An Unravelling Read online

  ‘Around that, yeah.’

  Grandma is busy pouring orange juice and rolling pancakes. ‘There’s soda bread in the basket,’ she says, ‘and I brought chicken broth for your tea, Cara – go and get it out of the boot. Freya will help you.’

  It takes both of them to carry in the huge pot; the gelatinous heave of cold bone broth. ‘There’s two chickens-worth in that,’ says Grandma, as they lower it unsteadily onto the table, a quiet gloop as it settles. Freya stands for a minute with her fingertips touching the table edge. She looks at Cara, and then at her feet – gold-glittered pumps over hot-pink tights.

  ‘What is it, Freya?’

  ‘Cara, can I borrow your car actually?’

  ‘What’s wrong with your car?’

  Freya won’t meet her eye. She has made a beautiful job of the ‘magical genie’ makeup: turquoise eye-shadow shimmering on her big lids and tiny sequins twinkling along her cheekbones. ‘I don’t know, it was pissing petrol out the bottom – I had to leave it at the garage. It needs a new part.’

  ‘Freya, that means I can’t take them to the park or anything…’

  Freya glances quickly at their grandmother, who is slicing Denise’s pancake into bite-size swirls, pretending not to listen.

  ‘Oh come on you weren’t going to take them to the park. They can run around the garden. Or, the other thing we could do is you drop Grandma home and I could take her car?’

  ‘Grandma needs her car. It’s fine.’

  ‘So you don’t mind?’

  ‘It’s fine, take the car.’

  *

  Thick-knuckled hands curled around the arms of the big kitchen chair, lips pursed: Grandma surveys her granddaughters.

  ‘Well, don’t you look a funny one, Cara? Why aren’t you dressed darling? What does your husband think of all this?’

  Cara bends her hands around the mug. The tea tastes wrong after the mouthwash.

  ‘He’s asleep.’

  ‘You’ll keep him some pancakes, won’t you? A man like that, working hard all week. They need to feel looked after, darling, you know.’

  ‘I look after him, Grandma. He’s asleep. I’m up. I’m up with the kids. I was hoping to get some work done this morning—’

  ‘Pass me my handbag, Freya.’

  Freya’s jewellery tinkles as she scrambles under the bench and pulls up a heavy leather handbag, navy with silver buckles and a plaited handle, and passes it to Grandma. Grandma sets the bag on her lap. She takes out her glasses and puts them on, then pulls some knitting out – a child’s sock. She lifts it by the nest of needles, and arranges the wool on her lap.

  ‘You can put my bag away there, Freya. Zip it up, will you?’

  Freya does as she is told. ‘I better go,’ she says. ‘Grandma, I’ll be home late – eightish. We’ll eat here with Cara. I have a break between gigs, do you want me to do the shop?’

  ‘No darling, you have enough to do. I’ll do the shopping. I owe a visit to my deli.’

  ‘K. Right, I better go.’

  She kisses Grandma, kneads her shoulder, then kisses her again before turning to her son.

  ‘Bye bye, baby, be good for your Aunty Cara, have fun with your cousins. Bye girls, have a nice day, see you later…’

  She wiggles her fingers at Cara. ‘Thanks Cara, see you later – oh, can you help me move my stuff actually?’

  On the way out the door, she stops – ‘Shit, my phone!’

  Cara helps her heave a botched polka-dotted suitcase from Grandma’s four-by-four into the boot of her own little hatchback.

  *

  Grandma is sitting where she left her, but the ball of wool has rolled under the chair, and she is out of breath, picking hurriedly at some dropped stitches with the end of a needle.

  ‘What have you been up to, Grandma?’

  Grandma peers up at her playfully. ‘Oh, me? Oh no, nothing ma’am!’ and winks at the children. The girls clamp their hands over their mouths, but Jem climbs down off the bench and pulls at the cord of Cara’s robe.

  ‘What is it, Jem?’

  Fist drawn up to his cheek, prodding the air with one finger and his eyebrows bouncing, he points at the sink. It’s steaming with soapy water. There is a row of washed plates on the draining board.

  ‘Grandma, don’t do the washing up!’

  ‘Oh no, no I won’t, ma’am, it’s a little robin did that,’ says Grandma, biting her cheek and winking again at the girls – Cara’s children begin to giggle into their sugar-grubby fingers, but Jem frowns at the lie.

  Making an exaggeratedly straight face at Cara, Grandma says, ‘You know me. I’m just knitting darling. An old lady knitting.’

  As she approaches the table, Cara spots a plastic bag of laundry under Grandma’s chair. Grandma regularly steals washloads from the utility room. Then she sends Freya over with a cardboard box of clean clothes – all of it washed and dried and ironed – even the kids’ tracksuit bottoms. Torn knees come back expertly patched, moth holes darned. Pretty lingerie is replaced with enormous cotton knickers. Cara makes a mental note not to let Grandma leave with the bag.

  ‘You need a dishwasher, darling.’

  ‘We’re grand, Grandma.’

  ‘Be sensible, Cara – there are such wonderful things nowadays. Why don’t you have a dishwasher, Cara? Are you short?’

  ‘No, no, Grandma, we’re fine.’

  ‘Don’t be short, now.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I got a bank statement yesterday in the door – well, Cara, disgusting amounts of money now, you know, from the estate. I can’t take it with me, you know. It’s the tax man will be taking it after, so don’t be short, darling. Don’t be a martyr. You know I can’t stand a martyr.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But how can you have time for it all? You need a dishwasher. You’re still doing your scribblings are you?’

  ‘Yes, Grandma.’

  Grandma straightens her back, chin tucked into her porridge-loose neck – she has picked up the dropped stitches and hardly glances at her hands now as the yarn spins round and round beneath the double pointed needles.

  ‘Well, ladies!’ Pat appears at the door in his boxer shorts and slippers. The sight of him makes a little leap in Cara’s belly. His arms and chest are still all brawny contours, but his belly has collapsed into a soft little paunch.

  Grandma blushes girlishly. ‘Well Pat, you are not very decent!’

  ‘Hi, Molly!’ he says. Denise has jumped up onto his hip and he holds her with one arm as he bends to kiss Grandma’s cheek. ‘I smelled the pancakes. I should have known you’d be behind all this.’

  ‘Get dressed, Pat,’ says Molly, ‘and your wife will prepare a plate for you.’

  Pat kisses Cara’s head, pulls her face into his belly and strokes her earlobe between his thumb and forefinger. ‘I thought you were working.’

  ‘I tried.’

  ‘Go on up. Go on up now. I can take over here.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. It’s not going well anyway.’

  Grandma wags a needle at her. ‘You have to go on, Cara, you have to go on with that, darling. You have a talent, you know that, don’t you? Your grandad always said it – he said, “That little girl has talent.”’

  ‘I’m working away, Grandma, I’ve a commission I’m working on now. A children’s book. Lots of rabbits. But it’s a little tricky. It hasn’t come right yet…’

  ‘Oh, you’ll do it, darling, don’t you worry. You always had something special, you know – an eye. Oh, it made your grandad laugh – you remember, don’t you? That time in the Shelbourne. We were there, the four of us. The Shelbourne is beautiful.’ Grandma brings the tip of her thumb and her index finger together, leans forward in her chair and pinches the air. ‘Classy,’ she says.

  Pat throws Cara a closed smile, mouths, ‘Getting dressed,’ and quietly leaves the room.

  ‘The Shelbourne is classy. There we were, all the waitresses in the most beautiful outfits – clean blac
k dresses and white collars! Well, beautiful. Classy, Cara, classy is the only word for it. Starched like you don’t see anymore. It was a red-haired girl with very refined manners brought a beautiful silver pot of cocoa for you and Freya – well, you were delighted with yourselves! Big smiles on you. There you were – sitting there with big smiles. And on the wall there was this painting – the kind of nonsense that people had started going in for at that time – some streaks on a page, you know, as if someone threw the palette at it – and there you were, a little thing of eight “Oh,” you said. “That’s like something Freya would do!”’

  Grandma rests her hands on her lap, rocks her head back and gives a laugh that makes her lungs sound deep and healthy. ‘Well, we laughed and laughed! Because you were right! It was like something a little child would do…’

  Cara smiles. This story always makes her uneasy. The day was so nice – the warm hotel with the delicate little tea cups, music playing low, Grandad calm, Grandma smiling and smiling, pink-cheeked. Cara was bewildered when Grandad chuckled so much that his face coloured like a bruise and he began to splutter and thump his sternum. It was a small painting with green and blue against warm white, pink stuttering on the surface. It was like the sort of thing her little sister did with Grandad’s leftover paints; and she liked the way the small canvas could shift space and colour, change everything around itself.

  Cara puts her hands around the tepid mug of tea.

  ‘Will I make more tea, Grandma? Is your tea cold? Mine is.’

  But Grandma’s face is suddenly serious, her mouth slack with fear, her voice comes low and spittle-quick: ‘Stupid old woman!’

  ‘What’s wrong, Grandma?’

  Grandma drops the knitting and shakes her head disgustedly, then snatches it up again. ‘Stupid goose. Stupid, stupid old eejit.’

  ‘Grandma, what?’

  She holds the bundle out to Cara, palms up: ‘I forgot the turn. Look at this now… I’ll have to pull it all out, right down to the heel flap.’

  ‘Oh – you were distracted.’

  ‘No.’ Grandma shakes her head and lowers the knitting into her lap, gives an exasperated sigh. ‘No, darling, you don’t understand. It was last night I did it Cara. I wasn’t distracted. I sat in my chair with the television off – nothing but nonsense on the television – and I worked the garter flap and then didn’t I go straight on without turning the heel. I’ve never done a thing like that before. Not since I was six years old.’

  She pulls angrily at the wool, making the sock spiral shorter and shorter; a hill of crimped yarn on her lap.

  ‘Hang on, Grandma, let’s wind it up properly—’

  At the other end of the table, a cup tumbles to the floor, spewing orange juice as it bounces noisily to a halt.

  ‘Oops. Sorwy Mammy…’ Megan’s hands fly up to her cheeks. Cara stands to get a cloth, but Grandma fixes her with a stern gaze. ‘Sit down.’

  She sits. Grandma’s eyes are bright with urgency. ‘I don’t want to be a halfwit, Cara. I don’t want to go loop-the-loop, and you all there humouring me.’

  ‘You’re not, Grandma – I do stuff like that all the time.’

  ‘Yes, well I don’t. I can rely on you, can’t I, Cara? If I start to go loolaa you’ll give me a tablet won’t you? To finish it.’

  ‘Grandma—’

  ‘Now don’t tell Freya about the sock, will you?’ She holds up a thick, trembling finger, wags it. ‘Not a word.’

  2

  TONGUE-POINT CLINGING TO HER upper lip, Molly backs carefully into her driveway. She likes to park with the car’s nose facing out. She takes her time. No rush. Checking all the mirrors, though it strains her neck to turn like this; a crunch like ground glass between the tendons.

  Pleased with her parking, she turns off the engine, lets down a breath with the sigh of the car, and sits for a moment.

  Tired today.

  She takes her headscarf from the passenger seat, smooths it into a triangle along its crease, loops it over her head and ties it under her chin. Then she hauls her big handbag onto her lap and feels for her housekeys. The one for the front door has a bit of blue yarn wound around the top. It was Dinny’s idea to do that. No more fussing to find the right key. She points it snugly between thumb and forefinger, then zips her handbag closed and opens the car door, easing herself around carefully, slowly – no rush – shuffling on her behind.

  The neighbours had a dog that used to wipe its bottom on the carpet, pulling itself along. Disgusting.

  She steps down from the car – one foot, then the other. No rush. Her home: the friendly diamonds of the leaded windowpanes, the shaggy pelt of ivy over its brick face. Does she have everything? Her bag and her key and her coat hanging neatly over her forearm. Oh, the messages – there’s a whole bootful to take in, meat and vegetables and the whole lot.

  Next door’s car is there, flashy wasp of a thing. Molly saw it as she pulled in. They might notice her and come out to help…

  Queer enough fish, the new neighbours – never a peep out of the man, and the wife a working mother. An airs-and-graces sort of a name, long, with roundy letters in it… Decent girl, but a miserable job she’s done on that house – tearing down the honeysuckle and knocking the cladding off the front.

  Very quick it happened, the whole thing. It was Freya spotted it one morning through the upstairs window. ‘Grandma, look the Breretons’ has sold!’ Molly couldn’t see from there, but just the thought of it made her gasp as though something had stung her… She went down to look and there it was – ‘SOLD’ pasted over the ‘For Sale’ sign. And the very next morning in comes a skip – huge clang of a thing – emergency yellow and cold pewter where the paint was lifted off it – plonked there just like that with a corner of it jamming into the flower beds. Molly didn’t have to be snooping to know how those poor daffodils had their stalks crushed and the heads snapped off, and them just ready to open. Last spring it was, was it? Just as the apple blossoms were pearling. Weeks and weeks that skip sat there, filling up with all the things the new people thought useless – floral-papered plasterboard, an avocado-green handsink and slices of that cladding; stone humps bulging from the level cement like the backs of bathing hippos. The scene made Molly think of faraway places where there are earthquakes.

  But she’s alright, the new girl next door, lovely manners, helping Molly in with the shopping sometimes, and always asking before she has the partition hedge pruned. A soft-spoken girl, but loud makeup on always, a thin neck and mumpsy cheeks – tapping at the door all meek, like maybe there could be a baby sleeping. ‘Mrs Kearney, I wonder would you mind if Gavin gave the hedge a little trim?’ Had Molly been a bit gruff that time, opening the door with a bull face on her? To make up for it, she said, ‘Oh, you can call me Molly,’ but the girl still calls her ‘Mrs Kearney’. Molly appreciates that.

  The thing is, the Breretons were Molly’s neighbours nearly fifty years. There was a time, when the children were small, that she and Jackie Brereton were a great help to one another. They had their tea together every morning, nearly. So it wasn’t nice to watch her get that way – stooped and shaky suddenly. It was a miserable thing, and cruel. Pain twisting up her lovely open face, and she nearly seven years younger than Molly. And then Mr Brereton had a fall and their son moved the both of them off to a ‘granny flat’ out the back of his house away in Rathgar or somewhere. A big sly article, the son. A bit of a galoot, Molly always thought. ‘They’re packing us away in the garage to die,’ – that’s what Jackie said before she left. She chuckled then, but it was like a sendup of her usual big laugh, a drowning-inside sound that Molly never thought she’d hear from the likes of Jackie Brereton. It was a sad cup of tea they had that time. The last time Molly saw her alive, was it? She was hardly cold when the ‘For Sale’ sign went up, then the red banner saying ‘SOLD’ across it, the skip and the smashed daffodil buds, and poor Mr Brereton still in shock, hardly a notion what was happening. Ugly business. Illness, death, pro
perty.

  Molly takes a good breath of the pollen-thick outdoors. She leans on the car while she heaves the driver’s door shut. Her knees hurt but they hold her there a minute – one hand flat on the glossy, warm metal, her bag stuffed under her arm, her key ready in her hand – just a minute so she can gather herself up. Tired today. All that cooking this morning. Oh, she’s glad though, the children will have some good fatty broth for their supper. Cara exaggerates with all her healthy things sometimes; wheat-free this and sugar-free that. No cups of tea for the children either, on account of the caffeine. Poor chicklings.

  Well, what a day – the sun warming the brick drive to a lovely rust, the air soft, a bright, open day with a sky high and aloof. Molly moves around to the boot. Nice weather for the children to play in the garden. Little Megan was looking pale today. The same look Cara can get sometimes; over washed, her top lip thinning off to a greyish blue. Bone broth will sort her out. Bone broth is good for everything. Oh, but a pig’s head is good too. She might phone the butcher on Monday, see if he can get her a pig’s head to boil; if she was to make a pea soup with the water, the children would drink it up, even the baby. Split peas and fresh peas mixed – deep and sweet, and it would do little Megan the world of good; put the colour back. She could tear a bit of meat into it too, from the cheeks. Tiring though, all that.

  She will sit with a cup of coffee now when she gets the shopping in. Then she’ll sort out her knitting. It’ll take her an hour, only, to put it right. She’d no cause to get so upset about that this morning. Mistakes happen.

  By pressing a cushiony button on the car keys, she can make the boot yawn slowly open, and there’s a button to make it close again all by itself. Marvellous things they have nowadays. It was her daughter Sinéad who organised that for her, after her neck that time…

  She surveys the contents of the boot – she’s bought more than she planned to. The vegetable man brought it all out for her in a cardboard box, but she won’t be able to lift it into the house. She forgets sometimes that things like this aren’t as easy as they once were.