Stand by Me (13 page)

Authors: Sheila O'Flanagan

Tags: #Fiction, #General

BOOK: Stand by Me

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‘You’ll peel eventually,’ he told her as they waited for a bus to bring them into town from the airport. ‘And it’ll be disgusting.’

‘Won’t.’ She stuck out her tongue at him.

‘Shove that in before you’re left that way.’

He grinned at her and she grinned back, then hopped on the bus, which had just pulled up in front of them, leaving him to wrestle with their suitcase.

The bus dropped them in the city centre, where Brendan insisted on them getting a taxi to their new house in Firhouse. Dominique was very excited about the house. She hadn’t been inside it since two weeks before the wedding because Brendan was getting the kitchen appliances fitted and furniture delivered and he told her he wanted it perfect before she saw it.

She was almost dizzy with anticipation by the time the car pulled up in front of the house and waited impatiently at the kerbside while Brendan paid the driver.

‘Right,’ he said as he took the key from his pocket. ‘This is it. Welcome to your new home, Mrs Delahaye.’ And he picked her up and staggered into the hallway with her in his arms.

‘You’re far too keen on trying to carry me places. For God’s sake put me down before you do yourself an injury!’ She was laughing, but serious too. She’d put on a lot of weight in Majorca and her bump seemed to have suddenly doubled in size.

‘Too late,’ he said mournfully. ‘I’m wrecked already.’ And then he led her through to the kitchen diner, where the new cooker, fridge and washing machine had all been installed. Exclaiming with delight, she then followed him into the living room (now carpeted in a pale beige), then upstairs to the bedrooms. The two guest bedrooms were empty of furniture, but the main one contained a divan bed with a pine head-board, a matching pine chest of drawers as well as two bedside lockers and a small dressing table. There were yellow curtains at the windows, held back by tasselled ties.

‘It’s fabulous!’ she cried. ‘Utterly, utterly fabulous!’

She threw her arms around him and held him close to her. ‘I love you so much.’

‘You love my skills as a DIY man,’ he said.

She giggled. ‘And your other skills.’

‘Domino Delahaye!’ He tried to sound scandalised but he was laughing.

‘So come on!’ she cried as she bounced on the double bed. ‘Let’s see how it all holds up.’

The house couldn’t have been more perfect. It was bright and airy and always seemed to be inviting, in complete contrast to the family home in Drimnagh, which had always seemed so dark and unforgiving. Dominique had bought lots of floral prints for the walls, too - sunflowers, tulips and daffodils - to emphasise the light, cheerful mood.

When Evelyn and Seamus called by for tea at the end of the first week, Evelyn commented on the prints, saying that they were very pretty, and then asked her daughter why there were no pictures of the Sacred Heart or St Dominic.

‘I’m not getting any,’ said Dominique forcefully. ‘I never liked them and I don’t want them.’

‘You need to have at least one holy picture,’ said Evelyn.

‘They always scared the shit out of me at home,’ said Dominique. ‘And I’m not letting that happen here.’

‘Dominique Brady!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘Please don’t use that sort of language in front of me again. You may think you can do what you like now that you’re married, but I do assure you, young lady, that I will not permit swearing in front of me.’

‘Dominique Delahaye,’ she corrected her mother. ‘And this is my house. So I’ll swear if I want to.’

‘But you wouldn’t want to,’ Brendan intervened as Domino’s face flushed red with annoyance. He turned to his mother-in-law. ‘Evelyn, we don’t normally swear.’

‘I’ll bring you round a picture tomorrow,’ said Evelyn.

‘I’m working tomorrow night,’ Dominique said. ‘So don’t waste your time.’

Evelyn turned up at half nine the following morning with a large oblong parcel under her arm. Dominique, who’d stayed late in bed, groaned as she heard the doorbell ring and groaned even more when she saw her mother on the front step.

‘Are you only getting up now?’ demanded Evelyn as she walked past her daughter into the kitchen. ‘What sort of life are you leading?’

‘I’ll be working until midnight tonight,’ Dominique told her. ‘I need my sleep.’

‘You shouldn’t be working at all in your condition,’ Evelyn said.

‘I need to work.’ Dominique filled the kettle. ‘We have a lot of expenses, you know.’

‘You’ll have more after the baby is born.’

‘Of course we will. But Brendan is very confident about his business.’

‘Far too confident.’ Evelyn sniffed.

‘You don’t know him,’ said Dominique.

‘Indeed. Well, we didn’t get much of a chance.’

‘Don’t go there.’ Dominique was surprised at the force in her own voice, and she could see surprise on Evelyn’s face too. ‘You can’t come here and criticise me and my choices,’ she continued. ‘I’ve my own life to lead.’

Evelyn opened her mouth but then closed it without speaking. She stayed silent while Dominique made the tea and then opened a blue Tupperware box containing a packet of McVitie’s Goldgrain. The Goldgrain were a favourite of her father, but she knew Evelyn wasn’t a fan.

Nevertheless, her mother took a biscuit and dunked it into her tea so that the edge became sodden and a small portion of it broke off and fell into the cup.

‘What time does he get home in the evenings?’ asked Evelyn, dunking the biscuit again and losing more of it in the process.

‘It depends,’ Dominique replied. ‘He’s just started work on a complete house renovation and so they’ll keep working as long as they can. But it doesn’t matter to me, because I’ll be working too.’

‘And what happens when the baby comes along?’

‘We’ll see,’ said Dominique. ‘Maybe I’ll get something closer to home. There’s a new restaurant opened in Templeogue village.’

‘You should be working in an office,’ said Evelyn. ‘It cost enough to put you through that secretarial course.’

‘If an office job comes up, I’ll take it,’ Dominique assured her. ‘It’d be a lot nicer to sit on my backside instead of being run off my feet all day. But so far nothing has.’

‘You need to send your CV out,’ Evelyn said.

‘I applied to millions of places last year,’ Dominique reminded her. ‘I’m not sure there’s any point in doing it again.’

‘You’ve got to keep trying,’ said Evelyn.

‘But no real point until after I have the baby,’ said Dominique. ‘After all, if I go to an interview now looking like a giant pumpkin, I’m not going to get the job.’

Evelyn finished the biscuit and drained her tea.

‘You’re right about that,’ she agreed. ‘And you need to be at home to bond with your baby.’

Or not, Dominique thought darkly as she cleared away the cups and put them in the sink. Evelyn had been a stay-at-home mother, but they hadn’t bonded, had they? She wondered how it worked, the connection between a mother and her baby. Should it automatically kick in? Would it, for her and Junior? Why hadn’t it between her and Evelyn?

She sat back down at the table and Evelyn picked up the parcel. Dominique knew what it was and didn’t want to unwrap it. But she didn’t feel as though she had a choice, and so she peeled back the brown paper to be confronted with the image of St Dominic that had been in her bedroom for so many years.

‘I know you think you’re fine with your fancy flowery pictures and your modern house, but you need him to guide you,’ Evelyn told her.

‘I don’t, you know.’

‘I thought you could put it in the hallway.’

Dominique said nothing.

‘He’ll remind you,’ Evelyn said, ‘of where you come from and where you’re going to.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Dominique non-committally.

After her mother had gone, she stashed the print in the cupboard under the stairs. Then she washed the cups, wrinkling her nose at the sodden biscuit pieces at the bottom of Evelyn’s. When she’d dried them, she put them back in the cupboard. The tea set, courtesy of Brendan’s mother, had been a much more welcome gift, she thought. And useful into the bargain.

It was the following evening when the decision about her future job was taken. Brendan had come home late and tired after his long day on the site. He’d decided to take a bath, and while he was relaxing in the warm water, Dominique began to tidy away the bundles of invoices he’d left on the table. They were crumpled and encrusted with dried cement. She could see that some of them were overdue bills, and she frowned. She knew that businesses had to be run on credit, but the words of her father ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be’ were etched into her mind. Dominique didn’t have a credit card and never bought clothes that she couldn’t actually afford. Seamus had told her that clothes and holidays were current expenditure and that she should never borrow for current expenditure. The only things worth borrowing for, he would insist, were your house and possibly a car. Now she divided Brendan’s bills into ones that were overdue and ones that still had a credit period to expire. There were also a few invoices that Brendan had sent to people who owed him money for small jobs he’d done in the few weeks after he’d left the building site and before he’d started the bigger work.

She totted them all up and realised that he owed more than he was getting in. She nibbled at her fingernail, suddenly worried. They couldn’t live owing more than they earned. Maybe Brendan setting up his own business wasn’t such a good idea after all.

‘Of course it’s a good idea,’ he told her after he’d come downstairs from his bath. ‘I’m going to make a nice sum out of all the stuff we have on at the moment, especially the renovation. Plus I have more jobs lined up. But I didn’t realise so many other people still owed me money. I should chase them up. That would help the cash flow a lot.’

‘You don’t have time,’ said Dominique. ‘You’re out on the site all day.’

‘I really need to set up an office,’ said Brendan thoughtfully. ‘I know the company is small now, but when we start to grow it’ll be important.’

‘Have we no money right now?’ asked Dominique. ‘After all, you owe so much ...’

‘We’ve plenty,’ Brendan assured her. ‘I have a line of credit with the bank.’

‘But that’s for the construction company.’

‘I also have one for my other expenses.’

‘That means we’re totally living on borrowed money.’ She looked horrified, and he laughed at her.

‘Only until I get paid.’

‘But what if they don’t pay you?’

‘Domino, Domino, of course they will. But in the meantime, if I get someone to look after the invoices, I can certainly cut back on the size of the overdraft.’

‘Why don’t I?’ She spoke almost without thinking, but then, more confidently, ‘I could do this, Brendan. I learned some bookkeeping at my secretarial course and I know how to type. It would look a lot better if you sent out typed invoices.’

He studied her thoughtfully for a few minutes, and then he nodded.

‘You’ll be off work anyway when the baby is born. It’ll give

you something else to do.’ ‘I’m sure I’ll be plenty busy with your son,’ she chided him. ‘But I want to help too. I want to be part of your business.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Tell them that you’re leaving the restaurant and come and work for me.’

‘Will you pay me?’ she asked.

He laughed. ‘Of course I will.’

‘A decent wage.’

He mentioned a figure and she made a face. ‘That’s not as much as I earn now.’

‘With or without tips?’