The Builders
MAEVE BINCHY
THE BUILDERS
Maeve Binchy was born in Dublin in 1940. After a spell as a schoolteacher, she worked as an Irish Times journalist for many years. She began to write fiction while in her early forties, and wrote fourteen novels which became bestsellers in over thirty languages. Her stories have been adapted for stage, television and cinema. She lives in Dalkey with her husband, writer Gordon Snell.
THE BUILDERS
First published by GemmaMedia in 2009.
GemmaMedia
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Copyright © 2002, 2009 Cathy Kelly
This edition of The Builders is published by arrangement with New Island Books Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Artmark
13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN: 978-1-934848-16-6
Library of Congress Preassigned Control Number (PCN) applied for
OPEN DOOR SERIES
An innovative program of original
works by some of our most
beloved modern writers and
important new voices. First designed
to enhance adult literacy in Ireland,
these books affirm the truth that
a story doesn’t have
to be big to open the world.
Patricia Scanlan
Series Editor
For Gordon
with all my love
Chapter One
Nan at Number Fourteen Chestnut Road heard about the builders from Mr O’Brien, the fussy man at Number Twenty-eight.
‘It will be terrible Mrs Ryan,’ he warned her. ‘Dirt and noise and all sorts of horrors.’
Mr O’Brien was a man who found fault with everything, Nan Ryan told herself. She would not get upset. And in many ways it was nice to think that the house next door, which had been empty for two years since the Whites had disappeared, would soon be a home again.
She wondered who would come to live there. A family maybe. She might even baby-sit for them. She would tell the children stories and sit minding the house until the parents got back.
Her daughter Jo laughed at the very idea of a family coming to live in such a small house.
‘Mam, there isn’t room to swing a cat in it,’ she said in her very definite, brisk way. When Jo spoke she did so with great confidence. She knew what was right.
‘I don’t know.’ Nan was daring to disagree. ‘It’s got a nice safe garden at the back.’
‘Yes, six foot long and six foot wide,’ Jo said with a laugh.
Nan said nothing. She didn’t mention the fact that the house in which she had reared three children was exactly the same size.
Jo knew everything. How to run a business. How to dress in great style. How to run her elegant home. How to keep her handsome husband Jerry from wandering away.
Jo must be right about the house next door. Too small for a family. Perhaps a nice woman of her own age might come. Someone who could be a friend. Or a young couple who both went out to work. Nan might take in parcels for them or let in a man to read the meter?
Bobby, who was Nan’s son, said that she had better pray it wouldn’t be a young couple. They’d be having parties every night, driving her mad. She would become deaf, Bobby warned. Deaf as a post. Young couples who had spent a lot doing up their house would be terrible. They would have no money. They would want some fun. They would make their own beer and ask noisy friends around to drink it with them.
And Pat, the youngest, was gloomiest of all.
‘Mam will be deaf already by the time they arrive, whoever they are. Deaf from all the building noise. The main thing is to make sure they keep the garden fence the height it is and in good shape. Good fences make good neighbours they say.’
Pat worked for a security firm and felt very strongly about these things. Jo and Bobby and Pat were so very sure of themselves. Nan wondered how they had become so confident. They didn’t get it from her. She had always been shy. Timid even.
She didn’t go out to work because it was the way everyone wanted it. They needed Nan at home. Their father had been quiet also. Quiet and loving. Very loving. Loving to Nan for a while, and then loving to a lot of other ladies.
One evening long ago, on her 35th birthday, Nan could take it no longer. She sat in the kitchen and waited until he came home. It was four in the morning.
‘You must make your choice,’ she told him.
He didn’t even answer, just went upstairs and packed two suitcases. She changed the locks on the doors. It wasn’t necessary. She never saw him again. He went without any speeches. Nan heard from a solicitor that the house had been put in her name. That was all she got and she didn’t ask for any more since she knew it would be in vain.
She was a practical woman. She had a small terraced house and no income. She had three children, the eldest thirteen, the youngest ten. She went out and got a job fast.
She worked in a supermarket and even took extra hours as an office cleaner to get the children through school and on their way to earning their own living. Nan had worked for nearly twenty years when the doctors said she had a weak heart and must take a great deal more rest.
She thought it was odd that they said her heart was weak. She thought it must be a very strong heart indeed to get over the fact that the husband she loved had walked out on her. She never loved anyone else.
There hadn’t been time, what with working hard to put good meals in front of the children. Not to mention paying for extra classes and better clothes. There had been no family holidays over the years. Sometimes Jo, Bobby and Pat went to see their father on the train. They never said much about the visits. And Nan never asked them any questions.
Jo often brought her jackets or sweaters that she was finished with. Or unwanted Christmas presents. Bobby brought round his washing every week because he lived with Kay, this feminist girl, who said that men should look after their own clothes. Bobby often brought a cake or a packet of biscuits. He would eat these with his mother as she ironed his shirts for him. Pat came round often to fix door and window locks, or to re-set the burglar alarm. Mainly to warn her mother of all the evil there was in the world.
Nan Ryan had little to complain about. She never told her children that since she had given up work she often felt lonely. Nan’s family seemed so gloomy about the work that would be done on the house next door that she didn’t want to tell them that she was quite looking forward to it. That she was waiting for the builders and looking out for them every day.
Chapter Two
The builders came on a sunny morning. Nan watched them from behind her curtain. Three men altogether in a red van. The van had ‘Derek Doyle’ on it in big white letters.
The two younger men let themselves into Number Twelve with a key. Nan heard them call out, ‘Derek! The bad news is that we’ll be a week getting rid of all the rubbish that’s here. The good news is that there’s somewhere to plug in a kettle and it hasn’t been turned off.’
A big smiling man came out of the red van.
‘Well we’re made for life then, for the next couple of months anyway. Isn’t this a lovely road?’
He looked around at the houses and Nan felt a surge of pride. She had always thought that Chestnut Road was a fine place. Nan wished that her children had been there to see this man admiring it all. And he was a builder, a man who knew about roads and houses.
Jo used to say it w
as poky. Bobby said it was old-fashioned. Pat said the place was an open invitation to burglars with its long low garden walls where they could make their escape. But this man who had never seen it before liked it.
Nan hid herself and watched.
She didn’t want to go out and be there on top of them from the very start.
She saw fussy Mr O’Brien from Number Twenty-eight coming along to inspect their arrival.
‘Time something was done,’ he said, peering inside, dying to be invited in.
Derek Doyle was firm with him.
‘Better not to let you in, sir. Don’t want anything to fall on you.’
Nan’s children had told her not to get too involved. Jo had said that the new owners wouldn’t thank her for wasting the builders’ time. Bobby had said that his girlfriend Kay said that builders preyed on women, getting them to make tea. Pat said that a house next to a building site was fair game for burglars and that she must be very watchful and spend no time talking to the men next door.
But the real reason Nan stayed out of their way was that she didn’t want to appear pushy. They would be working beside her for weeks. She didn’t want them to think she was nosey. She decided she would wait until they had been there for a few days before she introduced herself. She might even keep a diary of their progress. The new owners might like it as a record of how the house had been done up for them.
Nan moved away from the front window and back to her kitchen. She ironed all Bobby’s shirts. She wondered if Kay knew that Bobby brought his laundry bag over to his mother every week. But they seemed to be very happy together, so what was she worrying about?
She cleaned the silver that Jo had dropped in that morning, taking a toothbrush to get at the hard-to-reach places, like handles and legs of little jugs. She wondered why Jo worked so hard trying to impress people. But then of course it had worked, hadn’t it? Jerry, who had a very wandering eye, was still with her.
Nan made a big casserole and put some of it in foil containers for the freezer. Pat worked so hard in the security firm. She worried so much, she rarely had time to shop, so she cooked very little. It was good to be able to hand her a ready-made dinner sometimes. Nan wished that Pat would take time off, dress up, go out and meet people, find a fellow.
But then what did Nan know about finding fellows or keeping them? Hers had disappeared without a word in the middle of the night twenty years ago.
Nan kept quiet on a lot of subjects. So quiet that people didn’t expect her to have views any more.
There was a loud knock on the door and there stood the builder.
‘Mr Doyle,’ Nan said with a smile. ‘You’re welcome to Chestnut Road.’
He was pleased that she knew his name and seemed so friendly, and hoped that he wasn’t disturbing her. But he had a problem. The instructions had been to throw out everything that he found in Number Twelve, and yet a lot of it must be of sentimental value. He wondered if perhaps as a neighbour she might know any relative or friends of the people who had once lived there. It seemed a pity to throw such things away.
‘I’m Nan Ryan, come on in,’ she said. They sat in the kitchen while she told him about the Whites. They were a very, very quiet couple, who hardly spoke to anyone. Mr White had a job somewhere that involved his leaving the house at six in the morning. He came back at about three with a shopping bag. His wife never left the house. They put no washing out to dry. They never invited anyone in the door. They would nod and just go about their business.
‘And didn’t everyone around here think they were odd?’
Derek Doyle was a kindly man, Nan thought. He cared about these people, their strange life and their private papers still in the house. It was nice to meet someone who didn’t give out or complain.
Old Mr O’Brien from Number Twenty-eight would have fussed and said the Whites were selfish to have left so many problems behind them.
Her daughter Jo would have shrugged and said the Whites were nothing people. Bobby would have said that his girlfriend Kay would call Mrs White ‘a professional victim’.
Pat would have said that the Whites lived like so many people, in fear of their lives from intruders.
‘I didn’t think they were odd. I thought they seemed content with each other,’ said Nan Ryan. She thought she saw Derek Doyle look at her with admiration.
But she was being stupid. She was a woman of nearly sixty. He was a young man in his forties …
Nan told herself not to be silly.
Chapter Three
Derek Doyle dropped in every day after that. He waited until the other men had gone home, before he knocked softly on the door.
At first he used the excuse of bringing her old papers from the Whites’ house. Then he just came as if he were an old friend. They called each other Nan and Derek, and indeed he was fast becoming a friend.
They didn’t talk much about their families and she didn’t know if he had a wife and children. Nan told him little about her son and daughters. And nothing about the husband who had left her.
He might have seen Jo, Bobby or Pat when they came in on their visits. And then again, he might not.
For a big man he was very gentle. He carried with him plastic bags belonging to Mr and Mrs White as if they were treasures. Together he and Nan went through the papers. There were lists and recipes and handy hints. There were travel brochures and medical leaflets and instruction booklets on how to work old-fashioned, out-of-date objects.
They turned them over hoping to find some understanding of a life that had ended so strangely two years ago.
‘There’s no mention at all of their will,’ Derek said.
‘No, and nothing about what he did all day at work,’ replied Nan.
‘If only they had kept a diary. You’d think a woman on her own might have done that,’ he said.
Nan flushed a little. She had decided to keep a diary of the building work but so far it had all been about Derek Doyle and his pleasant visits. How he had brought a rich fruitcake in a tin, and cut a slice from it for them both when he came in to tea each evening.
How she had taken the bus to the fish shop and got fresh salmon to make a sandwich for him.
How it all gave a sort of purpose to each day.
‘Maybe she was afraid it might be found.’
‘So she could have hidden it well,’ he said with a smile.
The builders found the diary a few days later. It was behind a loose brick in the kitchen. Derek carried it in like a trophy.
‘What does it say?’ Nan was almost trembling.
He put down five exercise books full of small, cramped writing.
‘Do you think I’d open it without you?’ he asked.
She cleared a space on the table. The scones could wait. Now they might discover something about the strange secret life of the Whites, who had lived on the other side of a brick wall for twenty-five years.
They read together about the long days a woman had stayed hidden in Chestnut Road, fearful to go out lest she be discovered. Night and day she worried that the cruel husband she had left would find her and harm her again as he had done so often during their marriage.
Over and over she praised the kindness and goodness of the man she called Johnny, who must have been Mr White. How he had given up everything to save her and take her away from all the violence.
How her family thought she was dead because there had been no word from her after the night she had run away with Johnny.
‘Imagine all that worry and fear right next door!’ Nan’s eyes were full of pity.
They ate the scones, and as they turned the pages she made them beans on toast and they had a glass of sherry.
Derek Doyle didn’t leave until nearly eleven o’clock. He telephoned nobody and no one called him on his mobile.
That didn’t sound like someone with a wife, Nan thought to herself. She knew it was silly but she was glad.
There were still two more books of the diary to read.
Jo phoned.
‘I might call in tonight, Mother. Jerry’s got a meeting. I have to drive him there and pick him up so I could sort of kill the time with you.’
Nan frowned. This was hardly a warm thing for a daughter to say.
‘I’ll be out this evening,’ she said.
‘Oh honestly mother, tonight of all nights.’ Jo was impatient, but there was nothing she could do.
Bobby rang to say he would leave his washing in. And could she ever have it ready for him early tomorrow. Again Nan felt a wave of anger. She explained that it would not be possible.
‘What will I do?’ Bobby wailed.
‘You’ll think of something,’ Nan said.
Pat rang.
‘No Pat,’ Nan said.
‘What on earth do you mean. I haven’t said anything yet.’ Pat was annoyed.
‘No to whatever you suggest,’ Nan said.
‘Well that’s charming. I was going to go round and check your smoke alarm, but I’ll save myself the journey.’
‘Don’t sulk Pat. I’m going out, that’s all.’
‘Mam, you don’t go anywhere,’ Pat protested.
Nan wondered if this was true. Was she like poor Mrs White … who of course was not Mrs White at all. Her name was something totally different, but kind good Johnny White had gone out to work in a warehouse — a job he hated — just to keep her safe from harm.
The hours passed very slowly until it was time to take up the story again with Derek. Nan had changed into her best dress with the lace collar.
‘You look very nice,’ Derek said.
He had brought her a bunch of roses and she blushed as she arranged them in a vase. Then they read on.