The House by Princes Park (45 page)

Now Felix ran the chemist’s shop, but it was no longer a gold mine, Mrs McTaggart said sadly. A supermarket had since opened in the village, only small, but called a supermarket all the same. It sold aspirin and cough linctus, cold cures and corn plasters, all much cheaper than the chemist’s, so people only called on Felix when they needed a prescription or had ailments that required medicine the supermarket didn’t stock.

Felix brought her a cup of weak tea. ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ He stared at her intently from behind his pale-framed spectacles.

‘Just some toast,’ Ellie sighed. The look no longer bothered her. It was the way Felix looked at everyone, as if he was trying to see behind their eyes to some deep, inner part of them.

‘We’re having chicken for dinner,’ he said proudly. ‘Neila will be along in a minute to roast it.’

The chicken would be no bigger than a pigeon. Felix was finding it hard to survive on the profits from the chemist. There were times when Ellie felt quite sorry for him, which was odd, as she was inclined to regard inadequate people with contempt. But Felix never complained, never lost his temper, and had the patience of Job, as Gran would have said. She actually felt a sneaking liking for him. He wouldn’t be nearly so hard up, she thought
darkly, if he got rid of Neila Kenny, who’d been his father’s assistant. Perhaps he didn’t like to sack her because she was his girlfriend.

It was a strange relationship. She’d never seen them touch, let alone kiss. At first, she’d assumed they did those sort of things during the dinner hour when the chemist closed, but Mrs McTaggart said Neila went home for dinner and Felix treated himself to half a pint of Guinness in one of the local pubs.

Neila Kenny was older than Felix, a large, raw-boned woman of about thirty-five, with scrappy hair and a face that the most charitable person in the world would have to admit was ugly. The shabby, shapeless clothes she wore looked as if they’d come from a jumble sale. Her stony grey eyes regarded the newcomer with hostility and Ellie found her just a bit scary.

Her favourite person was Mrs McTaggart, who brought her home-made scones and girdle cakes, otherwise she would have starved – even the toast when Felix brought it would be horrid, either underdone or burnt. Craigmoss didn’t have a gas supply and the ancient electric cooker was unpredictable.

There was no knowing whose fault it was – Neila’s or the cooker’s – that Christmas dinner turned out such a disaster; the chicken almost raw, the potatoes hard, the Brussels sprouts soggy.

Throughout the meal, Neila subjected her to the third degree, asking questions about Liam that she’d asked before, as if trying to catch her out in a lie. Where had they got married? she asked suspiciously. Was it a white wedding? Did they have a honeymoon? Why hadn’t she gone with him to Geneva?

‘I’m expecting a baby in case you haven’t noticed,’ Ellie replied in answer to the last.

‘Your wedding ring’s awfully thin. Is it secondhand?’

‘Yes, it’s all we could afford.’

Ellie stayed put while Neila cleared the table. From the lack of spoons, she assumed there wasn’t to be a pudding and, so far, there’d been no sign of anything alcoholic to drink.

Neila retured with a tray containing three cups of tea and three mince pies. ‘I hope these are all right. I got them from the supermarket. They’ve been warmed up a bit in the oven.’

Ellie burnt her tongue on the mincemeat filling. She yelped and left hurriedly to get a glass of water from the nineteenth-century kitchen which led to a miserable, barren garden. She stood by the sink, dangled her tongue in the icy water, and thought how stupid she must look, how dreadful everything was, and how incredibly unhappy she felt.

‘Are you all right, Ellie?’ Felix enquired from the door.

‘Yes. Look, could we go to a pub for a drink? It’ll be my treat.’ She hadn’t used any of the money Liam had given her and was desperate to get out of the house.

‘The pubs are closed today. Anyway, the Craigmoss pubs don’t welcome women, so you couldn’t go if they were open.’

Time had never passed so slowly. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go except the village. After a couple of forays, Ellie decided never to go again. There was only a handful of shops; the supermarket which was pathetic, the chemist’s, a tiny post office, a shop that sold wool, sewing things, baby clothes, and adult fashions she wouldn’t have been seen dead in. People were quite friendly and stopped in the street to chat but, even so, Ellie had a feeling they didn’t believe she’d married Liam and hoped to trip her up. What would they do if they discovered the truth, she wondered? Stone her to death, beat her with sticks and drive her from the village, ban her from Mass?

A library van visited Craigmoss once a week and Ellie
spent most of the time with her head buried in a book. Felix insisted she visit the local doctor who examined her and advised she was putting on too much weight.

‘You need more exercise,’ Dr O’Hara said sternly. He made a note in his diary of when the baby was due – he would deliver it himself.

In order to keep sane, remind herself that a world existed outside the confines of Craigmoss, every few weeks Ellie caught the bus to Dublin, where she wandered round the shops, buying nothing, because it was important she keep Liam’s money for when the baby arrived and she could leave Fern Hall. Her only extravagance was a cup of coffee. She would sit in the restaurant, savouring the rich aroma, and try to plan ahead, impossible in Fern Hall where her brain felt as damp as the house itself.

But even with a clear head, it was hard to imagine what she would do once she had a child. Best not to think about it, see how she felt when the time came. If it was well-behaved, she’d buy a sling and carry it on her back and it wouldn’t stop her from having the adventures she had planned.

The weather improved and so did Ellie. The garden she’d thought barren suddenly sprang into life and the trees gradually became covered in pink and white blossom. She took a chair outside and read her book in the warm, spring sunshine. When Mrs McTaggart finished her work, they would have a cup of tea and a gossip.

Mrs McTaggart was a widow, comfortably plump, with red apple cheeks and three grown-up sons; two worked on farms nearby, and Brendan, the youngest, was in prison in Belfast.

‘He’s a terrorist,’ his mother said proudly. ‘He threw a bomb at someone. They still sent him to prison, even though it missed.’

‘I like the name Brendan,’ Ellie opined.

‘You’d like Brendan himself. He’s a lovely lad. He went to school with your Liam. They were a pair of imps, always in trouble.’

‘What was Felix like when he was young?’ She couldn’t imagine Felix being young.

‘Clever, far cleverer than Liam, if you don’t mind me saying. It was always planned he’d go to university, but when the time came, he couldn’t bring himself to leave, apart from which there wasn’t the money. Liam was only thirteen, Monica a year older, and his poor mam was being driven silly by his philandering dad. So, Felix stayed. All them brains, but what does he do but get a job in the Rose as a barman.’ Mrs McTaggart’s normally cheery face was sober.

‘That’s a shame,’ Ellie said encouragingly. It showed how bored she was that she found this stuff of interest.

‘It is indeed! Maybe he’ll get his reward in heaven, because he certainly hasn’t had it on earth. Five years later, didn’t his daddy go and die! By then, Monica had already left for London, Liam was ready for university himself, and Eammon Conway hadn’t been in his grave for more than half an hour, before his wife ups and parks herself on her sister, leaving Felix with the chemist’s and a house no one in the world would want to buy. Not to mention,’ Mrs McTaggart added darkly, ‘Neila Kenny.’

‘What’s Neila Kenny got to do with things?’ demanded Ellie. ‘And what did you mean by his philandering dad?’

‘I shouldn’t really tell you.’

‘Oh, go on. I won’t repeat it. I’ll not be here much longer, will I? It doesn’t matter what I know.’

‘It’s not that. It doesn’t seem right to spread gossip.’ She gave Ellie a reproachful look, as if spreading gossip was the last thing on earth she’d do. ‘As to repeating it, I doubt if a soul in Craigmoss doesn’t already know.’

‘If everyone already knows, then it’s not gossip.’

‘Do you think not? Ah, well, I don’t suppose it’d hurt.’
She was obviously dying to spill the beans. The truth is,’ her voice dropped to a whisper though the garden was empty except for themselves and a couple of birds, ‘Neila Kenny was Eammon Conway’s bit on the side for nigh on ten years.’

‘Never!’ Ellie was genuinely shocked. ‘You mean they slept together?’

‘I doubt if they slept much, but they definitely did the other,’ the woman said smugly.

‘For ten years! But this is Ireland! I thought you couldn’t get contraceptives. How could they have made love for ten years without having babies all over the place?’ Ellie was annoyed. She’d only made love for five minutes with the son of Eammon Conway before she was up the stick.

Mrs McTggart dropped her voice even lower. ‘Neila’s never had periods, so she can’t have babies.’

‘How the hell do you know
that
?’

‘Everyone knows everything about everyone in Craig-moss,’ said her informant, tight-lipped, as if she disapproved. ‘But you see what’s happened, Ellie? Felix has taken over his father’s woman, just as he took over his shop and his house. Now he’s stuck with her. One of these fine days they’ll probably get married, or so everyone expects. There’s some people, and Felix Conway is one, who are far too good for this world. That man’s a saint.’

LOCAL BUILDING FIRM GETS MUCH NEEDED HELPING HAND
, ran the headline in the
Echo
.

‘Crisis-hit Doyle Construction has been taken over by Medallion, the company responsible for some of the most impressive buildings recently erected in London and other major British cities. A spokesman for Medallion said all outstanding contracts would be honoured and completed on time. Matthew Doyle, founder of Doyle Construction, is being retained as Managing Director of the Liverpool arm of this prestigious company, though he will not have a seat on the board...’

Ruby laid the paper down with a sigh. Matthew hadn’t thought to tell her the good news himself – she assumed the news was good – he’d left her to find out for herself.

She sighed again because she knew this wasn’t true. Matthew hadn’t
wanted
to tell her himself. It wasn’t thoughtlessness on his part. He hardly came to the house nowadays, and then only when he knew there’d be other people there, at evenings and weekends. He’d stayed upstairs only for a few weeks before purchasing a one-bedroom flat in a modern block in Gateacre. Greta had helped put up curtains.

How she must have hurt him! Ruby cringed. But then all she’d done was hurt him since they’d met. He must love her very much, she thought, to have put up with it, with her, for so long.

But did he still love her now, she wondered? Perhaps
he’d given up. He’d been about to open his heart and in return had received the equivalent of a slap in the face. She wouldn’t be surprised if he hated her.

Ever since, on the few times they’d met, she’d looked at him in a different light, not as a friend, not as the man she’d once found so very irritating, but as a lover. She realised she would quite like to go to bed with Matthew Doyle, lie in his arms, marry him if he asked. The excited thrill she’d had when they first met, which had never completely gone away, returned with a vengeance. The half-spoken acknowledgment of his feelings had unlocked the key to her own heart, sadly too late.

One of these days, Ruby vowed, she’d get Matthew by himself and
force
him to say the words he’d been about to say on that brilliant February morning. He may have given up on her, but she hadn’t even started on him.

‘Forty-one!’ Greta grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. ‘I don’t
feel
forty-one. Do I look it?’

‘No way, sis.’ Heather was sitting on the bed, conscious that it was twenty years almost to the minute that she’d been in exactly the same position, doing the same thing, watching her sister get made-up on her birthday. Then, Greta had been twenty-one. ‘Do I look forty?’ she asked. It would be her own birthday in two weeks’ time.

‘Hardly thirty. Is this lippy all right?’

‘It’s a bit dark. You’ve got a thing about dark lippies. With your colouring, you need something lighter.’

‘You always say that.’

‘You shouldn’t ask my opinion if you don’t want it.’

Greta rubbed the lipstick off with a tissue and applied a paler one. ‘Does that look OK?’

‘Much better.’

‘What shall I wear?’ Greta got up and examined her half of the wardrobe.

Heather shrugged. ‘Anything’ll do. It’s only the two of us going for a meal.’

‘We should have had a party.’

‘Who would we have invited?’

‘Oh, I dunno. People from work?’

‘They’re all married,’ Heather said. ‘We’d have been the only single ones there.’

Greta took out a frilly chiffon frock and examined it critically. It would look good with her black velvet jacket. ‘I’m surprised Gerald isn’t coming for Easter,’ she remarked. ‘It’s only next week. Moira will be home from Norwich, and there’s Matthew, Daisy and Clint. We could have had a family party then. Mam would have been pleased.’

‘I’m not seeing Gerald any more.’

‘Why not?’ Greta span round so fast she nearly fell over. She looked at her sister with amazement. ‘I know you only started off as friends, but I thought it had got serious.’

‘It had,’ Heather said calmly. ‘He asked me to marry him.’

‘What did you say?’

‘At first, I didn’t know what to say. I thought about living in a strange town, leaving this house.’ Heather glanced around the familiar room. ‘I tried to imagine what it would be like, not seeing Mam every day, you, our Daisy. I wondered if Gerald’s children would grow to love me, and would I ever love them?’

‘And what did you decide?’ Greta sat on her bed and the sisters looked at each other across the small space between, as they’d done thousands of times in the past.