The Builders

MAEVE BINCHY

Maeve Binchy was born in Dublin in 1940. After a spell as a schoolteacher, she worked as an
Irish Times
journalist for many years. She began to write fiction while in her early forties, and wrote fourteen novels which became bestsellers in over thirty languages. Her stories have been adapted for stage, television and cinema. She lives in Dalkey with her husband, writer Gordon Snell.

T
HE
B
UILDERS
First published by GemmaMedia in 2009.

GemmaMedia
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Copyright © 2002, 2009 Cathy Kelly

This edition of
The Builders
is published by arrangement with New Island Books Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Artmark

13 12 11 10 09                       1 2 3 4 5

ISBN: 978-1-934848-16-6

Library of Congress Preassigned Control Number (PCN) applied for

O
PEN
D
OOR
S
ERIES

An innovative program of original
works by some of our most
beloved modern writers and
important new voices. First designed
to enhance adult literacy in Ireland,
these books affirm the truth that
a story doesn't have
to be big to open the world.

Patricia Scanlan
Series Editor

For Gordon
with all my love

Nan at Number Fourteen Chestnut Road heard about the builders from Mr O'Brien, the fussy man at Number Twenty-eight.

‘It will be terrible Mrs Ryan,' he warned her. ‘Dirt and noise and all sorts of horrors.'

Mr O'Brien was a man who found fault with everything, Nan Ryan told herself. She would not get upset. And in many ways it was nice to think that the house next door, which had been empty for two years since the Whites
had disappeared, would soon be a home again.

She wondered who would come to live there. A family maybe. She might even baby-sit for them. She would tell the children stories and sit minding the house until the parents got back.

Her daughter Jo laughed at the very idea of a family coming to live in such a small house.

‘Mam, there isn't room to swing a cat in it,' she said in her very definite, brisk way. When Jo spoke she did so with great confidence.
She
knew what was right.

‘I don't know.' Nan was daring to disagree. ‘It's got a nice safe garden at the back.'

‘Yes, six foot long and six foot wide,' Jo said with a laugh.

Nan said nothing. She didn't mention the fact that the house in
which she had reared three children was exactly the same size.

Jo knew everything. How to run a business. How to dress in great style. How to run her elegant home. How to keep her handsome husband Jerry from wandering away.

Jo must be right about the house next door. Too small for a family. Perhaps a nice woman of her own age might come. Someone who could be a friend. Or a young couple who both went out to work. Nan might take in parcels for them or let in a man to read the meter?

Bobby, who was Nan's son, said that she had better pray it wouldn't be a young couple. They'd be having parties every night, driving her mad. She would become deaf, Bobby warned. Deaf as a post. Young couples who had spent a lot doing up their house would
be terrible. They would have no money. They would want some fun. They would make their own beer and ask noisy friends around to drink it with them.

And Pat, the youngest, was gloomiest of all.

‘Mam will be deaf already by the time they arrive, whoever they are. Deaf from all the building noise. The main thing is to make sure they keep the garden fence the height it is and in good shape. Good fences make good neighbours they say.'

Pat worked for a security firm and felt very strongly about these things. Jo and Bobby and Pat were so very sure of themselves. Nan wondered how they had become so confident. They didn't get it from her. She had always been shy. Timid even.

She didn't go out to work because it
was the way everyone wanted it. They needed Nan at home. Their father had been quiet also. Quiet and loving. Very loving. Loving to Nan for a while, and then loving to a lot of other ladies.

One evening long ago, on her 35th birthday, Nan could take it no longer. She sat in the kitchen and waited until he came home. It was four in the morning.

‘You must make your choice,' she told him.

He didn't even answer, just went upstairs and packed two suitcases. She changed the locks on the doors. It wasn't necessary. She never saw him again. He went without any speeches. Nan heard from a solicitor that the house had been put in her name. That was all she got and she didn't ask for any more since she knew it would be in vain.

She was a practical woman. She had
a small terraced house and no income. She had three children, the eldest thirteen, the youngest ten. She went out and got a job fast.

She worked in a supermarket and even took extra hours as an office cleaner to get the children through school and on their way to earning their own living. Nan had worked for nearly twenty years when the doctors said she had a weak heart and must take a great deal more rest.

She thought it was odd that they said her heart was weak. She thought it must be a very strong heart indeed to get over the fact that the husband she loved had walked out on her. She never loved anyone else.

There hadn't been time, what with working hard to put good meals in front of the children. Not to mention paying for extra classes and better
clothes. There had been no family holidays over the years. Sometimes Jo, Bobby and Pat went to see their father on the train. They never said much about the visits. And Nan never asked them any questions.

Jo often brought her jackets or sweaters that she was finished with. Or unwanted Christmas presents. Bobby brought round his washing every week because he lived with Kay, this feminist girl, who said that men should look after their own clothes. Bobby often brought a cake or a packet of biscuits. He would eat these with his mother as she ironed his shirts for him. Pat came round often to fix door and window locks, or to re-set the burglar alarm. Mainly to warn her mother of all the evil there was in the world.

Nan Ryan had little to complain about. She never told her children that
since she had given up work she often felt lonely. Nan's family seemed so gloomy about the work that would be done on the house next door that she didn't want to tell them that she was quite looking forward to it. That she was waiting for the builders and looking out for them every day.

The builders came on a sunny morning. Nan watched them from behind her curtain. Three men altogether in a red van. The van had ‘Derek Doyle' on it in big white letters.

The two younger men let themselves into Number Twelve with a key. Nan heard them call out, ‘Derek! The bad news is that we'll be a week getting rid of all the rubbish that's here. The good news is that there's somewhere to plug in a kettle and it hasn't been turned off.'

A big smiling man came out of the red van.

‘Well we're made for life then, for the next couple of months anyway. Isn't this a lovely road?'

He looked around at the houses and Nan felt a surge of pride. She had always thought that Chestnut Road was a fine place. Nan wished that her children had been there to see this man admiring it all. And he was a builder, a man who knew about roads and houses.

Jo used to say it was poky. Bobby said it was old-fashioned. Pat said the place was an open invitation to burglars with its long low garden walls where they could make their escape. But this man who had never seen it before liked it.

Nan hid herself and watched.

She didn't want to go out and be
there on top of them from the very start.

She saw fussy Mr O'Brien from Number Twenty-eight coming along to inspect their arrival.

‘Time something was done,' he said, peering inside, dying to be invited in.

Derek Doyle was firm with him.

‘Better not to let you in, sir. Don't want anything to fall on you.'

Nan's children had told her not to get too involved. Jo had said that the new owners wouldn't thank her for wasting the builders' time. Bobby had said that his girlfriend Kay said that builders preyed on women, getting them to make tea. Pat said that a house next to a building site was fair game for burglars and that she must be very watchful and spend no time talking to the men next door.

But the real reason Nan stayed out
of their way was that she didn't want to appear pushy. They would be working beside her for weeks. She didn't want them to think she was nosey. She decided she would wait until they had been there for a few days before she introduced herself. She might even keep a diary of their progress. The new owners might like it as a record of how the house had been done up for them.

Nan moved away from the front window and back to her kitchen. She ironed all Bobby's shirts. She wondered if Kay knew that Bobby brought his laundry bag over to his mother every week. But they seemed to be very happy together, so what was she worrying about?

She cleaned the silver that Jo had dropped in that morning, taking a toothbrush to get at the hard-to-reach places, like handles and legs of little
jugs. She wondered why Jo worked so hard trying to impress people. But then of course it had worked, hadn't it? Jerry, who had a very wandering eye, was still with her.

Nan made a big casserole and put some of it in foil containers for the freezer. Pat worked so hard in the security firm. She worried so much, she rarely had time to shop, so she cooked very little. It was good to be able to hand her a ready-made dinner sometimes. Nan wished that Pat would take time off, dress up, go out and meet people, find a fellow.