Heart and Soul Page 9

  Tim had told Declan that he would give him the loan of his car for a few days.

  “Am I insured?” Declan wished that he weren't always so cautious.

  “Sure, you're on my insurance, and have my permission to drive the car. Anyway, you're not a maniac driver, I'd say!” Tim laughed.

  Declan rehearsed the journey so that he wouldn't be a complete amateur. On the day of the big meal he saw that Fiona had fixed her hair and had brought smart clothes into work. A cream silk dress and jacket. Her best outfit. Possibly too smart. His mother would find fault with that too. Back home, Dimples had been washed and brushed and refused permission to sit on his favorite chair. Dad's friend Muttie Scarlet had been warned not to call in and ask Paddy out for a pint. Declan's mother was wearing lipstick at breakfast. She told them she was breaking it in since she didn't normally indulge. He wanted to hold her newly permed head to him and tell her that she was marvelous and he loved her and that he would never abandon them, but of course he did nothing except grin foolishly and say it would be a wonderful evening.

  The day seemed endless. Bobby Walsh had been having chest pains, and his wife said he was not going into that ward where everyone from all parts of this country and the Lord knew what other countries was gathered. Whatever he came in with, he would be much, much worse when he came out.

  Declan wished that their son, Carl, was with them. He would be able to calm his mother down.

  For the second time since he had gone to work there, Declan found himself watching the clock. Finally it was time to leave and he opened the door of Tim's car proudly for Fiona. His girlfriend. They drove cheerily through the traffic, Fiona chattering happily about the day that had just ended. What a marvelous man Lar was, his mind so full of information. How Mrs. Walsh, Bobby's awful wife, had sighed and groaned at Lavender when she was giving her a diet sheet for Bobby.

  “At least you're Irish. I suppose that's one thing that can be said about you,” was how Mrs. Walsh had finished.

  “Right in front of Ania. Really, the woman is a monster!”

  After a while she noticed that Declan wasn't responding. “Am I talking too much? I'll be quieter when we get there,” she promised.

  “No, don't be quiet, please don't. Just be yourself. But you will realize that they are themselves too.” He looked very sad.

  “But they're your mam and dad. I'll love them. They produced you. What's not to love about them?”

  “They're awkward and shy. They're not normal and casual like your parents.”

  “Ah, God, Declan! Would you come on! No one's parents are normal. It will be fine.”

  • • •

  Back at St. Jarlath's Crescent, Molly and Paddy were ready. The kitchen was glowing with its peach-colored walls and gleaming white paintwork. The melon was sliced and each piece had a glacé cherry on top. The roast was cooking away in the oven, beef chosen carefully by Paddy Carroll, master butcher, that day. Was there anything else that should be done?

  “That dog will want to have a wee the moment the girl arrives,” Molly declared.

  “Right, I'll take him out now,” said Paddy Carroll, who thought this night would never be over.

  “But be back in time!” Molly screamed.

  Paddy put the big dog on the lead and marched him out, but at the gate Dimples saw a cat slinking along the road. He didn't like it. He growled. Paddy took no notice. He didn't realize how serious the growl was. Then the cat streaked across the road and Dimples was after her with his lead dangling behind him. Paddy watched as it all happened in slow motion. The car coming down the crescent, trying to swerve to avoid the dog and driving straight into the lamppost. He heard the sound of glass breaking, metal buckling and saw the blood of his only child all over the windshield.

  He had never felt so powerless or shocked in his whole life. And as he stood rooted to the ground, Dimples came back penitently and licked his hand.

  From the passenger seat in the car emerged a beautiful fair-haired girl, her face and dress covered in blood.

  “Call an ambulance,” she shouted. “ Quickly!Tell them that there are head injuries.”

  Paddy realized that this was her, the nurse, the girl that Declan had said was really special. And she had been coming to dinner tonight, except that now Declan was dead. He looked at the angle of the boy's head. His neck must be broken.

  He moved like a robot into the house, pushing past Molly, who had come out to see what was happening. “Come back inside, Molly, I beg you,” he said, and picked up the phone. But she didn't and as he was giving the emergency services the address, he saw his wife with her hands to her face looking in disbelief at the car where Fiona was kneeling in the broken glass and talking in the driver's window. She was assuring Declan that help was on the way. And she was telling him that she loved him.

  Dimples knew something was wrong, but he didn't know what it was. He sat down sadly beside the range and with a great degree of interest smelled the beef that was cooking.

  Paddy had brought out a rug and people had gathered in the street.

  “He can't hear us,” Fiona was saying to Molly. “Please believe me, he's unconscious. They'll be here any moment.” And amazingly they were.

  The ambulance men were very relieved to see a nurse on the scene. Fiona held the crowds back, spoke reassuringly and took complete control. She insisted that she had only surface wounds in her forehead and she would see to them once they had Declan on the way to A&E. She wanted to go with him, but as they lifted his body from the front of the car, she knew that his parents needed her more.

  “Anything?” she asked one of the men.

  “A weak pulse,” he said.

  “Better than nothing,” she said with a watery smile and then turned to the police, who had arrived in a Guards car and were beginning to take statements.

  “Could we have the discussion inside?” she said. “These are Declan's parents and they must want to sit down in their own home after the shock.” She helped Molly back into her house, got a rug for her knees and rubbed her hands for her. She got a nip of whiskey to bring some color back to Paddy Carroll's face from a man called Muttie who had rushed over when he heard the commotion. And she turned off the oven, where an enormous joint of beef was cooking away. And then they began the interminable business of the dog who had seen the cat and had run out on the road, and the son of the house who had seen the dog and swerved to avoid it and hit the lamppost.

  Several times Fiona left to call a friend in the hospital, a friend who would be able to tell her more than the inquiries desk. The news was reasonable. He was on life support, but everything seemed to be working well enough. A fractured skull, a broken arm, but no internal injuries in the rest of his body. He would not be able to be visited by anyone until the next day.

  At n p.m., five hours after she had arrived in St. Jarlaths Crescent, Fiona spoke to both her friend and the inquiries desk for the last time that evening. They were both able to say that Declan would live.

  And so they took the beef out of the oven and the three of them sat and ate it with slices of bread and butter. And she stayed the night with them, in the same house where Declan had been born and brought up. And she actually managed to get some sleep as she lay in his bed.

  In his hospital bed Declan Carroll slept a normal sleep and dreamed about the clinic. He was on the floor trying to reach up to the desk and Hilary kept telling him to rest where he was and let nature take its course. Eventually, after a few failed attempts, he decided to do that. Hilary was usually right.

  Chapter Three

  Hilary Hickey caught sight of herself reflected in a shopwindow and paused in shock. Not only was she very old-looking, but she also looked quite eccentric. Her hair stood up in spikes and her clothes seemed to have been thrown on at random. Was this the way people saw her? Hilary was surprised. She had thought she looked quite different. If she had been asked to describe herself she might have said small, neat, trim, fit, with a nice broad smil
e, the smile that so many years ago had made Dan Hickey leave his wealthy fiancée at an art gallery opening and come to her side.

  No one would leave anyone to come to her side nowadays, Hilary thought ruefully. They might cross the street to avoid her. She looked into the shop further and realized it was a hairdressing salon. Perhaps this was a sign, a message saying that it was time she did something about her unkempt head. She would go inside and see if they had anyone free to do her hair now. If they had, then it was definitely a sign. The young girl at the desk was called Kiki.

  “Sure,” she said, “I can do you now.” She looked dangerously young and rather overly made-up for Hilary's conservative thinking.

  “But what about the …um …reception desk?” Hilary asked nervously.

  “Oh, that looks after itself,” Kiki said, getting towels and directing Hilary toward a basin.

  Kiki talked incessantly about a new club that was opening next week.

  “My son may well be going to that,” Hilary said cheerfully. It sounded the kind of thing that Nick would like, noisy and colorful and opening its doors at midnight. She often met him returning home when she was heading off to the clinic. But she had learned not to comment.

  In many ways Nick was a perfect son. He was a talented musician who gave music lessons in the afternoon when he taught the clarinet and kept an eye on his grandmother. Inasmuch as he could. But of course, if he had to go out to a school or to visit a pupil at home, then there was no cover, no one to look after Hilary's mother.

  Hilary bit her lip and thought about it over and over again as Kiki gave her a strenuous shampoo. She didn't care what the so-called experts said. Her mother, Jessica, was not going to go into a home for the bewildered. She would not put her mother away.

  Hilary was an only child, with parents who had been absolutely devoted to her. Her father was a very handsome man who sold cars in a showroom. He loved cars. Hilary remembered how he had stroked them and almost purred at them. He would promise that one day he would save enough to buy them a beautiful car and all three of them would go driving in the countryside on a Sunday.

  But before that could happen Hilary's father met a lady with very blond hair and a black leather coat. The lady was buying a car and needed a lot of test drives. During one of the test drives it turned out that Hilary's father and the lady in the black leather coat were meant for each other and would go and live in the south of England, and have their own family.

  Hilary had been eleven at the time.

  “Will I be going to the south of England to see them and to spend holidays?” she had asked. Her mother thought not. Better not to build up any hopes. Better to work hard and get a good job. That's what Daddy would have liked to see.

  So why didn't he stay to see it? Hilary wondered. Her mother never answered this, and so her life was never quite the same afterward. She saw her father only once a year and her mother went out every day. She helped people in their gardens and she made cakes for her friends. She always encouraged Hilary to invite friends home on a Friday evening, and they now had so much room in the house without Father that they let two rooms to paying guests. These were two mousy women called Violet and Noreen who worked in a bank and lived very quietly. Hilary's life fell into a routine: home from school, glass of milk and a homemade biscuit, then homework.

  Then Violet taught her bookkeeping, and Noreen taught her to type on an old machine where the letters had been covered with sticking plaster. By the time she left school, Hilary had achieved what they apparently wanted for her: a good education and some steps down the road toward being a secretary. She would have loved to have gone to university like some of her school friends, but by the time she was eighteen she realized that the money just wasn't there. Her mother wasn't doing gardens and making cakes out of friendship for people. She was doing it to earn a living for them both.

  Hilary went to a secretarial college, and because the two paying guests had helped her so much, she learned everything she could in a very short time. She got the Certificate of Merit from the college and was ready to earn her own living in a few short months. She started in hospital administration and that was where she stayed. She had concentrated too much on her work to consider men and marriage. Until she met Dan Hickey

  All her friends warned her against him. He was too good-looking, they said. He was unreliable. If he left his fiancée for her, he could do the same thing again. He didn't have a real career. He was a gentleman. He needed a rich woman to support him. Only her mother agreed that Dan was wonderful. Anxiously, Hilary ran her friends’ concerns past Jessica.

  “Suppose that he is too good-looking for me, Mother?” she worried.

  “Nonsense, Hilary. You are a fine-looking young woman, and you have a good career, and you have a house to offer him.”

  “He can't come to live here.” Hilary was aghast.

  “Where else would he live? I worked long and hard to keep this house for you. We have no paying guests now. Make me a small flat beyond the kitchen and we are right as rain.”

  “But it's putting you out of your own house—” Hilary began.

  “No, it's not. I'm not really able to climb those stairs anyway. This way I have company and independence. What could be better?”

  “But will we be able to afford to build an extension?”

  “Certainly we will. I have been saving like a squirrel. I've been waiting for this day.”

  “It hasn't come yet. He hasn't asked me.”

  “He will. Just have an open mind,” Jessica advised.

  Dan asked her to marry him the next week.

  “I'm not much of a catch,” he apologized.

  “You're the only catch I wanted,” Hilary said and he seemed delighted. He was also delighted that he didn't have to think of finding a family home, and after their quiet wedding he moved in seamlessly.

  Dan was always seeing someone about an opening or talking to someone about a possibility. But in the twelve years of their married life he never earned one single penny. Instead, Jessica returned to her garden pruning and cake making, and added dog walking as well. Hilary took on private bookkeeping jobs for clients, small companies or wealthy individuals, which paid well.

  When Nick was eleven, exactly the same age as Hilary had been when she lost her father, Dan went out of their lives. But he did not disappear to the south of England with a woman in a black leather coat. He was drowned in a deep, dark lake when he had gone to the Irish midlands to meet a chap who might be able to give him a job. The Guards came to the door to tell Hilary and her mother and her son. They were very kind. They came in and made tea for the stricken family and left knowing as little about the man who had drowned as they had before, except that he had left three broken people behind.

  There had been a small insurance policy. Jessica insisted that they have an elegant funeral for Dan Hickey He would have wanted it that way. Hilary was too shocked and angry to care. Why had he gone swimming in an unfamiliar lake? Why had he gone before his son grew up to know him properly?

  Looking back on it all afterward, she was deeply touched at and grateful for her mother's insistence that the funeral be done right. The delicate sandwiches in the posh hotel, his many friends and acquaintances, none of whom had delivered a job, a contract or an introduction but who were all happy to turn up for the reception. It had indeed been exactly what he would have wanted. She had not one moment of regret.

  And after that Hilary had set about making Nicks childhood as good and happy as Jessica had made hers. When he showed an interest in music, she paid for private lessons. She never fussed. She knew that his friends teased him about his crazy house with two old women in it. To boys of that age, Hilary knew that she must seem the same generation as her mother. And the years went by. Hilary never found anyone else remotely attractive enough even to consider an involvement. She wasn't short of offers of company, a hardworking young widow with her own home, a good income, an easygoing, grown-up son who composed and tau
ght music and a cheerful mother tidied away downstairs in a granny flat. She had a lot going for her. Or had, at one time.

  But her mother had become more frail, more forgetful and less able to cope on her own, Hilary was sure it was simply her mother just getting older—it was beyond belief that Jessica would lose her fine mind, her generous nature, her grasp on everything.

  But in her own way, Jessica guessed what was happening. Realizing what the future might hold, she wrote a letter. It was a short typed note:

  As I am getting older I am becoming more forgetful, and it is possible that one day I might not know where I am or who I am or even more important, who you are. So I wanted to say a nice, clearheaded good-bye and thank-you to everyone while I still do have my wits, or at least some of them, about me.

  I have had a very good life and I hope you won't be offended if I am confused later on. The real me, inside here, remembers you well…

  Then she wrote a few words to each person. To Hilary she wrote:

  You are simply the best daughter in the whole world. Never forget that. Do what you have to when the time comes. I'll love you anyway …

  Mam

  Her mother was giving her permission to put her away. That was so generous but was it sane? There was no way Hilary could do it.

  She looked at her reflection in the mirror without much pleasure. “What are you going to do with it?” she asked Kiki.

  “I'm going to give it some shape. You want it shorter and glossy yeah?”

  Short and glossy was what Hilary had thought it was until she had seen herself in the window.

  “Yes, not too short.”

  “Trust me,” Kiki said and huge showers of Hilary's hair seemed to cascade onto the floor.

  Hilary wondered why she had trusted this girl with huge, dark-rimmed eyes and green nail polish. There must have been a reason.

  Clara gasped with admiration when Hilary came back to the clinic. “Where did you get your hair done, Hilary? You look ten years younger. I'm going there at once.”