Page 23 of Secrets in the Snow
‘It can be tough, yes,’ I mutter, fiddling now with the silk scarf. ‘I’m dealing with it as best I can on so many levels, but Jude and I had a very complex, complicated history that went on for a lot longer than it should have before he died.’
We sit in brief silence.
‘And Mabel’s death must be bringing a lot back?’ whispers Aidan. ‘I’m sorry. It’s tough.’
He tilts his head, acknowledging how I’ve opened up ever so slightly for the first time about my turbulent past.
‘It has, yes,’ I tell him, wanting to close the conversation as quickly as I unintentionally started it. ‘But it’s not straightforward. This is a very different type of grief with Mabel. It’s not at all the same thing.’
We don’t speak again for a few seconds, both tangled up in thoughts of how painful the subject of loss can be.
‘You know, when I look at your son I see a lot of my younger self staring back at me,’ Aidan says with gentle trepidation. ‘Losing a parent so young definitely shapes you for life. I know it did for me, anyhow, and I’m sure losing your life partner is just as difficult. I know you are going to miss having Mabel’s support to lean on.’
I busy myself by taking out a wonderfully soft cashmere camel coat with an over-the-top fur collar that brings me back to when Mabel first marched me down to meet Camille to ask for a job here.
‘She was a very determined woman,’ I say with a smile. ‘I’m so sorry, Aidan, but can we talk about Mabel instead of my ex? Grieving for Mabel is a very different process than what I feel for my husband’s passing, and I would much rather remember her with the love she deserves. I doubt she’d want my late husband stealing her thunder.’
My forehead is creased into a frown that Mabel used to call ‘the look of doom’, and I consciously change my expression.
‘Of course,’ says Aidan, changing tack immediately. ‘OK, let’s stay focused on the job at hand here and the legendaryMabel Murphy. So tell me about this coat. I don’t think I remember it?’
I breathe out a very obvious sigh of relief, and then we both erupt into a fit of nervous laughter.
And so I launch into the story of how Mabel was fed up looking at my long, pale face one day, and equally was fed up with me talking about the dire state of daytime TV in Ireland and my tendency to lie on the sofa, day in, day out while Ben was at school.
‘Did you move here to get a life together or to simply exist?’ she’d asked me crossly one afternoon in March. ‘You’re better than this, Roisin O’Connor! You’ve a whole life ahead of you that I only wish I had! Get up and get out! I’m taking you to Camille once and for all!’
Aidan is all ears, and is especially impressed at my facial expressions, my New York accent, and how I can mimic Mabel right down to the way she used her hands to illustrate her point.
‘She had threatened me with Camille ever since I let it slip that I used to sneak in here and drool at the rails of clothing in Truly Vintage, wishing I’d someday have the courage to follow my own passion and dreams for upcycled fashion, arts and crafts,’ I tell him. ‘Before I knew it, I was being led by the hand like a school girl right to the door. She was wearing this coat that day. I’ll never forget it.’
The meeting with Camille, who was about to go on holiday at the time, was as it turned out perfect timing asshe was desperately seeking someone she could trust to run the shop while she took time out, and the rest was history. Mabel always had that sixth sense to know when two people would work well together, and she was bang on the money with Camille and me.
I hadn’t looked back since.
Aidan pulls out a very cool pair of green velvet flared corduroys next, and it’s his turn now to share a memory of Mabel in her finest hour.
‘My uncle Peter was so madly in love with her,’ Aidan tells me, his face full of awe and admiration. ‘It was sickening to the outside world because let’s face it, a love like that comes only once or comes never at all for most of us mere mortals, but they had a deep, deep chemistry that could be felt in the air. They clicked, you know. They just clicked. It was pretty magical to be around.’
I imagine a younger Mabel in the corduroy flares, her bouncy blonde curls like she had in her photo albums, and Peter’s handsome stature watching her as if she were the only woman in the world. Shewasthe only woman in the world for him.
‘Ironically, Peter used to warn me off marriage every time I spoke to him on the phone,’ Aidan says, his turn now to fall into a frown. ‘When I told him I was getting married to Rachel, he asked me so many questions, telling me of the pressures nowadays on young people and how we plunge into things without thinking. I thought it wasbecause he didn’t believe in marriage, but it was in fact the opposite. He believed in it so much that he didn’t want me doing it for the wrong reasons. Disposable vows, he called it. Divorce on tap. He warned me not to get married if I was going to throw it down the drain a few years later. Anyway. That was Peter!’
And then he stops. And he looks away.
I can tell by Aidan’s tone of voice and how he stopped that he has already said more than he intended to. I want to prod a bit, to ask him more, but he looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
‘If only we all had even a little bit of magic in marriage like Peter and Mabel had,’ I say, trying to lighten the mood now by holding up a quite hideous luminous floral jumper that was definitely for a separate pile of clothing we’d decided would go elsewhere.
‘I do believe in that magic,’ says Aidan, a faraway glaze in his eyes now. Then he looks right at me. ‘I believe what he said now more than ever. I think we can all have what Peter and Mabel had, if we’re lucky enough to find or marry the right person.’
‘And have you found the right person?’ I ask him, wondering about his relationship with Rachel, his wife of I’m guessing, about six or seven years now. He stops and thinks and then shrugs it off.
‘I don’t think I have,’ he says sadly now. ‘But like you, I’d rather just talk about Mabel.’
13.
Itry not to let my jaw drop at Aidan’s honesty about his marriage and we go on to share so many stories as we sift through Mabel’s collection of pussy-bow blouses, pleated skirts, and chunky knitted cardigans, with Aidan telling me of how he was so mesmerized by Mabel’s accent when he was a young child, and of his uncle Peter’s stories of New York that gave him a longing to try out a life in America.
