One Hundred Names (26 page)

‘Congratulations,’ Aoife laughed, leaning over and giving Mary-Rose a half-hug and kiss.

Mary-Rose seemed uncomfortable by the closeness.

‘Aoife and I met a few weeks ago at work. I thought now would be a nice time for you to meet,’ Sam said, a little embarrassed.

‘Ah, yes, of course,’ Mary-Rose said, still trying to gather herself together.

‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ Aoife said, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, eager to please.

‘Well, I …’ Mary-Rose was at a loss for words.

‘Don’t worry, I didn’t tell her about the baths we took together,’ Sam jumped in, and Aoife laughed.

‘What have you not done together?’ Aoife laughed. She meant it innocently but it carried more weight with Mary-Rose, who immediately looked awkward, which Sam picked up on and who then also looked awkward. But Aoife didn’t notice. Eager to impress her boyfriend’s friend she continued, ‘Speaking of baths, have you ever tried to wash Scotty? He’s impossible!’ Aoife launched into a story about how she and Sam had tried to clean Sam’s dog, but Kitty wasn’t listening to the story. Instead she caught the quick glance between mother and daughter, her mother reaching for her daughter’s hand beneath the table.

Name Number Seven: Mary-Rose Godfrey

Story Title: The Proposee

After meeting with Mary-Rose, Kitty made her way to St Margaret’s Nursing Home to meet Birdie again. She enjoyed spending time with Birdie, loved her simple stories of years gone by, her elegance, her gentleness, her openness to everything around her. Kitty had spent more time with Birdie than with the other people on her list, but, listening back over the tapes, Kitty realised that there was one question that needed to be asked. The day was still bright and sunny despite coming into a chillier evening at six o’clock. Many of the nursing home inhabitants were outside sitting in the shade, which was where Kitty found Birdie, looking as elegant as usual, her feet resting on a pillow on a garden chair, her face lifted up to the heat, her eyes closed.

‘Hello, birthday girl,’ Kitty said gently, not wanting to surprise her.

Birdie’s eyes opened and she smiled. ‘Well, hello, Kitty. It’s lovely to see you again.’ She took her feet down from the chair. ‘It’s not quite my birthday yet,’ she said. ‘Not that I’ll be celebrating it. Eighty-five years old, can you believe it?’ She shook her head, unimpressed.

‘You don’t look a day over eighty,’ Kitty said, and Birdie laughed. ‘You are celebrating it somewhere, though, aren’t you?’ Kitty probed, trying to get to the bottom of the mystery. It had been playing on Kitty’s mind for the past few days: where on earth was an eighty-five-year-old woman planning on spending her birthday if it wasn’t with her family, and she was intent on not telling them where she was going?

‘Well, no, I’m not exactly celebrating it.’ She removed an invisible piece of fluff from her skirt. ‘Isn’t it a smashing day?’

Kitty smiled, loving the challenge. ‘Your birthday is on Thursday, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ll be somewhere other than here for your birthday?’

‘That’s right, I won’t be here, but we can meet again on Saturday or Sunday, if that suits you. Even Thursday morning will be fine but I’m afraid I’m probably boring you with all of these stories.’

Kitty smiled. ‘Birdie, can I ask, where are you going?’

‘Oh, it’s not important, Kitty, it’s just …’

‘Birdie,’ Kitty said in a warning tone, and Birdie finally cracked a smile.

‘You don’t take no for an answer, do you?’

‘Never.’

‘Well, all right. I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Kitty, and I do apologise.’

Kitty’s ears pricked up and her adrenalin surged. ‘Yes?’

‘But only because it’s a silly little thing and nothing you would want for your story.’

‘Let me be the judge of that.’

She sighed. ‘I told you that when I was a young girl I was very sick.’

‘You had tuberculosis.’

‘It was an incredibly fatal disease then. It was like being handed a death sentence. Four thousand people died from it every year.’ She shook her head. ‘There was a terrible stigma attached to it. I was only fourteen and was sent to a TB sanatorium on the edge of town where I stayed for six months before my father, God rest his soul, decided to take me out of there and go with me to Switzerland. They thought the fresh air would help me. After a summer my father got the position of headmaster and we moved back home, but with my poor health there was very little I could do. So many people died in those sanatoriums. But because of my condition, my father wrapped me up in cotton wool. He had plans for me, he was very controlling of me – who I played with, who I talked to, eventually who I loved.’ She looked sad at that. ‘Even when I was improved, he couldn’t change. I was his sick little girl, his youngest, and he wouldn’t, couldn’t, I suppose, let me go.’

She was silent.

‘This is so silly, Kitty.’

‘It’s not. Please tell me.’

‘I suppose I got used to being treated as if at any moment I could break. Not to run too fast, not to jump too high, not to laugh too loud, not to do anything too much, just take it nice and easy, but I never liked it. The whole town knew that I was the headmaster’s sick daughter and many of them thought the TB would come back. I was brittle, I was fragile, I was not to be treated the same. I was the one who could drop dead at any moment, the one who wouldn’t live to see her eighteenth birthday. When I moved away it broke my father’s heart but I needed my own space and my own identity. I forgot about all those feelings over the years as I got married, had my babies, reared my children, and I could look after people for a change. But I see that is all I did. As though it was my way of rebelling against my adolescence. I became a childminder and cared for other children, never wanted to be cared for in that way again.

‘But coming here to this place has brought it back to me. That feeling of …’ she thought about it and looked as though she’d a bad taste in her mouth ‘… of being mollycoddled. Of being powerless. My children, as beloved as they are, have almost written me off already. I’m old, I know that, but I still have fire in my belly. I’m still … alive!’ She chuckled at that. ‘Oh, if the village could see me now.’

When Birdie looked at Kitty, her eyes sparkled mischievously. ‘On my eighteenth birthday I made a bet. I used the birthday money my father had given me and on the day I left the village for ever I made a bet.’

‘What was the bet?’

‘That I would reach the age of eighty-five.’

Kitty’s eyes widened. ‘Can you make a bet like that?’

‘Josie O’Hara, the meanest man in town, had the bookies in his family for what seems like for ever. He thought I was on my way out, just like all the others, and he was only too happy to take the bet.’

‘How much money?’

‘I bet one hundred pounds. A lot of money back then. And so confident was the bookmaker on my demise that he gladly offered me odds of one hundred to one.’

‘So that means, to the bookie’s dismay, you’ll be collecting …’ Kitty calculated it.

‘Ten thousand pounds,’ chuckled Birdie.

‘Birdie!’ Kitty gasped. ‘That is phenomenal! Ten thousand!’

‘Yes,’ Birdie raised her eyebrows. ‘But it’s not just the money.’ She turned serious. ‘Not that any of those old codgers are alive now. I just need to go back there for myself.’

‘You have unfinished business,’ Kitty smiled, loving this story.

Birdie thought about that. ‘Yes. I suppose I do.’

‘So here’s the plan,’ Molly said, leaning in towards Kitty and Birdie conspiratorially around the garden table. ‘Now that you’re in on it, we could use your help.’

‘Oh, don’t drag poor Kitty into this,’ Birdie interrupted.

‘Are you joking? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’

‘Really?’

‘This is the most exciting thing I’ve heard all day. Apart from a man who hears prayers and a woman who gets proposed to every week.’

‘What?’ Molly asked.

‘Never mind.’

‘Okay, so the bus is out of action from Thursday morning, when the Oldtown Pistols return from their semi-final with the Balbriggan Eagles, to Friday evening, when the Pink Ladies go to bridge. Which gives us a window of opportunity to take the bus Thursday at
10 p.m., drive to Cork, stay the night, pick up the money and drive back the following morning to be home by Friday evening.’

‘Hold on,’ Kitty interrupted. ‘You’re taking the nursing home bus?’

‘Unless you have a car or any other ideas, it’s all we can do.’

‘Are you allowed to take the bus?’

‘It’s strictly for nursing home activities.’

‘So you’re not allowed to take the bus.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So you’re effectively
stealing
the bus.’

‘We’re
borrowing
the bus.’

‘Birdie,’ Kitty said in surprise, ‘did you know this?’

‘The woman is going to collect ten grand – what does she care how we get there? So I’ll get slapped on the wrists if they find out, it’s no big deal, but Bernadette won’t find out. We’ll be gone and back before they even notice we’re gone.’

Kitty thought about it – it seemed innocent enough when she put it like that – but she didn’t need vehicle theft on her record to top it all off. ‘But what about you, Molly? They’ll notice you’re gone.’

‘I don’t work that shift. I don’t start work until Friday evening, and before you ask, as far as the old battle-axe knows, Birdie is going out with her family on an overnight trip for her birthday.’

‘You two have thought this all through, haven’t you?’

They chuckled mischievously.

‘Well?’ Molly asked. ‘Are you in?’

‘I’m in,’ Kitty replied, and the three reached into the centre of the table and held hands.

On the way home, Kitty took out her notepad.

Name Number Six: Bridget Murphy

Story Title: Birdie’s Nest Egg

After a long day working on her subjects for the story, Kitty finally felt like she was getting somewhere. She had scratched the surface and was getting glimpses of the people beneath, the underneath part everyone hid from everyone else, the part of a person beneath the mask, beneath social politeness, beneath insecurity. She felt that she was beginning to get to the juicy parts of her list. Despite that, she had only met six of her one hundred names, had less than a week left of her deadline and she was no closer to establishing a solid link. Could it be hidden secrets, like Birdie and Archie’s? She was going to have to dig a lot deeper with Eva, Mary-Rose and Jedrek, if so.

She called Pete for the second time that day.

‘You better have something for me, Lois Lane.’

She laughed. ‘Not that I’m ready to reveal yet. I told you,
Friday
. I forgot to ask, how long is the piece?’

He paused. ‘Kitty, considering you should be finished and merely going over the article for perfection right now, I’m a little surprised to hear you ask that.’

‘Have we gone back to bad Pete again?’ She moved to the vacated back row of the bus for privacy.

‘Bad Pete,’ he laughed. ‘Am I really that bad?’

‘At times you are horrendously scary.’

‘Well, I don’t mean to be horrendously scary,’ he said, and she almost felt his breath on her ear, one of those conversations when every pause, every word, breath and sigh meant something. ‘Not to you, anyway.’

She smiled and then looked around to make sure no one was catching her obvious silly smile.

‘So how many words have you written?’ he asked more gently.

‘You can’t answer a question with a question, Pete. I asked you first.’

‘Okay.’ He sounded like he was stretching and she pictured his broad muscular shoulders and then her hands running over them. She surprised herself with this fantasy: this was Pete, bad Pete, duty editor Pete, who had often given her nightmares, not sexual fantasies on buses. What was happening?

‘It’s the main feature so you have five thousand words. However, I could reduce it to four if you’re having problems. You could draw matchstick people to take up space or something,’ he teased.

‘I’m not having problems – well, okay, I am but in the opposite way. It’s just that there is so much material. One hundred people’s stories in five thousand words is near impossible.’

‘Kitty …’ He was warning her now.

‘I know, I know, just listen.’

‘No, I’ve heard you. This is your baby, you drove this thing forward. If this was Constance’s idea for a feature then she would have figured out a way to do this. You knew her better than anyone, you’re a great writer, Kitty, you’ll figure it out.’

Kitty smiled at the praise; she hadn’t had much of that for the past year. ‘Thanks.’

‘It’s true, but I don’t want to ever have to tell you that again.’

‘I know, I’m sure it hurt you to say it.’

‘You think I hate you so much.’ She heard the smile in his tone. He lowered his voice so nobody could hear him. ‘What can I do to make you believe that I don’t?’

She heard herself say, ‘Hmm,’ and they both laughed.

‘Actually, what are you doing tonight?’ he asked.

‘Oh, you don’t want to know.’ She thought of the manure lining the stairway to her flat, an impatient Zhi and a long night ahead of her, cleaning.

‘So you’re busy.’

‘Why?’ She sat up, her heart beating faster. She wanted to backtrack, say no, she had no plans. What had she been thinking? That had been a deliberate lead on from her previous suggestive comment and she was too stupid thinking about manure to have realised it.

‘Oh, no reason.’ Pete cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been working late here to get this done. I’ve been here most nights till ten or eleven; if you wanted any help or a meeting about anything, just drop by.’

‘Thanks, Pete.’

‘Otherwise, putting my bossy hat back on, you know Friday is the deadline, we’re having a staff meeting and I need you to be there to present the story. No excuses.’

Kitty hopped off the bus, feeling lighter than before. When she reached her apartment she expected the smell of manure to greet her but it was clean. In fact, it smelled of turpentine, which was actually a welcome scent compared with the last. She pushed open the door to the dry-cleaners with a big smile on her face.