Chestnut Street (42 page)

But by the time Katie was sixteen she had stopped talking about them; possibly something in her mother’s fixed, polite smile of assumed interest rang false.

“How was Dad?”

“Oh he’s okay,” Katie would say with a shrug.

No information, no detail and slightly less interest.

It wasn’t long before Katie had other things to do with her time on Saturdays. Better things.

Like going out with her own friends. There were apologetic phone calls or texts to her father.

Always some very vague excuse or even “Sorry, Dad, tied up tomorrow,” which made him realize that she no longer cared about meeting him.

He visited Nuala at work.

Nuala was a nurse in a nearby hospital. It didn’t suit her to have visitors while she was on duty.

“Five minutes,” he begged.

“I’ll take a break,” she said wearily.

She took him to the end of the corridor, where there were some chairs.

“I see you’ve managed to turn her against me,” he said bitterly.

“No, Michael, I said nothing to her,” Nuala said quietly.

“Why else would she refuse to meet me? Don’t fool me, Nuala—I know the way you go on.”

“I don’t go on, actually, Michael. I agree I did when you left first, but now …”

“Now what?”

“Now it doesn’t matter what you do, honestly. It used to matter, but now I just wish you well and I don’t think about you at all.”

She spoke calmly; he seemed to believe her.

“So why then does she want to go off with her friends instead of meeting her father?” He was genuinely bewildered.

“Because she’s seventeen,” Nuala said.

“And you’re happy with this?” He had a concerned-parent face that annoyed Nuala greatly but she managed not to show any sign of it.

“I’m happy she has friends, yes.”

“I asked Katie to meet me on some other day in the week and she said she was busy with homework.” He was most aggrieved.

“Yes, she does study a lot during the week, which is why she appreciates the freedom of her weekends.” Nuala sounded mild and accepting.

“Do you have another partner, Nuala?” he asked suddenly.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you’re different somehow—you don’t cluck cluck cluck like a hen.”

“Oh, that’s good. Sorry, Michael, I have to go back to the ward.”

“What am I to do?” he asked.

She remembered that little-boy-lost look too.

“Lord, I have no idea,” she said and walked down the corridor.

“I saw your dad today,” Nuala said that evening.

“Oh, yeah?” Katie didn’t even look up from the magazine she was reading.

“He thinks I’m stopping you from seeing him.”

“Typical,” Katie said.

Nuala said nothing.

“I suppose you’re going to be on my case now, asking me to see him.”

“No, indeed. You’re seventeen—you decide what to do and who to see.” Nuala sounded bright and cheerful.

Suddenly Katie got up from her chair and embraced her.

“You are the best mother in the world. Sit down and I’ll make the supper.”

Nuala smiled to herself. Whoever had advised her somewhere along the line to say nothing had been so right.

Katie studied hard and was accepted in a teacher’s training college. She had a life crowded with friends and more study and practice-teaching.

She saw her father one weekend in four for ever-shorter times. She still lived at home with Nuala.

On the night of Katie’s graduation, she met Tom, and everything changed.

Tom was very charming: Nuala would admit that much.

He was good-looking too, and good company.

But her own husband, Michael, had been all these things once.

Katie was very taken with him. Soon after she met him, she explained that she would be getting her own flat. All this was said without any reference to Tom being on the scene. But it was as clear as day that Katie was in love, and that this was her chosen man.

Nuala knew that Katie had to leave home sometime but she didn’t want it to be with Tom.

She wondered why exactly she didn’t like him, didn’t entirely trust him. He seemed to be deeply smitten by Katie. He didn’t seem to flirt with other girls, and they had been together for months and they had never had a quarrel. He might well be a faithful husband or partner. Why did she think that he was not good enough for her daughter?

The night that Katie and Tom came in to tell her they were engaged was the night Nuala realized why she didn’t think he was the right man for Katie to marry. He was a man possessed by money and success and being in the fast lane. This was a dangerous road for her only daughter to go down.

Katie would spend a lifetime worrying and being anxious, waking up at night to wonder if this investment was safe or if that project was doomed.

Nuala had seen people like this over the years, people worried sick by money at risk, anxious about overinvesting, buying second homes.

It
did
seem the right thing to do; property would never lose its value. A lot of the nurses had bought very expensive homes and were paying huge mortgages. It would be well worth it in the end, they said; they would have something to leave their children.

Sometimes they tried to persuade Nuala to get herself a bigger place in a smarter part of town. It was so easy these days to get a loan from the banks; they were leaping over the counter trying to get you to take their money.

But Nuala had refused. She saved something every week but it was in a nice, safe deposit account.

She had little time for Tom’s schemes, all of which involved borrowing money to set up his own consultancy. There were so many people these days who
needed
advice, he said, and it would be a runaway success. Katie would leave her teaching job and help him in the office; it would be much more tax-efficient. They were putting a deposit on a really nice place—it was the bargain of a lifetime.

They were dying to show it to her. It was rather far away but then distances were nothing these days in a fast car. And they had a fast car.

The only thing, the only little thing, was that they needed a little help with the deposit on the house. All the money they had borrowed from the bank was geared for the consultancy. Tom explained it ruefully. He simply could not ask his own parents for any more help. They had already given so much.

He held his head slightly on one side.

Nuala had savings.

Every week she put a little money into her building society savings account. Over the years it had mounted up. It was for a rainy day. Nuala looked at all the hope and longing in Katie’s face.

The rainy day was obviously here.

“I can help you both with the deposit,” she heard herself say.

Tom bounded across the room.

“What a mother-in-law-to-be,” he said.

“It’s only a loan, Mum,” Katie said, her eyes shining.

“It’s a beautiful house, Nuala—you’ll love it—and only an hour’s drive away,” Tom promised.

It was indeed a beautiful house; it had three bathrooms if you called the shower room downstairs a bathroom. It had a patio with a barbecue, a kitchen that would not be out of place in a gourmet restaurant, a turning circle in the front, room to park five cars, at least.

It was a very smart address, and one hour and forty-five minutes away from Nuala’s house, whatever kind of car you were driving.

Nuala wanted to say a lot of things.

Like that they would be crippled by the mortgage.

Like it was too far away for her to visit or for them to come to her very often.

Like a young couple didn’t
need
such a home.

Like the price of houses might fall. What then? They would be left paying for a house that could never realize the amount of money they had paid for it.

But Nula said nothing like that.

She saw the way they stroked the house as if it were a big family cat, she saw the hope and the future in their eyes.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, and they hugged her tight.

So they moved in, and it was all too soon to plan the wedding because they were so busy and exhausted setting up the consultancy, entertaining possible clients, going to first nights and gallery openings and networking with the right type of people.

Nuala wondered when they would fix a date but she said nothing. She came to lunch in the big new house occasionally and her own house was always open to them.

Katie sometimes dropped in to Chestnut Street.

They would have a big bowl of soup, which Katie said was very comforting. She and Tom seemed to live on sushi and canapés these days.

Katie sounded tired. She missed teaching, but the business was everything; it had to be built up and they were getting top-scale clients now.

She began to talk about a big Christmas housewarming party they would have two weeks before the day itself. The invitations would go out early—it was going to be a hot ticket.

They would have a theme of black and lime green, all the candles and the linen and the ornaments on the Christmas tree in these colors.

“What on earth will I wear to the party, I wonder?” Nuala asked.

“Oh, Mum, you won’t come. You’d absolutely
hate
it, all kinds of awful people braying and shouting, and Tom and I will be so busy flitting around we won’t be able to … no, you’d really and truly be wiser to avoid it.”

Nula said nothing.

She did not say that since all her savings had gone into that house the least she could expect was to see the house being warmed.

She did not say she was disappointed, insulted or upset.

She clung to the notion that it was wiser to say nothing at all.

Her silence upset Katie.

“I mean you don’t
want
to come or anything, Mum, do you? Better come on a day when we can talk and everything?” Katie’s face was anxious.

Part of saying nothing was to avoid looking like a martyr, so Nuala put on her happy face.

“No, sweetheart, it’s a relief, actually. I’d much prefer to go for a nice relaxed meal with just the two of you,” she said.

“Oh, Mum, I
knew
you’d feel like that—it’s just Dad that’s being a real pain about it all.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, he actually heard about the party from someone and says that he is insulted that he wasn’t asked. So of course we had to send him an invite. I
told
him like I told you what it was going to be like, but nothing will stop him—he’s coming and he will be
so
out of place.”

Michael telephoned Nuala at work.

“One cup of coffee on your way home?” he begged.

“One cup,” she agreed.

“When are those two getting married?” he asked when she sat down. His face looked tight and angry.

“Katie and Tom? Oh, when they can afford to have a big wedding, I imagine.”

“Is the house in her name?”

“I’m sure if you asked Katie she would tell you all this.”

“I never see her—she’s become impossible to find. Then there’s this party … you’re not going to it, I gather.”

“It’s not really my sort of thing.”

“What
is
your sort of thing? I’ve never known.” His face was red, as it always was when he was picking a fight.

But these days she didn’t try to placate him.

“You never tried to find out,” she said mildly, without accusation. Just as if it were a fact.

“So tell me now.”

“I suppose I want a peaceful life and I want our only child to be happy and make the right choices.”

“So you lend them money to buy that white elephant of a house?” he said with a sneer.

“It’s what they want.” She was still calm, unfussed.

“We all want things we can’t have or shouldn’t have. That house is an unexploded bomb. Property is beginning to get shaky, houses aren’t getting their prices.”

“Did you invite me to have coffee with you to discuss the economy, Michael?”

“And that fellow’s job prospects are way out of line. There’s a recession coming; he’ll lose everything. I just want to know if Katie’s safe or if she’s tied into it all with him.”

“Well, ask
her
, Michael—please don’t ask me. I don’t know anything.”

“Are you sure you don’t have a partner or something? I have never known you so … I don’t know … so confident, so sure that you’re right about everything.”

“I’m off now,” Nuala said.

She thought about it on the way home. Saying nothing had certainly been the right way to go with Michael. In the bad old days she had ranted at him, begged him to change his ways; now she was cool and vague and said very little. It was working amazingly well. He would have come home with her had she shown the slightest encouragement.

But then she didn’t want that at all now.

But was it right to say nothing to Tom and Katie? That was the question.

There was a message on the machine at home.

Tom’s parents were popping in unexpectedly and there was nothing in the freezer, nothing they could offer them. They couldn’t get away from the office. Could Mum ever send round one of her marvelous supper dishes in a taxi?

It would be
so
marvelous.

Nuala found a beef casserole in the freezer and some spiced red cabbage. She put twelve small potatoes into a bag and called the taxi firm that Tom and Katie used.

There was an embarrassed pause.

“I’m afraid they no longer have an account with us,” the voice said.

“But they didn’t tell me?” Nuala was astounded. “I’m Katie’s mother. I know they are great customers of yours—can you check again?”

“I have checked—they’re on stop.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just that there’s no account,” the voice said sympathetically.

“Like they haven’t paid the bill?”

“I have no idea,” the voice said.

Nuala found a local taxi man and paid him a small fortune to take the food across the city.

“This must be an important meal,” he said as he carried it into the back of the car.

“I think it’s deadly important,” Nuala agreed.

She sat by the fire and wondered.

Was this dinner a bid to get Tom’s parents to invest more?