Best Love, Rosie. Nuala O'Faolain

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СКАЧАТЬ importantly, ‘is always flattering.’ I often wondered where she picked up the various little pronouncements about femininity which she issued as if they were holy writ. I only ever saw once – from far away and indistinctly – Stoneytown, the place where she grew up. All it had been even before it was abandoned was a terrace of grey houses and one more house out on its own on a rocky shore at the very tip of the headland where the Milbay River meets the sea, fifty miles south of Dublin. Not much chiffon around in those parts, I dare say.

      We sat at our end of the banquette. Min’s head was bent over her plate: she’d eat scrambled egg with appetite here whereas she wouldn’t touch it at home. Her hair a vivid chestnut today, because of the recent visit of the hairdresser who did the elderly ladies for free. She got out of bed for that with alacrity. But once when I said, laying on the enthusiasm, ‘There, Min! The hairdresser! There’s an example of something you’re receiving that you wouldn’t receive if you weren’t a pensioner!’ the bleakness of her glance in reply made me truthful. ‘What can be done, for God’s sake, Min?’ I burst out at her. ‘I can’t stop things being the way they are!’

      Though for all I know, growing older isn’t what’s depressing her. A lot of people just accept life as it comes. I don’t know how.

      ‘I’ll go and see what the desserts look like, will I?’ I said. ‘We might as well treat ourselves.’

      Meanwhile the old lady, whose face had retreated around her mouth, leaving her teeth too big, had risen a bit unsteadily to her feet. ‘I have to go to the toilet,’ I heard her say to one of the young mothers.

      ‘Well – go,’ the young woman said. ‘You’re well able to go on your own.’

      ‘By myself?’ the woman said. She stood indecisively, holding on to the back of a chair. ‘Where is it?’

      I went up to the counter and brought back a fruit salad and an apple tart.

      ‘Excuse me, is this lady with you?’ A man in a manager’s suit was now speaking loudly and accusingly. Behind him, the elderly woman was holding her handbag up to her face as if to hide it, her eyes shut but a tear rolling down beside her nose. ‘She was found in the kitchen. Customers are not allowed in the kitchen.’

      ‘I was lost!’ she cried in a cracked voice. ‘I didn’t know where I was!’

      ‘It’s all right! Stop crying, for God’s sake,’ the young woman said; but the old lady couldn’t stop.

      ‘Oh, shut up!’ the young woman snapped at her, so sharply that even the manager recoiled.

      ‘I’m bursting myself, Missus,’ Min was on her feet. ‘I know where it is.’

      She stepped around the buggy and was leading the old lady away before I had the tray down on the table.

      We were nearly home when Min said, ‘What time is it?’

      ‘Twelve-thirty,’ I said. ‘Early,’ I added in case she hadn’t noticed my tone of voice.

      ‘Are you finished the page with the crossword?’ she asked.

      In other words, she was going to go to the pub, no matter how early it was.

      ‘We could go into town,’ I said. ‘Look around the shops, maybe buy Bell a new basket because that one is falling apart.’ They say you shouldn’t tell someone to stop doing something unless you can offer them something else to do. ‘Or we could go somewhere in the car. It’d be great to get out of Dublin.’

      ‘What’s wrong with Dublin?’ she said. ‘I’ll be home in an hour.’

      And with that she turned in to the Kilbride Inn.

      I got the bus into town and went around the self-help section of Eason’s. And it’s not that I’m teetotal. I love a couple of glasses of wine if the food deserves it. In the old days, of course, a few bottles wouldn’t be too much, if it was a long lunch full of skirmishes and blushes and silences and hands that jumped apart from the shock whenever they touched. Never again? Is that what I had to accept? Yes it was.

      Don’t think about it.

      Nothing. Nothing to help with ungovernable nostalgia for long, boozy lunches with people who fancied you. Nothing to help you cope with regret.

      And that evening, my project touched rock bottom.

      From: [email protected]

      To: [email protected]

      Sent: 2.05 a.m.

      I tried out the 4-F thing with various people who just sniggered. I’m afraid there’s a problem with the letter F!

      However one agent asked about you and I said you were as smart as paint. She then asked what you look like and I said I hadn’t actually seen you for years but you looked very nice back then. When she asked how many years I was amazed to realise it’s been more than 30! She said unfortunately the most important thing about selling in this market is how the author will tape, and if you’re not young and good-looking, you have to be Shirley MacLaine.

      But Rosie, don’t give up. I’ll keep looking for an agent/publisher. And did you mean it when you said you could come to New York? I’ll be there for the Antiquarian Show in early June. Any chance you could make it then? The schedule’s hectic already, but I could cancel the first morning and show you a few favourite scenes. Manhattan’s not like Dublin – you have to get up very early to catch a good look at it.

      It is a big thrill to be in touch with you again. Come if you can.

      3

      Tessa and Peg and I went for ice cream after the movie even though the skirt of the pink suit I was wearing was already showing some strain. ‘You wear that to the pictures?’ Tessa had said incredulously. All very well for her, she’s a foot taller than me and stick-thin and has successfully modelled herself on Jackie Kennedy, little A-line frocks and all.

      ‘I have to wear it sometime,’ I said defensively, ‘or I’ll get no value out of it at all.’

      I’d had no luck with that suit. Min, who was with me the day I bought it, informed the sales assistant that I must be off my head, that anyone with any sense picked a colour that didn’t show the dirt. I remarked that I’d seen nomadic women in the desert near Isfahan who wear lots of pink and are covered in dirt and still look wonderful, and Min gave me her what-a-pain-in-the-arse-you-can-be look. I can’t say I blamed her. Still, as I said to her, I did happen to have lived in all kinds of places and to have seen all kinds of things; and I could hardly stop them coming into my head just to be nice to a person who’d hardly been anywhere.

      Min laughed heartily. ‘Miss Hoity-Toity,’ she said.

      The ice cream at least stopped me sniffing: I’d cried so hard at Babe that Tessa moved to the row behind us on the grounds that she was getting wet. She looked attractively fit in grey leggings and a white singlet under a thick fleece with her legs strong on bouncy trainers. She never mentioned her exact age, but she must be nearly sixty-two, preparing for the old-age pension, though you’d never think it. A lock of pure silver, like a badge of honesty, swept back through her generally salt-and-pepper hair that I thought was natural but which Peg said might be a clever dye job.

      ‘Four СКАЧАТЬ