The Stone House (3 page)

‘Don't worry about anything, Kate, honest. Molly and I'll be fine,' reassured Derry. ‘You just stay with your mother. She's the one who needs you. I'll be able to collect Molly tomorrow if need be, and I can reschedule the next day if I have to. The O'Reillys might be a bit annoyed, but they can wait! I'll have their brief finished next week.'

She drank the hot sweet mug of tea, and ate the thin golden pancake with a shake of sugar and squeeze of lemon quickly; Molly came in to sit beside her. She watched Derry wipe Molly's sticky hands, his sandy hair bent down over hers, infinitely patient. Not minding that his beige chinos had a layer of sugar on them. Minnie and her friends were always telling her that she was lucky to have Derry on the scene and that he was so different from most guys. He wasn't one to shirk the responsibilities of fatherhood. She knew that, but sometimes she longed for more. Perhaps to feel that his weekly visits to her apartment and his involvement in her life were not just because of the dark-haired bundle of mischief the two of them had managed to produce. Funny, the only female that he could totally commit to was a three-year-old!

She got up to go and made Molly swear to behave.

‘Listen, I'm sorry having to call on you like this. Are you sure you're OK about it?'

‘We'll manage.'

‘I don't know what I'll do if she dies!'

‘Hey! Come on, don't talk like that. Maeve's strong. She's a tough Dillon woman. You'll see, she'll get through this.'

‘I'm not sure if she will,' Kate said, trying to compose herself as she grabbed her car keys and kissed Molly goodbye.

She cursed the heavy traffic and overcrowded roads and prayed that she would soon reach Waterford's main hospital and find her mother much recovered. Aunt Vonnie wasn't usually an alarmist but sometimes falls and head injuries looked a lot worse than they were. Her mother could be sitting up in bed talking by now, for all she knew.

At the Wexford lights she checked her phone: still no reply from her older sister. Putting her foot on the accelerator of the Golf she passed a slow truck hauling cattle for the ferry, the animals staring balefully at her.

She eased the car into fifth gear as she followed the Dublin to Waterford road hoping she would make good time. She put on the radio but couldn't concentrate on the news so she switched to her Coldplay CD, the familiar music soothing her.

It was almost dark by the time she reached the city. The shops and banks were shut. The streets were empty as she drove through it and out past the college and the glass factory to the Tramore road to the hospital, where she easily found a spot in the almost empty car park.

‘Kate! Oh, thank God you're here.'

Her aunt looked as if she had aged ten years in a few hours. Her naturally curly dark hair was standing on end, her face pale and strained as Kate hugged her tight.

‘How is she?'

‘There's no change. I keep asking but that's all they'll say.'

‘Can I see her?'

‘There's a nurse in the station there. Nurse Kelly. She's expecting you.'

The nurse was calm and gentle as she explained how they still had not fully ascertained what had happened to Kate's mother. A massive bleed to the brain but the extent of the damage, and her chance of recovering, it was still far too early to say.

‘Can I talk to her doctor?'

Dr Healy had gone home for the night but would be on again in the morning when her mother would be fully assessed by a neurologist and the team.

Nurse Kelly passed Kate a gown and led her into the intensive care ward where her mother lay.

Kate felt a chill pass over as she entered the long narrow room. She was unable to ascertain which of the high narrow beds held her own mother. Fear choked her as she realized they all almost looked like corpses attached to machines that forced air into lungs and monitored every minute change of rhythm and pressure. The nurse led her to the woman in a bed down on the right. It was her mother, her face calm, eyes closed, her skin cold to touch. She looked so different with the colour drained from her skin, her hair brushed back off her face, her grey roots showing. She was wearing a simple printed tie-back hospital gown. Kate automatically bent forward to touch her.

‘Why is she cold?' she blurted out, trying to rub her mother's arm and shoulder and warm her.

‘It's better she is cool than hot with a temperature. The air here is kept at a regular temperature to make it easier for the patients.'

‘Mammy! Mammy!' she whispered. ‘It's Kate.'

There was no response. She watched her mother's face: closed, her effort now concentrated on breathing, the machine making a slow whooshing sound beside her. It scared her. She had never seen her mother like this.

‘She just looks like she is asleep. How long will she stay like that?'

‘We'll know better tomorrow, be able to judge. For the moment she's best left quiet, totally still. The brain is delicate, there's still swelling.'

‘How much?'

‘We're not sure of the extent of it yet.'

Kate looked at her mother and wondered how she could have taken her life so much for granted. Her mother was never sick. Everyone in Rossmore knew that. Maeve Dillon was a woman with a fine constitution who kept herself healthy and fit with walking and cycling and swimming all year round. She didn't smoke, didn't overeat and only drank the odd glass of wine or pint of beer. She'd always looked after herself and following their father's death had kept occupied with the Vincent de Paul work as well as playing bridge and helping with the local meals on wheels. Kate struggled to compose herself.

‘Can I stay with her?'

‘You can sit with her for a few minutes if you like, but as you see the nurses and doctors need to be able to get easy access to patients here quickly so there aren't
the same facilities for visitors as in another ward. There is a special waiting room just outside the door with coffee and tea and a place to put your feet up. Your mother is being totally monitored and if there's even the slightest change in her condition you'll be informed.'

The nurse left her for a few minutes. It felt unreal balanced on the narrow stool waiting for her mother to wake up. When Kate was small she would grab at her mother and shake her and roll on top of her to wake her when she needed her, and her mother would reach and pull her daughter into her arms even when she was asleep or having a nap, the two of them laughing.

‘Mammy, I'm here with you. You're in the hospital but you're going to get better. I promise.'

All around silence, except for the machines. She wanted to scream and shake her mother. Rouse her.

‘Mammy, please wake up.'

Nurse Kelly appeared silently at her shoulder, suggesting it would be better if Kate wait outside for the moment. She followed the nurse out, hanging the gown on a hook.

‘Did you contact Maeve's other children?' the nurse asked.

‘Yes, I left a message for my sister in London and I spoke to Romy in New York.'

‘They realize the seriousness of your mother's condition!'

‘I told them what my aunt said. I'll phone Moya again.'

‘I'm sure you've done your best,' smiled the tall dark-haired nurse. ‘You go and have a seat in the waiting room with your aunt and I promise to get you if you're needed. You'll be tired after the drive.'

‘I'm bunched,' she admitted, feeling that every ounce of energy had drained out of her.

‘A cup of tea'd do no harm. Your mother is in the best of hands.'

Aunt Vonnie sat pretending to read an old copy of
Image
magazine in the magnolia-painted room.

‘Well what'd you think, Kate?'

‘I don't know,' she admitted honestly. ‘I just don't know. Do they think she's going to die?'

Her aunt's pale blue eyes welled with tears.

‘I hope not,' she said firmly. ‘Maeve's a fighter. She won't give up easily.'

‘But they were saying about swelling in her brain, what does that mean?'

Her aunt shook her head. ‘We must pray for her. Prayer is what's needed now. We must ask the Lord to spare her.'

Kate didn't know what to say. She hadn't the same faith or belief as her aunt.

‘Would you like some tea or coffee?' she asked.

‘A mug of tea would be grand, pet.'

In the far corner of the room there was a sink and an electric kettle, mugs and cups, spoons and plates, and an assortment of different types of teas and coffee, packets of biscuits and milk and sugar.

Kate was glad to busy herself, wiping around the sink with a cloth and cleaning the worktop.

Her aunt looked wretched, she thought, as she passed her the hot mug of tea. ‘It must have been a shock for you finding Mammy like that,' she said.

‘All I can say is thank God we'd arranged to meet
for lunch and that I was so mad with her I drove over, otherwise God knows what would have happened!'

Kate couldn't help but feel the reprimand in her aunt's voice. Her mother lived on the outskirts of the town and if it wasn't for her friends and activities could go for days without seeing anyone.

‘I'm so glad you were there,' she said, squeezing her aunt's hand.

Her mother would be lost without her older sister, the bond between them still strong.

‘When I got to the house it was too quiet – you know your mother, she always has the radio or music blaring – then I found her. I thought she was dead at first. I came with her in the ambulance. Once we got here they all took over, but I kept talking to her. You know Maeve, she loves talk.'

‘I don't know what we'd do without you, Aunt Vonnie. You and Mammy are so close.'

Her aunt took a packet of tissues from her bag and blew her nose. She looked absolutely exhausted, her face drawn, a ladder in her tights, and her pale blue and cream suit crumpled.

‘Maybe you should go home for a while and have a rest,' Kate suggested gently. ‘You've had such a shock today, and contacting me and the ambulance and everything.'

‘Maybe you're right,' agreed her aunt, rubbing her eyes. ‘I'm all done in.'

‘I'll stay here with Mammy.'

‘What did the girls say? Are they on their way?'

‘I spoke to Romy, but,' she shrugged, ‘I don't know.'

‘This time she has to come home, Kate. Give me her
phone number, I'll phone her when I get home and tell her to come immediately. Your mother needs her!'

‘I know.'

‘And what about Moya?'

‘She's probably getting a flight. I don't know.'

‘A mother needs her children around her at a time like this, and you girls should be together if anything were to happen.'

‘Please, Aunt Vonnie, don't say that.'

Kate was too tired and upset to get into any kind of argument or deep discussion with her aunt, who was far too overwrought herself.

‘There's a payphone outside the door. I'll go and phone Joe. I won't be long.'

A few minutes later her aunt reappeared. ‘He's on his way. He's so good he'd already left to come and get me.'

Kate smiled. Her uncle was one of the nicest men put on the planet: caring and protective and still mad about her aunt after thirty years of marriage.

‘He wants to look in on Maeve anyways. Maybe you should try Moya again?' Vonnie said.

‘I'll use my mobile. I've got the number in that.'

‘You'll have to go outside or downstairs where we came in to use it. There's signs everywhere here.'

Kate sighed. Her aunt wasn't going to give up on it. Getting up from the low, tweed-covered couch she made her way down in the lift and out past the night porter's desk to the automatic doors.

She redialled Romy's number. No answer. She didn't bother leaving a message. She went down through her address book and called Moya. The number rang and
rang and was finally answered by her niece Fiona. Rock music pounded in the background.

‘Hi, Fiona. It's your Aunt Kate, is your mum there?'

‘She's out.'

‘Oh, is your dad there?'

‘He's out too,' she said slowly. ‘They're together.'

‘Did your mum get the message I left earlier about Granny?'

‘I don't know.'

Kate could almost hear the uninterest and confusion in the teenage voice.

‘Listen, did she check her messages?'

She fell silent. It was no use.

‘Fiona, I need to speak to your mum, urgently. Where is she? I need the number.'

She knew that Patrick would insist on privacy and not being disturbed, mobiles switched off, but that her sister was the type of mother who always left the number of where she was going pinned up somewhere in case her children needed her.

Her bet paid off. Minutes later she had the number. Dinner party or not, she didn't give a damn. She was phoning Moya and telling her to get herself home as soon as possible.

THE HOUSE IN
Ovington Gardens was warm, hot even, for the Mitchells always seemed to have the thermostat of their heating turned up and the boiler at full blast. A huge fire burned in the magnificent Adams fireplace and Moya Redmond thanked heaven that she was wearing a Synan O'Mahoney scooped-neck black-frilled top and figure-hugging black skirt, a classic with a little bit of oomph that she'd picked up the last time she'd visited Dublin. If she'd worn wool she'd have expired.

Patrick looked handsome as ever but a bit warm about the gills and she hoped by the time they sat down to eat that the men would be able to relieve themselves of their jackets. Why, even the champagne was warm!

Moya knew almost everybody at the dinner party so she should be able to relax and enjoy the night.

‘Moya, don't tell me you're hiding yourself!' joked Hilary Mitchell their hostess, her plump face red with excitement.