Homecoming (24 page)

‘Eventually, you will. I can think of very few people who haven’t talked.’

‘It works, right? It fixes people?’

Eleanor shook her head. ‘It’s not about fixing. It’s about making you able to live your life to the best of your ability. You need to understand yourself so you can survive. My job is to provide the insights from the information you give me. I am not your friend, I am your therapist.’

Eleanor felt herself grow weary. That was part of her problem now. After a lifetime of being on the sidelines of her patients’ lives, she was tired of that.

So long as Ralf was alive, it had been fine. It had never mattered that she’d been on the periphery of her patients’ lives – she could come home to him and he made her feel whole again.

Now he was gone and there was nothing to connect her with the world any more.

‘You are working over here?’ Megan asked.

‘I’ve retired,’ Eleanor said, aware that she sounded tired now. ‘Not that someone like me ever retires. It gets into your soul – probably it’s the same in your work?’

Megan shrugged as if she didn’t care.

‘You mentioned being the cautionary tale for actresses. What did you mean?’

Eleanor was close enough to see Megan’s beautiful eyes fill with tears.

‘I’m sorry I was rude earlier,’ Megan said hoarsely. ‘I’m upset. I’d love to talk to you sometime, but not now, OK?’

She got up, smiled briefly, and almost ran out of the park.

Eleanor stayed a moment longer. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told Megan that what she did was an intrinsic part of her. Talking to patients had always fascinated her: the piecing together of their stories was enthralling. She felt a spark of energy inside. It would be good for both of them if Megan came to see her properly.

11
Fish

Living beside the sea means there’s always food. We were lucky in Kilmoney because we had the ocean on our doorstep.

You’d laugh at it now to think of people saying sorry for dishing up scallops and butter for dinner when there was no money for meat. Here in New York, people in fine restaurants pay good money for shellfish, and we had as much of it as we wanted.

Your grandmother’s family used to collect winkles from the shore. Hard work it was, I can tell you. Those were the days before the waterproof boots and they’d spend the day knee-high in water on the rocks, filling a basket – creel we used to call it – with periwinkles. Many’s a poor family lived on winkles and cockles, cooked in milk for the children. When I was young, my mother made me eat shellfish three times a day in March to keep the cold out. I can still taste the salt tang of the sea when I see cockles today.

We ate salmon if we were lucky enough to catch one, but the best salmon rivers were owned by the folk in the big houses, so we hadn’t the rights to fish those rivers. But your aunt Agnes had a friend out Bohola
way who’d sneak out at night and fish in one of the rivers. I was never sure if we should eat salmon caught that way or not. Agnes used to say that the rivers belonged to no one, and we had as much right to them as anybody else.

My favourite fish is fresh mackerel, bought on the quay from the man who hauled it out of the ocean, and cooked that day in a little flour and butter.

We were lucky that none of the family were fishermen. I never looked at the sea with the wild white foam from the waves without saying a prayer. So many families lost men to that sea. Every family who fished had a different stitch in their woollen jumpers, so their bodies could be identified if they drowned.

The tradition in the area was to put a live periwinkle in the corner of the house on St Brigid’s Day to protect the fishermen. The young priest, the man who was full of fire and brimstone, did his best to stop the women doing it. But they didn’t heed him. They did what made them feel better. That’s a good plan.

Searching for a wedding dress was like going on an expedition to the Arctic, Connie decided. You knew you might be gone some time, but you had a hope of it working out all right in the end.

Nicky had made a mood board compiled with ripped-out bits of various bridal magazines.

‘I like structural shapes, but these fluid lines are great too,’ she might say thoughtfully to Connie, who had no idea what she was talking about but was ready to be enthusiastic nonetheless.

Weddings were a whole other world, Connie had discovered: there were entire magazines on wedding flowers, and fat books on etiquette, speeches and what a bride might need on her wedding day. Had all this been around when she was engaged? She had no idea. Her bridal dreams had been mistier things based on her walking up the aisle with Keith waiting for her.

Nicky’s other constant topic was plastic surgery. She was editing an Irish guide to cosmetic procedures and, in Connie’s opinion, it had made her obsessed.

It was a cool morning, and they were out on their first foray into actual dress hunting.

‘The book’s called
Plastic Fantastic
,’ Nicky explained. ‘The surgeon who’s written it is fabulous, but the best bit is the section on when it goes wrong. Not his work, obviously. You really wouldn’t believe what people will have done.’

‘Really?’ said Connie, who was still exhausted and had found it hard to get out of her cosy bed at eight. She didn’t think she’d ever been in the shops that early at the weekend.

‘You have to watch out for the shiny foreheads,’ Nicky went on. ‘The thing I can’t understand is why anyone would do it in the first place.’

Nicky didn’t really want to know the answer because she thought she already knew it, Connie realised.

Nicky thought it was stupidity. Connie knew it was fear: fear of ageing.

‘Why would you bother?’ Nicky said dismissively. ‘All that nipping and tucking and injecting. It’s kind of sad. There’s this woman who works in the shop two floors below us, she must be sixty but she dresses from Top Shop. Honestly, she had her first face lift at forty, the other girls in the shop say. And her eyes – they’re like cat’s eyes now, she’s had so much done. Why?’

Connie knew why. The days when she could get away with a swish of foundation across her cheeks were gone. Somehow, in the last year, her face had changed. In the mornings, her eyes were puffy and her cheeks retained the creases from the pillow for an hour. She looked tired even when she’d had nine hours’ sleep.

She could totally understand why a sixty-year-old woman would want to look younger when she had to work in the expensive clothes shop below Peony’s offices. It was probably on a par with going to work in a school populated with gorgeous teenagers. On a good day, a person could cope with it. On a bad day, it was all she could do not to put a paper bag over her head.

Ahead of them was their destination: Bridal Heaven, a onestop bridal shop.

‘And she does that thing with her lipliner – you know, drawing the line bigger than her lips really are. It’s awful,’ Nicky was saying.

With a giant push, she opened the heavy door into the store, a grey-carpeted haven with walls lined with every shade of white, from dazzling snow to lush cream. Scented candles wafted rose and grapefruit into the air and the music was muted Tchaikovsky.

‘This is nice,’ Nicky said appreciatively.

‘Yes,’ agreed Connie, but her mind was on the woman with the lipliner trick. Who wasn’t guilty of that sin sometimes? Just a smidgen of lipliner to fake bigger lips. Connie didn’t consider herself vain, but there were times when it was hard to face the ageing person in the mirror. And she wasn’t even forty. What would it be like when she was fifty?

Nicky was too young to understand, but she would, one day. They were part of the modern generation of women who weren’t supposed to age. They were supposed to look like blemish-free, unwrinkled girls in skinny jeans and heels forever. Their mother hadn’t had these worries. She’d cut her hair short once she hit thirty, and had taken to wearing comfortable long skirts and flat, lace-up shoes with sheepskin lining.

Connie could remember her mother preparing for a Christmas party and debating whether to wear her old blue two-piece (tie-front blouse and gathered, long skirt) or her black velvet dress (long sleeves with a lace frill on the hem). There had been no panic about getting her hair done, applying the latest make-up, or trying to look as good as women ten years younger.

It was different now. Ageing was taboo.

A sales assistant, a bright youngster who introduced herself as Jen, settled them into a changing room, and then the sisters began to roam the dresses.

‘You tell me what you like and I’ll get sizes,’ Jen said cheerfully.

‘Something unconventional,’ said Nicky confidently. ‘I don’t want to look old-fashioned, I want to look chic. Do you know what I mean?’

She tried on a rash of slinky silk satin dresses that followed the contours of her body like a second skin.

‘Too clingy,’ she decided critically. ‘Getting the right underwear would be a nightmare.’

‘Some people wear two pairs of control pants on the day,’ Jen volunteered.

‘I’d rather have lumps and bumps,’ said Connie, horrified. She could never understand control underwear. It hurt. Besides, all the fat went somewhere. If it wasn’t allowed stay on your waist, it squelched out above and below the control bit.

Next, Nicky went for column dresses with sleeves, without sleeves, with one sleeve, with a bit of lace on one shoulder.

She hated them all.

‘We’re never going to find the dress,’ she said miserably.

‘Nonsense,’ said Connie, who’d thought Nicky looked beautiful in all of them. She was used to her sister’s perfectionism. Jen brought a tray of tea and some biscuits.

‘I can see why people spend all day doing this,’ Connie said wearily, taking a biscuit for energy.

‘Some people spend several days,’ Jen, said.

Connie quailed.

‘Not me,’ said Nicky confidently.

‘I’ll bring some more gowns for when you’ve finished.’ Jen left them alone to have their tea.

Another hour passed, and Connie was beginning to think they would never get out of Bridal Heaven, when Jen arrived with an armful of lace and tulle.

‘I know this isn’t what you want,’ she said to Nicky, who was perched on a grey velvet pouffe eyeing the frou-frou dress sceptically, ‘but I’ve found that sometimes, what you want and what works can be two different things.’

Nicky shrugged. I’ll humour you, her expression said.

Connie went back out to look again while Jen helped Nicky into the dress. They were so beautiful, she thought, fingers touching laces and satins. The tangible expression of hope and joy.

She hadn’t bought a dress for her wedding to Keith all those years ago.

‘Thank goodness you hadn’t got that far,’ her father had said. ‘If you had the dress and then he left you, well, that’s breach of contract.’ Poor Dad. He was such an innocent. In his mind, being dumped once you’d bought the dress would be a sign that you should head to the courts to sort it out. There had been no talk of how Connie’s heart had been breached by Keith. Her family had declared Keith a waster and decided that it was just as well Connie wasn’t marrying him.

She’d bought bridal magazines though, and had wondered what she’d wear when the time came. But the time had never come.

Nicky gasped so loudly that Connie rushed back into the changing room, half-expecting some disaster: a bit of sleeve ripped, a zip come apart. But there was no disaster.

Her sister stood with both hands covering her mouth, stunned into silence by the sight of herself in Barbie’s dream wedding-gown.

‘I love it,’ she said, shocked.

Connie took in how the cream chiffon with a sweetheart neckline clung to Nicky’s small waist, then foamed out into blossoming whirls. ‘It’s gorgeous.’

Jen looked suitably smug. ‘I told you both,’ she said.

‘But I don’t want a traditional dress,’ Nicky insisted.

She did a twirl, then another one, because the skirt flowed out like a ballerina’s when she turned.

‘I want something simple and chic.’

She piled her hair on top of her head with one hand, then held out her skirts with the other and tried a few more twirling movements.

Jen stepped forward with a couple of giant hairclips. ‘Let me,’ she said.

With professional ease, she clasped Nicky’s blonde silky hair on top of her head, then raced out of the changing room for a moment, returning with a twinkling silver tiara and an old-fashioned veil of heavy lace.

She arranged both on Nicky’s head quickly, then stood back. ‘Now.’

Connie couldn’t speak. At last, Nicky looked like a fairytale bride.

‘I love it,’ Nicky sobbed.

Connie beat Jen to it. She ripped a couple of tissues from the box on the small coffee table.

‘I really do love it,’ Nicky said tearfully.

Connie held her sister tightly and smiled at Jen over Nicky’s shoulder. ‘I do too,’ she said.

That night, Connie went to dinner at Gaynor’s.

Gaynor had gone from head of human resources for a major computer conglomerate to running a house, the parents association at her children’s school, as well as working one day a week in the HR department of a chain of clothes shops.

If they hadn’t known each other since their schooldays, Connie thought she might have been totally overwhelmed by Gaynor.

‘Gaynor’s watchword is capable. It’s the only one that will do for her,’ Connie used to say to Nicky. ‘She could run the whole country in her sleep. No, she could run
the health service
– that’s what she could do. She is
that
good.’

‘I don’t think anyone could do that,’ Nicky said, shaking her head.

‘Gaynor could. I was talking to her on the phone the other day, and she’d already given the dogs a bath because they’d rolled in cat shit, had made four casseroles to freeze for the week’s dinners, organised a play date for little Niamh, sewed on labels for the other kids’ uniforms, written a stack of emails about the parents committee meeting – and that was by eleven in the morning. That afternoon, she was going to do two hours in the charity shop, pick up the kids, take Josie to ballet and Charlie to football, pick them up again, take them home, make sure all the homework was done, and be at the school for a meeting with the teachers at eight. The health service would be a doddle for her. Oh, I forgot. She was going for a run at lunchtime because she’s not getting enough exercise. If I was her, I’d be lying down watching
Oprah
with a cool cloth on my head.’