A Gift to You Read online

  My men leave the house, still chomping on crispy bacon, and absent-mindedly, I pick at the stuffing that is overflowing onto the big oval serving plate. It’s scrumptious. And I’m starving. A wild, reckless madness overcomes me. I grab the carving knife and fork and slice into the smooth, perfectly cooked succulent breast. Juices ooze out. I carve again and lay the steaming white slices onto a plate. I pull some of the rich dark meat from under the wings and lay it neatly beside the breast. My fingers are sticky and I lick them, teasing myself with the taste of what is to come. I spoon out stuffing and take a jar of cranberry sauce from the cupboard. I dress the slices of meat with rich red cranberries and shake pepper and salt over my feast. Exhilarated, I pour myself a glass of chilled white wine. Sitting at the kitchen table, I cut a white piece of hot meat, add a dark piece, press some stuffing on top and ease my fork into the steaming, succulent food. I eat slowly, savouring the contrasting moist flavours. It is delicious. I have surpassed myself this year. I congratulate myself, taking a sip of cool, tart wine. Tension evaporates. I feel perfectly at peace as the silence of the house wraps itself around me. This is the life.

  We arrive half an hour late at Monica’s. We got delayed playing a game of skittles with the children.

  My sister is doing her nut. ‘You’re late. Bring the turkey into the kitchen until I carve it,’ she hisses at me as she ushers Ronan and the children ahead of her. She looks the height of elegance in her red linen trousers and black sleeveless DKNY top. I carry the tinfoil-wrapped plate carefully, reverently. Ken is out on the deck in a chef’s hat and apron, presiding over his smoking barbecue. He hails us in his faux-hearty tones, reserved for lesser family mortals and those he feels superior to.

  ‘Jamie Oliver, eat your heart out,’ Ronan murmurs, giving me a wink.

  I laugh and Monica turns and glares at me. That makes me laugh even more. I’m a little tipsy. The two glasses of wine I’ve already had have gone to my head. I’m not used to drinking in the middle of the day. I follow Monica into her state-of-the-art kitchen and place the turkey on the island. Monica is all business-like. Impatiently, she pulls away the tinfoil, anxious to get carving. Her jaw drops.

  ‘What’s happened to the turkey?’ she squawks.

  ‘Oh, I had mine hot. It was delicious,’ I say off-handedly as I pull a couple of bottles of wine out of the tote bag on my shoulder. ‘You might want to put these in the fridge to chill for later,’ I add calmly. I even smile at her before stepping out through the patio doors to join my husband and children.

  DIFFICULT DAYS

  The Unexpected Visit

  My granddaughter, Isobel, has come to visit me today. When I hear the knock on the door and open it to find her on the step, I’m surprised but, nevertheless, delighted to see her.

  It’s been a while since she’s called to see me – Christmas, actually – and it does my heart good to see her all rosy-cheeked and windswept, her glorious black hair tumbling from its topknot as the wild easterly wind gives a gusty howl and nearly blows the door off the hinges.

  ‘Come in, pet,’ I urge, ushering her into the hall before closing the door on the melancholy, wintry afternoon.

  ‘Oh, Nan, it’s so warm and cosy in here!’ Isobel exclaims, bending to kiss my cheek. A cloying sweet scent from one of the designer perfumes she so favours wafts behind her as she walks ahead of me into the sitting room. She unwinds the scarf from around her neck and unbuttons the fashionable belted black woollen coat she wears and drops both onto the sofa, before hurrying to stand in front of the fire, hands out to the blaze.

  ‘I love a real fire,’ my granddaughter enthuses. ‘I wish I had one in the flat, or even better, a stove with lots of glass. They heat the place brilliantly,’ she burbles away, words tumbling out in that breathlessly animated way she has of speaking. ‘My friends . . . remember Clare, who married Leo?’ She cocks an eye at me. ‘They have a wood burner in their house. They’re so lucky!’ Isobel frowns, eyes darkening with sulky disgruntlement. ‘I never thought Clare would be married before me. She never went out with fellas until she met Leo. And now she’s married, and has her own house and I’m manless and renting an apartment I can’t afford!’

  I’m very fond of Clare; she and Isobel have been friends since childhood. She is the giver in their relationship. Shaded and diminished by Isobel’s shining effervescence. It has always been so.

  I give an inward sigh. Isobel’s grand romance ended unexpectedly six months previously and I know I’m in for an afternoon of whiny self-pity. It shocks me to think, in spite of so-called women’s liberation and feminism and the like, if a girl hasn’t got a man on her arm, she considers herself a failure.

  I’m eighty now, and it was the same in my day! Spinsterhood was the greatest fear for my friends and me. Spinsterhood might have been preferable for some of them, I reflect, remembering several of the unlucky ones who made bad marriages and suffered physical and emotional abuse, or in one case, poverty because of gambling. Two friends had husbands who weren’t faithful, another found out her husband was gay and the marriage was his cover. I was lucky in my marriage, although like most couples, we had our ups and downs.

  ‘Sit down and I’ll make a pot of tea.’ I put on a bright smile. I had been about to watch an old black-and-white Bette Davis film on one of the movie channels and had been rather looking forward to it, but it behoves me to make some sort of effort at entertaining. I wait to see if my granddaughter will tell me to sit down and offer to make the tea, but I should know better. She sprawls herself in the armchair opposite mine, kicks off her high heels, wriggles her toes in front of the flames and settles in to be pampered.

  ‘Have you any of your to-die-for cream sponge?’ she wheedles, her brown eyes glinting in anticipation, a smile curving her crimson rosebud lips. Isobel is beautiful. She reminds me of Ava Gardner. That wild, ripe luscious beauty that is at its best in the late twenties and thirties, before it gets blowsy.

  I leave my granddaughter to toast by the fire and put the kettle on and get down china plates, cups and saucers. Old-fashioned, I know, but tea from a china cup is the only way to drink it. I have no cream sponge today, but I know Isobel will enjoy a slice of my cherry-and-walnut cake. The kettle sings as I stand looking out at the sleeting rain that has begun to fall, and the sullen leaden sky grows even more oppressive, threatening snow. It has been a hard February this year, with very little hint of spring.

  I wet the tea and pop a tea cosy over the pot to let it brew. Is Isobel on or off the milk, I wonder. Probably off, seeing as it’s after Christmas and she could be doing one of her ‘detoxing’ carry-ons.

  ‘Are you still taking your tea black?’ I bring in the tray with the cups and plates of cake. She has her head bent to her phone, thumbs flying over the keys.

  ‘No milk, thanks,’ she murmurs without raising her head. What is it with people today that they are so addicted to these yokes? They can hardly go for a pee without texting or taking photos of themselves and Facebooking and Twittering. I have never seen such self-absorption. They need the world to know the boring minutiae of their shallow lives. It mystifies me. I saw Isobel and her ex taking a photo of themselves with her phone! ‘It’s called a selfie,’ my granddaughter explained, having made sure that the angle was right, and the light, and so on and so forth. Me, me, me! The selfie generation, and they call this progress!

  ‘So, to what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected treat?’ I ask lightly, smiling down at my granddaughter as I pour her tea and hand her the cup and saucer.

  ‘Oh, I had to take a flexi day or I’d lose it, so I decided to come for a visit. It’s been ages since I’ve seen you,’ Isobel says, before biting into the buttered cake.

  ‘Hmm, it has been a while.’ I try to keep the tartness out of my tone. The last time Isobel had dropped in, she’d needed money for her car insurance. Don’t get me wrong, I love my grandchild. She and her younger brother, Richard, were a great source of joy to Dara, my late husband, and me, wh
en they were young. We loved them as our own and spent many happy hours spoiling them and loving them as only grandparents can. But as they grew older and began to lead more independent lives, the visits grew less frequent.

  ‘Eaten bread is soon forgotten,’ Dara had growled grumpily when Richard once told him he couldn’t come and sweep out the yard and cut the grass because he was going hiking with friends. He’d promised he’d do it the next weekend he was free. It never happened, of course, and in the end, we got someone in to cut the grass and do a few odd jobs, twice a month because Dara’s failing health meant he wasn’t able to look after the garden, which had been his pride and joy.

  I’d hoped my son, Eamonn, might urge Isobel and Richard to help us out a bit more as old age clipped our wings, but he was so busy with his financial-services business, we weren’t on his radar either. I was disappointed, to tell you the truth. Had our rearing of our son contributed to his self-preoccupation? I was worse than Dara for spoiling Eamonn, I have to admit. I treated him like a little prince, so proud of his academic success that I would let him off his chores so he could study or spend time with his friends.

  I expected more of my daughter, Emily, and indeed she was, and is, a good and dependable girl who takes excellent care of me now that her father has passed to his eternal rest and I am on my own. Emily, a primary-school teacher, works hard and has reared two sons who have both emigrated to Canada. They are loving it and Emily has been over to visit them in Toronto several times. Emily lives in a midland town and she drives up to Dublin every Saturday to shop for me and do whatever chores I need doing. It was Emily who persuaded me to get a woman in to ‘do’ for me every morning.

  ‘You can well afford it, Mam,’ she urged. ‘Spend your money on yourself, you’ve worked long and hard enough, there’s no pockets in a shroud,’ my daughter said firmly when I protested. I felt guilty at the thought of spending some of my nest egg employing someone to clean and iron, as though I was the landed gentry and too lazy to do my own housework. Though I put it off for a long time, protesting that I was well able to look after myself, my arthritis slowed me down terribly, and when Lily, the woman Emily found for me, came to do the few hours every morning, I wondered how I’d ever managed without her. I love hearing her key in the door, and her cheery, ‘Are you up, love? I’m here. I’ll put the kettle on,’ roar up the stairs. Lily is a fount of news and information and, at this stage, I know as much about her family as I do about my own. What I love most about her is her authenticity. There’s no side to Lily. What you see is what you get. A genuine salt-of-the-earth soul with a great heart. I always feel Dara is minding me from beyond the grave and that he sent Lily to me to help fill the aching gap his going has left in my life.

  ‘How much do you pay her?’ my daughter-in-law, Gina, asked me bluntly when I told her I was getting someone to clean for me. Gina is Isobel’s mum, and Eamonn’s wife. We get on well enough, but Gina is nosy and I don’t like that in a person.

  ‘That’s between Lily and me,’ I’d said firmly, and she hadn’t asked again.

  Isobel picks up the remote control and starts to flick the channels. ‘Oohh, The Big Bang Theory, I love that. You aren’t watching anything, Nan, are you?’ She takes a gulp of tea and settles back comfortably in the chair. Now, I do rather like The Big Bang Theory myself – the characters and dialogue make me laugh – but I’m a tad annoyed at madam’s appropriation of the remote control, as Bette Davis disappears off the TV screen.

  ‘I thought you came to visit me, not watch TV.’ I give her the eye over the top of my specs.

  ‘Sorry, I never get to see TV in the afternoon; it must be lovely to be retired and be able to do whatever you want.’ She gives a deep, peeved sigh but mutes the sound.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ I say drily. ‘Especially now that I can’t drive any more and can’t go to all the places I used to go to, like the library, and into town to visit art galleries, or for a walk on the seafront, or even to visit your grandfather’s grave.’

  ‘Oh! I must bring you sometime,’ she says airily, not meeting my gaze.

  ‘So what’s new in your life? How’s work? Any new fella on the scene?’ I don’t want her to think I’m giving broad hints to get lifts to the grave, even though I am. I miss my weekly visit to change the flowers and keep the plot tidy.

  ‘Nope, no man. I’m not going down that road again, Nan. That Gary Finlay toad was two-timing me big time! And he took half the Egyptian cotton bed linen and two of my Orla Kiely bath sheets when he moved out of the apartment. My lease is up at the end of February, and the landlord is looking to increase the rent. I’ll have to let it go. I won’t be able to afford another decent flat unless I share with someone and I so don’t want to do that!’ Her pretty face darkens into a glower and I think to myself how spoilt her generation is with their posh sheets and designer towels and sense of supreme entitlement.

  Dara and I bought our bed linen and towels in Denis Guiney’s in Talbot Street – the same as half of Dublin – and only then when we could afford them. No such thing as credit cards. It was the HP in our day. But I never bought anything on the hire purchase; I was too afraid of getting into debt.

  ‘Will you move back home?’ I throw a log on the fire and watch the sparks fly up the chimney, before it catches and yellow flames lick and curl around the sides.

  ‘That’s such a backward step, Nan,’ Isobel sighs. ‘I’m nearly thirty. I can’t go back to living with Mum and Dad. I’ve got used to my independence.’

  ‘Well, we have to cut our cloth to suit our measure.’ I trot out my mother’s favourite saying. ‘You’ll surely find someone compatible to share with. With all these rent increases, there are plenty of young people in the same boat as yourself.’

  ‘Hmm. All I need is a good-sized room to get me over the hump until I find somewhere I can afford,’ she says with studied nonchalance, giving me a smile that doesn’t quite reach her watchful eyes.

  And then the penny drops.

  Isobel wants to come and live upstairs in the big front room that used to be Dara’s and my bedroom. It’s a beautiful room with a bay window – bright, airy, high-ceilinged. It would make a very nice bedsit indeed.

  Two years after my husband passed away and as my mobility lessened, at Emily’s urgings, I renovated the house so that the small box room is now an ensuite with a walk-in shower. It adjoins the second bedroom, at the back of the house, where I now sleep. It too is a sunny, serene room overlooking the copse of trees at the end of my garden and I love the way the sunlight filters through the foliage, even in these dark days of winter when the thin bony branches are skeletal and undressed.

  ‘A bedsit sounds just the thing,’ I say non-committally but, inside, I’m raging. Only the other day, Gina had casually mentioned how much she enjoys not having to kill herself doing housework now that Richard and Isobel no longer live at home. Eamonn has turned Isobel’s bedroom into an office, she declares. It’s ideal for him.

  Gina and Isobel are in cahoots. They have it all worked out. Lonely, afflicted Nan would be only delighted to have her granddaughter come to live with her for a while. Rent-free too, I bet. So there is an ulterior motive behind this unexpected visit. Just like my granddaughter’s last one when her car-insurance money was needed and she was broke. I’d paid up, to a gushing flood of thanks and promises to drive me wherever I needed to go.

  Anger and hurt swell and swirl inside. I am being used again, made a convenience of by my own kith and kin. My grandchild that I used to cuddle and kiss and spoil and romp with now sees me as an easy touch, as I’m beginning to fear, does her mother.

  Well, madam, you’ll not be getting your feet under my table now or in the future, I think coldly.

  Don’t get me wrong, if Isobel was in trouble or homeless, she could have that room with a heart and a half, but she’s not getting it like this. Sneakily. Opportunistically. I will not be her or Gina’s doormat.

  I’ll be keeping a wary eye on Miss Iso
bel and Master Richard. I’ve been thinking about updating my will for a while now. I want to make it more in Emily’s favour; after all, she is the one who does all the running around for me, and my son is happy to leave her do it. I want to leave a decent bequest to Lily, too. ‘Kindness is as kindness does.’ Another favourite quote of Mother’s. Isobel, Richard and Gina will weep and wail at my funeral, and be the first to read my will, but Emily and Lily are the ones who will truly grieve me.

  I am nobody’s fool. I still have my marbles. I know a set-up when I see one.

  I silently thank God for these mercies.

  ‘Have another slice of cake, Isobel,’ I say briskly. ‘And turn up the sound on The Big Bang Theory. I have today’s paper here; we might as well have a laugh before we go looking for your new abode.’

  Isobel’s jaw drops! Her eyes widen in dismay as I casually flick through the paper to find the apartments-to-let section.

  ‘Bazinga!’ As Sheldon would say!

  Fairweather Friend

  ‘Why do you bother going on holiday with Melissa Harris? She’s such a cow. She only uses you, you know,’ Denise Irvine said crossly, as she forked chicken korma into her mouth and took a sip of white wine.

  Sophie glowered at her sister. ‘She’s not that bad!’ she snapped irritably, dipping a piece of naan bread into her tikka masala sauce.

  ‘Oh, come on, Sophie, she’s a walking bitch and always has been. She drops you like a hot potato as soon as there’s a bloke on the scene and then you don’t see her for dust until she’s ditched and needs a shoulder to cry on. You’re too soft with her and always have been. It’s time you told her where to get off. Remember last year, you were supposed to go on holiday with her and then she dropped you at the last minute because she met Mister Wonderful, and took off to Ibiza with him?’ Denise pronged a stuffed mushroom and ate it with relish.