Heart and Soul (15 page)

•   •   •   

Ania had made a great banner with
WELCOME HOME, DECLAN
on it and it was strung between the two bedroom windows. The neighbors were all at their gates looking on and Paddy waved them in.

“The lad would love to see you,” he called.

Declan's mother was resplendent in a dark purple dress with a lace collar. Her hair looked different, and for once she didn't seem to be fussing. Declan could hardly take it in. There was no racing around asking people to sit here or there—she was relaxing with a glass of wine. He shook his head in disbelief.

Maud and Simon were like a courteous committee, almost as if they were representatives of another civilization. Fiona was spot-on to say they spoke like aliens: that was exactly what they did, with one starting and the other finishing every sentence.

“Everyone in St. Jarlaths Crescent wants you to feel very welcome …” Maud beamed.

“Back to your home after your great ordeal,” Simon continued.

“And to say how much the accident was regretted …” Maud added.

“Particularly by the family that owned the cat.” Simon looked very solemn.

As people often did talking to the twins, Declan felt increasingly disconcerted.

“The cat?”

“The cat that attracted Dimples's attention and made him run away from your father.” Maud spoke as if Declan might be now deranged as well as limping.

“I'd forgotten the cat,” Declan said truthfully.

“Oh, well, she
will
be pleased to know that,” Simon said. “She was afraid to come in to welcome you back …”

“The lady who owns the cat, that is. The cat herself has no memory of it at all,” Maud explained.

“Listen, I gather you're giving a bit of a hand with the party. I wanted to thank you.” Declan rustled for some euros in his pocket.

“Oh, no, Declan, thank you, but the matter of finance was raised …” Simon said.

“And turned out to be very inappropriate,” Maud finished.

“No, no, we can't have you working for nothing. Everyone gets paid for their work,” Declan protested.

“It's a neighborly gesture, not a job,” Maud said firmly. And that was that.

Declan looked around the small house in St. Jarlaths Crescent in bewilderment. His mother seemed quite at ease entertaining the people from the clinic. She seemed to have had a personality change in the time that he had been in hospital. He listened as she told Clara Casey all about how hard Declan had studied when he was young, but there was no fantasy about his being senior cardiologist anymore. Molly was nodding her head eagerly with Lavender about the amount of protein there was in good lean meat, and she was offering Ania some hours in the launderette if she needed them.

Everything had changed since Mother and Fiona had got to know each other. What he had been trying to do for years, Fiona seemed to have achieved in a matter of a few short weeks. He looked at her proudly across the room, laughing and at ease, her curly hair tied up with a green ribbon that matched her eyes. Her friend, Barbara, helped her with everything, including keeping Paddy Carroll's pint glass well topped up.

He wished he could spend some time alone with her, but Fiona had put her finger on his lips and said there would be plenty of time for all that.

Later, when most of the guests had left and Maud and Simon were busy clearing up, Declan and Fiona asked them about their plans. They explained that they were going to Greece for the spring holiday; they hoped to get jobs in bars or restaurants.

“Do you know any Greek?” Fiona wondered.

“Not yet, but we were sort of thinking …” Maud began.

“That we could pick it up as we went along,” Simon finished.

“I have a booklet I could give you. It's a help to know a few basics in advance,” Fiona offered.

“What did you work at when you were there?” Simon asked.

“Well, I didn't really work there …”

“It was a holiday?” Maud said.

“Sort of…” For once the confident Fiona looked less than comfortable. “Here, you don't want to go through all the silly things I did. What you do want is a bit of advice and even a couple of introductions.”

“We'd love some advice,” said Maud.

“Could you sort of mark our card?” Simon asked.

“I think you should go to a small place, somewhere that hasn't become a big international tourist area. Then you get to know the people, and the place.”

“And would we just turn up …”

“With our words in basic Greek?”

“I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll write to a friend of mine in this lovely place on one of the islands and tell her that you might need a job.”

“Would you?”

“Is it a restaurant?”

“Well, no. She runs a craft shop, but she has a great friend Andreas and he runs a taverna.”

“Taverna, “
the twins repeated solemnly.

“The place is called Aghia Anna—look, find me a map and I'll show you.”

Declan's heart nearly burst with pride as the twins ran back home for their map of Greece. Knowing Fiona, he had no doubt she would indeed be able to set them up.

When the twins came back with the map, they spread it on the table. Declan looked across at Fiona as she traced her finger across the map. This was the road from Athens to Piraeus, which was the
harbor town. Then they were to walk along the line of ferries heading out for the Greek islands. They must write down the name Aghia Anna in Greek letters so that they would recognize the words when they saw them. She was as enthusiastic as if she were going with them. He felt a catch in his breath. She wasn't just a girlfriend, not just a pretty nurse and part of a hospital romance. This was something totally different. As he watched her push the curls out of her eyes and behind her ears he realized that he couldn't live without this girl.

It was part of his life that she should be there, reacting and smiling and pealing with laughter. He needed her approval and her courage. He had to know what she thought about everything. She looked up suddenly to know were they boring him and caught him staring at her.

“What is it, Declan? Am I droning on too much?”

“You couldn't drone on. It just isn't in your vocabulary.” His voice sounded thick suddenly, as if he had a cold.

“Hey—I'm meant to be looking after you,” she said anxiously. “Are you developing a wheeze?”

“No—it's something else entirely.”

“Like what exactly?”

“Like
emotion,
if you push me. You know, the way they say in books ‘His voice was husky with emotion

“Oh,
Declan
—aren't you a scream!”

“I mean it,” he said simply. “I was just looking at you and realizing how precious you are to me.”

Maud and Simon pretended to study the map with huge intensity.

Fiona came over and kissed Declan lightly.

“And you to me,” she said. “But I'll have to borrow your laptop. There have to be cheaper flights than what the twins have found.”

He still held her hand a little and didn't take his eyes off her face. It was as if he was looking at her for the very first time. Nothing mattered as long as he could be with Fiona, at St. Jarlath's Crescent, her parents’ house, the flat she shared with Barbara, by the seaside.
Anywhere. Suddenly it was clear to him. She was quite literally the center of his life. And soon he would be in the clinic working with her all day and he would see her every night.

When Declan came back to work in the heart clinic everyone was very supportive and he caught up on all the news surprisingly quickly. He had been away when Hilary's mother had died, but he knew the whole story from Fiona and he took the first opportunity to tell Hilary how sorry he was.

“She's at peace now,” he said to Hilary.

“Thank you, Declan. Another way of putting it is that I wouldn't be told, I wouldn't listen and she was killed by a car as a result.” Her voice was very flat.

“Don't think like that. It wouldn't bring her back.”

“No, but if I had listened to other people she wouldn't be dead. I can't forget that. I am allowed to feel ashamed and sad about it.”

“You loved your mother. What's bad about that?”

“You are very soothing, Declan, but we must not be bland.”

“No, I agree, I have a tendency to go down the bland route, but can I tell you something? If I hadn't had the accident, Fiona wouldn't have got to know my family so well, and they love her now. If it had just been a dinner, a roast that night, we would still be playing games and dancing round each other. Am I mad to think we were meant to be together? Is that too bland or is it just being grateful for how it turned out?”

“It hasn't turned out well for me.”

“Yet,” Declan said. “A day will come when you are glad that she didn't spend years lost in a fog. Not yet, but believe me it will come.”

“She's a lucky girl, Fiona,” Hilary said.

Declan move toward his patients with their notes in his hand and a smile of reassurance on his face.

“Well, Joe, you're looking fit and well. I hope you feel as well inside. No palpitations?”

And it was as if he had never been away.

Hilary and Ania watched him, delighted to see him back.

“He is so important to this clinic,” Ania said in a solemn little voice.

“As are you, Ania. This place couldn't function without you,” Hilary said with such sincerity in her voice that Ania's eyes filled with tears.

It had been like a personal intervention of the Mother of God when Ania met Dr. Clara Casey and got a job in the heart clinic.

Ania was the youngest of her family. She could not remember her father because she had been only three when he was killed in an accident. It was a terrible day when poor Pawel reversed his new lorry which was his pride and joy into a deep quarry. He had made only the first payment on this truck, which was going to change their finances. Papa would work all the hours that God sent and the family would be wealthy in their happy home. His daughters would marry men of substance in the area and his son, Józef, would join him in the business. Their name would be known all over the countryside as people who could be relied on.

Ania heard all this later. Because the story was so often told in her family, she sometimes believed that she remembered that day, the day they brought the news home that Papa was dead and the lorry had not been paid for. Two pieces of almost equally bad news, the way it was told.

So there was no wonderful family home. There was her poor mother, her mamusia, who worked all the hours in the day to put food on the table. Her brother, Józef, joined no family company; instead he went north to Gdansk, looking for work. At first he wrote and said he was in the shipyards and doing well and he sent Mamusia
a little money. But then he met a woman from Gdynia and with the expense of setting up a home for himself and his new bride, soon the money stopped coming.

Her two sisters worked in a factory, where they met men and married them. There was nothing for them at home now—better to start lives of their own. They would come by from time to time, complaining about their in-laws and how hard they worked.

“Stay single as long as you can, little Ania,” they warned. Not that this was hard for Ania to do—she was still very young and when she came home from school each day there was little enough time even to do any studying. It was her job to get the irons ready to press the clothes that her mother mended. And it wasn't a matter of lovely, easy electric irons like now, with steam irons like today. Ania had learned to iron with great heavy things that warmed on the stove, and always with a damp cloth to protect the material. Woe betide anyone who left a scorch mark.

Mamusia always said that if you returned the clothes steamed and pressed to people when the alterations were done, they really appreciated the garment looking much smarter than it had before. It would encourage them to bring their skirts to be let out for a matronly figure or a school uniform adapted for a younger child.

Some other girls in her street went to the carnival when it came to town, and the circus, and they would meet for coffee and fizzy drinks in the café beside the bridge. But not Ania. There was always too much to do.

Mamusia was always cheerful and full of hope.

“We have our good name, little Ania, we have our standing here among these people. Your father was a respected man. We have managed to pay off what was owing on his lorry. We are people of honor. Nothing can bring us down.”

But Mamusia didn't know what was in store that would change everything.

•   •   •   

When Ania was fifteen, Mamusia made her a birthday present of a little jacket trimmed with dark green velvet. A customer had bought too much and Mamusia had carefully put aside some of the small pieces that she snipped off.

Ania was delighted with her finery. Her dark hair looked very shiny and she thought that in fact she might not be that ugly after all. She had always seemed so scrawny and awkward compared to other girls, she hadn't known that she would look so fine when dressed up.

She saved her little amount of money to go to the café with her best friend, Lidia, to show off her new style. The other girls were very admiring and all the time she was aware that a dark-haired man was looking at her with some interest.