Feeding Strawberries to Pigs Read online

  ‘You managed it then.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Miss Peters’ rendezvous with Albert.’

  Sara handed her the letter and said. ‘Yes in this life, not the next though did you meet him?’

  ‘Meet who? She hasn’t had any visitors that I know of?

  Sara didn’t have time to unravel this mystery, her time was precious Miss Peters had taught her that.

  ‘Kate can I leave you to deal with this then, we should call Nancy and let her know about Miss Peters and ask her how Albert Shapiro is doing? Text me when you have the info please.’

  Sara sat on the old metal bench and thought about Alice Peters and how she must have felt sitting on the same bench in 1914. John did not arrive at 4.15. She felt that the old lady had told her the story as a way of warning her, as if she could read her mind. A chill blew around her ankles and after looking at her watch for the last time she stood up and started to walk up the path. Suddenly she could hear footsteps and felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. When she turned round John was standing there. He had not run away, he had been caught in traffic.

  She blurted it out despite having rehearsed the words so carefully. She found herself asking him somewhat clumsily, if he had any objections to calling their baby Albert.’

  ‘Funny name for a girl though.’ Was his immediate reply as he wrapped his arms around her making it impossible for her to walk away.

  ‘Oh I have girls’ names in mind too.’

  John smiled at her and held her hands as he said.

  ‘We had better have two then, if you have the time and your career will allow it that is?’

  She simply replied. ‘We have all the time in this world and probably the next.’

  Her phone bleeped and she smiled as she read the text.

  ‘Albert Shapiro died 11.30 am our time today.’

  As she walked hand in hand with John she wondered why Angels were always depicted as young and pretty, because who else could Alfred and Ethel have been.

  DADDY SNORES

  I blame the snoring. I have never heard my father snoring, but it must be really powerful because it makes my mammy cry all the time. Snoring uses your money up too. It stops you going on holiday and it even seems to stop people inviting you to parties and all sorts of things. It makes you puke and get fat. It makes you iron your own shirts and sometimes it makes you get up and leave in the night or not sleep at all. I never thought snoring could be so important. Apart from being noisy, it really does seem to cause disturbances and destroy the peace. It stops people hugging and makes them angry, very sad and ill. It can even make smelly 14 year old brothers cry! Snoring is worse than cancer and no one seems to even be doing anything about it. You get charities raising money for cancer but I’ve never heard of anyone collecting for a cure for snoring have you?

  It seemed to get really bad in December just after my 10th birthday. 3 days after Christmas I found daddy sleeping on the sofa one morning. At first I thought he was sick cos to be honest he didn’t look good, but when I asked him what was wrong he told me that Mammy couldn’t sleep because he snored so much.

  Mammy must have been very tired because she spent the whole of New Years day in bed. I asked my brother what was wrong, but he just grunted and retreated to his bedroom. Granma O’Sullivan came to visit and that seemed to do the trick cos Mammy was out of the bed and sitting in the kitchen drinking tea with her and listening as Granma told her how wonderful her son is and how lucky she is to be married to such a great man. Daddy didn’t sleep on the sofa that night, but the moment Granma left, Mammy took to her bed again. Daddy was back to sleeping on the sofa too.

  I came home from school a few weeks later to find the house upside down! There was Mike the builder, a friend of my daddy’s banging and crashing in the garage at the side of the house. Mammy wasn’t home, but Daddy was there wearing his gardening clothes and this bit really shocked me he was smoking! I had never seen my daddy smoke before, he made his own and they were kind of thin and wispy and he sucked at them sort of hungrily. I couldn’t help wondering if they would affect the snoring for good or bad.

  I asked Daddy what was going on and he was full of talk of a conversion and to be honest I had no idea what he meant, I’ve heard about Protestants being converted but didn’t think this was anything to do with Mike. And when I saw a big hole in the wall between our utility room and the garage I was so pleased that my mammy was out. There was dust everywhere and I knew Mammy doesn’t care for dust and muck of any kind. All through January and February the work went on and on. One day I asked Mammy what was going on and she said that Daddy’s snoring had got so bad that he would have to move into the garage because she couldn’t put up with it any longer. Then she burst into tears and went up to her bedroom

  Snoring is not good for you and neither is smoking. And neither is drinking! Mammy has started having her friend Sue come round on a Saturday night. Granma Boyle doesn’t think much of Sue, calls her ‘the divorced one’ and told Mammy last time she was here that spending her Saturday nights drinking with Sue was giving out a very wrong message to all and sundry. I can tell my daddy doesn’t like it either cos now he has taken to going out with Mike and leaving Mammy and Sue to ‘their own devices’ as he puts it.

  By March the building work was all finished and then something very strange happened I came home to find a big van parked in our drive and watched as new furniture was being carried in through our back gate through the new back entrance to the house that led to the newly converted garage. Daddy was there, but there was no sign of Mammy. Mrs Rooney next door stood and watched and shook her head with obvious disapproval.

  I have to say that Daddy’s new room in the garage looks great, he has it painted white with a white carpet and fitted wardrobes and he even has his own bathroom and his own back door. He must be hoping the snoring stops though cos he has this massive iron bed with black satin sheets that match the black towels in his bathroom so there is plenty of room for Mammy. Mammy told him he had to wash his own sheets and things cos she wasn’t setting a foot inside his something pad, oh yes his ‘sag pad’ well it didn’t look saggy to me. He’s even got a little room built into the garage roof where he has a sofabed and television and his computer. I think Mammy’s jealous really cos Daddy now has the best bedroom in the house. I told Dad his room looked nice and Mammy screamed at him ‘And so it should for what it cost!’ Daddy just shrugged and started taking all of his clothes out of his wardrobe and moving them to his sag pad.

  Daddy hasn’t got a phone in his new bedroom and he doesn’t know this, but I have taken to listening in when he makes calls. I feel sort of bad for doing it really, but now I just can’t seem to help myself. He was telling someone last night that he has to ‘grin and bear it’ that 8 years will fly by because the last 8 have. He was smiling while he was on the phone and the other person must be funny cos he was laughing a lot.

  Mammy was in the other room doing some ironing. She is so jealous of Daddy’s new bedroom that she has stopped doing his ironing! He does look sort of funny when he does it and he swears a lot cos he keeps burning his fingers and his shirts. He is really bad at it Mammy just laughs at his crinkled shirts and says it’s a shame that they only make the shirts he likes out of cotton.

  I was sad this week though, cos my friend Carly and her parents always go on holiday with us every summer over to France. We stay in two big caravans at a great camp site in the Vendee. When I asked Mammy about the trip this summer she sat me down and told me that we wouldn’t be going this year. I burst out crying and kept asking why and then she finally told me that there was no money left for holidays because of the building work. Then I asked if Carly could come over to play cos I wanted to show her Daddy’s new room. Well Mammy’s face went all red when I said that. She went over to the sink and washed up some cutlery and told me that no one was to know about Daddy’s new bedroom and especially not Carly and Granma O’Sullivan. When I said that Mrs Rooney next door
knew, cos she asked me about the building and the new furniture Mammy ran out of the room and I think she was sick in the toilet!

  The next day Carly told me that we were no longer invited to their barbecue party because things would be ‘awkward’ was the reason her parents had given her. I suppose if Daddy fell asleep after a few drinks like he usually does and stared snoring it would be very embarrassing for Mammy and yes ‘awkward.’

  My brother really is a horrible person! I try to avoid him but I was so upset about not going to France and I wanted to know if he knew and was upset too. I knocked on his bedroom door and eventually he said ‘who’s there?’

  I said it’s me and he told me where to go! So I just opened the door and walked in and that made him really cross. I asked him if he knew about the holiday and he told me to ‘f off.’

  He knew alright cos he was crying.

  Well today something very odd happened Granma O’Sullivan had a stroke and poor Daddy is beside himself, but for once Mammy seems happy! It seems Mammy went to the hospital and has invited her to come and live with us! When I went to see Granma O’Sullivan she didn’t make much sense. She can walk but she can’t manage stairs and she can’t talk. Well every cloud has a silver lining as my Mammy said. Daddy asked where Granma would sleep and Mammy’s reply made sense. His bed is very big and Granma is very deaf and won’t hear the snoring and there’s always his sofa bed.

  I wonder how long Granma will be living with us? If bad snoring lasts only 8 years she won’t have to share with Daddy for too long. As Daddy said he will just have to ‘keep grinning and bearing it.’

  STATIONS OF LOSS

  It was Kate’s idea to go and see them. The 14 Stations of the Cross in St John’s church in Bethnal Green, for Margaret just the thought of it brought back memories of school, cold chapels, funerals and wet Easters the end of lent and denial. Kate’s enthusiasm for these paintings was very contagious. Margaret had brought Kate up in a rather secular manner but something was drawing Kate towards religion. Kate had explained over the phone why they had to see these iconic paintings.

  ‘It took him eight years to complete and he used his son and daughter as models’, she gushed and to make sure that Margaret was up in time to be at the church by 10 a.m. she insisted that she stayed the night, her mother was fond of sleeping in at weekends. Margaret went along with it all to please Kate, her daughter seemed determined to educate her.

  Margaret wished Kate would be less interested in art and literature and a little more interested in men and babies. Margaret wanted to be a grandmother. She longed for a grandson, but could not bring herself to tell Kate how she felt and why. Kate had been let down by too many young men she didn’t waste her time searching for Prince Charming when all she seemed to meet was frogs. Especially, the ones that never turned into princes, however many times you kissed them.

  Neither of them was prepared for what happened next.

  St John’s church was unremarkable, but when Margaret looked at the man representing Jesus in the painting, something strange happened. As Margaret stared at him, his eyes seemed to see right through her and the Virgin Mary’s tears seemed oh so familiar. Margaret walked through the church in a trance as if she was 10 years old again; the year her beloved brother died. She hadn’t realised it until she looked at the paintings of the Stations of the Cross, that she had pictures in her mind, sketchy drawings of events that led up to her brother’s death. She had never spoken much about her brother to her children. Kate and her sister had been part of her healing, and she never wanted to burden them with any of her sorrow.

  Now she went to a different part of the church unable to tell Kate what effect these paintings were having on her.

  Her children were unaware of how when they passed the age at which her brother had died, she had sighed with relief, and with every year they survived she felt more blessed. Her mother was dead now, but when she looked at the Virgin Mary’s tears she knew she had seen them in real life many, many times.

  ‘Are you alright madam?’

  A tall man with piercing blue eyes was looking at her, he reminded her of someone and just this little act of kindness was too much for her to bear.

  ‘No I don’t believe I am. It’s these paintings they are bringing back such painful memories.’

  The man led her to a pew near the door and offered her a tissue from a packet which he kept in the inside pocket of his coat. The tears were streaming down her face, tears for a time long ago. Her brother would have been 50 this year, she told the man that her brother had been dead 35 years, ‘forever 15’, was the phrase we used, forever frozen in adolescence and my memories of his death are frozen images like these paintings. The man nodded and listened and Margaret talked.

  I. Patrick gets an invitation to a beach party.

  My mother wished that she had forbidden him to go, but that wasn’t her style and she trusted people to look after her children as if they were their own. I still have the invitation.

  II. Patrick says goodbye to his family.

  I was going to stay with my friend Lottie for a week and before I left I went into Patrick’s bedroom and woke him up and gave him a big hug. I thought he might be cross that I woke him, but he cuddled me and told me to behave myself. I wasn’t an easy child and my parents were going through a divorce, this brought me and Patrick closer together. When our Dad told us he was moving out Patrick and I were relieved, we were fed up with the rows.

  III. Patrick is missing.

  My Dad came home to find a note pinned to the back door, ‘Please contact Police Sergeant Grimes on….’ It was the day after the party and it was 1 pm by the time they worked out Patrick was missing. Last sighted at 4 am

  Four days they sat waiting for him to be found. His friends made one of those appeals on local TV it was even mentioned on Radio 4.

  I didn’t know Patrick was missing, I was protected. I do remember being cross when I was told that all of the televisions at my friend’s house were broken. Then we were taken to a cottage in the middle of nowhere where there weren’t any televisions or people. It was on the news and in the papers and I was oblivious to it all. I rang home every day and my mum must have made a Herculean effort to sound normal even when I asked to speak to Patrick her voice gave nothing away.

  Four days sitting in the kitchen with the vicar and the family liaison officers the curtains closed to avoid people snooping. The bins were locked up to avoid the press searching for snippets of information, desperately keen for scandal. The press asked people in the local pub for any juicy tit bits that might put the family in the frame. Nothing was forthcoming. Friends descended to care for my mother I was so pleased when I heard that and saw them holding my mother up, they were her emotional crutches.

  IV. Patrick is dead.

  The day I was due to go home Lottie’s mummy told me there had been a change of plans my mum and dad were coming to collect me from Lottie’s house the next day. We drove to Lottie’s house and found that all of the televisions were still broken. The next day I packed all my stuff and waited for my parents to arrive. They arrived in my mum’s car which seemed odd at the time. Lottie’s mum opened the door and hugged my mum and dad in turn and then she seemed to disappear leaving me with my parents who both looked as though they had shrunk since I saw them last, my mum had hollow cheeks and my dad had dark sockets for eyes. They took me through to the sitting room in silence and do you know I knew there had been a death, I could smell death not that I even knew what that smell was and I thought my dog had been run over she was only a puppy and had no road sense.

  My mum did all of the talking and the words ‘Patrick has died’ burnt into my consciousness like a red hot poker through my core causing me pain, real physical pain. My soul mate, the only person in the world who understood what it was like to be in our family was dead. I don’t remember but my mother told me the first thing I said was ‘poor, poor Patrick and now I am an only child.’ My mum told me she had kept all the ne
wspapers and one day I may want to read what happened and then I understood why none of the televisions worked and why we had driven in the dark to the cottage in the forest. I must have been a strange little girl because on the way home we stopped at a service station and I insisted on having a clock work hamster toy which was dressed as the ‘grim reaper’ and when you wound the key it waved its scythe demonically. Patrick would have loved that!

  V. Patrick’s soul is commended to God.

  Patrick did come home again, but I couldn’t see him because he was lying in his coffin. He was placed in the sitting room and we carried on around him. The house stank of lillies, one smell of a sickly sweet Lily and I am back there again watching my mother place big church candles on my brother’s coffin. Granma, Auntie Mary and mum’s best friend Maureen had held a sort of wake in the kitchen the night before the funeral. Dad wasn’t around he had already moved out. Patrick’s coffin was cool it was spray painted silver and had the name of his favourite band written down the side. He had a rock star funeral with his favourite music and everyone wearing their normal clothes and anything that they wanted to wear, some dyed their hair and played their electric guitars in the church. The lyrics were screened though. We all said our pieces about Patrick even me. He would have loved it. After the funeral just his closest family went to the crematorium and that was the saddest bit, watching his cool coffin disappear.

  VI. Patrick’s last party

  We had a marquee in the garden and his friends drank beer and we ate pizza and hotdogs. The photos show us having a good time, like he liked to do. They don’t show me sleeping in my mum’s bed, or mum and I bracing ourselves for all those ‘firsts’ first day back at school without Patrick etc. I used to go into Patrick’s room we left it like it was the day we went to the party for a long time. I could smell him so strongly in there, I never thought about it when he was alive but once he had gone it was overwhelming a mixture of deodorant and his smelly feet. At his funeral party mum displayed ring binders that contained things from the different stages of his life for everyone to look at and there were big baskets of his stuff for each stage from baby toys to CD’s. His things outlived him I still have some of his things, his watch, some of his exercise books and all of those ring binders with his swimming certificates and his detention slips. Patrick was no saint.