With All My Love (35 page)

The only real sadness had been Lizzie’s leaving the following spring, a week after Briony’s first birthday.
That
had been hard. Almost as painful as a bereavement.

Even to this day Valerie could still remember the wretchedness of their parting. She had left Jeff minding Briony and had driven to the airport to meet up with Lizzie and Dara and their families. They’d all gone for a drink in one of the airport lounges, after Lizzie and Dara had checked in, and laughed and chatted and kept up a façade for their sakes, but when it was time to go, she and Lizzie had held each other tightly, wordlessly, until Dara had said gently, ‘We really have to go, hon.’ Watching her best friend disappear through customs, in tears, had been one of the worst moments of her life and she had felt utterly bereft. Valerie had managed to leave the airport without disgracing herself but when she’d got to the privacy of her car she’d cried like a baby all the way home. She had never missed anyone in her life the way she’d missed Lizzie those first few months, all those years ago.

Valerie got out of bed and padded silently into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. There was no sound from Briony or Katie’s rooms and she hoped her daughter was sleeping. She might feel better in the morning and have calmed down.

She took her tea and a biscuit and went back to bed. There, she picked up the photo album and flipped the pages until she came to Lizzie’s wedding. Valerie smiled looking at the photo of Lizzie and herself: Lizzie radiant in a classy white satin boat-necked gown with a veil dropping from her chignon, and Valerie in an aquamarine taffeta silk bridesmaid’s dress. Each smiling brightly for the camera but holding hands tightly, knowing that they were soon to be parted. They had seen each other nearly every day of their lives since they’d met and become the best of friends in primary school when they were five. There was nothing they didn’t know about each other.

It had been a great wedding, Valerie remembered, flicking through the photos. She had tried her hardest not to be envious of her friend. As she watched Dara place the ring on Lizzie’s finger she wondered if Jeff would ever put a wedding ring on hers. Even now, all these years later, she couldn’t help wondering if he had lived whether they would have married. They had been happy living together, for the most part, and one thing that had given her great comfort and sustained her in her darkest hours was that Jeff had been a wonderful father. He loved Briony with all his heart. He was involved in every aspect of her life, and until the day he died she had been the centre of his universe.

A photo of Jeff holding Briony, with his arm around Valerie’s shoulder, outside the church was one that she’d had copied and framed. Briony’s new front teeth were on show in a big grin that dominated the photo. Jeff looked so handsome in his suit and tie, his brown eyes crinkling in a smile that still tugged at her heart even now as she looked at it. She had given the framed photo to Briony years ago and she wondered if her daughter still had it.

Another photo of Lizzie and herself with Mrs Maguire caught her attention. Mrs Maguire had had a ball at the wedding, thrilled to be invited, along with her daughter. She had thoroughly enjoyed herself and got quite tipsy to boot. Valerie chuckled, remembering how their landlady had said to the two of them at one stage when they were chatting, ‘Could you tell me now, gels, what are these plutonic relationships between men and women that I’ve been hearing about?’

‘Platonic, I think,’ corrected Lizzie, winking at Valerie.

‘No, plutonic, deah,
plutonic
,’ Mrs M insisted resolutely.

‘I think it’s when a man and woman are just friends and there’s no . . . er, romance or stuff like that,’ explained Lizzie.

Aha . . . I see. No riding to hounds.’ Mrs M nodded wisely.

‘Exactly!’
Lizzie agreed with a straight face, while Valerie tried not to laugh.

‘Ah, yes, well, I’ve plenty of them, unfortunately. Wouldn’t mind a bit of hound riding, though. I can safely say the pair of you aren’t very plutonic with
your
chaps,’ she tittered before tottering off on her spindly heels to get another G&T, her wide-brimmed pink hat with the big bow bobbing and dipping tremulously with every step.

How she and Lizzie had snorted with laughter, holding each other up. ‘She’s priceless. I love her dearly. I’ll miss her so much.’ Lizzie wiped her eyes.

‘Stop. Don’t talk about it,’ Valerie warned as the familiar ache of dread and sadness took hold.

She had sobbed inconsolably when Lizzie had thrown her bouquet at her, and made her way with Dara through the archway formed by family and friends to the waiting car to head off to Malta on her honeymoon.

Jeff had taken her outside and put his arms around her and she had cried into his shoulder, drenching his shirt with tears. ‘You still have me and Briony,’ he comforted her. ‘And we’ll be able to go and visit them in London.
And
I’ll be moving into the flat so you won’t be too lonely,’ he reminded her.

That was the saving grace of the upheaval. Jeff had moved in the week after Lizzie moved out, and having him there helped take the ache of loneliness away. Those early years of Briony’s life were the happiest times of her own. If she had been married to Jeff it would have been perfect. But he hadn’t been keen to marry until they were on a better footing financially and able to buy their own house. She could never erase the secret fear that that was his excuse to avoid marrying her and that one day he’d leave her and find someone new, even though he would always be a good father to Briony.

But that apart, when she’d told him that Lizzie was going to live in London in the next six months, he’d jumped at the idea of living in the flat with her and Briony, and that had given her great joy. They had had ups and downs, of course, settling into living together, and sometimes she had felt as though she was giving much more to their relationship than Jeff was. Being a working mother was hard, especially when Briony had begun teething and was often fretful and out of sorts. The nights of interrupted sleep took their toll. Sometimes she felt she was in a permanent state of exhaustion. Valerie sighed, remembering one particularly fraught weekend when she and Jeff had planned to go to a friend’s twenty-first party. They had been so looking forward to it and she had been thrilled that she could fit into her favourite jeans again. She’d bought a new off-the-shoulder lacy top and had got her hair cut and styled. She was feeling glamorous and stylish for the first time in ages. A babysitter was lined up, one of Mrs Maguire’s grandchildren, and Valerie had been fizzing with anticipation for her night out with Jeff. Briony had been grizzly, her cheeks roaring red, dribbling a river onto her bib, and Valerie’s heart sank as she felt the heat radiating from her. She slipped the thermometer under her arm and saw with dismay that her daughter had a fever.

‘Ah, she’ll be grand. Can’t you give her some of the Calpol stuff?’ Jeff said in desperation, seeing his chance for his eagerly awaited night out in danger. But Briony had got more distressed and had howled in pain as the sharp edge of her new tooth pushed its way up through her gums.

The babysitter arrived as Valerie was pacing up and down trying to soothe her daughter while Jeff waited with ill-concealed impatience for her to get her coat and bag. Without warning Briony upchucked over Valerie’s new top, her howls rising to a crescendo of pain and indignation.

‘I can’t leave her,’ she had said resignedly. ‘I’ll have to stay put. Sorry, Maria,’ she turned to her babysitter, ‘I’ll have to cancel.’

‘No worries. I can meet up with friends in town. I hope Briony will be OK,’ she said kindly. Valerie watched her go and envied Maria her freedom.

‘I’ll stay too.’ Jeff’s disappointment was palpable. He’d pulled off his leather jacket and flung it over the banisters.

‘You might as well go. There’s no point in the two of us missing the party.’ Valerie had felt she should give him an out.

Jeff had taken it eagerly. He’d grabbed his jacket. ‘Are you sure? I’ll stay if you want,’ he offered halfheartedly.

‘No, go on, it’s OK.’ She took Briony into the bathroom to take off her soiled babygrow, seething with resentment as she heard Jeff say, ‘Thanks, Val, I won’t be too late,’ before taking the stairs two at a time.

By 2 a.m. Valerie was in a state of rampant indignation lying tense in the bed, Briony dozing beside her, as she silently railed at Jeff’s selfishness and lack of consideration. He was so self-centred and inconsiderate. Briony was
his
child too. He should have known she hadn’t really meant it when she’d told him he could go to the party. If he had any decency in him he would have stayed with her to mind their daughter. When he arrived home after four, wafting alcohol fumes, she could have strangled him.

‘You can sleep on the sofa,’ she had hissed when he’d sat down heavily on the side of the bed to take his shoes off. ‘I’m not listening to you snoring in a drunken stupor for the rest of the night.’

‘I’m not that drunk,’ he’d protested.

‘I mean it,’ she’d retorted grimly, and he’d taken his pillows and sloped off into the sitting room, and minutes later she’d heard him snoring his head off.

‘He’s a man – what do you expect?’ one of the girls at work had joshed the following Monday morning at tea break when they’d been discussing their respective weekends.

‘You think that’s bad. My chap went on a stag night and left me with a baby with measles, and I had to entertain his parents, who were staying for the weekend, and he didn’t come home until midday the following day!’

‘And my husband . . .’ another woman had interjected, beginning another tale of bad behaviour. Valerie felt a sense of kinship with her colleagues as their tales took the sting out of Jeff’s night out. She had got over her huff, realizing that men were indeed a different species, as one of her colleagues had pointed out, and that being a mother meant she would never be able to plan a night out without factoring in some potential hiccup, for many years to come.

The novelty of living with Jeff, of having her dinner with him when he came up from Rockland’s after a day’s fishing, and eating breakfast with him in the mornings, had been all she’d ever dreamed off. Bathing Briony with him, and putting her to bed, and then being able to sit together and watch TV and share a bottle of wine was such a treat. Best of all was falling onto the double-sized mattress that Mrs Maguire had graciously allowed them to place on top of the divans, and making love. This all helped her make her adjustments to motherhood and cohabiting. But most of all living with Jeff soothed the pain of Lizzie’s departure. She missed her friend dearly and the weekly phone calls on Sunday night were treasured by both of them.

Eight months after Jeff had moved in with her he’d got a job in an engineering firm in Arklow. It was a good job with prospects for promotion. He was lucky to have found it because of the hardships and difficulties posed by an economy in the doldrums, mass emigration, strikes, and protests. Valerie, like most of her colleagues, had taken an afternoon of precious annual leave to walk in the huge PAYE protest march through the streets of Dublin. If Jeff hadn’t had his father’s boat to work on he would have been one of the thousands of unemployed and could have faced the prospect of emigration.

They had spent long hours discussing this new development. Would Jeff commute to Arklow from Dublin or should they move back to Rockland’s? Valerie loved living in the city. Everything was on her doorstep, every amenity she required, and most comfortingly, Temple Street Children’s Hospital for emergencies, even though she’d only had need of it once. It took her just twenty minutes to drive to work, so she had more valuable time to spend with her daughter every morning, making sure that she was dressed and fed before delivering her to Anna, her child-minder. If they went back to Rockland’s to live, she would have to commute to the city and that would take at least an hour. But – and it was a big but – Carmel and Tessa had offered to share the child-minding between them, and both Jeff and Valerie liked the idea of their daughter being with family in familiar surroundings, with two grandmothers who adored her. It would also save them a fortune on crèche fees, money they could put aside for a house of their own, and they’d be able to get out more often, having two willing babysitters. And the rent would be cheaper. There were a lot of pluses to moving back to Rockland’s.

Jeff was keen to go home. He could still fish occasionally with his father to make extra money and he could train and play football with his team, much easier than when he had been living in Dublin.

‘What do you think?’ Valerie had asked Lizzie during one of their Sunday night phone calls.

‘I’d give it a bash. With what you save, and with the extra money from Jeff’s new job, you could start saving for a house of your own. If it doesn’t work out and you’re not happy you can always move back up to Dublin. You have a couple of years’ leeway until Briony starts going to school,’ Lizzie pointed out.

‘I love Dublin, though,’ Valerie sighed.

‘Think of picnics on the beach, and picking periwinkles, and walking into a dewy field early in the morning looking for mushrooms and then frying them for breakfast. Think of the cuckoo in Larkin’s field in May, and the wind whispering through a field of barley, and the smell of new-mown hay and the shooting stars in August,’ Lizzie said wistfully. ‘I never appreciated all those things when I had them and now I’d give anything to be at home sometimes. I’m still
sooooo
homesick,’ she confided.

‘Aw, my poor petal. I wish you were here. I’d love one of our video nights,’ Valerie said longingly. ‘We used to have so much fun.’

‘Don’t let’s talk about it or I’ll cry. Some of the girls from school still live at home. It’s not as if you wouldn’t know anyone if you went back.’ Lizzie changed the subject. It was making her lonely talking about the past. ‘I bet Carmel would love it.’

‘Yeah, she’d be thrilled and so would Tessa, needless to say, but in fairness she’s a great granny, and Lorcan is so kind to us. As long as Tessa wouldn’t start interfering, although she’s much better than she used to be. Remember the time she caught us lolling in our pyjamas and the flat like a tip?’