The Ballroom Café (5 page)

She wanted that warm feeling of relief to course through her, like a waterfall rushing, to feel Agnes’s excitement, be enveloped by her Blue Grass perfume, to finally show her the gold star she got that day for spelling.

‘I can see you are lining up with the opposition.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘There are only two coffee places in town.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Debbie was stammering, not sure of the intent behind the observation.

Ella saw the red veins in her eyes, the blotchy swollen skin underneath. It had only been a few days, but Ella thought the woman had aged at least a decade. She should have walked by, but she felt sorry for this stranger so far away from home. ‘Tell me to go away if you like, but are you all right?’

Taken aback, Debbie pressed her fingers under her eyes. ‘I got bad news today. I don’t know what to do.’

Ella sat down. ‘I know we don’t know each other very well, though you have handled some of my best china.’

Debbie smiled. ‘I don’t know anybody else who would trust me like that. My mother always called me butterfingers.’ She stopped suddenly, as if she should not be raking up unnecessary memories.

Ella made to stand up. ‘I am intruding.’

‘Please sit down; we can talk about other things.’

Ella motioned to the waitress to bring her a cappuccino. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Roberta take a window seat and order a pot of tea. ‘We all have strange stories in our families. That woman over there with the drawn-out look is the O’Callaghan one: my younger sister.’

‘She lives in the old house with you.’

‘Yes, but we don’t talk.’

‘And you don’t mind?’

‘Of course I mind, but don’t tell her that or she will keep it up forever.’

‘How long has it been going on?’

‘The silent treatment? Decades: too many years to count. I think we are rather used to it by now. Probably would not know what to say to each other, if we started to talk.’

Debbie spluttered, the last of her tea falling back in the cup. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Unfortunately, yes.’

‘Why exactly?’

Ella smiled. ‘We will have to get to know each other better before we start sharing those secrets.’ Her coffee arrived and she used her spoon to scrape off the frothy foam. They sat silent as she stirred in two sugars.

‘It would be so much nicer in your china cups, don’t you think?’ Debbie said.

‘With a chocolate stick on the side to scoop up the foam,’ Ella said, and they both started to giggle.

‘Take the café job?’

‘I’m only here for a short time.’

‘Take it?’

Debbie hesitated. ‘I’m only on vacation.’

‘It will be something different, an adventure to talk about back home. A distraction, even. I have Iris, but she has to pull around the gardens. To be frank, I don’t want her anywhere near my china. Just until I can get somebody to help out full-time. It might be fun.’

‘You have a way of persuading a person.’

‘I wish the bank manager felt the same way. I am thinking of expanding, converting the old ballroom.’

‘There’s a ballroom?’

‘Once the talk of the town between here and Dublin. We will look at it tomorrow, when all the ladies have drained their cups.’

‘Won’t your sister object?’

‘To you or the ballroom?’

‘Both.’

‘Yes, she will, but what can she say?’

Listening to their loud giggling, Roberta prickled at the back of her neck. She rose quickly from her seat, threw a five-euro note on the table and rushed out of the café, banging the door.

‘Don’t mind her; she does not like anybody to enjoy themselves. Will I see you tomorrow?’

‘I guess.’

‘Eight thirty on the button,’ Ella said, before she whipped away to cut across the fields and beat her sister home.

*

The next morning Ella was in her bedroom powdering her face when she saw Debbie approach from the lakeside. Walking across the grassland, she was stooped against the cold morning breeze pushing past the house, gathering momentum on the parkland on the way to ruffle the lake. She saw her check her watch and nip in behind a tree to light a cigarette, puffing out large clouds of smoke, which were whisked away by the wind. Tramping towards the house, cupping the cigarette in her hand, at the fountain she stopped to stub it out and throw the butt under an old butterfly bush. Ella clicked her tongue, annoyed that the butt should be discarded so casually. She went downstairs to open the front door for Debbie.

‘There is a biting wind out there; come in and have a cuppa before you start,’ Ella said.

‘Let me get the tables set and then I can relax.’ She slipped off her coat before making her way to the sideboard.

‘Have it your way. Come to the kitchen when you are ready. The lemon cakes are rising nicely, cracking on top.’

Ella stopped in the hall to pick up a note left there since late the night before.

Do you want us to be a complete laughing stock? There is talk that your cake is too sweet and the coffee too weak. Give up now for all our sakes. R.

She scrunched the paper and pushed it in her apron pocket. Ten minutes later, she heard Debbie make a lot of noise as she walked with heavy steps down the hallway before she cautiously pushed at the door.

‘All done,’ she said, nervously sitting at the kitchen table.

Ella pulled three cake tins quickly out of the oven. She used a darning needle to pierce each cake five or six times, drizzling lemon and melted sugar across the surface of the cakes and pushing it towards the holes until it slipped down out of sight.

‘It makes them lovely: a mouthful of sour and sweet at the same time. You can’t beat it. It is the only cake that can stop Muriel Hearty talking for a few minutes,’ Ella said, knocking out two other cakes onto a wire baking tray.

‘Looks a secret ingredient. There was a bakery near me in New York that injected cream and jam into its muffins.’

‘My secret is to get it all into the cake while it is still hot.’

Debbie pressed a few crumbs on the table into her mouth with her finger. ‘Mmmm.’

‘You might stay here after all.’

‘No. That’s not going to happen.’

Ella would have answered, but she heard Muriel Hearty’s screech as she scurried up the driveway, desperate to get in from the cold. ‘The hordes of Genghis Khan are upon us.’

Debbie helped pour the teas and coffees, handing out slices of lemon cake and buttering plain scones. Muriel Hearty tried to put talk on her, but she demurred and escaped to the stone fountain.

The pain up her side was persistent and her stomach was queasy. She heard the ladies push back their chairs and leave soon afterwards, and Ella locking up the French doors and making her way to the fountain.

‘You are not fed up of us already, are you?’

Ella was standing behind her, idly fanning her hand along the cold stone of the fountain.

‘That’s not it. I have a lot on my mind.’

‘Can I divert you?’

Debbie nodded.

‘I promised to show you the ballroom. Come on. I will warn you nobody has been in here in a long time,’ Ella said, as she led the way inside. They climbed the dark staircase, past the sombre portraits of a family, long since faded. ‘Good-looking relatives: they have the O’Callaghan nose – long, we won’t say beautiful,’ she giggled.

Opening a door halfway down the hall, Ella stepped back to take it all in. She did not see the mouse droppings, or the cobwebs so thick they resembled a stage prop, nor the windowpanes dulled with dirt. They stepped into the long hall; Debbie whistled under her breath. The oak floor was soft with dirt. A thick layer of dust ground and scraped the wooden boards as they stepped across. Shafts of sunlight were thrown about, as if discarded in the rush to leave decades earlier. Damask curtains, now torn and no longer regal, were half hanging on poles, some with dirty tears and rips from where bigger than a mouse had lost its footing in a panic. In the fireplace grate were the stiff remains of a crow that had crashed into the chimney top, its wings still half splayed wide.

‘It must have been grand at one time. Of course, we only ever used it as a skating rink. When I was a young woman, I imagined nice wooden tables with tablecloths and chairs with cushions, where people would come and sample my cakes and drink my tea. There would be window seats overlooking the garden, where customers could enjoy the sunshine and pay good money for refreshments.’

Ella walked over to a window and spat on a pane of glass; tucking her sleeve over her fingers, she rubbed fiercely.

‘Old glass. It shines up lovely, even after all these years of neglect.’

Debbie copied her, scraping away the dirt from another pane so she could look out. Underneath, the fountain was empty; the rhododendron spread without direction; the fields tumbled away to the sea.

‘It would be so nice to sit at this window. Why didn’t you ever do it before?’

Ella had been asked such a simple question. Would she tell her that she had been frozen in pain for so long? Would she tell her the emptiness inside her meant that fulfilling dreams was nothing but a silly notion that, from time to time, brought a certain comfort? How could she, even now, articulate the pain of a husband and child dead, within months of each other, the grief and loss that left a permanent longing? What would this woman from a grand city know how it was to be alone, to have lost time and time again, to be forever grieving?

‘I just never got around to it.’

‘You should do it now.’

‘We will have tea. The damp goes into your bones, if you stay on this floor for too long. The radiators were never enough to heat the place. We will have to get a few plug-in heaters.’

Ella walked back across the ballroom, leaving neat tracks in the dust.

Roberta, sitting at the kitchen table heard the murmur of voices. Pulling her notepad from her pocket, she scribbled another note.

What was that woman doing upstairs? I won’t have it. What’s next, guided tours? R.

Pushing the kitchen door so hard it crashed into the free-standing fridge, making it shake and shudder, Roberta made a beeline for the back yard. Grabbing her emergency coat from the shed hook, she set off for the front gate. When she’d phoned Gerry O’Hare earlier, he said he could be there in fifteen minutes and it was nearly that now.

‘Feeling like a trip out, Miss O’Callaghan?’ he said, as he helped her into the car.

‘Just drop me in the town, Gerry. I need to get out of the house.’

She barely said goodbye when he pulled in at Hearty’s post office. Standing rearranging her coat, she did not see Muriel come up behind her.

‘Are you going for a cuppa, Roberta? Matthew has taken over and I am gasping.’

Roberta did not indicate either way, but the two women fell in to step beside each other.

After they ordered, they sat on two hard chairs, so they could be within easy hearing distance of each other.

‘I see the Yank has almost taken up residence with you,’ Muriel said, jigging on the seat, to get comfortable.

Roberta did not answer but fiddled with the Peter Pan collar of her blouse.

‘You know she is going to be around for a while, has taken my flat for four weeks in all.’

‘Hmmph.’

The two women leaned back so that the waitress could put down the large cappuccinos.

‘Would you like a bun with that?’

Muriel looked at Roberta.

‘Wouldn’t the taste of something sweet be nice?’

‘I suppose,’ Roberta answered.

‘Two currant scones with butter and jam, please,’ Muriel said to the waitress.

Roberta sat stiffly on her chair. ‘So, what has all this got to do with me, Muriel?’

‘I hear she was the only one who wanted the job in the new café,’ Muriel said, rearranging the pleats of her skirt.

‘I don’t know anything about a job. That might be putting too much of a spin on it. She is helping out, that is all. Any talk of anything else is pie in the sky.’

‘Well, I think they might be keeping you in the dark there. Iris herself told me Molloy’s will be closing down soon. She talks big, that one, says the American will mean a bigger café and more time for her to whip the gardens in to shape. What would your poor mother have said?’

Roberta felt hot. The waistband of her skirt was pinching her skin. Spikes of sweat pushed through her hair.

‘I really don’t have time to sit around all day gossiping. You enjoy the rest of your coffee,’ she said, rising abruptly from the table.

Gathering up her coat, she slapped a few euro coins on the counter before making for the door.

Never a woman to waste anything, Muriel reached across and threw Roberta’s cappuccino into her half empty cup and began to butter her scone.

Gerry O’Hare, who was passing after picking up paint at the hardware shop, saw Roberta rushing out of Molloy’s, her coat flowing around her.

‘Is everything all right, Miss O’Callaghan?’

‘Take me home, Gerry, please.’

Nothing further was said until the Mercedes pulled around the back of Roscarbury Hall.

‘Are you sure you are all right, Miss O’Callaghan? Will I talk to Ella for you?’

‘That will not be necessary. Thank you.’

Roberta pushed cash into Gerry’s hand before rushing off, stopping in the kitchen to take a note wedged between her sugar bowl and milk jug on her tray.

Butt out. You are not the one who has to deal with the bastards in the bank. E.

Mother Assumpta was reading the paper in the top-floor sitting room when Sister Marguerite, out of breath and excited, called her to come quickly.

‘Two minutes in the day I take, to read and pray for the poor souls of those suffering all over the world. It had better be a matter of supreme importance.’ Assumpta did not move, but shuffled her newspaper loudly to convey her annoyance.

‘It is the American on the phone, looking for Consuelo. Will I say you are at prayers, Mother?’