The Women of Primrose Square

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘You are aware of the twelve-step programme?’ Leon asked.

  ‘Of course I’m aware,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘They banged on about it for long enough back in the nuthouse.’

  ‘Then you’re also aware that you should be going to meetings regularly,’ he replied. ‘You may perhaps remember signing a release form with words to that effect? You promised your shrink you’d follow the steps of the programme, which means being in regular contact with me, as your sponsor. Returning my calls would be a good start.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Emily, ‘aren’t women supposed to get female sponsors? Not that I particularly care,’ she added.

  ‘Only if there are enough people to go around,’ said Leon, picking up a fork and horsing hungrily into the frangipane. ‘Besides, you got yourself a bit of a reputation back at St Michael’s. No one else would have you. So I drew the short straw.’

  ‘Listen to me, Leon,’ Emily sighed. ‘I think I can save us both a whole lot of time and bother here, OK? I used to drink and now I don’t anymore. That’s all there is to it. I appreciate you offering to do the whole sponsor thing, but I promise you, there’s no need. I don’t do meetings. Meetings are for oddballs with issues and over-sharers who love the sound of their own voices, not for people like me. I don’t need twelve steps and I certainly don’t need someone breathing down my neck every two minutes. All I need is to avoid pubs and stick to fizzy water and I’m good.’

  ‘You don’t need help?’ he said disbelievingly.

  ‘Just told you, no.’

  ‘You don’t need money? Lucky you.’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ she said grudgingly, ‘course I need money. We all need money, don’t we? But getting some kind of a job is next on my list.’

  ‘You’re not going to be able to hold down a job,’ Leon said, still horsing into his cake, ‘unless you stick with the programme.’

  ‘That’s bollocks!’

  ‘Oh yeah, because your employment history to date has been so stellar?’

  Then with his free hand, he reached into an inside pocket of his jacket and produced a twelve-step handbook.

  ‘Just read it,’ he said, shoving it towards her. Emily glared back at him, then started to flick through the booklet, more as a piss-take than anything else.

  ‘ “Step one,” ’ she said, reading aloud as Leon demolished the last of the cake in front of him, ‘ “admit your powerlessness over alcohol.” Yup, been there, seen that, done it, have the T-shirt. And what have we here?’ she went on. “Step two: come to realise that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Ooh, and take a look at step three,’ she went on, waving the booklet about theatrically. ‘Make a decision to turn our lives over to the will of God.’

  Leon stopped eating and looked over at her, an inscrutable expression on his face.

  ‘Now, let me ask you something,’ Emily went on, oblivious. ‘Do I look like a God-botherer? Do I strike you as a good little Mass-going Catholic? Last time I was in a church was for my father’s funeral, and that was about three years ago now.’

  ‘Keep reading,’ Leon said quietly.

  ‘ “Make a moral inventory of ourselves”,’ Emily read aloud. ‘Yadda, yadda, yadda. “Be entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character.” Jesus Christ,’ she sneered, ‘who wrote this shite?’

  Leon continued to look at her, waiting.

  ‘“Humbly ask him to remove all our shortcomings,”’ Emily read on, ‘“which neatly brings us to step eight.”’

  ‘There you go,’ Leon nodded. ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘“Make a list of all persons we’ve harmed and be prepared to make amends to them all.”’

  Emily looked at Leon and shrugged. There was a tight pause as he sat back, shoved the empty plate away and folded his arms.

  ‘Step eight,’ he said, holding her gaze. ‘Right there – that’s where we all fall down. Is there no one in your life that you’d want to make amends to?’

  Emily took another sip of coffee and looked anywhere except at him.

  ‘Jeez, must be hard being a flawlessly perfect human being like you.’

  Again, Emily said nothing. Instead she focused on looking out the window in front of her, point-blank refusing to engage.

  ‘Let me be perfectly clear with you from the start,’ Leon said, sitting forward, his voice low and gravelly. ‘I don’t want to be here any more than you. You think I’ve time to go chasing around the city trying to get a hold of you, Emily Dunne? You think I could be arsed putting up with your rudeness and your attitude? Dream on. But when I first got out of St Michael’s, my sponsor kept me sane and kept me sober, and that’s why I’m here. Because I believe in paying things forward. If I can help you even a quarter as much as my own sponsor helped me, then I’ll have paid my dues.’

  ‘Look, I appreciate you’re trying to do your best here,’ Emily said, ‘but come on. I’m a grown woman. Are you seriously expecting me to buy into all that shite about higher powers having control over me? Get real.’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘you’re the one who needs to get real.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ she said defensively.

  ‘Like a good sponsor,’ Leon went on, ‘I took the time and trouble to learn a bit about you before we met. I know what you’ve been through, Emily. I know loads about you. I know that before you went to St Michael’s for addiction treatment, you were in and out of other recovery programmes the way other people are in and out of revolving doors. I also know that while you were at St Michael’s, you were widely considered to be one of the most troublesome patients ever to cross their threshold.’

  ‘Well, excuse me,’ she replied, ‘but the reason I went to all those places – that poxy kip of a treatment centre, St Michael’s, included – was to dry out and kick the booze. And you know what? Job done. I’m dry, haven’t touched a drop in months. I’m one hundred and two days dry now, if you want to be pedantic about it. So I’m good. I’m cured. And if you don’t mind, I’ll thank you for the free coffee and be on my way.’

  She pulled her seat back and was just about to haul her long legs out from under the table when Leon’s voice stopped her.

  ‘What about your mother? Your sister?’ he asked, swivelling around to face her. ‘Your friends? Or don’t you have any friends? Common enough with dry alcoholics. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.’

  I bloody do have a friend, Emily was about to reply, thinking of Susan. But then, she reminded herself, she’d only known Susan for a short time – they met when sharing a room together at St Michael’s. Susan only knew the sober side of Emily, not the darker side that she worked so hard to keep under wraps. Susan had never once seen Emily drinking, and never would.

  Friends, Emily thought, the very word freezing her dead in her tracks. She remembered back to all those long weeks and months in treatment. Sunday was visiting day, but no one came to see Emily. Not once, not ever. Sundays were a killer for her back in treatment. Sundays almost drove her over the edge. Everyone else would sit down in the recreation room or stroll outside in the grounds chatting with loved ones, drinking tea and coffee, stuffing their faces with cakes and treats that visitors had brought.

  But Emily would sit alone upstairs, watching daytime crap on telly and trying to convince herself she didn’t care.

  Leon continued to stick the knife in.

  ‘I know you have an ex-husband too,’ he said. ‘No reparations to make there – nothing at all? Are you really going to tell me that everything is forgiven and hunky dory in your private life?’

  Emily slunk back into her seat, feeling a whole lot smaller.

  ‘That’s the thing about alcoholism, isn’t it?’ Leon said. ‘It’s not just your own life you piss all over, is it? One person’s drinking can drag up to a dozen others down with them.’

  ‘I know,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t need to be reminded.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then you also know thi
s: your chances of not drinking again increase tenfold, providing you have the right support around you. But you’re never going to get that support unless you’re prepared to build bridges with everyone you harmed in the past.’

  Emily thought of Sadie. How close they used to be, back when they were younger. How much did she miss that closeness now? Far more than she cared to admit.

  Then she thought of Jamie, who she’d stolen money from and reduced to tears. Jesus Christ, how could she have done that to an innocent little boy? There was Boring Brien, who she’d once propositioned when fried out of her brain, three years ago now, just as her marriage was breaking up and her drinking had spiralled out of all control. What had possessed her to sabotage her relationship with the only brother-in-law and sister she had?

  And towering over them all was her ex-husband, Alec. Alec, who she’d really, truly loved more than any other living person and who now wouldn’t even take her calls. For fuck’s sake, what the hell was wrong with her anyway? Why was it that whenever she had someone good in her life, someone just like Alec, she had this deep, primal need to challenge their love, to test them to the limit, until she pushed them away?

  And of course, there was her mother, who Emily had bitterly rowed with the last time they’d spoken, not long after her father died and when the shit really hit the fan.

  To this day her mother’s harsh words rang in her ears, loud and clear.

  ‘I can try to forget what you put me through,’ her mother had told her, ‘but I’ll never forgive. From this day on I only have one daughter and that’s Sadie. You’re dead to me. Do you hear me? Dead.’

  Leon rapped a teaspoon off the side of a saucer, pulling her focus back to that cluttered, noisy little coffee shop.

  ‘I’m offering to help you here, Emily,’ he said. ‘Why won’t you just accept a bit of help? There’s no shame in it.’

  ‘But . . . but supposing no one from my old life wants to talk to me?’ she asked in a very, very small voice.

  ‘Suppose you don’t try? Then look at your life now and ask yourself, which is worse?’

  Violet

  All morning long, Violet had a sickening, nauseous feeling deep in the pit of her stomach. She was pretty sure that she had been thorough and that there was nothing to worry about, but still. There was no harm in double-checking, was there?

  It was quiet at number eighty-one Primrose Square and, for once, she had the whole house to herself, lodger-free. Frank was at work and that appalling, unladylike Emily was off with her gentleman caller again, up to God knows what.

  The state of that man too, whoever he was. Violet had had a good look at him as he loitered outside her front door earlier. Not only was he far hairier than any grown man had a right to be, but she distinctly saw evidence of a tattoo. A tattoo on any person meant just two things: either that the person sporting it had just been released from prison, or that they were about to burgle you.

  For the moment, however, the house was deserted. Not a sound apart from the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway and the creaking of the ancient floorboards as Violet padded around in her slippers with her walking stick.

  Perfect, she thought. This was the ideal time to slip up to the bedrooms and make sure there was nothing lying around that might possibly come back to incriminate her. Naturally, she’d taken particular care to clear out both of her spare rooms prior to lodgers descending on her, but still. You never could tell, and that Emily one in particular was a case in point. Violet would put nothing past her, including taking the chance to burrow at the back of drawers and cupboards where she’d absolutely no right to be.

  With purpose in her step, Violet began her search in Emily’s bedroom, at the very top of the house. Without a second thought, she let herself into the room – and let out a gasp when she saw just how untidily it had been left. Items of clothing were strewn all across the bed, and the floor was covered in sweet wrappings, half-drunk water bottles and empty Tayto crisp bags.

  I’ll give that little rip a right dusting down the minute she gets back here, Violet thought. Where does she think she’s living anyway – the city dump?

  She made straight for the dresser just opposite the window, a heavy, old-fashioned mahogany piece of furniture that had been in the house since her late father’s time. The top drawer was stiff and unwieldy, but it gave after a good yank and she stood on tiptoe to peer inside.

  Disbelievingly, Violet pulled out what looked like a straggly piece of bright red dental floss – except this article appeared to be made of lace. An undergarment? Surely not. This item was little more than a piece of string. But there was a padded brassiere that came with it in exactly the same colour. Violet fished it out, repulsed. Really. That Emily Dunne had to be forty years old if she was a day. Was this really the kind of thing that she wore under those revoltingly tight jeans that she appeared to live, eat, drink and sleep in?

  Aside from that, though, there was nothing. Not a single thing that might give Emily a single scrap of ammunition against her. All clear, Violet thought, abandoning the top drawer and moving on to the second one. There, she scooped out a most alarming-looking contraption, a strange, flesh-coloured object of a curiously phallic shape, with all manner of buttons down the side, to operate whatever it was. Violet pressed one, whereupon the item in her hand began to vibrate gently, emitting a low buzzing sound. She had no idea what such an item could possibly be used for – perhaps one of those devices that kept away bluebottles in the heat? There was a tube beside it, which looked every bit like a tube of toothpaste, but had something most peculiar written along the side of it:

  DUREX INTENSE LUBE

  Goodness me, Violet thought, puzzled. Something you used in the engine of a motor car, perhaps? Which was peculiar, though, given that Madam Emily didn’t even own an automobile.

  Then her beady eye lit on the very thing she feared most.

  There was an old, yellowing newspaper lining the drawer that had doubtless been there since Old God’s time. But it was the date that made Violet stop rummaging as her blood ran cold.

  18 September 1968.

  Violet’s eighteenth birthday. Gently, almost tenderly, she took away all of Madam Emily’s items of clothing and removed the paper, now almost falling apart and ready to crumble. She held it in her hands, smelling it deeply.

  And suddenly she was that girl again. Eighteen years of age and the spoiled darling of the house, about to celebrate her special birthday at Primrose Square. Father had insisted on having a party, ‘with no expense spared for my only child,’ she could still hear him saying.

  1968. It was over fifty years ago but Violet could still remember how excited she’d been, how beautiful the house had looked, with her late mother’s good Persian rug rolled up in the drawing room downstairs, all set for dancing after supper. Where there were cobwebs on every surface now, then there were huge bouquets of flowers. But then their housemaid Betty had always been particularly skilled at floristry.

  ‘I want this party to be the talk of Primrose Square,’ Father had said. ‘All those begrudgers who’ve spent years looking down their noses at us, invite them all. Invite everyone! Whatever sort of a party you want, Vi, you can have. Just make sure that we’re the envy of everyone on the square.’

  Violet stood, fingering away at the yellow newspaper, lost in thought and remembering back to those happy days, when she was a spoiled, eighteen-year-old young lady with the whole world at her feet. There was only her and Father in that big house; Violet’s mother had died when she was just a baby and she and Father were as close as two peas in a pod. Betty lived in the maid’s room at the top of the stairs, because, as Father always said, if a live-in housemaid was good enough for the gentry, it was good enough for him.

  Father. Violet could still remember him so vividly. How tall and proud he was, how he’d brag about Violet’s musical talents every chance he got. Nowadays, of course, a man like Father would be described as an entrepreneur, but
back then people referred to him as ‘self-made’.

  Freddie Hardcastle had started out in life as a builder. He was a bricklayer by trade, and he’d slowly and steadily worked his way up, until he had his own contracting business – and a highly successful one too. In the building boom after the war, Violet’s father had made his money building houses for Dublin Corporation in the newly formed estates all around Drimnagh and Whitehall. Which meant he could easily afford to buy a gorgeous, two-storey over-basement Victorian terraced house on Primrose Square. The very best house on the square, as everyone said.

  Best of all, having money allowed Freddie Hardcastle to do what he really wanted more than anything else: to buy his way into polite society. He may have been born a humble brickie, but he was determined to spend his middle years rubbing shoulders with quality. Doctors and lawyers, that class of person. There was even a judge living on Primrose Square. These, Freddie hoped, would be Violet’s new friends; maybe given time she might even marry into that social class.

  At eighteen, Violet was her father’s pride and joy. Tall, slender, pretty as a peach and talented too; she had a real gift for the piano.

  ‘You’ll do great things in this life, Vi,’ he used to say to her. ‘You’ll have everything you ever wanted. And one day you’ll make me a very proud grandfather – when you meet the right young man, of course.’

  The night of her big birthday party couldn’t come quickly enough for Violet. The guest list exceeded well over a hundred; her own friends from finishing school were included, and Father insisted on inviting a great many of his business acquaintances.

  ‘Do you know, I don’t know a single sinner your father’s asked,’ Betty had grumbled to Violet, shaking her head. ‘It’s all politicians and judges and priests. There’s even a Monsignor in there. Not a single one of his old brickie pals. And your father worked with them all for so many years.’

  ‘Never mind, Betty.’ Violet had smiled, not caring who her father had or hadn’t invited. ‘We’ll have a wonderful time, no matter who’s here.’