‘Have you everything?’ said Constance.
‘I don’t know,’ said her mother.
‘Don’t worry.’
‘It’s a lot of work,’ Rosaleen said, with a real despair in her voice; you would think she had just spent an hour in the insanity of the supermarket, not Constance.
‘But I suppose it’s worth it to have you all here.’
‘I suppose.’
‘I’ll be sorry to see it go.’ She was talking about the house again. Any time she felt needy, now, or lost or uncertain, she talked about the house.
‘Right,’ said Constance. ‘Listen, Mammy.’
‘Mammy,’ said Rosaleen.
‘Listen —’
‘Oh, don’t bother. I’ll let you go.’ And she was gone.
It was Rosaleen, of course, who wanted Brussels sprouts, no one else ate them. Constance stood for a moment, blank behind the crammed boot of the Lexus. You can’t have Christmas without Brussels sprouts.
Sometimes even Rosaleen left them on her plate. Something to do with cruciferous vegetables, or nightshades, because even vegetables were poison to her when the wind was from the north-east.
‘Oh what the hell,’ said Constance. She slammed the boot shut and turned her sore feet back to the walkway and the horrors of the vegetable section. Then over to the spices to get nutmeg, which was the way Rosaleen liked her Brussels, with unsalted butter. And it was a good thing she went back up, because she had no cranberry sauce either — unbelievably — no brandy for the brandy butter, no honey to glaze the ham. It was as though she had thrown the whole shop in the trolley and bought nothing. She had no big foil for the turkey. Constance grabbed some potato salad, coleslaw, smoked salmon, mayonnaise, more tomatoes, litre bottles of fizzy drinks for the kids, kitchen roll, cling film, extra toilet paper, extra bin bags. She didn’t even look at the bill after another fifteen minutes in the queue behind some woman who had forgotten flowers — as she announced — and abandoned her groceries to get them, after which Constance did exactly the same thing, fetching two bouquets of strong pink lilies because they had no white left. She was on the road home before she remembered potatoes, thought about pulling over to the side of the road and digging some out of a field, imagined herself with her hands in the earth, scrabbling around for a few spuds.
Lifting her head to howl.
Back in Aughavanna she unpacked and sorted the stuff that would go over to Ardeevin for the Christmas dinner and she repacked that. Then she went to Rory’s room, where the child was sleeping off a hangover. Constance took off her shoes and climbed on to the bed behind him.
‘Oh fuck,’ he said.
‘Your own fault,’ said his mother, as she spooned into him, with the duvet between them and the wall at her back.
‘Ah, Ma,’ he said and flapped a big hand over his shoulder to find a bit of her, which happened to be the top of her head. But Rory was always easy to hold; easy to carry and easy to kiss, and there, in the smell of last night’s beer and his rude good health, fretful, lumpy Constance McGrath fell asleep.
In the evening she brought Shauna over to Ardeevin with the ingredients for the stuffing and they put it all together right there at the table in the big kitchen. Dan knew exactly what to do with the experimental bag of chestnuts. They chopped and diced, the three of them, while the others were at the pub, and they put the vegetables under water for the next day while Rosaleen supervised happily from the chair by the range. Dan talked about Tim Burton with Shauna and they discussed the veins on Madonna’s arms. He asked a couple of excruciating questions about pop music, she asked about an artist called Cindy Sherman, and this just knocked Dan for six. He kissed the child before they left, he piled her hair on the top of her head, saying, ‘Look at you!’ and Constance would have loved to stay longer, to be that thing, a grown-up child in her parents’ house, but she had presents to wrap back in Aughavanna and she did not get to bed, as it turned out, until after two.
There was no dishwasher in Ardeevin so the next day Constance was at the sink non-stop, finding crockery, dipping through soaking pans and greasy dishes to prise out a bowl for the carrots, another side plate, a serving spoon. Hanna was too miserable to help and Emmet did not see the need for it — it was like he had a different set of eyes. So it was her and Dan, mostly, but Dan did not do dishes, Dan did food. And her mother did not like the scarf, of course she didn’t. How could Constance have ever expected her to?
There was no pleasing her.
Rosaleen spent the early part of the day quietly enough. She walked into town for Mass and stopped for a cup of tea with the two elderly sisters who lived over the Medical Hall, because Bart and his wife were in Florida for the duration. She came back with the cooking in full swing, and she spent some time organising the table and making it beautiful, with pine cones sprayed silver and white baubles, which she scattered in an artful way around two pewter candlesticks: white candles, white cloth, a sprinkling of glitter, a squirt of artificial snow. She went out to the garden for greenery and a fading, freakish rose that bloomed against her sunniest wall. And this yellow rose she set on a corner of the mantelpiece, where it dropped petals as the day went on and the dinner was not yet served because — and you couldn’t blame him — Dan did not get the bird on till nine. So Constance was grabbing the crisps out of Shauna’s hand, saying, ‘Wait’, and then out of Emmet’s hands, while Hanna leaned against the range, sipping sherry intended for the gravy, and nothing was on time.
And just as she had the gravy reducing in the pan, Rosaleen called them in to the front room. She was like a child, Constance thought, she waited until things were Completely Impossible, and then she went Beyond.
Rosaleen had the wrapped scarf in her hand. She held the parcel up and wiggled it from side to side.
‘Wait, Mammy,’ said Constance, wiping her hands on her apron.
‘A scarf!’ said Rosaleen.
But when the paper was off and the beautiful thing out in the light, Constance knew who had won this time around. The scarf was even better here in the living room than it had been in the shop and Rosaleen was almost put out, it looked so well in the winter light. She set it across her shoulders and picked at the fabric.
‘Oh this is far too good for me.’
Rosaleen hated being upstaged by her own clothes. It was a rule. Vulgarity she called it, but the scarf was not vulgar, it was entirely discreet.
‘It’s lovely on you,’ Constance said.
They had all drifted in to watch: Constance, Dan, Emmet, Hanna. With Dessie at the back of the room, looking at all the Madigans.
‘Pink,’ said Rosaleen, taking it off and setting it against the dark green and glitter of the Christmas tree. ‘Very fresh. Though Lord knows, I’m probably a bit old for pink.’
No one answered, so she said it again.
‘Long time since I wore pink.’
‘I wouldn’t call it pink,’ said Constance. ‘Maybe lavender.’
‘Lilac,’ said Hanna.
‘Lilac shawl,’ said Emmet. ‘You know that’s actually Sanskrit.’
‘Is it?’ said Dan, because there was no getting around Emmet when he had a fact, you just had to let him slap it out there, and admire.
‘Yes. Both words. “Lilac” and “shawl”.’
‘Thanks, Emmet,’ said Hanna.
Rosaleen bunched up the ‘lilac shawl’, annoyed by Emmet, or annoyed by the thing itself. She chucked it into the easy chair by the fireplace, and was cross with herself then, because her children were all looking at her.
‘Oh I am tired of myself now,’ she said.
And because it was Christmas, she started to cry.
‘Oh, Mammy,’ said Constance.