‘Better,’ said Eileen. She heard footsteps coming along the corridor and whispered, ‘But you can negotiate the right deal for her, and that includes where she eats and sleeps as well as how much she’s paid.’
Deidra tapped on the door before she opened it.
‘Well, well, well, I never thought I’d see you again so soon,’ said Eileen as Mary Kate stepped nervously into the room, accompanied by a woman who seemed unable to close her mouth.
‘Neither did I,’ said Mary Kate. ‘You would not believe what I’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours. This is Cat, she lives next door to my Aunt Bee, who sailed back to Ireland the day I left. Cat?’
Cat was looking around the room and had walked over to a plant on a jardinière and appeared to be staring.
Eileen smiled. ‘It’s an aspidistra,’ she said. ‘I’ve had it for a long time now.’
Cat found her voice. ‘Do you know how long that plant would last on top of that tall thing in my house with our kids? Not even five minutes.’ She looked towards Mary Kate, her eyes wide. ‘Would you even believe that?’ she said, pointing back to the plant.
Lizzie frowned. Eileen smiled. This was going to be fun.
One hour and two phone calls later, Lizzie pulled on her gloves. ‘Well, there you go, she is expecting you at 6 p.m.’ There had been only one awkward moment, when Lizzie had asked Mary Kate to shorten her name to Mary.
Mary Kate’s reply had been swift and unequivocal. ‘My mammy didn’t call me Mary, she called me Mary Kate, and that’s my name.’
Cat had slipped her hand on top of Mary Kate’s, squeezed it and smiled. ‘Good for you,’ she said.
Mrs O’Keefe had nodded in approval. ‘Quite right,’ she’d whispered over the sound of Lizzie talking into the phone.
‘Don’t you be late now. Best not to get off to a bad start. Jolly good luck for you that my sister met you on the boat and could vouch for you. We usually demand written testimonials.’
Mary Kate had not warmed to Lizzie and had found it difficult to understand how it was that she and Mrs O’Keefe were sisters.
‘Good, well, there we go, all sorted. Perhaps you could give Cat a lift to the bus stop, Lizzie?’ said Eileen.
Lizzie frowned at her sister.
‘Oh, don’t mind me, I can walk,’ said Cat. ‘I just feel a bit funny about leaving this one. But the kids will be home and wanting to know where their tea is soon, and if I leave them with Linda for much longer, she’ll sell them – or even worse, knowing Linda.’
Eileen was horrified at the potential fate of Cat’s children. ‘Well, in that case, Lizzie will run you straight home, won’t you, Lizzie.’
Lizzie was completely unused to being told what to do, and for once she was speechless. ‘Come along then,’ she said as she flipped her headscarf over her head like a kite and, letting it land and settle into place, tied it under her chin. ‘We had better get going before my sister starts finding more things for me to do.’
There was a touch of humour in her voice, and for the first time in a long while Eileen smiled at her sister. ‘Thank you, Lizzie,’ she said.
‘Well, it looks like all’s well that ends well,’ said Cat, her eyes bright, her voice full of enthusiasm as she clapped her hands together. She had really taken to Mrs O’Keefe. She was relieved she’d made the decision to remove her curlers. She nearly hadn’t, wanting to keep her hair tight for the bingo that night.
‘Hardly,’ snapped Lizzie. ‘She’s lost every penny she owns. I wouldn’t call that a good ending.’
Cat blushed and looked down at her hands. Now she felt foolish.
Mary Kate looked up at Mrs O’Keefe, who shook her head. ‘I think you’re right, Cat,’ she said kindly. ‘My Pat, he always used to say that everything happens for a reason, and I think, as unfortunate as yesterday was, we will know very soon what that reason was.’
Cat walked over to Mary Kate and threw her arms around her shoulders. ‘You know where I am now, love. Come back and see me. If that woman doesn’t want you, and she might not – they’re mostly stuck-up around here – come straight back.’ She realised instantly what she’d said. ‘Oh, honest to God, I don’t mean you – you’ve been smashing.’
Mrs O’Keefe laughed. ‘No offence taken, Cat. I think they’re all stuck-up too.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ said Lizzie impatiently. ‘Come along then, Cat.’
Minutes later, the front door slammed, a car engine started and Mary Kate and Eileen O’Keefe were alone.
‘Let’s have another pot of tea, just us two,’ she said. She noted the long, deep sigh that Mary Kate gave out as she sat in front of the fire and saw the tears that filled her eyes. Her brightness in front of Lizzie, who was securing her a job, and Cat, who would be writing to her aunt, had been all bravado. ‘Are you alright, love?’ she asked as she placed her hand on Mary Kate’s shoulder.
Mary Kate shuffled forwards in the chair to free a handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt. Turning a pitiful face up towards Mrs O’Keefe, she replied with one word on the end of a sob. ‘No.’
12
Lavinia Marcus turned the key and, pushing the door open with great care, tilted her head and listened. She could hear nothing but the swinging of her key fob against the wood. She let out a long sigh. Thank goodness. Joan had agreed to take the boys to the park and had clearly been as good as her word. She needed some time alone before they returned.
She hurriedly removed her gloves and hat, threw them over the chair in the hall, then did the same with her coat. She caught herself in the mirror on the hall stand as she undid the buttons on her dress. She had overdressed for the weather. She’d thought it was going to rain and in Lavinia’s mind, as she was now living in the northwest of England, rain meant cold; only it hadn’t rained and it was warm and clammy.
She studied her face for signs of guilt and her blue eyes stared back at her, empty. Her hair was blonde and curled around her ears, and her cheeks were soft, sharply defined like two small pillows, and as pink as her lips. She opened the vestibule door with its two stained-glass panels depicting a brace of dead pheasants, which she hated, and looked down the long hallway of her house, which she hated even more.
They were on the wrong side of the avenue, the side whose gardens faced north, and that was something Lavinia could not accept. ‘Why can’t we live in a smarter area?’ she demanded of her husband every single night. ‘How can we live on an avenue where everyone on the opposite side of the street with the south-facing gardens thinks they’re a cut above us?’
Nicholas always sighed in that long-suffering way of his before he responded. ‘Duke’s Avenue is a smart area. The whole avenue is smart – every house. It doesn’t matter what side you live on. And anyway, since when did you become such a keen gardener? I cannot live too far from my patients. I have to be nearby when I’m on call. We should really be closer to town.’ He knew she would never agree to that.
‘Closer to town? Are you mad? We should be out in the country. When I married you, you told me we were going to live in a smart area. You chose this practice, Nicholas – you deceived me. If you want to be in Liverpool, why don’t you have a practice in a smarter area? Why did you have to take on that godawful place?’
And then the row would begin. It was always the same, and it always ended in tears. It wasn’t just the house that annoyed her: there was also the way the telephone had a habit of ringing in the middle of the night with a medical emergency and someone needing his help. He shared his on-call duties with the other doctor at the practice, so he was required to be available every other night and every other weekend. If Nicholas had already been called out and the phone rang again, Lavinia had to answer it. When this happened, she routinely made him suffer in an atmosphere of silence and hostility for up to a week, with her talking to him through the boys, even though their youngest had only just started school. She prided herself on knowing how to carry a grudge.
Years ago,
he would have jumped through hoops to avoid being given the silent treatment. He used to make accommodations in the form of bouquets of flowers or dinners at the golf club, but those had only mollified her to a degree, and now he’d even given up doing that. He seemed to think that just being with him and the boys should be enough to make her happy; that having a husband who was both committed to alleviating the suffering of others and able to provide a comfortable life for his own family should be sufficient. It was not.
Lavinia threw open the bedroom door and cursed that the bed wasn’t made. It didn’t occur to her that Joan couldn’t be in two places at once, down at the park and in the house doing her chores. She let her dress slide to the floor as she removed her earrings, which she dropped onto a glass tray on the mahogany dressing table, along with her pearls and hair-combs. Flinging up the sash window, she flopped onto the bed and the feather pillows and turned her face towards the windows to catch what air there was. She could see the tops of the cherry trees swaying in the breeze, heard the gentle rustle of the leaves and the repetitive call of the wood pigeons.
Lifting her legs, she began to undo the studs on her suspender belt, flinching at the tenderness in her hips and thighs, sore from a long afternoon of lovemaking. Her fingers slipped inside her silk French knickers and she smiled. It was the wrongness, the audacity, the intense thrill of deceit that made it all so exhilarating; it was the only thing keeping her sane in that dull, dull avenue. She could never leave her husband, her prison, not without a cast-iron excuse – her parents would never forgive her. He would have to do something dreadful, and the sun would freeze before that happened. She was married to Dr Perfect, according to everyone who knew them.
She could survive, with indulgence. And Robin was her indulgence. Their hours together were limited. School having broken up was a huge inconvenience as Joan very obviously could not manage the home and the children. They ran circles around her. ‘I really do need more help,’ she whispered to herself.
That morning she’d been struck by a sudden thought, just before she’d set out for her assignation. Remembering that she still had the agency details from when they’d employed Joan, she’d hurried over to the bureau, pulled the lid down and begun rifling through the untidy pile of correspondence. Nicholas had his own office and desk in the house. He dealt with all of the bills and anything to do with the home and the children. He paid all of her bills too – the hairdresser, milliner and dressmaker. ‘Ah, there you are,’ she’d said out loud as she found a letterhead stapled to the testimonial that had arrived with Joan, along with the bill for the agency’s services. Her mood had lifted. Nothing made Lavinia feel better than when she was spending money or elevating her status, and having a second girl living in, to help Joan with the boys, would certainly do that, allowing her more time to do the things she wanted.
Back from her early afternoon rendezvous now, she rolled onto her side and thought of ways she and Robin could meet more often, maybe even get away to a nice hotel. ‘I need more freedom,’ she repeated to herself. Her summer could be seriously curtailed if she didn’t do something, and soon.
She’d not been in her bedroom for ten minutes when the peal of the telephone rang up the stairs. She groaned, irritated at the thought of having to answer another call from a patient who’d confused the doctor’s home telephone number with the one at his practice. She turned off the bath she’d started running, ran down the stairs in her slip and was immediately glad she hadn’t left the phone to ring out. It was the owner of the employment agency getting back to her – not just one of her assistants – and she had good news.
‘Well, actually, I have to say, this is fortuitous,’ the woman said. ‘My sister lives only doors from you, on the sunny side of the avenue.’
Lavinia suppressed her sigh. Everyone who lived on the other side made that point, repeatedly.
‘We have the girl here with us now,’ she continued. ‘My sister personally recommends her. What would be a good time?’
Lavinia looked at her watch. She had her hair appointment in an hour and didn’t want to be late. Looking her best was more important now than ever. ‘Let’s say six o’clock. Will that be too late?’ she asked with unusual sweetness.
Nicholas was coming home later and later from his surgery these days. He used to make a point of being home for the boys’ bathtime, running into the bathroom, rolling up his sleeves and falling to the floor. But, as ever with Nicholas, his patients had taken even that pleasure from him, a pleasure he seemed quite happy to abandon.
‘Yes, six o’clock would be just fine. Her name is Mary Kate Malone.’
‘Really…’ Lavinia was rifling in her handbag, searching for a cigarette, half distracted. ‘What a mouthful. We shall have to call her just Mary – is that acceptable?’ She placed the cigarette in her mouth to free up her hand as she looked deep into her handbag for the lighter.
There was silence on the end of the phone and then the voice of the agency owner came back on. ‘Er, I’m afraid not. Apparently, her full name is Mary Kate, it is not to be shortened.’
Lavinia snapped the clasp of the handbag shut, folded her arms and took a drag of her cigarette. ‘Really.’ She smiled and thought to herself how amusing it was that the working classes could be so protective over the most meaningless things. ‘Send her at six.’
As she dressed for her hair appointment, she thought of the excuses Nicholas would make for coming home late that evening. ‘My patients have very different lives to ours,’ he would say, as if she couldn’t possibly comprehend. ‘When they have a sick baby, it’s often very sick because of the conditions in which they live. Three babies registered at our surgery died last winter, two with gastroenteritis and one with pneumonia. You take the central heating and the coal fires we have for granted.’
Lavinia hated those conversations most of all. She did feel sympathetic, of course she did – she was human – but why did the living conditions of others mean she had to sacrifice her husband? ‘Robin doesn’t seem to be as bothered as you, and nor does he work as many hours. He also thinks a lot more of his family because, unlike you, he puts them first.’ She was talking about his partner at the practice, and her secret lover too.
Nicholas never had an answer to that. Robin was a good doctor, but he didn’t have quite the same bedside manner as Nicholas and was inclined to scold patients he felt were wasting his time – not something Nicholas had ever done. ‘Find yourself a hobby for when the boys are at school,’ he’d said to her. But Lavinia was not the type of woman one could easily placate.
She had swallowed her anger. He had moved her across the country, away from Surrey and all her smart friends with commuter husbands who worked in the City. Well, he had made his bed, now he could lie in it. She thought of his words as she walked to the hairdresser’s. ‘Find yourself a hobby!’ She had certainly done that. Pulling her handbag further up her arm, she decided to walk down rather than up the avenue, even though it would take longer and could make her late for her appointment, not an unusual occurrence. If she walked up the avenue, she might bump into Joan bringing the boys back from the park and that just wouldn’t do, not today.
13
Eileen O’Keefe offered to walk with Mary Kate to the house for the interview. ‘Just in case you feel a bit nervous on the way,’ she said.
‘Not at all,’ Mary Kate remonstrated. ‘I want to do something right and if I can make my way down the road and cross it without getting run over or mugged, that would be a huge improvement, is what I’m thinking.’
Despite the seriousness of her words, Eileen laughed; something she hadn’t done for a very long time. ‘If they ask you about those bruises, just tell them the truth, don’t try and hide it. And also, remember that you don’t have to live in – they already have someone doing that. In fact, I’d say that living out would be better. That way you can earn more money and you can sleep here.’
‘But I would have to pay you for sleeping here,’ Mary Kate sta
mmered.
‘No, you would not. I wouldn’t let you.’ Eileen was quick with her prepared retort. While Mary Kate had sobbed her heart out in front of her fire, she had thought it all through. ‘It would be lovely for me and Bluey to have a bit of company at night. You can sit and watch some of that television. It’s a waste, putting it on just for me. Do you know, sometimes I find I’m talking to Bluey and asking him what he thinks. It would be so much nicer if it was you – at least I’d get an answer. Let me tell you, there’s nothing as miserable as laughing on your own.’
Mary Kate smiled. No one in Tarabeg had a television. There was no transmitter that reached the coast and it was widely believed that there never would be. Not that anyone in Tarabeg was remotely concerned. Who needed television when they had Mrs Doyle’s telex machine in the post office, the one nod to modernity that had been made in Tarabeg since the time of the last famine – that and the opening of the Malones’ shop. Most of the villagers liked it that way because Father Jerry told them they should. How could a priest do battle with the darker forces if people had a million images pumped into their homes each night and a multitude of voices spouting ungodly opinions?
Mary Kate placed her hand on the large brass handle. As she opened Mrs O’Keefe’s front door, the warm, dusty air rose up from the red tarmacadam road. The sun had dipped behind the cherry trees, the last of its warmth still held in the dark red bricks of the houses and tall chimneys. She looked down the six steps and took a deep breath, her cardigan buttoned up and her shoes cleaned by Deidra on Mrs O’Keefe’s instructions. She clutched her handbag, pulled the pink silk scarf Mrs O’Keefe had lent her to cover her bruising a little tighter around her neck, and prepared to leave.
Mary Kate Page 15
