The Kinsella Sisters (3 page)

‘What! I was conceived in a derelict cottage?’

‘No. You were conceived under an apple tree in the orchard. I remember there was a full moon that night and—’

‘Ew
, Ma! Too much information!’

‘Sorry I’ll shut up.’ Río returned to her bureau, absently leafed through an old notebook, then lobbed it onto the rubbish heap. Kneeling down and reaching randomly for something else to trash she said: ‘You should do this, Finn, in your room. Declutter your life. Isn’t it about time you got rid of a load of your old computer games?’

‘Funny you should say that. I was just thinking it was about time for me to do a blitz. I’ve been doing some thinking, Ma, and—’

‘Oh, look! One of your old school reports. Listen to this: “Finn is a popular and outgoing boy. However, he tends to concentrate overly on the physical aspect of his education. This is, unfortunately, to the detriment of his academic work, at which he could be very successful if he applied himself more rigorously.” I used to get that sort of thing in my school reports too. “Could do better. Must try harder.’”

‘Ma?’ Getting to his feet, Finn swept his hair back from his face, and the gesture reminded Río–as it always did–of his father.

‘Mm-hm?’

‘Carl’s decided he’s going to do the round-the-world thing this year.’

‘Good for Carl. When’s he going?’

‘In about three weeks.’

‘And he’s going for a whole year?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’ll miss him. What do you fancy for dinner this evening, by the way? Or maybe we should forget about cooking and head down to O’Toole’s for chowder? My treat.’

‘I hadn’t really thought about it. You see, Ma, the thing is that Carl’s asked me to go with him.’

Río paused in her perusal of a mail-order catalogue. ‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. And I’ve really been thinking about it. It would be a really amazing experience, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes. It would.’

‘He’s–um–planning on hitting Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, South America…’

‘That’s going to cost a lot of money.’ Río turned a page automatically. A garden gnome that was great value at only €22.99 winked up at her with unseemly cheerfulness. How could it wink at her when her world was about to cave in?

‘Well, yeah. But there are ways of doing it on the cheap. You can get a ticket with a certain amount of stops on it, and it works out pretty good, depending on how many stops you take. It actually costs less than you might think. And I’ve been saving.’

Río wrenched her attention away from the gnome and forced herself to meet her son’s eyes. ‘You were saving up to go to college, Finn. I thought that’s what we agreed.’

‘I’m sorry, Ma. But I don’t want to study Marine Biology. I want to dive.’

‘But a degree in Marine Biology can help you as a diver. It can—’

‘Ma–I’m not an academic. I’m a hands-on kind of guy. I don’t want to pootle about underwater collecting specimens for analysis. I want to dive deep, I want to dive hard, I want to experience—’

‘You sound like some stupid slogan on one of your dive T-shirts.’

There was a silence, and then Finn said, ‘Shit, Ma. Are we going to fall out over this?’

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’ Río chewed her lip, hating herself. ‘I don’t mean to rain on your parade, Finn–really I don’t–it’s just that you’ve taken me a bit by surprise, that’s all’

Finn shuffled his feet. ‘You probably think that I haven’t put very much thought into this, Ma, but I have. It’s not like it’s going to be a holiday. We’ll pick up work as we go, me and Carl. There’s always work for Irish in bars, and we can help out in the scuba resorts we visit. And if I pick up enough work, I might be able to afford further training. Maybe even get my instructor-ship certification at last.’

‘Your big dream.’

‘My big dream.’

Río closed the mail-order catalogue and added it to the heap of junk. ‘Then go for it, Finn.’

‘You mean it?’

‘Yes, I do.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘If we were in a movie now I’d say something meaningful like: “Follow your dream, son. That’s the only thing that matters in life.” Blah, blah, blah…’

‘But we’re not in a movie, Ma. I want to know what you really think.’

‘It doesn’t matter what I really think.’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘OK. Here goes,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘This is what I think. I love you more than my own life, Finn. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. And because I was responsible for bringing you into the world, I am responsible for your happiness. At the very least I owe you that—’

‘But, Ma, I owe you too. I owe—’

‘No, no. Listen to me.
I
owe it to you to be happy because there is no point–no point at all–in bringing into this world a human being who is going to end up a miserable son-of-a-bitch who resents his mother for standing in the way of what he really wants to do and turns into a–a big seething ball of bitter and twistedness. Oh God, how crap am I at this sort of thing! Let me try again.’ Folding her hands on her lap, Río looked down, waiting for the right words to come. ‘I didn’t make you so that you could care for me in my old age, Finn,’ she resumed,
‘or because I wanted to mould someone in my image. I couldn’t have done that even if I’d wanted to, because you were always your own man, even as a toddler. And now that you’re grown, it’s time for me to start letting go. Oh!’ Río stood up briskly. ‘I’m sounding like a character in one of your dad’s schmaltzier pilots. This is where I should get out your baby pictures and gaze at them tearfully.’

‘Here.’ Finn held out his baby bootees. ‘Gaze at these, instead.’

Río laughed, even though she actually did feel very choked up.

‘You’ve always been able to make me laugh, you brat.’

‘Maybe I’ve missed my vocation. Maybe I should do stand-up.’

‘No. Being a stand-up is more dangerous than being a scuba-diver.’

Mother and son shared a smile; then Finn gave Río one of those self-conscious hugs that twenty-year-olds give their parents, patting her shoulder and depositing a clumsy kiss on her cheek before disengaging.

‘Thanks, Ma,’ he said.

And then the phone went.

‘Get that, will you, Finn?’ said Río, reaching for a packet of tissues. She wasn’t going to cry. She just needed to blow her nose. She had nothing to cry about. She had reared a beautiful, confident, gregarious son, and she had done it all by herself. She had
nothing
to cry about.

Finn picked up. ‘Hi, Dervla,’ he said. ‘Yeah. I’ll put you on to her.’

‘Dervla?’ mouthed Río, giving Finn a sceptical look.
‘Dervla?’

He nodded, and Río wondered, as she took the handset from him, if this was one of Finn’s jokes. What had started as a fissure, just after their mother’s death, had developed into a rift between the sisters as wide and unbridgeable as the Grand Canyon. Dervla rarely phoned, and if they happened to meet on the street they would cross to the other side to avoid each other–to the private amusement of the rest of the village. For two decades Río’s sister’s
preferred method of communication had been via terse reminders sent in the post or dropped through the letterbox. These billets-doux bore such legends as: ‘When was the last time you cleaned Dad’s kitchen?’ (A major chore.) Or: ‘Your turn to organise a chimney sweep for that fire hazard of a house.’ Or: ‘Please defrost Dad’s fridge. I did it last time.’ Since the advent of text messaging, the reminders had become terser still. ‘Lite bulbs need replacing.’ Or: ‘Washing machine broken.’

‘Hi, Dervla,’ Río said into the receiver, assuming a bright, faux-friendly expression to cover her confusion. ‘What’s up?’

‘There’s no easy way to say this, Río,’ came Dervla’s voice over the receiver. ‘But then there never is a good way to break bad news.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Río asked, antsy now.

‘Daddy’s dead,’ said Dervla.

The sisters arranged to have their father buried in the graveyard near the beach, where all the headstones faced the sea, on Friday the fourth of January. The notice Dervla had composed for the paper read: ‘Kinsella, Frank. Husband of the late Rosaleen, beloved father to Dervla and Ríonach, and grandfather to Finn. At home, peacefully’ Both observations were lies. Their father had not been beloved by either of his daughters, and, although he had died in the comfort of his own bed, there was no way it could have been a peaceful leave-taking.

‘I’m hardly going to put the real cause of death in the paper,’ Dervla had said waspishly, when Río questioned the wording. ‘Everybody in the village knows he was a complete lush—’

‘And everybody in the village will know exactly how he died, Dervla.’

‘I realise that. Of course word will get out about what really happened, but there’s no reason to announce to all and sundry via the obituaries page that our father choked to death on a lamb chop.’

‘I wonder why he was eating a lamb chop in bed,’ mused Río.

Dervla shuddered. ‘Let’s not go there.’

Dervla and Río were sitting on the sea wall opposite their father’s house, trying to pluck up the courage to go in. Since
Dervla had phoned Río with the grim news of their father’s undignified demise, the sisters had forged the kind of uneasy
entente cordiale
that is always necessary when families get hit by flak. Río had spoken to the local GP and the priest, while Dervla had spoken to Frank’s solicitor and the funeral parlour in Galway Together they had started to compile a list of other people who should be contacted personally, but had given up when they realised that there was actually no one outside of the village who would be in any way affected by their father’s death.

Dervla had noticed that Río was wearing red shoes today, which seemed a little inappropriate given the circumstances, but she’d resisted the temptation to be critical of her sister during this difficult time. She’d even managed a morose smile at Río’s latest alcoholic joke which went: ‘A drunk was walking through the woods when he found a skull. The first thing he did was call the police. But then he got curious and picked it up, and started wondering who this person was, and why this person had antlers.’

During their childhood, Dervla and Río had found that the best way to cope with their father’s alcoholism was by developing a sense of humour around it. The incident that had made them crease up most had been the evening they’d spotted Frank careering home along the coast road in his Volkswagen, clearly well over the limit. The car had lost one of its back wheels, which meant that sparks were ricocheting up from where the undercarriage was scraping the asphalt. Frank was hunched over the steering wheel–a manic expression on his face–and a garda patrol car was in hot pursuit. Dervla and Río had adapted ‘Three Wheels on My Wagon’ to fit the occasion, and for days afterwards simply humming the opening bars of the song had made them cry with laughter.

They’d even managed to make their mother laugh sometimes, and when the three of them started, they couldn’t stop. A musician friend had once remarked that the sound of the Kinsella women’s laughter had inspired him to write a ballad.

That had been Before Shane. When Shane Byrne entered their lives, everything changed.

Dervla had spotted him first, when he’d played Macheath in a student production of
The Threepenny Opera
in Galway, where she was studying Auctioneering and he was studying Photography. She had been blown away by Shane: she attended every production he was in, she volunteered her services backstage as an assistant stage manager, and she spent hours boring all her friends–including Río–about what a god he was. She’d even snogged him one memorable evening, when a friend of a friend had thrown an opening-night party. That had been the defining moment of their relationship: for Dervla it had been such a celestial experience that she couldn’t admit to herself that it might not have been quite so earth-shattering for Shane. But she was determined to make him realise how good they could be together, too infatuated to care that she was in danger of making a laughing stock of herself. When it came to Shane Byrne, Dervla had no pride left. And one night she decided she was going to bite the bullet and seduce him backstage, after the show.

But Río had got there first. Beautiful Río, gregarious Río, Río who had been their mother’s favourite and was beloved by everyone who met her. Río, who danced on the sand like the girl in the song, and who turned heads when she walked down the street, and who could fall out of bed looking like a young Brigitte Bardot. Río, who had landed an apprenticeship with a scenic artist because she painted so beautifully; Río, who looked adorable standing on a step ladder with a smudge of Crimson Lake on her nose; Río, who had invited Shane back to the house in Lissamore to take photographs, so that she could parade in front of him in her bird-of-paradise kimono just days before their mother died…

Dervla had never forgotten how she’d walked into the prop room that evening to find her sister and ‘her’ man in a hot clinch. Río had jumped like the guilty creature she was, then become
abject. Dervla remembered the halting sentences, the pleas, the lamenting: ‘Please understand…’ ‘It’s been agony…’ ‘We couldn’t help ourselves…’ ‘I beg you, Dervla…’ Dervla had listened stony-faced, without comment, watching her sister stew while Shane sat on the sofa looking bemused. Then she had turned on her heel and made a dignified exit. The sisters had barely spoken since, and the cold war had continued to the present day.

What had upset Dervla most had been that the betrayal had taken place a bare two months after their mother had died. Until then, she and Río had been a force united against a home life blighted by cancer and soured by alcoholism. When Río betrayed her, Dervla had never felt more alone in her life.

She’d moved out of the family home and landed a job in an estate agency in Galway city, forty kilometres away from Lissamore, determined to become the most successful, most highly regarded estate agent in the entire region of Coolnamara. Because, after all, bricks and mortar were the only things that could be depended upon. Property was the most solid, most tangible, most proven form of investment there was, and Dervla craved constancy in her life. Other women sought constancy in the shape of a husband and children, but Dervla knew that there was no such thing as constancy in families. Her daddy had disregarded her, her mother had abandoned her, and her sister had betrayed her. Her ultimate aim was to own a house so classy that it would announce to the world that, in terms of self-sufficiency, she–Dervla Kinsella–was at the top of her game.

And Dervla had achieved that ultimate aim. She had set up on her own, worked her ass off, and assembled a team of razor-sharp agents. Her name was writ large on ‘For Sale’ boards all over the Galway/Coolnamara region, many of which boasted ‘Sale Agreed’ or ‘Sold’ banners. She hadn’t found her dream house yet, but she had found its urban equivalent in a gleaming penthouse apartment in a newly fashionable area of Galway city.

‘You do realise that we’ll have to clear the place before the funeral?’ she said, resuming scrutiny of her father’s scuffed front door. Behind that door, she knew, lurked unspeakable chaos.

‘Oh God.’ Río started swinging a scarlet-shod foot. ‘Can’t we leave it until afterwards?’

‘Of course not. We’ll be having the wake there. When was the last time you visited Dad, incidentally?’

‘A couple of days ago. I brought him some chicken casserole.’

‘So you know what kind of state it’s in?’

‘Yes. Worse than Francis Bacon’s studio. I volunteered to clean up for him, but he told me to eff off, as usual.’

‘That’s what he told me when I last visited, bearing Tesco’s Finest lasagne.’

‘Did you bring him the lamb chops?’

‘No, thank God. Did you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, at least neither of us is guilty of patricide.’ Dervla gave her sister a grim smile, then swung herself off the sea wall. ‘C’mon, Río. Let’s get cracking.’

Leading the way across the road, she produced a key from her bag, and inserted it in the lock. Next door, she saw a net curtain twitch, revealing the sparkle of Christmas tree lights. She hoped that her neighbour had invited her father in for mince pies and mulled wine at some point over the Christmas period.

‘Mrs Murphy’s on our case,’ she observed. ‘We’d better say hello.’

‘Maybe she brought him the chops,’ Río said in an undertone.

Mrs Murphy emerged onto her front step, wiping her hands on her apron, and wearing a lugubrious expression. Dervla found herself wondering why her father’s neighbour had phoned her in her Galway office with the news that Frank had popped his clogs, rather than phoning Río, who lived just down the road. But when she saw Mrs Murphy glance reprovingly at Río’s red shoes, she concluded that it must be because Río had always
been seen as the less responsible of the two sisters. She, Dervla, was the sensible one, while Río was the flibbertigibbet. Dervla was the level-headed career girl, Río the boho vagabond. It made sense to contact Dervla rather than the giddy one on an occasion that required a degree of gravitas.

‘I’m sorry for your trouble, girls,’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘Will you come in for a cup of tea?’

Dervla returned her doleful smile. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Murphy, but we’d best be getting stuck in to cleaning.’

‘I managed to tidy the upstairs a little, after your father…you know.’

The sisters nodded solemnly. ‘Thank you so much. And thank you for taking care of the removal and—’

‘I would have done the downstairs too,’ resumed Mrs Murphy hastily, clearly reluctant to dwell on any morbid particulars, ‘but my back started giving me gyp. I’m sorry I couldn’t have been of more help.’

‘No worries, Mrs Murphy. You’ve been a real trouper. Daddy couldn’t have wished for a better neighbour.’

It was true. Frank could never have survived without the help of Mrs Murphy and the other denizens of the village who ‘kept an eye’ on him. The care in the community myth actually existed in Lissamore, where twitching curtains were less a sign of nosiness than of a genuine concern. The villagers looked out for each other, and nobody had been ‘looked out for’ more than Frank Kinsella. People dropped food in to him, they saw him safely home at closing time, and every so often somebody would slip into his house while he slept, to wash dishes or clothes or floors.

Río and Dervla did their bit too, of course, but both drew the line at moving in with Frank. There was no way Dervla would consider leaving her penthouse and her business in Galway, and it would be unfair to expect Río–who’d already reared one child single-handedly–to become full-time carer to a father who was more demanding and irresponsible than any adolescent.

‘I’ll bake a fruit cake for the wake,’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘And if there’s anything else I can do, just ask.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’ll be hard, living without your da next door.’ To Dervla’s astonishment, the elderly lady’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’ll miss him, so I will. He had the gift of the gab, did Frank. Better than the radio, he was, with those stories of his.’

For the first time, Dervla entertained the possibility that people had actually
liked
her father. She had dreaded it when he’d launch into one of his stories when she had brought friends home as a child. Frank would go on and on about some mythical Irish hero of the Celtic twilight, or sing rebel songs, or spout Yeats’s poetry endlessly while her mates tried hard not to yawn or snigger.

From inside the house came the musical intro to the lunchtime radio chat show.

‘Oh!’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘I’d better get back in. They’re talking about rip-off funeral parlours. Oh! Saving your presence.’

Bowing her head, she made a tragic little
moue
before disappearing back behind her front door.

‘Poor Mrs Murphy,’ said Dervla, turning to Río. ‘She’s genuinely gutted about Dad.’

‘Do you think she fancied him?’ Río asked.

Dervla considered the possibility of Mrs Murphy fancying her father. ‘I dunno. I suppose he was a handsome dude once upon a time, in a Rabelaisian kind of way.’

‘He certainly knew how to charm the ladies. Didn’t he sweep our poor mama off her feet? How long did they know each other before they got married? Two months, or something stupid?’

‘Two months and two days, Mam told me. Kinda proves the point about marrying in haste and repenting at leisure.’

‘She certainly did that. I wonder why she never divorced him?’

‘Divorce wasn’t allowed, in those days.’

‘I guess they were just young and foolish. I guess we all were once.’

There was a pause as the sisters regarded each other. Then Dervla turned the key, pushed open the door to their father’s house, and stepped over the threshold. To the right of the hallway, the sitting room was in darkness. She flicked a switch, then strode into the room and yanked open the curtains.

Sunlight made a reluctant entrance through grimy window-panes, and dust motes could be seen spiralling sluggishly around the room. The curtains had evidently not been opened for some time.

‘Jesus,’ said Río. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘There’s a dead mouse somewhere. We may have to lift a floorboard.’

‘Ugh. You’re sure it’s not just rotting food?’

‘Sure. I’ve smelled enough mice corpses in my time. You wouldn’t believe some of the house-of-horror recces I’ve done. Let’s just hope it’s not a rat, and that it isn’t survived by its dearly beloved wife and children.’

The women stood in the middle of the floor and surveyed the room where, on rainy Sunday evenings, they had once played board games in front of the fire. In those days their mother would make sandwiches–chicken or lamb or beef left over from the roast they’d had at lunchtime–and sometimes as a treat they’d have marshmallows to toast, and then they’d watch the Sunday evening soap opera with Rosaleen, while Frank dozed under the newspaper. And then they’d pack their school books into their satchels in readiness for the next day, and kiss their parents good night, and go upstairs to the big attic bedroom, which ran the length of the house, and tell each other stories about what their futures would be.