‘Mother seems to have told you a lot,’ she said.
‘That’s what it’s for, the Memory Club.’
‘And she spoke about Harry?’
‘Oh, yes. A lot about Harry.’
Alice felt that people kept her out of having information until she didn’t want it any more. ‘Well, thank you for phoning, Maureen. I really appreciate you taking the trouble.’
‘It’s no bother,’ Maureen said. They paused. The call hadn’t gone well, but Alice didn’t want to appear angry.
‘I pray for them at morning Mass,’ she said. It was clear that
Alice needed to take strength at the mention of Harry.
‘Were you his child, Alice?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He got her pregnant.’
Each wanted to hang up, but they kept hoping for something more, a clever development in the conversation that would turn it into something nice. Maureen said her father was the person she missed all the time. ‘We used to run away to Glasgow together when I was wee,’ she said. ‘Just me and him and we had the whole day to ourselves. He used to take me to the perfume counter at Arnotts. We’d buy soap. And on the way back …’ She paused and Alice felt kindly towards her. ‘I always wished the train belonged to us and that we’d never have to get off.’
‘I had none of that,’ Alice said.
‘He called me Mog.’
‘I don’t think my father even remembered our names.’
‘Whose names?’
‘Ours,’ Alice said. She spoke reluctantly, feeling that she had gone far enough with Maureen. There was such yearning in Alice’s voice, as if she wished more than anything for things to be certain, but she knew they couldn’t be. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.
ALWAYS
It was only a fraction of the stuff from Atholl Gardens, but the linen was washed and ironed, laid out and tied with blue ribbon, looking like old stories that had yet to be told. Over the TV set Anne draped an Edwardian tablecloth that had come from Canada
after the death of her mother. She placed the ceramic rabbit on top of the tablecloth to hold it down and then she glanced at him while she moved between the bundles, unfolding the material and holding it up and tutting.
Jane, Jessie. Wait a minute. There was Grace. And Anna. Nobody came to the house in Glasgow once they were gone. It was just me up there. Before Luke was born I would build a fire because the pipes were frozen. My fingers used to get cold and they were stained with developer most of the time. I went to the camera club, that’s right. I used to massage that stuff into my fingers to stop the irritation. Camphor ice.
She didn’t notice her neighbour enter but didn’t flinch when she saw her. ‘Good heavens,’ Maureen said, stepping over the bundles. ‘Did you decide to have a wee spring clean?’
‘Stuff from the aunt-hill,’ Anne said.
‘I thought I heard a man’s voice earlier.’
Anne seemed distracted. ‘We were talking about camera work. I had to come back from New York and I didn’t want to come back, Maureen. I wanted to take pictures.’
‘You were very good.’
‘It’s in there somewhere.’ She pointed to the bathroom. ‘A lot of negatives and things like that.’ All of a sudden she seemed upset. She lifted a pillowcase and dabbed her eyes with it. ‘But Jessie used to read to them all in their beds at night,’ she said.
‘Who did she read to?’
‘The aunts.’
‘And could you get away sometimes and see Harry?’
‘I drove a car then.’
‘Oh, I wish I could drive,’ Maureen said. ‘I never took the test, you know. We took the train. My dad loved trains and we were
always on them. Away days, they called them. I was an only child. He used to squeeze my hand and say I was his favourite person. Just like that.’
‘I had a nice father, too,’ Anne said.
‘We were lucky.’
Anne looked up as if she suddenly appreciated Maureen. ‘I’ve always had good neighbours,’ she said.
Maureen put her to bed and then went to bring a cup of tea from next door. She placed a sleeping pill on the saucer, to see if it didn’t relax her, but it turned out Anne was fast asleep when she got back so she just took it herself. She felt Anne was on her own, really. She had all these people and all these stories but it didn’t amount to much. You have to be ready to put the past behind you and learn to rely on yourself.
That’s what I did, thought Maureen. I never needed a man to make me into somebody. No way. I could stand on my own two feet. But her mind changed as she handled the cold linen. She didn’t want to admit it, but she understood how it sometimes took another person to turn you into your better self. And that’s what happened with her and Anne. In the old lady’s company she felt more like the person she ought to have been. Anne’s interests touched Maureen, revealing a bit of her to herself. Maureen had just finished the audiobook of
Wuthering Heights
and she thought of it as she looked at Anne lying asleep. She couldn’t imagine unquiet slumbers for a woman with that kind of nature and all this linen.
Maureen lifted a nice glass from the trolley and poured herself a whisky before coming back and sitting by the bed. It sometimes confused Anne to hear Luke’s letters, but Maureen wanted nonetheless to read them to her in a good, clear voice, capturing the
words he’d written down. With the glass balanced on her knee, she took out a folded letter from the pocket of her cardigan.
I told all the boys to write letters so I better write one myself, eh? This is the one and only Captain Campbell here of the 1st Royal Western Fusiliers writing to you from the roasting desert.
As she read aloud the clock was ticking and the whisky tasted of smoke. The letter was full of news.
So that’s it, really. We’re in Camp Bastion and getting ready to push off. I’m not allowed to tell you where we’re going but it’s a good one. I’ve got the usual team here, Flannigan, Dooley and young Lennox, who spend all day playing ping-pong and slagging each other off. The major is here too and is doing his best for us, so if anything happens to me you’ll know it’s just bad luck. Main thing is I’m thinking of you. Keep smiling, Luke.
Maureen finished the letter and put it away. It said a lot for a young man that he could write a letter like that. Just to let the people at home know he loved them, just to do the right thing when it’s dangerous and he knows they must be worried with all the stuff they see on television. She poured another whisky and walked to the window. Half the things her own family said they probably didn’t mean. They were all right, really. You have to forgive people if you want to get along, yet it wasn’t the future she had expected with her children. She’d thought it would be holidays abroad and big dinners by the pool with all the women asking her opinion.
The darkness outside made a mirror of the window and the room looked back at itself as Maureen sat sleeping on the sofa
with the tumbler in her hand and the linen stacked beside her. She opened her eyes with a start and found the siren was sounding. She got up slowly and went over to wash the tumbler and place it on the dish-rack before going into the bedroom. ‘In the name of God,’ said Anne.
‘It’s the fire alarm,’ Maureen said. She unhooked Anne’s dressing-gown from the back of the door and brought it to her. ‘We’ll have to go into the courtyard and be counted.’
‘What is it?’
‘The fire alarm. This is every other day. I bet you it’s that Mr MacDonald again in flat 29.’
‘McDonald’s? Like the hamburgers?’
‘No, it’ll be toast. But a pest, Anne. Why he insists on making toast at midnight I’ll never know.’