Homecoming (5 page)

Prudence Maguire didn’t have a dog; no surprise there. Rumour had it that her daughter had once had a hamster, but it had escaped, and Prudence had refused permission to have the couch ripped apart to find it. Nora imagined a ghostly hamster still rattling round inside the Maguire family couch, making little eldritch squeaks of distress that Prudence would totally ignore.

She glanced at her watch. Ten to seven. Megan would have landed. She’d be in the taxi soon, on her way. Nora closed her eyes and wished for the first time ever that her niece wasn’t coming. Nora had tried hard to be a steadying influence in her nieces’ lives. Her brother Fionn would have wanted his big sister to take care of his daughters when he died. But it hadn’t been easy. Marguerite, their mother, was the exact opposite of Nora: a woman who lived in a state of constant, almost child-like happiness, she was prone to both wild adventures and falling passionately in love.

She was the type who clearly needed a man around and, although she’d adored Fionn, he wasn’t long dead before she was anxiously looking for another strong male to take care of her.

She also had strange views on how to bring up her daughters.

When the carrots the children had planted hadn’t grown in Nora’s bit of garden, Marguerite stuck shop-bought ones into the earth instead and pretended to dig them up.

‘That’s appalling,’ Nora had said, unable to stop herself. ‘How can they learn about real life when you fake it for them like that?’

‘They’re only a few carrots,’ Marguerite had laughed. ‘Don’t be so serious, Nora.’

And now Marguerite was sunning herself in Ibiza with her latest hunk and didn’t appear to be treating Megan’s situation as worrying.

‘Darling, it’ll all blow over,’ Marguerite had reportedly said to Pippa when her elder daughter had phoned with the news.

Nora hadn’t spoken to Marguerite in years. It wasn’t possible to kill someone over the phone but Nora didn’t want to take any chances.

So Nora was left to pick up the pieces. But how could she? Megan still didn’t know that huge, clean carrots didn’t magically appear a couple of weeks after you planted seeds.

The cassette player in the taxi had been blasting out Moroccan music all the way from the airport and the driver, a very slender, dark-skinned man with long, artistic fingers that tapped the steering wheel in time to the beat, hadn’t spoken at all since Megan had got into the cab.

‘Very good,’ was all he’d said when she gave him the address.

‘This is it,’ she said, sitting forward in the seat at the taxi slowed down in Golden Square.

‘Very good,’ he said again, applying the brakes with a firm foot.

Megan shot forward in the back seat and banged her head on the headrest of the passenger seat. The taxi driver looked around in alarm.

‘It’s fine,’ Megan said quickly, holding a hand up in the international ‘all fine’ gesture.

He still looked alarmed.

‘Really fine,’ she said. ‘I’m OK, honestly.’

She handed him the money plus a generous tip. When you didn’t want to communicate, Megan had learned it was best to hand out big tips. It was like saying, ‘I’m not a rude bitch because I’m famous, really, but here’s a large tip, just to make sure you like me.’

‘Very good,’ the driver said.

It was clearly the only English he spoke. Poor man. He wasn’t at home here either, she thought, hauling her stuff out and shivering in the chilly night air.

Megan couldn’t actually remember the first time she and Pippa had come to stay with Nora. Their aunt and her narrow, quirky house in Golden Square had always been a part of their lives, it seemed. Yet she knew it wasn’t always so. It was only when Dad died that they’d begun to stay with their aunt for long periods of time. It was clear, though nobody had ever said as much, that Mum hadn’t coped well with her husband’s death, hence Nora had stepped in to take care of her little nieces.

Golden Square, with its endless cycle of interesting tenants downstairs, and various motley dogs, cats and even once, a parakeet, had filled the gap left by Megan’s father. Yet everyone appeared to forget that it was Nora’s brother who’d died. She had every right to be as devastated as Mum, yet she never said anything about her own grief. She’d simply moved into their lives, being there when she was needed, for summer holidays, for Christmases, her pain on hold while she did her duty.

Nora must have been watching out for Megan now because the front door opened and Nora appeared silhouetted in the hall light, trying to restrain two barking dogs.

‘Hello,’ called Megan, hauling her wheeled hold-all along the narrow garden path. The taxi driver had barely accelerated off with a roar of tyres, before the tears started rolling down her cheeks.

Nora gave up holding back Cici and Leonardo, opened the door wide and welcomed Megan into her arms, the dogs jumping eagerly around them.

‘You’re here now,’ Nora said softly. ‘It’ll be all right, Meg, you’ll see.’

Hearing the diminutive name she’d preferred when she was a kid made Megan feel even sadder. She’d had such plans for her life and what had they come to? ‘Oh, Nora, everything’s a disaster. I’ve ruined it all,’ she said.

‘Nonsense,’ Nora replied, deciding that now wasn’t the time for the lecture. She pulled the hold-all the rest of the way inside, called the dogs in and shut the front door. ‘You made a mistake, people do. You feel terrible right now, but you will feel better soon.’

Despite her tears, Megan felt familiar anger prick. Nora still talked to her as though she were a child. This was the destruction of both her life and her career, not a schoolgirl escapade. She was twenty-six, not a kid.

‘Come on upstairs. I’ve just made myself some lemon and chamomile tea, there’s plenty in the pot for two. And
Bondi Vet
is on later. They’re all repeats; tonight it’s the one about the parrot on Prozac, you’ll love it.’

Nora adored animal shows, everything from wild animals being secretly filmed in the bush to domestic cats being rescued from mad people who didn’t feed them: she watched them all.

Megan thought of how she’d hoped that tonight she could talk to someone who loved her and would understand. Perhaps she could finally unburden herself and tell Nora everything. But no, they were going to watch animal programmes. Still, it was better than having Nora lecture her.

‘Great,’ she said, with an enthusiasm she didn’t feel. What she’d really like was a cool glass of white wine and a hot bath, but neither seemed to be on the menu.

The dogs split the loving between them, with Cici appointing herself carer of Megan and sitting on her lap waiting to be adored. Leonardo, shaking with the excitement of the evening, lay on the couch beside Nora, his velvety grey head on her knee.

Nobody could resist a double bill of
Bondi Vet
and with Cici there to hug, Nora could see her niece visibly relax. Megan kicked off her shoes and folded her feet up under her on the big armchair, rearranging Cici so she was snuggled close to her. Pretending to watch the television, Nora secretly watched Megan.

Her beauty had come as a surprise. Marguerite was pretty in a blonde, girlish way, and Pippa took after her. Fionn himself had been tall, attractive and had an air of great strength about him, but he was no matinee idol. And yet along had come Megan, a genuine beauty even when she was a child. There had been no teenage anxieties for her about her looks, no acne or teeth problems, nothing. She’d grown from a slight fairy of a child with cool blonde hair and enquiring dark olive green eyes into a slight fairy of a woman, with a sheen to her skin, an inner glow that marked her out. People had stared at her when Nora took the two girls out; nobody had ever assumed Nora was their mother, which might have been hurtful except that Nora had no problems with her own lack of beauty. It was like the length of your legs: there was nothing whatsoever to do about it.

It had been no surprise that film and television people had been enamoured of Megan. Even as a child playing a little gangster in a stage version of
Bugsy Malone
, she was luminous.

But not so luminous now, Nora thought. Megan was wearing what all young women seemed to wear these days: those loose, boyish jeans, flat little lace-up runners and an enormous grey sweatshirt that dwarfed her. Her skin had a greyish tinge, she looked skinny and, without any make-up, the ultra-blonde hair looked cheap and, Nora hated to even think it, tarty.

Nora had read the single interview given by someone close to Katharine Hartnell in a newspaper a client had left at the surgery. Devoid of most of the usual celebrity cover-up, it had sounded heartfelt and terribly sad. There was no blithe dismissal of a lowly actress trying to infiltrate a solid movie-star marriage. Just the assertion that this had split the Hartnells up and that her husband’s betrayal had shaken Katharine to the core.

No, Nora decided. She wouldn’t say anything to Megan tonight. What could she say, anyway? She wasn’t equipped to counsel Megan over this. It was so far outside Nora’s comfort zone that she wouldn’t have known where to start.

But she felt, as her eyes stared unseeing at the Sydney vets trying to save a dog bitten by a snake, that she’d let her brother down. This wasn’t what he would have wanted for one of his beloved daughters.

3
Bread

You need good-quality flour to make decent bread. Never underestimate a nice cake of soda bread with freshly churned butter for when you’re tired and ready to sink down beside your own fire. Or a good wholemeal to set off a piece of cheese when you need energy.

It took me a long time to learn how to make good bread because my mother never measured a thing. She just threw handfuls in. Flour, some buttermilk left over from churning…I have my recipe here and I can tell you, we got more out of the flour than just bread. We got linen sheets!

I never thought we were poor, you see, Eleanor. We had exactly what everyone else in Kilmoney had, which was next to nothing. But that wasn’t poor. There was this little old creature who lived in a tumbledown shack on the coast road, and we all thought she was poor. You’d see her at Mass on a Sunday with her dress inside out and not much of a dress, either. She was as thin as a consumptive and hadn’t a tooth in her head. Lord help us, that was our vision of poverty. We always had food to eat from our garden, the hens, the ducks and the cows, and as long as someone had the
loan of a donkey to go to the bog, we’d turf for the fire. Your aunt Agnes could turn her hand to anything, and she kept us neat.

Agnes learned about nice belongings when she went into service. Captain and Mrs Fitzmaurice she worked for, and nobody could say a word against them in her hearing.

Linen sheets, she said, were the last word in luxury.

Sure we have linen sheets, my father said. And we did. The eight-stone bags that the flour came in were made of a coarse linen and when the flour was emptied into the flour barrel, Mam would unpick the bags, wash them, bleach them in the sun out in the fields, and then sew them up into sheets.

Mam had been taught to knit the thread the bags were sewn with into lace. When she got sick, I took over.

I used to think, if the likes of Mrs Fitzmaurice had to live in a small three-bedroomed cottage like us, now that would be hard for a person used to fine linen. But for us, we loved it. It was home. The Captain and Mrs Fitzmaurice never had children. She was always so interested in you, Eleanor, when you were a child, that I think she’d have liked a little one or two. So you see, I never understood us being poor. In my eyes, we had everything.

On a cold Wednesday evening in January, Rae Kerrigan stood on her tiny balcony overlooking Golden Square, and watched a girl with long dark hair walk along the east side of the square. The girl might have been twenty and with her hair and a long striped scarf trailing behind her, she reminded Rae of herself when she was young. The girl walked with the energy and determination of youth, long jean-clad legs striding along, carrying what looked like a huge rucksack easily. Rae had once had a similar scarf, and had been as slender, racing along with her dark hair flying.

Men probably loved the girl’s hair. Men had certainly loved Rae’s.

‘You look like Ali MacGraw in
Love Story.
Never cut your hair,’ one boyfriend had begged her, after a long night at a folk concert on the campus in Galway, when they were still drinking wine in her tiny bedsit at dawn. The modern Rae was able to smile ruefully at the memory. That was well over thirty-five years ago, at least, she realised.

The boyfriend would have been shocked if he saw that the long dark hair was now tawny and shoulder-length, streaked with hairdresser’s clever soft browns to hide the grey that had appeared when she’d hit forty. But her winged brows were still mahogany dark, flared over the deep-set warm eyes that contributed to Rae’s thoughtful, penetrating gaze.

Still, that boyfriend would have changed too over the years; he probably bore as much resemblance to the earnest young philosophy student with floppy brown curls as she did to the girl she’d once been. She’d be fifty-eight on her next birthday and her life had taken paths she could never have imagined back then.

Along the way, she’d got married, had her beloved son Anton, and she’d traded her career in human resources for something a little different. Despite what she’d thought all those years ago, everything had worked out. Well, nearly everything.

She’d once read a spiritual saying that encapsulated her early life: for your heart to open, it first has to break. Rae’s heart had certainly been broken, but she’d recovered, more or less.

The girl who’d prompted the memories reached the corner and was gone from sight. Rae hoped, for the girl’s sake, that she’d had an easier life than Rae had by the same age. She wouldn’t wish that on anyone.