Cecelia Ahern - Short Stories - The Every Year Collection

Every Friday and Saturday night Mags and Aggie would become those women in the privacy of their own bedsit while they let the music take them away and let the noises from below make them feel as if they were in the very room. They would doll themselves up to the nines in their Sunday best, flicking cigarette ash around the room, revealing so much flesh their parents would be saying decades of the rosary. She lived life happily in a city not designed for single women.

The voice called out to her louder and louder week after week until Mags finally felt confident enough to leave the safety of her bedsit in order to explore downstairs. And when she left the room that night she left the Margaret Divine of Kilcrush behind her. For on stage performing was an angel, the stage spotlight acting as a beam from heaven shining on the man who sang as though he were from another world. His eyes sparkled at her as his magic hands glided gracefully over the keys, and he sang with a smile. A smile all for her. He just seemed to glow to Mags; she could hardly take her eyes away from him, couldn’t stop listening to his voice. There was an air of sophistication about him and at the age of twenty-one Mags knew she had already fallen in love with the voice of an angel, and now she had fallen in love with the man. It had been the Calling she had been praying for. His voice calling her to leave her safety net behind and come downstairs.

He was smart and friendly and funny and listened to Mags’s stories, laughed at her jokes, seemed interested in her opinions, made her feel loved and intelligent and sexy, and this was all new to her.

They became engaged only weeks later and, as Mags’s parents still refused to visit her in Dublin, she embarked on the train journey to Kilcrush with her love. He made her feel strong, as if she could take on the world and perhaps even her mother.

And, for a woman who didn’t think much of city people and their ways, Mags had never seen her mother so uncomfortable and nervous, so well dressed; she had never seen the cottage look so clean, not even as clean as when the local priest visited. It was as though her mother thought royalty was among them. But Connie was a man of the world. He had seen countries, learned of things Grainne could never teach her daughter or preach to her friends. Mags was surprised to find her mother intimidated by this confident young man who looked at her daughter in a way she found uncomfortable.

While Cornelius became acquainted with the men in the living room, it was required of Mags to help prepare tea with her mother in the kitchen. Her first greeting was a slap across the face. ‘That’s what you get, Margaret Divine,’ her mother said breathlessly while rubbing her hand in her apron as if to try to rid herself of the guilt of the act. ‘That’s what you get for not obeying me, for running off and becoming a scorned woman who hangs around smoky clubs with men like you were some sort of fancy woman,’ she hissed. ‘That’s not the life you were reared to know, not the life your father and I worked hard to provide for you, and this is how you repay us?’ She busied herself making sandwiches, slicing the tomatoes with neat precision, almost obsessive behaviour.

Mags stared at her mother, her eyes glistening from the sting of the slap.

‘Well, Margaret, what have you to say for yourself?’ She stopped slicing the tomato and turned to face Mags, sharp knife in one hand, other hand on hip trying to appear menacing. Margaret saw her then for the first time, for what she really was. A woman who knew very little about the real ways of the world. She realized that the woman who scared her all of her life knew very little at all. Margaret began to laugh, to her own surprise, quietly at first, but then she reached to the very bottom of her soul and found a loud bellyaching laugh that made her eyes run with tears of sadness and relief. This unusual act of disobedience angered her mother even more, and Mags received an even harder slap on the other cheek.

This stopped her laughing immediately but her eyes still glistened with bitter amusement.

‘What have you to say for yourself, young lady?’ her mother said angrily through gritted teeth. Loose grey hairs flailed around wildly as though they celebrated their escape from the tight bun in her head. Her face aged in an instant in Mags’s eyes, sharp knife aimed pointedly at Mags’s face. ‘Well?’ she pressed, the delight of putting her daughter back in her place causing her shoulders to relax a little. Margaret glanced at the small mirror over the kitchen basin, at the small wooden stool that she was forced to sit on for all of her teenage years twice weekly and endure the pain of covering her flushed cheeks. She didn’t know what to say. Margaret caught her reflection in the mirror and her stinging cheeks slowly broke into a sad smile. ‘Why Mother, you seem to have made my cheeks rosy.’

Her comment was greeted with an icy stare. But a shocked one at that. No words came from her mother’s mouth. And, as the unusual silence hung in the air, Margaret turned her back and walked out of the kitchen, out of the cottage and out of the place where her mother had tried to hold such control over her.

She and Cornelius married a few weeks later in a small church in Dublin. Her mother could not bring herself to attend but, for the last time, Mags’s father led her down the aisle of the church, with makeup on her face, up to the front row.

‘Four and seven, forty-seven.’

Mags smiled. The year she and Connie had their first baby.

He had been like an excited child himself when he found out about the pregnancy. He had picked her up and danced her around the living room of their new home, then quickly put her down again with worry, afraid of hurting her and the baby. They had finally managed to gather the money together to buy their first home in a new housing estate of brand-new three-bedroom homes in Cabra, Dublin. They had spent the first few years of their married life working all the hours under the sun to help pay for the house, and now they would have an addition. Mags smiled again. She couldn’t wait to talk to Connie later about the day they moved in. She loved doing that. Going over the memories of years gone by with him.

They named their first son Michael after Connie’s father, and over the following years they had three more children. Two more boys, Robert and Jimmy, and one girl, Joyce. A daughter Mags allowed to dress, act and speak for herself just as she pleased. They were all married now. Only Joyce lived in Dublin, the rest were living overseas with their families. They tried to get home as much as they could. Their eldest was now fifty-three years old. Not a baby any more.

‘On its own, number eight.’

The number of her grandchildren.

She couldn’t wait to finish up here and talk to Connie. She still loved him with all of her heart and every time she thought of him butterflies fluttered around her tummy. He used to work at the bingo hall until a few years ago, when the arthritis in his hands became too bad. He had missed playing the piano so much and Mags missed listening to him as she played her bingo. It was nice to hear his familiar sounds in the background and she liked being able to look up and watch him when he didn’t know she was looking. His face furrowed in concentration as he played the tunes he had been playing for over fifty years. They had never been able to find a replacement piano player. But there was no one near as good as Connie anyway …

Her thoughts diminished as she stared down at her card.

‘Oh,’ she said quietly with surprise.

‘Wha’?’ Aggie yelled.

Mags smiled at her lifelong friend. ‘I got bingo, Aggie.’ She clapped her hands together with glee.

‘You got wha’?’