A Gift to You (12 page)

She walks along the deserted corridor, lined with empty clinics, that leads to the lifts, and becomes aware of footsteps echoing behind her. Not a doctor, or a consultant, she decides. They walk
with brisk strides. Always in a hurry. Places to go, people to see. Don’t get in my way, please. Not a nurse in squeaky soled shoes, or an administrator click-clacking along in high heels.
She knows the distinct types after all these months.

It’s a man and he’s gaining on her as she turns right and crosses to the bank of lifts. He overtakes just as the steel doors open to one of the lifts and she follows him in. He jabs
his finger on the seventh floor button and glances at her enquiringly. ‘The same,’ she responds. He leans against the handrail and she rests against the opposite one.

‘Doors closing,’ the automated voice says and then they are cocooned in their steel box with the big glass wall that looks out onto the new hospital complex, and the unexpected vista
of the green purple smudged Dublin mountains in the distance.

Will the man chat? she wonders. Some people do, some people don’t. He’s not a doctor. He’s a tired, careworn, middle-aged man in a crumpled suit, and if he’s going to the
seventh floor, life is hard for him, she reflects.

‘Not a bad day,’ he says politely, making the effort.

‘No,’ she agrees, injecting a false note of cheer into her voice, ‘not a bad day at all.’

‘We did well this year,’ he observes, as the lift glides slowly upwards and the sun spills over the autumn-dabbed mountains, a backdrop to the massive glass link corridors to the old
hospital.

He has a West of Ireland accent. Connemara, perhaps, she guesses.

‘It will shorten the winter.’ She tries to be as positive as he’s been.

‘True.’ The lift judders to a halt and he courteously stands back to let her out.

‘Thank you,’ she murmurs, unconsciously taking a deep breath, as they walk towards the entrance to the seventh floor, mentally preparing herself before passing through the big grey
doors that lead to the oncology wards.

He inhales too and they smile at each other. ‘Hard, isn’t it?’ she says.

‘
Very.
’ He exhales a gale force sigh. ‘How long have you been coming?’

‘Eleven months. You?’ They slow down to talk.

‘Three,’ he says. ‘You’re a veteran.’ His eyes crinkle in a smile. They are cornflower blue like her husband’s.

‘You could say that.’ She smiles at his droll humour.

‘My son is very ill,’ he volunteers hesitantly. ‘And you?’

‘My husband,’ she says, passing through the door he holds open for her. There is no need for histories, descriptions and comparisons. They are on the seventh floor, that is
enough.

‘Hard,’ he says again. ‘Very hard.’

‘It’s the anxiety.’ She grimaces. ‘The constant, grinding anxiety and getting the phone calls that make you think this is it!’

‘
Exactly!
We’ve had a few of those, too.’ He nods empathically as they walk along the entrance hallway towards the long corridor that houses the wards.
‘There’s nothing worse than being called in.’

They stop at the intersection. ‘I’m this way.’ He indicates right.

‘I’m the other.’ She smiles at him.

‘Where there’s life there’s hope,’ he says, and, as if it was the most natural thing in the world he reaches out spontaneously to pat her back.

She gives him a hug and they stand there, two strangers comforting each other. They give each other one last smile before they go their separate ways. ‘God go with you,’ he says,
raising his hand in farewell.

‘And with
you
,’ she responds fervently. ‘And with you.’ She hears his footsteps, solid and determined, fade away and she turns left.

‘Come on, old girl, chin up,’ she encourages herself, walking past the nurses’ station. Her knees ache, as does her neck, a creaking jagged unforgiving pain that keeps her
awake at night. She is bone weary.

She stops at the green door behind which her husband lies in a bed that puffs and blows, surrounded by bleeping machines, and tubes and drips and lines, and grey cartons for vomit, and rubber
gloves and pill cups, all the accouterments of the very ill.

She takes another deep breath and pastes a smile on her face as she has done, day in, day out, week upon week, month upon month, for all of this long, exhausting year.

She glances to her right, there is no one else around, the man is gone from sight, but further along the corridor she knows that he is doing the same as her, putting on the brave face, showing
courage, being kind and adapting to a world that has narrowed to this, the seventh floor of a hospital, where the most part of their life is now spent.

Nothing has changed, but this day
is
different, she acknowledges. Two strangers have brought comfort to each other because they understood the silent suffering of the other. This brief,
enriching encounter will keep her going for a while. She has been bolstered and uplifted just when she had begun to wilt.

She opens the door. ‘Good morning, love. How are you today?’ She greets her husband as she always does, remembering her fellow traveller’s words: ‘Where there’s
life there’s hope.’

I need assertiveness classes, I think to myself, as simmering with irritation as I stuff a turkey that I do not want to stuff, let alone eat. I’m
really
annoyed
at myself. Once again, I’ve let my older sister walk all over me and behaved like an absolute doormat. Mad as I am at her, I’m even madder at myself.

I do beg your pardon. How rude of me to launch off like that without even introducing myself. My name is Jessie Barnsley. I’m a forty-year-old wife, mother of two, freelance copy editor,
palm-curling PMT sufferer and, right now, doormat. Let me fill you in before we go any further. Monica, my eldest sister, married to flashy git Kenneth, who likes to be called Ken, is having her
annual family barbecue.

Because it’s family and we are very definitely B list, she doesn’t bother with caterers, not when the rest of us can turn to and bring an assortment of grub. I get a phone call from
her four days before the big event: ‘Bring the turkey over as soon as it’s cooked so I can carve it and plate it up before the others arrive. Lia [sister-in-law] can do up the salads,
I’ll sort out the ribs and burgers for the barbecue.’ Monica issues her instructions like a sergeant major.

‘Do we really
need
a turkey? I don’t like cold turkey,’ I say, a tad irritably, it has to be said. PMT is beginning to kick in and besides, I have a deadline that is
fast looming. I’m way behind schedule. I don’t have
time
to cook turkey! I tell my sister this.

‘
What?
’ Monica is clearly taken aback by my lack of enthusiasm. ‘Of course we need a turkey. We
always
have a turkey. All you have to do is bung it in the
oven. You know Gran and Granddad won’t eat barbecue food. You know how conservative they are. And neither will Marcus after getting the trots . . . no, sorry . . .
“
salmonella
” last year at Suzy Carter’s charity barbie.’ Monica drips with sarcasm – she doesn’t like Marcus, her brother-in-law. Mind, I’m not
mad about him myself. Apart from being a hypochondriac of the highest order, he gives me the creeps. His hugs are gropy sort of hugs, if you know what I mean. You just don’t want to be left
in a room alone with him. He sneaked up behind me one Christmas and I get the shivers just thinking about it.

Monica is rabbiting on. ‘He’s such a wussie, honestly. He doesn’t just get a headache, he gets a brain tumour, and as for . . .’ I tune out and let her at it. Why does
she bother going to such trouble when it’s clearly an ordeal? It’s become a sort of family tradition now, though, Monica’s barbecue. She had the first one six years ago and,
between yourself and myself and I know this is a bitchy thing to say about my own sister, but it wasn’t for the love of us all. It was only to show off her posh new house in Malahide with the
fabulous sea views and landscaped garden. The first year, she and Ken looked after the cooking, but the following year, when she decided to have one again and get all the family entertaining out of
the way ‘in one fell swoop’ as she rather crassly put it, Lia, our sister-in-law, kindly suggested we all bring a dish.

That wasn’t too bad. I did three dozen savoury vol-au-vents; but since then, I’ve ended up cooking a twenty-five pound turkey for the past couple of years and it’s a nuisance.
I mean, it’s
her
decision to have a family barbecue, not mine. So why should
I
have to suffer? Why does she do it year after year, if it’s such a drag? I suppose she
feels she has to now. It’s expected of her. Everybody groans at the thought of going, but we usually end up having a bit of a laugh at the end of the day.

‘I could do a salmon,’ I say now, interrupting her anti-Marcus diatribe.

‘Orla’s doing salmon, you do the turkey as usual and bring a bottle of gin or vodka . . .’

I feel my blood boil – Monica and Ken like spirits, Ronan, my long-suffering husband, and I prefer wine. ‘Monica, Ronan and I aren’t mad about spirits; we prefer to drink
wine,’ I explain.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Monica can’t hide her exasperation. ‘There’ll be plenty of wine here. Look, I have to go, Ken’s entertaining some colleagues from
London and I have to have a manicure and get my hair done. Bye.’ She sounds distinctly tetchy, huffy even. My heart sinks. Monica in a huff is not for the faint-hearted. She does huffy better
than anyone else I know and can stay frosty for weeks.

So that’s how, this Sunday morning, I’m up at seven-thirty, stuffing a huge, fat, white-skinned, blue-veined turkey, with extreme bad grace. This year, I’ve cheated. I’ve
bought ready-made apricot-and-walnut stuffing instead of making my own. I rub the skin with lemon to crisp it up, lace the breast with streaky bacon, swaddle it in tinfoil and manoevre the roasting
dish into the oven. I still feel hard done by. Resentment has multiplied in the four days since my conversation with Monica. That turkey is proof positive that I do not count in her eyes. She did
not listen to one word that I said to her.

A) I don’t like cold turkey.

B) I’m tied for time and am under pressure with my work. I was up until 1 a.m. this morning, editing, and am bog-eyed with tiredness.

C) Although I don’t drink spirits, I am still expected to bring a bottle of gin or vodka.

What is it about Monica that makes her feel that what she wants is far more important than anything I might want? Why are my feelings and desires of no consequence and why do I put up with her
bullying? Because frankly, that’s what it is. Bullying and a lack of respect. Monica doesn’t rate my copy editing as a job at all. As far as she’s concerned, I’m at home all
day, so I don’t ‘work.’ She feels perfectly free to ring up and ask me to collect her children from the crèche, because she’s been delayed at a very important
‘strategy planning session’. She works as PA to a stockbroker and likes to think she’s at the cutting edge of high finance.

Don’t think that I mind helping someone when they’re stuck. That’s not it. It’s just, week in, week out, I’m expected to drop everything and run to her assistance.
What really bugs me is that she expects it of me and I find it so hard to put my foot down and say no. Enough is enough. Ronan, my kind and lovely husband, tells me that I have to make a stand.

Am I being super-sensitive? I ask myself over and over. I don’t think so and, today, I’ve made a decision: this is the last turkey I cook for Monica’s damn barbecues.

Bits of stuffing are caught under my rings so I rinse them under the tap and gaze out at my garden. It is a lovely late-summer’s morning, Monica is always lucky with her weather. Sweet pea
and roses scent the air and my damson tree is heavy with ripening fruit. Soon, I’ll pick them and make pots of ruby red jam that my children will spread on thick chunks of bread slathered
with butter.

I hear the pitter-patter of feet down the stairs and my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Millie, bursts into the kitchen, blue eyes wide and clear, golden curls dancing, ‘’Allo,
Mammy. I’ss hungry,’ she declares. I bend down and sweep her into my arms, nuzzling her neck, inhaling the delicious baby scent of her. I adore her, and my four-year-old son, Adam.

I’m very lucky really, in case you think my life is all gloom and doom. I have a really happy family life. Sometimes I think Monica is a little envious. She might have loads of money, a
big house and ‘high-flying’ career, but Kenneth aka Ken is not the ideal husband – his career is everything. He’s a pilot, and I think he plays away. Monica is very insecure
about his fidelity. I know I’m being judgmental here, but I wouldn’t put it past him. He thinks he’s God’s gift to women.

‘I’ss hungry, Mammy,’ Millie repeats indignantly, and I kiss her again and open the fridge to get her an Actimel and milk for her cereal.

The aroma of roasting turkey fills the kitchen as the hours pass, reminding me of Christmas. My mouth waters as I eventually lift the crisp golden bird from the roasting dish four and a half
hours later. ‘Looks good, Jessie,’ Ronan approves as he slides the big plate underneath it and carries it to the table for me. He and Adam dive on the crisp streaky bacon.

‘Yummy yum yum!’ Adam grins, grease dripping down his chin. ‘You’re a brill cook, Mam.’ Ronan and I smile at each other over his head and I feel a moment of
happiness. How lucky I am to love and be loved. They are going to play football in the park, my precious husband and son. I warn them to be back before two. We are expected at Monica’s for
three. Millie is having her nap.

My men leave the house, still chomping on crispy bacon, and absent-mindedly, I pick at the stuffing that is overflowing onto the big oval serving plate. It’s scrumptious. And I’m
starving. A wild, reckless madness overcomes me. I grab the carving knife and fork and slice into the smooth, perfectly cooked succulent breast. Juices ooze out. I carve again and lay the steaming
white slices onto a plate. I pull some of the rich dark meat from under the wings and lay it neatly beside the breast. My fingers are sticky and I lick them, teasing myself with the taste of what
is to come. I spoon out stuffing and take a jar of cranberry sauce from the cupboard. I dress the slices of meat with rich red cranberries and shake pepper and salt over my feast. Exhilarated, I
pour myself a glass of chilled white wine. Sitting at the kitchen table, I cut a white piece of hot meat, add a dark piece, press some stuffing on top and ease my fork into the steaming, succulent
food. I eat slowly, savouring the contrasting moist flavours. It is
delicious.
I have surpassed myself this year. I congratulate myself, taking a sip of cool, tart wine. Tension
evaporates. I feel perfectly at peace as the silence of the house wraps itself around me. This is the life.