Flowering Cherry

Winner of the 2007 Bryan MacMahon award at Listowel Writers' Week

This morning I woke to find my husband Frank stone dead in the bed beside me.

I didn't scream, like they do in the films, not at first anyway. I just stared at him for a long time. Making sure, I suppose. But he was cold and no breath fluttered the little hairs in his nostrils.

After a while I went downstairs. I stepped outside in my night-dress, the pink one with teddy bears on it, and stood on the wet grass in my bare feet under the cherry tree.

The young fellow from number 43 passed on his way to work. I called out to him. Help me, or something. But either he pretended not to hear or he was wearing one of those iPod things. I suppose it distracts from the tedium of the journey.

So I just went on standing there until Missis from next door came out to fetch in her milk.

"Whatever are you doing, Eileen?" she asked. "You'll catch your death."

I don't quite remember what happened next but later I was in her kitchen drinking a cup of strong sweet tea. I noticed she'd got those pine-fronted presses in. They look nicer than formica.

"That'll do you good," she said, although I doubted it. I've always hated tea with milk and never take it strong. Sure enough, I had to run to the lavatory to throw up. Luckily they have a downstairs one, unlike us. Her husband's a builder and put it in himself. I noticed she has one of those air fresheners stuck to the wall that lets out little puffs on a regular basis. As a result, the room smelt sickly sweet, but better than sick, I suppose.

She was good about it, even though some of it went on the floor. Wouldn't let me mop it up and said it was a natural reaction. To the sudden death, she meant, not to the tea.

"How long have you been married anyway?" she asked.

"Thirty-seven years," I said.

"That's more than half a lifetime."

She's a nosy, managing kind of woman. I've never much cared for her but in this instance I was grateful. She called 999 and the ambulance came promptly and pronounced Frank dead, even though I knew that already. They reckoned it was a massive heart attack but had to wait for the doctor to confirm it. He wouldn't have known what hit him, they said, kindly enough. Terrible for you, though, they added.

I've been cleaning up. Well, clearing out. It keeps me busy and Missis next door approves. She's been telling everyone I'm in shock. To account for the fact that I haven't shed a single tear, I suppose.

"Let me know if there's anything I can do," she says, but I don't need her. The undertakers are very helpful and have walked me through the whole business even though I wouldn't have had a clue about organising a funeral up to now. Padraig, my eldest, says I shouldn't have rushed into things and that he knows a firm would have done it for half the price but I told him I wasn't in the humour to shop around.

The funeral was well attended. I hadn't realised Frank was known to so many people. But then my daughter Gemma – back from Munich for the occasion -- whispered "ghouls" to me and, when I asked what she meant, she said the place was packed with ould ones whose idea of a fun way to spend a morning was to find some funeral and toddle along to it.

I didn't care much for the comments of the priest.

"Frank wasn't known to me personally," he said, and then went on about what a wonderful husband and father he was. That was all rubbish. I mean, how could he know? Gemma and Padraig were in floods of tears but I still couldn‘t. Not even at the graveside in that bitter wind. I kept thinking about the cherry tree and how now it wouldn't have to be cut down.

Padraig and Shirley, his wife, came round this afternoon.

"What ever are you doing, mam?" asked Padraig. "Can't it wait?"

"I'm collecting it up for the Vincent de Paul," I said.

"But that's all good food. You can eat that."

It was tinned stuff, the sort Frank liked, the sort his mam used to make for him. Tinned peas and peaches and rice pudding, oxtail soup and lamb stew and steak and kidney pie. I never liked any of it and wasn't about to start now. Frank always harped on about how I didn't eat properly. At least I won't have to listen to that any more.

Actually, earlier on I had been watching one of those cookery programmes, the one with the pretty girl who's a vegetarian. I've never been comfortable with meat, so I thought, I'd like to try that. I'll probably buy her book, the one they advertised at the end of the programme.     

"If you want any of it, help yourself," I said to Padraig.

He picked up the spaghetti hoops.

"The kiddies would eat this," he said, "wouldn't they, Shirl?"

The upshot was he took everything except the rice pudding, so not much for Vincent de Paul after all. Padraig also went through Frank's things and picked out his good suit, not the one he was buried in of course, but the grey with the navy stripe. Also a couple of pairs of shoes. Now that's what I call ghoulish – wearing dead men's clothes -- but Padraig said it would help keep his dad's spirit alive.

"Oh and those shirts look hardly worn, mam. Might as well take them as well."

After they'd gone I cooked myself some dhal with lentils, onions and spices I got down at that new oriental shop. I even stirred a bit of natural yoghurt into it, the way your one on television advised. Then I took the phone off the hook and curled up on the couch to eat it. I could hear Frank saying furniture isn't for feet. It is now, I thought.

I've been taking driving lessons. I mean it's stupid having the car sitting outside the house, rusting away. Padraig said he'd take it off my hands -- it would do nicely as a little runaround for Shirley -- but I said I'd like to see if I could manage it first.

"Won't be easy at your age, mam," he said. "And by the way this house stinks like an Indian takeaway."

Missis next door knows this old fellow, Sidney, who gives lessons. His car's a Golf and mine a Fiesta but I suppose the principles are the same.

Sidney's a widower, he tells me.

"Life's just not the same, is it," he says.

"It certainly isn't," I reply.

"Anyway, you'll soon get the hang of it," he says, probably referring to the driving.

I've been admiring the cherry tree. I remember when we planted it, how years later the kids used to climb up into the branches. Padraig won't let his now. He says it's too dangerous.

"What would happen if they fall? Would your insurance cover that, mam?"

 In fact he's been on at me to have it cut down.

"Isn't that what dad planned to do?" he asked.

"I'm sick of the sight of the bloody thing," Frank used to say. "No use to anyone. It doesn't even have fruit you can eat."

Padraig was still rabbiting on about it.

"You wouldn't know yourself, mam," he said. "It would make the front room much brighter. I know this fellow would do it for you cheap and take the wood away after."

But I love that tree. And now the spring's here it will be flowering soon, a mass of snowy white blossom.

I'm shy to say this, since it's very personal, but I think I had an orgasm last night. I'm not sure because I've never had one before. Frank liked to get the business over quickly and I couldn't do anything about it myself, not while we shared a bed.

Anyhow, I'd been curled up on the couch, drinking a glass of bacardi and coke and watching one of those adult channels you can get on digital. It was quite explicit and I was about to turn it off when they started on about masturbation. Seemingly some comedian had quipped "don't knock it: it's sex with someone I love" which I thought was quite funny. So anyway I tried it out and I must say it was very enjoyable. I'll certainly do it again sometime.

I think I'm going to give up the driving lessons. With Sidney at least. He keeps on about the loneliness of the single life and how there's a lot to be said for companionship in the autumn of our days. When I think about it now I should have put him straight at once and told him that if I ever wanted a new relationship, it wouldn't be with a seventy-two-year-old midget without a tooth of his own in his head. I know that because his false sets keep slipping.

Then this morning Missis next door called over to me while I was hanging out the washing.

"I hear you're getting on very well with Sidney," she said, and winked.

He lives in some miserable old person's flat and probably has an eye on my house.

In fact, I reckon I might sell the car after all. If there's one thing to be said for Frank, he kept it in good order, and his mechanic, Andy, has already told me he could find a buyer at a fair price if I was interested. Then I could take a holiday on the proceeds and not feel I was dipping into my capital. There's a very nice looking Mediterranean cruise in one of the brochures I picked up recently that's not expensive at all when you consider what they provide. I've always wanted to go abroad – further than North Wales, I mean. I could always go and visit Gemma – she's forever inviting me -- but her partner Helmut is a sneering sort of a person, too much like Frank for my liking.

I won't tell Padraig about my plans just yet. I'm not sure if he meant to offer me any money for the car but I don't think it would be anything like what Andy can get. Andy's a nice man. A widower too, by coincidence, and very well preserved.

Today I parked rather well, under the cherry tree, which arches out a bit over the road. It's covered in tight buds now, about to burst into flower. Almost the best time, like a promise. I was plucking up courage to tell Sidney I was stopping the lessons, when he cut in.

"You know something, Eileen," he said. "If I was living here, first thing I'd do is chop down that yoke. There must be an awful mess on the car when the leaves and that fall down all over it."

I know his car is his pride and joy, but for me that was the clincher. I told him rather abruptly that it didn't matter because I was selling the car. I'm afraid he took it badly. He seemed to suggest that I'd led him on and wasted his time. Although at €30 per lesson, he didn't do too badly out of me.

I'm sitting in the tree. I don't think anyone noticed me climb up – it was easier than I'd thought – and no one can see me now unless they look really hard. The leaves are thick and through them the sun is flickering camouflage patterns on my skin. A soft breeze is stirring the blossoms, for the buds have fully opened at last. My lovely flowering cherry is all dressed up just like a girl at her debs, ready set for a new and amazing life.