A Greyhound of a Girl (6 page)

“Lucky me,” she said. “Granny's bringing me up to the bed.”

“Can I come with you?”

“Granny will need your help down here. Won't you, Granny?”

“Oh, I will,” said Jim's mother. “I'd be hopeless without Emer.”

The stairs were in the kitchen. The passage was narrow and steep. Tansey got up the first two steps and she turned and smiled at Emer. Then she kept going.

lu?”

“Yes.”

“Swine flu?” said Mary.

“No, no,” said her mother. “Ordinary flu.”

“She, like, died of flu?”

“Yes,” said Scarlett. “People often died of flu. Millions of people did. It was much more serious back then.”

“When?”

“1928.”

“That's so sad,” said Mary.

“Yes, it is,” said her mother. “And that's why I got a bit of a shock when I heard you say the name. Tansey.”

“The same name.”

“Your granny used to tell me all about her. About how she'd died, and the little bits about her mother that she could remember. Because your granny was only three when it happened.”

“That must have been, like, sad for you too,” said Mary.

They were in the car again, heading for the hospital. The Sacred Heart.

“Yes, it was,” said Scarlett. “But not really.”

Her mother's !!!s were gone again, but Mary decided not to mention it. They were talking about death. But the strange thing was, Mary was enjoying the conversation.

“She never kept it secret,” said Scarlett. “She never decided that it was too sad for me to hear about. And her own granny was lovely.”

“My great-great-grandmother,” said Mary.

“Oh, gosh, I've lost count!” said Scarlett. “But, yes, I think so. She became the mammy.”

“Not really,” said Mary.

“No,” her mother agreed. “You're right. But at least she had people who loved her.”

She wiped her eyes.

So did Mary.

They smiled.

“What about your granddad?” Mary asked.

“Jim?” said Scarlett. “I remember Jim. He lived to be a ripe old age!”

“What does that mean?”

“You know what it means, Mary!”

“Yeah,” said Mary. “But why ‘ripe'? Why do people say that? It's disgusting. It makes him sound like a rotten banana, or something that burst in my schoolbag and, like, ruined all my books and copies.”

“What an image!” said Scarlett. “You're going to be a writer!”

“No, I'm not,” said Mary. “It was just, like, a way of telling you that my banana burst in my bag and most of the books are covered in yeuk.”

“Really?!”

“Really.”

“We'll deal with it when we get back.”

“Okay,” said Mary.

Her plan had worked. It had only become a plan when she'd remembered what had happened to her schoolbag—
in
her schoolbag—while they were talking about her mother's granny, the other Tansey, less than a minute before. But the timing was perfect. She'd dreaded having to tell her mother. But now it was done, and her mother would do most of the cleaning—Mary knew this; she could already see it—and they'd even have hot chocolate together when the job was done and they'd watch a film that only girls and women liked.

They were driving into the hospital car park. Scarlett stopped at the gate and leaned out to grab a ticket from the machine.

“I'm always afraid I'll fall out of the car whenever I do that!” she said, and she laughed.

“At least it's the hospital car park,” said Mary. “That's handy.”

Scarlett laughed again.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I hate this place.”

“Me too,” said Mary. “I'll tell her.”

“Tell who?”

“Tansey.”

“Tell her what?”

“That my great-granny had the same name as her. She's really nice.”

Scarlett found a space on the second level and parked the car.

They were getting out, shutting their doors.

“I'd like to meet her,” said Scarlett.

“Well, she's always out there,” said Mary. “When I'm coming home.”

“Maybe I'll come out tomorrow and say hello,” said Scarlett.

“Okay,” said Mary.

They walked out of the car park and along the path, through the people in dressing gowns who were smoking outside the front doors of the hospital, and into the place itself, past the shop that sold sweets and flowers that made Mary sneeze nearly every time she passed it, and down the long corridor that was full of people's whispers and the squeaks of their shoes and slippers. And into the empty lift that was wide enough for a car but was actually that size so that gurneys with people lying on them could fit into it, on their way to and from the operating theaters. Mary always expected to see a gurney with the sheet pulled over the person's face.

“Why do they put the sheet over the face?” she asked her mother now, as the lift went up so slowly they weren't even sure it was moving.

“When someone's dead, do you mean?”

“Yeah,” said Mary. “Obviously.”

“Don't be rude.”

“I'm not being rude,” said Mary. “It never happens any other time.”

“I don't know,” said Scarlett. “What about very shy people?”

“What about them?”

“I'm sure they want the sheet over their faces when they're being rolled around.”

“That's a joke, is it?” Mary asked.

“Yes, it is,” said Scarlett.

“It's quite good,” said Mary. “But I don't think this is either the time or the place for joking.”

Scarlett laughed.

“You're impossible,” she said.

“If I'm impossible,” said Mary, “then how come I'm here? In this very slow lift?”

Finally, it stopped. About two days later—actually, five seconds—the doors slid slowly open and Mary and Scarlett got out.

They passed the nurse that Mary didn't like and the other one she did like.

“How is she?” Scarlett asked.

“She's grand,” said the nice nurse.

Mary's granny was asleep.

They sat beside her bed. She didn't wake up. This hadn't happened before. Mary's granny had either been awake or had woken when they'd arrived to see her. But
now she lay there. Her head looked tiny against the pillow.

Mary sat up on the bed, but her granny stayed asleep.

“She looks happy,” Scarlett whispered.

It was true—if they wanted it to be true. Her face was calm. Her wrinkles were the ones she'd had as far back as Mary could remember, the wrinkles that had always been part of her granny. The wrinkles that were like lights, or paths that lit up, whenever her granny laughed—which was often. Paths that led to her granny's eyes—
all the better to see you with, my dear
.

They sat for a while longer—twenty minutes—hoping she'd wake up. Scarlett held her mother's hand. Then Mary did. It frightened her a bit, just before she touched the hand—just in case the hand was cold. But it wasn't. It was warm, and Mary thought she felt her granny's fingers squeeze her own, just slightly.

“We'd better go,” Scarlett whispered. “The boys will be home.”

Mary nodded, but still they sat until Mary heard the scrape, the squeak of her mother's chair and her mother leaned down to the face in the pillow and kissed it.

Mary slid off the bed, then leaned against the bed and
tried to do what her mother had just done. But she wasn't tall enough to reach her granny without climbing back up. So she got up on the bed and kissed her granny's cheek.

“Ah, now,” said her granny, although her eyes didn't open. “I know that kiss.”

“Granny?”

She didn't answer.

“Granny?”

No answer.

“We'd better go,” said Scarlett.

“She spoke to me,” said Mary.

“I know,” said Scarlett. “It's lovely.”

Mary kissed her granny again, on her dry cheek, and got down off the bed.

Then she remembered something.

She got back up on the bed.

“Granny?”

Her granny's eyes stayed closed. Mary looked at her granny's mouth, and saw it move slightly, letting out a pop of air. Mary decided: her granny was listening, even if she was asleep.

“Granny,” she said—she leaned down near to her granny's ear. “Tansey says it'll all be grand.”

She watched, to see if her granny had heard, some sort of sign that the words had gone in. The eyes stayed shut, but the lines beside them shifted, very slightly.

“It'll all be grand,” Mary said again, and tried to sound like Tansey.

Then she slid off the bed, and stood up straight when she felt her feet touch the floor.

“What was that about?” her mother asked, as they waited again for the lift.

“A message,” said Mary.

“A message?”

“Yeah,” said Mary.

“A message from who?”

“Tansey.”

“The old woman.”

“No. The footballer.”

“Don't be cheeky.”

“Sorry,” said Mary.

“The old woman.”

“She isn't old,” said Mary. “But, yes.”

“Does Tansey know your granny?”

“Yes,” said Mary. “I think so.”

mer remembered it all her life. The day her mammy stopped. She was only three when it happened. She knew that all her life too. Her grandmother told her, and her daddy and her aunts and uncle.

You were only three
.

You were only three, God love you
.

A brave girl you were, and you only a little thing
.

She remembered the egg. Her own egg. She'd brought it into the kitchen, to show it to her grandmother. She remembered running into the dark of the kitchen. But she couldn't remember what she'd run in from. And that saddened her, because she'd been out there with her mammy—she was told that—and, try as hard as she could—and she did try, for years—she couldn't pull her memory back, back out to the yard where her mammy had
been walking behind her. She ran into the kitchen, too excited—too happy—to slow down, and before she could properly see, the egg was out of her hands, and she heard it smack the stone floor. Just a little flat noise, like a cheek full of air being tapped, and she knew she'd lost the egg before she could see the proof of it. She was crying before she fully understood. She'd nothing now to show her grandmother. She'd killed the egg.