Chestnut Street (29 page)

“It will be a lonely New Year’s for her,” Judith said sympathetically.

“It’s a lonely one for me if I know that you won’t come to the Gulf with me,” Sean said simply.

“And for me if I know you don’t believe that I can’t leave my parents and my job,” Judith said.

They had got no further; there was no more to be said.

The women all rang Grace next morning: what could they do, what should they bring?

“I don’t know, I don’t mind … whatever you think,” she said in tones so different from her own they were all alarmed. They didn’t know where to begin; Grace would have organized them all,
should
have organized them all. She knew where things were, she would have phoned the stores, but Martin said she had gone to bed with a detective story.

Martin was getting Champagne, Harry was getting wine, Sean was getting spirits and Charles went out and sold his stamp album to buy mixers and beers.

Anna got bags full of potatoes because even though they were labor-intensive, they were cheap. She made three different kinds. Olive hit the shops only when everyone was closing and she got kilos of sausages and huge flat mushrooms. Judith got ice cream and three dull, tired-looking apple tarts and shared half a bottle of Calvados among them all.

They telephoned Grace and asked whether they should stay the night with her and Martin.

“I honestly don’t mind whether you do or not,” Grace said pleasantly.

They put their duvets and pillows in the car. They knew the house—there were plenty of sofa cushions. When they arrived, Grace was still in bed. She greeted them pleasantly but distantly, as if they were people she hadn’t really known at all.

The women assembled the food in the kitchen. The men were setting out the glasses and the drink. Grace lay in her bed and turned the pages of her book. For the first time in her life they were all aware of her. She could hear them whispering and wondering when she would join them. Martin, most of all.

On Christmas Day, Grace the Organizer had served a meal to eleven people, unaided, unthanked and unappreciated.

Now, just six days later, she was lying in bed doing nothing and they were all anxious for her even just to acknowledge them. Was there some kind of moral here? Some lesson that she had never learned in her whole life until now?

“Would you like another cup of tea?” Martin pleaded. Casual, distant, uncaring Martin, whom she had been trying so hard to please.

“Shall I run a bath for you?” Anna begged. Wild, bohemian Anna, who was at every race meeting and every card table in Dublin.

“Should I plug in your heated rollers?” asked Olive. Smug, complacent Olive, so sure of her Harry, so confident in everything.

“I could iron a dress for you, if you like,” Judith offered. Judith, so happy in her independence, her good job, her freedom to make her own decisions always.

Grace accepted everything, tea, heated rollers, scented bath and dress-ironing. Then she asked for the phone. They heard her dial and speak.

“Lola, I forgot to say there are a few people gathering here tonight in case you’re free to join us.… No, nothing formal. I’ve
no idea what time we’re eating, or even
what
we’re eating. Something, anyway.… You will? Good—see you later, then.”

And Grace, who was no longer sure that it was only her organizational skills that kept her as a functioning member of society, as Martin’s wife and as everyone’s friend, sat back to enjoy the last night of the year. She didn’t care that they never found the matching cutlery, the good napkins, the electric plate warmer or the saltcellars. Instead she sat back and watched and listened and smiled. She couldn’t quite see how, but a lot of things seemed to get sorted out, things that might never have been sorted out had they been able to go to the hotel as they had long, long planned.

Sean was not going to the Gulf for another year and only then if Judith had found a job in the area that suited her.

Harry told everyone that he fancied the whole of womankind, he thought all women were gorgeous, but he loved only Olive.

Anna and Charles said that they would like Grace to hold half of their money when the refund came from the hotel; they were a teeny bit into gambling, they admitted.

Lola came and sat on the floor and sang Joan Baez songs. She said that Grace was the hardest worker in the world and said that she, Lola, would like to stay the night here with her new friends since there was nobody in her flat on Chestnut Street. And Grace said that would be fine but didn’t rush to get linen and blankets. Lola eventually slept under her fur coat on a sofa.

And best of all, Martin said she was marvelous. He said it six times. Four times in front of people and twice just into her ear.

Beside her bed Grace always kept a notebook so that she could write down ideas; this was part of being organized. Tonight she wrote herself one message:

“Send thank-you flowers to the hotel.”

She would know in the morning exactly why she must thank them for being delivered from the tyranny of being organized and for being able to join the human race.

Nan at 14 Chestnut Street heard about the builders from Mr. O’Brien, the fussy man at Number 28.

“It will be terrible, Mrs. Ryan,” he warned her. “Dirt and noise and all sorts of horrors.”

Mr. O’Brien was a man who found fault with everything, Nan Ryan told herself. She would not get upset. And in many ways it was nice to think that the house next door, which had been empty for two years, since the Whites had disappeared, would soon be a home again.

She wondered who would come to live there. A family, maybe. She might even babysit for them. She would tell the children stories and sit minding the house until the parents got back.

Her daughter Jo laughed at the very idea of a family coming to live in such a small house.

“Mam, there isn’t room to swing a cat in it,” she said in her very definite, brisk way. When Jo spoke she did so with great confidence.
She
knew what was right.

“I don’t know.” Nan was daring to disagree. “It’s got a nice, safe garden at the back.”

“Yes, six foot long and six foot wide,” Jo said with a laugh.

Nan said nothing. She didn’t mention the fact that the house in which she had reared three children was exactly the same size.

Jo knew everything. How to run a business. How to dress in great style. How to run her elegant home. How to keep her handsome husband, Jerry, from wandering away.

Jo must be right about the house next door. Too small for a family. Perhaps a nice woman of her own age might come. Someone who could be a friend. Or a young couple who both went out to work. Nan might take in parcels for them or let in a man to read the meter?

Bobby, who was Nan’s son, said that she had better pray it wouldn’t be a young couple. They’d be having parties every night, driving her mad. She would become deaf, Bobby warned. Deaf as a post. Young couples who had spent a lot doing up their house would be terrible. They would have no money. They would want some fun. They would make their own beer and ask noisy friends around to drink it with them.

And Pat, the youngest, was gloomiest of all.

“Mam will be deaf already by the time they arrive, whoever they are. Deaf from all the building noise. The main thing is to make sure they keep the garden fence the height it is and in good shape. Good fences make good neighbors, they say.”

Pat worked for a security firm and felt very strongly about these things. Jo and Bobby and Pat were so very sure of themselves. Nan wondered how they had become so confident. They didn’t get it from her. She had always been shy. Timid, even.

She didn’t go out to work because it was the way everyone wanted it. They needed Nan at home. Their father had been quiet also. Quiet and loving. Very loving. Loving to Nan for a while, and then loving to a lot of other ladies.

One evening long ago, on her thirty-fifth birthday, Nan could take it no longer. She sat in the kitchen and waited until he came home. It was four in the morning.

“You must make your choice,” she told him.

He didn’t even answer, just went upstairs and packed two suitcases. She changed the locks on the doors. It wasn’t necessary. She never saw him again. He went without any speeches. Nan heard from a solicitor that the house had been put in her name. That was all she got, and she didn’t ask for any more since she knew it would be in vain.

She was a practical woman. She had a small, terraced house and no income. She had three children, the eldest thirteen, the youngest ten. She went out and got a job fast.

She worked in a supermarket and even took extra hours as an office cleaner to get the children through school and on their way to earning their own living. Nan had worked for nearly twenty years when the doctors said she had a weak heart and must take a great deal more rest.

She thought it was odd that they said her heart was weak. She thought it must be a very strong heart indeed to get over the fact that the husband she loved had walked out on her. She had never loved anyone else.

There hadn’t been time, what with working hard to put good meals in front of the children. Not to mention paying for extra classes and better clothes. There had been no family holidays over the years. Sometimes Jo, Bobby and Pat went on the train to see their father. They never said much about the visits. And Nan never asked them any questions.

Jo often brought her jackets or sweaters that she was finished with. Or unwanted Christmas presents. Bobby brought round his washing every week because he lived with Kay, this feminist girl, who said that men should look after their own clothes. Bobby often brought a cake or a packet of biscuits. He would eat these with his mother as she ironed his shirts for him. Pat came round often to fix door and window locks, or to reset the burglar alarm. Mainly to warn her mother of all the evil there was in the world.

Nan Ryan had little to complain about. She never told her
children that since she had given up work she often felt lonely. Nan’s family seemed so gloomy about the work that would be done on the house next door that she didn’t want to tell them that she was quite looking forward to it. That she was waiting for the builders and looking out for them every day.

The builders came on a sunny morning. Nan watched them from behind her curtain. Three men altogether in a red van. The van had
DEREK DOYLE
on it in big white letters.

The two younger men let themselves into Number 12 with a key. Nan heard them call out, “Derek! The bad news is that we’ll be a week getting rid of all the rubbish that’s here. The good news is that there’s somewhere to plug in a kettle and it hasn’t been turned off.”

A big smiling man came out of the red van.

“Well, we’re made for life then, for the next couple of months, anyway. Isn’t this a lovely road?”

He looked around at the houses and Nan felt a surge of pride. She had always thought that Chestnut Street was a fine place. Nan wished that her children had been there to see this man admiring it all. And he was a builder, a man who knew about roads and houses.

Jo used to say it was poky. Bobby said it was old-fashioned. Pat said the place was an open invitation to burglars, with its long, low garden walls, where they could make their escape. But this man, who had never seen it before, liked it.

Nan hid herself and watched.

She didn’t want to go out and be there on top of them from the very start.

She saw fussy Mr. O’Brien from Number 28 coming along to inspect their arrival.

“Time something was done,” he said, peering inside, dying to be invited in.

Derek Doyle was firm with him.

“Better not to let you in, sir. Don’t want anything to fall on you.”

Nan’s children had told her not to get too involved. Jo had said that the new owners wouldn’t thank her for wasting the builders’ time. Bobby had said that his girlfriend, Kay, said that builders preyed on women, getting them to make tea. Pat said that a house next to a building site was fair game for burglars and that she must be very watchful and spend no time talking to the men next door.