The Restaurant Page 21

  ‘Ten. About that.’

  ‘He has the look of a collie about him.’

  ‘He’s a bit of everything, as far as I know. Not a lot of pedigree going on.’

  She rewards him with a smile that doesn’t last. ‘Bill,’ she says, in a new voice. ‘I have to ask you something.’

  No. Don’t ask. Please don’t ask me.

  ‘Why do you not come to the restaurant any more? Was it something I said, that day in the cemetery?’

  ‘No,’ he lies. He’s always been a useless liar. He can feel the heat in his cheeks. ‘It’s nothing you said. I’ve just been … busy with various … stuff. Work, and that.’

  He can see the doubt in her face. An idiot wouldn’t believe him. ‘I’d hate to feel that I’d upset you in any way—’

  ‘You haven’t upset me.’

  ‘You’re not mad about anything?’

  He finds a smile. ‘Not mad, no.’ If she only knew. If he could only tell her.

  ‘Well, that’s a relief.’ She dips her head to focus on Sherlock again, causing her hair to tumble forward. She lifts a hand to sweep it back. ‘It’s just that, well, the thing is, I might not be here for … Well, there’s a chance I’ll be moving away,’ glancing up, finding his gaze, ‘and I’d hate for you not to come in again before that happens.’

  He feels a swoop in his gut. ‘You’re moving?’

  ‘Well, it’s not … Nothing’s settled, or anything. It’s just a … a possibility. And it might not happen for ages. I just don’t know.’

  She’s moving. She’s leaving. Logic would say it was a good thing. Logic would point out that she’d be no more out of his reach than if she stayed in town, and having her move away meant there was no danger of bumping into her accidentally, like now.

  But logic doesn’t come into it. The thought of her not being around any more is unconscionable.

  ‘Where?’ he asks. ‘Where are you moving to?’

  ‘Well, it would be Dublin – but like I say, it might not be for a long time.’

  Dublin. No. ‘What about the restaurant?’

  ‘Well, I’d have to sell it. I don’t see how—’

  ‘You can’t,’ he says.

  She tips her head a fraction to the side. Says nothing.

  ‘You can’t move away. What about all the people who have nobody to eat with? You can’t just – you can’t just desert them.’ Stop talking, his horrified inner self commands, shut your mouth – but he doesn’t stop, he shuts nothing. ‘They’re depending on you. You can’t just walk away from them.’ Every word makes him sound more ridiculous and pathetic. He hears it: so must she.

  He comes to a halt. They regard one another. A laugh floats out from behind one of the surgery doors. The receptionist sneezes. ‘Pardon me,’ she says, without looking up.

  ‘I don’t want to close it,’ Emily replies then, in a small voice. ‘Really, it’s the last thing I want, but I have to … think of the future.’

  The future. His future without her. Her future with someone else, with second-chance man.

  ‘Bill Geraghty?’

  He turns to see the vet beckoning him in, the owner of the tiny pups coming out without them.

  ‘Will you come back?’ Emily asks. ‘To the restaurant.’

  He gets to his feet with his bundle. ‘Not much point,’ he says, ‘if you’re moving on,’ and her face changes, and immediately he wants to punch himself in the head. He walks away, his heart in his boots.

  He tries and fails to push her from his mind while the vet examines Sherlock. He’d forgotten precisely how pretty she is, how beautiful her eyes, her hair, her everything. Why did he say that, how could he be offhand, so dismissive?

  He becomes aware that the vet is speaking. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Has he thrown up? Does he have diarrhoea?’

  ‘Not that I saw, but I didn’t check outside.’

  ‘I’m guessing stomach bug. His vitals are normal and I don’t feel anything iffy, but I’d like to keep him here overnight, see how he is in the morning. If there’s no improvement, we’ll do an X-ray. That OK?’

  ‘Fine.’ He’d had no idea there were overnight facilities in the clinic. ‘Will I call you, or …?’

  ‘We’ll give you a ring when we know more. Keep your phone near you tomorrow.’

  He prays for her to be gone from the waiting area, and for once his prayer is answered. He drives home with his empty towel and lets himself into the darkening house. He stands in the hall for a second, listening instinctively for the clicking of claws on tiles before he remembers. The silence seems absolute, even though Sherlock, in the ten years that they’ve had him, has barked a total of about three times.

  He flicks on the hall light. He catches sight of himself in the mirror. He frowns and steps closer – and discovers that his face is covered with tiny cream spots. Wonderful. The icing on the damn cake. Your face looks funny, the small girl at the vet’s said, and he thought his broken heart must have been showing on it. Emily didn’t comment, or Eoin, even though they must have seen the spots. The vet said nothing either. Everyone very polite, apart from the no-filter child.

  His doorbell rings, startling him. Emily, he thinks, his heart giving a leap. He’ll say sorry, he’ll call himself a fool and beg her to forgive him. And then he realises that it couldn’t be Emily, because she doesn’t know where he lives. He opens the door to find Mrs Twomey on the step.

  ‘Bill, I saw you earlier bringing your dog away, and now you’re back without him. I hope nothing is wrong.’

  She never misses a thing. She must spend her day positioned behind the net curtains. But she’s concerned enough to leave her house and ring his bell. Tonight, that will do.

  ‘He’s being kept in. They think stomach bug.’

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t sound too—’ She breaks off to peer closely at him. ‘Bill, what on earth is that on your face?’

  ‘Paint,’ he says, stepping back. ‘Come in.’

  He makes tea and puts biscuits on a plate, despite her protests. She eats three, and tells him about the time Toto, an old dog of theirs, chewed in his puppyhood through the television cable just as they were about to tune in for the Eurovision. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but it was the year Johnny Logan won.’

  ‘First or second time?’

  ‘Second, I think.’

  He tells her about painting the nursing home. She tells him of an aunt who, twenty years earlier, attempted to climb from the window of her nursing-home bedroom, convinced in her dementia that she was a teenage girl again, and bent on escaping to a dance.

  He makes more tea.

  ‘Tomorrow would be our fortieth wedding anniversary,’ she says, halfway through her fresh cup, ‘mine and Harry’s’, and the talk turns in that direction. Bill tells her of his own wedding day, when the rain never stopped, and of the upcoming nuptials of his nephew in England. Mrs Twomey tells him of a wedding in the town that never happened. ‘A few years ago this would have been, just before I retired. A neighbour of a woman I used to work with, her fiancé didn’t show up at the church on the day. Poor girl never saw it coming. Someone told me she’s since opened a restaurant. I haven’t been to it – I’m not much of a one for eating out.’

  Bill drinks his tea. It’s Emily, it has to be. Deserted on her wedding day: what kind of a man would do that to a woman? But now they’re back together, and she’s planning to move to Dublin, which means he must work there. She’s giving up everything for him. Even if they really hurt you, should you trust them again if they tell you they’re sorry? she’d asked Bill.

  ‘I mustn’t take any more of your time,’ Mrs Twomey says, getting to her feet. ‘This was nice, Bill. It gets quiet on your own, doesn’t it?’

  Later, scrubbing his face until it hurts, scraping paint from under his nails, the possibility occurs to him that Mrs Twomey is lonely. Does she have friends? He has no idea. She and Betty got on – they’d have regular chats over the hedge. Maybe she’s still in contact wit
h people she worked with, other nurses. Early sixties he seems to remember, when Harry died, so now she’s close to seventy, if she hasn’t already hit it.

  What’s her first name? Betty must have mentioned it, lots of times. It takes him a while, but he finally arrives at Carmel. Funny that he knew Harry as Harry, but she was always Mrs Twomey.

  Funny too, how people can live side by side for years, for decades, how they can experience triumphs and endure tragedies in such close proximity, with just a few metres – a side passage, or sometimes nothing more than a shared wall – separating them. Funny how lives can run on parallel tracks, how they can intersect briefly every so often but never really connect on any but the most superficial level.

  He thinks of how a father can yearn for the return of a lost child for weeks and months and years to no avail, how tears and pleas are equally useless tools when pitted against addiction.

  He thinks of how a man can love a woman with his heart and his soul, and how she can be utterly unaware of it. He considers the two women who between them take over most of his waking thoughts, and the appalling truth that they are both out of his reach, both denied to him.

  He steps from the shower and pats himself dry. He towels his hair roughly and pulls his fingers through it. He finds a T-shirt and boxer shorts and goes to bed. He thumps his pillow and turns onto his side and closes his eyes.

  An hour later, still wide awake, he pushes back the bedclothes and fumbles for the switch of the bedside lamp. He sits on the side of the bed for a bit, yawning and rubbing his head, looking at his bare feet on the blue rug that Betty bought the week before she went to her doctor with a cough that wouldn’t go away.

  At length he goes in search of paper and a biro. He sits at the bureau in the corner of his room and draws down the hinged top.

  He puts the biro to the page.

  Dear Christine,

  My only child, my precious girl. You lit up my life when they put you into my arms twenty-five years ago. I was unbelievably happy at the sight of you. I was also terrified I’d drop you and you’d break – but I didn’t, and you didn’t. It took over sixteen years for you to break, and when it happened, I broke too.

  I’ll always be your dad. You’ll always be welcome in the house you once called home, but now I’m tired and I’m damaged, so I’m going to stop chasing impossible dreams, stop trying to fix my broken girl, and just go on loving her.

  Dad

  He turns to a fresh page. He writes again.

  Dear Emily,

  I’m writing to tell you that I love you. I’ve loved you from about my third visit to your restaurant. It might have been my fourth, I’m not sure. I just know that I walked in one lunchtime and you smiled hello, and I knew that my bruised heart had surrendered again.

  I understand that you don’t love me back. I get that I’m too old for you, and that you love someone else. And even if those things weren’t true I’d be no good for you, because I’m a mess, and pretty useless to anyone. And yet my feelings persist, and all I want is to see you, and be near you, and to watch you smile.

  I hurt you tonight, and I hate myself for it. I also hate the thought of you moving away, but it’s probably for the best. I’ll try to forget you, but I’m making no promises.

  I wish you a happy life.

  Bill

  He sets down the biro. He reads both letters once, and then rips them up and drops the pieces into the bin.

  He switches on his computer, and opens his email.

  Dear Claire,

  You were right, I was wrong. It didn’t work.

  No need to answer this, just wanted to let you know.

  John

  He presses send, and off it goes. He returns to bed, and eventually he sleeps.

  And the following morning, her answer is waiting in his inbox.

  Dear John,

  I’m so sorry.

  Please don’t lose heart. She will need you some day, I’m convinced of it.

  Your friend,

  Claire

  Astrid

  SHE’S SWEEPING THE BREAKFAST CRUMBS FROM THE kitchen floor when the doorbell rings. She checks the time and sees nine fifty. Too late for the postman, and Thursday is the wrong day for Pat, and she’s not expecting a supermarket delivery.

  A meter reader maybe, or someone trying to sell her a million television channels, or wanting her to move her electricity account elsewhere. Or it might be someone eager help her to find God, or Jehovah, or whoever they believe in. She always says no, as politely as she can, and still they keep coming. She sets the brush and dustpan against the wall and goes to answer it.

  ‘Hello,’ the girl says. Shoulders hunched, hands thrust into her pockets. Same oversized jacket, different trousers beneath, faded denim instead of corduroy. Grey canvas pumps, might have been white once upon a time. Hair ponytailed, not loose like before. Unsmiling.

  ‘Christine. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come to do the gardening,’ she says. No intense stare today. Looking somewhere to the left of Astrid’s elbow.

  ‘You’re over two weeks late. You didn’t show up, and you didn’t let me know why. I know you have my number. Your father told me he’d given it to you.’

  ‘I lost it. Sorry.’

  A lie? The truth? Does it even matter? ‘In that case, you should have sent someone to tell me you couldn’t come. It’s not good enough. You really should have let me know.’

  ‘… Sorry.’

  She looks pitiful, so thin and pale. Should Astrid send her away? She’s sorely tempted. But ten euro has already been invested – and she’s here, she’s come back. Astrid decides to focus on that, and let the rest go. Everyone deserves a second chance.

  She steps aside. ‘Come in,’ she says. ‘Better late than never, I suppose. You can do two hours, as we discussed.’ Hard to imagine that she’ll last two hours: she looks on the point of collapse.

  They walk again through the hall and the kitchen to the patio. ‘You can start by clipping that hedge. It needs a good tidy-up all round, top and sides. You’ll find everything you need in the shed, clippers and a rake and a wheelbarrow. You can gather the clippings in the barrow and wheel them around to the brown compost bin at the side of the house. It won’t all fit in, but do what you can, and I’ll give you bags for the rest. There’s a stepladder too, if you need it.’

  Christine nods, her eyes fixed on the hedge.

  ‘Is there anything you want before you start? A glass of water or a cup of tea?’

  ‘No … thanks.’

  ‘Right. I’ll call you when the two hours are up. Please knock on the door if you need to use the bathroom, or anything else.’

  ‘OK.’ The girl moves off towards the shed, still wearing her enormous jacket. Go inside, Astrid orders herself. Leave her be. She’ll do better when you’re not watching her.

  Back in the kitchen Astrid finishes sweeping the floor. After that she descales the kettle, washes and polishes the entire contents of the cutlery drawer, wipes down surfaces that don’t need it, cleans the fridge. Avoiding the window and the patio doors, determinedly ignoring whatever may be happening beyond them.

  As she replaces the fridge contents – milk, cheese and yogurt, the second half of the chicken stew she ate last night, jars of apple jelly and chutney – she decides she should offer some kind of sustenance when the two hours are up. The girl looks like she hasn’t had a square meal in months.

  She can have the remains of the stew that Astrid was planning to eat this evening. It’s no sacrifice: there are more of Pat’s offerings waiting in the freezer, all of which can be heated from frozen.

  She moves into the sitting room, leaving the doors open in case of a knock from the garden, and puts Wagner at a low volume on the record player. She finds her crossword book and makes a start on a new one, but her concentration fails her, and the clues she normally manages to solve remain impenetrable.

  She takes her knitting from the basket by her chai
r and resumes the scarf in a burgundy shade that she started a couple of weeks ago for the nice boy who delivers the local paper. She thinks the colour will suit his red-brown hair. She’s a slow, plodding knitter, her fingers not as cooperative as they used to be, but if she puts her mind to it he should have it by Halloween.

  At length she returns to the kitchen and lights the oven and puts the stew in to reheat. Just before twelve, the savoury smell beginning to drift about the kitchen, she makes herself a cheese sandwich and plugs in the kettle, and sets the table for two. She opens the back door and steps onto the patio.

  Oh no.

  Parts of the hedge remain untouched, with the same wild straggling growth as before. Other sections have been hacked, attacked, with gaping holes where growth should be. The clippers sit on the grass as if flung there, blades open. Leaves and twigs litter the lawn. The rake leans crookedly against the hedge. There’s no sign of the wheelbarrow.

  Christine lies on her back in the centre of the garden, arms and legs akimbo. Her jacket has been tossed nearby, along with some kind of navy woollen garment. Her cheap-looking canvas shoes have been similarly discarded. The soles of her bare feet tilt outwards, and are dark. Her hair has come loose.

  She could be a child, Astrid thinks, lying in such an abandoned way, surrendering herself completely to the earth. How stick-thin her arms are, exposed without her outer clothing, covered now by just a bottle green cotton top whose sleeves have been pushed above her elbows. How lean every part of her is, no breasts to speak of, stomach hollow, hip bones jutting beneath the light fabric of her jeans.

  Could she be suffering from anorexia? Wouldn’t it explain her undernourished appearance, and perhaps the trouble between her and Bill too? Anorexia, the deliberate denial of food to the body, would perplex and torment any father, would have him desperate to find a solution. But could Bill really have been so delusional as to consider Christine capable of physical work?

  Astrid steps off the patio and crosses the lawn. As she approaches the prone figure, her eye is drawn to a red mark in the exposed crook of the girl’s left inner elbow. Has she scratched herself on the hedge?