Chapter One

 

 

 

‘That you, Lizzie?’ Mammy, from the kitchen.

No, Mother, it’s the Queen of England. I got a key cut for her at lunchtime. Tell Daddy to put on a clean shirt.

Wisely, Lizzie O’Grady does not say this out loud. Peace at all costs, as Pope John XXIII always said. At least, Mammy says he always said it. Listening to her talking about him, you’d swear they met every Friday for tea and scones at the Vatican café. ‘Peace at all costs, Mrs O’Grady,’ he’d say, passing Mammy the pot of raspberry jam. ‘Amen, Your Holiness,’ Mammy would answer, lowering her eyes in reverence and nearly getting a dollop of jam on the crisp linen tablecloth; that would take some penance.

‘Did you get the white pudding?’ Mammy again.

God almighty, I haven’t my key out of the door and the woman is looking for her white pudding. Lizzie feels like telling her they were out of it at Tesco, but there was a special offer on hamsters, so meet Bill and Bob. She grins at the thought of Mammy’s jaw dropping in horror.

Then she thinks of the Pope and pulls her key out of the door and turns her head towards the kitchen. ‘Yes, Mam, got it.’ Because the world would definitely screech to a halt if the O’Gradys had to do without their white pudding on a Thursday night.

She hangs her jacket and scarf on the hallstand, beside Daddy’s second-best grey check and on top of Mammy’s powder-blue padded. Then she drops her Tesco bag-for-life and has a closer look at the face in the hallstand mirror. Straight brown hair to her shoulders, with a fringe that wanders down to her eyebrows; unremarkable grey eyes. Long, dark lashes, though – easily the best thing about the face. For the laugh she tried fluttering them at Tony once, when they first started going out, but he just looked alarmed and asked her if she needed Optrex.

Clear skin, thank goodness – she’s never really been spotty – with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, as if some careless painter had shaken his coffee-coloured brush too near her. In an idle moment last summer she took an eye pencil and joined them up. Italy, if France had stuck out a toe and knocked it sideways a bit.

She used to be full of freckles, practically covering her nose and tumbling across her cheeks. Thank God they’re nearly gone – but gone where? Off in search of adventure, I suppose. Off to find a more exciting face. She bares her teeth. Not exactly Hollywood-white, but straight enough; and most of her fillings are tucked away in the back. Lips could be poutier, skin could be dewier; and who told those crow’s-feet they could park themselves there? Just because she’s forty-one, they needn’t think they have the right.

She supposes her face is normal enough – nothing that would make children run screaming from her in the streets, but nothing that would make anyone do a double-take either. In fact, no one except Tony has looked twice at Lizzie for quite some time now; and he’s so used to looking at her that he probably doesn’t really see her any more, not properly.

Forty-one and still living at home with Mammy and Daddy. Big fat baby. Well, not literally fat – although the tummy could be flatter, and the thighs could not in all honesty be described as firm; when she clenches her bottom the backs of them crinkle up horribly. She supposes it’s cellulite, and has decided to ignore it in the hope that it’ll go the way of the freckles.

She hasn’t worn a bikini in over ten years, and she gave up sleeveless tops after the night she caught sight of a flabby arm in a mirror behind a bar and looked around to see who was wearing the same top as her. She goes from a loose 14 to a tight 10, depending on her willpower and the season. Her appetite is depressingly healthy, and she walks only when the weather’s not too terrible. She’s tried gyms over the years, and callanetics, and once she signed up for kick-boxing classes, but nothing’s grabbed her for long enough to make a difference.

One of these days she’ll tone up, definitely. Any day now.

She feels something bump against her leg and bends down. ‘Hello, fatty.’ She strokes the soft ginger coat, and Jones purrs and butts his head against her hand. She hefts him into her arms and shows him the cat in the mirror.

‘Look at the state of you – you’re obese. I’m like Twiggy next to you. Aren’t you mortified?’

Jones nuzzles against her neck, not in the least mortified. Lizzie went to Limerick for a day’s shopping about six years ago and came back with a tiny Bustopher Jones mewing in a cardboard box on the back seat of the car. She’d walked past a pet shop and there he’d been, standing up against the window, mouthing out at her. Lizzie had taken one look at the little pink pads against the glass and fallen in love forever.

When she arrived home with him, Mammy ranted about fleas and ticks and dead birds and said Lizzie needn’t think she was going to look after him, God knew she had enough to do, and she presumed Lizzie would be taking him with her when she got married – but he won her over in a week with his kittenish charm. Lizzie came downstairs one morning to find her standing over him as he lapped up a saucer of sardine juice with his tiny pink tongue, managing a surprisingly loud purr at the same time. Mammy looked at Lizzie, arms folded across her dressing-gowned chest, and dared her to comment. Lizzie had enough sense not to.

After a fortnight they stopped calling him Bustopher Jones and switched to Jones – he didn’t seem to mind. He was greedy and lazy and alarmingly stubborn, and Lizzie adored him. His appetite was huge; on top of the three meals they fed him, Jones begged what he could from the neighbours, who were well used to his mournful mewing at their patio doors.

‘Lizzie? Are you there?’ Mammy is still waiting for her white pudding.

‘Coming.’ Lizzie puts down her giant cat and heads off to help Mammy with the Thursday-night dinner: rashers and sausages and soft fried eggs and white pudding, and Mammy’s bran-laden brown bread, to keep everyone regular.

As she opens the kitchen door, the savoury smell of frying meat hits her nostrils, and her stomach rumbles in anticipation.

Mammy looks up from the spattering pan. ‘There you are. Any sign of Tony?’

Lizzie shakes her head, glancing at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s only twenty to.’

In all the Thursday nights he’s been coming to dinner at the O’Gradys’, Tony has never arrived before ten to six, or after five to. You could set your watch by him – him and his Iced Caramels.

She puts her bag on the table, takes out the white pudding, peels away the plastic and begins to slice it thickly, the way Daddy likes it.

‘Any news in town?’ Mammy turns the rashers on the grill.

Not really – unless you count the earthquake, just before the volcano. And of course the flood didn’t help.

Passing her the sliced pudding, Lizzie racks her brain. ‘The traffic was heavy at the roundabout; it took ages to cross.’ Well, it was better than nothing. ‘And there was a big queue at the cash machine by the library; I was sorry I hadn’t used the one on the square – I was frozen standing there. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, two weeks before Christmas.’ She goes to the bread bin and takes out a quarter of Mammy’s bread. Tony will eat two slices exactly.

Mammy pokes at the sausages to make room for the pudding, and just as she fits them all onto the pan the bell rings. She puts down the fork and starts patting her hair. ‘That’ll be Tony now. Will you let him in, Lizzie?’

No, I’ll shove a rope ladder out the landing window. Lizzie opens the front door and Tony steps inside, rubbing his woolly hands together. He still isn’t wearing the sheepskin gloves she got him for his birthday in October; probably saving them for the heavy-duty cold in January.

‘Hello, love. Isn’t it perishing?’ He brushes her cheek with frozen lips. ‘Nice and warm in here.’

In the kitchen, Lizzie watches as he goes to Mammy, who’s just pulled off her apron – ‘There she is’ – and pecks her cheek before presenting her with the bag of Iced Caramels from his pocket. Mammy always takes them with the same mixture of surprise and delight, as if he’s never brought them before. As if he’s the only one who ever brings her anything. As if she likes Iced Caramels.

When he first started coming to dinner, Tony asked Lizzie what sweets her mother liked. She told him, ‘The pink and white ones’; and when he arrived the next night with his bag of iced caramels, she hadn’t the heart to tell him it was marshmallows she meant. Every Thursday Mammy takes the bag from him, and every Friday she passes them on to old Mrs Sweeny a few doors down, who loves them.

‘Lizzie, take Tony’s coat, and call Daddy.’ Mammy is pouring a generous dollop of whiskey into a glass. ‘Desperate out, isn’t it, Tony?’ Lizzie hears Tony agreeing about the desperate state of the weather as she hangs his coat and scarf in the hall. She wonders what would happen if he ever disagreed with Mammy, about anything. Or had three slices of bread instead of two. Or turned up for dinner on a Wednesday night, just for a change.

She gives herself a shake and puts her head round the sitting-room door. Daddy is reading the paper, as she knew he would be. ‘Dinner’s ready, Daddy.’

He puts down the paper and smiles over at her. ‘Right, love.’

Lizzie’s stomach rumbles again as she walks back into the kitchen; you’d swear she hadn’t eaten for a week, instead of just over four hours ago. Right now she could eat a horse if someone served it up on a big dinner plate with carrots, peas and a baked spud dripping with butter. Maybe a dollop of Ballymaloe relish on the side.

She’s never been in hospital except as a visitor, and never stayed in bed for longer than two days. She’s never broken a bone, never even cracked anything. Every three months she donates a pint of brimming-with-goodness blood to her local clinic, and she never feels faint afterwards. (Of course she always has the bottle of Guinness they provide, just to be on the safe side.) She hasn’t seen the family doctor in so long, she’d probably walk past him in the street. She’s the healthiest person she knows, and she knows quite a lot of people after forty-one years of living in the same biggish Irish town.

Healthy, engaged, steady job, everything mapped out for her. There is no earthly reason for her to feel unhappy and frustrated and desperately lonely; to be convinced, as she takes her seat at the table and smiles across at Tony, that if something doesn’t change very soon she’ll curl up and die. That she’s been slowly dying for a very long time.

How has she come to this? When she was growing up she had lots of friends, and even a few boyfriends. She had her share of Valentine cards and oh-my-God-there-he-is crushes, and bags of vinegary chips after the pictures and goodnight kisses a few doors down in case Mammy was looking out.

But one by one the friends drifted, most into marriage, one into a convent, one to Australia, two to London. The boyfriends drifted too – they never seemed to last longer than a few weeks; and except for one, whom she secretly mourned for a while, Lizzie waved them all off happily. They left no space in her life; her heart was still annoyingly intact.

She longed for a bit of real, honest-to-God heartbreak; something that would have her polishing off a whole pound of Milk Tray and bawling her way through a box of tissues, the ones with aloe vera so her nose wouldn’t go too red and raw. Or maybe she’d go off her food and take to the drink; yes, that might be more tragic. Sometimes she imagined a mild breakdown – nothing too scary, just a few weeks in bed with a pack of Prozac and Mammy running upstairs with trays of steamed fish and Complan. But it never happened. No one was ever interested enough in her to break her heart.

And then she went to work at Julia O’Gorman’s restaurant, and five years after she started, Tony O’Gorman came home from Scotland to work in the family business and they started going out. And six years later they got engaged.

And they’ve been engaged for eleven years. As the Americans say, do the math.

They made plans. Of course they made plans. Like any engaged couple, they settled on a date and booked the church and the hotel and pored over travel brochures for the honeymoon. And then, two weeks before the wedding, as Lizzie was struggling into the dress for the final alterations, Tony’s father dropped dead in the kitchen one morning, so of course they cancelled.

They rescheduled for a year later. This time, a burst pipe flooded the restaurant, forcing it to close down for a couple of months while the refurbishments were done. They couldn’t leave Julia on her own at a time like that – of course not.

The third time, six years into the engagement, they got as far as three days before the wedding. The bridesmaid was dressed, the holiday in Wales was booked, the flowers were ordered, the presents were piling up in the sitting room, Lizzie’s weight loss was coming along nicely. Then, in the middle of The Late Late Show, the phone rang. When Daddy answered, a distraught Julia O’Gorman told him that Tony had been rushed to hospital with appendicitis. Lizzie wanted to go ahead and get married in the hospital, but Mammy wouldn’t hear of it. After all those lovely presents, she’d never be able to hold her head up in Kilmorris again if they didn’t give everyone a good day out.

The time after that, it was Daddy’s hernia. And then came the Big Row: Lizzie in tears, insisting they set a new date, and Tony refusing to plan anything under duress – couldn’t Lizzie see this was the busiest time in the restaurant, his mother wasn’t up to it, hadn’t they all the time in the world? They made up, of course they did; but for a long time after that neither of them mentioned the W-word. They went out every Sunday night as usual (the only night the restaurant was closed, and both of them were off), and Tony came to dinner every Thursday evening, just before Lizzie went on duty at half seven; but the subject didn’t come up between them again for at least a year after the Row.

And then, every now and again one or other of them would say, ‘We should really set a date,’ and the other would agree that they really should, and somehow it never got beyond that. One day they’ll probably just elope, and Mammy will have to lump it, and that’ll be that.

And Lizzie is dying. Healthy, employed, engaged Lizzie O’Grady is dying of boredom and frustration and impatience, and with the effort of trying to hide it all and pretend that everything is fine, just great, and that she’ll be married any day now to the love of her life.

‘Pass the bread to Tony, Lizzie.’ Mammy points towards the plate of sliced bread that’s positioned exactly halfway between Tony and Lizzie. She thinks of the Pope and picks it up and holds it out to Tony.

He pats his stomach like he always does. ‘I shouldn’t, but I will; can’t resist your bread, Maura.’ He smiles over at Mammy, and Mammy smiles back at him like it’s the first time she’s heard it. Sometimes Lizzie wonders if Mammy loves Tony more than she does; he’s the son-in-law she prayed to St Jude for, years ago, when all of Lizzie’s friends were settling down.

But Lizzie loves him too – of course she does. She’d hardly have stayed engaged to him for eleven years if she didn’t, for goodness’ sake. Isn’t he decent and reliable, and doesn’t he always remember her birthday, and aren’t vouchers much better than something she mightn’t like and might have to bring back on the sly or wear to please him? And isn’t he good to his mother, insisting that she always comes first? That’s what sons are supposed to do, aren’t they? That’s what she’d want her son to do.

Not that she’s likely to have any now.

But she can’t blame Tony for that; it’s hardly his fault that they’ve left it too late for children – she had a say in it too, didn’t she? So why on earth does she feel trapped and suffocated and locked away in a tower with no door, sitting at her little high-up window looking out at the world? Rapunzel with shoulder-length brown hair; fat lot of good that’d be when the prince arrived. She’d have to jump out the window to him – probably break her leg, or land on him and squash him to death.

‘What are you smiling at?’ Tony pops a bit of sausage into his mouth.

Lizzie lifts her cup and shakes her head. ‘Just something I saw on telly last night. How was work today?’ And he begins to talk about the restaurant, and she looks across at him and sees his honest face and reminds herself that this man has chosen her, out of all the single females in Kilmorris, to share the rest of his life with. Her Tony.

After dinner Mammy says, ‘Lizzie, get the cake,’ and she takes her lemon poppyseed cake from its tin and cuts a slice for everyone. Tony beams as she puts his slice in front of him. ‘Another delicious cake, Lizzie; I’m a lucky man.’

Mammy beams back at him as if she’d baked it. ‘She’s great at the cakes, all right; I don’t know when I had to bake one last.’

And Tony, right on cue, says immediately, ‘I’m sure it would be just as good, Maura; she didn’t steal it.’

Lizzie eats her slice and watches them saying exactly the right things to each other. Funny, how things work out. She left school after Leaving Cert and got a waitressing job in O’Gorman’s – just for the summer, to make a bit of cash for the year she was going to spend travelling with her friend Síle. Then she was going to come home and start working as a baker.

Baking is her passion. It’s all she ever wanted to do. From the time she realised that you could put together a lot of things that couldn’t be eaten on their own, and add a bit of heat, and produce something delicious, she was totally hooked, happiest up to her elbows in flour and surrounded by spices and bowls of beaten eggs, and little bags of sesame seeds and caraway seeds, and books with oven-temperature charts inside their front covers. She made her first Christmas cake at eleven, nearly delirious from the smell of fruit soaking in dark rum, and from then on Mammy never baked another one. Now Lizzie makes eight cakes every October, for various relatives and neighbours.

She has a stack of books beside her bed, and every one of them is totally dedicated to the art of baking. Each night she devours them, poring over the ingredients of cottage cheese dill bread, learning the difference between biscottentorte and tiramisu, licking her lips over summer berry strudel. She bakes as often as she can, whenever she and the kitchen are free at the same time. As well as keeping Mammy and Daddy well stocked up, Lizzie bakes for everyone else, too. When she goes to visit friends, she brings a cake; if the friends are married with children, they get a bag of cookies or buns. When Mrs Geraghty up the road had a stroke Lizzie visited her with a plate of light lemon squares. When Louise and Derry got engaged, they asked her to make a cake in the shape of a plane for the party; they’d met on board an Aer Lingus flight to Rome. To date she’s made cakes for six weddings, eleven christenings and countless birthdays.

When she started, she experimented all the time. She wanted to conquer the mysteries of baking – find the perfect temperature to rise yeast at, get the balance just right between sweet and tart in a strawberry rhubarb pie, stop those blasted cherries from sinking to the bottom of her fresh cherry cake. She had her share of disasters – every so often Jones would sniff at his bowl and wonder what on earth he was being dished up, or Daddy would be emptying the kitchen bin and discover a plastic bag that felt mushy and warm. But she learnt as she went along.

And the plan always was that one day she’d stand in her very own bakery, and people would make a special detour for a loaf of her four-cheese-and-onion bread, or a box of her triple chocolate chunk cookies, or a warmed slice of her Spanish tortilla tart. She’d have a little counter at one side where people could sit and eat, and she’d take orders for birthday cakes in the shape of racing cars, and wedding cakes with each tier a different recipe. And children would stand on the path and breathe in the aromas that wafted out, and beg their mothers for a bun. Oh, she had it all planned.

Except that, before she found a way to tell Mammy and Daddy that herself and Síle were heading off after the summer, Síle decided to go to college instead of Europe, and Lizzie couldn’t face the prospect of going alone. She thought she might as well stay on at O’Gorman’s while she decided what her next step should be; better to be earning a few quid than sitting at home doing nothing.

It simply didn’t occur to her to go ahead with the baking plan; she still yearned to see a bit of the world – she’d never been further than Dublin – and she knew that, once she started baking for a living, that’d be the end of her travel plans. So she whiled away the hours in O’Gorman’s imagining herself on a beach in Greece or picking grapes in France or climbing a mountain somewhere in Africa. She was desperate for a bit of excitement, but she couldn’t bring herself to make the break on her own.

On her way home from work after telling Julia O’Gorman that she could stay on for a while, Lizzie opened a savings account. She promised herself it was just till next spring; then she’d definitely take off – on her own if she had to.

But somehow it never happened. In the spring Julia made her head waitress, Monday to Friday, eight to four – this was before they started doing evening meals – with a series of teenagers to train in and keep an eye on, and a stream of regular customers who felt safe in the unchanging world of O’Gorman’s, where you had your dinner in the middle of the day and you went home to your tea. And Lizzie stayed on, because the longer she put off her round-the-world adventure, the further away from her it seemed to go.

She didn’t find anyone else to go travelling with – her friends were well settled into relationships, or had already moved away, or were in the middle of their studies – and when it came down to it, she just couldn’t face the notion of heading off alone. The furthest she got with her plan to become a baker was going around the three bakeries in Kilmorris and asking if they needed any help. None of them did, and she hadn’t a clue where to go from there.

And so it went. Occasional visits to the cinema, on her own or with whichever of her increasingly rare boyfriends happened to be on the scene; the odd coffee with one or other of her old pals who squeezed her in between ballet runs and music lessons; and evenings at home with Mammy and Daddy and crosswords and telly and Scrabble and how was your day and have some more cabbage, it’s not worth keeping this bit and I hate to throw it out and my knee was at me again last night and will you get some white pudding for the dinner.

And now here she is, engaged for the past eleven years to the son of her mother’s best friend, and still dreaming about becoming a baker. As she changes into her black skirt and white blouse after dinner, Lizzie suddenly thinks: Maybe it isn’t too late. What has she got to lose by giving it another go – finding out more about what steps she should be taking? Really, she gave up far too easily last time. She’s never even talked about it with Tony; by the time he arrived on the scene, her dream was well tucked away. But she’s so much more experienced now . . . Zipping up her skirt, she feels a flutter of hope. Maybe it isn’t too late.

As Tony walks her back to the restaurant, she decides to test the waters.

‘Darling, you know how much I like to bake.’

He looks indulgently at her, squeezes her shoulder. ‘I do, pet – and you’re great at it. Those cakes you make are really delicious.’

Lizzie smiles; so far, so good. ‘I’ve been thinking of going into it full-time – you know, making it my career. What would you think?’

He looks puzzled. ‘Full-time? But how could you do that, with your job at the restaurant? You’d never manage the two, pet.’

She shakes her head, still smiling. ‘No, of course I wouldn’t. I’d have to give up the restaurant – get a job in a bakery for a while, till I had enough experience to open up my own little place.’

Tony stops walking, turns her to face him. She looks up at his horrified face and feels her heart sinking. ‘Lizzie, love, you’re not serious. Tell me this is a joke.’

Her smile disappears. ‘What would be so terrible about it? It’s not as if O’Gorman’s would collapse without me – you could get any number of waitresses to do what I do.’ As she speaks, she feels something heavy settling around her.

He’s shaking his head slowly, hands on her arms. ‘Lizzie, love, that’s not the point. We’re getting married, or have you forgotten? You’ll be part of the family, part of the business. You can’t just walk out on it like that.’

She starts to speak, but he’s not finished. ‘Look, pet, it’s one thing to be able to turn out a nice cake or a loaf of bread, but it’s a whole other story to make a living out of it. What do you know about setting up your own business, hmm?’

She feels a stab of anger. ‘Well, obviously I’d have to –’

He interrupts her, hands still trapping her arms. ‘Look, pet, this is a crazy idea. You bake wonderful cakes; no one’s denying that. But you’re a waitress – an excellent one – and you’re marrying into a restaurant business. I think you need to get your priorities right here, Lizzie.’

Again she has to fight down a spurt of anger. ‘Tony, please don’t lecture me about where my priorities lie. I don’t see why my having a different career should in any way be seen as disloyal –’

He cuts in again, speaking slowly, in a way that makes her want to slap his face. ‘Look, love, all I’m saying is that we’ll be in charge whenever my mother retires, and it would be a bit silly if you were off baking cakes when we were trying to keep the restaurant going.’ He drops her arms and puts his hands in his pockets. ‘Where would the money to open up your own place come from, anyway? Have you thought of that?’

It’s the one thing Lizzie was hoping he wouldn’t bring up. They’ve been putting money into a joint account for years, but that’s earmarked for the two of them; it’s ‘ours’ rather than hers. She couldn’t expect him to hand it over – and it would be petty to take out her half.

‘I could see about getting a loan . . .’ But she knows she’s on shaky ground now. Why should she expect any bank manager to hand over the kind of money she’d need? It’s not as if Tony would offer the restaurant as collateral.

He sees her uncertainty and puts an arm around her shoulders. ‘Lizzie, love, it just wouldn’t work, with two businesses to manage – you’d be dead out.’ You, not we. ‘I’ll tell you what – I’ll speak to my mother about letting you do some baking for the restaurant, instead of ordering it all in. I’m sure she’d be delighted to have some home baking to serve up.’ He takes her arm again and begins to steer her gently in the direction of O’Gorman’s. Subject closed.

And Lizzie imagines baking apple tarts and chocolate sponges and fruitcakes for O’Gorman’s until Julia retires – and then baking exactly the same tarts and sponges and cakes after that; because why on earth would Tony want to change anything when he’s in charge? His life is exactly the same now as it was when they got together. He still lives at home with Julia, and even after he and Lizzie are married, that isn’t going to change: Lizzie will just move in. Julia will need minding as she gets older – they couldn’t possibly desert her.

Tony still has his golf, and his Toastmasters, and his fortnight in Bundoran every September with Julia. He and Lizzie go away for a week in May – well, he wouldn’t feel happy leaving Julia on her own for any longer; surely Lizzie can understand that.

And for the past twenty years Lizzie has been saying Yes, of course, and Yes, I understand, and No, I don’t mind, and now, as she walks arm in arm with the man who’s just crumpled up her dream and tossed it into the gutter, she wonders how long she can go without telling someone she’s dying.