The Daisy Picker (20 page)

She goes back to the house and locks the door for the night, and goes upstairs to lie in bed and stare at the bedroom ceiling until it’s time to get up again.

It takes Daddy nineteen days to die. He does it quietly, like he did most things, in his own bedroom, in the middle of a sunny afternoon in June, when Lizzie is in town shopping for groceries
and Mammy is hanging out the washing. The only person with him is Gary O’Rourke from the end of the road. Gary is studying to be a nurse and has been sitting with Daddy for a couple of hours
a day. He hears the change in Daddy’s breathing and calls to Mammy out the window, and she drops the sheet she’s holding and runs in with two clothespegs still in her hand, and by the
time she gets up to the room Daddy is dead.

Daddy is dead.

Lizzie arrives home forty minutes later and hears what sounds like singing upstairs. Then the kitchen door opens, and she looks at Gary and she knows that it’s not singing. She drops her
bags on the floor and covers her face with her hands as he walks towards her with his arms out. Two oranges roll across the hall carpet.

The first person Lizzie phones is Angela. Three hours later, just when The Kitchen would be getting busy, Angela rings the bell. She brings a mountain of sandwiches in a roasting tin and two
still-warm chickens, and she walks past the group of neighbours in the hall and straight into the kitchen, where she drops everything on the table. Then she finds Lizzie and wraps her arms around
her and hugs her tightly and rocks her as she bawls.

Later, she hands around sandwiches and makes tea while Lizzie phones the undertaker and talks to the priest.

All through what’s left of the day, Mammy sits in a chair beside the bed. People come and talk to her in low voices and hold her hand and go away again, and she sits and nods and
doesn’t cry and rubs at her arms every now and again, as if she’s cold, although the day has been unusually warm.

Later still, when everyone else has gone, and Daddy has been taken away to the funeral parlour, Lizzie and Angela leave Mammy and her sister Rose upstairs together and go down to wash up and
clear away the remains of the comings and goings of the day.

Then they sit at the table with more cups of tea. Lizzie’s head feels light, as if she’s had a few glasses of wine, although she’s drunk nothing but tea all afternoon. She
keeps forgetting about Daddy, and then remembering, and every time it happens she feels like her heart is simply going to stop beating, because there’s no sensible reason for it to carry
on.

She looks across at her rock. ‘Angela, I never even asked you how you managed to come, with the restaurant.’

Angela waves a hand. ‘Trish stood in for the night – you know, the one who does the lunches – with Dee as her assistant. They’ll be grand; Trish is well able. I had
everything ready to go, anyway.’ Then she looks across at Lizzie. ‘You’re exhausted. D’you think you’ll sleep?’

‘Maybe, in a while.’ Lizzie yawns and rubs her hands across her eyes. ‘But tell me about you. What’s happening with John?’ It’s been nearly a month since
Angela got his letter.

Angela dips her finger into a drop of tea on the table and starts making circles with it. ‘Oh, I wrote to him and told him I didn’t want him back.’

‘And he hasn’t been in touch again?’

‘Nope. Not a word.’ She shakes her head. ‘It’s in the past – and I think it’s better that it stays there.’

Then she reaches over and puts her hand over Lizzie’s. ‘Now, tell me what happened with you and Joe. He’s been going around with a face as long as a wet week since you left,
but I can’t get anything out of him.’

‘There’s nothing much to tell. He decided he should give Charlie the job instead of me, that’s all,’ Lizzie says. ‘It makes sense, doesn’t it? He’s
family, I’m not.’

Angela shrugs. ‘Actually, I’ve never seen Charlie working there; Joe’s the one I meet any time I go in.’ She smiles faintly. ‘We’re a right pair,
Lizzie.’

Lizzie tries to smile back. ‘We are.’

After a minute, Angela stands up. ‘I’d better get back, I suppose.’

Lizzie walks to the car with her, and hugs her at the door. ‘What would I do without you?’

‘Ditto, my dear.’ She gets into the car. ‘Lizzie, mind yourself. You’ve a busy few days ahead of you; try to sleep, and don’t worry about anything in Merway. See
you soon.’

Lizzie stands on the path, waving, as Angela drives off.
Six months ago Daddy stood here and waved me off.
She wonders how she can possibly go on producing so many tears.

Two days later, Joe McCarthy comes to Daddy’s funeral.

Lizzie doesn’t know he’s there until after the Mass, when people are lining up to shake her hand and tell her they’re sorry for her troubles. Tony O’Gorman is there, with
Pauline Twomey, and all of her old friends, and some of her regulars from O’Gorman’s, and friends of Mammy’s whom she’s known for years. Lizzie is standing beside Mammy and
nodding and saying thank you and telling people to come back to the house afterwards, and then she sees the next person and it’s Joe.

She looks at him and bursts into tears. He reaches out and gathers her into his arms, there in the church in front of everyone, and holds her. ‘I’m so sorry, Lizzie,’ he says.
She smells his spicy aftershave and feels the rough cotton of his shirt against her wet face, and she doesn’t know what he’s sorry for, and she doesn’t know what she’s
crying for most. She wants to stay wrapped up in him for a long time; it feels like the safest place for her to be, with his arms tight around her. He keeps the dark away.

Then she remembers Mammy standing beside her. She takes a deep breath and makes the tears stop, and stands back from him, and says, ‘Thank you for coming, Joe.’ He slips something
into her hand and moves off, and she puts it quickly into her pocket and turns to the next person in the line.

She can still feel his arms, wrapped around her and holding her tight.

She sees him again at the graveside, standing next to Angela and Deirdre. The day is showery; someone holds an umbrella over her as they watch Daddy disappear into the ground. She hangs on to
Mammy and tells him goodbye and carries on ignoring God.

They go back to the house, and Lizzie busies herself passing around sandwiches, finding plates for buns that someone brought, making pots of tea, opening bottles of whiskey and gin and vodka and
wine. Angela is everywhere, making sure everyone has a drink and something to eat. Deirdre spends her time at the sink, recycling the piles of cups and plates that keep appearing. Sometime during
the afternoon, Lizzie sees Angela touch Mammy’s arm and say something, and she watches Mammy’s face break into a careful, grateful smile.

Joe doesn’t come back to the house. When there’s a lull in the afternoon, Lizzie finds her jacket and puts a hand into the pocket. She pulls out a chubby little wooden cat, his head
cradled in his paws, his tail curled around him, fast asleep. There’s something poking out from under one paw. She looks closer; it’s a tiny fish-tail. She pictures Joe bent over his
workbench, carving it.

But Charlie is never in the shop.

Lizzie serves food and drink, and mourns.

And life goes on.

Nights are there to be got through. Days are measured in meals: prunes and Bran Flakes in the morning, a sandwich and a cup of tea around midday, dinner in the evening. Mammy still cooks all the
dinners. Lizzie has offered to help, but Mammy won’t hear of it.

‘Thanks, love, but I prefer to keep busy. You go and read your book, and I’ll call you when it’s ready.’ Lizzie wishes she could concentrate on a book; it might make the
hours seem less like years.

Conversation is difficult. Lizzie does her best.

‘I passed Johnny McDermott in town today.’ The McDermotts live at the end of the road.

‘Is that right.’ It’s far too flat to be a question.

‘I hardly recognised him, he’s got so tall. He must be – what, eighteen now?’

‘I suppose, about that.’ Mammy pushes a bit of bacon around her plate.

‘He was smoking. It’s a pity, isn’t it, when they start?’ Surely that’ll get a response.

‘Mmm.’

Sometimes Lizzie talks about the people she met in Merway.

‘He’s an artist – I think I told you about him on the phone. He paints outside every day, whatever the weather – unless it’s absolutely lashing. You should see his
paintings; they’re great. And his house is just by the beach, practically on it.’

‘Really.’

Every morning after breakfast they walk to the grave, about a mile away. They stand beside the fresh earth, still piled with wreaths. Mammy prays quietly, and Lizzie thinks about Daddy and
doesn’t pray.

Sometimes they call into the supermarket on the way home, and Mammy fills a basket with the same foods they’ve always eaten – chops, sausages, eggs, oranges, potatoes, carrots, peas.
Lizzie looks on the shelves and sees salami and melons and asparagus. Once she asks Mammy if she’d like to try some hummus – ‘Just for a change; you can spread it on bread or
crackers’ – but Mammy just shakes her head. ‘I don’t think I’d like it, love. You get it if you want.’ Lizzie doesn’t bother.

In the afternoons she tries to read, and pulls weeds from Daddy’s flowerbeds, and mows the lawn he always mowed, and answers letters of condolence. And walks.

One evening, after dinner, Mammy gives her Daddy’s watch. He was presented with it at his retirement, four years ago, after working for forty-one years in the same insurance office in
town.

‘I want you to take this, Lizzie. I know Daddy would have wanted you to have it.’

It’s a beautiful gold watch, with a black face and thin gold hands and Roman numerals. Daddy didn’t wear it for about a year after he got it. It sat on the dressing-table, in its
shiny black box, and he kept wearing the old watch with the battered brown leather strap that he’d had for years, until Mammy wore him down – ‘For goodness’ sake, Jack,
would you ever give that old thing to charity and put the new one on? What are you saving it for?’ But even after he started to wear the new watch, he always put on his old one when he was
gardening or doing any kind of rough work; and he’d still be wearing it at bedtime.

Lizzie looks at the beautiful watch that Daddy never grew fond of, and feels miserable. ‘Thanks, Mammy.’ She takes off hers and puts on Daddy’s. It looks good on her wrist, big
and solid – she’s always liked big watches. But it doesn’t remind her of Daddy.

She thinks it might be better not to tell Mammy that she’s already got something much more precious to remember him by.

After the crowd left on the day of the funeral, she went out to the shed and found his old baseball cap poking out from under one wheel of the lawnmower. It was splattered with paint and covered
with dried earth, and it smelt musty. She keeps it in the drawer of her bedside locker, next to the little wooden cat.

She lies in bed every night and hears Mammy crying in the next room. Lizzie’s heart breaks for her – the life has gone out of her as surely as if she’d been buried next to
Daddy. How can Lizzie possibly leave her like this and go back to Merway? She’ll stay a month or two, and then see.

And her heart sinks as she feels her old life wrapping itself around her again.
Why, Lizzie, you’re back; how nice to see you. You make sure you stay this time, right?

No way. She’ll just keep Mammy company till she’s able to be on her own.

Mammy, who’s never lived alone in her life – who moved straight from her family home to married life with Daddy. Who doesn’t drive, barely knows how to change a light-bulb, has
never replaced the battery in the smoke alarm and couldn’t find where to turn off the water supply if her life depended on it.

And slowly,
when I go back
turns to
if I go back.
Standing in the garden one night, Lizzie makes herself face the possibility that she may never again live in Merway. Never
wake up and hear the seagulls. Never step outside the caravan door and breathe in the salty air. Never knead a ball of dough on Angela’s big kitchen table, up to her elbows in flour, giggling
away at something Angela has just said.

Never open the door of Ripe and see Joe McCarthy smiling at her.

For the first time since Daddy died, Lizzie lets herself think about Joe – and immediately, a single question buzzes around her head: why did he tell her he had to let her go to take
Charlie on? Angela said Charlie is never in the shop; it’s always Joe she meets when she goes in. And this brings a new and unpleasant notion drifting into Lizzie’s thoughts: was Joe
trying to get rid of her? Did he realise that she was falling for him, and decide he had to put a stop to it? The night of Angela’s party, when he flirted like mad with her, whispered in her
ear – was that just the Guinness talking? All the times they sat around the table in the back room, all the gentle teasing that she pretended to hate – could that really have meant
nothing to him?

And then she thinks about the way Joe chats and laughs with anyone who comes into the shop. The way he makes old Mrs McLaughlin raise her eyes to heaven and sympathise good-naturedly with
Lizzie: ‘God help you, dear, having to put up with his
ráiméis
.’ The way he can even raise a reluctant smile from grumpy old Gráinne in the
newsagent’s. What ever gave Lizzie the notion that she was special? Just because he offered her a job doesn’t mean he fancied her, for God’s sake.