Secrets in the Snow

In return for all the love I felt from her, she told me that I made her glow inside with my warrior strength and determination to make things better. I listened to her with awe and excitement as she recounted tales of her home city of New York, of the love she shared with her late husband Peter, and by being there to share her last few years with her, she said that Ben and I showed her how to live life to the full again. We gave her a reason to get up in the morning that didn’t involve her talking to herself or to the plants in her garden. She enjoyed picking Ben up from school and she looked forward to Christmas, to birthdays and to holidays like she hadn’t done since Peter’s passing just a year before we moved to Ballybray.

‘I wish I’d come here soon enough to meet Peter,’ I used to tell her often.

She would look up at his photo on the mantelpiece, which stood alongside a framed picture of Peter’s very handsome nephew Aidan, who lived in America, and recall how much Peter had never feared she would be alone in Ballybray for long.

‘He told me he’d send me an angel,’ she used to say, clasping her frail but hard-working hands to her chest as she thought of him. ‘I like to think he knew you were coming here soon after he left. He was right. It didn’t take long.’

Now, four years later and only two days after her funeral when we’d said our heart-breaking goodbyes to Mabel, our cosy living room that was once always filled with her laughter, her wise words and her sometimes intense swearing when she really wanted to make a point, is drenched in the darkness of a dull Saturday afternoon in November.

Snowflakes hit the window, then melt and trickle down the pane, reflecting our mood as Ben and I sit together side by side in the quiet, contemplating what the hell we are meant to do without her. The TV is off again, the clock breaks the silence as it ticks back time on the wall, and we drift between staring into corners of the room, to looking out of the window to falling asleep for brief naps, and nibbling on snacks from the cupboard left over from her wake. We are a sight of misery and despair once more, yet I can’t shake it off, and neither, it seems, can Ben.

What would Mabel say if she saw us like this, I find myself wondering? I close my eyes and hear her raspy New York accent, telling me to shake off the cobwebs of the day and go do something fun.

She was a dancing-in-puddles type of woman when it rained, a ‘ditch work and let’s hit the lake for a swim’ sort when the sun shone, and she taught me to value every moment of time, knowing that nothing lasts for ever, so why can’t I continue on with how she’d like us to be?

‘How about we go outside and have a snowball fight?’ I ask Ben, trying my best to sound just a little like her. I even put on an American accent for effect, but he rolls his eyes at my efforts. At least it’s a reaction of some sort.

‘Or we could walk down by the lake?’ I suggest. ‘Feed the ducks? I bet they’re starving.’

He scrunches his nose and I give up with my ideas.

I feel deflated, sunk, and dead inside if truth be told. I feel like after almost winning a four-year-long game of snakes and ladders that I’ve landed on the penultimate square and slid right back down to number one, back in time, back to the shell of a person I was when I first arrived here.

Most of all, I feel like packing up and running away to start over again, just like I did after the last funeral I attended four years ago, when Ben was too young to care where we were going, but old enough to know not to ask too many questions.

Going to Mabel’s funeral took me right back in time to when my husband had died suddenly. Only at Jude’s funeral, I can’t say I felt the same sorrow as I do for Mabel now. In fact, all I felt then was anger and relief.

3.

‘Will I fix us some stew just like Mabel used to make?’ I suggest now to Ben, hoping and pleading with him for some sort of an answer, or that he might eat something other than toast and tea or rubbish from the biscuit tins left in by well-meaning villagers for the wake. ‘It won’t be quite as nice as Mabel could make it of course, but I’ll do my best?’

Ben shrugs his shoulders, which is good enough to make me pounce off the seat to go and attempt to make Mabel’s Irish Stew, delighted with myself that I’d bought in the ingredients just in case he’d show a spark of enthusiasm for a proper meal, and happy if truth be told, to be doing something that didn’t involve staring into space.

She used to bring us a small pot of stew every Saturday in winter, and Ben would lap it up in one go, sometimes asking for more before he went to bed, and if she had more she would leave it in for him rain, hail, sleet or snow. She’d a knack for making that stew, and even if it was simple and not very fancy, no one could make it taste the way she did.

I throw some cubes of steak into the pan just like she used to and then stir them around in a dash of oil as they brown. I quickly chop an onion, adding a splash of water, then turn it down to simmer just as she’d taught me to.

‘You’re going to need me to write this recipe down for when I go,’ she’d told me over and over again in a giddy voice. ‘It’s very, very complicated.’

I’d burst out laughing at her blatant sarcasm.

‘I’ll remember it, I promise.’ But she’d insisted on scrawling it down on a piece of paper and sticking it to my fridge. The writing has faded since that day, but I vowed I’d never take it down as it summarized her humour so dearly. There were memories of Mabel everywhere in our home, and that’s the way it would always be.

Ben turns the volume up on the TV so high it pierces my ears and I make my way to the living room to tell him off. Grief or no grief, he can’t get away with drowning me out like that, but just as I’m about to say my piece, a car pulls up directly outside Mabel’s house next door and my heart skips a beat.

No one ever visits Mabel’s house; no one except me or Ben of course, and the kind nurses who saw her through her last months as cancer dealt its final blow.

I race to the window, trying my best not to twitch the curtains, but I feel it’s in my rights to know what’s going on. I still have a key to her house, just like she had for mine, but I haven’t been able to step inside it since the day of her burial. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do so again.

‘Who the hell is that?’ I mumble to myself, knowing that Ben isn’t listening nor can he hear me over the din of the TV. The man at Mabel’s house drives a fancy silver Mercedes 4x4, the type of car I’d only ever seen in a car showroom from a distance, and he steps out of his vehicle and then goes to the boot to fetch something. I try desperately to peel my eyes away in fear he might see me watching, but I can’t. And then I recognize his face from the funeral, even though he never did introduce himself formally to me or my son.

He’s tall, broad shouldered, with dark wavy hair. I know him. Well, I know of him, I should say.

It’s Aidan Murphy – the Aidan Murphy, who Mabel loved to brag about when I’d lend her an ear to do so. Her precious nephew, her only living relative, and the one person who lit up her life even more than Ben or I ever could or would, and he is putting up a For Sale sign in her garden!

‘Come on!’ I call out over the theme tune of some American TV show Ben is now superglued to. ‘You just cannot do that so soon! No way!’

I put on my boots, grab my coat on the way through the hallway, put it over my head to shelter from the snowfall outside, and march as best I can without slipping to the end of the pathway.

‘Excuse me, but why are you doing this so soon?’ I shout at him, recognizing a rise of panic and grief in my voice that I can’t seem to control. ‘Couldn’t you at least have discussed it with me first? Given me some notice or warning?’

‘Excuse me?’ he replies, puzzled. He blinks back snowflakes and wipes his hair out of his eyes as he stands in the blistering cold, positioning the wooden signpost in the snow-covered muddy soil in Mabel’s once impeccable front garden.

‘It’s the week of her funeral, for crying out loud!’ I continue. ‘She’s barely cold in the ground, and you’re advertising for a new occupant already? Didn’t you mean a word you said from the pulpit at her funeral? Are you totally hard-hearted, Mr Murphy?’

As I rant and rave, he stares back at me in bewilderment. I want to punch him.

‘Hard-hearted?’ he asks, laughing as he does so.

‘Yes, hard-hearted!’ I reply. ‘This is incredibly hard-hearted of you!’

He squints in my direction as the penny drops as to who I am.

‘So, you must be the enigmatic Roisin O’Connor?’ he says, nodding now in realization. ‘I heard you were great friends with my aunt, but I’m afraid this is none of your business.’

Enigmatic? What the hell is that supposed to mean? We are face to face now with only a flurry of snow and the picket fence coming between us. Well, that and our obvious difference of opinion as to what should happen to Mabel’s house this week.

‘None of my business?!’ I spit, knowing I’m not giving him a very enigmatic impression now, as I stand, almost frantically in tears. ‘I was her best friend and she was mine! She hadn’t seen you in the flesh in at least five years, and now you rock up, play chief mourner with your glamorous wife, and two days after her funeral you stick a signpost in her garden so you can earn money from her already! How could you be so greedy? How?’

I’ve never wanted to bite my tongue so much, but I can’t stop myself.

I probably know a lot more about Aidan than he realizes I do, and my impression of him isn’t, let’s say, very honourable, despite his tragic upbringing and rags to riches story that Mabel swooned over.

‘Do you have anything else to fire at me, or are you done for now?’ he asks me, checking his phone as he speaks. ‘Looks like this place hasn’t changed much at all – Ballybray was always suffocating with nosey neighbours everywhere. You’ve just reminded me why I left in the first place.’

My mouth drops open and I sigh from the tips of my toes, realizing I am very much wasting my time and that in the bigger picture it’s probably not my place any more to interfere in Mabel’s business. But to call me a nosey neighbour? Aidan is just as I’d imagined he might be. Arrogant, cold, rich, nonchalant, and far too good-looking for his own good, only unlike Mabel, I am not going to fall for his wolf in sheep’s clothing appearance. If he was as wholesome as Mabel had believed him to be, he’d have waited at least until some of her more personal belongings were out of the house before he advertised for a new owner.

In my state of distress, I hear echoes of my late husband Jude’s laughter ringing in my ears.

You need to learn to butt out of other people’s business, Roisin! Just who do you think you are? You’re always trying to save everyone else’s world when the one person you really need to save is yourself!

I feel tears prick my eyes as a ball of emotion sticks in my throat. Am I done? I probably am, if truth be told.

I’m so tired.

Mabel’s wake had been quiet but exhausting, and her funeral had wrung me out emotionally. I’ve had more than enough for one week, not to mention a young boy who has since declared to me that everyone he loves just ‘left and died’ and believes that I am probably next, before going silent on me for days.

‘Oh, just do whatever you have to do, Aidan. You’re right! It’s absolutely none of my business,’ I mumble in defeat and storm away wiping my eyes as I march through the slushy garden and back into the place I call home.

‘It was nice to meet you, Roisin!’ Aidan calls after me, threatening to really tip my emotions over the edge. ‘Keep warm! It gives this snow storm to get worse tonight!’

I don’t answer him this time, and I slam my front door behind me, the sound of it shutting giving me comfort just as it always does because I feel safe here, far away from my own past and from my own truths. I deliberately take a moment to inhale the familiarity that surrounds me, calming down in seconds. The photos of Ben on the walls at various stages of his tiny life so far and snapshots of this new chapter of my life surround me, soothing me, reminding me of how far I’ve come since I left the busy streets of inner Dublin.

I miss Mabel so badly already. She always had all the answers to my worries. She was a fiery New Yorker, a sharp-minded septuagenarian with an attitude to change the world, and a heart the size of the entire globe. She was Marmite, she was mysterious, and she was mine. She was the only person who believed that after all the hardship I’d been through, there was light at the end of the tunnel.

But now that light is out, I fear. The air has been sucked from within me and just like Ben, I feel like lying down in bed and shutting out the world, but I can’t. I have to keep going for my son’s sake, no matter how much I fear I’m crumbling inside.

I try to block out the sound of Aidan hammering in the For Sale sign that is still ringing in my ears, and I pledge to Mabel that I’ll find a way to keep going. I have no idea how, but I go back to making her stew in search of some divine inspiration. I take off my coat and boots, go to the kitchen, where I add some stock cubes to the stewing beef, some chopped up potatoes, carrots, salt and pepper, and I allow it to simmer. As it stews, I do too at the idea of a new owner moving in next door. It just seems all too final and way too soon.

The smell of the simple ingredients warms the air and when I peep into the living room to find Ben curled up on the sofa fast asleep, I put a blanket over him, turn off the TV, turn on the soft sounds of Ella Fitzgerald, and allow myself to shed a quiet tear in Mabel’s memory.

‘No weeping over me, my girl!’ I recall her telling me when I pushed her around the lakeside walk in her wheelchair just a few weeks ago. ‘I hope you know that I’ve lived a full and fruitful life, made even richer for having you and Ben beside me, so no tears please! Let there be laughter and smiles for miles and miles.’

It was easy of course to agree that there’d be smiles at the time when she was still here living and breathing, only a heartbeat away, but not so much now, when I’m empty and weak inside.

‘I mean it, don’t you dare fall on your knees again,’ she’d said sternly. ‘You’re not the person I found crouching in that corner any more. You’ve a whole lifetime ahead of you, and you’re made of tough stuff, Roisin O’Connor!’

I knew she meant business when she called me by my full name and not just Roisin. Remembering her doing so raises a smile and then my tears turn into laughter as I recall her in her glory days, out in the garden defying the elements, emphasizing that there was no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes. She wouldn’t have cared that the heavens opened on the day of her funeral. In fact she’d probably have enjoyed that.

‘Put up an umbrella and quit moaning,’ she’d have told us mourners as we shivered and complained. ‘Button up your coat! It’s Ireland you’re living in, not the Bahamas for crying out loud.’

My reminiscing is interrupted by the faint smell of burning so I jump up quickly and add more water to the pot, stirring the stew frantically to try to save it.

Just in the nick of time, I salvage the dish and I swear I can hear Mabel tut-tutting at how easily distracted I am.

‘Where is your head, lady?’ she’d ask me when she’d find me daydreaming. ‘There’s time for dreaming and there’s time for doing. Which is it for you today, Roisin?’

A knock at my front door springs me back to reality and I put the lid on the pot and turn it down to the lowest setting, then play my usual guessing game as to who it could be as I walk from the kitchen through the narrow hallway. I’ve always hated the door knocking, especially at night, as it opens up old anxieties and fears from my life before I found peace here in Ballybray. I open the door and almost take a step back in surprise.

It’s Aidan Murphy.

A very cold, a very wet, and perhaps a little more humble-looking Aidan Murphy. What could he be looking for now?

4.

‘Yes?’ I say, opening the door just a little bit at first and wincing as the icy wind cuts through into my hallway.

I don’t know this man and I don’t need strangers calling at night, especially not him, and especially not after the way he spoke to me earlier.

‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ he tells me, peeping through the narrow slit in the doorway. ‘But do you have a minute?’

I open the door a bit more to respond.

‘Me? You mean you do want to discuss something with Mabel’s nosey neighbour after all?’ I say, enjoying my upper hand now. ‘You’re really digging a hole with your arrogance, Mr Murphy, pardon the pun.’

He at least has the grace to shudder at his earlier insult.

‘OK, OK, I’m sorry for calling you a nosey neighbour,’ he says, extending a cold, damp hand. Again, I open the door a little wider, I shake his hand, and a waft of very expensive aftershave mixes in the cold air. ‘I’m Aidan. Aidan Murphy.’

‘I know exactly who you are,’ I remind him. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Aidan Murphy.’

‘I’m sure you have,’ he sings in return. ‘You probably know more about me than I know myself right now, and at that I’m not joking.’

Even though he is haughty and cold in stature, now that I see him out of the flurry of snow I can tell he is indeed a very, very handsome man and a lot older than he was in the photo that has sat on Mabel’s mantelpiece for as long as I’ve been here. He’s about at least forty years old now, I guess, noticing the fine lines around his dark eyes. He looks so much like Peter, Mabel’s late husband, but from what I’ve seen so far he has none of his uncle’s manners or charm.

‘You spoke well at the service,’ I say to him jutting out my chin and folding my arms, knowing I can’t deny him that. ‘You’re a good speaker and can surely tug on emotions for someone who is so hard-hearted.’

He looks different now in his jeans and navy rain jacket, a far contrast from the slick black suit he wore for the funeral mass on Thursday. I know I should really ask him inside, but I just can’t let him away with his initial approach so easily. Mabel would hate to see my stubborn streak or old anxieties creep through, especially now – especially with her precious Aidan.

‘Thank you, that’s – that’s kind of you to say,’ he says, looking through the snow at the adjacent garden of the semi-detached cottage. ‘Look, if you don’t mind I just need to talk to you about something and then I’ll be out of your hair again for good. I’m not planning on hanging around Ballybray for any longer than I have to.’

I open the door properly and try to figure out this stranger who can barely hold eye contact with me. For someone so hugely successful in New York, he is severely lacking on people skills, but I refuse to stoop to his level, so I remember my manners.

‘You’re freezing.’ I say, stating the obvious. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea? Or some stew? You look like you’re frozen through.’

It’s a no, just as I’d imagined it might be, but at least I tried.

‘No thanks, this won’t take long,’ he says, wiping his feet on the mat.

He steps into my hallway, closes the door, and I lead him past the living room where my son still sleeps off his sadness, and into the kitchen, proud of the warm, homely smell that fills the air.

My house may be small and old in comparison to whatever mansion or posh New York apartment he lives in, but I always pride myself in making a house a home with warm colours, mouth-watering smells, and a cosy atmosphere.

‘It’s Mabel’s own recipe for Irish Stew,’ I explain to him, even though he isn’t remotely interested and didn’t ask what’s cooking. ‘She insisted on writing it down for me once, even though it’s the simplest thing to make in the world, but I only wish she’d passed on the secret of how hers always tasted nicer than my version ever will!’

I point towards her handwriting on the fridge and he leans closer to read it, his eyes quickly scanning across the gallery of photos that hang on to their place beside it with alphabet magnets. As he does so, I allow myself to take in his handsome physique, his hair damp from the snow, and I feel my hormones flutter at his good looks, but the feeling leaves me as quickly as it came. I am very, very much done with letting any man interfere with the life I plan on having here – just me and my son, where no one will ever hurt us or leave us again.

He stands up straight, having seen enough of my patchwork of photos from down memory lane.

‘Can I take your coat?’ I ask him, catching his dark eyes in direct contact properly now. ‘You’ll get a chill.’

He looks almost as tired as I am, dark under the eyes and his face pale and a little gaunt. Jet-lagged too, no doubt, and grieving, I suppose, in his own way.

‘It’s OK,’ he says, still taking in his surroundings. ‘I can’t really stay long.’

He shuffles a bit, and I pull out a chair at the kitchen table for him to take a seat, inwardly apologizing to Mabel for our bumpy start and hoping it can only get better.

‘Look, Roisin, I’m not here on a social visit,’ he tells me quickly. ‘So I’ll cut to the chase.’

‘I think I’ve already guessed that.’

‘I’ve a lot of loose ends to tie up here and my plan is to do so and get back to New York as soon as I can.’

He shifts in his chair as if his skin is crawling, emphasizing that being in Ballybray is the last thing he wants right now.

He has property in Dublin, I know from Mabel’s bragging, but I imagine he and his wife are staying in some plush hotel like the Westbury or the Merrion, in luxurious surroundings, a far cry from his much more modest beginnings here. His very beautiful wife, who Mabel incidentally couldn’t stand, is no doubt relaxing in a spa right now while he does his mundane business here in the backwaters, and they’ll have dinner by candlelight at seven and long to escape Ireland back to the glamour of their real life in New York City.

‘I’ve just this minute discovered that Mabel has left us some sort of package to open after she died,’ he says, reaching into his inside pocket. ‘So I didn’t want to open it without letting you know, as it’s very clearly addressed to us both.’

‘A package?’ I ask. ‘For me and you?’

My image of his glamorous wife disintegrates immediately and the mug in my hand almost slips to the floor, but I catch it just in time.

He’s totally lost me on the whole ‘us’ revelation. I mean, I’d imagined Mabel might leave Ben and me something small in her will to remember her by, like the tea set from Amsterdam I’d always admired, or the cushion on her settee from her home in New York that Ben loved resting his head on, but what could she have left for us now at this stage?

‘Yes. Us as in me and you, strange as it may seem,’ he says, pulling out a brown padded envelope. He sets it on the table in front of him and stares at it. ‘Even stranger is that I found it in the garden shed, which suggests she didn’t want it to be discovered straight away, not until after the funeral anyhow.’

I lift the envelope from the table and touch her distinctive handwriting with my fingertips, feeling my heart race in my chest at the idea of what might lie inside this package delivered from beyond the grave.

Mabel was always so delicate with a pen, and every letter kicks or swirls like it is ready to dance off the page. I always felt her calligraphy reflected her vibrant past as a performer, kicking her heels up to the roar of a loving crowd in New York.

I read it aloud, with my hand on my chest, unable to contain the quiver in my voice.

‘For my family – my darling Aidan and Roisin – two of my favourite people in what was such a wonderful life,’ says Mabel. ‘Please watch this short message together and do as I say – or else! Love, Mabel.’