Something in Common (11 page)

As she brought her mug to the table, the letter she hadn’t got around to opening before the school run caught her eye. She slid her finger under the envelope flap and pulled out the notelet. The front image was a watercolour of a vase with masses of daisies stuck into it. Maybe not a letter of complaint after all, maybe one of the very few she got with something positive to say.

The handwriting inside was rounded, with giant loops under the
ys
and
gs.
The ink was the same purple as on the envelope.

She dribbled some of Malone’s milk into her coffee, hovering between amusement and annoyance. Seemed like Pollyanna was alive and well, living forty miles down the road and worried that Helen might have upset the poor little author with her
horrible review. Sarah Flannery (Mrs) must have time on her hands. Probably delighted with the chance to use one of her twee little notelets.

And naïve enough to admit that she hadn’t even read the damn book.
Imagine how hard the author must have worked on it
– how the hell did she know he’d worked hard on it? If she’d bothered to scan even the first few pages she’d have seen that he’d put precious little work into it, but she’d been too busy writing to the nasty lady who’d offended him.

I’m sure you won’t object to a little constructive criticism
– what was so constructive about telling Helen she didn’t like her review? Another cliché whose meaning had clearly escaped her. The woman was laughable.

She could just imagine Sarah Flannery in her country cottage with roses growing around the door. Married to Mr Flannery with a square jaw, who treated her like a queen and never got sick.

The perfect little housewife – no working outside the home, she bet, for Mrs Sarah Flannery – waving hubby goodbye in her frilly apron as he went off to work each morning. Cooking dinner for him and their two perfect children, one of each, who got top marks in everything at school.

Helen had a good mind to send her
To Kill with Kindness
, let her see what rubbish she was standing up for. She pulled a cigarette from its pack. Why not? She’d send her the book, ask Catherine to let it go through the post at the paper, say it was work-related. That should shut her up, silly Mrs-in-brackets Flannery.

She stuck the cigarette between her lips and looked around for matches, eyeing the typewriter that sat waiting for her to tap out a thousand words about the wonderful Joe Dolan. Her deadline was five o’clock, so delivery could wait till ten to.

She enjoyed making Breen sweat a bit.
Did him no harm at all.

‘S
he bought the land two years ago, and she plans to build a new house there. Imagine, a real princess coming on holidays to Mayo.’

‘Bet Rainier couldn’t believe his luck when he got her.’ Christine gazed at the photo on the front of the magazine. ‘She even looks good in a headscarf. Mind you, the open-topped sports car helps.’

‘She’s gorgeous, shame she had to give up acting … Oh, by the way, you’ll never guess what I got in the post the other day.’

‘What?’

‘That book, the one Helen O’Dowd reviewed a few weeks ago. Remember I wrote to her because I thought she was too hard on it?’

‘I’d completely forgotten that … So she sent you the book?’

‘Well, there was no note or address or anything, but I presume it came from her.’

‘Did you tell her you hadn’t read it when you wrote?’

‘Well, yes. I thought I should be honest.’

Christine laughed. ‘Sarah, you’re so innocent – I find it hard to believe we came out of the same womb. Obviously she felt you needed to see what you were talking about. Let’s have a look then: where is it?’

Sarah took the book from the dresser and handed it to her. Christine’s nose
wrinkled as she took it. ‘Stinks of cigarettes.’ She opened it and turned the pages.

Sarah crossed to the window and looked out at the cherry tree that Neil had planted at the bottom of the garden six months earlier, the day after they’d got home from their honeymoon in England. She’d watched him placing the sapling in the hole, thinking,
I might be pregnant already
. Now March was almost over, and the little tree had its first scatter of blooms, and she was still being disappointed every month. Not to worry, she was only twenty-eight. They had plenty of time.

The silence in the kitchen was shattered suddenly by a loud squawk. Christine took no notice, continuing to read.

‘Oh, let me.’ Sarah crossed to the pram and lifted out the warm, wriggling bundle. She cradled it against her, rocking and shushing and pressing her lips to the soft, damp cheek.

‘Needs a nappy,’ Christine said, not looking up. ‘I can smell him from here.’

‘I’ll do it.’

She couldn’t get enough of him, wanted to smother him in kisses, tickle his fat little toes, press her face to the tight drum of his belly and inhale his sweet, powdery scent. Four months old and already well aware that his aunt adored him, she was sure of it.

‘Aidan,’ she whispered into his ear, and he hiccupped at her. Born nine months after Christine’s wedding, the honeymoon baby that Sarah had wished for, but hadn’t got. Some wives had all the luck.

After they’d left, Sarah cleaned the kitchen and put on a wash. So little time on a Saturday to carry out all the jobs she didn’t get around to during the week. She remembered a time when all she’d wanted was to get married, have babies and give up working outside the home. But now that she had a job she loved, she was having second thoughts.

Raising a family and going out to work was undoubtedly a challenge, but it was 1978, and mothers in the workplace were becoming the rule rather than the exception – especially since women could now earn as much as men, in theory anyway. And it would be a bit demoralising, wouldn’t it, if she had to go running to Neil anytime
she needed money?

So much was changing, with the eighties just around the corner. The way things were going, it seemed only a matter of time before married couples would be able to get contraceptives from their doctors. Not that Sarah would ever be looking for those, of course: the more children they had, the better. But she’d try to keep her job too, for as long as she could.

Of course, she had to get pregnant first.

She returned the empty laundry basket to the bathroom and went outside to cut the back lawn. She was married to a gardener who kept everyone else’s grounds looking lovely and never gave a minute’s attention to his own. Some days she spent more time in the garden than in the house, but she enjoyed it as long as the weather held out.

Pushing the mower up and down in neat stripes, she thought about the woman who’d sent her the book. Impossible to know how she’d received Sarah’s letter, when she hadn’t sent a word in response. Mind you, the book was probably response enough.
Take that
, it said.
Read it and see what I’m talking about.

And in fairness, Sarah probably
should
have read it before she’d protested at the review. She’d begin it this evening, now that she’d finished
The Girl with Green Eyes.
Really, she couldn’t see what all the fuss had been about. Certainly Edna O’Brien’s writing was a little risqué in parts, but to have banned it, and even burnt copies of it, seemed a bit harsh.

She raked up the cut grass and added it to the compost heap. But even if
To Kill with Kindness
wasn’t very good, there had still been no call for Helen O’Dowd to be so mean about it. She could surely have found one single positive thing to say, even if it was only to compliment the characters’ names, for goodness’ sake.

She returned the mower to the shed and walked into the house, stepping out of her gardening shoes at the back door. Time for a quick shower before Neil got home. As she put a foot on the first stair, the phone rang.

‘Sarah,’ her father said, his voice
thick with fear, ‘it’s your mother.’

Helen read the letter with growing irritation. What a ninny she was.
If you can’t think of anything good to say, say nothing
. How could Helen write a review if she said nothing? Such a load of bullshit – and what was with the ridiculous purple ink?

She could just imagine Mrs Goody-Two-Shoes Flannery throwing compliments around like snuff at a wake, spreading happiness wherever she went, never a bad word spoken about anything or anyone. If Helen had to button her lip every time she felt like saying something that might upset someone, she’d be struck dumb most of the time.

Mind you, there were plenty who’d probably prefer her that way. ‘You have a mouth on you,’ Breen had told her once, ‘that would scour toilets.’ As if he couldn’t let fly himself with a few four-letter words, as if he hadn’t turned the air blue on the rare occasions that Helen had dared to disagree with him.

‘This is an effing newspaper I’m running here,’ he’d bark. ‘I’m in charge, not some Johnny-come-lately who thinks she’s the next Hemingway. Don’t think I won’t give you your effing marching orders if you push me too far.’ Only of course he hadn’t said effing. And then he had the gall to point the finger at her if she dropped the occasional exasperated four-letter word into their conversations.

But he wouldn’t let her go: he knew as well as she did that they were too good a team. Much as she hated to admit it, Breen was the sharpest editor she worked for. He spotted a hanging participle or a lazy reference at a hundred paces, and for all his guff, Helen knew he respected her work. Not that she wouldn’t drop
him
like a stone if she could afford to, ordering her around like he was God almighty. No wonder she felt compelled to push
back against him now and again.

He wasn’t all bad, though. The time Helen had had to turn down a commission because Alice had broken her wrist when she’d fallen from the monkey bars in the park, a courier had called to the house with a big blue elephant: most unexpected. And although Helen was reasonably certain that the idea had been Catherine’s, she’d still have had to get the go-ahead from Breen. Somewhere beneath his well-cut suit there beat a heart that wasn’t made totally of granite.

She scanned Sarah Flannery’s letter again.
I’m writing a book myself:
Helen could imagine what sort of a happy-ever-after load of tripe that was going to be. Everybody being nice as pie to everybody else, nobody dying, nobody cursing, nobody so much as having a bad thought. She must remember Sarah Flannery’s name, make sure to get her hands on an advance copy. Of course, that was assuming any publisher in his right mind would want it, which sounded a pretty unlikely prospect.

She tossed the letter and its envelope into the bin. Silly woman, nothing better to do than write preachy messages in poncy cards, in between embroidering a few cushions probably, and doing the church flowers.

As she reached for a cigarette, the phone rang. She walked out to the hall and lifted the receiver.

‘Mrs Fitzpatrick?’

The female voice was familiar – breathy, polite – but Helen couldn’t immediately place it. ‘Yes.’

‘Sister Aloysius here. It’s about Alice.’

Damn, fuck, blast: another complaint. Helen decided to launch a pre-emptive strike.

‘I know she was quite late yesterday morning,’ she said, eyeing the cobweb that dangled from the far corner of the hall ceiling. ‘It’s totally my fault: I forgot to set—’

‘Mrs Fitzpatrick,’ the nun broke in, more brusquely, ‘I’m not ringing you about Alice’s lateness, although I do think it’s important that she learn early on about the
importance of punctuality.’

Helen’s free hand balled into a fist: snooty frustrated bitch. She waited to hear what was coming, wondering what else Alice could have done to merit a call to her mother from the principal. Robbing someone’s sweets at lunchtime? Breaking someone’s crayons? Wasn’t that as bad as seven-year-old crimes got?

‘The reason I’m calling is to point out that Alice’s head is full of lice – in fact, she’s had them for several days now. I’d appreciate if you could attend to it, if you wouldn’t mind.’

Lice? Helen’s mouth dropped open.

‘I realise you’re a busy woman, Mrs Fitzpatrick, but it really is essential that you keep an eye out – so easy for lice to spread within the confines of the classroom, as I’m sure you’ll understand.’