Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [94]
Once a week, Carl drove her in to the clinic so that she could see everyone and keep up to date on what was happening. She was pleased that Moira was going to the country place for the weekend. It might cheer her up.…
Moira looked out of the train as she crossed Ireland towards her home. She had packed her little case and had no idea where she would stay. Perhaps her father and Mrs. Kennedy might offer her a bed?
Mrs. Kennedy was fairly frosty when Moira telephoned to speak to her father. “He’s having a lie-down. He always takes a siesta from five till six,” she said, as if Moira should somehow have known this.
“I’m in the area,” Moira said. “I was wondering if I could call in and see him?”
“Would that be before or after supper?” Mrs. Kennedy inquired.
Moira drew a deep breath.
“Or even during supper?” she suggested.
Mrs. Kennedy was more practical than welcoming. “We only have two lamb chops,” she said.
“Oh, don’t mind about me. I’m happy with vegetables,” she said.
“Will you arrange that with your father when he wakes up? We don’t know what he would want.”
“Yes, I’ll call again at six,” Moira said through her teeth. She had eased her father’s passage to live openly with Mrs. Kennedy and this was the thanks she got. Life was certainly unfair.
But then Moira knew that already from her work. Men laid off from work with no warning and poor compensation; women drawn into the drugs business because it’s the only way to get a bit of ready money; girls running away from home and refusing to go back because what was there was somehow worse than sleeping under a bridge. Moira had seen babies born and go home from the hospital to totally unsatisfactory setups while hundreds of infertile couples ached to adopt them.
Moira sat in a café waiting for the time to pass until her father woke from his siesta. Siesta! There would have been little of that in the old days. Father would come in tired from his work on the farm. Sometimes Mother had cooked a meal—most times not. Moira and Pat used to peel the potatoes so that that much was done anyway. Pat was not considered a reliable farmhand, so Dad would ensure that all the hens had been returned to their coop. He would call out until the sheepdog came home. Then he would pat the dog’s head. “Good man, Shep.” Every dog they had over the years was called Shep.
Only then would he have his supper. Often he had had to get the supper ready—a big pot of potatoes and a couple of slices of ham, the potatoes often eaten straight from the saucepan and the salt spooned from the packet.
Life had changed for the better in her father’s case. She should be glad that he had that wordless Mrs. Kennedy looking after him and cooking him a lamb chop of an evening. Why was the woman so unwelcoming? She had no fear of Moira and she should know that. But then she had always been stern and forbidding. She seldom smiled.
With a shock she realized that this is what people actually said about her. Even Mr. Ennis had mentioned that Moira was very unsmiling and seemed highly disapproving of things.
When Moira rang back, her father sounded lively and happy. She knew that he spent a lot of time wood carving nowadays and had built an extra room for his work. He did most of the talking and finally said, “So are you coming for supper tonight?” as if there was never any question.
She took a bus out to Mrs. Kennedy’s and knocked on the door timidly.
“Oh, Moira.” Mrs. Kennedy showed just enough recognition and acknowledgment that she had arrived, but no real pleasure.
“I’m not disturbing you or my father?”
“No, please come in. Your father is freshening himself up for supper.”
That was a personal first, Moira thought to herself. Her poor father would sit down for whatever meal there might be with muddy boots and a sweaty shirt, ready to spoon out the potatoes to Pat and herself and her mother, if she ever sat down. Things were very different now.
Moira saw a table set for three. There