The Misremembered Man (19 page)

“She
could
die, but it’s too early to say.” He sat forward. “My mother had something like it several years ago, but she pulled through.”

Lydia brightened. “So she’s still living?”

“Sadly, no. She died of a heart attack last year.” Lydia stared at him. She thought he might be in his early forties. “My mother was eighty-two,” he said. “Parents get old; they die. We have to face these things.”

She thought him very direct and cold. He seemed to be preparing her for the worst. How could he be so dispassionate? A part of her, though, was conceding that such clinical detachment came with being a doctor; one couldn’t become too emotionally involved or one’s work would suffer. She decided nevertheless that she did not like Dr. O’Connor. He must have read something of this in her face; he examined his hands.

“Oh, I am sorry,” she said. “About
your
mother.”

“Thank you,” he smiled, “but such is life.” He turned to look out the window, then at his watch. “They’re here. Ten minutes. Very good!” He stood up as the ambulance pulled into the driveway.

“Perhaps you should get a coat,” he said. “You can travel in the back.”

Three hours later Lydia found herself in the hospital waiting room, a large, cheerless place with vinyl plastic seating. A coffee table in the middle of the room was littered with scruffy, out-of-date magazines. A television, high up in one corner, was tuned to the katzenjammer of an ultra-violent children’s cartoon.

Several people had come and gone in the time Lydia waited there, but she had scarcely been aware of them. She sat with her hands thrust in the pockets of her jacket, staring down at the floor. In her mind her mother was already dead, and she knew in those moments that things would never be the same again.

She was so glad that they’d had the little holiday with Gladys. How could she have known it would be their last? A tear rolled down her cheek and fell onto her blouse. She followed its blurred path, then shut her eyes tight against the prospect of her lonely future. The more she thought of it, the more freely she wept, lost to the reality of the waiting room and the people around her. That was until she felt a small, sticky hand on top of hers. She wiped her tears; a little girl of four or five was gazing at her with wide blue eyes. Lydia smiled and took her small hand in hers.

“What a lovely girl you are! What’s your name?”

“Sar…ah.” She pushed back her dark fringe and buried a tiny fist in her right eye, rubbing it fiercely.

“That’s a lovely name. And where is your mummy, Sarah?”

“She over there.” The little girl pointed to a young woman sitting on the far side of the room. Lydia returned her smile.

“You sad,” Sarah said almost accusingly and pulled her hand free. Before Lydia had time to answer, she ran to the coffee table, brought back a tattered copy of
National Geographic
and plonked it on her lap.

“Thank you, Sarah.”

“Miss Devine?” a voice called out.

Lydia turned in alarm. It was an earnest-looking nurse behind the reception desk.

“Mr. Bennett will see you now. Second door on the left, down the corridor.”

Lydia got up, her legs numb from having sat for so long. She bent down to the little girl.

“Bye, bye Sarah. I’ll read your magazine when I get back.”

The child stood sucking her finger, looking up at her. Lydia patted her head.

“Bah, bah,” she heard the little girl cry behind her as she rushed weeping from the room, to face whatever it was the cardiologist was about to tell her.

On her way home in the taxi she felt a little more hopeful. Mr. Bennett had diagnosed something he’d called “atrial fibrillation.” He explained that it was common, particularly in old people; that the heart quivers instead of beating effectively, and so causes the blood to clot. One of those blood clots had broken off and lodged in an artery leading to the brain; hence, the stroke.

Her mother was still unconscious and in intensive care. Lydia had been allowed one brief visit; a visit where she could do little more than murmur words of encouragement and love to the comatose patient. She might be there for some time, Lydia learned, depending on how she responded to treatment. It was early days, the cardiologist warned, and he had echoed Dr. O’Connor’s ominous assertion concerning the first forty-eight hours.

She had been advised to go home and wait by the phone.

“
H
ad a great time, Rose; a great time altogether.”

Jamie was sitting once again in the McFadden kitchen, nursing a mug of tea and eating a marshmallow-and-Rice-Krispie traybake. It was late afternoon and he was waiting for Paddy to drive him into Tailorstown, to help him pick out a suit at Harvey’s, Purveyors of Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Fashions. Paddy was upstairs, grooming himself in preparation for the expedition.

“It was the grandest place I was ever in,” Jamie enthused between mouthfuls.

“I know, Jamie. I’ve heard it’s a grand place.”

Rose was in an armchair by the stove, her feet resting on a footstool embroidered with the limestone peak of Mount Errigal. She was sewing a series of furry topaz bobbles onto an orange-and-emerald striped tea cozy, and preparing to give Jamie the benefit of her acres of profound yet confusing wisdom. He knew this because whenever Rose gave forth, she tended to knit vast rugs of thought into patches and clusters, ending up with something that made perfect sense to her but precious little to anyone else.

“God, I’d never seen the like of it, Rose! I was afeard to touch anything in case I tumbled it.”

“Aye, that’s the thing about being in these grand places. You’re kinda uneasy you might fall a clatter and bring a lamp or a vase or a table or whatever down on top a ye.”

She fetched another bobble from a crowded basket at her feet and anchored it to the tea cozy with her thumb.

“The sheets on the bed were the whitest I ever seen. As white begod as…” Jamie’s eyes roamed about Rose’s kitchen. When he failed to locate something of a comparable whiteness he simply said, “as white as the divil, Rose.”

“A say, Jamie! She probably uses extra tablets o’ that Reckitt’s Blue when she’s steeping them, like.”

“God, is that how it’s done?” Jamie said in amazement, looking down at the decidedly gray cuff of his shirt. “And d’you know who a run into at me breakfast one mornin’? Doris and Mildred, no less.”

“Get away, Jamie!”

“Aye, Doris couldn’t hear right after the robbery, so Dr. Brewster sent her for a week with her ears. And d’you know, Rose, she was lookin’ terrible well.”

“Now, Jamie, she might look well, but she’s got hands for nothin’, couldn’t boil a-negg or sew on a button if you paid her. And just when I mention eggs, a s’pose you got some great feeds?” Rose was eager to steer Jamie away from the widowed postmistress, who, in her opinion was “used goods” and therefore unsuitable marriage material for an eligible bachelor such as he.

“Feeds, Rose? Oh, the best. But I didn’t have the fry-ups in the morning with me diet an’ all. But the dinners in the evening, well y’know the pope in Rome probably wouldn’t get as good.”

“Heavens above. Is that so?” Rose looked up in wonder.

“Aye, we had that thing with the pastry and a sausage stickin’ outta the middle of it,” he said. “I think it was called a frog-in-a-hole?”

“No, Jamie. That would be toad-in-the-hole.”

“The very one, toad-in-the-hole and then that spotty dick, the thing with the raisins like a bread puddin’, after it.”

He reached for another traybake, the mere memory of Gladys Millman’s meals giving him an appetite.

“Lord, Jamie, and was it all baked proper? Because there’s them that leave the spotty dick too long in the steamer so that the wee raisins melt.”

“Naw, the raisins were all there,” Jamie assured her. “You coulda counted the wee brutes, every last one of them, Rose, so you could.”

“God-blisses-an-save-us, is that so? And what did you eat it with, Jamie?”

“A spoon.”

“No, Jamie. I mean: Did you have it with custard or cornflour? Because there’s them that prefer the cornflour with the spotty dick but I like the custard meself.” Rose fished another bobble out of the basket.

“Custard, Rose, but you know it was a wee bit wattery, not as good as yours.”

“Och, away with you!” She smiled broadly, swelling with the compliment like a balloon on an ether nozzle. “And that’s another grand place, Jamie, where you’re gonna be meeting your lady. Where was it again?”

Jamie left his mug down on the table and fished in his inside pocket for the letter.

“Wait ’til a see now.” He flattened out the page on the table. “It’s called the Royal Neptune Hotel. Sounds grand, right enough.”

“It is, because me and my Paddy were at a waddin’ there of a Brigid Maryann Mulgrew about eight years ago. She got Biddy Maryann for short.” Rose was in her stride, prepared to pick up and purl a cable twist of convoluted recollection for the benefit of Jamie’s confused ears.

“She was a widda woman, so she was, because her first man, Dinny, fell into a drain one night on his way home from Stutterin’ Joe McSweeny’s pub and didn’t they find him the next mornin’ as stiff as a dunkey’s hind leg for he’d froze himself to death. Now, Biddy Maryann wasn’t much to look at, Jamie, and not only that, but she was terrible untidy. A bit of a lazy clat. The type that would keep a shovelful of dung on the table to keep the flies off the butter, as they say. But she came with a bitta land. So, y’know, when she got married for the second time, it was like a kind of a miracle, so it was, because Dinny had drunk all the land that she’d come with. Now, this new man that she got was a Cellastine Monroe. I can’t mind if he was from up the country or down the country. God, y’know, Jamie, he could maybe even a been from across the country.” She gripped a strand of topaz wool between her teeth and broke a piece off.

“He was
in
the country, anyway,” said Jamie, anxious to haul Rose back to the road that would lead to the Royal Neptune hotel and her opinion thereof.

Rose threw back her head and laughed heartily. “God, that’s a good one, Jamie. ‘He was in the country,’ but what I was gonna—”

“And what did you eat at the Royal Neptune, Rose?”

Rose took a mouthful of tea to help fuel the telling of yet another story on her favorite topic.

“I was just comin’ to that, Jamie. I ’member that the dinner was powerful good. We had liver and bacon knuckle and bashed neaps with gravy.”

“God-oh!” Jamie reached for another traybake. “Bashed
what
?”

“Neaps, Jamie. They’re a mixture of the spud and the turnip. D’you like the turnips, Jamie?”

“Naw, never liked them, Rose.” He stared at the floor, shutting his mind on the unpalatable truth of a buried wrong.

“And the puddin’ was Irish jig pallalalover, or whatever you call it. But me and my Paddy didn’t have that, as I recall. We had the sticky toffee, tipsy Irish whiskey layer pudding with a touch o’ mint and crushed nuts. And d’you know, it was beautiful, because you know the secret in a good layer pudding, Jamie?”

Rose stopped to drink more tea, her bosom heaving with excitement.

“Naw, what’s that, Rose?” Jamie said into the pause, never having learned the difference between a rhetorical and a genuine question.

“It’s the sponge, Jamie.”

“Is that so, Lordy-me?” He glanced at his now-empty plate and saw an elephant with pink ears staring back at him from under a slew of crumbs. However, the beast was not allowed to reveal itself for long. Rose was ready with the cake knife.

“Another caramel crispie?” Rose pushed two more cookies onto the elephant’s trunk before Jamie had time to look up. “Yes, indeed, Jamie. I always make me own, as any woman worth the nose on her face should be able to do, and I should hope that this lady you’re gonna meet knows her shortcrust from her puff and can make a decent Victoria sponge, because if she can’t then it means that her mother didn’t learn her proper. The first thing I learned my Marion, as soon as she was outta nappies, was how to bake a proper sponge.”

Rose and Paddy did not often refer to their daughter. She had disappointed them greatly by marrying an alcoholic carpet-fitter from Muff. It was said that the only time you could depend on Seamus to lay a carpet straight was during the six weeks of Lent, when he gave God the nod and his liver a break.

“And any woman that’s not learned proper in the way of bakin’ a good sponge,” Rose continued, “has not got the basic training in the way of baking, if you unnerstand what I mean, Jamie. And she’ll be buyin’ Lyons’ fingers to make up for it, and anything that comes outta a packet is never the same.”

Rose cast off the last stitches of her muddled discourse, satisfied to have had her say. “What time did you say you were meetin’ this lady, Jamie?”

Jamie was still wondering what lion’s fingers had to do with a sponge cake, but decided not to ask, for fear of sounding stupid. He checked the page again—needlessly, because since receiving Lydia’s letter, he had the time, day and date chalked in foot-high letters on the blackboard of his brain.

“Half past three, it says here. Thursday the fourteenth.”

“Well, my Paddy’ll take you there, Jamie. You couldn’t be ridin’ your bike in a good new suit. God knows what you’d look like by the time you got there. And if it happened to be rainin’—and I’m not saying it’s gonna be rainin’, Jamie; far be it from me to be predickin’ such a thing—but if it was, God knows what’d be splashin’ up from the wheels and ruinin’ your shoes and your suit and what else, God-blisses-an-save-us, and you couldn’t be appearin’ in front of that fine lady and you covered in muck.”

She got up to replenish Jamie’s mug and shout up the stairs.

“What’s keepin’ you, Paddy? Time’s goin’ on. We don’t want Mr. Harvey to be closed by the time yous get there.”

“I’ll be down in one wee minute,” came Paddy’s reply.

She turned. “D’you know, Jamie, God’s good, but you shouldn’t dance in a wee boat, all-the-same! That’s why I’m sayin’ that my Paddy’ll give you a lift.”

“That’d be great, Rose.” Jamie shifted in his seat, lifted his cap to air his pate, tugged on his ear and rubbed his chin, wondering how he was going to phrase the next question.

“But y’know Rose…,” he began, “I was wonderin’…I was wonderin’ if you’d maybe come with me too. I’m gonna be a bit nervous meetin’ her for the first time and I think if you were there as well as Paddy it wouldn’t be as bad like.”

Rose clapped her hands to her flushed face with the excitement of it all. “D’you know Jamie, I’d love to come! That’s no bother atall. Me and my Paddy could sit in the lounge and wait on you, like. Mind you, me and my Paddy have passed a lot of watter under the bridge since we were there last, at Biddy Maryann Mulgrew’s waddin’, so we have, so it would be inter-resting to see if it’s got any grander, like.”

“Aye, I know what you’re sayin’ surely,” Jamie responded. “It’ll be a wee day out for you, Rose. And after it’s over we could maybe have a bit of a feed or whatever.”

“Good enough.”

Rose fitted the finished bobbled tea cozy on a delft teapot and bore it to the mantelshelf. She stood back and admired her handiwork with a sigh of contentment. At that point Jamie heard Paddy’s footsteps finally descending the stairs, and he got up to button his jacket in readiness for departure.

Mr. Alphonse Harvey stood behind the long polished counter of his fashion emporium, cracking his knuckles and gazing out the window. He’d been looking out on Tailorstown’s main street, and dressing and shoeing its townspeople, for nearly twenty years. The shop had changed little in its ninety-two-year history. Alphonse was proud of his business and its lineage, the respect his family commanded and the community he served.

He was a stern, portly man with a florid complexion, his girth and color earned through many years of rich food, inactivity and a passion for several whiskey-sodas after his late-evening meal.

He was devoted to his business, had a reputation for giving generous discounts, and allowed those customers he supposed “decent” to pay off their purchases in installments.

Things generally ran smoothly in Mr. Harvey’s shop. He had two assistants, Miss Mildred Crink and his young son, Thomas. It made him immensely proud that Thomas had needed little coaxing in following him into the family trade. He was turning out to be a dependable and trustworthy successor to his father’s crown. Mr. Harvey could go away on business trips, content in the knowledge that his son would have everything under control.

Mildred was also a godsend; rarely sick and forever amenable, she was an essential asset in the Ladieswear and Lingerie departments.

“Good evening, James…Patrick.” Mr. Harvey greeted the farmers as they shambled through the door.

Paddy removed his cap and Jamie took his cue.

“How you keepin’, Mr. Harvey?” Paddy said.

“Can’t complain, Patrick. The weather’s fine, business is good and the wife’s gone to stay with her sister in Wales for a week. So all in all I would say I’m a happy man.” He clapped his hands and grinned, at the same time realizing that his joke would be lost on the pair of them. “Now what can I do for you this fine day?”

“Well, I’m lookin’ for a suit.” Jamie stood self-consciously, pulling on his ear. “Not too dear, mind you, but a good, decent one all the same.”

“Certainly, James. Just follow me and I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

He led Jamie and Paddy through a succession of departments—Shoes, Childrenswear, Haberdashery, Ladieswear—that smelled of fine leather and new fabric, to the Menswear section at the back of the shop.

“How are you, Jamie?” trilled Mildred Crink, popping her head from behind a half-dressed mannequin, a bunch of pins in the corner of her mouth.

She was surprised to see him but did her best not to show it. What, she thought, would Jamie McCloone be wanting with a suit? Doris had mentioned that a mysterious package arrived for him the previous week, and when she’d poked a discreet hole in a corner of it, was surprised to see what looked like
hair
protruding. She’d dropped the package in alarm, thinking there might be some sort of small animal inside.

“Not often I see you in here.” Mildred took the pins from her mouth. “Hello, Paddy. How’s Rose keepin’?”

Jamie and Paddy tried not to look at the naked plastic breasts as they responded to Mildred’s query. (Paddy wondered why a mannequin would need breasts; Jamie wondered why a woman would.)