The Restaurant Page 13

  ‘How sad.’

  ‘We still do it though. We leave her door open so she can hear.’

  ‘Ah, that’s lovely. Poor thing. I never knew you could play the piano, Bill.’

  ‘I can’t really. I mean, I can plink along. They’re not fussy.’

  Heather reaches for more bread, and they move on to speak of other things. And when a box with Gloria’s name on it is delivered to the nursing home a few days later, they open it to find a brand new CD player, along with a selection of CDs – Songs of Percy French, Old Irish Favourites, The Great American Songbook – and no sender’s name or address on it.

  Gloria never married, never had children. She gets a once-in-a-blue-moon visit from a niece who lives in … Carlow, Bill thinks, or maybe Athlone, and a few cards at Christmas from other relatives, and that’s it. He can’t imagine which of them might be responsible for this gift.

  Not that it matters who sent it: what matters is that someone took the time to do it, someone who knew the situation, and set about making the world a little happier for Gloria.

  He brings it to her room. ‘Now look what’s come for you,’ he says, setting it on her bedside locker, bending to plug it in. ‘It seems you have a secret admirer, Gloria.’

  He holds up the CDs, one by one. When she sees the Percy French, her mouth moves and she lifts her good hand, so he puts it on, and they listen to Columbus’s sailing across the Atlantical sea, and Gloria settles back and looks at the ceiling and mouths along silently with the words, and before the first verse is over, a tear trickles from her left eye and runs into the pillow.

  The world, he thinks, is full of silent, wonderful kindnesses. He must remember this, and take heart from it.

  That evening, on impulse, he switches on his computer.

  Dear Claire,

  Thanks for your response. I didn’t expect you to have a magic solution, but I appreciate your kind words. It’s good to feel that someone has taken the time to think about my daughter’s situation. Not much has changed since my last email, except that I’ve had an idea and I wanted to run it by you. A woman I know is looking for someone to do some gardening for her, and I’m thinking of asking my daughter if she’d be interested. I figure there’s nothing to lose – and isn’t there a small chance that it might nudge her back on the right path? She used to like gardening, once upon a time. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.

  I went to a support group once. It wasn’t for me.

  Regards,

  John

  PS The world isn’t a bad place; today I was reminded of that. I’ll live in hope that things come right.

  Astrid

  SHE HAS A SUMMER COLD. IT’S DOING THE ROUNDS, coughed out from one victim to drift through the air and settle on another. It began a few days ago as an itch in her throat, a minor annoyance that prompted a bout of painful dry hacking every so often. Within a day she was sneezing, and the cough had deepened, and her voice sounded like it was travelling through her nose. Now it has taken serious hold.

  By night she must sleep, or try to, propped up with pillows that keep her airways tolerably clear; by day her head feels clogged and dull and achy. She sneezes often, and each sneeze hurts her chest, and feels like it’s draining more energy from her. She adds Vicks and hot lemon drinks to her shopping list, and a small bottle of whiskey, and she stays away from The Food of Love, where she might pass her cold around the big table.

  ‘You have a right dose,’ Pat says when he delivers her frozen dinners on Monday morning. ‘My wife is the same. Stay indoors, wrap up well’ – but the sun has finally got some heat in it, so she ventures onto the patio with the velvety soft sky-blue throw that her nephew – well, her husband’s nephew – and his wife gave her at Christmas. She sits swaddled, eyes closed, and listens to the chirruping of the birds as they flit and swoop in the sky above her bedraggled garden.

  When the sun moves lower and the air grows chilly she returns inside, replacing the birdsong with music of a different kind as she riffles through the collection of long-playing vinyl records she and Cathal put together over the years: Beethoven, Schubert and Wagner, Pavarotti and Ella Fitzgerald, Mario Lanza and Billie Holiday. She selects a Schubert sonata and places it carefully on the turntable of the player that was a wedding gift from her parents-in-law, one of the few items of furniture she took with her when she moved into town.

  It’s too large to fit with ease in her small sitting room, but she appreciates its rich mahogany tones, and loves how its generous speakers flood the room with sound – and each time she regards it, and uses it, she is afforded some satisfaction at the thought of how her mother-in-law must have grudged every penny it cost, how she must have hated having to buy anything at all that commemorated her son taking for his wife a girl who was neither Irish nor born into the Catholic faith.

  She lifts the arm and lowers it carefully to position the stylus on the vinyl, conscious of the permanent little tremor in her ninety-two-year-old hand. One small jump and down it goes, and she settles on the more upright armchair she bought four years ago, when hauling herself from the softer couch became too much of a struggle. All the adaptations, all the compromises old age demands.

  But the music, the music, the music. Filling the little room, pouring into her soul, the music of her childhood, the music of her ballet classes, the music no war could kill, no devil in jackboots and a black uniform could destroy.

  Later, before bed, she tips a measure of whiskey into a glass. She adds a teaspoon of brown sugar and drops in a lemon slice studded with cloves, and tops it up with boiling water. She sips, hacking weakly, throat burning, head aching. Sitting in bed, she pulls on thick socks and wonders if she will live to see her birthday in September. The thought is troubling – because life, for all its dark episodes, for all its trials and losses, can still throw up happiness, can still surprise and gladden her. Not ready to leave it, not yet.

  ‘That cough sounds like it’s gone to your chest,’ Heather says the following morning, when she arrives for her monthly cleaning of the windows. ‘I think you might need an antibiotic’ – so Astrid makes an appointment that afternoon to see her doctor, who scolds her for not coming sooner. ‘You could have got pneumonia,’ she says, ‘and then where would you be?’

  Astrid says nothing to this. No response is required, she feels, apart from a remorseful expression.

  The doctor writes a prescription. ‘Bed rest,’ she orders. ‘Up only when you have to. Can you arrange for someone to cook for you?’

  ‘I have wonderful neighbours,’ Astrid replies, which isn’t exactly answering the question, and not exactly lying either. Her neighbours, while they may indeed be wonderful – she doesn’t know them well enough to confirm or deny this – are out at work all day: she has no intention of asking any of them to cook her dinner. Anyway, she doesn’t need them, with Pat’s meals waiting in the freezer.

  ‘Ring me in a few days if you don’t start to feel better.’

  ‘I will, Doctor.’

  She obeys instructions, staying in bed and taking her tablets, rising only to attend to calls of nature, and to make cups of tea or Bovril, to boil the occasional egg, and now and again to peel an orange, Pat’s offerings after all proving too substantial for her compromised appetite, and the preparation of them, simple as it is, too much of a drain on her depleted energy.

  The days drift slowly by as she drowses and dreams, and listens to the rain when it returns, and remembers a red cardigan with fat wooden buttons she had as a child, and Opa’s teeth in a tumbler of water on the bathroom shelf at night, and the pattern of white seashells that danced joyfully around the hem of one of Mutti’s blue summer dresses.

  Heather phones. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Better,’ Astrid says, not sure if this is true, but wanting it to be.

  ‘Really? Did you see the doctor?’

  ‘I did. She gave me medicine.’

  ‘Good. Can I get you anything? Groceries, magazines, bag o
f chips?’

  ‘Thank you, dear. I’m fine. I have everything I need.’ She hangs up and closes her eyes and falls into another doze. She sees Gerhard’s model aeroplanes lined up on a shelf in his room, and the green bottle of Papa’s hair oil sitting on the window-ledge of the bathroom, beside the cracked china saucer with its little muddle of Mutti’s hatpins.

  Emily phones. ‘Heather told me you were sick. She gave me your number. Can I bring you any food? A little soup, maybe?’

  ‘Thank you so much, Emily, but I can manage.’ Emily has quite enough to do without tending a sick old woman.

  ‘Well, please ring if you change your mind. It’s really no trouble. And keep warm.’

  ‘I will.’

  And one morning she wakes feeling hungry. She inhales, and feels no catch in her chest. Her head is clear, her nose no longer stuffed. She removes her nightdress – how thin she looks in the wardrobe mirror, how worn out and pale! She steps carefully into the shower stall and stands beneath the warm water, taking slow grateful breaths. Not her time yet.

  Afterwards, still fragile, she eats a slice of buttered toast and drinks two cups of tea, and watches a robin flit along her hedge. She must find someone to bring the garden back: who knows how much longer she’ll have to enjoy it?

  When she returns to the restaurant, almost three weeks after her last visit, Emily rushes to greet her as she steps inside. ‘Oh great, you’re up and about again! How are you feeling? Are you better?’

  ‘I’m better,’ Astrid says, but still Emily hovers and fusses – and when Bill shows up a few minutes later, he’s equally concerned.

  ‘You’ve lost weight,’ he says. ‘You need building up. I hope you took a taxi here instead of the bus.’

  ‘I did.’ Their concern is touching. She’s glad she made the effort to come. As she does her best with the carrot and coriander soup, her appetite as well as her energy yet to return fully, she tells Bill of her renewed determination to find someone to reclaim her garden.

  ‘You mentioned someone who might be interested,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if you got a chance to ask her.’

  Bill drinks water. He tears a piece from his bread but doesn’t eat it. ‘I didn’t,’ he says. ‘At least, I did meet her, but … I must admit it slipped my mind, sorry. I’ll definitely ask, next time I see her.’

  Astrid likes the thought of a woman resurrecting the garden, coaxing it back to life. ‘I gave you my number and my address, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did. I’ll let you know, as soon as I can.’

  ‘I’ve called you a taxi,’ Emily says, when Astrid is paying her bill. ‘And take this,’ she adds, presenting Astrid with a small white carrier bag. Astrid looks inside and sees something wrapped in tinfoil. ‘Bread and butter pudding,’ Emily says. ‘It was on yesterday’s menu. Reheat in the foil for ten minutes.’

  She’s lucky, so lucky to have people who care. That evening, she manages a few mouthfuls of the dessert, after a small serving of Pat’s shepherd’s pie. In the days that follow she tells herself that she feels a little less feeble each morning. She takes the tonic her doctor prescribed to rebuild her, and eats what she can, and walks slowly up and down the road, and no trace of the chest infection returns, for which she is deeply grateful.

  At ninety-two she’ll take what she can get. She has her music and her friends – and soon, hopefully, she’ll have a garden to bring her joy again.

  Heather

  ‘MUM.’

  ‘Yes, sweetie.’

  ‘How come I don’t have a granny or granddad?’

  Heather looks up from the TV mag. ‘You do. I’ve told you about them. They’re my mom and dad, and they live in the States.’

  ‘Well, how come I’ve never met them then? Why do they never come to visit?’

  Heather sets aside the magazine. Here it comes. Might as well get it over with. ‘Well, I guess we didn’t always get along so well, honey. Not like you and me. So I figure it’s best for them to live far away.’

  She sees Lottie try to get her head around it. Not easy as an adult to figure out families, impossible as a seven-year-old.

  ‘But maybe I’d get along with them.’

  ‘Maybe you would.’ Of course she would – because how could they not love her? What was it Emily said? Something about them deserving a chance to be grandparents.

  She feels bad having lied to Emily about her dad buying the house for her. It just seemed easier than go into the whole trust fund thing, how it kicked in on her eighteenth birthday, how she’s as rich now as a small country. Don’t people treat you differently if they know you’re rich?

  ‘So maybe we could visit them,’ Lottie says.

  ‘Let me think about that one, sweetie.’

  And over the following days she does think about it, as she’s hosing the dirt from Brona McCarthy’s car, as she’s rolling a fresh coat of white emulsion onto Madge’s kitchen walls, as she’s shining her own mirrors and windows with balled-up newspaper.

  Is it time they were told? With Lottie’s eighth birthday approaching, should she finally come clean? What can they do only rant and rage, and refuse to acknowledge their granddaughter? She can’t see that happening – can she?

  She decides to go for it. She’ll put it in a letter though – it’s not something to be sprung on them in a phone call. That evening she waits till Lottie has fallen asleep. She opens her laptop and begins to type.

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  This letter has got some big news in it, so if you’re not sitting down just now, you maybe should. Don’t worry, it’s good news, or rather it’s got a happy ending. For the longest time I’ve wanted to tell you, but the truth is I had no idea how you’d take it, so I chickened out.

  She pauses to sip liquorice tea, trying to figure out what should come next.

  So I guess I must backtrack a little. I told you about Gerry, the lovely man I looked after when I got here first, until he died. I know you were mad at the time that I didn’t continue with my studies, but we’ve had that argument, so I’ll say no more about it. You know I bought Gerry’s house after my trust fund kicked in, and that I still live there. Well, all of that is true – but I left stuff out.

  More tea, some head-scratching. The tricky part.

  Here’s what happened. A few weeks after I started working for Gerry I met a man – well, he was just two years older than me, and I was still a week off my seventeenth birthday, so I guess you could say we were just a couple of kids really.

  Another pause. This is hard. Come on, she tells herself. Write the damn thing.

  The truth is I fell in love. His name was Manfred, and he was from Germany, working in a bar in town. We met in a park, we struck up a conversation at an ice-cream van, and very quickly we began a physical relationship – my first, in case you’re wondering. I thought he loved me too, I really did. When I got pregnant – I’m sorry, we weren’t as careful as we should have been – he told me no problem, we’d get married, but two nights later when I dropped by the bar where he worked, I was told that he’d gone back to Germany. I tried calling him, but I guess he’d got a new SIM card for his cell phone, because I couldn’t get through. I had no address, no way to reach him.

  Will they get this far without tearing it up? No way of knowing until they respond. If they respond.

  So to cut a very long story short, I had a baby girl when I was seventeen, and I called her Lottie – well, she started out as Charlotte, but she’s become Lottie. She’s the reason I could never go home, even for a visit, because I couldn’t find a way to tell you about her. But Mom, Dad, you should see her. First off, she’s a lot prettier than I was as a kid – she’s blonde like her dad, with the bluest eyes – but more importantly she’s such a great kid. She’s funny and clever and thoughtful, and just wonderful. She’s the best mistake I ever made, and you’re her grandparents, and I know I should have told you long before this, but I’m telling you now.

  She lifts her fingers from the keys,
suddenly drained. She rubs her face hard. Come on, nearly there.

  She knows about you, because I’ve told her she has a grandma and a grandpa in the US. She’d love to meet with you some day, but that’s up to you. I’m not sending a photo of her, not yet, not until you get used to the idea of her being there, and ask me for one. She’ll be eight next week, on the seventeenth, and for the first time she’s asked for a party at home rather than going on a day trip like we usually do. I’m going to fill our house with all her friends and make it a day to remember, because Lottie deserves the best celebration I can give her. It’ll be a tight squeeze – I think I’ve told you that my house would just about fit into your living room – but we’ll have fun.

  You’re digressing. Stick to the point.

  So there you have it. Lottie is my big news. I hope you’re not too disappointed in me. I never planned for this. I thought it would be years before I became a mom, but I’m not sorry about any of it. I don’t regret meeting Manfred, even though he broke my heart, because he gave me the gift of Lottie, who mended my heart and brought happiness back into my life, more happiness than I thought anyone could ever fit inside them.

  Maybe you’ll call, after you’ve had time to get your heads around this. I hope you will. I hope you won’t take it out on her if you’re mad at me – but if I don’t hear from you I’ll take the hint, and I won’t bother you again.

  Your daughter,

  Heather

  She prints it out and reads it through, frowning, trying to decide if it’s come out right. She imagines her mother taking it from the mailbox, wondering why her daughter is writing rather than calling. She sees her slitting open the envelope, standing in the kitchen, reading it just like this. Frowning like Heather too maybe, as she realises that there won’t be a rich or titled son-in-law anytime soon, nothing for her to brag about at dinner parties.