’ she went on.
‘You tell me. I only talked to her for half an hour this morning. She didn’t even recognize me.’
‘Should she have?’
‘We were in the same class at school. The mists of time, I suppose…’
‘Ah, go on.’ Jo studied me in concern. ‘If they ever had a reunion at Sacred Heart, Drumsharry, I bet I’d be able to spot the gang from my year at least.’
I offered her a baby carrot to chew on. ‘So how many girls in gymslips did you corrupt in your time, then?’
‘Not a one, more’s the pity. I was into boys at the time, or trying to be. I even married one.’
‘You’re having me on.’
The fair head was still bent over the chopping-board. ‘Shrove Tuesday, 1971. We had pancakes at the reception.’
‘I was only nine, and you were getting married? God help us. So where’ve you been hiding hubby all these years?’
‘It’s a long and nasty story,’ said Jo. The sunlight was fading to grey on the wall of the garage. Her light blue eyes swivelled towards me. ‘I’ve got the wedding ring to prove it. I’ll show you next time you’re over in the Attic.’
‘I won’t be, most likely,’ I said. ‘You were always Cara’s people.’
Jo put the peeling knife down on the gritty draining-board. ‘You’re being very hard on yourself, woman.’
‘What am I doing?’ The air in the kitchen was damp and stifling.
‘Well, for one thing, cutting yourself off from all of us just because you think –’
‘Jo,’ I told her, ‘you needn’t worry, I’m not
going to ask who it was, I’m not blaming anyone. But whatever about how I coped with it under other circumstances, I can’t right now. I don’t need to ask, I happen to know it was Sherry, but if you want to protect your housemate that’s very honourable.’
‘Ah, shut up with your honourables.’ Her bottom lip was wet. ‘You’re missing the point.’
I bent to lean my elbows on the stainless-steel rim of the sink. My head weighed like a cannon-ball; I pictured it hurtling through the air, ready to explode. ‘So tell me the point. What exactly is the point of all this, Jo?’
She said nothing.
My eyes were still dry. I leaned them on my knuckles, trying to break the seal that kept back the waters. I saw black sand, stabbed with green stars.
A hand on my shoulder. ‘Are you –’
‘I’m fine.’ I stepped back out of reach. My hands lined the carrots up on the board. I bit into a sliver of one; its indifferent taste calmed my tongue.
Jo was watching. ‘Hey, I’ve remembered what the point is.’
‘Yeah?’ I offered her a small smile. If I was going to turn into a bitch overnight, there truly was no point to anything.
‘Well,’ she began carefully, ‘even if Cara might have had the odd fling over the years, didn’t she always come back to you? I remember her saying that you’d tried breaking up quite a few times, for a couple of years once –’
‘Four.’
‘Right.’ Jo had lost her rhythm; she flailed for the words. ‘But she kept coming back, didn’t she? The woman couldn’t have got away from you, even if she’d wanted to. Which she didn’t,’ she added hastily.
‘She made a good shot at it,’ I commented. ‘Got as far as Denmark. And what about Ben, she nearly had a baby by him.’
‘But she didn’t. She couldn’t actually leave you for good.’
‘That might say more about her incapacities than my attractions.’
‘Ah, bullshit. Stop waving the big words around, Teacher.’
I glanced over, startled by her rudeness. And then my own anger surged back. ‘You know, Cara once told me that my kind of love was like a feeding tube forced up a hunger-striker’s nostrils.’
Jo’s throat wavered as she swallowed. ‘She was just being melodramatic.’
‘She meant it.’
‘Maybe that particular minute she meant it. But the girl invited you into her family home, for god’s sake,’ Jo ploughed on. ‘She chose you over and over again since she was a teenager. Doesn’t that prove something?’
‘What? What exactly does it prove?’
The door was thrust open, and in came Kate, rain spots on her mother’s dressing-gown. ‘Did you hear the thunder?’
Jo and I didn’t look at each other. I leaned over the sink and stared into the yard. ‘I didn’t notice the sun had gone in, even. It is looking awful dark.’
Kate smacked a few drops from the curls over her forehead. ‘I’d better get some clothes on; I seem to remember that my father scandalizes easily.’
She made it to the hall before the key turned in the front door; she paused to wrap the satin robe around her more tightly. I left her and Mr. Wall to their shrill greetings, and shut the kitchen door on them.
Jo was rinsing the mud off the potatoes in a colander. Outside the rain grew heavier. The squeal of the cat-flap broke the silence; Grace’s tail smeared the back of my ankles. Jo set the colander on the draining-board with a clank. I kept my head down, cutting the last section of carrot into transparent slips. ‘Listen, Pen, you’re digging yourself into a hole.’
I slapped down my knife. ‘Just because you’re in your fucking forties doesn’t mean you know the first thing –’
‘Shush, shush.’
The cat was watching us disapprovingly.
Jo scratched her cheek, leaving a smear of mud from the potatoes. She went on more gently. ‘I know you have to grieve for the woman, but you don’t have to go round doubting everything you two had. Don’t you know you were the beginning and end for her?’
‘Never suspected you were such a romantic.’
‘It’s not my language, it’s hers. She talked about you all the time, we were sick to the teeth of hearing about her wonder-lover.’ Jo tried a chuckle.
The rain was hammering on to the roof of the garage now, and slashing at the windows.
‘That’s what she called you, didn’t you know?’
The hammock would be sopping by now. ‘Yeah, that was one of the names.’ The rumble of thunder drowned my words.
‘Pen?’ Jo peered into my face. ‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’
‘You’re probably right,’ I said, to shut her up. ‘Was that lightning? I thought it went bright for a minute.’
‘Didn’t see.’ Jo bent over the sink to look into the yard. ‘I don’t want to alarm you, but you’re four inches under out there.’
‘I’m what?’
‘Your drains must be choked.’
I hauled open the kitchen door. ‘Oh buggery, it’s coming over the doorstep. I didn’t give the drains a thought all summer.’
Jo’s laugh was a little cracked. ‘If you can lend me some wellies…’
‘No, I’ll do it.’ I wrenched off my shoes and began to tuck the hem of my skirt into the waistband.
‘Crazy woman –’
But I was in the yard already, my ankles numbed by the swirling water. If it caught me off balance I’d be swept down the crazy-paving steps and into the garden. The rain crashed in my face as I waded across the yard. I had my fist in the first drain, wrenching out handfuls of grass and leaves, by the time the window opened.
‘Here, you great otter,’ Jo called, ‘would you do it with a wooden spoon at least.’
‘Hands is best,’ I shouted through the downpour. I pointed to the whirlpool already forming round the first drain. ‘Shut that window, the rain’ll saturate my tea-towels.’
By the time I staggered in, sniffing, Jo had brought a towel from the cloakroom to wrap my head in. She wouldn’t stay for dinner, she said; I had enough on my plate.
I lent her my crow-headed umbrella in case she didn’t find a parking space near the Attic. At the door, there was one of those moments when two people realize that they like each other more than they know each other. This is nicer than the opposite situation, but more awkward. You try to remember the protocol for touching. You hate to gush, or presume too much, yet you are unwilling to let the moment pass without some gesture. Jo was standing on the step below, staring into the rain; she looked back up at me. I put out my hand towards her, not for a shake but in a low wave. But she put her hand out too and they met tentatively, fingers sliding over palms, the tips of the fingers resting together for a fraction of a second, then dropping away.
Then she was trudging through the garden to her purple Volkswagen Beetle, not looking back, and I was momentarily warmed. Apart from the sign of peace at mass, Jo had been the first person to touch me since it happened, to lay hands on the new Pen.
When I’d changed into dry clothes I went back to my chopping-board, listening to the small sounds of the house. Cara used to read poetry aloud while I was cooking; mostly right-on women’s anthologies, but sometimes Wordsworth, for whom she had a secret yen. She got louder at the bits she liked best; I used to wonder what Mr. Wall made of all this muffled oratory booming through the walls. Being read to was lovely, but somehow Cara expected me to notice metaphors and irony while I was chopping mushrooms. I always had to apologize before turning on the noisy blender, and even then if I failed in concentration she might flounce out with ‘Never mind, I’ll read in the garden.’
Dinner was muted tonight. The potatoes were firm but the carrots were mushy. I gave Grace a sliver of ham; was that a flicker of disapproval I caught on Kate’s face? Her chocolate-brown suit still looked freshly ironed. I felt an irrational surge of resentment which had something to do with her being so well groomed, and something to do with her air of detachment, but was not justified by either.
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She and her father passed each other dishes. She had brought him an express-mail letter from his wife; he folded it away in his breast-pocket to read later. It was painful to watch them; sometimes civil as strangers, then a flash of an old disagreement. With questions like ‘So how is the library?’ or ‘I hear terrible things about the American school system’, they tried to reconstruct the missing years.
He was too polite to ask her any of the really interesting questions. At sixteen, in cotton bell-bottoms, could she really have volunteered to give up the mossy woods for a country of shrieking sirens? I had never been to the States and never wanted to. Watching Cagney and Lacey was stressful enough, and I only did that to ogle Sharon Gless, who wasn’t my type anyway, too blonde. Cara had always insisted that going was Kate’s choice entirely, but I just bet her mother bribed her with boot-skates and summer camp. Cara got seagulls. The summer the others left, Mr. Wall took her to West Cork and she drew endless seagulls. She had kept all the pictures and showed them to me when she was spring-cleaning last year. They were not like any seagulls I had ever seen.
I was considering these questions and forking down some apple pie when the doorbell startled us into silence. It was a puny boy whose feet were rapidly outgrowing him; he rested a black leather suitcase on the upturned toe of one boot. ‘Wall?’ he asked me, indecently cheerful for someone employed by a hospital to deliver those possessions no longer needed by their owners. I took the case from him without making myself smile.
If I brought it into the kitchen, Mr. Wall might ask what it was, and suddenly I didn’t trust my voice. I hauled it upstairs. I resisted the urge to hide it under my bed; who would I be hiding it from? It would only delay things. Besides, I had to find Sherry’s damn toothbrush; I wanted nothing of hers in the house. So I lifted the case, hissing with effort, and placed it centrally on the bed, like a great carcass on a sacrificial altar.