Time Present and Time Past (2 page)

Out on the street, beyond the wooden deck, the Luas slips past, a sleek and silver tram, almost futuristic in spite of its quaintly chiming bell. Fintan finishes his coffee and cake. It's time for him to get back to the office.

Already he is thinking about dinner.

By mid-afternoon Joan and Beth have finished their lunch, and they leave the restaurant. They say goodbye to each other and Beth heads off in the direction of the National Gallery, while Joan unwittingly retraces her son's steps along Merrion Row, going towards the Green. Like Fintan, she also goes into the gardens, and sits down on a bench near the ponds, to get her bearings and decide what to do with the rest of her day.

She's glad that the lunch is over. It had been pleasant enough, but she always finds it something of an obligation, a chore even, to meet Beth. Even though they're sisters, they don't have much in common. Beth is interested in music and gardening, things which Joan has never found particularly engaging. They always talk a little bit about the family, of course, although rarely about Martina, who actually lives with Beth. And so their conversation had stayed on the most general of topics: the meal they were eating, holiday plans, the weather and so on. There's no point talking to Beth about topics that really interest Joan, such as the economy. She reads every last little article in the business pages of
The Irish Times
every day and is convinced that the good times are going to end, and sooner rather than later. Anybody should be able to see it coming, she thinks. The problem is that people don't want to know, they want to think that the money will keep flowing forever. Well, they're in for a shock.

Joan feels happier and more relaxed now that she's on her own again. She leans back on the bench and gazes out over the water. It had been a funny coincidence seeing Fintan like that, in the restaurant. Fat as a fool he is, these days. It's bad for his health. She resolves to tell him as much the next time she sees him. She'll remind him to go and get his cholesterol checked; no, better than that, he needs one of those comprehensive medical tests that they do now in the private clinics. Have blood samples taken, get his heart checked out. That's what she'll tell him to do. She'll mention it to Colette as well and have a word with her about his diet. He eats too much; he was always a glutton. Maybe Colette can help persuade him to go to the clinic, because Fintan is like most men, he won't go near the doctor no
matter
what's wrong with him. If his head fell off and rolled across the floor, he'd pick it up and stick it back on, hope for the best. Fintan's own father had been exactly the same and where did it lead? To a heart attack in his prime, that's where, and Joan left on her own to finish rearing Fintan and Martina.

She sighs and shakes her head. Enough. The rest of the afternoon is hers to enjoy as she thinks fit. She doesn't come into the centre of town very often these days, so when she does, she likes to make the most of it. She'll do a little shopping and then have a cup of tea somewhere before getting the DART home. This plan pleases her and she looks forward to the next hour or so.

She leaves the Green by Fusiliers' Arch, crosses the road and walks down Grafton Street past all the buskers: past a man pretending to be a statue and another man making enormous soap bubbles that quiver and wobble; past a group playing traditional Irish music. It's quite busy in town today. There are shoppers and tourists; there are young
women
wearing those little sheepskin boots that look like slippers, together with short skirts and opaque tights. It's an odd look, Joan thinks. They're probably students from Trinity, for some of them have satchels over their shoulders that gape open, showing folders and books.

She goes into Brown Thomas and walks through the glittering cosmetics hall, where girls in black dresses and high heels attempt to spritz her with the latest expensive new perfume. Skinny Minnies all of them, and wearing far too much make-up, they remind Joan of Martina at the same age. It isn't a happy thought. She sweeps imperiously past them, and heads for the escalator.

Joan finds herself reflected in mirrors everywhere. She's a handsome woman, big boned, with strong features, and she takes pride in her appearance. Although she's in her seventies now she could pass for late sixties. A snappy dresser, she's looking today for a new suit for the spring, something that will take her on through to the summer. She likes classic, rather formal clothes, Basler, Jaeger, things that don't date.

As she browses through the rails she notices two women, one about her own age and one a good deal younger. It's clearly a mother and daughter out shopping together, because they look quite like each
other
. The mother has just come out of the changing room, in a dress with a big label hanging on the back of it, and the daughter is giving her opinion. Joan has never liked shopping with other people, certainly not for clothes, and certainly not with
Martina
. Very occasionally she'll go shopping with Colette, but only for things for the house. Colette helps her bring home in the car items that would be too big for her to manage on her own. But Joan knows her own mind. She either likes something or she doesn't. Beth, on the other hand, is a born ditherer. Joan suspects that she wouldn't have a clue how to dress without Martina's help; why, she even used to let Christy tell her what colours she should wear, because she couldn't make up her mind for herself.

After looking around for a while, she settles on two possible options, both of them in summer-weight wool. One is a dress and matching jacket in black-and-white houndstooth; the other a skirt suit in a soft turquoise colour. She feels that she would get more wear out of the houndstooth, but she likes the other one much more. The colour is flattering and is more suitable, she thinks, for the season that's in it. She tries both of them on, and quickly settles on the turquoise one. It's an easy decision to make.

Once she's paid for the suit and it's been presented to her in a striped carrier bag, she browses around the store a little more, and then goes out onto Grafton Street and looks in a few more shops, at shoes and scarves.

By now she's ready for some tea, and so she heads through the arcade that leads onto Dawson Street, and goes up Molesworth Street to the National Museum, the cafe of which is a favourite place of Joan's. You can almost always get a table there, even though the room is small; and it has a certain elegance with its chandelier, the chain supporting it swagged in silk. Another advantage, she thinks, as she waits for her pot of Earl Grey, is that you're almost certain to be left in peace. The risk of running into someone you know in the museum is very slight.

She sits down with the tea and waits for it to draw. There's a younger woman at a nearby table with an enormous buggy. It's quite ridiculous, the size of it: you could invade Iraq in a thing like that, Joan thinks. There's a changing bag hooked onto the handles of the buggy; and the front is all hung with toys, trinkets and little mirrors, like a pagan shrine. Joan pours her tea and savours its citrus fragrance.

An elderly man sitting on the other side of her politely asks for a salt cellar off her table, and she passes it to him with a smile. They talk to each other for a few moments before the man continues with his meal. Joan quite likes talking to strangers: fellow passengers on the bus or the DART; people walking their dogs along the seafront near where she lives, or sitting on park benches. She likes that glancing interaction, where nothing is at stake. People don't know who you are; there's no emotional baggage, no
intimacy
. Joan hates the very word, with its connotations of privacy violated, of things that shouldn't even be thought of being dragged into the open.
Intimate friends
: who in their right mind would want such a thing?

Of course she couldn't say it to anyone, they'd only take it up wrongly, but she loves being a widow. That isn't for a moment to say that she's glad her husband Terence died; it's rather that she's very happy living alone, and never having to please anyone but herself. Joan never tires of her own company.

As she drinks her tea she remembers the Trinity girls she'd seen on Grafton Street earlier. Did they know how lucky they were to be at university? Joan would have given anything to have gone to college, but her father hadn't believed in education for girls. Business, politics, economics, law, even: Joan would have loved to study any one of those subjects, and she'd have had the brains for it too, for she'd been a smart young woman. It had annoyed her beyond measure that Martina had had every opportunity to study and had made nothing of it. Terence had always said she wasn't academic, but he had doted on her and made excuses. It was just laziness, as far as Joan could see. Martina had never been interested in anything other than lipsticks and dresses, boys and going to dances. Even Fintan could have done better as far as education went. He got his law degree, he was clever and hard-working and had quite a good job now, but he didn't have the right personality, Joan thought, he had been too soft-hearted to ever end up as a judge or a barrister. Still, she has great hopes for his sons, for Rob in particular.

She and Beth had both entered the civil service after they left school. If it was good enough for their own father, the logic had run, it should have been good enough for them. They'd started at quite a lowly level, in clerking posts, and Beth, in all the years she spent there, had never made any great progress. She'd had no real interest or aptitude; it had never been anything more than a way to make a living. But Joan had been ambitious. She'd worked hard, studied at night, sat exams and moved slowly up through the grades.

What if my life had been different? she wonders now, gazing into her tea cup and staring at the leaves, as if trying to predict her own future instead of reassess the past. What if I had never married? But in those days the only way for a woman to be respected was to get a ring on her finger. Joan had always known that. She'd hated being stuck living at home, but back in the day you couldn't just move out to a place of your own. She'd used to envy the girls in the civil service who were up from the country, for even though they were only in boarding houses or sharing dingy little flats together, at least they'd had their freedom and their privacy.

Terence Buckley had been a young teacher lodging in a house two doors down from Joan's family home, and her connection with him had started in small talk when they met on the street. It's odd, but she suspects that she thought about marriage before he did, even though when it came to the point it was he who had had to persuade her. He'd been a decent man, gentle and soft spoken, so she'd known she would be fine with him. She didn't want anyone who was short-tempered like her father; she didn't want anyone who had a stronger will than her own. She hadn't been looking for trouble; she'd wanted a home that was truly hers; wanted to get away from her wretched, bickering parents. The big problem had been the marriage bar. In those days women had been obliged to give up their civil service jobs when they got married, so it hadn't been an easy decision to make. She'd thought about it for a long time before deciding to throw in her lot with Terence.

She'd been correct in her assessment of him, for he'd turned out to be a good husband and father; a steady worker who ended up a headmaster, and an excellent provider for the family. Marriage in fairness hadn't been so bad. It was the children that had been the real problem.

But no, she thinks immediately, stealing a glance at the monster buggy beside her, that wasn't true: it was the having of the children she had hated. To this day she can hardly bring herself to walk past the National Maternity Hospital. She regards it as she feels the citizens of Moscow must have regarded the Lubyanka during the Purge: as an imposing civic building in the centre of the city, within the walls of which truly unspeakable things were happening day and night. She hadn't had too hard a time of it with Fintan for she hadn't been sick when she was expecting him, just tired all the time, and then when he was ready to be born she didn't realise what was happening until the last gasp; she'd almost had him right outside the hospital, on the pavement of Holles Street. It was the second time around that she had really suffered.

  There'd been the so-called morning sickness that had lasted all day, every day, for pretty well the whole nine months, until she thought she would surely bring up her own liver and lights, because it didn't seem possible that there could be anything else left inside her that she hadn't vomited up. She'd been pregnant over the course of a summer, an unusually close and humid summer, which had added greatly to her discomfort. Labour had lasted for three days, three days of indescribable pain and humiliation. And then the baby, when she finally brought it home, had colic. It wouldn't sleep and it whinged all the time, ‘a gurney baby', as Terence's mother up in the North had called it. She'd only realised then how easy a time of it she'd had with Fintan and even later, as a little boy, there'd never been any trouble managing him, for he'd been an obedient child, Joan thinks, tractable. But she doesn't like to remember those early days of motherhood, not even now, so many years later.

  She finishes her tea and decides that she'll head for home soon. She won't need to do any cooking tonight, having had a solid lunch with Beth, just put out a few cold cuts and some bread, maybe cheese and some fruit. Everything she needs is in the house, and there's red wine too. She'll have a glass, just the one, then she'll read the paper, do the crossword and watch the news on television before having an early night.

There are worse things to be than a widow in your seventies. Sometimes Joan wonders if there's anything better.