Homecoming (11 page)

‘Should I get botox?’ asked Megan, examining her face in the mirrored surface of the table in front of her.

‘It’s too soon for you,’ Carole advised. ‘Later, maybe. The problem is doing too much of it, mind you. You’ve no idea how many people get hooked on it. Let’s be honest, decent directors want some movement in the face. That porcelain doll look is on the way out. You can’t act if you can’t actually move any of the muscles in your face.’

‘As long as you can move your lips to ask “What’s my motivation in this scene?” when you have to snog Rob Hartnell!’ teased Zara.

‘Stop!’ said Megan. ‘I’m bloody terrified. He’s an icon.’

‘A very hot icon, and you have a huge love scene with him,’ Carole said.

‘That’s making it worse, not better,’ Megan laughed, although she was excited at the thought. This wasn’t happening to anyone else, it was happening to her. She’d somehow got this magical part where she would be acting opposite a man she’d watched, rapt, like everyone else, on the Odeon screen when she’d been younger. She’d be up there on the screen with Rob. It was heady stuff.

‘Don’t worry.’ Zara patted her hand. ‘Carole or I will stand in for you on the day. You only have to ask. I can bear to snog Rob Hartnell if it’s for a greater purpose.’

In Titania’s Palace, Megan Flynn sat with her empty cup and looked at all the people around her. Once, she wouldn’t have envied them anything. They had dull lives, she’d have told herself: the women with the grocery bags pooled around their feet, the young mothers with small children wriggling redfaced in high chairs, the men poring over crosswords or chatting just as avidly as the groups of women.

As she’d danced the night away in clubs and at wrap parties, posing for photographs and plotting with her agent about what she’d do next, Megan had thought these people were buried alive.

How could they not want to do what she did? How could they be happy in their humdrum lives?

But now she looked at them and she could see the lure of the simple life. They might have no excitement, but they were secure and happy in this cosy world of Golden Square.

None of them would be filled with anxiety at the prospect of the rest of their lives. None of them were waiting for someone to find them hiding out in Dublin. None of them had had their hearts broken. Or so she thought, in her self-centred way.

Was a boring life a good trade-off for that?

6
Mushrooms

Never underestimate the power of a simple mushroom. When I was young, Agnes and my mother would head off at dawn on summer’s mornings to search for mushrooms. Nobody thought of growing them in the vegetable garden along with the potatoes and cabbage. Mushrooms were the fairies’ gift to us, my mother would say: like soft pincushions scattered on the grass as the sun rose.

You had to be quick, mind, or else the cattle would trample them and they’d be gone.

Home with their pot of mushrooms, we’d put the fattest on top of the range and sprinkle a little salt on them. Roasted like that, with the heat rising up into the mushrooms and the pink pleated underbelly turning brown, they were the most delicious thing you’d ever eat.

They made a great feast with a bit of scrambled egg: a plate of earth brown mushrooms with the juices running out of them and the eggs like yellow clouds beside them.

Even now – and it’s a long time since I walked a green field to pick a wild mushroom – I can still taste
the freshness of one roasted on my mam’s range.

It was the simplicity we loved. Agnes had told us of the grand feasts in the big house, with sauces you had to stir for hours.

Hollandaise for asparagus was the fashion at the time in the grand houses. I’ve since tried asparagus and all I can say is, give me a roasted mushroom any day.

But the humble mushroom is proof that sometimes the best things in life are found growing wild and free right under your nose. Don’t rush so fast, Eleanor, that you can’t see the wild mushrooms around you.

Two weeks into January and the rains came. Rae wasn’t sure which was the lesser of two evils: the fact that the rain raised the temperature from an icy minus three in the early morning or the fact that at least when it was freezing, it didn’t rain.

Will was awake and reading when Rae woke up one mid-January morning with the sound of torrential rain bouncing off the windows. She peered at him sleepily, then looked at the clock. Only six thirty, still dark.

She wriggled over in the bed and snuggled up against him, loving the solid heat of his body beside hers. He was always warm. She wore bedsocks and fleecy pyjamas, which she’d learned to like when she was menopausal and prone to night sweats.

She’d hated the sweats. Waking up to a cool film of perspiration and with her hair stuck to her head as if she’d been swimming.

But she’d found the loss of fertility even harder. Menopause was one of those words she winced at. The end of fertility. There was something horribly final about it.

Even if she was too old to have a child now, the
ability
to have one was something precious.

And yet the ability to have children had brought her pain along with joy. Rae could never look at a baby in a pram without feeling a surge of an old pain rise up in her.

‘Hello, love,’ said Will.

‘You’re awake early,’ she murmured.

‘Couldn’t sleep. Did you sleep well?’

‘Really well. Sorry you didn’t.’

Rae lay for a moment more, doing what she’d done for so many years: gently nudging the past back into its box in her mind.

That done, she stretched luxuriously. She didn’t have to get up for another hour. Bliss.

She loved lying in, half-sleep. When Anton had been little, this had been the thing she’d missed the most: the dreaming time at weekends before she got up to face the day. Anton had been a particularly early riser. He was born when she was twenty-nine. He was now the same age she was when she’d given birth to him. She tried to imagine her beloved son as a parent – not that there was any sign of him settling down yet.

He’d be a gentle and thoughtful dad, she thought. He’d been the tallest of his class for years, built like a rugby player but totally lacking the rugby player’s ferocious sporting instinct. She’d always thought he’d work with animals in some way. She remembered the gentleness of him when he was sitting in the dog’s basket, stroking her silky ears. Instead, he’d turned that sensitive, thoughtful side into political analysis.

And he was happy. That was all she wanted, really.

She was lucky, despite everything that had happened. She
must
remember that.

Rae’s mind roved about, flitting into Titania’s and the morning ahead. Patsy from the hair salon wanted a table for ten at lunchtime and a cake for a birthday.

‘Candles?’ Rae had asked on the phone.

‘Definitely no candles,’ Patsy had answered in her raspy, smoker’s voice. ‘She’s gone beyond candles. But something with shoes would be nice. She loves shoes. They love you back, too.’

Rae laughed. She liked Patsy and her sharp, dry humour. Patsy was another person who hadn’t been brought up in happy-familyville, Rae was sure of it. There was a sense of kinship between them, even though neither had ever said a word about their past to the other. But sometimes, you
knew.

Patsy never looked at Rae as if she were a comfortable married woman who helped out with Community Cares to fill her spare time. She understood that Rae was helping herself by helping other people, in the same way that Patsy helped the women who turned up at Patsy’s Salon sporting red eyes, black eyes and faces full of pain. Patsy welcomed them in, put the kettle on and made them beautiful. Beauty, like cups of tea in Titania’s, was sometimes more than skin deep.

‘I was thinking…’ Will put down his book.

Rae struggled out of her half-dream and sat up against the pillows. ‘You don’t want to hurt yourself, love,’ she teased.

In retaliation, Will stretched his long fingers under her armpit and found the tickliest place.

‘You win,’ she said, laughing.

‘I was going to suggest a fabulous holiday to cheer us up after the winter,’ Will said, ‘but seeing as you think I’m Mr Thicko…’

Rae leaned up and nibbled his ear. ‘Go on, Mr Thicko,’ she said, ‘you know I love you.’

‘Well, I was thinking – before I was rudely interrupted, that we haven’t had a holiday for two years. What about a cruise?’

Rae gave a little gasp of shock. She’d always wanted to go on a cruise, but cruising holidays always seemed too expensive whenever she’d idled away time looking at the prices on the internet.

‘Do you think we could afford it?’ she said. Inside, she was thinking that they must be able to afford it. Will was the finance person in their marriage. Even though she managed Titania’s, the café belonged to Timothy. He gave her budgets and sorted out cashflow. Rae herself had never been that comfortable about money.

Left to her, she and Will would never spend anything in case some catastrophe occurred and they ended up penniless. Her parents had been permanently broke. Her work with Community Cares showed her nothing but people who lived on the edge of the abyss.

‘I was looking at the bank statements on the internet last night,’ Will said. ‘We could do it this year, for sure.’

‘Yes, but would it be wise?’ she asked. ‘Who knows how long the economic downturn’s going to last. You’re not that busy, Timothy might turn round and close Titania’s…’ Rae felt the familiar twinge of money worries overcoming all thoughts of the holiday she’d always wanted.

‘Listen, we are doing fine financially, love,’ Will said. ‘We don’t spend money, Rae, we’re so careful. The downturn is here and, yes, I’m doing half the work I was a year ago.’ Will worked as an architectural technician for a local business and, as building work was at a standstill, he was working only on the company’s projects in the Far East. ‘But we’re fine. We have no mortgage, we could survive on half the money we’re earning now.’

Rae thanked God silently for the bequest from Will’s father that had allowed them to pay off their mortgage fifteen years previously. They’d bought the house long before the property boom, so they’d paid buttons for it compared to what it was now worth.

‘Rae, how long have we been talking about a cruise?’

She allowed herself to relax. ‘Since Anton was small and we knew there was no way in heck that he’d cope with being closeted on a boat,’ she said fondly. ‘Think of all those seaside holidays.’

‘Crazy golf,’ Will said.

They both groaned.

Anton had taken a mad passion for crazy golf when he was ten and no holiday was complete without a trip to a course. Will and Rae had spent many hours trying to whack golf balls into clown’s mouths and windmills.

‘Disney in Florida?’ It had taken them three years to save up for that holiday.

‘That was amazing,’ Will said with a sigh. ‘I don’t think I could do any of those rollercoaster things again.’

‘You were brilliant for going on them all,’ Rae said. She was terrified of heights and just looking at some of Orlando’s rides was enough to make her central nervous system go into shock.

‘I’d love a cruise,’ Rae said, and suddenly she wanted it so much she felt as if she might burst out crying with the sheer joy of it all. She
was
so lucky. She had her wonderful son, her wonderful husband, and now this unexpected treat. When she thought of how sad her life had looked all those years ago, she’d never dreamed she could have this happiness.

‘I love you, Will,’ she said, winding her arms round him.

‘Mr Thicko loves you back,’ he replied, kissing her. ‘That’s a very sexy outfit you’re wearing,’ he murmured, moving the neckline of her definitely unsexy fleecy pyjamas so he could nuzzle her neck.

‘It’s designed to drive men wild with lust,’ Rae agreed. ‘If it’s disturbing you, I could take it off.’

‘There’s a thought,’ he murmured, and then they didn’t talk for a while.

Forty minutes later, they were up, dressed and getting breakfast. They moved easily around each other in the kitchen. Rae turned the coffee machine on, Will laid out cups and plates. She toasted some wholegrain bread; he found the marmalade she liked and put out plum jelly just in case they were in the mood for that.

It was the precise opposite to the way Rae had grown up; mornings then had been taut as a violin string, the air trembling with arguments that might erupt at any moment. One wrong word was all it took for Glory Hennessey to start throwing plates and insults at Paudge, with him throwing them right back. Rae had hated it, and had learned how to blend into the furniture so she didn’t get involved.

As a child, she perfected the adult ability to take the emotional temperature of a room within two minutes of entering. If the room was happy, she’d do happy, but she wouldn’t really
be
happy. Her happiness was surface only. Play along with them, but don’t really relax because in two minutes happy could be over and major screaming fit could be the order of the day.

When she was at school, the teachers thought her a strangely silent child. It was habit. Talking turned into saying the wrong thing so easily at home. Silence was the wisest option.

Even now, Rae could still feel her stomach clench when she heard people rowing.

It was no accident that she’d married a man who was gentle, thoughtful and rarely spoke without first considering the likely effect of his words on the other person.

By eight twenty it had stopped raining. Rae kissed Will on the cheek and they both headed off to work: she to Titania’s down the street, and he to his office in the long back garden of their house.

She took the long route to Titania’s, walking all around the garden itself, where the heady earthy smell of wet soil obliterated all other smells. Despite the wet, a couple of dogs were rolling in the grass, seemingly trying to wriggle themselves into the ground in pure pleasure.