The Grace Girls (22 page)

Sophie tutted to herself, half-listening to her sister-in-law while she opened all the cupboards that she might have hidden the biscuits in.

‘I meant to ask you,’ Mona said, ‘did your goose arrive th
is mornin’?’ All the Grace families received a decapitat
ed g
oose as a Christmas present from Pat and Fintan’s brother, Joe, who was still home in Ireland on the small family
farm.

Sophie nodded, still opening cupboard doors. ‘Fintan brought it in. I’m glad he was here for it’s a ton weight.’

‘Thank God now that they came in plenty of time,’ Mona went on. ‘Ours came in the post van around eleven o’clock. By the time we got it in and soaking in cold water, the van had gone out of the street and I’d missed seein’ whether he’d stopped at your house.’ She looked around the kitchen now. ‘Where have you put it?’

‘Out in the shed,’ Sophie told her, ‘in cold water. I spent a good hour plucking it this morning, and then I gave up and left it to Fintan to finish off. It’s the most horrible job, that and gutting it. The smell of it would put you off.’ She laughed. ‘The girls run a mile when they see it with the feathers on and the blood all around the neck. If they look at it too much, it’ll put them off and then they won’t have it for their Christmas dinner. That’s why it’s out in the shed until it’s ready for the oven.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind it a bit,’ Mona laughed. ‘I get the lads to take turns on the feathers and then I give it a good clean out in salty water. It always reminds me of back home in Galway when we were children. My granny kept geese and ducks and everything.’

‘I ordered a large-sized chicken at the butcher’s just in case the goose didn’t arrive,’ Sophie said, now on her tiptoes looking in the cupboard she kept the baking trays in, ‘so I asked Fintan to take a walk up to the shop and let the butcher know that I’ll leave the chicken until the New Year.’

‘We’re lucky getting the geese,’ Mona stated. ‘Chicken is what most of them have around here for their Christmas dinner. A goose in a luxury.’

‘You’re right,’ Sophie agreed. ‘We should all be grateful, even if it is hard work.’

‘It’s a mild enough day for December,’ Mona said, nodding towards the window. ‘Thank God, I would hate it to be awful cold for Lily comin’ home. We’ll have to be fierce careful about keeping the house warm enough for her. We’ve brought her bed into our bedroom because it has the biggest fireplace and so we can keep a close eye on her.’

‘Oh, she’ll be fine,’ Sophie said, her head half in the cupboard that held the pots and pans. ‘She’s come on great every time I’ve seen her, and she’s moving her arms and legs and breathing a lot better.’ She suddenly spotted the blue wrapping and emerged triumphantly with the chocolate fingers.

Tears suddenly shot into Mona’s eyes. ‘It’s taking an awful long time . . . When I think of her just weeks ago, running around and dancing all the time, and then I look at her now, still hardly able to move.’ A tear trickled down he
r face. ‘God knows if she’ll ever be able to walk again . . .
or whether she’ll be left crippled. That little McKay fellow up the road – he’s left in a wheelchair.’ Her head dropped
into her hands. ‘Oh, God, Sophie,’ she moaned, ‘I lie awak
e every night thinkin’ of her, and Pat’s often awake too. What did we ever do to deserve this?’

Sophie came over to sit by her and put her arms around her sister-in-law. ‘You did
nothing
!’ she whispered. ‘It’s a germ that could have attacked anybody . . . it has attacked loads of people, grown-ups and children.’ She rocked very slightly, trying to comfort Mona.

‘It’s the hardest thing we’ve ever had to endure,’ Mona said, her voice thin and cracking. ‘And it had to be the smallest and the weakest.’ She gripped Sophie’s hands with all her might.

‘Lily will be fine,’ Sophie said, tears now tripping down her own cheeks. ‘Lily will be fine.’

Mona finished her cup of tea, and then leaned across to pick one more biscuit. ‘You’d better take them out of my sight,’ she said to Sophie, ‘or I’ll end up eating the whole packet.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s no wonder you’re as thin as a rake, you only pick at the odd one.’

‘Chocolate doesn’t bother me,’ Sophie replied. ‘I can take it or leave it most of the time. It’s only at the bad time of the month that I take a notion for it.’

‘Don’t talk about that,’ Mona said, rolling her eyes. ‘Mine are all over the place. They’re here early one month then gone for two. I don’t know where I’m up to, and I’m terrified to let Pat near me. Before I could work out the safe time of the month, but now I haven’t a clue.’ She gave a little laugh now. ‘I’m tryin’ to outsit Pat every night, so that he’s asleep when I go up. I tell him I’m ironing or listening to the radio but some nights he stays up late himself, and it means that I’m not gettin’ to bed before twelve.’

‘What about going up earlier, and trying to get a good night’s sleep?’

‘Tried it,’ Mona said, lifting her eyes to the ceiling, ‘but he only follows me up ten minutes later.’

‘Has he not guessed that there’s something wrong?’ Sophie asked, surprised and slightly embarrassed that Mona was speaking so personally. Sex was not a common subject for discussion amongst the circle of women they moved in.

‘Oh, I’m sure he has,’ Mona sighed, ‘but he’ll just have to keep guessing. I don’t want to start explaining all of
that
to him, and knowing Pat, he might blame everything on it and say it’s me gettin’ older . . . that I’m on the change of life.’ She took a small bite of her chocolate finger. ‘I’ve just said I’m not in the mood for you-know-what, with all the worry about Lily and Christ­mas and everythin’.’

‘Are the lads all finishing work tomorrow for Christma
s?’ Sophie enquired now.

Mona nodded, then she swallowed the remainder of the
biscuit. ‘Michael and Sean have the half-day, and Declan
and Patrick are off school and college already. What about Heather and Kirsty?’

Sophie had to think for a moment. ‘Heather’s finishing early tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and then the crowd in the office are all going out to a pub for a Christmas meal. They said it would be easier havin’ it in the afternoon for the ones that have a distance to travel home.’

‘That’s sensible,’ Mona said, ‘because you can’t trust those trains, especially late at night.’ Her brow deepened. ‘And you never know who could be lurking about on them when they’re half-empty. A good-looking young girl on her own in a carriage – anythin’ could happen to her.’

‘Don’t say that, you’ll only get me worried,’ Sophie said, clearing up the cups and plates. She turned the hot tap on to fill the basin and then squirted some Fairy Liquid in and swished it around with her hand. Mona was an expert at putting her finger on the sore point, she thought ruefully. And when things did go wrong, she wasn’t slow to point out that she’d noted all the drawbacks in advance. She kept her back to her sister-in-law, rattling about with the cups and saucers in the comfortingly hot water.

‘Well, she was hell-bent on going to work in Glasgow, and that’s what these big cities are all about,’ Mona said with a sigh. ‘Oh, Heather Grace is just like her Uncle Pat: once she makes up her mind, there’s no movin’ her.’ A smile suddenly spread across her face. ‘And how’s poor Kirsty? She must be exhausted – on her feet all day in that chemist’s and then out two and three nights in the week for rehearsals.’

‘Oh, she’s none too pleased at the minute,’ Sophie said, grateful that they’d moved on to the safer subject of Mona’s favourite niece. She often wondered if Mona made the difference between the girls deliberately, or if it was something she wasn’t aware of. ‘She’s working right through until the half-day on Christmas Eve.’

‘Is she?’ Mona said, her eyes wide with surprise. She c
lucked her tongue in disapproval. ‘I suppose oul’ Simpson
is hopin’ to sell a few more soap an’ bath-cube sets at the last minute.’

Sophie shrugged, lifting the delft out of the basin and placing them on the draining-rack. ‘I suppose it’s for prescriptions as well, with them being closed the Monday and Tuesday. I think having Christmas on the Sunday this year has confused things as well because they have to get an extra day off for the bank holiday.’

‘True,’ Mona said, her round face thoughtful. ‘That’s a nice Irish fella Kirsty’s workin’ with at the singin’ . . . good-lookin’ and well-dressed too. Is it Dublin he’s from? What’s his name again?’

‘Larry Delaney, and he is from Dublin. He’s been very good to her,’ Sophie said, warming to the conversation. She left the dishes to dry on their own and came back to sit down at the table. ‘He called round last night and dropped off half a dozen beautiful dresses for her to pick from for that big New Year’s ball. You should see them, all sequins and pearls and one has a fancy shawl to go with it. He even brought long gloves to match each dress.’

‘And are they upstairs?’ Mona asked, lifting her eyes to the ceiling, interested. ‘I’d love to get a look at them.’

Sophie frowned and adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose. She really only needed them for reading and sewing, and most of the time she forgot to take them off. ‘
God knows what state the room will be in . . . they’re alwa
ys rushing at the last minute and I haven’t had time to make their beds yet or anything.’ She felt cornered now; the last person she wanted to have nosing around the bedrooms was the fussy Mona who made a virtue of being up early every Monday to clean her windows after making all her beds and hanging her washing out. ‘I usually tidy the room for them first thing in the morning, but I’ve that much sewing to do I never got the chance to make my own bed, never mind theirs.’

Sophie suddenly got to her feet now, thinking that if she got a few steps ahead of her sister-in-law, she might manage to close all the other doors and not have her peering in at the towels that Fintan had probably dropped on the bathroom floor after washing this morning.

Mona got to her feet, waving her hand dismissively. ‘Don’t be so silly, Sophie, sure there’s nobody lookin’ at the beds or the state of the house.’ She shook her head incredulously, smiling benignly, as if she were the most
easy-going housewife in the world. ‘All I’m interested in is seeing these fancy stage rig-outs, no’ lookin’ around for dust.’ She followed Sophie out into the hall, keeping as close behind her as she could. ‘And where did you say that he got the dresses from?’ she asked as they mounted the stairs
.

‘I’m not sure,’ Sophie replied, trying to get a step or two ahead of the heftier Mona. ‘I think he has a finger in a lot of pies, and he must know somebody that hires them out or something like that.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you something,’ Mona said, cracking out in laughter, ‘with looks like that, he can stick his finger in my pie any day!’

‘Mona Grace!’ Sophie said, coming to a standstill a few steps from the top. She was laughing along with it, but fairly shocked at the same time. ‘That’s not what you were sayin’ earlier when you were talking about poor Pat.’

‘Poor Pat, me arse!’ Mona said, her chin jutting out. ‘He’s been well looked after in that department all these years, and there’s five children to prove it.’

Sophie continued up to the landing, casually reaching out her left arm to close the sewing-room door and then sw
inging her right arm to close the door to her and Finta
n’s room.

‘As I said before,’ Mona said airily, ‘this isn’t a house inspection. My own isn’t too tidy at the minute with Christmas presents and paper shoved into wardrobes and drawers.’

Yes
, Sophie thought ruefully,
but mine are scattered all over the floor and on top of the dressing-tables
.

‘Beautiful! Absolutely beautiful!’ Mona said, her voice full of
awe. She fingered the little beads on the bottom of one of the dresses. ‘They must have cost an absolute fortune.’

‘The material alone to make them,’ Sophie informed her, ‘would cost more than two or three frocks in the Household or Bairds.’ Both department stores in Wishaw were patronised by the females in the surrounding district for outfits for special occasions.

‘Oh, she’ll look stunning in them,’ Mona said wistfully. ‘With the lovely little figure Kirsty has on her, she can wear anything – absolutely anything.’ She held up a strapless taffeta dress, the red bodice sewn with tiny black seed pearls, with a plain black skirt flaring out underneath. ‘Oh, my God!’ she breathed. ‘What would you give to get into something like that again?’

Sophie lifted a midnight-blue, off-the-shoulder dress from the hastily tidied bed where they were all spread out, ignoring Mona’s comment, because she knew perfectly well her own weight and shape had hardly altered since she was Kirsty and Heather’s age. Mona just liked putting everybody in the same boat as herself and the couple of extra stone she was carrying. She looked closely at the blue dress, wondering if it was a bit too plain for the stage, and the dark colour a bit too sombre.

‘I think your Heather’s lost a bit of weight,’ Mona com­mented, her brow in a disapproving furrow. There were no compliments forthcoming, as there had been for Kirsty’s slim figure. ‘I suppose it’s all that running up and down to the station, and then the walk she has to the office. I’m not sure if it suits her . . . she looks a wee bit drawn to me. She’s not run down or anything, is she?’