I used to work the Sunday evening shift in a nursing home near Glasnevin, the kind of place where the kettle was never cold and the television was always a little too loud. Every Thursday at half two, a woman in a navy coat would arrive carrying a paper bag from the bakery in Phibsborough. Her name was Aoife. She was in her early forties, quiet in the way some people are quiet because they have learned not to take up too much space.
At first I thought she belonged to someone. Everyone who came through our front door belonged to someone: a daughter rushing in after work, a nephew pretending not to be emotional, a neighbour with Mass cards. Aoife belonged to no one there, but she came every week all the same. She sat with whoever had no visitor that day. She played cards with Mrs Kavanagh, read the death notices to Tom, and once spent an hour untangling a chain for a woman who kept asking when her husband would collect her, though he had been gone twelve years.
We never asked too much. In nursing homes, you learn that people’s sadness is often sitting just under their skin, and it is not always kind to touch it. But I was curious. She knew how to speak to people who were half in this world and half somewhere else. She never corrected them harshly. If Mrs Doyle said she had to get the dinner on for the children, Aoife would say, “Will I peel the spuds for you?” and Mrs Doyle would laugh like a young woman again.
One wet November Thursday, the rain was coming sideways across the car park and the trees near the National Botanic Gardens looked stripped and tired. I assumed Aoife would not come. Half two passed. Then ten to three. I was in the small sitting room with Liam, a retired bus driver from Finglas, who had gone downhill quickly that week. His daughter was trying to get home from Australia, but the flights were a mess. He kept waking and asking if she was at the door.
At three o’clock, Aoife arrived soaked through, her hair stuck to her face, the paper bag tucked inside her coat to keep it dry. “Sorry,” she said, as if she was late for a job we were paying her to do. “The bus was held up by O’Connell Street.”
I told her Liam was restless. She took off her coat, rolled up her sleeves, and sat beside him. “Well, Liam,” she said, “I heard you drove half of Dublin around in your day.”
His eyes opened a little. “The 40,” he whispered.
“A noble route,” she said. “You’d want the patience of a saint.”
He smiled. It was small, but it was there. She held his hand and spoke to him about bus stops, about wet umbrellas, about the smell of chips near Parnell Street after a late shift. I stood by the door pretending to sort towels, but really I was watching something I couldn’t name. There was no drama in it. No grand speech. Just one person refusing to let another person feel abandoned.
Later that evening, Liam’s daughter rang from Dubai airport, crying so hard I could barely understand her. I put the phone on speaker and held it near his ear. Aoife stayed beside him, her hand still around his. His daughter kept saying, “Daddy, I’m coming. I’m coming.” Liam didn’t answer, but his breathing softened. Aoife began to hum an old song under her breath, “The Rare Auld Times,” so gently it was almost part
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