A Week in Winter(17)

‘But we’d only have to find homes for them, Miss Queenie. We couldn’t have a house full of cats when the visitors come.’ He realised that he was beginning to think of himself as part of the whole project.

‘Would you like children of your own one day, Rigger?’ She always asked strange, direct questions that nobody else did.

‘I don’t think so, to be honest with you. They seem to be more trouble than they’re worth. They’d only end up disappointing you.’ He knew he sounded bitter, and tried to laugh and take the harm out of it. Miss Queenie hadn’t really noticed.

‘We would have loved to have had children, Jessica, Beatrice and myself. We could always see our children playing around Stone House, which was silly really because if we had married we wouldn’t have been living here any more. It was all a dream, anyway.’

‘And was there ever anyone you particularly would have liked to marry, Miss Queenie?’ Rigger amazed himself asking her such a thing.

‘There was one young man . . . oh, I would have loved to marry him, but sadly there was TB in his family and so he couldn’t marry at all.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it was a disease of the lungs and people could catch it and it would pass on to the children. He died in a sanatorium, poor, poor boy. I still have the letters he wrote to me.’

Rigger patted her hand and, embarrassed, he patted Gloria’s head as well. They drove on in silence until they arrived at the vet.

‘Don’t worry, Gloria. You won’t feel a thing, pet. And anyway, there’s more to life than just sex and kittens,’ Miss Queenie said reassuringly as she handed the purring cat over.

The vet and Rigger exchanged glances. This wasn’t the normal conversation in the surgery.

While Gloria was being seen to, Rigger and Miss Queenie drove off to do items off Chicky’s list. Rigger marvelled at how many people knew him by name in Stoneybridge and the surrounding countryside. Surely his mother would be pleased to know that he was so accepted in this place where she had grown up.

But still there was no word from her.

He had written to Nuala telling her about the day-old chicks they had bought and had to protect from Gloria, who wanted to practise her hunting skills; and how hard it was to dig potato drills. He told her about how the builder was going to charge a fortune to make a walled garden, so Rigger had built it himself, stone upon stone, and raised growing beds. How every time he dug a hole to plant something, Gloria arrived and sat in it, gazing at him seriously. Despite that, now there were shrubs and plants grown up against the wall, which was called espalier. They had runner beans and courgettes and whole rakes of salads and herbs.

He did not tell his mother about the lovely girl called Carmel Hickey, who was studying hard for her Leaving Certificate but could be persuaded to go out to the cinema or for a drive down the coast with Rigger.

Some of the neighbours, and indeed her own family, worried that Rigger lived in Stone House with the two women.

Chicky laughed. People said that it looked odd, that was all. But she dismissed it and life went on easily for the three of them, working long hours and coping with people who didn’t turn up on time or at all. She taught Rigger to make the kind of meals that Miss Queenie liked: little scones and omelettes. He mastered it quickly. It was just another thing to learn.

Rigger sometimes asked Chicky’s advice about what girls liked. He wanted to give Carmel a treat. What would she suggest.

Chicky thought that Carmel might like to go to the fair-ground that came every year to a nearby town. There would be fireworks and bumper cars, a big wheel and a lot of fun.

And apparently Carmel liked it a lot.

It was touching to see Rigger getting dressed up to take his girl out in the old van. Chicky sighed as she saw them heading off by the cliffs. Rigger didn’t drink so she never worried about there being any danger ahead. She could not have foreseen the conversation a few short months later.

Carmel was pregnant.

Carmel Hickey, aged seventeen and about to sit her Leaving Certificate, was going to have the child of Rigger, who was eighteen. They loved each other, so were going to run away to England and get married. Rigger was very sorry to let Chicky down and leave her like this, but he said it was the only thing to do. There was no question of a termination and Carmel’s parents would kill them both. There would be no tolerance in the Hickey family.

Chicky was unnaturally calm about it all.

First thing she said was they must tell nobody. Nobody at all.

Carmel was to do her exams as if nothing was wrong. Then, in three weeks’ time when the exams were over, they could get married here, in Stoneybridge, and take it from there.

Rigger looked at her as if she was mad.

‘Chicky, you have no idea what they’ll be like. They’ll skin me alive. They have such hopes for her: a career, a life and eventually a great catch as a husband. They don’t want her married to a dead end like me. They’d never stand for it, not in a million years. We have to run away.’

‘There’s been far too much running away,’ Chicky said. ‘Your mother ran away from here. I ran away. You ran away. It has to stop sometime. Let it stop now.’

‘But what can I offer Carmel?’

‘You have a job here – a good job – you have savings already in the post office. I’ll let you have that cottage beside the walled garden. You can make a home there. You will be providing all the produce for Stone House and for anyone else you can sell it to. You’re a genuine businessman, for God’s sake. These days they’d be hard put to find anyone so ready and able to make a home for their daughter.’