Dun Laoghaire has two piers which reach into the sea in two curves forming an almost complete circle. And it’s along their limestone flags, either on the West or the East pier, most of south county Dublin stretch their legs. And it was where I went when I needed to clear my head. The sale of the Copse was bothering me, the money seeming less and less important as different issues clouded what I had once thought an obvious and simple issue.
The pier was full that summer evening, dog walkers, couples, small children on trikes weaving precariously close to the edge as we made our way to the lighthouse and back again. But just as I reached the bandstand, halfway along, I saw Red with his dad; the two of them, like everyone else, taking an evening stroll in the pink-tinged dusk.
For a moment, I panicked. It was one thing dealing with Red every day; we’d transcended awkwardness and were easing into a grey area of not friends but not acquaintances. But Christy was different. I’d let him down as well, rejecting him when I ghosted Red. I’d managed to avoid Christy all these years, our paths and worlds never colliding. Until now.
I thought I might get away with pretending I hadn’t noticed them, but Red saw me and said something to Christy, who looked up, bright-eyed, like an elderly meerkat. And I had no choice but to lift my hand in a wave and they both waved back. There was nothing for it but to go over. I felt a burning shame at my cowardice but also a loss for these two good men. My life, I realised, had been poorer without them.
‘Hello Tab,’ said Red. ‘Lovely evening.’
‘Yes it is,’ I said and leaned towards Christy and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘Where have you been hiding, Tabitha?’ He peered at me, wonderingly, as though I was some great unsolved mystery. ‘Now you’re a sight for my old eyes. We haven’t seen you in some years. And you’re looking all the better for it. Red told me he was teaching in your school.’
‘Hello Christy,’ I said, ‘nice to see you too. After all this time… and Red, lovely evening.’ I smiled at them both without actually making eye contact.
‘Red insisted we came down,’ said Christy, the same eyes as Red, I remembered, and the same smile. ‘Says I’ve been stuck inside so much, twiddling the old thumbs. I don’t come down to the pier. I like to shuffle about the town instead.’
‘How are you feeling? Red told me you’d been ill.’
‘Still kicking. It’ll take more than a stroke to knock me over. Like an ancient oak, I am. But then this fella here turns up…’ he nodded at Red, ‘…as though I’m on my way out. So I says to him there was no need, no need at all, but he insists on sticking around.’ He looked at Red affectionately. ‘Who’d have thought it?’ went on Christy. ‘You two in the same school.’
‘I know, small world, isn’t it?’
‘It’s only to the end of term, though,’ said Red, as though he didn’t want to give Christy any ideas of a great reunion. ‘It’s been… nice seeing Tab again.’
‘Well, it must be!’ said Christy. ‘Lovely girl like Tabitha. Head teacher at the school. I’ve been following your progress, young lady. And married. To Michael Fogarty. Well, I didn’t see that coming… but maybe there’s more to him than the stuffed shirt.’
For a moment, I wanted to laugh. Trust Christy to cut straight through the awkwardness and put everything out there. But Red looked annoyed.
‘Dad…’ he warned.
‘What? Statement of fact, is it not. Tabitha, statement of fact?’
I nodded. ‘No, that is true.’ But I wanted to tell them both that it had been a mistake, that to the outside world, it must seem as though Michael and I were happy. After all, we were still together. I wanted to explain why I hadn’t left, or why I’d married him in the first place. ‘And a daughter,’ I said instead. ‘Rosie.’
‘Ah! The rose of summer. Lovely,’ said Christy, smiling, oblivious to Red’s shifting from foot to foot, itching to get going again and away from me and all I represented. It was one thing being polite to me in school but he obviously didn’t want to socialise with me and chatting on the pier would definitely qualify as socialising.
‘Now, the school,’ went on Christy. ‘I saw on the news. The protest. Nice to see some of the old faces again. I recognised Arthur Fitzgerald. Haven’t seen him for years now. And your mam, of course. Might have a wander down myself and say hello.’
‘Dad,’ said Red. ‘Please don’t you join the protest? It’s enough that one parent of the teaching faculty is involved. Another would be a parent too far.’ He smiled at me, apologetically, shaking his head.
‘They look like they are in for the long haul,’ continued Christy, ignoring him. ‘You’ll find it hard to shift that type, you know, the ones with the Primus stove and the camping chairs. They’ll be there next Christmas with the oil barrel fire, the tents.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ I told Christy. ‘I’m sure of it. There’s no way this’ll still be going until Christmas. We have to make a decision one way or the other.’
‘And which way are ye leaning? Trees or no trees?’
‘Dad, you make it sound like a game show,’ said Red. ‘Ignore him Tab. Dad, it’s a difficult decision. Tabitha is already going through enough without anyone poking and prodding.’
‘I’m only asking,’ he said, innocently. ‘Anyway, Tabitha here doesn’t mind, do you, loveen? She’s not the type to take umbrage and offence… She’s one of us.’ He smiled at me, confident in his pronouncement. But there was a slight puzzlement in his eyes as if to say, she was one of us but something happened and now… now she’s married to a Progressive Conservative.
‘I haven’t made a decision yet, Christy.’ I managed to keep my voice steady. ‘But when I do, you will be the first to know.’
He nodded. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I want to see you sometime. Come over to the house. Cup of tea and a chinwag. We haven’t had one of those in quite a few years. Time to stop being a stranger.’
For a moment, I didn’t think I was going to be able to get the words out. For years, I thought that they both hated me and I would never be forgiven and here he was being so lovely. ‘I’ll call in,’ I managed.
‘Promise me?’ He caught my hand in his two big warm rough hands and held it tightly. ‘What about tomorrow?’
‘I’ll come, I promise.’ I felt nervous, as though I was putting on an old coat and wasn’t sure it was going to fit. But I wanted to be that person who wore that old coat so much. I hadn’t realised I still could.
We said our goodbyes and I walked into the darkening sky, towards the red lighthouse at the end of the pier. It hadn’t been just Red I’d missed, it was Christy too. And it was the person I used to be. I missed all of it and wanted it back.
*
There was no doorbell on the door, just the old lion head knocker, so I rapped, loudly, and stood back, holding a yucca plant. Christy was always growing things. Or he used to. There were always spider plants rooting in little plastic cups of soil or plants trailing up the pipes in the kitchen. The house was exactly as I remembered it. Large, Victorian and in one of the wrought-ironed railed squares in Dun Laoghaire, but shabbier and more run-down than its neighbours.
And then, something, a noise, a figure, materialising through the glass.
‘Just in time,’ said Christy. He always used to say that to us when we’d come home, me and Red. ‘In time for what?’ we’d say and he’d answer, ‘whatever you want.’
‘In time for what?’ I said.
‘Whatever you want,’ he said, making me smile.
‘These are for you,’ I said, handing over some biscuits and the plant. ‘I don’t know if you still…’
‘Still eat shortbread?’ he said. ‘You bet I do. Whatever the doctors tell me.’
‘And still green-fingered?’
He nodded. ‘I feel like a matron on a ward sometimes, tending all my little plants, nursing them to bloom or to sprout. And this plant is a beauty. Like a tiny slice of jungle. You shouldn’t have. Now, tea. Come downstairs will you? I’ve just had my writers’ group and there’s some fruit cake left over. I always say, if you’re going to have to listen to bad poetry – mainly mine, it has to be said – then fruit cake helps the situation enormously. Or we can open these fancy biscuits. You’ve missed Red, he’s gone for a walk.’
‘That’s okay,’ I said, following him into the large hall; with the staircase that led upstairs, the coving and celling roses, and I noticed that nothing had changed: same paper, same paint on the walls, same tangle of vine twisting around the banister. ‘I came to see you.’ But I hadn’t realised how much I wanted to see Red until I knew he wasn’t going to be there and felt disappointment curl around my insides.
‘Red’s on at me to get the house cleaned,’ he said. ‘He’s starting one room at a time. Doesn’t understand how I live like this. I don’t see it, but he says the dust isn’t good for me.’ Christy leant heavily on the handrail as we descended into to the kitchen, his breath all wheezy. Maybe, I thought, Red had a point about the dust. ‘He’s done downstairs, so the kitchen is visitor-friendly.’
‘So you’re doing well, then,’ I said. ‘Apart from your son being on at you to dust more.’
He turned on the stairs. ‘Well, I’m not doing too badly. Red is a one to worry… I’m not dead yet.’
Before
Laughing and giggling. Red carrying me on his back down these stairs when I thought I’d broken a leg. I hadn’t. I’d just sprained if after drinking too much cheap wine at a party. And then the next morning, Christy putting a fried breakfast in front of me, Red already tucking in.
‘You need to get some fat on those bones,’ he said, giving me a wink. ‘Get that into ye.’
‘Dad, enough of the personal remarks,’ Red had said. ‘You need to get some fat off yours.’
It was always such a comfort to be with the two of them in that lovely, quiet house.
‘What are you up to today?’ said Christy.
‘I don’t know,’ said Red, glancing at me. ‘What do you feel like doing?’
‘The boat to Dalkey Island?’ I said. ‘I haven’t been there since I was little. Mum took me.’
‘Now, that’s an island,’ said Christy. ‘It doesn’t belong to people at all, just the goats.’
‘How are we going to get there?’ said Red.
‘A boat.’ I grinned at Red. ‘Obviously. You can ask one of the fishermen to take you out. It might blow away our hangovers.’
‘I think,’ said Red, carefully. ‘I think you might be on to something there.’
And we did. For a fiver, one of the boatmen dropped us off on the island and once we were landed, and our seasickness quelled, we explored: walking the full perimeter, exploring the old ruins and sitting for ages, Red lying down, hands behind his head, me cross-legged making daisy chains.
‘You know, Tab?’ he said, waking up. ‘I think this is all I need in life. Us on an island. Where no one and nothing can reach us.’
*
‘Sit yourself down there, Tabitha,’ Christy said, pointing to his old armchair and faded cushion beside a wood burner. ‘And I’ll make the tea.’
‘How is the writers’ group going? How many are you?’
‘There’s the six of us now. The stalwarts. All the way from Peggy who’s going on eighty-seven, down to Charles who’s a mere stripling of 67. Poetry isn’t bad at all. But you know something, Tabitha? I don’t know what I’d do without my poetry. Writing my little verses keeps me sane. I seem to have become more prolific as I’ve got older. It’s like I have to put everything down, make sense of everything, before I can’t anymore. Don’t stop, actually.’
He was wiping out two mugs with a tea towel and he unwrapped a large, almond-topped fruit cake, the kind of cake no one makes anymore. ‘Peggy’s this is,’ he said. ‘We get all the reading and critiquing over and done with and then we have our reward.’
He handed me a mug of tea and a slice of cake. If I closed my eyes I could be twenty all over again. Our last year at college, Red and I practically lived in the room upstairs.
‘Now, there’s something I’ve been wondering, and before Red gets back I had better get it off my chest. So, tell me this and tell me no more,’ he said. ‘Why did you marry someone like Michael Fogarty? I thought you were one of us. And well, they’re the ones getting rid of the bowls club here in the town and cutting the winter fuel allowance. And a friend of mine, his daughter, well, she’s living in a bed and breakfast, grotty place it is, with three children, because they’ve run out of council houses.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I’m still the same. I still vote the same way. Michael is…’ Christy was exactly the same as he used to be but I was mortified he was asking about Michael. Michael who I’d married only a year after ending it with Red. Michael the father of my child. Christy never minded asking you the awkward questions if he needed to know something. He needed to fully understand everything about the world until he was satisfied.
‘I couldn’t believe it Tabitha,’ said Christy, ‘when I heard. Not one of them, I thought to meself. That right shower with their shiny cars and shiny heads and shiny suits, doing nothing for the working man or woman.’
‘Michael isn’t that bad,’ I said, compelled to defend Michael. I didn’t want him to think I had married some right-wing lunatic. Michael was a moderate. And a good person. ‘Actually, he was against the bowls club closing.’
‘I saw your mam at the protest,’ he said, letting Michael go. ‘She’s a mighty woman, isn’t she?’
I nodded. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘And your daughter? Rose of summer… what age is she now?’
‘She’s doing her Leaving. Working hard you know. A bit stressed but…’
‘You were just the same, working hard, a good brain, all that,’ he said, taking the lid off the teapot and pouring in more hot water from the kettle.
‘Was I?’ I couldn’t remember being like that, but I was touched by how he remembered me. We chatted for a long time, about Christy’s coming and goings, my life at the school. I told him about Rosie and about Nora. We talked about films we’d seen and books read. It was like the old days. And then, a noise upstairs.
‘Dad?’ Red’s voice from above our heads caused beads of sweat to ping all over me, fear and excitement and delight at his imminence.
‘Down here! With a special visitor.’ Christy winked at me, indulgently.
‘Oh yes?’
Footsteps coming down the steps into the kitchen … and there was Red.
‘Hello Tab,’ he said, looking a little taken aback, as though he’d forgotten all about Christy’s invitation to me. ‘I thought Dad meant the writers’ group. I was hoping to hear a bit of Heaney…’
‘Well, maybe Tabitha will oblige, said Christy. ‘Tea Red?’ He filled the kettle. ‘What will you give us, Tabitha?’
‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘You’re not going to make me recite something…’ Christy had a terrible habit of forcing people to do things, be someone they didn’t quite think they were. And when you’d done it, you realised that you were better for it. But today, with sweat prickling my back and my mouth dry, and brain gone, I knew I wouldn’t be able to rise to the challenge. ‘What about some Pam Ayres,’ I said. ‘O I Wish I’d Looked After Me Teeth?’
Red laughed but Christy said, ‘and what’s so funny. Poetry is poetry. Don’t tell me Redmond Power that you are a poetry snob. We don’t allow them in this house, do we Tabitha?’
I shook my head and winked at Red. ‘No, Christy, no we don’t.’ Red was smiling broadly. It was like the old days. ‘It’s just like the old days,’ said Christy.
‘I was just thinking that,’ said Red, glancing at me. Me too. Me too, I thought. ‘How are you feeling, Dad?’ he said. ‘Did the poetry group tire you out?’
‘Not at all. Strong as an ox I am.’
‘Dad, you had a stroke six months ago. You have to face your own…’
‘Decrepitude.’
‘No,’ said Red, but he was smiling. ‘Limitations. We all have them.’
‘Limitations are all in the mind. So, I need a stick but that’s not going to stop me. And if you have an active mind, you’re more than half-way there.’
‘I was asking Tabitha about the bowls club,’ went on Christy. ‘It was quite the blow for us oldies when it closed. But I know it hasn’t got anything to do with her. But we still haven’t found a place to convene. I suppose that’s why we enjoy the writer’s group so much. Oldies United.’ He chuckled.
‘The last thing Tab needs is you banging on about things. Anyway, it’s not good for you, getting excited. And you should stop watching the news.’ He turned to me, making proper eye contact for the first time. ‘He just shouts at it. Thought he was going to have another stroke last night.’
‘It’s keeping me going,’ said Christy. ‘I’d go to an early grave watching Cash in the Attic or Pointless.’
I shouldn’t have come, I thought, suddenly, a wave of nostalgia washing over me, and loss, loss for the person I once was. And by coming here I was trying to recapture. But it had been a mistake. You don’t just drop in on your old life and you can’t just be the person you once were.
‘I’d better go,’ I said, standing up. ‘I’ll be back in to see you, okay, Christy?’
‘But you’ve just got here,’ said Christy. ‘Stay for some more of Peggy’s cake. You can have an even bigger slice this time.’
‘No, I’ve got to go. But I’ll come back.’
‘Promise?’
I nodded.
‘Well, then, I’ll see you out.’ Christy began to stand up. ‘And you’ll take some of the cake, won’t you? She’ll be delighted when I tell her that a slice went to Michael Fogarty’s home. She’ll like that, she will.’ He chuckled again. Peggy obviously wasn’t someone Michael could rely on for her vote.
‘Sorry,’ mouthed Red as Christy wrapped up a large slice in greaseproof paper.
‘Michael’s more of a Mr Kipling man,’ I said. ‘He’s suspicious of home-made.’ We all laughed, and I thought how a receptive audience always made disloyalty easier.
‘You haven’t changed, Tabitha,’ said Christy, passing me the package. ‘Not one little bit. Still got that beautiful smile.’
‘I’ll see her out, Dad,’ said Red. ‘You stay there, you have enough going up and down as it is.’
As he followed me up the stairs, his body close behind mine, the closest we had been, physically, for years and I could feel this magnetic tug that in a moment I would turn around mid-step and we would touch as though some kind of bodily memory compelled me to. At the front door, I stood aside while he opened it.
‘He’s looking well,’ I said.
‘When I first got home, he wasn’t his usual self. Tired, thin, that kind of thing. He was doing strange things. In hospital, I found him reading a copy of the Daily Mail.’
‘That must have been quite a shock. Which was worse, hearing he’d had a stroke or seeing him reading the Daily Mail?’
‘The Daily Mail, obviously. I mean for a life-long, actual card-carrying socialist, a man who writes poems about the unequal tax systems of this country and wrote an epic poem based on a night in an A&E department, to see him reading a right-wing paper was the far bigger scare.’ And he grinned right at me. And for a moment there was Red again. My Red. ‘But I think it did him the power of good. Like electric shock treatment. He had to get well. Put the world to rights again. Write his poems. Give out about things.’
‘I hope he’s onto more edifying newspapers these days.’
‘Yes, it’s grand. The doctor prescribed him a combination of the Irish Times and the Guardian, so he’s on the road to making a full recovery.’
‘Let me know if Christy wants a copy of the New Statesman. I hear it’s like EPO for socialists.’ I was rewarded with that grin again, the one that brought me right back to a different age. ‘He must be happy you’re back?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah and I’m glad to be back. Didn’t think I would be. But it’s good to be home.’
‘So, what did you miss?’ I knew I was stalling, not wanting to say goodbye. ‘When you were away?’
‘Barry’s tea. That was my number one. And proper chocolate. Irish Cadbury’s. A nice quiet pub. With no television on and an auld fella at the bar.’ He smiled. ‘The usual expat longings. And having a laugh.’
‘Have you not laughed in all the time you’ve been away?’ I said, pretending to be shocked.
‘There’s a particular way of having fun that we Irish do. I missed it.’ We made eye contact for a moment but he looked away, quickly.
‘So…’ I said. ‘Nice seeing you both together.’
‘And you, Tab. It’s nice seeing you.’
I walked down the path to my car feeling a sense of emptiness that I hadn’t felt in years.
Before
Christy was standing there on the doorstep when I opened the door. ‘Are ye all right? Red was waiting…’ His face changed as he looked at me. ’What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘We’re all fierce worried about you.’
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ I said. ‘Nothing. I just want…’ What did I want? Just to be on my own. It seemed like the only thing that might keep me going was if I just didn’t see anyone. ‘Tell Red I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want to see him.’
Christy’s eyes were full of empathy. ‘Tabitha, I think…’
‘Please, I don’t want to,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to see him again.’
Christy, bless him, tried again, more desperately this time, for Red’s sake, I knew. But also for mine. He was such a good soul. ‘Tabitha, you don’t look well,’ he said. ‘Who’s here? Is your Mam here? Who’s looking after ye?’
‘Everything’s fine Christy. Everything’s fine.’ And I closed the door on him and after a few weeks, the phone stopped ringing and there were no more knocks on the door. And I got what I wanted, to be alone.
*
When Rosie was six, I left Michael and we moved into Nora’s house, my old home, and Michael arrived home to find me pushing boxes into a car.
It was then or never. Any later and Rosie would have been too aware, the repercussions of divorce too hard for her to deal with. It was a miserable marriage, the loneliness of two people sharing a home and a daughter but nothing much to say to each other.
‘Michael, I’m not happy,’ I said. ‘Let me go.’
‘It’s not a question of happiness,’ he said, shaking his head at me, as though I hadn’t grasped something fundamental, as though I was slightly stupid and he had to explain what life is all about. ‘It’s a question of just staying married. That’s all people have to do. We don’t have an awful marriage. We have a daughter. How bad is it, really?’
‘I want to be loved. Taken care of…’ My words sounded immature and stupid.
‘Taken care of? Whatever do you mean? I thought you feminists didn’t want that kind of nonsense. I thought you could stand on your own two feet.’
‘I do and I can. That’s not what I want…’Oh God, what did I want? I was beginning to lose confidence in everything. I didn’t know what was the right thing to do? I had been so sure and now… now, it felt like I was the last person to make the right decisions as to my and my daughter’s future happiness.
‘So you don’t want to be taken care of?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’m confused. I have no idea what you want or what you are even asking for. And you don’t even know.’
‘I just want you to bring me a cup of tea,’ I said, lamely. ‘I want you to know how I like it, how much milk I like in it and which is my favourite mug.’ I felt tears welling up at the corners of my eyes.
‘What?’ He almost laughed. ‘You’re joking? But how would I know those things?’ he went on, angry at me for crying, and my confusion and what he saw was weakness, ‘You don’t even know how I like mine.’
‘I do!’
‘How then?’
‘Full-fat milk, in second, colour of dark toffee, served in your Royal Tara bone china mug.’
‘Yes, well… but tea is just tea… it doesn’t actually matter how you like it. You can’t expect me to go to Mammy and tell her that you have ended our marriage because I didn’t know how you liked your tea?’
‘It’s a metaphor! A symbol,’ I said. ‘A boiled-down microcosm of our marriage.’
He shook his head and spoke quietly, ‘Mammy was right when she said I shouldn’t marry you.’
And so, I picked up my case and I went and he didn’t stop me. But Celia did. She knocked on the door.
‘Tabitha,’ she said icily.
‘Hello, Celia.’
‘I was wondering…’ Her tone was icy, imperious, ‘…when you were going to return my granddaughter to her father?’
‘I’m not.’
‘But you can’t do that,’ she said, looking at me as though I was faintly disgusting. ‘The child belongs with her father. All children need fathers, did you not know that? Well, it depends on the father but in this case, I think we can all agree that Michael is a good father, the best kind of father to a little girl like Rosie. You didn’t have one so you don’t understand how elemental they are. Do you want Rosie to grow up without a proper family, the two parents… a normal, loving home?’
‘But we’re not happy…’
‘Correction,’ she said. ‘You’re not happy. Michael informs me that he is happy. He was perfectly happy with you and your life together. You’ve just got to get yourself happy and stop asking for too much. Life isn’t about trying to be happy. It’s about sacrifice, tenacity, keeping going. There will be moments of happiness and pleasure, yes. But that is it not daily life. And nor should it be. When will you see sense?’ She looked around, worried in case any neighbours were nearby, listening. ‘And we can’t have this discussion on the doorstep,’ she said, shoulder barging past me.
‘Celia,’ I said, ‘we can’t have this discussion at all. It’s between me and Michael.’
‘Yes,’ she tried a softer approach, ‘but he’s incapable, you know that. But, Tabitha, he’s not a bad man. Not a serial killer or murderer. He told me about the tea.’
‘It’s not about the tea…’
‘And I understand,’ she said, ‘I really do. It’s the little things. The thoughtful things. Michael Sr wasn’t good in terms of affection, remembering my birthday that kind of thing. Michael is just like his father. But I realised that there was a bigger picture. And you should too.’
‘Is everything all right, Tabitha?’ Nora was hovering in the background.
‘Yes, thanks, Mum.’
‘Hello, Nora,’ said Celia, trying to smile, ‘how lovely to see you again. And you are looking… splendid. That cardigan. It has a hand-knitted quality that is very charming. I think I saw something very similar in Brown Thomas last week. Yves St Laurent perhaps?’
‘Nearly,’ said Nora. ‘St Vincent De Paul.’
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ I said. ‘I just want to talk to Celia for a moment.’ I gave Nora a reassuring smile. I could handle this.
‘Tabitha,’ Celia began again, ‘he needs you. He can’t become a politician, like his father, if he is divorced. No one would trust him. They’d all wonder why his wife left him and no one would believe it was because of the silly matter of a cup of tea…’
‘It’s not about the tea!’ Why didn’t these people just get it? It wasn’t the tea, it was something deeper, something that said about how I wanted to be loved, deeply and properly for who I was. Not be in some working partnership. I wanted more.
‘They’d imagine terrible things about him. That maybe he had, oh I don’t know, predilections, peccadilloes, partialities. Perhaps, they might think he was homosexual…’
‘I don’t care what people think.’
‘No, dear, you obviously don’t. But I do. And Michael does. And that little girl who is going to grow up without a father, she does too. Think of Rosie, her needs. Her rights. And, Tabitha, marriage is not meant to be fun. You’re not supposed to actually enjoy it. Hard slog is what it is. But worth it in the end. When you are standing by the graveside, dressed in black, and you look back on a long marriage, you will think it worth it.’
‘I can’t wait that long,’ I said, wanting to laugh at the weird turn the conversation was taking. ‘Celia, he calls me Mammy.’
‘Tabitha, that’s nothing. Michael Senior used to call me Mrs Fogarty. What is in a name?’
‘But we just aren’t compatible…’
‘Now, you’re just being silly. Think of it as a business, and Michael is your colleague. You don’t expect compatibility and passion and superb tea-making skills from someone you work with, hmmm? That’s just naïve.’ She smiled at me, sensing victory. ‘I was married to Michael Senior for thirty-five years. And all that mattered was the team. I mean, there were a few incidents I had to turn a blind eye to. There was one woman who wouldn’t stop phoning the house. And then there was that columnist that developed quite the crush… but I ploughed on. Eyes on the prize.’
The prize being the widow at the graveside, I thought. The dowager political wife.
‘Thank you, Celia,’ I said, edging her back to the door and holding it open. ‘I appreciate you coming round, I really do.’ I felt resolve and determination falling away. They were right, she and Michael. I was young and immature. I was asking for something that didn’t belong in real life. I had a daughter to think about. I had wanted marriage and I had got myself into this relationship. I couldn’t bail out of ‘us’, crying about love and tea, just because it wasn’t perfect.
‘You need to think very clearly about what you want to do, Tabitha.’ She was now standing on the doorstep. ‘And be clever about your life. Don’t just throw it away over a cup of tea.’