Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [36]
Katie came back from Istanbul and called Lisa to say she had a present for her. “How was it at the college?” she asked.
“You remembered?” Lisa was amazed. Nobody else had asked.
“I got you a terrific present at the bazaar,” Katie said. “You’ll love it!”
Lisa felt a prickling behind her nose and eyes.
She never remembered getting Katie a present from anywhere. “That’s lovely,” she said in a small voice.
“Will you come over this evening? Garry and I will bore you to death about all we saw.”
Normally Lisa might have said that she’d have loved to but she had a million things to do. But she surprised both herself and her sister by saying that there was nothing she would like better.
“Brian might come as well, but he’s no trouble.”
“Brian?”
“Our tenant. We gave him the two rooms upstairs. I told you about him.”
“Oh, yes, of course you did.” Lisa felt guilty. Katie had indeed been wittering on about someone coming to live upstairs. She wished she had thought of asking for the rooms herself, but as usual the timing had been all wrong.
“You’re not trying to set me up with this Brian, are you?” she asked.
“Hardly! He’s a priest and he’s nearly a hundred!”
“No!”
“Well, fifty anyway. Not about to break his vows. Anyway, don’t you have a fellow?”
“Not really,” Lisa said, admitting it for the first time to herself.
“Of course you do,” Katie said briskly. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re free tonight—come around seven-thirty.”
Lisa was free that night. She had been free the night before, and the night before that. It had been three days since Anton had gone to April’s party. Lisa was waiting for him to contact her.
Waiting and waiting.
Brian Flynn turned out to be a very decent man and great company. He told them about his mother, who had dementia but seemed quite content and happy in whatever world she lived in. How his sister had married a man called Skunk, how his brother had left one wife and fled from one girlfriend.
He told them about a holy well that he didn’t rate very highly and about the immigrant center where he worked now and how he had a lot of respect for the people there.
Occasionally, he asked Katie and Lisa about their family. They both made excuses to get onto other subjects, so he either gave up or realized this was not an area where they were comfortable.
Garry talked cheerfully about his parents and how his father had originally said that being a hairdresser was only a job for “nancy” boys, but had slightly softened in his view over the years.
He told them about the time he had gone to the zoo on his birthday when he was seven and his parents had told the elephant that he was the best boy in the country, and they told him that the elephant would never forget this because elephants don’t forget. And to this day Garry always thought that the elephant remembered.
They smiled at the notion.
Lisa wondered why she had ever thought Garry plodding. He was just decent. And romantic too. He showed them pictures on his phone of Katie with her hair blowing as they went for a cruise on the Bosporus and another of her with minarets in the background. But he hardly saw anything except her face.
“Katie looks so happy,” he said over and over.
“And do you have a young man of your own?” Brian Flynn asked Lisa unexpectedly.
“Sort of,” Lisa answered him truthfully. “There is a man I fancy a lot, but I don’t think he is as serious as I am about it.”
“Oh, men are fools, believe me,” Brian Flynn said with the voice of authority. “They have no idea what they want. They are much more simple than women think, but more confused as well.”
“Did you ever love anyone? I mean before you joined up …,” Lisa asked.
“No, nor after either. I’d have been a useless husband anyway. By the time they end this celibacy thing for priests, I’ll be too old to get involved with anyone and that’s probably all for the best.”
“Is it lonely?”
“No more than any other life,” he said.
As Lisa walked home from Katie’s house she took a detour that brought her