Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

I lay back on my bed, considering the last forty-eight hours of my life. Yesterday, Granny was alive and Karen’s husband physically attacked me, and now here I lay after spending the day with her in Rome. I was genuinely sad about Granny Fitz. Despite her rudeness, I think she did always have my best interests at heart. When I was a boy, she doted on me in a way that made Mum jealous.

I knew that I would not be coming back to Rome after the funeral. The flights were too expensive.

Thankfully, Mario wasn’t on duty in the morning. A silent girl served me strong coffee with chocolate powder in it and a croissant, and hailed a taxi on the street to take me to the airport.

My mother greeted me tearfully when I arrived home. Helen had stayed the night in one of the spare rooms to keep her company.

‘Jesus, Lar, what happened to your face?’

I had forgotten about my bruise.

‘Laurence was mugged by some hoodlums,’ said my mother.

Later, Helen grilled me about the ‘mugging’. She couldn’t understand why they hadn’t taken my watch or wallet.

‘Come on, Lar, what really happened?’

‘I walked into a shelf at work.’

She hooted with laughter.

‘You’re some eejit. Why does your mum think you were mugged?’

‘If I tell her the truth, she’ll ban me from going to work. You know what she’s like.’

‘Are you going to sue them? The office?’

‘What? No.’

Helen shrugged. ‘I would.’

No doubt she would.

Helen grabbed me and gave me a hug. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ she whispered, ‘I thought your granny would live for ever. She was made of steel!’

Helen stayed all day, helping my mother. She even did some light housework before she came to say goodbye.

‘That’ll be twenty quid, please, Lar.’

It was easier to pay her than to fight about it.

Granny had been found by a neighbour. It was a heart attack. Probably the same congenital failure that had killed my father, although the stress of killing somebody was no doubt a contributing factor in his case. Mum was in stoic form, despite the tears. She and Uncle Finn and Aunt Rosie were coordinating the funeral arrangements. Aunt Rosie said something about every funeral you go to reminds you of all the other funerals you’ve ever been to. I’d only been to one.

‘You know, I hardly remember a thing about your father’s. I was in such a state!’ said Mum.

Before the funeral, out of respect for Granny, I asked Rosie to help me put make-up on my bruise. Rosie wanted to know all about the mugging. The funeral car arrived to take us to the church before I had to do too much explaining.

We stood at the top of the church as Granny’s friends and acquaintances shook our hands, mumbling their condolences. Granny’s coffin was closed. Apparently she had made her wishes known in case someone dressed her inappropriately. Mum said they’d given the undertakers Granny’s tweed skirt and mink stole. That seemed inappropriate to me. Being buried with an animal that was already dead was worse than wearing it, in my opinion.

After the obligatory shuffle around Uncle Finn and Aunt Rosie’s chaotic, sandwich-laden home, made worse by throngs of elderly people in various stages of decrepitude, shot through with their eight rowdy offspring, I drove Mum home.

‘What a day!’ she said, but she was almost cheerful. She’d got what she wanted. Her interfering mother-in-law was out of the way and her son was home, back where he belonged. She didn’t try to fake her sorrow that my holiday had been aborted almost before it had even begun. She didn’t ask me how I had spent my twenty-four hours in Rome. My day with Karen was something I could keep to myself. She didn’t notice my mood, or if she did, she probably thought it was because I was missing my holiday or my grandmother. She was in good form, gossiping about what the mourners were wearing, which of Dad’s friends had come, how well Aunt Rosie had coped with having ‘all those people’ in her house. She fixed us both drinks.

‘I think we’re going to be all right now,’ she said.

I didn’t know what she meant. ‘What?’

‘Financially. Eleanor told me last year that she had changed her will to look after us. I just told Finn. He was furious about it. I don’t know exactly what she did, but she definitely said we’d be taken care of.’ Mum was quite gleeful about this. I had never realized before how mercenary she could be. We did OK on my management salary and her widow’s pension, but it was nothing like the scale my father used to earn, so even though we could cover our bills, there were no extras like the old days. No fine dining and designer clothing like Mum was used to. I didn’t miss that kind of thing, but my mother yearned for it.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Annie’s family is not going to give up on looking for her. Her sister has been to Athlone looking for her and she’s going back to the midlands to continue the search as soon as she can.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, are they stupid?’ My mother was irritated and I was astonished by her callousness. ‘It’s ridiculous. Why can’t they just drop it?’

‘If I disappeared, would you stop looking for me?’

‘Darling! Of course not! I am just trying to protect you and the memory of your father. Send her another letter.’

‘What?’

‘The sister. What’s her name? Send her a direct letter from Annie, something that will stop her. We’ll compose it together. You’ll have to go back to Athlone to post it.’

My mother was being so practical and unemotional about this cover-up of her husband’s murderous history. It horrified me. And yet what could I do? She was right. It had to be done. And it also gave me the chance to give comfort to Karen.

‘Karen. Her name is Karen.’

Ma and Da were sort of back together. He was so grateful to have her back, he smartened up, stayed out of the pub and went looking for a job in earnest. He had really missed her and was determined to keep her home. Dessie was trying to get me to come home too, and my mother was doing her best to help him. She was at me all the time. ‘Don’t make a mistake you’ll regret for the rest of your life. Dessie Fenlon is a good man and sure, doesn’t he love the bones of you?’

Dessie had doorstepped me shortly after Rome, but when I’d ignored him, he shouted down the street after me, ‘I sorted your man in the dole office, he won’t go near you now.’

I wheeled around. ‘You did what?’

‘Gave him the hiding he deserved.’

I remembered the bruise under Laurence’s eye and his explanation of the ledgers falling on top of him at work. ‘You stupid bastard,’ I said. ‘He’s only a friend.’

‘Yeah, well, he won’t be anything more than that after I’ve finished with him.’ And Dessie sauntered away, hands in his pockets and head up, as if he’d just had a good day at the dog track.

In my head, I was reliving my day in Rome with Laurence. It had been such a brilliant time and a real shame that it had to be cut short. When I got back, he explained about his granny dying, but I found myself thinking about him all the time. I felt terrible about Bridget. Laurence could have kissed me any time that day, he could have taken my hand, made some gesture of affection, but he didn’t. I thought I had been misreading the signals, but I felt like he and I were involved in some way. And yet any time I had tried to reach a higher level of friendship with him, he had gently turned me away – like when I’d asked for his home phone number, he had mumbled that I could always get him in the office. It struck me now that Dessie had scared him off. Or maybe Laurence just didn’t like me in that way. Maybe the modelling business had given me too much confidence.