‘I swear I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m going tohave to catch up with you guys later, Roisin,’ he says. ‘Bruce needs me on site at one of the new developments. It’s going to take an hour at least. John knows the route. I’m so sorry.’
I’m glad of John’s voice to patch over my disappointment as I feel tears sting my eyes. This is not what Mabel planned for us, surely. This is not even the Aidan I know at all.
‘I’ll take care of them, don’t you worry, Mr Murphy,’ John says as he slowly drives out of his parking space, leaving Aidan to flag down a yellow cab and take care of whatever emergency has come about.
‘We can have our own fun,’ says Ben, clicking his camera through the window.
‘Yes, we can,’ says John. ‘That’s the spirit.’
But I can’t speak. I feel as if I have snakes inside me, eating me up and poisoning all my hopes and dreams of a future with a man I don’t feel I even know any more.
John quickly drives us around eastern Brooklyn and shows us the house Mabel grew up in – a shuttered three-storey terrace with wooden slats and a flight of about ten steps up to the front door. I pause and try to imagine a young Mabel skipping along the sidewalk here as she made her way to school. She told me so many happy stories of her childhood here with her only sister who she lost so tragically to teenage cancer, and her hard-working mum and dad, who never got over it.
We drive by the street where Peter and Mabel spent theirearly married life near North Riverdale in the Bronx, and when I look up at the window of the brown brick townhouse, I picture them looking out at the world from their home, where love was always on the menu, but where the heartbreak of never having the family they craved often cracked them at the seams.
We catch a matinee on Broadway in the afternoon, making it Ben’s choice, which he is over the moon with, and he predictably decides to go forThe Lion King.
‘Good choice!’ exclaims John when he drops us off. ‘It’s one of the best.’
All the way to the theatre, he and Ben recite lines from the movie I could easily say I’ve seen more than a hundred times, and it makes me smile to hear how competitive they both are when trying to outdo one another on everything from quotes to song lyrics.
We are exhausted but exhilarated after the show, and when we pop by The Supper Club where Mabel became an off Broadway star as our last pit stop, it’s there we meet the larger than life Penny Sanders, granddaughter of the original owner, who makes us feel like celebrities in our own right, even giving us a tour behind the scenes so we can see where Mabel would have applied her make-up, where she stepped into her most wondrous costumes, and the place where she prepared to entertain the masses.
The basement bar is very much as I’d imagined it from Mabel’s description. Deep red velvet curtains frame a smallstage, which hosts a baby grand piano and a small drum kit. The stage overlooks a host of little black polished round tables, framed with high-backed dark red leather chairs, and a long shiny bar runs up the side of the room, which is decorated with cocktail menus and advertisements in plastic stands for forthcoming shows. I just wish Aidan were here to experience all this with us.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says in a text message, but I can’t bring myself to reply.
Penny, a tall, voluptuous lady with a beaming smile, couldn’t be more welcoming as she gives us a history of the club and how much they’ve tried to hold on to its authentic style down the years, which means it’s more or less still the same as it would have been when Mabel was part of the crew here.
‘She could light up a room without saying a word,’ says Penny, enjoying the memories of Mabel as much as we are. ‘I was only a very young child, but I’d sit right here at this very table and watch her rehearse onstage, lost in a world of her own while she practised her lines and sang her songs. Her husband Peter would slip in to the back just over there, smoke a cigarette and look on with pride. He’d come here in a yellow cab and he’d tell anyone who’d listen just how much he hated them!’
I laugh, remembering how Mabel once told me about Peter and his awkwardness around public transport, especially New York’s yellow cabs. Hearing about Peter remindsme also of the lady in Sullivan’s back in Breena and I wonder if she’ll ever get in touch? I doubt it, but I do intend to follow it up with Aidan once he finds his way back home to Ireland, if he ever does. I’m in New York, the city he lives in, but so far he could be anywhere. We’ve barely spent time with him at all.
Ben is skirting the bar and I’ve one eye on him to make sure he doesn’t touch anything he shouldn’t, but Penny seems relaxed and encourages him to take pictures with his new camera.
She turns to face me again.
‘You know, you look a little like Mabel did back in her heyday,’ says Penny, really focusing my way now. ‘She was blonde of course, whereas you are darker in colouring, but she was petite like you, Roisin. Bird-like, almost, but so delicate and pretty. She told me you reminded her of herself in many ways.’
I do a double-take.
‘You already knew about me? Were you expecting us here today?’ I ask her, wondering whether there’s some sort of higher force spurring us on, or some extra planning on Mabel’s behalf that may have anticipated this visit.
Penny glances at Ben and then back to me.
‘Of course I did,’ she tells us, letting us know that it’s no surprise. ‘Mabel and I kept in touch as often as we could.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh yes,’ she continues. ‘I used to love receiving her letters.She’d tell me of her handsome nephew Aidan and his life in New York and young Roisin and Ben next door to her in Ballybray. She said you’d come here together this weekend. I was very much expecting you, though I’d hoped to meet Aidan too. He couldn’t make it, huh?’
Mabel, as always, is ten steps ahead and I can’t find any more words to keep up.
‘He has a lot of work commitments, unfortunately,’ I tell Penny, sorry now that Mabel’s plans haven’t gone exactly as she may have liked them to.
After we’ve reminisced as much as our energy and hunger levels allow us, Penny walks the two of us out and we follow her down a tiny corridor which is framed with black and white prints of many of the club’s stars in action. Ben trails his eyes along them, keeping them peeled in case he spots the lady herself.
‘To think she walked these corridors on a daily basis all those years ago,’ I say, sensing that deep connection to Mabel once more, one that I’ve only ever felt by being in her house back in Ballybray.
