we were allowed to accept soft drinks from customers. But this time, something about his sparkly eyes that seemed to look deep into the heart of me, something about his melodious voice and cultivated manner, something about his sharp suit and immaculate shirt made me accept, and then spend the rest of the evening between customers (it was a quiet night) leaning on the bar chatting to him.
He was in the area for a work conference, staying in a hotel just up the road, but couldn’t stand the company of his colleagues another moment so had escaped from the hotel bar and into the nearest pub. By the end of the evening we’d swapped phone numbers and agreed to meet up the following day when I wasn’t working, for a drink. He turned up that second night with a gift of the best box of chocolates I’d ever had, and a perfect single stem red rose in a plastic tube. My previous boyfriends had all been impoverished arts students. No one had ever treated me like that before.
He used to sing that Human League song to me – you know the one: ‘Don’t You Want Me, Baby’. I wasn’t exactly working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when he met me, but pretty close. And he liked to tell people he’d pulled me up, out of the gutter. ‘Who knows where she’d have ended up without me, eh?’ he’d say, patting my arm while I grimaced and tried not to wonder the same thing.
Paul had been kind in those early days. Thoughtful, considerate, and nothing was too much trouble for him. He was always planning extravagant little treats for me – a surprise picnic on the banks of the Thames, a hamper complete with bright white linen napkins all packed and ready in his car; tickets to Wimbledon centre court on the ladies’ final day; a night away in the Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. All would be sprung on me as a surprise.
It was exciting, but looking back, perhaps slightly unnerving in the way that it left me with no control over my life. I’d have to cancel any plans I had made myself, to go along with his surprises. And any twinge of resentment I felt would turn quickly into guilt – how could I resent him doing such lovely things for me? When I told my friends of his latest surprise treat, they’d all sigh and tell me how lucky I was, and ask could I clone him for them.
Gradually I’d stopped making my own plans, at least not without checking with Paul that it’d be all right for me to see my parents, or spend a day shopping with a girlfriend, in case he had something up his sleeve for us. And so as Paul and I became closer, my old friends had drifted away as I’d rarely seemed to have time to see them and had cancelled on them too many times.
We left the farm in silence, and got back in the car to return to Blackstown in search of a café. I spent the journey wondering what plans Paul had made for the money if we sold the farm. Perhaps he’d surprise me, the way he so often used to, and present me with round-the-world cruise tickets, or keys to a luxury holiday home in Tuscany.
It was the sort of thing he might have done in the early days of our relationship. He’d stopped the surprises after the boys were born – it wasn’t so easy to swan off on weekends away with toddlers in tow. But the boys were in their twenties now and had left home – Matt had a job and Jon was a student. Perhaps Paul did want to rekindle the spirit of our early relationship. I resolved to try to keep an open mind about the farm, but I would certainly want to know his plans before I agreed to sell it.
There’s something funny about being at my stage of life. OK, spare the jokes about the big change, but being 49 and having the big five-oh looming on the horizon does make you re-evaluate who you are, what your life is like, and whether you’ve achieved your life’s dreams or not. Ever since my last birthday I’d been doing a lot of navel-gazing. What had I done with my life? I’d brought up two wonderful sons. That had to count as my greatest achievement.
I say ‘I’ had brought them up although of course it was both of us. Paul wasn’t as hands-on as I was – it was always me who took them to Scouts, attended school sports day, sat with them overnight when they were ill. But then, Paul would always say his role was to be the breadwinner, mine was to be the mother and homemaker.
I’ve tried to list more achievements beyond being the mother of well-adjusted, fabulous young men, but frankly I can’t think of any. We have a beautiful house – that’s down to me. Maybe that can count? I decorated it from top to bottom, made all the curtains, renovated beautiful old furniture for it. I did several years of upholstery evening classes and have reupholstered chairs, sofas and a chaise longue. But all this doesn’t feel like something that could go on my gravestone, does it? Here lies Clare Farrell, mourned by husband, sons and several overstuffed armchairs.
We arrived in Blackstown, and Paul reversed the car into a parking space outside a cosy-looking tea shop. I shook myself out of my thoughts. They were only making me bitter. Who knew, perhaps he did have plans for the proceeds of the sale of the farm that would help rekindle our relationship. Surely a marriage of over twenty-five years was worth fighting for? I should give him a chance.
‘Well? Does this place look OK to you?’ he asked, as he unclipped his seatbelt.
I smiled back as we entered the café. ‘Perfect. I fancy tea and a cake. That chocolate fudge cake looks to die for.’ Huge slices, thick and gooey, just how I liked it. I was salivating already.
‘Not watching your figure then? You used to be so slim,’ Paul replied. He approached the counter and ordered two teas and one slice of carrot cake – his favourite, but something I can’t stand. ‘No, love, that’s all,’ he said, when the waitress asked if he wanted anything else. ‘The wife’s on a diet.’
I opened my mouth to protest but Paul gave me a warning look. I realised if I said anything he’d grab me by the arm and drag me back to the car, where we’d have a row followed by stony silence for the rest of the day. And I wouldn’t get my cup of tea. Easier, as on so many other occasions, to stay quiet, accept the tea and put up with the lack of cake.
It was so often like this. Once more I wondered whether I’d ever have the courage to leave him. But was this kind of treatment grounds enough for a separation? It sounded so trivial, didn’t it – I’m leaving him because he won’t let me eat cake and I’ve had enough of it. Well, today wasn’t the day I’d be leaving him, that was for certain, so I smiled sweetly, sat at a table by the window, meekly drank my cup of tea and watched Paul eat his carrot cake with a fork, commenting occasionally on how good it was.
Ellen, July 1919
Three good things had happened that day, Ellen O’Brien thought, as she walked home to the cottage she shared with her father. Firstly, she’d found a sixpence on the road leading out of Blackstown. Sixpence was the perfect amount of money to find. A penny wouldn’t buy much, and a shilling or more she’d feel obliged to hand in somewhere, or give it to Da to buy food. But a sixpence she felt she could keep. It hadn’t lasted long though, as she’d called in at O’Flanaghan’s sweetshop and bought a bag of barley-drops. She’d always had a sweet tooth and even though she was now a grown woman of eighteen she still could not resist the velvety feel of melting sugar in her mouth.
The second good thing was the one that most people would say was the most important of the three. She’d got herself a job, as upstairs maid for Mrs Emily Carlton, in the big house. Da had been nagging her to get a job and bring in some money to help. There was only the two of them now in the cottage since one by one her brothers had gone across the seas to America, Canada and England. Da was getting old and appeared less able (or less willing, as Ellen sometimes thought, uncharitably) to work, and had said he needed Ellen to start earning. She’d been keeping house for him for five years now, since Mammy had died during that long, cold winter when the whole of Europe
