Chapter Twenty-five
It had taken only seconds for Shelagh to run to Deirdre Malone’s house, even with a baby on her hip. She left doors open and a bin scattering in her wake and gasped the words out before she was even fully in the kitchen as the door flew open with Shelagh virtually swinging on the latch. ‘Deirdre, have you heard the news?’ She had intended to savour in the delight of holding something over Deirdre, but, carried away in the moment, she blurted out, ‘Maura and Tommy are back, for good. Can you believe it?’
‘No they’re not,’ Deirdre said, as cool as a cucumber.
‘They are, I’m telling you. Seamus came back for his pipe and told me. I saw Nellie with my own eyes. The kids came for a shovel of coal and I asked them, what do you want it for and they said, Peggy was short and Maura’s back. Honest to God, she’s in Kathleen’s but I don’t think we will see her now until tomorrow, it’s so late.’
Deirdre took her coat down from the kitchen door. ‘Oh, I think we will. I need to see this with my own eyes. Malachi!’ Deirdre shouted up the stairs. ‘Get down here in the kitchen until your da gets back and watch the kids don’t make a mess.’
Shelagh juggled the baby onto her other hip. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked. ‘We can’t just go into Kathleen’s, she’s not knocked on with the mop yet.’
Deirdre fastened her headscarf under her chin. ‘No, and she won’t, will she? It’s bloody Maura, always calling the shots, but no one’s slept in Maura’s house for months, there’s no beds made. We can go and start getting it ready for her and that way we will have to see her, won’t we? They can’t leave us out because that wouldn’t look very nice, would it? Mary, put that mop down, you’re coming with us.’
Shelagh looked twice at the girl. ‘Holy Mother of God, Mary, what happened to your hair?’
‘Don’t ask,’ said Deirdre. ‘God alone knows what Eugene will say when he sees the state of it, and she paid Cindy good money for that.’
Mary was about to say that she hadn’t at all. That Cindy hadn’t taken a penny off her, but instead she kept quiet and said, ‘I can’t, Mam. I’ll have to go and fetch Biddy from the Seaman’s Stop. Malcolm has a full house tonight from one of the ships and she’s down there, helping.’
Deirdre wasn’t listening, she was already away and out of the door. Shelagh, in her wake, popped her head back around the door and said, ‘Mary, your hair looks lovely, so it does!’ and as quick as a flash, she was gone.
An hour later, they had almost finished preparing the house for Maura’s return and were slightly disappointed not to have been summoned, especially as Harry and little Paddy had arrived to see who was in the house and would obviously carry the news back to Maura that they were already there and using their own initiative. It had taken them less than an hour to do what would have taken a tired Maura much longer to complete alone. During the turning of the mattresses, the making of the beds and the lighting of the fires in both bedrooms, there had been a prolonged exchange.
‘It seems to me, Shelagh, that if you’ve got a bit of money, you don’t want to go and spend it on an empty house, do you? It’s obvious they always intended to come back, isn’t it?’
Shelagh was confused. ‘I suppose so, because look at this place. Kathleen has been coming in once a week since they left and giving it the once-over. In fact, she had the nets out last week and there’s nothing for us to do other than make the beds and light the fires. So Kathleen must have known, mustn’t she? Or she probably read it in the tea leaves – that’s the thing about Kathleen, she knows what’s coming before the rest of us do. Nothing’s a surprise to her. She can see into the future, ’tis a great gift she has.’
‘Ma,’ the back door opened and one of Shelagh’s children ran in shouting up the stairs, ‘you’ve got to go to Kathleen’s now! She’s banging on with the mop and it’s three knocks.’
Shelagh picked her baby up from the floor and straightened her back with some effort. ‘We’re doing the beds. Tell her no one needed to tell us what to do, it’s all done and dusted and when is Maura coming down?’
‘Ma, she knows you’re here, Nellie told her, Kathleen says you’ve got to come, right now!’
Deirdre tutted. ‘There you go, Shelagh, we’ve been summoned. Finally, we get to see Queen Maura – and you see, that’s the other thing about Maura, we get her house ready for her, but we have to go and have a formal introduction at Kathleen’s house. She thinks she’s flamin’ royalty, that one.’
*
It took only minutes for Kathleen’s house to fill and to calm everyone down due to the surprise at Maura’s return.
‘Oh, it was no surprise to us, was it, Shelagh?’ said Deirdre. ‘The minute Shelagh told me, I said, right, come on then, Shelagh, she will have tired kids on her hands to deal with and I knew those beds would need making.’
Deirdre had never been Maura’s favourite neighbour, but she was grateful that Deirdre had done exactly what Maura would have done had the boot been on the other foot. ‘Thank you, Deirdre, that’s good of you. It’s nice to know nothing and no one has changed.’
Deirdre folded her arms and preened. ‘We’ve turned the beds down and lit the fires
