‘Hello, Daddy,’ she heard Niall calling from the living room.
‘Come in here, Niall,’ she shouted. ‘Your tea’s ready.’
James was standing in the doorway wearing that padded anorak she hated – the way he wore it over his suit, like a teenager going for his first job interview.
‘Hello, love,’ she said and brandished a smile at him. He looked lost, she thought, like he’d wandered into the wrong house. She poured him a measure of whiskey and handed him the glass.
‘Hello,’ he said and walked straight to the end of the table, where he hung his anorak on the back of the chair.
Under the stairs, she thought, under the stairs. They had the same conversation every evening about him hanging his anorak under the stairs. But she would not engage with any of that now. She took the plates from the oven and served up the food. She carried James’s dinner to him just as he pulled some letters and his diary and keys from the pocket of his anorak and piled them on the table. Say nothing, she said to herself, say nothing.
‘Now,’ she said, placing his dinner before him. She’d prepared lamb chops, carrots, and parsnips – his favourite.
The phone rang and she heard Niall bounding into the hallway. She put the pot of creamed potatoes at the centre of the table and James leaned forward, his nostrils flaring.
‘Colette’s on the phone,’ Niall called.
She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Tell her we’re just sitting down to the dinner and I’ll give her a ring back later.’
It was the third time Colette had called that day. They had a trip planned. The next day they were driving into the North, to Enniskillen, to do some Christmas shopping. Izzy was bringing Niall and Carl and they would meet Colette. There were other towns that were closer, but on a Saturday just before Christmas they were likely to meet half of Ardglas out shopping and so Colette had convinced her to drive a little farther afield.
Colette had phoned several times a day since the trip to Bundoran. If James asked, Izzy told him it was her other most frequent caller, her friend Margaret Brennan. Sometimes Colette would use the pretence of discussing the workshop – she would ask Izzy if she thought the exercise she’d set had been effective, if the class had responded well to it. But always she would move the conversation on to her gratitude to Izzy for helping her, and the loneliness she was feeling as Christmas approached. When Colette suggested the shopping trip, she said that it might be the only opportunity she’d get to see Carl over the Christmas period, and Izzy had agreed to it with the addendum she placed on every discussion of the subject – that these meetings were not a solution to anything and they’d have to stop.
‘Turn off that television, Niall,’ she said as he walked through the kitchen door.
‘Leave it on,’ James said. ‘It’s good to know what’s going on in the world.’
She saw that the news had moved on and now they were showing a report on the ceasefire in the North. She blessed herself. Two months old and so far it seemed to be holding. But there was no end of talks between political parties and factions and paramilitary groups, and none of them ever seemed to be happy with the outcome.
‘Jesus,’ James said, ‘you never know when it’s going to all kick off again.’
‘Oh now, we have to be grateful for every bit of good news we get.’
‘They’ll never be satisfied – shower of bastards.’
Izzy watched Niall struggle to dislodge the ketchup in the bottle, then with one violent shake of his arm half the contents slid out onto his lamb chops.
‘Look at that waste, you could put most of that back in the bottle,’ she said.
‘It was an accident,’ Niall said, and already she could see tears in his eyes.
‘What does Colette want?’ James asked.
‘Sure, I don’t know, I didn’t speak to her.’
‘She phoned the other night too, when you were at bridge.’
‘You never told me.’
‘Ah well, she said she’d phone back.’
‘And she has done, several times. She usually phones me up to ask something about the creative writing class and then keeps me on the phone for hours. But it’s only an excuse. It’s sad really. She’s lonely.’
Niall was looking at her and she tried not to catch his eye. He had scraped up every morsel on his plate but had not run off to watch television like he did every other evening.
‘You may be excused, Niall,’ she said.
He stood up and began to walk slowly towards the door.
‘Niall,’ James said. He took a £20 sterling note from his wallet and handed it to him. ‘That’s for Enniskillen tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, Daddy,’ Niall said, slipping the money into his pocket.
‘Now don’t lose it,’ Izzy said.
‘I won’t.’
‘Do you want to give it to me to look after?’ she asked, but he was already running out of the room.
She glanced at James, who still had one eye on the television. There was a story on the Russian soldiers moving into Chechnya. Men in winter camouflage, guns propped on shoulders, marched in perfect unison through driving snow. It was a beautiful sight really, or beautiful and terrifying at the same time, and she thought she might include this image in some way in her writing. Her poems so far had so much to do with her own life and she was getting bored of herself.
‘It’d break your heart, the whole thing,’ she said.
‘Oh sure, the world’s in a terrible state.’
‘I’m not on about the news,’ she said. ‘I’m on about Colette.’
James lifted another pile of creamed potato from the pot, the spoon giving a loud clack as he brought it down on his plate. ‘Oh, you’d want to be careful there,’ he said.
