The Ballroom Café (18 page)

‘Don’t go back to the States just yet.’

‘Ella, I have to go.’

‘Give us time to think. There must be something else we can do.’

‘I don’t know if I want to do any more.’

Ella patted her on the head. ‘Have a bath and sleep on it.’

Debbie sank down onto her bed. A sick exhaustion was creeping through her. Flashes of her mother’s funeral were running through her head … Even when she really tried, she could not remember her mother dying: only that she came back and then she was in the coffin.

There were a lot of discussions as to whether Debbie should be allowed to attend the funeral, but Rob was firm.

‘Of course she has to be there. Debbie, more than anyone, needs to say a proper goodbye.’

Agnes, she was told, was dressed in the blue taffeta suit she had made for the flower-arranging festival. Debbie saw only the closed wooden casket laden down with flowers. When she was sure nobody was looking, she quietly slipped the gold star, which she had carefully and slowly snipped from her homework notebook, among the white flowers they had sent in her name.

‘I got the gold star for you,’ she whispered, before she was ushered away.

Ella held herself together until she got to her own room. Collapsing on her bed, bawling, she felt under her pillow for the little black and white cow. Grubby and matted, it had been coarsened by decades of dried-in dirt. Carrie had liked to stuff it under her chin and chew the ears. They had only been gone a few minutes when Ella saw it on the ground by the fountain. Scooping it up, she ran down the rhododendron side path, the shortcut to the gates.

She got there first and was behind the large elm tree, leaning to catch her breath, when she heard the pram wheels on the stony avenue. Michael Hannigan was walking fast, as if he was upset; Roberta was trying to keep up. He slowed down at the gates and she put her hand on his shoulder, asking if he was all right. Shrugging, he smiled and reached out, running his hand down her cheek. Ella, the cuddly cow tight in her hand, felt a coldness creep over her heart. She could not see her husband’s face, but she took in Roberta’s shy smile, the softness in her eyes.

Punching her pillow, Ella cursed over and over she had not stepped from behind the tree to confront them. Carrie saw her and waved bye bye, but Michael Hannigan, caught up in his own grumpiness, did not even notice. Letting the cuddly cow slip from her hands, Ella stumbled back to the house. She started baking, the flour dropping between her fingers bringing calm thoughts and clear thinking on the next step she must take.

When there was a quiet and hesitant knock on the door, she had considered not answering, but the young lad rapped next on the window, gesticulating extravagantly.

‘What is wrong with you, Sean McHenry?’

‘Mrs Hearty in the post office sent me. You had better come quick. There has been an accident.’

‘What?’ A shadow blurred her eyes and cold seeped through her. Leaning against the door, she barely heard the words he said next.

‘It is the child. They are trying to get her. She fell in the water.’

She took off her apron, folded it and left it on the dresser, checking the oven was off before getting into the car. Young McHenry did not say another word, but he drove too fast, beeping cars out of his way on the Main Street. When she saw the crowd gather at the mouth of the harbour, she could not stay sitting.

‘Stop the car,’ she shouted, opening the door and jumping out even before it had finally come to a halt.

Later, they spoke of how she came thundering, screaming her daughter’s name, falling to her knees beside her, afraid at first to touch her cold, soaking-wet body.

Ella remembered the cold and the way her hands shook as she reached across to the pudgy cheeks and the mouth, covering her girl in kisses, pleading with her to wake up for Mummy. She was so still, showing what the older child may have resembled.

Pain seared through her, and anger: a torrent of anger. Michael Hannigan blubbered, falling on his knees, begging forgiveness. She told him be quiet as the crowd moved back to make space for the ambulance. When he tried to get in the ambulance, she pushed him back. That night she lay beside her daughter in the morgue, to keep her warm, before a taxi came to bring her home.

Roscarbury Hall was in darkness, the life sucked from it.

When she walked into the kitchen, her husband was waiting, his head in his hands.

‘Will you ever forgive me?’

‘You will have to ask God to forgive you.’

‘The wind came all of a sudden. I tried to catch the pram. I just missed it.’

‘Why didn’t you have your hands on the pram, and it so near the water? Tell me that!’

She was shouting, kicking a chair out of the way, fisting the table in front of him.

‘I, I don’t know.’

‘You do know. You do know, you coward; you must know.’ She reached over and slapped him hard. He did nothing to defend himself. ‘You bastard, tell me the truth. I deserve it.’

When he got up and walked across the room, she thought he was leaving, but he was putting space between the two of them.

‘I was kissing Roberta.’

She barely heard him.

‘We were kissing: just a small kiss. My hand was off the pram for a second, just a second.’

Ella slumped into a chair, staring at her husband as if he were a stranger who had intruded into her kitchen.

‘I saw it straight away. I just missed the handle. Carrie thought it was fun.’

Ella rose up. ‘Is that supposed to give me any comfort: my baby daughter was laughing on the way to her death?’

‘No. I didn’t mean it like that.’

Ella stood up. Her voice was flat. ‘Make yourself respectable to receive the coffin tomorrow. I don’t want you falling apart on me. You will not let me down again.’

She climbed the stairs slowly to her sister’s room. Roberta, her eyes raw red from crying, let out a yelp when she saw her sister.

‘Ella, I am so sorry.’

Ella heard the fear in her voice, saw the tearful trembling, the shoulders convulsing in shivers. She reached out with her hand and she saw Roberta relax a little.

In a sharp, quick movement, she raised her hand high, bringing it down across her sister’s face. Stunned, knocked back in pain, Roberta shouted, but her words were lost in the spitting rage of her sister.

‘Don’t even look at my husband again.’

Roberta stumbled back into the room, her face throbbing. ‘Hit me; do anything you like. Nothing matters.’

‘Shut up with the self-pity: if you had not been batting your stupid eyelids at a married man, my daughter would not be in the morgue now. Cold, lifeless and alone; there is nothing left of Carrie; the sea water has soaked it away.’

Roberta attempted to rally, put her hands out as if seeking calm. ‘Michael Hannigan is no innocent in all of this …’

Ella lunged forward, this time catching Roberta by the hair and tugging so hard some came away in her hands. Beating the hair from her hands as if it was loose dirt, Ella stepped further into the bedroom.

‘Stay away from my husband, you interfering bitch. I will let you stay in the house, I have to, but I do not want to hear your voice ever again.’

Roberta made to speak, but Ella raised her finger to her lips.

‘Not a word: ever.’

Ella could say no more, so she left and moved her clothes from the bedroom she shared with Michael Hannigan to the front room, where she settled into the single bed, but not to sleep, the dark waves of emptiness pressing on her until morning.

Roberta stayed away from Ella the rest of that night, only appearing the next day as the undertaker arrived with the coffin.

‘Tell her she is not wanted here,’ Ella snapped at her husband, and he did.

Roberta sank to the back of the crowd gathering outside the front door, tears chiselling a channel through her face.

Several weeks went by at Roscarbury Hall, but not even the change from spring to summer could change the mood in the big grey house. Roberta took to buying her own provisions and labelling them. She spent the afternoons sipping cheap sherry. Ella and Michael Hannigan sat together but did not speak; it was an uneasy silence they both grew accustomed to.

Two weeks in, Roberta knocked on Ella’s bedroom door and handed her a small box wrapped in black tissue paper. Ella ignored her, moving away to the window, watching the rain shower sweep across the parkland, not looking around until she heard Roberta put the box on the dressing table before leaving the room.

She had not looked at it since that day. An urge to locate it, where she had carefully stored it in the attic playroom on the top floor, came over her.

The knob of the playroom door was stiff; she had to twist it hard for it to give way. The room was gloomy and smelled musty and stale. Thick cobwebs ran across the ceiling and down the walls in a wavy pattern, accentuated by the fading light of the evening. Rita, the old Crolly Doll, watched Ella, as she tiptoed across the room to the shelves in the fireplace alcove. A mouse skipped behind an old Meccano set when she stretched in for the red leather musical box. Gently sweeping away the heavy dust and mouse droppings, Ella opened the clasp. The lid creaked and the musical box, which had once played ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’, was silent as Ella picked out a small black box.

She slipped it into her pocket and left the room, stopping to pick up an old fire engine from the floor and put it on a shelf.

Back in her room, she pulled the box from its packaging. She did not read the gift tag, which said, ‘To Ella. With profound apologies and sorrow. All my love, Roberta.’

Inside lay a Weiss pinwheel brooch, each spoke covered in black rhinestones, their glittering darkness reflecting the heaviness inside her, each spoke like a dagger that was aimed at her heart by her sister and Michael Hannigan. She still could not forgive them for what they had done.

A blackness enveloped her, as dark and deep as the stones on the brooch. She lay down on her bed, staring at the wall, the floral wallpaper dancing in front of her.

She must have slept, because when she woke it was dark and the house was quiet. Her head ached, but her mind was clear. She took the pinwheel brooch and walked over to the window, pulling her cardigan around her against the night chill. Opening the window, she threw the brooch with as much force as she could muster. It must have landed in the rhododendron, because she heard a faint swish of the broad, shiny leaves as they bounced the brooch to earth.

Debbie was already in the kitchen eating breakfast when Ella made it downstairs the next morning.

‘You look as if you need a strong coffee. My dad swore by it after a bad night.’

‘Did he drink?’

‘There were bad nights, I guess, when he couldn’t get my mother out of his head.’

‘I think I will have that coffee after all.’

Ella took out her mixing bowl and took down the self-raising flour.

‘I have booked the flight.’

Ella, who had been tying up her apron strings, stopped, her hands suspended behind her back.

‘Maybe we could go to see Sister Consuelo first.’

‘I don’t want to, Ella. I had a long think about it last night. I want to call a halt. It’s time to concentrate on what’s next.’

She pushed a mug towards Ella.

‘I don’t feel up to the coffee. It is a waste after you went to the bother to make it.’ Ella shovelled her hand into the bag of flour and took out a huge scoop. She let some of the flour drift over her fingers as she watched it slip into the baking bowl.

Debbie switched on the ovens; the low humming sound filled the kitchen.

‘I was thinking of a different cake for every day of the week.’

‘You should have an Internet presence.’

‘What we are doing is more than enough.’

‘Do you know that many cake recipes?’

‘Variations on a theme, I suppose.’

‘I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to.’

Ella would have told her she had not, but Iris burst in the back door, letting a cold breeze whip at the tablecloth and around their ankles.

‘Ella, I have to go. The solicitor rang. He gets the impression that bastard husband of mine is going to give in, so I have to hightail it to Gorey.’

‘But it is likely to be busy this morning.’

‘I have to go, Ella; I have got to get him to agree to a settlement before he changes his mind. Seemingly he has hammered out something with his brother and the bank. I could get my house back.’

‘But—’

‘Ella, you might be getting rid of me. Don’t tell me you don’t want that.’

Ella smiled. ‘Give it a few days and it will be just myself and the quiet sister again,’ she said tightly, standing up and reaching for the white bag of sugar.

Iris did not answer but ran off to change into her good clothes. Debbie went out the front to set the outside tables. She was hauling two chairs at a time across the grass, wet with dew, when her phone rang.

‘Miss Kading, it is Mother Assumpta from the Order of Divine Sisters, Ballygally Convent. I hope I am not disturbing you.’

‘No, not at all.’

‘Miss Kading, I know how pressing your situation is and I wonder could we meet in private. Would tomorrow suit?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘2 p.m. If you don’t mind, could we meet somewhere other than the convent? I was thinking maybe the Valley Hotel on the N11.’

‘That sounds good.’

Ella was standing at the front door, beckoning to her.

Debbie put away her phone. For the moment she wanted to keep the meeting to herself; she was not ready to have the reason why Assumpta wanted to meet picked over and analysed. Ella’s fussy nattering gave her the perfect excuse not to tell her.

‘Is there something wrong? We are way behind this morning. I don’t know what has got into us all. It is lemon and poppy seed cakes today. I am sure Muriel will have plenty to say about it when the seeds get stuck in her dentures. Will you set up the coffee machine and set the tables upstairs?’ Ella whipped inside to pull her cakes out of the oven before Debbie had time to answer.

For the next two hours, each was busy with the chores that had to be completed before opening. The smell of baking wafted through the house and the coffee machine gurgled, so that when the first customers came the Ballroom Café was functioning normally. Roberta came to the door twice and peered in as if looking for somebody, but she said nothing to Debbie. When she came across Ella in the front drawing room, where she had retired to sit and compose herself for ten minutes before the café opened, she walked across and handed her a note.