He took to coming home later and later. He also took to visiting Casey’s pub on the journey home – a big barn of a place – both comforting and anonymous at the same time. It was familiar because everyone knew his name.
‘I’ll drop it down to you, Noel,’ the loutish son of the house would say.
Old Man Casey, who said little but noticed everything, would look over his spectacles as he polished the beer glasses with a clean linen cloth.
‘Evening, Noel,’ he would say, managing to combine the courtesy of being the landlord with the sense of disapproval he had of Noel. He was, after all, an acquaintance of Noel’s father. It was as if he was glad that Casey’s was getting the price of the pint – or several pints – as the night went on, but he also seemed disappointed that Noel was not spending his wages more wisely. Yet Noel liked the place. It wasn’t a trendy pub with fancy prices. It wasn’t full of girls giggling and interrupting a man’s drinking. People left him alone here.
That was worth a lot.
When he got home, Noel noticed that his mother looked different. He couldn’t work out why. She was wearing the red knitted suit that she wore only on special occasions. At the biscuit factory where she worked they wore a uniform, which she said was wonderful because it meant you didn’t wear out your good garments. Noel’s mother didn’t wear make-up so it couldn’t be that.
Eventually he realised that it was her hair. His mother had been to a beauty salon.
‘You got a new hairdo, Mam!’ he said.
Josie Lynch patted her head, pleased. ‘They did a good job, didn’t they?’ She spoke like someone who frequented hairdressing salons regularly.
‘Very nice, Mam,’ he said.
‘I’ll be putting a kettle on if you’d like a cup of tea,’ she offered.
‘No, Mam, you’re all right.’
He was anxious to be out of there, safe in his room. And then Noel remembered that his cousin Emily was coming from America the next day. His mother must be getting ready for her arrival. This Emily was going to stay for a few weeks apparently. It hadn’t been decided exactly how many weeks …
Noel hadn’t involved himself greatly in the visit, doing only what he had to, like helping his father to paint her room and clearing out the downstairs box room where they had tiled the walls and put in a new shower. He didn’t know much about her; she was an older person, in her fifties maybe, the only daughter of his father’s eldest brother Martin. She had been an art teacher but her job had ended unexpectedly and she was using her savings to see the world. She would start with a visit to Dublin from where her father had left many years ago to seek his fortune in America.
It had not been a great fortune, Charles reported. The eldest brother of the family had worked in a bar where he was his own best customer. He had never stayed in touch. Any Christmas cards had been sent by this Emily, who had also written to tell first of her father’s death and then her mother’s. She sounded remarkably businesslike, and said that when she arrived in Dublin she would expect to pay a contribution to the family expenses, and that since she was letting her own small apartment in New York during her absence, it was only fair. Josie and Charles were also reassured that she seemed sensible and had promised not to be in their way or looking for entertainment. She said she would find plenty to occupy her.
Noel sighed.
It would be one more trivial happening elevated to high drama by his mother and father. The woman wouldn’t be in the door before she heard all about his great future at Hall’s, about his mother’s job at the biscuit factory and his father’s role as a senior porter in a very grand hotel. She would be told about the moral decline in Ireland, the lack of attendance at Sunday Mass and that binge drinking kept the emergency departments of hospitals full to overflowing. Emily would be invited to join the family Rosary.
Noel’s mother had already spent considerable time debating whether they should put a picture of the Sacred Heart or of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour in the newly painted room. Noel had managed to avoid too much further discussion of this agonising choice by suggesting that they wait until she arrived.
‘She taught art in a school, Mam, she might have brought her own pictures,’ he had said and amazingly his mother had agreed immediately.
‘You’re quite right, Noel. I have a tendency to make all the decisions in the world. It will be nice having another woman to share all that with.’
Noel mildly hoped that she was right and that this woman would not disrupt their ways. This was going to be a time of change in their household anyway. His father was going to be retired as porter in a year or two. His mother still had a few more years in the biscuit factory but she thought she might retire also and keep Charles company with the two of them doing some good works. He hoped that Emily would make their lives less complicated rather than more complicated.
But mainly he gave the matter very little thought.
Noel got along by not thinking too deeply on anything: not about his dead-end job in Hall’s; not about the hours and money he spent in Old Man Casey’s pub; not about the religious mania of his parents who thought that the Rosary was the answer to most of the world’s problems. Noel would not think about the lack of a steady girlfriend in his life. He just hadn’t met anyone, that’s all it was. Nor indeed did he worry about the lack of any kind of mates. Some places were easy to find friends. Hall’s wasn’t one of them. Noel had decided that the very best way to cope with things not being so great was not to think about them at all. It had worked well so far.
Why fix things if they weren’t broken?
Charles Lynch had been very silent. He hadn’t noticed his wife’s new hairdo. He hadn’t guessed that his son had drunk four pints on the way home from work. He found it hard to raise any interest in the arrival next morning of his brother Martin’s daughter, Emily. Martin had made it clear that he had no interest in the family back home.
Emily had certainly been a courteous correspondent over the years – even to the point of offering to pay her bed and board. That might come in very useful indeed these days. Charles Lynch had been told that morning that his services as hotel porter would no longer be needed. He and another ‘older’ porter would leave at the end of the month. Charles had been trying to find the words to tell Josie since he got home, but the words weren’t there.
He could repeat what the young man in the suit had said to him earlier in the day: a string of sentences about it being no reflection on Charles or his loyalty to the hotel. He had been there, man and boy, resplendent in his uniform and very much part of the old image. But that’s exactly what it was – an old image. The new owners were insisting on a new image and who could stand in the way of the march of progress?
Charles had thought he would grow old in that job. That one day there would be a dinner for him where Josie would go and wear a long frock. He would be presented with a gold-plated clock. Now, none of this was going to happen.
He was going to be without a job in two and a half weeks’ time.
There were few work opportunities for a man in his sixties who had been let go from the one hotel where he had worked since he was sixteen. Charles Lynch would have liked to have talked to his son about it all, but he and Noel didn’t seem to have had a conversation for years now. If ever. The boy was always anxious to get to his room and resisted any questions or discussions. It wouldn’t be fair to lay all this on him now.
Charles wouldn’t find a sympathetic ear or any font of advice. Just tell Josie and get it over with, he told himself. But she was up to high doh about this woman coming from America. Maybe he should leave it for a couple of days. Charles sighed again about the bad timing of it all.
Dear Emily,
I wish that you hadn’t decided to go to Ireland, I will miss you greatly.
I wish you had let me come and see you off … but then you were always one for the quick, impulsive decision. Why should I expect you to change now?
I know that I should say that I
hope you will find all your heart’s desire in Dublin, but in a way I don’t want you to. I want you to say it was wonderful for six weeks and then for you to come back home again.
It’s not going to be the same without you here. There’s an exhibit opening and it’s just a block away and I can’t bring myself to go to it on my own. I won’t go to nearly as many theatre matinées as I did with you.
I’ll collect your rent every Friday from the student who’s renting your apartment. I’ll keep an eye open in case she is growing any attitude-changing substances in your window boxes.
You must write and tell me all about the place you are staying – don’t leave anything out. I am so glad you will have your laptop with you. There will be no excuse for you not to stay in touch. I’ll keep telling you small bits of news about Eric in the suitcase store. He really is interested in you, Emily, whether you believe it or not!
Hope you get your laptop up and running soon and I’ll hear all about your arrival in the land of the Shamrock.
Love from your lonely friend,
Betsy
Hi, Betsy,
What makes you think that I would have to wait to get to Ireland to hear from you? I’m at J.F. K. and the machine works.
Nonsense! You won’t miss me – you and your fevered imagination! You will have a thousand fantasies. Eric does not fancy me, not even remotely. He is a man of very few words and none of them are small talk. He speaks about me to you because he is too shy to speak to you. Surely you know that?
I’ll miss you too, Bets, but this is something I have to do.
I swear that I will keep in touch. You’ll probably get twenty-page letters from me every day and wish you hadn’t encouraged me!
Love
Emily
‘I wonder, should we have gone out to the airport to meet her?’ Josie Lynch said for the fifth time the next morning.
‘She said she would prefer to make her own way here,’ Charles said, as he had said on the previous four occasions.
Noel just drank his mug of tea and said nothing.
‘She wrote and said the plane could be in early if they got a good wind behind them.’ Josie spoke as if she were a frequent flyer herself.
‘So she could be here any time …’ Charles said with a heavy heart.
He hated having to go in to the hotel this morning, knowing that his days there were numbered. There would be time enough to tell Josie once this woman had settled in. Martin’s daughter! He hoped that she hadn’t inherited her father’s great thirst.
There was a ring at the doorbell. Josie’s face was all alarm. She snatched Noel’s mug of tea from him and swept up the empty eggcup and plate from in front of Charles. Patting her new hairdo again, she spoke in a high, false voice.
‘Answer the door, please, Noel, and welcome your cousin Emily in.’
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 1992 by Orion Books.
This eBook first published in 2009 by Orion Books.
Copyright © Maeve Binchy 1992
The rights of Maeve Binchy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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ISBN 9781409106142
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Maeve Binchy, The Copper Beech
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