Second Chance Read online

  PATRICIA SCANLAN

  SECOND CHANCE

  Patricia Scanlan was born in Dublin, where she lives today. Her previous bestsellers include: City Girl, Finishing Touches, Francesca’s Party, Two for Joy, Double Wedding, and most recently Divided Loyalties. She is also the Series Editor and contributing author to the Open Door series, published by Gemma. Patricia teaches creative writing and is deeply involved in adult literacy.

  SECOND CHANCE

  First published by GemmaMedia in 2009.

  GemmaMedia

  230 Commercial Street

  Boston MA 02109 USA

  617 938 9833

  www.gemmamedia.com

  Copyright © 1996, 2000, 2009 Patricia Scanlan

  This edition of Second Chance 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

  12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5

  ISBN: 978-1-934848-12-8

  Library of Congress Preassigned Control Number (PCN) applied for

  OPEN DOOR SERIES

  Patricia Scanlan

  Series Editor

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I’m going.” Tony O’Neill gave the door a good slam.

  “And don’t bother coming back,” his wife Jean shouted angrily. Tony heard the baby start to cry. He wanted to go back into the house and cuddle her but Jean would say he was spoiling her. Tony looked back. He could see his mother-in-law peering through the lace curtains that hung on the windows of her small red-brick house. When she saw him looking back she hastily dropped the curtains. Tony sighed. Mrs Feeny would blame him for the row. His mother-in-law blamed him for everything these days.

  Tony walked slowly in the direction of Phibsboro. It was starting to rain. The sky was low and grey. Big raindrops plopped onto the ground in front of him. That was all he needed. He quickened his pace. He could take shelter in the newsagents down the road. The rain came faster and heavier until it was a downpour. Tony had to run the last few steps to shelter.

  He stood looking at the newspapers in the rack, his eyes skimming across the headlines. Interest rates up. Mortgages up. Unemployment figures up. The punt down. All bad news. As usual. He knew all about bad news. Being unemployed and living with your mother-in-law was about the worst thing.

  He’d been a printer in a small printing firm. It had specialised mostly in wedding stationery and Thank You cards and party invitations and such like. The firm had been doing well. Then there had been a postal strike. Orders stopped coming in. Existing orders had not been paid for. The staff began to get very worried. With good reason. After several weeks, with no sign of a settlement in sight, the boss called a meeting. The business had failed and he had no choice but to make his staff redundant.

  That was the worst day of Tony’s life. Going home to their flat to tell Jean the news had been dreadful. He felt that he had let her down terribly. After all it was his duty to provide for his wife and new baby daughter. Some of his mates were redundant and he had never been able to understand their misery at signing on the dole. He couldn’t understand when they talked about it taking away their pride. Wasn’t it great to get money handed out to you? You could spend all day doing exactly what you wanted to do, he once joked with Mick, a pal of his.

  “It’s not like that at all,” Mick snapped.

  Tony thought he was being a bit touchy. Now he understood. Signing on robbed a man of his pride. Robbed him of his independence. And robbed him of his will to get up off his ass and do something.

  The first morning he had signed on he felt worthless. Although the girl behind the counter had been very nice and helpful, Tony went home to Jean, put the money on the table, and cried like a baby. His wife tried to comfort him. It was only temporary. Things would improve. He would get another job, she assured him.

  Nothing she said eased his fears. Tony had seen men like himself, men younger than him, and older men who had been signing on for years. They too had tried to get jobs. And failed, time and again. Why should he be any different? New technology that made man’s skills unnecessary was helping to cut down on the workforce. Computers didn’t take tea- and lunch-breaks. They didn’t take an hour off each week to cash a pay-cheque. They didn’t need unions to fight for their rights. Bloody computers, he hated them.

  That first terrible week of his unemployment he sat down with the Golden Pages directory and wrote to every printing firm listed. He wrote to all the newspapers, local and national. Jean, who had worked as a typist before her marriage, typed his CV neatly and expertly. He wrote over fifty letters seeking employment. He cycled the length and breadth of the city hand-delivering them. He prayed that the postal dispute would end so that the postman could start delivering the replies. Surely, out of the fifty firms he had written to, he’d get a job offer from one of them.

  With great anticipation Tony heard the ending of the postal dispute announced on the six o’clock news one evening several weeks later. The next morning he was waiting for the postman. To his dismay all he got were several brown envelopes containing bills, and a card from his sister who had been in Spain on holidays.

  “Don’t worry,” Jean assured him. “They’ll have lots of mail to sort. There’s probably loads of replies waiting for you.”

  Tony got two replies out of the fifty letters he had sent out. Both regretting that they could not offer him employment. He was gutted. Despair enveloped him. What a failure he was as a husband and father. “Stop worrying, we’re managing all right. Something will turn up,” Jean encouraged. But he could see the new worry lines in her face. The anxious furrowing of her brow when more brown envelopes with their unwelcome bills dropped on the doormat in the mornings.

  “Maybe I should go to England,” Tony suggested glumly. “I’d surely get a job there.”

  “It’s as bad there as it is here. Hold on for a while. We’re not on our uppers yet,” his wife said, but Tony could not get rid of the nagging anxiety that weighed him down.

  They quickly learned to economise. No more Chinese take-aways. No newspapers. No more biscuits or cakes. They started to buy cheaper loo rolls and cheaper nappies for the baby. Yellow-pack labels saved them a few pounds. As fast as the sand in the egg-timer, their little nest egg of savings disappeared. Jean suggested that maybe they should start looking for a less expensive flat.

  Her mother stepped in and suggested that they come and live with her until things picked up and her son-in-law got another job.

  “I think it’s for the best, Tony. At least it won’t be taking an enormous amount out of your dole money in rent. I could look after baby Angela for Jean if she was able to get a part-time job,” Mrs Feeny said with that delicate breathy voice that hid a will of iron. Tony knew he would be making a big mistake by agreeing to his mother-in-law’s suggestion. They’d manage on their own. Thousands … no millions of people managed in similar circumstances and he’d get a job somewhere, he knew it. “Let’s wait another little while,” he urged his wife. But he could see that she wanted to move in with her mother.

  “I’ll get a job in an office or maybe a shop or café for a couple of hours a day. Mam can mind Angela. She’d love it and it would give us a few extra bob,” Jean pleaded the day they gave back their video and stopped their Cablelink payments. Then the washing-machine broke down and Tony just didn’t have the money to get it repaired. Jean started bringing the washing around to her mother’s. She spent longer and longer there. In the end, Tony agreed to go and live in the
red-brick house off the North Circular Road. He had never felt so fed up in his life.

  Now, nearly a year later, he was sick to death of his life. Sick to death of his mother-in-law and, right at this minute, sick to death of his wife. Especially after their row this morning. He stared glumly out of the shop window. The rain was easing off. Where was he going to go today anyway? He had had no destination in mind when he had barged out of the house earlier on. All he had wanted to do then was to get away from his wife and her mother. He put his hand in his trouser pocket and took out the loose coins that jangled there. One pound and thirty pence, he counted. Hardly a fortune, still it was better than nothing. Last week he’d only had twenty pence left on his dole day. He wouldn’t mind buying a paper and going for a cup of coffee and a read. But if he bought the paper he wouldn’t have enough to buy anything to eat later. He had better stay out of Jean’s hair for the rest of the day. Tony sighed. He put the coins back in his pocket and headed on towards Phibsboro.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jean scraped a slice of burnt toast. She had burnt her breakfast because of him. She was very angry. Just who did Tony think he was? You’d think he’d be a bit grateful to her mother for taking them in. For helping out when they were stuck. And they were stuck. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. Her mother’s generosity had eased their financial situation a lot. Why couldn’t Tony be more gracious?

  Jean sat down. She took a bite of toast. She made a face. It tasted horrible. Tony hadn’t had much to eat either. Jean felt a pang. She was feeling remorseful now that her burst of temper was spent. She shouldn’t have shouted at him the way she had. Just because he let the milk boil over. Her mother had started moaning about the way milk stains the cooker. There had been a full-scale row.

  Her mother was not easy to live with. Jean had to admit it. She was fussy. She liked everything just so. If Tony left a paper on the chair she’d fold it up neatly and put it in the paper rack. Always with a little arch of the eyebrows and eyes thrown up to heaven. Bridie Feeny never had to speak to make her disapproval known. One arch of her plucked eyebrows was enough.

  Angela whimpered in her high-chair. Jean stood up and gently lifted her out.

  “Poor baba,” she soothed. Angela snuggled in for a cuddle. Jean gave a little smile. They had been so excited when she’d found out she was going to have a baby. Together they had decorated the small room in the flat. They had bought nursery wallpaper. She had even got a border to match. It was a beautiful border. It had little cows jumping over the moon.

  Jean felt sadness well up. How she would love to be back in her cosy little flat. Just the three of them. Everything had been going so well for them. They had been saving for a mortgage. Their dream of buying their own house was shattered now. All their savings were gone. Tony felt a terrible failure. He felt he had let her and Angela down. Jean sighed. He shouldn’t blame himself. It wasn’t his fault. He was a good husband. And she loved him.

  “Maamaa,” Angela interrupted her musings. Jean looked down at the little curly fair head. Tenderly she kissed her daughter. Angela was starting to talk. It was fascinating to listen to the garbled sounds and try to make sense of them. She could say hot. Everything was “hot”. Jean had to watch her like a hawk now that she was crawling. Angela was fascinated by the fire. But fortunately, “Aha hot” was enough to stop her in her tracks. She’d be one in a couple of weeks. It was hard to believe.

  Gently she laid her daughter on the floor. She watched her scoot around. Propelling herself on her little arms and legs.

  Jean cleared the dirty dishes off the table. She filled the sink with hot soapy water. She washed the dishes slowly. Where had Tony gone, she wondered?

  Jean stared out the window into the small back garden. Her mother kept it immaculate. But, despite Bridie’s best efforts, autumn leaves covered the neat lawn like a patchwork quilt.

  Jean watched the early morning sun shining on the damson trees. There had been a shower when Tony left. It was over now. The sun was emerging from behind the grey clouds. She could see patches of blue in the sky. It was early autumn. The leaves were still crisp on the branches. Gold, red, russet, brown and some still green. The slanting rays of the sun danced over them. The light breeze made them tremble on the branches. A little gust now and then would make them quiver and rustle. And then some would float lightly down to join the crisp, crunchy pile beneath the tree.

  It was a mild autumn so far. The rambling pink rose was still in bloom. So were the fuchsias in her mother’s hanging baskets. Their full pink-and-white blooms were glorious against the whitewashed walls. Tubs of pink and red geraniums dotted the yard. Jean loved to sit out there on a sunny afternoon with Angela. It was a little haven of peace.

  “Would you look at those leaves,” Bridie Feeny said crossly. She came and stood beside her daughter. She picked up the tea towel and started to dry up. “I think they look pretty,” Jean reflected.

  “Pretty!” exclaimed her mother. “They’re a nuisance. They’re so untidy. I cleaned that garden two days ago. There wasn’t a leaf to be seen. And now look at the place. I’m going to get those damson trees cut down.”

  Jean threw her eyes up to heaven. Her mother made the same threat every year. But then spring would come. Each year white frothy blossoms would burst from the young buds. It was a glorious sight. Then the green leaves would appear. Later, as spring turned to summer, the damsons started to grow fat and juicy. They looked like big purple grapes.

  After a long hot summer the branches would bow under the weight of their fruit. Jean and Bridie would spend the afternoon picking them. Then Bridie would make pots of dark, sweet damson jam. The memory of fresh Vienna roll, spread thick with butter and topped with the tasty jam made Jean’s mouth water.

  The last few years had not produced a good crop. The summers had been cool and cloudy. This year there hadn’t been enough damsons to make jam.

  “What are you going to do with yourself today?” Bridie asked. She reached down and lifted her granddaughter into her arms. Angela squirmed. She wanted to keep on exploring. “This one is getting a mind of her own,” Bridie said tartly. “Just like her father!”

  “Don’t start!” Jean warned. “I’ve had enough for one morning.”

  Bridie glared at her daughter. “You’ve had enough! You’ve had enough. What about me? Just because I didn’t want my cooker ruined with hot spilt milk. That Tony has a sharp tongue.” She sniffed.

  “Mother, do you want us to move out?” Jean demanded.

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” Bridie retorted. “Where would you go?”

  “We’d get a flat from the Corporation,” Jean snapped.

  “There’s no need for that kind of talk,” Bridie said hastily.

  “There is need,” Jean fumed. She dried her hands. “I’m going to get dressed. I’m going in to the Housing Department to ask them to put us on the list. Then we’ll be out from under your feet. Tony was right. I should never have let you persuade me to come home.” She felt the tears come to her eyes. She hurried out of the kitchen, not wanting her mother to see them.

  Jean ran upstairs into her small back bedroom. She flung herself on the bed. Tears slid down her cheeks. She didn’t think she could stand much more. She had said that she was going to see about getting on the housing list. Maybe she should do it. Things couldn’t go on as they were. Jean sat up and wiped her eyes. It was her children’s allowance day today. She would call into the post office to collect it. Then she would get the bus into town. She must check the address of the Housing Department. She wasn’t too sure if they had moved to the new civic offices. She hoped they hadn’t. The civic offices were not that handy to get to. Jervis Street was much more convenient.

  Jean went to the small wardrobe that held all their clothes. She took out her good black ski pants. She wanted to look smart. It helped, when you were down in the dumps. She chose her favourite pink cashmere jumper to go with the pants. Swiftly she began to dress. Enough was enough. It was
time to do something about their situation.

  Bridie put Angela back down on the floor and stood frowning at the kitchen sink. Why on earth was Jean picking on her? Anyone would think it was her fault that Tony and Jean had problems. She had gone out of her way to help them. She had opened her home to them. This was the thanks she got. Bridie pursed her lips. She should have known better than to expect gratitude. She dried the knives and spoons and settled them neatly in the drawer. She put the butter in the fridge. She wiped the top of the marmalade dish and put it in the top press. She gave the press door a good slam because she was so annoyed. There were Cornflakes all over the table mat where Tony had been sitting. He was most untidy.

  She glanced at her granddaughter who was gazing wide-eyed at the clothes tumbling around in the washing-machine. Angela was her pride and joy. How lonely her life would be without her daughter and precious granddaughter. And, to tell the truth, she liked having a man in the house at night. Since they’d come to live with her, Bridie slept soundly.

  When she had been on her own, she’d slept fitfully. Always listening for unusual noises. Two houses on the street had been burgled. Bridie was terrified the same would happen to her. Now that Jean and Tony were living with her she felt protected.

  But it was hard getting used to having people around the house all day. She had got into a routine of her own that suited her. She liked keeping a tidy house. Tony was not a tidy person. He didn’t fold up his newspapers neatly. He left his jacket hanging on the back of a chair. It drove her mad. She had asked him to hang it up in the press under the stairs. When she asked him, he would do it for a few days. Then he would forget. It was most annoying. Her dear dead husband Tom had been very neat in his habits. “A place for everything and everything in its place,” was his favourite saying.

  Bridie’s lip trembled. She missed Tom. He’d been a good husband. He was a quiet man. He let Bridie make the decisions. That suited her. Bridie was an organiser. They’d rarely had rows. Their life was a comforting routine that seldom varied. Breakfast together. Then he went to work. He worked in a furniture shop in town. She cleaned and tidied the house and did the shopping. Then she’d prepare lunch. Which was served up promptly at one o’clock. Except on Sundays. On Sundays they had lunch at one-thirty.