As Ann walked away Izzy became aware of the silence once again. She’d hoped for the restaurant to be quiet. She did not have the wherewithal for smiling and small talk. Even chatting with docile and affable Ann had required effort, although Ann’s infrequent presence had provided the only reprieve from the solemnity of the evening.
Izzy lifted her wineglass and took a drink and then watched Margaret copy the action in a slow, mechanical way.
Margaret had said little all evening, and this was unlike her. Izzy had thought she could rely on Margaret’s usual lively chatter to see them through the meal. She and James had not spoken a word to each other for weeks now. It had been their biggest row to date.
‘Colette is my friend,’ Izzy had said to James.
‘She is a useless fucking trouble-maker who has never done an honest day’s work in her whole life, and you let yourself be impressed by her.’
‘You can talk,’ she’d said. ‘Why don’t you fuck off and kiss Shaun Crowley’s arse – it’s all you’re good for.’
And it seemed that it wasn’t enough for Shaun to come telling tales on her and Colette, but that he’d needed to let James know the whole town thought she was having an affair with the parish priest. And she couldn’t resist goading James a little over the ridiculousness of that, and for allowing himself to be so easily manipulated.
‘You’re right – I have a confession to make. I have been riding Father Brian. We’ve done it in every room in the house and I’m surprised you haven’t noticed with the beds sundered and me in a state of disarray when you arrive home.’
‘Ah, will you shut up, I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you.’
And she was very serious then in telling him that while not even the briefest of romantic moments had ever passed between them, the feelings she held for him surpassed those of friendship. He was a man who listened, who took her seriously, who was interested in what she had to say. He didn’t ignore or dismiss or belittle her. And while she wished it were her husband who played this role in her life, that was not the case. His visits were the thing she looked forward to most every week. ‘And when I hear you put your key in the door in the evening,’ she’d said, ‘I feel like I’m just going to go and throw myself off the nose of the pier.’
So began the usual round of manoeuvres that had come to characterise their fights. She’d moved into the spare room, although on this occasion James didn’t even pretend to be surprised. When Orla had arrived back from school that Friday, Izzy had collected her from the bus stop and warned her of the atmosphere that awaited her at home. Orla had sunk down in the seat and sighed, folded her arms, and turned her face to the window. ‘Again?’ she’d asked. Niall had grown more withdrawn and sullen, and everything he did seemed to infuriate her. But in particular, he had developed a new habit of playing with his hair. He would take the hair at its longest point on his crown and twist it tightly around his index finger or use both hands to fiddle with it until he had managed to tie a few strands into a wispy knot. She often found him doing it while staring at the television, or in moments of distraction, but no matter how often she told him to stop, the next time she saw him he was pulling at his hair again.
And each evening she tried to come up with a new way to escape the house, to be away from all of them. A meal with Margaret had seemed like something she could manage. She had not expected that Margaret would be the one who needed to be drawn out on her problems. It was a poor substitute for her talks with Brian, where she could give full vent to the depth of her unhappiness, but with Margaret she could discuss the failures in her own marriage with relative openness. Margaret knew what it was to experience shame. Her marriage had lasted less than a year. Brendan, her husband, had been a skipper on one of the boats and was out at sea all the time. Margaret had just given birth to their son, Daniel, and struggled with being alone so much. Brendan was maverick and ambitious and would go on to own his own trawler, and while Margaret was good-looking, she was also prim and plaintive. They were a poor match. One evening Brendan came in from fishing and told Margaret that it was a mistake for him to have married. He simply had no interest in the kind of life that could be shared with her. Margaret learned later that he had a girlfriend in Galway he’d kept all through their courtship and marriage.
Brendan moved out of the family home. A change in the law a few years back had meant they were able to legally separate, although what material difference that made to Margaret’s life Izzy could never tell. Brendan had always supported Margaret and Daniel, only now he was legally obliged to do so. And still, neither Margaret nor Brendan could ever remarry. So Margaret was in the position, unique among all the women Izzy knew, of having the financial support of a wealthy husband while being completely blameless for the failure of their marriage. And yet Izzy had felt nothing but pity for her in the twenty years they’d been friends. Margaret had lived her entire adult life like her husband’s mistress, dependent on him for hand-outs, keeping away from other men, staying thin, denying herself so much so that she might remain alert and ready for when he finally returned to her.
Margaret pulled her shawl off the back of her chair and gathered it around her shoulders. She had lost more weight and it had aged her, Izzy thought. She had also stopped dyeing her hair. It was usually jet black but tonight it was tied up in a neat bun, a swirl of grey and black that she’d skewered with what looked like a wooden knitting needle.
‘Is she coming with those coffees?’ Margaret asked.
Izzy looked up just as Ann was backing through the kitchen doors. ‘Here she comes now,’ she said.
‘She’s a bit distracted this evening,’ Margaret said.
‘Oh, sure that woman’s in love,’ Izzy said.
They both tried to conceal their smiles as Ann placed the coffees in front of them. Margaret had her arms folded on the table and was staring down into her coffee, and as soon as Ann was far enough away, she looked up at Izzy, her tired eyes sunken in her head. ‘I’m a bit worried about Daniel,’ she said.
Margaret usually spoke a lot about her son but so far this evening he’d been absent from their conversation. Margaret and Daniel had lived alone together for his entire life until the previous September, when he’d moved to Galway to attend college. Daniel had been Margaret’s sole focus, a stand-in husband. She fussed over him and fixated on him in a way that Izzy thought unhealthy. He still drove back from Galway every weekend with a boot full of washing for her. The fact that he was intelligent and driven, that he was so much like his father, had always been a great source of pride for Margaret. She was ambitious for him. But problems started when he was an adolescent. He was prone to obsessions. Around the time of his exams there came a phase of cleaning his hands until they were raw from scrubbing. And that seemed harmless enough until he started to think he had swallowed glass, that every time he ate there was glass in his food. He lost so much weight they had to send him to see a psychiatrist.
The boy was depressed and Izzy didn’t know why Margaret couldn’t just come out and say it. Half the country was depressed, including herself. But Izzy believed you needed a reason to be depressed, and really the source of Daniel’s problems was a mystery to her – he had grown up in a way that was unlike the other boys and girls in his school, certainly, but he was intelligent and athletic and attractive and spoiled by his father and mother, and there was no end of friends calling to the house for him.
‘Has something happened?’ Izzy asked.
Margaret lifted her cup and placed it back on the saucer. She sighed and closed her eyes tightly.
‘Come on, Margaret, talk to me now, you’re scaring me.’ Izzy reached out and touched her fingertips to the back of her hand.
Margaret flinched, then sat back in her seat and lifted her chin. ‘Oh, it’s nothing that won’t get sorted out, but he’s had a bit of an episode. We’ve had to take him out of college for the time being. He’s at home with me at the moment but we have an appointment in Letterkenny next week to see the psychiatrist and we’ll know more then.’
‘And when you say he had an episode . . . ?’ Izzy asked.
‘A complete mental breakdown, a full-blown collapse . . .’ Margaret almost shouted the words. She lowered her voice. ‘It’s the same problem. He gets these thoughts, preoccupations . . . dark things,’ she whispered, ‘and once he starts to think them, he can’t get them out of his head and then he can’t sleep and . . . it’s a whole cycle . . .’
‘And Brendan’s being good about everything?’ Izzy asked.
‘Oh, couldn’t be better. When we got the call from the college, he went down and collected him and brought all his stuff back. He’s with Daniel now, to give me the night off.’
It always astonished Izzy that despite his leaving her and their child all those years ago, Margaret only ever referred to him in the saintliest of terms, like it was some small miracle that he cared enough to look after his own son.
‘I think it was the stress of living away from home for the first time,’ Margaret continued, ‘he couldn’t handle being out of his routine, living with other people, not being in control of everything.’
Niall, just before she’d left the house, was fussing and fretting over where she was going and whether or not he could go with her, and when he’d hugged her, she’d looked down – a pale, mottled bald patch about the size of a 5p piece, where he’d pulled the hair from the crown of his head.
‘But he’s young, and you’ve done something about it, he’ll get over this,’ Izzy said.
‘It’s just hard to see him wasting his life.’
‘And you’ve sat on that now for weeks. Why didn’t you pick up the phone and give me a ring?’
‘Now, ladies,’ Ann said, placing the bill between them along with a small foil parcel.
They looked up at her in surprise and sat back in their seats, drawing away from each other, their intimacy undone. Izzy noticed they were the only table left in the restaurant. They split the bill without any of the usual fuss about one paying for the other.
In the foyer of the hotel, they stood staring through the glass doors at the pouring rain outside, neither of them too keen to walk back to her car. They both agreed then that they should do this once a week, that with the weather as bad as it was it would give them something to look forward to. Izzy made Margaret promise to let her know how Daniel got on with the psychiatrist. They were standing beside the door to the bar, and each time it swung open, for a brief moment, music and chatter poured out and was silenced again.
‘It’s stopping,’ Margaret said, looking out at the rain and fastening the buttons on her coat.
A man stepped out of the bar and walked to the cigarette machine and Izzy peered through the closing door. A few people sat huddled around tables, and a lone drinker, a woman, was keeping the barman company while he polished glasses. She was slumped over the bar, trying to engage him in conversation. The door opened again and Izzy recognised Colette. She was wearing jeans and trainers and had her hair tied up in a ponytail like she’d just gone out for a walk and casually decided to have a drink by herself.
