Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [96]
They spoke about Mrs. Kennedy’s involvement in a local women’s group. They all felt that farming was finished and that there was no living to be made from the land. A lot of them were training to go into the bed-and-breakfast business. Mrs. Kennedy was thinking she might join in. After all, they had three rooms more or less ready; all they’d need to buy was new beds. That would be six people, and they would make a tidy living.
Moira realized that she didn’t know Mrs. Kennedy’s first name.
If she had, she might say suddenly, “Maura” or “Janet”—or whatever she was called—“can I sleep the night in one of those three rooms, please?” But she had never known her name and Dad referred to her as “herself” and, when he was talking to her, as “dear” or “love.” No help there.
When she had finished the meal, Moira stood up and picked up her suitcase.
“Well, that was all lovely, but if I am to find a place to stay, I’d better go now. The bus still goes by at half past the hour, right?”
“Leave it to the next half hour,” her father said. “You’ll easily get into Stella Maris. They’ll give you a grand room.”
“I was thinking of calling on Pat,” Moira said.
“He won’t be there. He’ll be up at the garage. Leave him till the morning, I’d say.”
“Right, I’ll do that, but I’ll go now, as I’m standing. Thank you again for the nice meal.”
“You’re very welcome,” Mrs. Kennedy said.
“It’s good to see you, Moira. Don’t work too hard up there in Dublin.”
“Do you know what kind of work I do, Dad?”
“Don’t you work for the government in an office?”
“That’s it, more or less,” Moira said glumly.
She set out on the road. She wanted to go past her old home before the next bus came. She walked down the old familiar lane, a lane that her father must have walked many a time before he had officially left his home to live with Mrs. Kennedy. And why would he not want to live with her? A bright, clean house where he got a welcome and a warm meal and maybe a bit of a cuddle as well. Wasn’t it much better than what he had had at home?
She arrived at her old house. Straightaway she could see that the new owners had given it a coat of paint; they had planted a garden. The stables, byres and outhouses had all been changed, cleaned and modernized, and this was where they made their cheese. They had a successful business, and it all centered around the house where Moira had grown up.
She went into the old farmyard and looked around her, bewildered. She must now see the house. If they came out, she would tell them that she had once lived here. She could see through the windows that there was a big fire in the grate and a table with a wine bottle and two glasses on it.
It made her very sad.
Why couldn’t her parents have provided a home like this for Pat and herself? Why were there no social workers then who would have taken them away to be placed in better, happier homes?
Her mother and father were not functioning as parents over those years. Her mother was in deep need of help, and her father struggled ineffectually to cope. Moira and Pat should have grown up in a household where they could have known the language of childhood. A family where, if Pat ran round pretending to be a horse, they would have laughed with him and encouraged him and not cuffed him around the ears, as would have happened in this house.
Moira never had a doll of her own, not to mention a doll’s house. There were no birthday celebrations that she could remember. She could never invite her school friends home, and that was how she had learned to be aloof. She had feared friendship and closeness as a child because sooner or later that friend would have expected to be invited to Moira’s home and then the chaos would be revealed.
There were tears in her eyes as she saw what the house could have been like when she was young. It could have been a home.
Moira caught the bus to