The Ballroom Café (10 page)

‘I want to look in her eyes, to talk to her, to know her touch, to find out if she likes what I like. If she has passed on, I want to hear stories of her, stories that will keep me strong in the difficult weeks ahead.’

*

It came out of the blue. Ella, washing up, stopped: her hands treading the sink water, sludge circling around her elbows, the water going cold. Debbie’s voice was low to start with. She had never said she was going on national radio, did not even hint at it. Ella wiped her hands dry, sitting down to take it all in.

Roberta, downstairs, the open bottle of sherry in her hand, forgot to pour a glass, the air around her crowding with the words. Debbie spoke slowly and clearly, as if she had all the time in the world. Everybody listening knew this was something that would go wider and deeper, like the circles to the far shore when a small stone sinks. She had started with a hesitant voice, but ended it with tears, full of thanks to the good people of Rathsorney and, above all, to Ella, who ran the Ballroom Café.

‘A romantic name, for sure; what sort of establishment is it?’ the presenter asked.

Debbie giggled, the lightness of her voice conveying more than the description that followed of the best little café this side of the Atlantic. Ella felt her cheeks glow red with embarrassment and pride, despite the tears streaming down her face, plopping into the dish water. She dried her hands carefully, as if she were about to collect a prize, and decided to get up an hour earlier the next morning, to throw a few extra cakes in the oven. It might be time to try out a lemon meringue pie, though she worried she would not have the time or patience to stand at the stove and stir to get the required thickness of the lemon curd. Maybe a duck-egg sponge cake with a dusting of icing sugar. She needed extra anyway, because even the lackadaisical would make an effort after hearing that interview.

*

Mother Assumpta sat down, stress pains flashing across her stomach. Consuelo could protest all she liked, but this business had all the hallmarks of ballooning into a scandal and it was she, Assumpta, who would have to deal with the fallout.

That Consuelo should refuse to go back to Moyasta, even now, made Assumpta very angry. The knife still in her hand from peeling the spuds for dinner, Consuelo, in Assumpta’s office, looked like a raving maniac as she invoked God to justify her past decisions.

‘I am named to the country as a criminal when all I did was the Lord’s work and help those young girls who had done wrong and shamed their families.’

‘I doubt it is going to stop there. The Donegal woman has also come on the radio. It is most unpleasant.’

Consuelo placed her knife on the table. ‘Where the hell would those people be if I had not got good homes for them? Sure, their mothers were only delighted to be getting rid of them. I have nothing to hide.’

‘Don’t you, Consuelo? We both know that times back then were harsh on unmarried women, and while we got homes for their children, we treated the women like dirt.’

Consuelo banged the table so hard with the palm of her hand the bowl of oranges trembled. ‘How dare you, Mother. I gave my life to finding good homes for the bastard children nobody wanted.’

Assumpta shook herself, to get Consuelo out of her head, and sat down to draft a statement for the press. In it, she offered to help anybody who came forward but declared that Consuelo herself, who was now in her 70s, was too ill to be of benefit to any inquiry.

If she kept Consuelo contained within the convent walls, her strategy might even work.

*

Ella watched her dawdle up the avenue, dragging her feet and pulling on a cigarette. At the fountain she paused, puffing quickly before stubbing out the cigarette butt on the lichen-stained stone. A teacher waiting on tables in the Ballroom Café: that was something Muriel could put in her pipe and smoke. Curse the life she had been dealt, though. Ella snorted. Frustration rising inside her, she set to rearranging the tables at the window. Debbie lingered at the front door, idly scraping her shoes slowly along the steel of the foot scraper. Roberta, hovering at her bedroom window, watched as she stamped her feet on the top step.

Roberta had already slapped down two notes.

Never in all my life have I been so ashamed. How dare she talk about Roscarbury on the radio. Is this what you want: to be talked about on the national airwaves? R.

An hour later, another note in bigger writing was pushed on top.

She has showed us right up, telling the whole world her business and ours. If you don’t tell her to get on her bike, I will. R.

Ella did not bother to respond, but baked five extra cakes, because the whole of Rathsorney would surely come to the café that day. Lemon, chocolate, carrot, a light ginger cake, and a marble cake because it was easy and looked so complicated.

‘Just in time to grate the carrots. How are you, Debbie?’

‘You’re not cross, are you?’

‘Furious, more like, that you did not tell me these past weeks, and I working you to the bone. You poor thing, I even had you lifting heavy furniture and scrubbing floors. What must you think of me?’

‘I wanted to, but …’

Ella reached over and squeezed Debbie across the shoulders. ‘The whole world knows now. You don’t have to work. I remember I forced you in to it.’

Debbie pulled away, her face swelling with anxiety. ‘Ella, this place is like home to me.’

‘It will be harder on you now that the gossiping ninnies are on your case.’

‘I think I can handle Muriel and her bunch.’

‘If you are sure.’

‘I am.’

‘How did you swing it, getting on the radio?’

‘It was you, Ella: remember you introduced me to that local reporter? Next thing I got a call; he had contacts at the station.’

‘You could have told me. I would have come along, given a bit of support.’

Debbie reached over and gently rubbed Ella on the shoulder. ‘I was too afraid I would chicken out. I had to go on my own. If you’d been there, I’d have just ended up crying on your shoulder.’

‘There is nothing wrong with a bit of support. You are one for keeping things in, all right, but no matter: what’s done is done. It is all out there now.’

‘Ella, I’m sorry; I should have told you.’

Ella shook out a tea towel. ‘I just don’t like that you thought you were better on your own. Anyway, enough of that. After the carrots you can measure out a load of caster sugar, and the tables have to be laid.’ Ella clapped her hands in mock impatience.

Debbie did her best to smile as she tied her apron behind her back. ‘Have you heard the latest? It was on the news: there were so many people coming forward with the same story as you, there is going to be a full investigation; other convents might be involved.’

‘It’s not going to do me any good. I have to get back.’

‘Working here is not good enough for you.’ Ella pretended to throw her nose in the air.

‘You know it’s not like that,’ Debbie laughed.

The two of them set to laying the café tables.

‘I suppose I could stay a bit longer,’ Debbie said, folding napkins neatly on each table.

‘What have you to go back to?’ Once she said it, Ella regretted it. She saw Debbie’s shoulders shake. ‘I am so sorry. Curse the O’Callaghans; we were never known for our diplomacy.’ She stroked Debbie’s hair, like she would a child’s. ‘Stay longer, but leave that awful dive Muriel Hearty maintains is a studio apartment. You could move in here?’

‘But what will your sister say?’

Ella turned around. ‘Thankfully she won’t say anything, but she will of course be furious.’

They both giggled.

‘Oh my God.’ Ella had her hand to her mouth, staring out the window. ‘I think the whole town is coming in on top of us. Quick, put an extra setting on each table. Tell Iris to bring up some extra chairs.’

They rushed about with china cups and saucers, so that they were out of breath when Muriel Hearty led a very big posse up the stairs.

‘Darling Debbie, what can we do to help?’ she said, her voice loud so that everybody could hear her.

Embarrassed, Debbie did not answer.

‘For God’s sake, Muriel, will you stop your fussing and leave the woman alone to do her day’s work,’ Ella said.

‘She should not even be working today, Ella.’

‘Mind your own business, Muriel. By the way, Debbie is moving in here.’

Muriel Hearty put her elbows on the table. ‘A bit of a comedown, I would have thought, Ella. You do know it is breach of contract, it is. I turned away very good offers on my apartment to let her have it.’

‘Muriel, you know that is not true. Is it the marble cake today? I put a light dusting of cinnamon on top, mixed with a little icing sugar.’

Muriel, afraid of the adverse attention of the room, let it go and ordered the marble cake.

By the time Debbie slipped the plate of cake onto the table at her elbow, Muriel had turned the whole episode to her advantage. She took Debbie by the hand and in a booming voice, pushing through everybody else’s conversation, she announced loudly, ‘Darling, you do what makes you happiest. You won’t get any trouble from me. We all want the best for you and to see you reunited with your mother. How are you, dear?’ Muriel sat back in her chair, waiting for a detailed account.

‘Just fine, thanks.’

‘You are not on your own.’

The other women pushed closer together, clucking in agreement. Debbie nodded, moving from one foot to another before bolting downstairs to clear the garden tables. She was carrying a tray stacked with crockery when Roberta approached.

‘On the radio, that was a sad story you told.’

Debbie balanced the tray on the corner of the table nearest the door.

Roberta motioned Debbie to sit down and arranged herself carefully into a garden chair opposite before she continued. ‘I want you to go away, leave my sister alone. She does not need you here; she can run this place on her own, for as long as it lasts, anyway.’

‘You should have more confidence in Ella.’

Roberta shifted in the chair and fixed her coat over her knees. ‘The gossips will keep the place busy, until the next alluring venue turns up. A few weeks and it will shut down.’

‘I think you’re wrong.’

‘Does it matter what you think?’

‘Ella is determined to make a success of it.’

‘You talk as if you know my sister very well.’ Roberta leaned across the table. ‘You don’t know her at all.’

Deep circles of red formed on Roberta’s cheeks as she spat out the words. ‘You have no business being here, stirring up trouble, dragging our good name into the mud, so that people propping up the counters in public houses are gossiping about us.’

Roberta pushed her face closer.

‘Don’t you ever think you are part of Roscarbury Hall.’

Iris came striding across the parkland. Roberta turned and walked inside the house, slapping a note on the kitchen table as she passed through, on the way to the back garden.

I have told that Yank to leave. She has three days, no more. She is not wanted here and neither is the riff raff this café of yours is attracting. Don’t I have a say in who tramps through our home? R.

‘See you met Roberta. Was she nasty?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Don’t take it personally; she is nasty and bitter to everyone, especially herself. There was a time Roberta was the same as the rest of us, but life has dealt her some blows and this is how it has left her.’ Iris shook herself. ‘I had better not say anything. It is up to Ella to tell you the family secrets.’

Debbie walked further on and leaned against the side wall of the house as she lit up. Her head was thumping and she had a queasy feeling that would not go away.

Dr Lohan told her she would be fine until she was not. Then she would have to fix up her financial affairs.

She must talk to Nancy. She had always told her smoking would kill her; well, it wasn’t going to now, that was for sure. She puffed out three rings of smoke and watched them glide past the rhododendron, losing shape and disappearing among the shiny, broad leaves.

*

Bowling Green, October 1968

Saturdays changed so much after Agnes left. Before, it was all about Mommy and her preparations; now it was about Rob and Debs making do.

Saturday, early afternoon, Agnes, with Debbie by her side, would begin her elaborate preparations for her night out with her husband. Emerging from a hot shower, she smelled of steam and lavender soap, making Debbie’s nose twitch until she had to itch. In a big, blue towelling dressing gown, she sat at the dressing-table mirror and arranged all her bottles on one side, brushes and make-up the other. Not a word was spoken. If the young girl, unable to resist, wandered closer, Agnes put up her hand to keep her at a distance.

First Agnes plucked her eyebrows into a high arch and lathered her face and neck with moisturiser, massaging with elaborate, slow, deliberate movements. A special white square of cotton was used to wipe down the excess, before she patted her face hard. Finally, she moved to the thick brown foundation and the powder from a big glass jar with a red ribbon. The blusher was pink and discreet, the eye shadow blue and garish. Thick false lashes were glued to her eyes and painted deeper with a mascara stick. Only then did she let her hair fall around her shoulders and brush it until sparks flew, as it crackled and shone.

Sometimes, Debbie sidestepped closer, her hand twitching to touch the glossy golden locks. Her mother always spied her, snapping to get back. Deep-pink lipstick was the last to be applied, Agnes smacking her lips like a fish to make sure it would hold. Twirling off the dressing-table stool, she dropped her dressing gown like a film star before stepping into a new satin dress, ruched at the neckline and tight around the hips.