The Rose Garden (8 page)

‘Norah, I need two more hams, please!’ she called, then suddenly realized that Norah was sitting on a chair trying to get her breath back, with a heavy oven tray lying on the ground.

‘Are you okay?’ Gina asked, concerned. Norah looked awful and when she tried to talk her speech seemed slurred.

‘I was lifting the tray out of the oven …’ she kept trying to say.

‘It’s all right, Norah,’ Gina reassured her, going to get her a glass of water and making her put her feet up. ‘Maybe we need to get a doctor?’

‘No … n-noo.’ Norah shook her head, but Gina realized that her face looked different, slightly lopsided.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she said, running out to get Mary, who was still outside at a table. The nurse came in and quickly began to examine the older woman.

‘Norah, how are you feeling?’

Norah’s speech was slow and definitely slurred.

‘Can you raise your arm for me?’ asked Mary calmly.

The effort was too much and Gina could see the fear in Norah’s eyes.

‘Listen, Norah, I think you need to go to hospital. It might be a slight stroke and the sooner the doctors see you the better.’

‘Doctor JMMM,’ Norah tried to say.

‘I know you’d prefer Dr Jim, but today’s Wednesday and it’s his golf day,’ Mary reminded her. ‘There’ll be no one in the practice. Listen, I could phone an ambulance but it could take at least thirty minutes or more to get one from Kilkenny to here, so I’m going to bring you in my car. It’s faster.’

Norah protested about leaving the café, but Gina and Mary got her to see sense.

‘The lunches are nearly over, Norah, and I’m well able to manage,’ Gina reassured her. ‘Honestly, the sooner you and Mary get on the road to the hospital the better.’

‘Do you think you can stand and walk?’ asked the nurse.

‘Yes,’ nodded Norah slowly.

‘Gina, can you ask one of the men outside to come and give us a hand? My car is literally parked outside the door on the main street and I’ll phone the hospital ahead so they’ll expect us.’

Gina went out and saw that Brian Canning was sitting on his own reading the paper and finishing his lunch. He worked as a sales rep, and when she explained the situation he was delighted to help. Five minutes later, with Brian’s help, they had calmly and quietly got Norah out through the café and into the car.

‘You are going to be all right, Norah,’ Gina promised, sensing the older woman’s fear. ‘Don’t worry about the café – I’ll look after everything here. Everything will be fine, I promise.’

After they had driven off, Gina knew that everyone was concerned about Norah. She made a big pot of coffee and one of tea and went around the café refilling cups and reassuring their customers that Norah was going to be okay and that in the café it was business as usual.

GINA HAD PHONED THE HOSPITAL TO SEE HOW NORAH WAS DOING,
and the next day after work went to visit her. She found Norah lying in a ward with five other patients. She was half asleep and the twist to her face on one side was quite noticeable. Mary had explained to her on the phone that Norah had been given immediate treatment for her stroke on arrival at the hospital’s emergency department.

‘It should help,’ Mary explained, ‘but the brain scans will show just how significant a stroke she’s had. However, one has to take her age into account.’

Looking at Norah, who as she lay in the hospital bed suddenly seemed a frail, small woman with a shock of white hair, Gina pulled up a chair to sit down beside her. She had searched Norah’s address book and phoned her nephew, Martin, and her cousin, Sadie, who lived in Cork to tell them that Norah was in hospital. Poor Norah had hardly any family when it came down to it …

‘I got you some nightdresses and a dressing gown and some things for hospital,’ Gina said slowly as she bent down and put them neatly in the small locker beside her.

Norah had lived in the rooms above the café for most of her life and Gina had rarely gone beyond the front door of the place, let alone searching the woman’s bedroom for things to take to her. Norah lived very simply and frugally, sleeping in an old double bed in one room with the other two smaller rooms used
for all kinds of storage. There was a small galley kitchen and a neat sitting room with a gas fire and a TV. The room was also filled with cats – not real ones, but china ones, toy ones, a bronze statue and a few cat photos. Norah obviously collected them. Cats clearly meant a lot to her, so it was strange that she didn’t own one.

When Norah was more awake, one of the nurses helped Gina to sit her up in the bed.

‘How are you?’ Gina asked.

Norah spoke so slowly and with huge effort. She began to get agitated trying to ask about the café.

‘The café is fine,’ Gina said firmly. ‘Everything went well today. The weather was pretty bad, so it was just a few regulars. They were all asking for you and said to get well soon.’

Norah nodded and her eyes welled with tears. Automatically, Gina reached for her hand.

‘Norah, you’re going to be fine,’ she comforted her. ‘You just have to take your time. Everything in work is okay, so please stop worrying. I did some new orders today – heaven knows I’ve watched you often enough to know what to do … So don’t worry.’

Norah squeezed her hand.

‘I’ve phoned Martin and Sadie. They both said they’d come here as soon as they can. I think Sadie’s coming from Cork tomorrow.’

Norah patted her hand.

A nurse came over and it was clear that not only Norah’s speech but also her swallowing had been affected by the stroke, as she couldn’t even manage a simple sip of water and had some kind of thickened liquid to take.

Gina made smalltalk about the customers and when Norah dozed off again she slipped away.

‘She’s really bad, Paul. The poor thing, you should see the state she’s in – she can hardly do anything,’ she confided as they sat having coffee in the bright cream-painted kitchen that Paul
had fitted a few months ago. The boys were in the other room, homework done, playing FIFA.

‘Do you think that she’ll be in hospital for long?’ he asked, worried.

‘It’s hard to say. I don’t know if she will get better or not. Mary says strokes are one of those things where it is almost impossible to say, but from what I can see Norah’s has really affected her badly.’

‘Do you think she’ll have to retire or shut up shop?’

‘I’ve no idea, but it doesn’t look likely that she’ll be back at work any day soon, so I’ll just have to manage.’

‘No better woman,’ he laughed.

‘I know that I can manage the café, but it’s dealing with Norah’s suppliers, like the wholesalers and the butcher, that’s the problem. As you know, she always keeps herself to herself. I can use cash for payments, lodge money to her account. There is a bank lodgement book kept under the counter, but I don’t have any access to withdraw from Norah’s bank account. I have no idea about anything like that. I can probably get credit for a few weeks, but after that people will expect to be paid.’

‘I have no idea what you should do. Maybe one of her family will be able to help,’ he suggested.

‘She only has that nephew, Martin, and his wife Cliona, who she sees about three times a year. Remember they wanted her to go to them last Christmas and she wouldn’t go as she said they drive her mad with all their talk about their expensive holidays and restaurants they have tried? And her cousin Sadie is the same age as her and lost her husband a few years ago and can just about manage herself. I think that she has a daughter married and living in Kerry.’

‘So not much help there?’

‘I doubt it,’ she sighed. ‘But what happens if Norah doesn’t come back and the café closes down?’

‘Don’t think that!’

‘I’m being realistic, Paul. The woman is about seventy-five – she should have been retired years ago! What happens if she
doesn’t come back to the café and it closes down? Where does that leave me?’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ he said soothingly.

Gina tried to control her anxiety. She and Paul were so different. He let things roll off him, not worry him, but she had shouldered a huge amount of the stress and burden over the years and knew that her income was very necessary for the family budget.

That night as she lay in bed she thought about the café – but under her ownership, with not only a change to the menu but perhaps also a change in the décor. She didn’t mean to be disloyal to Norah, but she had to consider, if the opportunity were suddenly to come up to take over the café or rent the premises, should she do it?

FOR THE FIRST FEW DAYS BUSINESS IN CASSIDY’S CAFÉ WAS QUIET.
It was as if the people of Kilfinn and the locality, sensing Norah’s absence, were reluctant to come into the café, but when Gina assured them that Norah was hoping to be back in attendance once she was able, the customers returned. Gina substituted some dishes and, chalking up the new daily specials, was encouraged by the way the customers liked them. Twice a week she called after work to see Norah, who was still in the hospital, and to update her on how the business was going. She lodged the money she took in to Norah’s business account and brought along the business chequebook for Norah to sign cheques to three key suppliers, plus her own wages. She could see how much effort it took for Norah to manage even that and wondered how much longer this could all go on …

Martin Cassidy had come into the café twice, looked all around him and gone upstairs. Gina couldn’t help herself, but she didn’t trust him to look after Norah’s interests. He’d asked to see the business accounts and she had refused, saying that only Norah could give permission for that. She could see him looking for them but she had the accounts ledger and lodgement book safely at home where she was trying to work out payments due. Sadie, Norah’s cousin, had also come into the café. A nervous woman, she had sat down to a lunch of shepherd’s pie over which she had fretted and worried about Norah.

‘What is to become of her? I’m retired on a small widow’s pension, so I’m not much help to poor Norah. Who is to look after her? If only she had married or had a family of her own …’

Gina had absolutely no idea what was going to happen, but as week after week went by it was clear that Norah was showing very little sign of recovery.

Gina had a few small catering jobs which, even though she was basically running the café single-handed, was something she had no intention of giving up. If the café were to close down and she were made redundant, it might be the only thing that she would have to fall back on.

She had normally worked only lunchtime on a Wednesday and three full days on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but now she also opened up on a Tuesday and all day Wednesday. Monday was such a quiet day it wasn’t worth opening. If she had had her way she would have opened on a Sunday, to catch people coming from mass, serve a family-friendly lunch, be open for afternoon tea and coffee and cakes when friends were off work and wanted to meet up – but Norah had resolutely refused to open on the Lord’s Day, and it was Norah’s café.

The staff nurse in the hospital had mentioned to her the last time she visited Norah that there was talk of transferring her to Beech Hill, Kilfinn’s nursing home for the elderly. Gina supplied them with cupcakes, and the few times she had been in the place she had liked it. It was bright and airy and had been purpose-built, and it was all on one level and only a few minutes out of the town.

Norah had always been independent, but for now it seemed her independence was gone; she would be reliant on nurses and carers for the time being and the hospital’s social worker had tried to explain to her the necessity of moving to a step-down facility. Norah had shaken her head, vehemently protesting about moving to an old people’s home. Norah Cassidy, of Cassidy’s Café, had never once in all her seventy-seven years of life considered herself old or even aging, so why she should be consigned to the place where all the old folks of the locality ended up was beyond her.

‘But they’ll take good care of you there. You’ll get the speech and physiotherapy you need,’ Gina assured her. ‘From what I’ve seen when I do my delivery, it’s lovely there. You’ll have your own room and bathroom and television.’

‘Just till I get better,’ mumbled Norah loudly.

Aware that it was unlikely Norah would return to work in the café, Gina wondered how much longer the situation could continue.

At night she worked on her laptop, planning out various scenarios that involved her either taking over running the café, or otherwise renting it or buying it from Norah and creating a café of her own.

‘What are you up to?’ teased Paul as she sat on the couch beside him.

‘You watch the news – I’m working out a new menu plan and also I have done a few mood boards of ideas for doing up the café if I took it over.’

‘Gina, don’t get ahead of yourself,’ he warned. ‘You don’t know what’s going to happen with Norah and that family of hers.’

‘If Cassidy’s closes down somebody else will take it over!’ she remonstrated. ‘I’m the one who’s been working there for over two years and I know I could make a go of it – increase business, attract new customers – if I got the chance. Maybe we should go to the bank and find out about taking out a loan, Paul.’

‘I’m not sure we should do that,’ he worried. ‘We are only getting back on our feet.’

‘I know, but this is different. It’s a business loan; we’d be paying a business rate. We own this house lock, stock and barrel, so no one can touch this place and it will not be part of the loan,’ she insisted. ‘Paul, do you realize, Norah having to retire might be my chance to have a business of our own?’

‘I know that, love,’ he said, hugging her.

‘I was thinking we could do up the place,’ she coaxed. ‘You could do some of the work, maybe we could buy new chairs or paint the old ones and give it all a fresh look. It’s got so dated. And
we could get rid of that oilcloth on the tables, and have fresh flowers and colour and a different look and feel.’

‘I think you should wait and see,’ he said gently.