Free Remembering Light and Stone by Deirdre Madden

ready for it or worrying about the future. She wasn’t even aware that she was going to have kittens. And then when they were born, she was perfectly contented, and stayed in her box with them and looked after them. She sat over them purring, and growled a little when I put my hand in to try and touch them. Six months later, she was killed. The kittens didn’t miss her. Often when I looked at Franca, I would remember that cat.
    There was a glass egg on the table, and I picked it up. I asked Ted if it was Murano glass, and he said that it was. Franca had a Murano glass decanter and six matching liqueur glasses that she got on her honeymoon in Venice. They were made of dark red glass, and were all hand painted with flowers – really florid. I know that she never used them, not even once, in all the years she was married. She kept them locked up in a glass-fronted cabinet. I know such a thing is outmoded and foolish, like the idea of a best parlour, but it appeals to me. We had a china cabinet at home in Ireland. I like the idea of having all those bits of glass and delft and keeping them locked up for years and years. They became a sort of witness to all the sturm und drang of family life; they give you a fixed visual point, even if it is only in the form of a carnival glass tea-set, or a silver-plated sweet dish. We were never allowed to use them, and as a child, it was as if they didn’t even belong to us, they had that mystery of other people’s possessions. As I grew older, I liked them even more, for their worthlessness, because the only value they could have was sentimental. Sometimes when I was in Fabiola’s house, and I looked at her cold and costly fixtures and fittings, I’d think of those things we had at home, like two delft pigs hugging each other, one for salt and one for pepper.
    ‘I don’t like things that just have monetary value,’ I said to Ted. He was standing over by the window watching me. I was still holding the glass egg. ‘My grandmother used to say about people, “Money’s their God,” and in Italy I feel like I know people for whom that really is true, and they make no attempt to hide it. I often think about that when I’m in the streets, when I visit a city like Rome or Florence. In a shop window you’ll see maybe a pair of shoes on a little platform, all cleverly lit like they were a holy relic, and you’ll see people looking in the window, and it’s like they’re almost awed. I want to say to them – it’s only a pair of shoes, for crying out loud, only a belt or a handbag or whatever it happens to be. In a few years’ time all these things will be worn out or they’ll just look foolish. Sometimes when I see people in the street I feel pity for them, as if I’m looking at them from a thousand years away. Do you know what I mean?’
    He said that he understood. I wasn’t sure that he did, but I decided that, for now at least, I would believe him.

5
    I won’t say anything about whether or not I slept with Ted that night. Even if I did say, it would be foolish to believe me, because everybody tells lies about sex, and I’m no exception. What I will say is that it took me a long time to fall asleep, which is usual when I’m away from home. I lay awake far into the night, looking at the window. There was a big moon. It made a pale square of light on the floor, and I remembered a dream I once had. In it, there was a huge flat golden moon, which was low in the sky behind a leafless tree. I was able to reach out and touch the moon; I put my arm through the branches and pulled it out of the sky. It came down as smoothly and as easily as a circle of silk. Shimmering, golden, it hung limp in my hand, but now there was no light. I remembered I had felt happy when I woke up, because the dream had been a good one. When I looked at the moon over Florence I hoped I might dream it again, but I didn’t dream at all that night. I didn’t mind, because I could so easily have had one of my