This Charming Man

by Marian Keyes

  Christopher Holland’s door opened immediately and he was already knee-deep into his apology. ‘Dee, I’m sorry, I –’

  Then he noticed me and he stepped back, suddenly wary.

  He was immensely sexy and knowing what I knew about his large member and his stamina, I so would. (Only in theory and ifI wasn’t with Damien, etc., etc.)

  ‘Grace Gildee, Christopher Holland.’ Dee’s introductions were terse. We stepped into the hall and I followed Dee into a living room.

  ‘Dee, I shouldn’t have done it –’ Christopher’s prostration was back on track.

  With a wave of her hand, Dee dismissed him. ‘I’m not here for an apology. I just need to know ifyou shafted me off your own bat, or if someone persuaded you?’

  ‘Persuasion,’ he said, sounding eager to absolve himselfofblame. ‘As if I’d come up with something like that by myself. Dee, the money was so big. I said no, they came back with more, I said no again, they hiked it again. It was the toughest call of my life –’

  ‘You’re breaking my heart,’ Dee said. ‘Grace, show him the photo.’

  I thrust it at him. ‘It’s old, I know, but do you see your –’ I coughed sarcastically – ‘ “persuader”?’

  It was donkey’s years since I’d seen Sheridan. I had to hope he hadn’t aged dramatically or had transformative plastic surgery.

  Christopher stared. ‘Is that Paddy de Courcy?’ He laughed. ‘No way, man. The state of him! He had a mullet.’

  ‘Never mind him.’

  ‘And is that you?’ He looked me up and down. ‘You haven’t changed much.’

  ‘Would you…’ I redirected him to the job.

  He gazed at the photo sitting in the palm of his hand for so long that I began to sweat.

  ‘Yes?’ I encouraged.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry.’ He looked genuinely regretful.

  ‘I know it’s old but try to imagine seventeen years on.’ I was beginning to sound desperate. ‘Think different hair, maybe less of it now, more jowly perhaps…’

  He pulled the photo closer to his face, and tried it with one eye shut, then the other. ‘Wow! Yeah, right, I see it now! You’ve gotta admit she looks totally different now, much classier –’

  She?

  She?

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her.’ He pointed at Leechy. ‘Alicia Thornton? Paddy’s lady? When she showed up here she had a mad scarfon, trying to change her look, but I knew who she was. Like, from the papers. Isn’t that who you’re talking about?’

  I turned to Dee. The shock on my face was mirrored on hers.

  ‘You mean –’ Dee hissed in a most terrifying way at Christopher Holland – ‘not only did you tell the entire nation every detail of our sex life, but you neglected to let me know that my closest colleague is out to get me?’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Please don’t tell me you thought Alicia Thornton was doing this off her own bat? Please don’t let me discover that you’re that stupid.’

  ‘I kinda felt…’ Christopher stammered. ‘I’d hurt you so much with the story. I didn’t think anything could hurt you more.’

  ‘I see. Stupid, treacherous and arrogant. FYI, Christopher, my career means far more to me than you ever did. Come on, Grace.’ She swept out.

  I whipped the photo out of Christopher’s hand, then hurried after Dee, back to the car. We got in but I didn’t switch the engine on, I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t trust myselfto drive safely.

  ‘It’s Paddy,’ Dee said.

  I nodded.

  ‘It’s definitely Paddy,’ she repeated. She twisted her neck to look at me. ‘Isn’t it, Grace?’

  ‘… Looks like it.’

  ‘Are you okay, Grace?’

  ‘Mmm, yeah.’

  But I wasn’t. Abruptly I found I was having a major rethink on the wisdom of this entire enterprise. Up until now it had been – almost – like a game; playing girl investigator during a slow week at work. Because of what Paddy had done to me it had been gratifying to pursue further evidence of his badness. But now I had the proof– he was involved in high-risk political games, he really was – and all of a sudden I’d come to my senses. What had I been thinking with my idiotic bravado? I should have stayed well clear. This was real life and I knew what Paddy was capable of.

  Sitting in the stationary car, I made a decision: this was where I bowed out. Dee could take it from here. She was the politician, she’d be good at all that Machiavellian stuff. I was just an ordinary Joe Soap. A scared one.

  ‘I’ll have to call him on it.’ Dee’s eyes were narrowed as she visualized the scenario. ‘But I need something to bargain with. What have you got on him, Grace? What skeletons are rattling in his cupboard?’

  ‘None. Nothing.’

  ‘What?’ She turned in surprise. ‘But I thought –? Oh no, Grace. You can’t!’

  ‘Dee, I’m not that type of person, journalist… whatever. I thought I was but it turns out I’m not. Sorry,’ I added.

  ‘You mean you’re scared of Paddy?’

  ‘… I suppose.’

  ‘But that’s good! It means you know something about him. Something that can help me.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Whatever he’s done to you, don’t you want to have your say?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s not the Grace I know.’

  ‘It’s not the Grace I know either,’ I said gloomily. ‘It just goes to show.’

  ‘Grace, you’re my only hope. My political career depends on you. Without you, I’m sunk.’

  I laid my forehead on the steering wheel. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘And ifI’m sunk,’ Dee said gently, ‘so are thousands of Irish women. Women who live in fear. Women who have no one to speak up for them. Women who have no one to give them a voice, no one to articulate the deepest hopes of their hearts.’

  Marnie

  Sky News was still her only friend. Even if it did have a tendency to repeat itself, every fifteen minutes or so. Today it was telling her that it was Wednesday, 21 January. (Also some tedium about football transfers, which she tuned out.)

  When the phone rang, Marnie regarded it fearfully. Just out of habit. Somewhere along the line, the phone had become a bringer of only bad news and she’d stopped answering it.

  The machine kicked in, then she heard Grace.

  ‘Marnie, it’s me, Grace, are you there?’

  Marnie picked up. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Are you sober?’

  ‘Yes.’ But only because she was waiting for the off-licence to open; there wasn’t a single drop of vodka left in the house. She didn’t know how she’d let that happen.

  ‘Are you really?’ Grace sounded anxious. ‘This is important.’

  ‘Honestly I am.’ Marnie’s heart twisted with sorrow; she couldn’t blame Grace for being suspicious.

  ‘Okay – right, I’ve got a favour to ask. Blast from the past. Brace yourself. Paddy de Courcy.’ Marnie flinched. She just had to hear his name. Even now.

  Grace continued. ‘Don’t feel any pressure to do this. Don’t do anything you don’t want. I’m only doing this to help someone else, so you won’t be letting me down.’

  Marnie was confused. ‘You want me to help Paddy?’

  ‘Christ, no! The total opposite.’

  ‘… Okay.’ So Paddy didn’t want her to help him. She felt oddly disappointed.

  ‘He’s up to all kinds of political dirty tricks,’ Grace said. ‘I said I’d try to help the person he’s shafting.’

  Marnie was startled. This was all very dramatic. Alarmingly so.

  ‘You were what I came up with,’ Grace said.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘The way he used to… hit you and stuff. I think he might have done it to other women too. If I can find some, would you be interested in coming with them? To put pressure on him?’

  ‘Pressure?’ Marnie heard herself ask. How very, very strange this was. Paddy de Courcy, afte
r all this time. Putting ‘pressure’ on him?

  ‘If he doesn’t back off, you and the others will go to the papers with your stories.’

  ‘The papers!’

  ‘It probably won’t come to that. The threat will be enough.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ She couldn’t have her story in the press. ‘… But Grace, what on earth makes you think there are others?’

  ‘One or two things. Not fully checked out yet. I wanted to see if you’d do it, before I did anything else.’ After a pause, Grace said, ‘You don’t have to do this, Marnie. I’m only asking because I promised this person, Dee, that I would. But life hasn’t been easy for you lately and maybe this is the last thing –’

  ‘Don’t you want me to come?’

  ‘In a way, no, to be quite honest. I’m only asking because I said I would –’

  ‘So you keep saying.’ Marnie almost laughed. ‘But I’ll come.’ She was quite definite. The draw to Paddy was still there, even after all these years. God, she was pathetic. But she already knew that.

  ‘You don’t think it’ll make…’ Grace hesitated. ‘… things worse for you?’

  She meant the drinking, Marnie understood.

  ‘You know what, Grace, it might actually help.’

  ‘It might,’ Grace agreed, sounding doubtful.

  ‘Putting the past to rest.’

  ‘… Mmm, it might…’ Then Grace’s tone changed. Delicately she said, ‘The thing is, Marnie, if this happens, you’d have to come to Dublin. You’d have to get a plane.’

  Marnie understood the implication: Marnie mightn’t be sober enough to manage the journey. Who could blame her for thinking such a thing, Marnie acknowledged sorrowfully.

  ‘It’s okay, Grace, I’ll be fine, I promise. So when do you want me?’

  ‘If it happens, it’ll be soon. The next day or so. And you’re sure you want to come?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Paddy de Courcy. She hadn’t thought about him in a long time. Occasionally, every year or two, his name was mentioned by Ma or Dad or even Bid, but she never indulged herself in bittersweet memories. She only had to hear his name for a barrier to come slicing down, like a guillotine, cutting off all thoughts of the past.

  But this morning there was no defence against unwanted memories. They were there, sharp and fresh, and she was plunged back into remembering the dizzying relief she’d felt, when she first met Paddy, that she’d finally found the lost part of herself.

  Up to that point she’d lived her life incomplete and skewed and it was a joyous revelation to discover that he was as hungry and empty as she was. His beloved mother had died and his father was too strange to provide him with love. Paddy was alone and lonely and the tenderness Marnie felt for him was so exquisite, she could hardly endure it.

  It was as if they existed on a frequency which only the two of them could hear. Terrible fears and unbearable griefs had always controlled her; she couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t at the mercy of powerful tides of emotion. No one else – certainly not Grace with whom she was inevitably compared – endured life with the painful intensity that she did. Even Ma and Dad at times watched her with confusion, as if they didn’t know where they’d got her.

  It shamed her, her difference. Other people, the lucky ones, seemed to have an internal stop button; a buffer, beyond which their feelings didn’t extend.

  But Paddy was like her. He experienced life with the same transcendent loves and bottomless despairs. She was no longer a one-off freak.

  Their connection was instant and intense and time apart was unendurable. Even if they had spent the entire day together, the first thing they did when they got home was ring each other.

  ‘I just want to crawl inside your skin,’ he said. ‘I want to pull you into mine and zip us up.’

  The first time he took her to his home it was so cold and loveless it broke her heart. It felt like the Marie Celeste, a place abandoned; there was nothing to eat and the heat wasn’t on. The kitchen was chilly, the table-top sticky, the bins unemptied. It was clearly a place where meals were never cooked, where milk was drunk straight from the carton and jam sandwiches were assembled without plates and eaten standing up, leaning over the sink.

  This absence of a loving heart to his home visited Marnie with a terrifying insight – and her insights, particularly the painful ones, were always spot-on – that if his mother hadn’t died, Paddy would not have fallen in love with her. He’d been different before the death of his mother, he had told her this, and she knew – even if he didn’t – that it had changed him into a person vulnerable enough to need her.

  It made her suspect not only that she was taking advantage of him but that she wasn’t good enough to have a relationship with a healthy man. Only a broken one would be interested in her because she was broken also, and – most paralysing terror of all – Paddy’s brokenness might heal whereas hers was permanent.

  She tried to tell Grace, who rolled her eyes and exclaimed, ‘You couldn’t be happy if your life depended on it, could you? Who cares why he loves you? He just does, okay? Can’t you see how lucky you are?’

  Humbled, Marnie worked hard to achieve glimpses of her good fortune: Grace was right, the connection Marnie and Paddy had was rare.

  They lay in fields and painted the clouds or looked at the stars and planned their future. ‘We’ll always be together,’ Paddy promised. ‘Nothing else matters.’

  The dark flipside of his love was his jealousy. Even though she swore that she would never stop loving him, he treated every other man in the world as a threat. Not a week went by without him accusing her of flirting with Sheridan, or ‘looking’ at some other man at a party or not spending enough time with him.

  One time, when she made the mistake of saying she thought Nick Cave was sexy, he went mildly berserk, ripping to shreds the magazine pictures that had triggered her remark. For months afterwards he would get up and stalk from the room if the Bad Seeds were playing. His paranoia infected her and – almost to please him – she became as suspicious as he was. Passionate disagreements were routine, practically mandatory. It was like a game, this ritual of dramatic accusations, followed by tearful reunions; their way of demonstrating how much they loved each other.

  There were times when she accused him of wanting Grace. Even, at times, Leechy. Leechy wasn’t exactly a looker – there was more than a hint of the equine about her features. (Indeed her own father used to say to her, ‘Why the long face?’ Which Marnie and Grace were horrified by. They used to ask each other, ‘Can you believe he said that? Her own dad?’) But Leechy was sweet and kind, one of life’s carers, and began to show up in the aftermath of Paddy’s and Marnie’s frequent wrangles, to counsel and comfort Paddy. Marnie was actually surprised by Leechy’s boldness but when she objected, Leechy urged compassion. ‘He was upset. He loves you so much and he has no one else to talk to.’

  ‘He has Sheridan.’

  Leechy made a dismissive face. ‘Sheridan’s a boy.’

  From time to time the emotional game-playing spilled over into the physical: a shove here, a slap there, on one overwrought night, a punch in her face.

  When Grace expressed her urgent alarm, Marnie said, ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. His feelings are so overwhelming that sometimes that’s the only way he can express them.’

  Even the cigarette burn on her hand was explicable. ‘He’s putting a permanent mark on me. Like a tattoo. But don’t tell Ma,’ she added.

  He outgrew her, it was that simple. This became obvious only with the benefit of long hindsight. The rot in their three-year relationship could be narrowed down to the last five months, which coincided with his final five months in college, January to May. Viewed objectively it made sense: real life was looming for him; he was no longer the bereaved half-feral boy but a man with his eye on a career as a barrister.

  Time to put away his childish things, as Dad might have said.

  During that spring, perhaps they had more
fights than their already very high average. Perhaps, as Marnie subconsciously felt him slipping away, she became more clingy. And as he desired to be free, his disdain became more overt.

  He told her he no longer loved her. But every time they’d had a minor dispute he’d told her he hated her.

  This time I mean it, he said. But he’d always said that too.

  During his finals in May, she clamped her paranoia down. She couldn’t jeopardize his degree. Even though she’d discovered from Sheridan that Leechy had been visiting Paddy at his home, she kept her mouth shut.

  But the night after he sat his last exam, she allowed herself to let the pent-up accusations fly. ‘What have you and Leechy been doing during her home visits? Having sex?’

  It was simply a tried and tested method to extract a declaration of love – one he had introduced her to – and at her core she knew there was no truth to it.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  ‘No, really, what have you been doing?’

  ‘I just told you.’

  She thought he was joking. Any other interpretation was unimaginable.

  ‘It’s real, Marnie. I’ve fucked her every day since I started my exams. It’s over, you and me. When will you listen?’

  When she understood that it was true, she doubled over and howled like an animal – but still she didn’t understand that this was the end. Years later, when she was able to get some sort of perspective, she realized that that wasn’t her fault. His sleeping with Leechy was agonizing, but it was part of their pattern to hurt each other because they loved each other so much.

  ‘You said you’d love me for ever.’ She was wild-eyed.

  ‘I lied. Look, we were just a college thing.’

  No, they weren’t. He was the love of her life, the type of love you could wait a hundred lifetimes for.

  Thrashing around like an animal caught in a trap, she wondered what she had to do. She was so distraught she thought that sleeping with Paddy’s best friend was the next logical step.

  Persuading Sheridan wasn’t as difficult as she’d expected. But when it was over, he was stricken with instant remorse. ‘Don’t tell Paddy,’ he said.

  She looked at him almost with pity. Don’t tell Paddy? Why did he think she had slept with him?