So it was for George’s sake that she knuckled down, literally, on the floors of some of the grand homes in which she worked, poking her fingers into unsavoury corners of domestic filth, sticking brushes down many toilets, spraying and swirling clean scents into places where clean scents would not otherwise be found. It was for his sake too that she worked overtime some evenings, to have that little bit extra, so that George could go on the school tour to Paris or Barcelona or wherever the teachers decreed was the place to go that year. Sometimes, she would meet the very same people whose houses she cleaned, in the restaurant at weekends. At first she used to feel awkward about it, but after a while she couldn’t be bothered dealing with such feelings. Occasionally, they blinked in comfortable Sunday surprise, recognising her as she awaited their menu choice. No starter for me, some cashmere-wrapped woman might murmur modestly, or, I think I’ll treat myself and go for the goat’s cheese, as if that was a really daring thing to do. Once she heard a woman remark softly to her silent husband about how great Maria was to hold down two jobs to make a go of things.
At home and school, George was diligent. The school was ten miles from the estate, far from the local one, which Maria regarded as too rough. He had local friends of course, but, miraculously for the times they lived in, appeared to hold himself at a slight remove from trouble. This pleased her. She did not worry that when George was busy tweaking at his mobile phone there could be anything other than boyish conversation going on between him and his mates. She would eye him fondly, her heart swelling as she observed him, his vital, straight shoulders, slim hips, and the golden brown eyes which reminded her of his father. Like his father, George would be of interest to the girls, she surmised. Unlike his father, she hoped she had knocked a bit of character into him, mainly by not spoiling him and by teaching him the value of a Euro.
‘The world owes none of us a living, son!’ she once said.
‘I know that Ma. You’ve told me that before!’ George had replied, impatient by now at the familiarity of this mantra.
‘So long as you know,’ she said softly, dropping the subject.
One day in late May, when the air was heavy with the scent that rose up from crushed grass, the one scarred horse chestnut tree, and the few wanly flowering shrubs at the edge of the estate, Maria waited at her gate for George. The domestic help suppliers were on strike because of a dispute regarding van rosters, and to her dismay she was off work all that week. There had been the usual May rain and despite the pleasant, early summer scents, she felt irritable and wandered impatiently up and down her own path.
It was a week before George’s Leaving Cert and, encouraged by his maths teacher, he had applied for a place in both Oxford and Cambridge University, in England. He really should go for Oxbridge, the teacher had advised Maria at the spring parent-teacher meeting. Nothing to lose and everything to gain. I think he can do it, I really do …
Oh, she had replied, astonished at George’s brilliance, which even she had not fully realised.
We should hear something, maybe a provisional offer of a place by the end of May.
A neighbour passed.
‘Waiting for George?’ said the neighbour pleasantly. He stood for a minute to adjust the belt of his jeans and wipe the sweat of the damp day from his face. He was an old widower who passed much of the time voluntarily collecting litter from around the pavements of the estate. Everywhere he went he carried a long fork-like gripper and a light plastic bin.
‘Clammy weather despite the rain, isn’t it?’ he said, idly opening and shutting the litter gripper. ‘It’ll be a hard bus-ride across the city for George this afternoon. The traffic’s gone crazy. I wouldn’t like to have to face a long bus ride on a day like this!’
‘Ah, George doesn’t mind. He studies on his way home!’ said Maria, with the pride of one who never studied much.
Minutes passed. She kept looking up at the sky.
‘I suppose a few clouds never did us any harm!’ she said at last.
‘Clouds, if you get enough of them, can be disastrous,’ said the neighbour absent-mindedly as he pulled a discarded milk-shake carton from the gulley below the pavement. ‘Think of the rain in ’87! Savage! The whole of Ringsend and Ballsbridge destroyed when the river burst its banks! Oh, you could lose your life with too much cloud.’
‘Still,’ Maria peaceably, not wanting to offend the neighbour, ‘at least we’re in a big city and not out in the sticks. The floods can be really bad out there. Global warming has changed things,’ she said knowledgeably.
‘You know that’s true I suppose,’ said the neighbour. He looked at his fingernails. ‘Well, it’s the biggest city in Ireland now,’ he said, earnestly. ‘It’s a cosmopolitan city now. It’s big, oh very big and full of foreigners. Not so big it can be seen from the moon I’d say. Not like the Great Wall of China. But it’s a big, big place.’
Maria was beginning to wish her neighbour would move on. She wanted to concentrate on George’s arrival down the long road. The man must have sensed her inattention, because he said goodbye and headed off in search of litter.
When half an hour had passed it became apparent to Maria that George must be delayed. She texted him.
Are u stuck in traffic?
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