Factory Girls by Michelle Gallen
Author:Michelle Gallen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00
Saturday, 2 July 1994
44 days until results
Mrs. OâNeill had invited Maeve and Caroline over to dinner, to thank them for having Aoife over for lunch every day. Visiting Aoifeâs house was an honor not commonly granted. It wasnât the biggest or oldest house in the town, but it was the best. Mrs. OâNeill liked to note that itâd been built by a widowed doctor in the late Victorian era whoâd retired back to the town after forty years in Kent. Heâd imported a team of English builders to construct a redbrick house by the river. After the doctorâs sons were killed on the Somme, the house had passed to the local vet. His artificial insemination program for cattle had been a lot more successful than his own attempts at breeding: after he and his wife died childless, the house had stood empty until the OâNeills paid through the nose to be the first Catholic owners.
Maeve was obsessed by the house. Each wall in every room was painted a slightly different shade of white. Mrs. OâNeill had once shown Maeve the color cards, which had included colors like Bone White, Frost Breath and Linen Dust. Maeveâd cracked some joke about Cocaine White thatâd made Mr. OâNeill (or John as she called him, when herself wasnât in earshot) crease up before he wilted under Mrs. OâNeillâs gaze. Maeveâd always thought white was boring. But these not-quite-whites (âqwhitesâ she called them, privately) played with her eye in the same way that scents on a breeze teased her nose. The hue of each wall changed according to the time of day, the weather conditions, the number of candles lit, the color of the rugs or the glow from the stained-glass lamps. Mrs. OâNeill made white work.
But then, everything in her house worked.
It was the only house in the town thatâd ever featured in magazines.
In one article there was a photo of Aoifeâs mother making jam with berries handpicked from their walled kitchen garden while standing barefoot in their large but cozy family kitchen.
âCan she not afford slippers?â Maeveâs mam had asked (sheâd never heard of, never mind experienced, underfloor heating).
There were shots of the staircase that loops up through the heart of the house before falling like a wave in the reception. There were photos of the bright, high-ceilinged rooms where heavy curtains fall like a respectful silence, pooling on the floor, snaps of John and James repairing the summerhouse, of Aoife curled up reading in the library in a puddle of sunlight.
Mrs. OâNeill shared her tips on interior design.
The storage bench in the kitchen is actually an artisanal pigâs trough that we stumbled across during a family ramble. The farmer almost paid us to take it away! Itâs Irish oak. It took months to dry out in my workshop before I could sand it. I fed it with wood oil recommended by a family friend in Denmark. Months of terribly hard work, really . . . but worth every minute!
And that was Aoifeâs family.
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