‘What?’
‘He’s going travelling around Europe this summer and he wants me to go with him. To Ireland! I’ve always wanted to go to Ireland.’
‘And are you going?’ she asked, when Grace eventually stopped talking.
‘Yeah. I think so. What do you think?’
Maggie put her cup and saucer down purposefully and stared Grace straight in the eyes. It was a look she gave people when she wanted their full attention; wanted them to sit up and take notice and not be distracted by anything else going on around them at that moment.
‘You don’t need to know what I think Grace. It’s what’s in here that counts,’ she said, tapping her chest. ‘There are probably a hundred and one reasons for you not to go rushing off around Europe with a young man whose heart you’ve already broken once, but if there is just one reason why you should, then perhaps that’s the one reason you should listen to. You’ve been cooped up here in this sleepy town for two years longer than you’d ever planned to. I think only you can truly know if now is the right time to leave home and get on with your life.’
She nodded after making this speech, as if to reinforce the solemnity of her words.
Grace sat and thought for a moment. ‘You’re right,’ she sighed. ‘It may look crazy and rushed and foolish to people on the outside, but I’ve got a good feeling about this. I don’t think I can go for the whole summer though – I’ve got a lot of catching up and prep to do before I go back to college in the Fall, but he’s planning on visiting Ireland first, so I thought maybe I’d just go there with him and come back.’
‘Ireland huh?’ Maggie smiled. ‘D’you know, I never went back. I’ve never set foot on Irish soil since the day I stepped onto the tender which took us out to the Titanic moored offshore in Queenstown. I was too afraid, you see. I made a promise to myself while I sat in that lifeboat bobbing around on the great blackness of the Atlantic ocean – I promised myself that I would never sail again until my dying day. And it’s a shame, because I often think that it would be nice to know what happened to that little cottage I used to live in with my Aunt Kathleen; would be nice to know whether anyone living in Ballysheen now would know about the fourteen of us who left that spring day.’ She sighed and laughed a little. ‘I wouldn’t think the people living there now would have any notion of what happened to us all. They’ll be too busy watching that awful MTV nonsense and doing that silly Rubik’s Cube thing.’
Grace chuckled. ‘Probably,’ she agreed. ‘Quite probably.’
A silence fell across the porch then as the two sat in silent thought and watched the cat chase a bee among the camellia bushes.
*
Grace’s mother gave her absolute blessing for Grace to travel with Jimmy to Ireland. She’d been putting it off and putting it off, worried about her mom’s reaction, wondering whether she would be OK about the prospect of being in the house on her own.
‘I think it’s a wonderful idea love,’ she said. ‘And I’m delighted that you and Jimmy are finally patching things up. He’s a good kid, I always liked him – and your father was fond of him too. Anyway, I’m gonna have to get used to being here without you when you go back to college in September. Imagine, all that laundry I won’t have to do – what ever will I do with myself?!’
Grace and Jimmy spoke every day on the phone, the love she felt for him growing stronger and stronger every day. Within a matter of weeks the travel arrangements were made and the flights were booked.
It was over a cup of tea and a slice of Mississippi Mud Pie in the Blossom Tree Café that Maggie made her announcement.
‘By the way, I was wondering if you kids wouldn’t mind too much if I came to Ireland with you.’
‘What?!’ Grace exclaimed, bursting out laughing. ‘You’re not serious?’ She looked across the table at Maggie and sensed that she was deadly serious. ‘Are you?’
‘Of course you can come with us,’ Jimmy interjected. ‘It would certainly be our honour to escort you back there, wouldn’t it Grace,’ he continued, kicking her under the table.
Grace was stunned. ‘Well, yes, of course, but….well, are you sure you’d be up to it Maggie? It’s a really long flight to Europe and there’d be lots of travelling once we arrived in Ireland.’
‘Well, I figure I’d only have to sit in an airplane seat the same as I sit in that old chair of mine at home and I don’t reckon you’d be asking me to do any of the driving – so what’s the difference – apart from a few hours here and there with the time of day?’