Everything Has Its Time

There are women of stunning beauty and charm, and then there are women who are simply adorable, the kind that one would not leave for anyone else. Despite the external coldness of her typically Nordic appearance, Kathryn was certainly one of the latter. Her air of aloofness, emphasised by her light skin tone, with hair to match, and her long face, made her look more like a being from Scandinavian folklore, be it a fairy, an elf, or a mermaid.

However, given her advanced age, one might even dare to call her a snow queen. She was of pure Irish blood, yet possessed none of the strong will, intransigence, or rigour which often characterise such women. Quite to the contrary, her character was sophisticated, gentle, and dignified.

«Why are we sitting in silence on such a marvellous day, eh?» she asked her daughter, turning to look at her. «Be a dear and put on some of Dad’s favourite music. You’d like that, wouldn’t you dear?» Erin looked at her father and suggested, «The Dance of the Elves to start with?» and she reached over to the tape recorder standing on the windowsill.

Here, however, in a neat little frame under a layer of glass, there was an old photograph, one of her parents’ most beloved pictures, from which they, still so young, beautiful, and perfectly happy, looked out at her… Her eyes fell on the picture, and her heart missed a beat…

Kevin announced his choice, «First I want Celtic Dreams, if it’s there. When I came to Birmingham, I couldn’t bring all of Ireland with me, so I just brought a longing for her…»

«I’ve brought you our trademark mutton ragù and Barmbrack cake shaped like a shamrock with emerald icing. Erin made cream to go with it. Tuck in! You’ll have some, won’t you dear…»

«Can I have a pint of Guinness?» he interrupted his wife impatiently, «I know you brought some…»

«Kevin, the doctors forbade you from having even a drop of alcohol, which includes beer. You’ll get worse beyond repair…»

«I can’t get any worse than this. If you don’t let me down a Patrick’s Chalice today, don’t even think about asking me to eat those culinary masterpieces of yours… I won’t even touch them…»

«Alright dear,» Kathryn caved in; she knew that arguing with him was pointless, especially today, «on second thoughts, you should be allowed a drop or two on this sacred day.» She began to place the items on the bedside table, and a minute later she had improvised a spread for the occasion.

«I have a little present for you dear,» she got out a small clay figure, it was a dumpy little man dressed all in green. He was mending his left shoe.

«Ah!» said Kevin and smiled, «A leprechaun! My favourite fairy-tale creature. Thank you, Kathryn!»

«May he make all your dreams come true!»

«When we drink, we get drunk…» quietly and weakly, Kevin started to sing, and then Kathryn and Erin joined in on their favourite song, one which had become a family tradition to sing when feasting, and then in unison they broke into a great chorus: «When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to Heaven. So, let’s all get drunk and go to Heaven.»

The singing and the consumption of beer served to ease the atmosphere, it became content and relaxed. Even Kevin perked up. The gathering was evidently in the highest of spirits.

«Dad, I’d like to propose a toast» said Erin.

«I’m listening, my girl» he said, and his eyes filled with even more love than before. And Erin raised her glass and began her speech solemnly, full of emotion and patriotic verve:

«Dear Dad! I wish you to live to 100, and an extra year for repentance… I drink to your funeral boat. May it be built of oak a century old, which I shall plant tomorrow… I drink that God may grant good health not just to you, but to the enemies of your enemies… And may no doctor ever make even a penny off your back… May God treat you with kindness… But not too soon, I hope! I wish that, when you do die, it will be in bed at the age of 101, of a gunshot fired by another’s envious wife.»

«A brilliant toast!» Kevin thanked her, but he noticed that tears had filled Kathryn’s eyes, despite her earnest efforts to hold them back. She kept blinking and forcing herself to smile, though since he had fallen ill, her smile was only ever one of sadness.

«I want to raise a toast to all of us!» Kevin looked at the two women sitting beside him, and for a moment Erin found herself seeing her father once more in the way she had always remembered him… the happy Irishman, wearing a tall, green hat like a puffball mushroom covered in three leaf clovers, red of face, with a red Celtic beard and nose like a potato, with bright and attentive eyes, a small and funny looking mouth, and a mug of beer in his hand. «God bless all those I love. May he bless all those who love me… May God bless all those who love the ones I love, and all those who love those who love me. And you, Erin… may your children’s children have children!»

The ailing man was not up to eating any ragù, citing absence of appetite, but he had some barmbrack cake with the ever-popular cream.

«Absolutely delicious!» he praised his wife and daughter.

«Dad, I’m off to work now,» said Erin hurriedly, putting on her coat and glancing at the clock. «We’re really busy. I’ll come and see you tomorrow, OK? Get some rest!»

«Thanks, Erin! Take care of yourself!» in his face there was a bottomless love and appreciation of her care. «Erin Go Bragh!» proclaimed Erin, with a smile on her face, for it meant: «Ireland Forever.»

«Long Live Ireland,» Kevin answered with solemnity.

Once alone with Kathryn, she took him by the arm and looked softly into his eyes. The expression on her face was attentive and charming, her expressive eyes could speak without words. And oh! How much endurance, compassion, understanding and love they held all at the same time!

«You’re engrossed in thought, what about?» he asked.

«I love you. I always have,» she said quietly.

«And I love you…» Kevin whispered.

«I know, dear. But I always like it when you tell me. And even if you didn’t acknowledge it, you would show it all the same…»

«I remember how our life together started. No one can take the past away from us. It might all be in the past, but it is still here. Inside us, in our memories. When you had just come to work in my pub… you were so simple and unsophisticated. So unique and wide eyed, and at the same time so sweet, that you conquered my heart at once, and I was overtaken by the desire to be your first love…»

«I had no interest in you. To be honest, all I noticed in you was that you were attractive, I didn’t notice anything special about you…» Kathryn shrugged her shoulders in a feminine manner, and readjusted the pearls around her neck.

«But over time, seeing how well the «Dublin Boy’ could cook, as if by magic, and using his own recipes, I was enraptured by how sexy you were.»

«I had found a woman who had fallen head over heels in love with me, I was completely oblivious to the wave of fortune rushing over us. Loving you was the greatest privilege God has ever given me.»

«You didn’t just accept me into your life, but my one-year-old daughter… And you were a good father to Rachel… Not every man is up to that, Kevin. And for that I am truly grateful.»

«Sometimes I find myself asking what would have been if I had never met you. I have yet to find an answer. All I know is that without love, life loses all meaning. A life lived without love is to not have lived life at all! Do you remember dancing under the moon with me? You said to me, „You’d be a great dancer, if it weren’t for two small problems…“ I asked: „Which ones?“ and you answered happily, „your legs.“ Then I started to take lessons, then all you could do was hang onto my shoulders. And do you remember when we went and placed bets at the horse racing? How did we make our way in life? We bought a nice little house and garden, and we got to work on it together… I trimmed the bushes into shape, and you grew those beautiful roses…» but behind his smile he hid a sharp pang of longing for the past, which was a bloody long time ago now. «And I remember how patiently you taught me to cook… You really hoped for me to become an outstanding cook, or chef, as you always said. You were so romantic. Still are to this day!»

«And to this day you still bake the best pies in all of Birmingham», said Kevin distantly.

«You know, Kathryn, I still have these dreams where I see myself standing at a white-hot stove, ordering the younger cooks around, taste testing sauces, and ordering the slower waiters to get a move on. And then I catch sight of you, always very feverish and utterly irresistible, carrying a battered tray in your hands, and it’s always a moment of joy. I stare directly into your eyes, and an invisible channel forms between us, connecting us and through which I speak straight into your soul. And in our souls we’re always so comfortable together. We always were a great team, right?»

«Not everything was so perfect, dear. We did argue about stupid little things, but we always made up afterwards.»

«Yes, sometimes it was really impossible to put up with you! A real monster! But I accepted that it was better to argue with you several times a day than to succumb to the heat-of-the-moment desire to take someone else, and to spend the rest of my life agonising over that decision…»

«I know what you’re on about, Kevin… again about that bow legged, blond trainee covered in makeup, who came to your pub for work experience and very soon had you on your back in the back room?» she said condescendingly. But in her condescending words there was a hint of offence.

«I was really upset by our fight that day. It was a difficult time in the infancy of our relationship… A sort of crisis, it seemed to me. That day a devil got into me, and I let passion and emotion take hold of me… But no… I felt absolutely nothing for her, she just had a great body… and it happened. But that was the only time that happened. And it meant nothing.»

«You don’t need to keep bringing up the mistakes of your youth, dear… Don’t let those memories torment you. We’re together now, and that’s what matters. And how lucky I’ve been in life!» her face suddenly became crimson.

«This morning I woke up thinking that I was the luckiest man on earth. That my life is complete… Life… how quickly it has gone…» Kevin was emotional and spoke quickly, as if speaking straight from the soul in an attempt to relieve it of some burden. She remained silent, her lips tightly shut.

«But along with the joy that came to our home when you first arrived with the innocent smiles of our little girls, Rachel and Erin, there also came fear, yes, fear. For their future. For life…»

«For their health,» she reminded him. «Rachel proved to be full of surprises, and Erin, my clever girl Erin, had to overcome that difficult operation…»

«Erin is going to be fine, Kathryn. You’ll see. But Rachel, I really want to see her get better. I pray to God for that every day.»

«They both live in our hearts, and in our prayers, Kevin…»

«I just can’t get my head around it, what’s wrong with her? Do you remember a few weeks after you returned from the maternity home, she turned Erin’s pram on its side and the tiny little thing screamed and fell out onto the floor? At least she was unharmed, apart from one scratch! And sometimes she pinched her so much that the poor, defenceless little thing couldn’t stop crying. Where did all that malice come from? I still can’t fathom it to this day, where did we go wrong? What did we do to deserve that?»

«You can’t blame us for all that, dear. We weren’t bad parents. I think everything will look up eventually. We need to be a bit more patient. We will leave it in the hands of God, and the doctors. She is in good hands. First, we must take care of you, Kevin. Tell me some good news, please… Or sing something…»

«I don’t want to sing, Kathryn. And as you know I am not an orator. Never was. I can’t articulate my emotions well. We men are tough creations. However, I can tell you this, you were my guiding star. No one can take our love off us! I am grateful to you for every day that we spent together. You deserved much better than me. All I can do now is beg for your forgiveness for every upset I inflicted on you.» His face remained motionless and grey, his gaze fixed on the ceiling.

«And forgive me, Kevin. Sometimes I wore you down with my nit-picking, I really bugged you…»

«So, finally you admit it?» Kevin said triumphantly.

«Yes, I admit it. I remember our arguments, I always wanted to win because victory made me feel more self-confident. That’s why I always stood my ground, even though it damaged our relationship. It seemed to me that I had to assert my right to supremacy in the family. How was I to know that the happiness of the family was more important than our exhausting squabbling in search of an imaginary justice?»

«I’m glad to be assured that wisdom definitely does come with age, Kathryn!»

«But you were wise even at the beginning of our life together, dear! You could have turned your back on me and left a long time ago. But you didn’t. You always forgot about the most recent argument for the sake of making the peace, for the sake of love. Don’t you think that is amazing? And I am grateful to you for it.»

«I did not leave you, but this was only because I always remembered the words of the vicar at our wedding in St Chad’s Cathedral. He asked us if we were ready to „be faithful to one another, in illness or health, in happiness or sadness, for rich or for poor?“ We both answered we were. And then he pronounced us man and wife, adding: „That which God has united, man cannot separate,“ Kathryn, I cannot repeat this enough, remember this. I am happy… I am waiting for my time, and I’m not scared…»

«Don’t give me that nonsense!» and the emotional nature of her incorrigible soul boiled over inside her, «at least not on your birthday! Have you thought about us?»

«You need to face facts. I have cancer. I am completely disabled. Life, if this state of being can be called life, has taken a turn for the worst. The doctors shrug their shoulders and won’t even look me in the eye. They’ve already written me off.»

«Whilst your lungs have breath in them, Kevin, you are fighting. You are alive, even if only for our sake.»

«But why? Why should I go on without hope? If the pain killers are now useless? If new and intolerable suffering and gloom increases by the hour? But the law of life is simple: one must pay for one’s own sins…»

«Will you stop beating that into the ground?» she choked out through tears. «I forgave you a long time ago for that fling with the trainee… Although I swore once never to forget about it!»

«But you spent a long time exploiting my guilt… That exploit has left a small scar on my conscience… and shame… But I’m not talking about that.»

«What are you talking about then?»

«That’s not important, Kathryn…»

«Is there something else I don’t know about? Tell me, Kevin, sharing a problem halves it. Don’t let your conscience torment you.»

«I can’t. It’s a long story…»

«I’ll find out sooner or later.»

«Please be patient, Kathryn. Everything has its time. But today, on my birthday, I wanted to speak to you.»

«Well then, speak… I’m listening…» she looked at him patiently.

«My dear Kathryn, my love,» he said, and then went silent. It was obvious he was trying to gather courage. She looked at him, and her lips faltered in desperation and powerlessness. «I do not see a reason to keep on living. It can only get worse for me. Why should I be a burden on you, the children, and on myself?»

«You’re not a burden!» Kathryn said, trying to reassure him.

«Don’t lie to me, please. That’s the one thing you’re no good at.»

«Put yourself in my shoes… could this not have happened to me?» she asked, a lump forming in her throat.

«I have thought about that too. But imagination and reality have little in common…»

«But there is still hope, no matter how little… There is always a sliver of chance…»

«Rubbish! I don’t need a false saviour! Don’t you understand, I have no more will to live, at all! Yes, truth be told, this is principally for my sake. This is not about you or the children. It is very moving that you want with all your heart to ease my pathetic condition…»

She hid her eyes and stared into the far corner of the wardroom. He said her name, and there was an urging in his voice, asking for her to understand, to forgive him. «You’re a kind person, and that is important!» said Kathryn, after a pause. «You have so much warmth inside you! And you can love with your whole heart! I have always looked up to you! I have always admired your work ethic, I always admired how you worked towards your success.»

«I had a long and tiresome road to go down, Kathryn, you know that…»

«If it was not for your perseverance and endurance, your ambitious hopes…»

«That is the only way you can not only stand on your own two feet, but also reach for the stars…»

«But dear, you were not born with those things, but you reached the moon anyway… You never promised your family anything more than you were in a position to deliver.»

«You know, dear, who stopped us…»

«From reaching the stars? Yes, Margaret Thatcher…»

«The very same. The «Iron Lady’. With her inhumane policies and relationship with the people. Do you remember, her economic plans were meant to end up with high unemployment? She strangled the trade unions with her bare hands, she ended the subsidisation of unprofitable companies. She raised taxes and lowered spending on social development. How many people ended up on the streets, without a penny in their pocket. All because she judged inflation to be a greater danger than three and a half million unemployed.»

«Yes, those were hard times… The people went bust…» Kathryn answered sadly.

«And then in 1981, in Ireland our homeland, there was a big string of hunger strikes and riots, and the Baroness’ response was overly brutal. No wonder there was an assassination planned against her. Do you remember the bomb at the party conference in Brighton? If it were not for her victory in the Falklands War, she would have lost the 1983 election.» Kevin continued his endless search for historic justice. This seemed to be one of the few things that could intermittently take his mind off things.

«The next two years were overshadowed by the miners’ strikes. Without batting an eyelid, the lady premier destroyed the nation’s coal industry with a single stroke, and left tens of thousands unemployed, and the pound crashed. That was why, when she died, there were celebrations in many of our cities, London, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow. People had placards with Ding-dong, the witch is dead written on them, people celebrated with champagne…»

«But you cannot argue, Kevin, we both felt sorry for her… Despite everything she did…»

«Yes, despite all that, she was still a human being. And a woman. Of course, you remember that poor woman had several strokes and a broken arm. Before she died, she had to go to the therapist for hallucination and dementia. I felt sorry for her, of course. Only death could bring her escape from her anguish, and, I hope, forgiveness for everything she had done, even though she never expressed regret for anything…»

«They should stop feeding you and just let you discuss politics and economics all day and all night, dear, you understand the ins and outs like the back of your hand… I can see it brings you great pleasure…»

«It is good that we see eye to eye on these issues, Kathryn!»

«Well obviously! If I was not also of 100% Irish stock, these discussions of ours would always and inevitably end in an overblown argument.»

«That’s where you’re wrong, my love! It wouldn’t end in an argument, but in a speedy divorce! That’d be it!»

«I value your sense of humour! You could outdo Tony Hancock at this. You’ve always been able to make me laugh, or at least force a smile.»

«With a big more luck… I could have you rolling on the floor in laughter…»

«You were lucky enough to be an Irishman, is that not enough already!» she retorted.

«Kiss me, Kathryn. I want to be reminded of the taste of your lips for the rest of time.»

For a moment, she felt embarrassment. But then, a second having passed, she leaned over to him and firmly kissed him on the mouth with her kind and pink lips, and briefly picked up the partially sweet, partially bitter smell of almonds. Her heart was racing. As their lips parted, he noticed that her large, dark eyes held a sad smile, and that her soul seemed completely void.

At this time, it was getting dark outside. The day of the Heavenly Patron was coming to a close. The weather started to get worse, the sky became overcast with big, grey clouds, and then came a drizzle of rain. Gloomy and grey. Kathryn sighed heavily and exited the hospital, feeling an unexpected coldness. She opened her large umbrella over her head, which partially concealed her face from passers-by, her face which had in the course of her visit become pinched and worn, and also covered over her fragile figure, now permeated with a great sadness. It also hid her eyes in darkness, brimming with tears of salt, like a boundless ocean. A feeling of hopelessness enraptured her body.

Deep in thought, she wandered the streets of Birmingham, this great industrial English city. The streetlights had already come on, the shopfronts were shining brightly, tempting the city’s shoppers, drunk with everything from ale to whisky with green shamrocks, with brightly coloured celebratory wreaths, and discounts advertised on brightly coloured signs. But she noticed none of these sights at all. Her strikingly transparent eyes, with their indescribable grief, gazed off somewhere in the distance, and her head was filled with the realisation of the hollowness of her existence.

«What is life?» she asked herself. «A single moment. And everything must come in this moment, birth, a baby’s cry, their smile, their first timid movements and the unintelligible babbling, the happy and carefree childhood, the first love, laughter and tears, victories and defeats, loss of loved ones, the overcoming of all kinds of problems. All of this must be done in this single moment. And what is death? Alas, it is not a moment, but eternity itself. Its arrival is inevitable. Who on earth has the power to stop it? Or at least delay it? To succeed in savouring the moment, in which we were all so happy…»

3. Rachel

Erin began to tire from the journey to the Central Psychiatric Hospital in Northern Nottinghamshire. She had been driving her two-year-old, beige-coloured Peugeot 307 quite fast, and without stopping, but there was still an hour and a half until her destination, even if she drove quickly. She was enjoying the warm yet wet weather, despite a soft wind blowing, but inside she was somehow anxious, confused, and grim. For a moment, something like a ray of light caught her eye and she looked up to the sky, but she saw no sunshine. She saw a few single clouds and a small gaggle of sparrows overhead, followed by a small gaggle of rooks. Hills and uplands were replaced by lowlands and thick woods, fertile lands of broad pastures and wild grasslands with cultivated fields. Brave yet skinny deer appeared along the road, hungry foxes ran past in search of fat partridges, and fat wild rabbits crawled into bushes of boxwood…

Finally, Northern Nottinghamshire came into view, with its landscape of rolling hills and large ducal estates. Once there were mining towns here, they reached up to the north out of Nottinghamshire and into Yorkshire. But of these mines, workplaces for thousands of able-bodied men, almost all were closed by the Conservative government in the 1980s, and all that was left to remind people of their former existence were abandoned windmills standing over the mineshafts. On the bright side, another interesting attraction came into view, Sherwood Forest, or at least what was left of it since the Middle Ages. Robin Hood, leader of the forest bandits, took refuge in this forest along with his merry men… And there was the family home of Lord Byron: Newstead Abbey. Erin remembered that in Nottinghamshire once also lived the father of Lemuel Gulliver, who she believed was a minor landlord, and the main character of Jonathan Swift’s novels «Gulliver’s Travels».