Between Sisters (8 page)

Sighing because she knew wine made her maudlin, Cassie put a few things in the laundry basket and then sat on the side of Beth’s bed, angling her head so she could see the title of the textbook:
European History from 1000AD to the Glory of the Renaissance.

‘That’s a nice small area of research to get through,’ she joked.

‘I know,
nightmare
, right?’ said Beth. ‘It’s very brutal, too: everyone killing everyone else, or else they died from poverty or disease. Yeuch. And women were like objects, just things, almost not people at all. It was so horrible, I flicked ahead to the Inquisition.’ She shuddered. ‘That was way worse, the things they did to people.’

Her eyes filled with tears.

Knowing she could have her arm shrugged off but risking it anyway, Cassie leaned in and put an arm around her older daughter.

‘Honey, that’s probably not a good thing to read before bed. Some people can read about the most horrendous periods in history and it doesn’t affect them, but you and I – and darling Lily, as well – are not among them. When I read about how they treated witches, who were most likely just midwives or healing women, I couldn’t sleep for weeks. The thought of it all just stayed with me.’

‘Really, Mum?’ Beth looked surprised. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Hard to imagine,’ joked Cassie, ‘but I was a bit sensitive when I was at school.’

She still was, Cassie reflected ruefully, thinking of how upset Shay’s continued defection could make her. But kids seemed to function better when they saw their parents coping fabulously, so she tried not to let it show.

She rapidly moved off that subject. ‘Your aunt Coco couldn’t read Anne Frank’s diary. She kept trying to but she’d sob so much that Grammy Pearl went into the school and said she didn’t care if it was on the course or not, Coco wasn’t going to read it.’

‘Go Pearl!’ laughed Beth.

‘Now, how about you pack up the history, flick through a magazine for five minutes to see what new band are in or out, and then try to sleep, because it’s really late, darling. I could bring you some hot chocolate?’

Beth smiled at her mother. ‘Yeah, that would be nice.’

Cassie almost bounced downstairs, so happy to have had a positive conversation with Beth.

By half eleven, Cassie was in bed herself, not reading, just mindlessly flicking through the TV which was turned to low, trying to find something mind-numbing to send her off to sleep and get her mind off the fact that Shay still wasn’t home.

His 8 p.m. text –

Gone to Ma’s, won’t be late

–
was plainly untrue and Cassie found herself simmering at the lack of any further texts.

Blast Shay for having the sensitivity of a ten-tonne truck, she thought, and switched out the light forcefully.

Cassie would kill him, Shay Reynolds thought as he sped through the darkened streets in his car, weariness overtaking him. He hadn’t noticed how late it had got. Once he’d sorted out the water heater problem, Mam had wanted to watch this old documentary on the TV about the building of Knock airport in the west of Ireland, and he’d said he’d sit with her for a bit of the programme. But she was so persuasive, and he’d made them another cup of tea – hers in the special china mug with the roses on it – and suddenly the show was over, it was after eleven and he’d been there for far longer than he’d meant to.

All the same, he felt so sorry every time he left his mother alone in the house he and his sisters had grown up in. He swore her face got smaller and sadder each time when she stood at the door to kiss him goodbye.

The routine was the same every time: Mam standing there wearing one of her soft woollen sweaters because she really suffered with the cold, and her wedding ring on a chain around her neck because her fingers were too misshapen from arthritis to wear it anymore. She hated that. His mother prized herself on looking youthful and pretty. She’d never been the sort of mother to slouch around the house and had always dressed up, wearing the pastel colours that suited her blonde-streaked hair.

‘Drive safely, love,’ she’d say at the door. ‘Give the girls my love, and Cassie. I hope she’s not working too hard. And you, love.’ At this, she’d reach up to hug him. Shay was six foot and his mother was almost a foot smaller. ‘You take care because nobody can replace my wonderful son.’

She’d never been much for make-up, but he associated the goodbye hugs with the scent of something flowery from his childhood, vastly different from the perfumes Cassie wore. Cassie’s were sharper, cut with citrus, modern; Mam’s was old and familiar, comforting, the scent of flowers of the past. It made him think of a time when life was simpler, when the office wasn’t such a jungle, when the girls had been younger and weren’t like tinder just waiting for a spark to set them off. When Cassie had seemed happier with him.

Simpler, that was it. Life had been so much simpler.

The sea wall raced by as he got closer to home and Shay made himself slow down as he reached the Silver Bay area. He was tired, although he’d have to deny it to Cassie and imply that he had loads of energy. But driving while tired could be fatal.

He looked briefly up at the road to Delaney Gardens as he passed it, thought of the redoubtable Pearl, and reflected that a huge part of the problem was that Cassie had no experience of a woman like his mother. Pearl was seventy-eight, acted like a woman three quarters of her age, and didn’t consider being within grasping reach of eighty to be any barrier to having a full life. Shay was pretty sure she and Peter from her poker club were lovers – it was the way Peter smiled and touched her face gently when Cassie and Coco were out of the room – but Shay had never shared this notion with his wife. Kids were weird about their mothers having sex and no doubt about it, Pearl had more or less been his wife’s mother.

Perhaps if she’d had her real mother, she might have understood his own mother more. He’d often thought this.

The bits he’d heard about Marguerite implied she was a fragile sort of person – well, she’d been a drinker, hadn’t she, and who knew what else – and sounded a million miles away from the strong Pearl. Edie was the one who’d filled him in on Marguerite. Edie was a mine of information about the past and was always delighted to reveal it.

‘No better than she should have been,’ had been her verdict on his long-gone mother-in-law, which was clearly Edie-speak for some sort of wild/trollopy/insane woman.

Pearl never mentioned her one-time daughter-in-law, and neither did Cassie. It was as if she’d vanished from all their minds, never to be thought of or spoken of again.

He drove slowly in the gate of their drive, parked beside Cassie’s small and now ageing Golf, and wondered how she’d react if he told her what his mother had been discussing with him tonight: selling both their houses and buying something bigger, with a granny flat for her.

‘Then you won’t be out all the time and we can be beside each other,’ Antoinette had said cosily.

Shay was smiling as he got out of the car. This would solve all their problems. He wouldn’t be racing off all the time to his mother’s because she’d be there. There would be no more rows. Result! Cassie would come round to it once she saw how it would work in all their favour. Just getting her to agree would be the problem. Cassie could be stubborn and she loved their house, but he knew how to work around her. It was a matter of picking the right time to tell her, that was all.

There were some nice new builds coming on to the market near the sea wall, which would be slightly closer to Delaney Gardens than their current house. Cassie would be closer to both Pearl and Coco with this plan, and Mam would be looked after. Everyone would be happy.

Five

It was a week of excitement, Vera, from across the square, told Pearl. A new family had possibly bought number twelve, which had been vacant for so long – although it was riddled with damp, God love them – and a special charity meeting was to be held in St Fintan’s church hall on Friday night.

At least sweet Father Alex had the sense to have his meeting at six, Pearl thought, as she and some of her Thursday-nighters made their way slowly up the back lane, through the mock-Georgian Ashleigh Estate and into the church grounds. If all was over by seven, people would still be home in time for the soaps and she’d get a bit of September sun in her back garden.

At this time of year, the verandah Bernie had built all those years ago – utilising old furniture and packing boxes because they hadn’t money for anything else – came into its own. Once he’d sanded it all down and painted it a pale south-of-France blue, nobody noticed that it was made from a hodgepodge of wood.

With the tangle of climbing roses and wisteria, not to mention the scent of nicotiana that drove the bees half crazy, the verandah was the perfect place to soak up the heat before the cool of October arrived and got into Pearl’s bones, making getting out of bed so hard in the morning.

‘How are things, Madame Pearl?’ asked Peter, slowing his long-legged pace to walk with her. Peter was a year younger, a lot taller and would give Gandalf a run for his money when it came to the long white silky beard and wise, smiling face.

‘I’m wondering what we are to be charitable about tonight,’ Pearl murmured. ‘It’s early for the Vincent de Paul Christmas drive.’

Peter considered this. ‘The old church needs work but someone will have to win the lottery to do that.’

‘Maybe it’s a papal message about selling a few Michelangelos,’ Pearl said wickedly. ‘That would fix up the church and do a bit for charity – quite a few things for charity.’

Peter laughed. ‘Don’t say it to poor Alex: he’s got enough on his plate as it is. And why –’ Peter lowered his face so it was very close to Pearl’s and she could smell that woodsy cologne he wore – ‘did Edie come along? Is her broomstick in for a service and she can’t get home?’

‘You are so bad,’ whispered Pearl. ‘She’s just lonely, you know that.’

‘I can’t drop round when she’s there,’ Peter murmured. ‘Can’t she be lonely in her own house?’

It was Pearl’s turn to laugh gently.

‘What’s so funny?’ said Edie, marching along and trying to keep up even though she was wearing her mink jacket and was roasting with heat.

Edie liked her furs and she had so little chance to wear them nowadays. It was a bit warm for the jacket but it was her favourite and surely there would be none of those mad, paint-throwing animal rights people in the church hall?

Mrs Maguire from The Pines had forgotten her hearing aid and Father Alex Wiersbowski, curate of St Fintan’s, couldn’t get the microphone to work.

‘Plug it in,’ said someone helpfully.

‘Batteries?’ shouted another kind soul.

Father Wiersbowski, who’d done a degree in fine art before his vocation, and who daily lamented the fact that men of religion were supposed to be brilliant at everything from comforting the dying to encouraging small children through the sacraments, twiddled the on and off buttons on the microphone with irritation. He was not a techie person.

He felt the eyes of the crowd on him. The church hall, cold even in high summer but warming up now due to some magic that had gone on in the boiler room thanks to Tom, the sacristan, was half-full with the older members of his congregation. Half full was good for the hall, better than the attendance at the actual church, where sometimes Father Wiersbowski wondered why he even went through the motions for a handful of the faithful.

Tonight, the Thursday night poker club people were here, which was a relief, because they were helpful, enthusiastic and blissfully funny. Unfortunately, Pearl’s sister was also there. Mrs DeVere had to be handled carefully, like an unexploded bomb, a thought that made Alex Wiersbowski say a small prayer of contrition with guilt.

The thing was, Edie didn’t approve of the modern Mass, wanted priests to talk permanently in Latin, and believed all young people – possibly himself included because he was only forty – were dangerous hoodlums hellbent on destroying society.

No point in explaining that the local secondary school – no doubt a hotbed of hoodlumism in Edie’s eyes – had come up with the idea for the fundraising drive for the school that St Fintan’s Church sponsored in Africa, and that the transition year students, all sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, had pledged that they’d raise twenty thousand euros for the school.

They were doing sponsored walks, bag-packing in supermarkets, twenty-four-hour fasts: anything to raise the funds.

‘Any chance the parish could match the money so we could send a grand total of forty thousand euros out when the students make their trip in March?’ the principal of Parnell Avenue Secondary School had asked.

Poor Alex Wiersbowski had been caught between a rock and a hard place.

The school principal was another person to add to the list of people he couldn’t manage: the bishop; the bishop’s private secretary; a frightening woman who ran the Legion of Mary; Pearl’s sister, Edie DeVere; and now the school principal, Ms Wilson, who said ‘Call me Maggie,’ and rumbled some long-buried part of his brain where life before celibacy lurked.

‘Well, I do not know,’ he stammered, his Podkarpackie accent unleashing itself through the English he’d spoken for twenty years now as he thought about how he’d get out of this one.

The church needed repainting. He was worn out from travelling to three churches and two nursing homes every weekend trying to say Mass, bring Communion, organise funerals, weddings and baptisms, and keep old Father McGinty from blowing up the parochial house because he kept forgetting to turn off the gas burners on the cooker. Plus, Alex’s car had ninety thousand miles on it and Lorcan, the mechanic, had said: ‘Father Alex, I’d start praying to your boss, the Man Above, for a miracle, if I were you. That thing’s barely roadworthy and one day she’ll stop dead in the middle of the road and trust me, there won’t be any coming back to life like that Lazarus fella.’

Alex didn’t feel he had a flock so much as a small stampede of wildly diverse creatures to control, and now this principal was giving him another impossible job to complete.

‘Ms Wilson,’ he’d begun when she’d ambushed him about the fundraising. He had to haul this back before it got out of hand.

‘Call me Maggie,’ said the principal again, with a smile. ‘No need for Ms Wilson or Father Wiersbowski,’ she’d added smoothly.

Alex closed his eyes as he remembered the meeting.

All this temptation, hard work and a car on the verge of death. And now this woman wanted him to get his parish – not a wealthy one, by any means – to come together to raise more money for the school in Africa, which had been his pet project all along, even though the parish had only managed small donations before. He could hardly say no.

His loyal parishioners had raised funds for the local poor and the homeless, but there were few houses in the St Fintan’s parish where money wasn’t an issue. How was he going to manage this? Where would the money come from?

He looked up at the hall roof with its telltale signs of damp: another crisis waiting to happen.

Maybe he should have gone on the Missions. Converting people to Christianity was more what he thought being a priest was going to be than this – this non-stop careful handling of people’s moods and trying to be intuitive and prayerful on days when he felt tired and like going back to bed with a box set.

There was no joy to be had with the microphone.

‘Shout,’ advised the sacristan. ‘You’ll only have to say it all twice so Greta Maguire can hear you, otherwise. I don’t think she knows how to work that hearing aid yoke, to be honest.’

Alex thought it might be nice to have a hearing aid himself so he could turn it off when he didn’t want to hear what was being said.

Raising his voice, he explained about the school’s plan to raise the money and how it would be wonderful ‘if we can come up with some way to match the school’s donation,’ he finished up lamely, knowing that most of the people in the hall were living on pensions, worrying about their own health, worrying about children and grandchildren and
their
futures.

‘Say that again,’ roared Mrs Maguire.

Her companion took it upon herself to loudly repeat the whole thing.

‘Haven’t we enough poor of our own here without helping other countries?’ said Edie DeVere crossly, rearranging her fur jacket as if she was going to drop dead with cold.

Father Alex suppressed the ignoble thought that St Fintan’s wasn’t even Edie’s parish and that selling the diamond eardrops attached to her earlobes might cut the fundraising total in half.

And what was it with the fur in September? Along the Carpathians, which ran to the west of his homeland, many people wore fur, but that was when the temperature dropped to minus twenty. There was no need for such a coat on an autumn evening in Ireland, especially now the sacristan had blasted the hall with heating.

Pearl was mightily sorry she’d allowed Edie to come along, and she glared at her sister. She was too long in the tooth to be embarrassed by anything Edie said. Lord knew she’d heard enough clangers from her sister’s mouth over the past seventy-odd years to be used to them by now, but still Edie came up with them.

To put a stop to whatever next Edie was about to say, Pearl heard herself speaking. ‘Father Alex, what a wonderful idea,’ she said loudly, shooting Edie with a glance so acidic it would peel paint from a door.

Edie, used to it, didn’t even appear to notice.

Pearl rolled her eyes. ‘We will all help, won’t we?’ she went on, looking around at her friends and neighbours. ‘“When you open your heart to giving, angels fly to your door”,’ she quoted. ‘I don’t know who said that – it’s of unknown origin.’

‘What’s this fascination with angels?’ grizzled Edie. ‘There’s angels all over the place these days. Used to be hippies and hallucinogenic drugs, now everyone’s seeing angels. There’s even an angel shop opening up near me. What’s wrong with saints and the like? Take Saint Philomena – I have a special devotion to her, myself.’

Peter and Pearl exchanged a glance. This was the first Pearl had heard of a ‘special devotion’ to St Philomena. Edie was just stirring it.

‘What could we do?’ Peter said calmly, to soothe the atmosphere.

Bingo nights were suggested. A raffle. This was considered. Raffles could make a lot of money.

‘But what would we raffle?’ asked Edie crossly.

‘A loan of your fur for a week, Edie,’ teased Peter, who was rewarded with a scowl.

The poker club all laughed, Gloria loudest of all.

‘I’ll bid for that,’ said Liam cheerfully. ‘I fancy myself in fur. Is there a hat to go with it? One of those little round furry Russian ones?’ And the club were off giggling again.

A mad idea came into Pearl’s head. Almost before she’d had a chance to try it out properly in her mind to see if it made any sense, she blurted it out. ‘How about a week of fundraising, a festival of fundraising? We can have things on the green and down at the seafront.’

‘Like what?’ asked Adrienne.

‘A sale of work and jumble sale one night,’ Peter suggested. ‘Those of us who paint could sell our canvases. Lord knows our friends and families would be glad not to have to take any more of them.’

There was a ripple of laughter at this. At least eight people in the parish painted. None expertly, but all with great joy. A local course had got them all started, and in fine weather they hauled easels and watercolours along to the sea wall, where they held up thumbs for hours at the sea or at the sugared-almond-coloured houses behind them, and then spent a lot of time sitting down, having a rest with flasks of tea and biscuits.

‘A fashion show,’ said Pearl suddenly. ‘All the local clothes shops could do it. The Seaview Hotel would surely help out. My granddaughters would love to be involved too, I’m sure.’

Everyone knew Coco ran that pretty vintage clothes store and Cassie’s company was in the papers all the time, running this event and that. With them on board, things would be organised, proper.

‘I love the sound of that,’ said Adrienne, her tired face perking up.

The poker wasn’t enough, Pearl knew. Since Adrienne’s daughter had gone off to London for work, she was like half a person, living for calls on Skype, so lonely without her grandkids. Her arthritis didn’t help; it had got so bad she couldn’t while away hours in her gardens, pretending to be busy. There was a hole in all their lives and a bit of chat around her fire once a week wasn’t enough for it.

Edie made a noise like a warthog snorting, and then Gloria said something about how her great-granddaughter wanted to be a model and wasn’t this just the chance to start her off on her great career.

Greta Maguire had a second cousin who had a son who made hats. ‘Mad yokes. None of us would wear them, obviously. They’re all made to look like UFOs or strange square things with feathers on, but sure, they’d be perfect for a fashion show. Strange, you know. That’s what the fashion crowd like.’

‘Let’s make a list, Father Alex,’ said Pearl loudly and, as usual, everyone obeyed and started hunting around in pockets and handbags for bits of paper and pens.

Father Alex beamed with relief. At least he’d have help. There was no way in hell they’d make twenty thousand euros but they could do something, and the principal – Maggie – would get off his back. Pearl really was an amazing woman, no doubt about it.

Later that night, when Edie had been coaxed off in the direction of her own home in her ancient Mercedes, Peter and Pearl lay in her comfortable bed, with Peter twisted to one side as he smoked one of the rare cigarettes he allowed himself.

‘Sorry,’ he said as a plume of smoke drifted over towards Pearl, snug within the covers and her soft white sheets pulled up around shoulders tanned from summer in the garden.