A Time for Friends (2 page)

How she longs to spend a summer in a caravan and play on the beach all day. How she longs to join the Secret Six Gang that Hilary and her sister and cousins are part of every summer in
Bettystown. It sounds even more exciting than the Five Find-Outers stories that Mrs Boyle sometimes reads to her. Well she is going to start her own secret gang and Hilary is not going to be
allowed to be part of it, Colette vows.

The nettle stings in her heart are soothed somewhat at this promise to herself as she observes Hilary marching out of the kitchen with a cross look on her face. ‘We have to go and play
outside and then we’re having our tea in the garden,’ she announces with a deep sigh.

‘
My
servant gives me a push on
my
swing before
my
picnic in
my
garden,’ Colette declares, eyeballing her best friend. ‘It’s a pity
you
don’t have a servant or a swing,’ she adds haughtily before sashaying out into Hilary’s back garden.

‘Get me twenty Player’s, and ten Carrolls for your ma and get yourself a few sweets.’ Gus Higgins hands Jonathan a pound note and pats him on the shoulder.
‘Don’t be long, now,’ says Gus. ‘I’m gaspin’ for a fag!’

‘OK, Mr Higgins,’ Jonathan says, looking forward to the Trigger Bar he’s going to buy as his treat. The fastest way to the shop is through the lane, halfway down his road, but
he decides against it. The lane is a gathering place for some of the boys in his class to play marbles or football. It is no place for him. ‘Nancy boy’ and ‘poofter’ they
call him, and while he does not know what ‘poofter’ means, he knows it’s a nasty and spiteful taunt. He takes the longer route, and crosses the small village green to
Nolan’s Supermarket. ‘Hi, Jon,’ he hears Alice Walsh call, and smiles as his best friend catches up with him.

‘Guess what? My daddy gave me six empty shoeboxes from his shop so we can make a three-storey doll’s house with them. Can you come over tomorrow?’

‘Deadly.’ Jonathan feels a great buzz of excitement. ‘Mam has some material from curtains she is making for Mrs Doyle; we can use it for our windows. And we’ll make some
ice-pop-stick chairs and tables. But I have to clean out the fire and set it and do some other jobs for Mam first and then I’ll come over. See ya.’

‘See ya!’ she echoes cheerfully before he opens the door to the shop and hears the bell give its distinctive ping. Mr Nolan is stacking shelves and he takes his time before serving
Jonathan. ‘Don’t smoke all those at the one go,’ he says, giving him a wink as he hands over the change. All the big boys buy Woodbines after school. Jonathan tried smoking once
and it made him sick and dizzy, so Mr Higgins’s and his mam’s cigarettes are quite safe.

‘Did you buy something for yourself?’ Mr Higgins asks when Jonathan hands his neighbour his change and the brown paper bag with the cigarettes in it.

‘I bought a bar,’ he says when Mr Higgins takes the Carrolls out of the bag and hands them to him.

‘Gude wee laddie. Nie here’s the cigarettes for your mother. It can’t be easy for her being a poor widda woman. I have three daughters of ma own to support but at least I bring
home a good wage. Tell her it’s a wee gift.’ His neighbour is not from around Rosslara. He and his family moved into the house next door to Jonathan’s two years ago when Mrs Foley
died and sometimes Jonathan finds it hard to understand him if he talks fast. He says ‘nie’ instead of ‘now’ and ‘wee’ instead of ‘small’. The first
time Jonathan heard him say ‘wee’ he was shocked because he thought he was talking about wee wees. Until his mammy explained it to him, saying that people from different parts of the
country had different accents.

Jonathan’s mammy has to work very hard doing sewing and alterations, as well as working every morning in the doctor’s surgery answering the phone and making appointments for
patients. Jonathan’s daddy died when he was three and his mammy has to pay a lot of bills and take care of him and his two older sisters.

Mr Higgins says his mammy is a grand wee woman. He’s kind to her and buys her cigarettes, because she can’t afford them herself. Jonathan thinks this is a great thing to do and so he
never minds running errands for his neighbour.

‘Tell your wee mammy, ma missus will be wanting her to make a communion dress for ma wee girlie. She’s away into town to get new shoes for them all and I’m having a grand bit
of peace.’ Mr Higgins gives a little laugh and pulls the sitting-room curtains closed.

‘I’ll tell her, Mr Higgins,’ Jonathan says politely, wondering why his neighbour is opening the button at the top of his dirty blue faded jeans. Perhaps he’s going to lie
on the sofa and have a nap, he thinks.

‘Before ye go, I want you to do me another wee favour. It’s just between you and me now. Our little secret. And there’ll be another packet of ciggies for your ma and a treat
for yourself next week if ye do as I ask,’ Mr Higgins says. His breathing is raspy and his face is very red and Jonathan is suddenly apprehensive. Something isn’t right. Something has
changed but he’s not sure what. And then it’s as though everything is happening in slow motion, even the very particles of dust that dance along a stray sunbeam that has slipped through
a gap in the closed curtains, and even the pounding of his heart thudding against his ribcage, as Mr Higgins advances towards him.

‘See you tonight,’ Niall Hammond said, planting a kiss on his drowsy wife’s cheek.

‘What time is it?’ Hilary groaned, pulling the duvet over her shoulders and burying her head in the pillow.

‘6.35,’ he murmured and then he was gone, his footsteps fading on the stairs. She heard the sound of the alarm being turned off, heard the front door open, then close, and the sound
of the car reversing out of the drive.

Hilary yawned and stretched and her eyes closed. I’ll just snooze for ten minutes, she promised herself, before drifting back to sleep.

‘Mam, wake up, we’re going to be late for school.’ Hilary opened her eyes to see Sophie, her youngest daughter, standing beside the bed poking her in the ribs.

‘Oh crikey, what time is it?’ She struggled into a sitting position.

‘8.12,’ her daughter intoned solemnly, reading the digital clock.

‘Holy Divinity, why didn’t you call me earlier? Where’s Millie? Is she up?’ she asked, flinging back the duvet and scrambling out of bed.

‘She’s not up yet.’

‘Oh for God’s sake! Millie, Millie, get up.’ Hilary raced into her eldest daughter’s bedroom and hauled the duvet off her sleeping form.

‘Awww, Mam!’ Millie yelled indignantly, curling up like a little hedgehog, spiky hair sticking up from her head.

‘Get up, we’re late. Go and wash your face.’ Hilary was like a whirling dervish, pulling open the blinds, before racing into the shower, jamming a shower cap onto her head so
her hair wouldn’t get wet. Ten minutes later, wrapped in a towel, she was slathering butter onto wholegrain bread slices onto which she laid cuts of breast from the remains of the chicken
she’d cooked for the previous day’s dinner. An apple and a clementine in each lunch box and the school lunches were done. Hilary eyed the full wash-load in the machine and wished
she’d got up twenty minutes earlier so she could have hung it out on the line seeing as Niall hadn’t bothered.

She felt a flash of irritation at her husband. It wouldn’t dawn on him to hang out the clothes unless she had them in the wash basket on the kitchen table where he could see them.
Sometimes she felt she was living with
three
children, she thought in exasperation. Typical that it was a fine day with a good breeze blowing and her clothes were stuck in the machine and
would have to stay there until she got home.

Millie was shovelling Shreddies into her mouth while Sophie calmly sprinkled raisins into her porridge. Sophie was dressed in her school uniform, blonde hair neatly plaited, and yet again Hilary
marvelled at the dissimilarity of her children. Millie, hair unbrushed, tie askew, lost in a world of her own, oblivious to Hilary’s hassled demeanour. At least they’d had showers, and
hair washed after swimming yesterday, she thought, taking a brush from the drawer to put manners on her oldest daughter’s tresses.

Twenty minutes later Hilary watched the lollipop lady escort them across the road, and smiled as Sophie turned to give her a wave and a kiss. It was hard to believe she had two children of
school-going age. Where had the years gone? she wondered as she crawled along in the school-run traffic.

It shocked her sometimes that she was a wife and mother to two little girls and settled into the routine of family life that didn’t seem to vary much when the girls were at school. At
least she’d spent a year au pairing in France after leaving school, and she’d spent six weeks on the Greek Islands with Colette O’Mahony, her oldest friend, having an absolute
blast the following summer! That had been fun. Hilary grinned at the memory, turning onto the Malahide Road, and groaning at the traffic stuck on the Artane roundabout.

Colette would never in a million years be stuck in school-run traffic, she thought ruefully. Colette had a nanny to bring Jasmine to school in London. No doubt her friend was sipping Earl Grey
tea in bed, perusing the papers before going to have her nails manicured or going shopping in Knightsbridge. Their lives couldn’t be more different. But then, even from a very young age, they
always had been.

Colette, the only daughter of two successful barristers, had had a privileged, affluent childhood. Her parents fulfilling her every wish, but handing her over to the care of a succession of
housekeepers, as they devoted themselves to careers and a hectic social life, before packing Colette off to a posh and extremely expensive boarding school.

In contrast, Hilary’s mother Sally had been a stay-at-home mother, although she did work a few hours on Saturdays in the family lighting business. Hilary’s dad, Mick, owned a
lighting store and electrical business and Hilary had worked there every summer holiday, either in the large showrooms, that stocked lights and lamps and shades of every description, or in the
office working on invoices and orders and deliveries.

Her parents, unlike Colette’s, were extremely family orientated. Hilary and her older sister Dee had grown up secure in the knowledge that they were much loved. Sally and Mick enjoyed
their two girls and had bought a second-hand caravan so they could all spend weekends and holidays together. Hilary’s abiding memory of her childhood was of her mother making scrumptious
picnics in the little caravan kitchen, and her dad lugging chairs and windbreaks and cooler bags down to the beach and setting up their ‘spot’. And then the games of rounders, or
O’Grady Says, with their parents and aunts, uncles and cousins joining in, a whole tribe of Kinsellas, screeching and laughing. And then the sand-gritted picnic with tea out of flasks, or
home-made lemonade, and more often than not, a gale whipping the sand outside their windbreak as clouds rolled in over the Irish Sea, the threat of rain somehow adding to the excitement. And when
it did fall, all hands would gallop back up the bank to the caravans, and Mick would laugh and say, ‘That was a close one,’ when they’d make it inside before the heavens
opened.

Sally enjoyed the company of her girls and, when time and work permitted, they would head over to Thomas Street, and ramble around the Liberty Market, browsing the stalls, especially the
jewellery ones, oohing and aahing over rings and bracelets. Kind-hearted as ever, Sally would fork out a few quid for a gift for Hilary and Dee. Their mother had steered them through the ups and
downs of their teen years and had urged her daughters to spread their wings and see the world and follow their dreams. She had been fully behind Hilary’s decision to go to France after her
Leaving Cert and be an au pair and become fluent in French.

After her year of au pairing and her six weeks roaming the Greek Islands with Colette, Hilary had planned to do an arts degree with a view to teaching languages but Mick had suffered a heart
attack the August before she was to start university, and she had felt it incumbent on her to put aside her own plans for her future, especially as she’d been abroad for more than a year,
enjoying the freedom to be carefree and unfettered. She had stepped up to the plate to help her parents in their hour of need. Her older sister Dee was in the middle of a science degree and there
was no question of her dropping out of university.

Hilary was desperately disappointed at having to postpone her degree course; she had been so looking forward to going to university and enjoying the social side of life. Dee might study hard,
but she partied hard too and lived on campus, free of all parental constraints.

Hilary had been looking forward to moving out of the family home. Having spread her wings in France, she was keen to have the freedom to live her own life but her father’s illness put paid
to that. She buried her regrets deep and put her shoulder to the wheel to keep the showrooms ticking over, while Bill O’Callaghan, Mick’s senior electrician, looked after that side of
the business.

Hilary had taken a bookkeeping and accounts course at night school soon after, and it was at a trad session one sweltering bank holiday weekend, in the college grounds, that she had met
brown-eyed, bodhrán-playing Niall Hammond. She had tripped over someone’s handbag and tipped her Black Velvet Guinness drink down his back.

He’d given a yelp of dismay and jumped to his feet and then started to laugh when he’d turned round and seen her standing, hand to her mouth in horror, her glass almost empty.

‘I . . . I’m terribly sorry,’ she stuttered; dabbing ineffectually at his shirt with a tissue, while his friends guffawed.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said easily. ‘I was getting too hot anyway.’ He pulled the soaking shirt over his head, exposing a tanned torso with just the right
amount of dark chest hair to make her think:
Sexy!