The Collected Stories

‘Well, really I don’t know.’ She faltered, immediately feeling hot. ‘I really think it’s better if we don’t go on about it.’

‘I won’t keep you ten minutes, Mrs Lacy. I promise.’

She held the hall door open and he walked into the hall. He stepped over a Weetabix packet which Betty had thrown down and strode away from. In the kitchen Betty was unpacking the rest of the shopping, making a kind of singing noise, which she often did.

‘Sit down,’ Bridget said in the living-room, as she would to any visitor.

‘Thanks, Mrs Lacy,’ he said politely.

‘I won’t be a minute.’

She had to see to Betty in the kitchen. There was flour among the shopping, and eggs, and other items in bags that might become perforated or would break when dropped from the kitchen table to the floor. Betty wasn’t naughtier than any other child, but only a week ago, left on her own, she’d tried to make a cake.

‘You go and get the Weetabix,’ Bridget said, and Betty obediently marched into the hall to do so. Bridget hastily put the rest of the shopping out of reach. She took coloured pencils and a new colouring-book from a drawer and laid them out on the table. Betty didn’t much care for filling already-drawn outlines with colour and generally just scrawled her name all over them: Betty Lacy in red, and again in blue and orange and green.

‘Be a good big girl now,’ Bridget said.

‘Big,’ Betty repeated.

In the sitting-room Norma’s husband had picked up the Cork Weekly Examiner. As she entered, he replaced iron the pile of magazines near his armchair, saying that it appeared to be interesting.

‘It’s hard to know how to put this to you, Mrs Lacy.’ He paused, his smile beginning to fade. Seriousness invaded his face as his eyes passed over the contents of the living-room, over the sacred pictures and the odds and ends that Bridget had been meaning to throw out. He said:

‘Norma was in a bad way when I met up with her, Mrs Lacy. She’d been to the Samaritans; it was from them I heard about her. I’m employed by the council, actually. Social Services, counselling. That’s my job, see.’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘Norma was suffering from depression. Unhappiness, Mrs Lacy. She got in touch with the Samaritans and later she came round to us. I was able to help her. I won her confidence through the counselling I could give her. I love Norma now, Mrs Lacy.’

‘Of course.’

‘It doesn’t often happen that way. A counsellor and a client.’

‘No, I’m sure not.’ She interrupted because she knew he was going to continue with that theme, to tell her more about a relationship that wasn’t her business. She said that to herself. She said to herself that six years ago Norma had drifted into her life, leaving behind a child. She said to herself that the adoption of Betty had been at Norma’s request. ‘You’re a lovely person, Mrs Lacy,’ Norma had said at the time.

‘I can’t get to her at the moment,’ Norma’s husband explained. ‘Ever since the other day she’s hiding within herself. All the good that’s been done, Mrs Lacy, all the care of our own relationship: it’s going for nothing, you see.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘She went to the Samaritans because she was suicidal. There was nothing left of the poor thing, Mrs Lacy. She was hardly a human person.’

‘But Betty, you see – Betty has become my child.’

‘I know, I know, Mrs Lacy.’ He nodded earnestly, understandingly. ‘The Samaritans gave Norma back her humanity, and then the council housed her. When she was making the recovery we fell in love. You understand, Mrs Lacy? Norma and I fell in love.’

‘Yes, I do understand that.’

‘We painted the flat out together. Saturdays we spent buying bits of furniture, month by month, what we could afford. We made a home because a home was what Norma had never had. She never knew her parents: I don’t know if you were aware of that? Norma comes of a deprived background, she had no education, not to speak of. When I first met her, I had to help her read a newspaper.’ Suddenly he smiled. ‘She’s much better now, of course.’

Bridget felt a silence gathering, the kind there’d been several of the other afternoon. She broke it herself speaking as calmly as she could, trying to hold her visitor’s eye but not succeeding because he was glancing round the living-room again.

‘I’m sorry for Norma,’ she said. ‘I was sorry for her at the time, that is why I took in Betty. Only my husband and I insisted that it had to be legal and through the proper channels. We were advised about that, in case there was trouble later.’

‘Trouble? Who advised you, Mrs Lacy?’ He blinked and frowned. His voice sounded almost dense.

‘We went to a solicitor,’ she said, remembering that solicitor, small and moustached, recommended by Father Gogarty. He’d been very helpful; he’d explained everything.

‘Mrs Lacy, I don’t want to sound rude but there are two angles we can examine this case from. There is Norma’s and there is your own. You’ve seen the change in Norma; you must take my word for it that she could easily revert. Then consider yourself, Mrs Lacy, as another person might see you, a person like myself for instance, a case-worker if you like, an outsider.’

‘I don’t think of it as a case, with angles or anything else. I really don’t want to go on like this. Please.’