he repeated, as if the very idea puzzled him.
For a moment I expected him to say, ‘Now don’t be silly, Jenny.’ But he didn’t. He just sat looking into the fire. It was a look I’d seen recently that worried me, though I couldn’t really say why. I waited for him to reply. In the firelight, his face looked very old and very tired.
He straightened up with a visible effort and turned back to look at me. ‘Jenny, dear, all human beings are selfish in one sense of the word. They have to be if they’re going to be any good to themselves or anyone else. Your self is all you’ve got in the end. No matter how much you care about anyone else, it’s you that you have to live with, for whatever time you’ve got.’
He paused. I could see he was short of breath, but he ignored it and went on.
‘Your mother was right saying you had only one life to live. But you’re right, too, about making your own decisions. It has to be you, Jenny, leading the life you choose, otherwise you end up living the life others choose for you.’
His breathing was rougher by now, and to my dismay I heard a sound I hoped I’d never hear again, the wheeze he was making in the intensive care unit at the Royal when I got there straight from the Birmingham plane. That was two years ago. They’d said then they didn’t think he’d pull round, the heart attack was massive. I’d held his hand and prayed, the way children pray. ‘Please God, let Daddy live and I’ll give up the job and come home as Colin and everybody else wants, and I’ll not complain about leaving a super school and kids I love.’ He’d pulled through but he’d had to retire early. And I’d kept my part of the bargain. But at times like tonight, I wondered if I’d actually been very selfish indeed.
He took a deep breath. The ominous sound disappeared. He went on, ‘Jenny, I’ve seen too damn much of living for others in my time. This island’s full of it. Women living for the house, or the family, or the neighbours, or the Church; men living for the business, or the Lodge, or the Cause. Any excuse so as not to have to live for themselves and make some sort of decent job of it. Shakespeare had it right, you know. “To thine own self be true, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Aye, or woman either. If that’s selfish, Jenny, I wish to goodness there was a bit more of it around.’
He leaned back in his chair, his face flushed with the effort he had made. I wanted to say so much, but I could see how tired he was. So I just said, ‘Thanks, Daddy, I’ll remember that.’ Then I offered to go and make the coffee, thinking he might well doze off in his chair.
He nodded gratefully and I was just putting my warm feet back into my shoes when the telephone rang loudly in the hall. I heard my mother’s step on the stairs. Her voice was as clear from the hallway as if she was standing in the room beside us.
It was Harvey, we gathered, honouring Rathmore Drive with one of his infrequent family visits for Sunday lunch. My mother was positively purring after the first few exchanges. There were a number of nauseating references to her favourite grandchild, Peter, the usual inquiries about Mavis and the two girls, and then, to my horror, I heard her assuring Harvey that I would be there too, that she was just about to ask me.
The call ended. I heard the heavy tread of her footsteps, the rattle of wooden rings as she pulled the velvet curtains behind the front door. The sitting-room curtains would come next. If she were going to come in, she would come in then. And as likely as not she would behave as if nothing whatever had happened.
My father was leaning back in his chair, listening to the pattern of the evening ritual. We exchanged glances and grinned ruefully at each other.
The door opened. She marched across to the fireplace, a smirk on her face. ‘My goodness,’ she exclaimed, ‘you’re sitting here all in the dark. Harvey rang a little while ago. They’re coming for Sunday lunch. Isn’t that nice? And Susie was asking for you, Jenny, so I said I was sure you’d be able to come, as Colin is away. Harvey will pick you up while I’m getting the lunch. I thought we’d have a leg of lamb for a change. What do you think, George?’
I pushed the front door closed with my elbow, stepped over a pile of envelopes and dropped briefcase and basket on the seat in the telephone alcove. ‘Thank God to be home,’ I said aloud.
There was an icy chill in the hall and a pervasive, unpleasant smell hanging in the air. It felt as if I’d been gone for a month. I kept my coat on and went into the kitchen. It was exactly as I had left it at a quarter to seven this morning when Colin suddenly announced that we had to leave an hour earlier than usual, because he had to pick up his father on the Antrim Road for their nine o’clock flight.
Earlier, I was surprised and delighted when he wakened me with a mug of tea. Sitting up in bed, listening to him cooking his breakfast, I drank it gratefully and hoped it was a peace offering after the awful row we’d had the previous evening. Relaxed and easy as it was still so early, I went down in my dressing gown and to my surprise found my fruit juice and cornflakes sitting ready for me.
Now, I scraped the soggy residue of the cornflakes into the polythene box where I keep scraps for the birds and put it back in the fridge. I’d been halfway through them when he told me. That gave me precisely fifteen minutes to shower, make up, dress, organise the papers I’d abandoned in my study the previous evening and be ready to leave. The alternative was to leave on foot, twenty minutes after Colin, and spend an hour and a half travelling, three buses and a train.
I shivered miserably and tried to put it out of mind as I studied the control panel for the central heating boiler. It looked perfectly all right. On: morning, six till eight. Heat and water. Back on: Five. For getting home, early evening. Off, ten thirty. By which time we were usually in bed. I looked at my watch. It was only ten fifteen so why was it off?
‘Oh, not one more bloody thing,’ I said crossly as I tramped round the kitchen in frustration. The air was still full of the smell of Colin’s bacon and egg. I prodded the switch on the extractor fan. To my amazement, it began to whir. It hadn’t worked for weeks. I almost managed to laugh at my bad temper, but then I caught sight of Colin’s eggy plate. The very thought of the relaxed way he’d announced the change of plan made me furious again.
‘Come on, Jenny, concentrate. It was working this morning,’ I said firmly.
Among the many delights of Loughview Heights, as advertised in the colour brochure from any McKinstry Brothers agent and free to all would-be customers, was a range of modern conveniences ‘guaranteed to impress your visitors’. What the brochure didn’t say was that they also broke down at the slightest provocation. There’d been such a crop of failures recently I was ready to exchange them for reliable Stone Age technology like paraffin lamps and water from a well.
I stared at the control panel again. Somewhere at the back of my weary mind a thought formed. I was missing something blindingly obvious. I peered at the minute figures on the dial. Then the penny dropped. Slightly to the right of the control box was a large switch. It said ‘OFF’.
‘Off?’ I exclaimed incredulously. ‘Who’s bloody OFF? I’m not OFF, I’m here and I’m freezing.’
I pushed it down. The loud click echoed through the dark, empty house. A red light flowered. There was a woosh and a shower of tiny ticks, like rain splattering a window. I shivered, cleared and stacked the breakfast things, and went through to the lounge and found an even worse mess.
I stepped round the ironing board and drew the curtains across the black hole that echoed the
