by Anita Notaro
“Yes, well, ehmm …” He pretended a coughing fit. “I’m sure she wasn’t being derogatory.”
“What does that mean?”
But he’d had enough. He was exhausted and the day had barely started. “Never mind, what I mean is, it’s OK to tease yourself, but not other people.”
“You tease me and Sarah and Sam and Jess all the time.”
“Yes, but I love you and you know I don’t mean it. Dollar Bill might not.”
“OK, that’s fine.” She flicked her horse’s mane in his direction and was gone. It always amazed him the way they took you right to the edge and then something clicked and they were satisfied.
Jack abandoned plans to see Rembrandt once he realized it was a fabulously mild winter’s day. They dropped Georgia off at a party as Kate had asked, then headed out of the city. First up, a long walk for Rashers and then a big lunch for them in a country house that welcomed children, quite a rarity in post-Celtic tiger Ireland. “Too many antiques, they’ll all be fingering them,” one Princess Anne wannabe had informed himself and Bill a couple of weeks ago when they’d tried to give her bundles of dosh for an unexciting lunch menu, just because Jess was desperate to go to the loo.
“I wouldn’t finger her if I was told I had twenty minutes to live and she was the only one with the injection,” Bill had whispered and they’d taken themselves off to Kitty’s in Arklow instead. No such adult comedy today, though. Bill and Kate had gone to visit a sick relative so Jack and the kids had a terrific lunch—smoked salmon salad with nutty brown bread for him and goujons of poulet avec patatas frittes for the girls. The cafe was a cross between a trendy chic French sidewalk cafe and a bustling-with-tattoos kiosk in Majorca, he decided, having spent ten minutes trying to decipher the menu. They tucked into decent portions of crispy chicken nuggets, though, and the slightly pompous waiter brought a very snazzy-looking bowl of lurid red tom kat—as Jessie called it—without being asked, which was a definite plus. The girls dunked their chips in immediately and were happy.
There was a painting class all set up in the garden—retired folk by the look of them—just about to break for lunch, so easels and pallets were abandoned in favor of straw hats and canes as they made their way slowly into the conservatory, where huge pots of tea and cucumber sandwiches minus the crusts awaited them. It was all very relaxing.
Jack paid the bill then took a pot of coffee and the remains of his cheeseboard on a tray outside and the girls ran happily about while he finished the last of the Telegraph mag.
“I like this place,” Jess announced about ten minutes later, coming to sit on his lap.
“Me too.”
“Can I bring my own paints next time?”
“Sure, darling.”
“Cause I had to stretch really high to paint my dinosaur and now my arms are hurting.” She held one out for a kiss and he absentmindedly obliged.
“Fibber, you weren’t painting dinosaurs, there aren’t any around here.” He tickled her under the arm as she knew he would.
“It was one from my magic nation, like the long red one from George and the Dragon.”
“Ah yes, we never have to worry about you, do we, your imagination will always keep you going. So,” he stood up and stretched lazily, “want to show me where this magic, invisible dinosaur is then? Or is it a dragon, maybe?”
“No, it’s not. Look, it’s over there, see.”
“Where?”
“On the big board, right there. Can you see it? It’s purple, cause I couldn’t find any red.”
“Jess, don’t tell fibs, darling.” His eyes were drawn to a huge purple squiggle diagonally across a gentle landscape in the near distance. He looked at his daughter, then back at the almost-finished painting. No, they were wild foxgloves, definitely. There was only one problem, they looked slightly more amateurish then the rest of the work, even at this distance. His heartbeat quickened.
“You didn’t?”
“She did.” Sam appeared from nowhere. “I tried to stop her and then I shouted for you but you weren’t listening, so then I started to run over to you but it was too far, so then I ran back to pull her away but she’d already finished.” She was breathless, he knew it was anxiety. She always felt responsible for her little sister.
He took a deep breath. “It’s OK, Sam. It’s not your fault.” He bent down. “Jessie …” but she was backing away faster than a cow in an abattoir. He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward him. “Jess, look at me.” She lowered her eyes until they were burning holes in her patent-leather pumps. “I said, look at me.” Her “it wasn’t me, really, I was only joking” eyes barely met his desperately anxious ones before she resumed her navel gazing. He tilted her head up and kept it there.
“That is not a good thing to do. Some nice man or woman has spent all morning”—hell, all weekend, probably—“drawing a very pretty picture of the garden and you’ve ruined it.” Her big conker eyes went all glassy and her lower lip wobbled.
“I thought it was a sad picture and you said I should try and make people happy. Remember that song you used to sing to us in bed when Mummy went away?”
“Yes.” He almost choked. Sam started singing it, just in case he wasn’t feeling guilty enough to slit his wrists wide open, twenty miles from the nearest casualty ward.
“Yes, I know the one, Sam, thank you.” He took a deep breath. “Look,” he glanced around at the group of innocent old dears, who looked as if they were about to make tracks back to the task in hand, “we’ll talk about this in the car.” He gathered up their stuff in the time it would take some poor oulwan or oulfella to cry “jeepers creepers,” or something less charitable, and led the girls at what his old games mistress would have described as “a rollicking pace” in the direction of the car.
“I want to say sorry,” Jess was screaming at an octave he never knew she could reach. Takes after her mother there, he thought grimly.
“Yes, well, you can put your next five years’ pocket money in the poor box. That should just about cover it.”
Twenty-eight
“You did what?” “I legged it.”
“But … but, what does that say to the children? What kind of example does it set for the future?” Without realizing it, Ellie was doing her best Orla impersonation. Her sister would lecture Jesus on the right way to preach, if he appeared on earth again.
“I know, but I only thought of that afterward.” Jack ran his fingers through his already greasy hair. “Anyway, Miss Self-righteous, haven’t you ever done anything like that yourself?”
“Only once, when my westie, Mungo Jerry, tried to have Lauren McKenzie from next door’s rabbit, Snauser, for his tea and I thought about it long and hard for almost three seconds then I simply smoothed it out flat with the bloody side hidden and combed it nicely and scarpered to clean Mungo’s beard.”
“It was dead then, I take it?”
“As a dodo.”
“Well, now you know how I felt.” Jack and Ellie were speaking for the first time since the “incident.” He hadn’t been about to admit it to anybody, except that Jess had burst into tears as soon as Ellie had arrived this morning. He’d disappeared into his office and left them to it. It was only the worst pangs of hunger that had made him reappear at four thirty. No tasty morsels had come his way today, that’s for sure. She had clearly taken sides.
“Jack, you’re going to have to talk to her about it,” Ellie said now. “The poor baby is traumatized.”
“I did, all the way home from Wicklow and again over a Knickerbocker Glory in the Embassy Grill, her favorite. I explained carefully how she couldn’t tell anyone what Daddy had done, until the woman in the next booth started giving me funny looks. I swear she was trying to find the number of the child protection agency as we hot-footed it out of there as well.”
“Well, talk to her again. Keep trying.”
“Look, it was a terrible day from the start. Jess asked me if I loved you and then Georgia was here and
she asked me if I’d give some teacher one like I apparently told Bill I would.”
“You are a baaaaad papa.”
“Actually, it was definitely all your fault.” He was remembering. “You’ve been singing to them about fat-bottomed girls. So, who’s a bad example then?”
She slapped her ass and repeated the line, looking only marginally older than Sam. “That’s innocent, compared to giving her teacher one.”
He decided to ignore that. “Would you help? We could bring them for a pizza tonight and—”
“Sorry, no can do. It’s club night, and it’s my turn to cook. Actually, would you mind if I left a bit early? I am seriously dreading tonight. Your dinner’s in the oven and the lunches and all are done. I’m supposed to be making millet and spinach mash with lightly steamed vitality veggies, and I’ve no idea what millet looks like, never mind where to get it.”
“Tomorrow evening, then?”
“Fine. I’m just going to hang out this wash and then I’ll be off. Good luck, captain. May the Force be with you.”
The millet mash tasted slightly of banana. There was a perfectly simple explanation for this: Ellie couldn’t find millet anywhere, so she added mashed banana because a knowing shop assistant told her millet was yellowy beige, smooth and tasteless. A bit of salt and no one was any the wiser. They were all way too interested in Maggie’s declaration of love, Ellie’s boss’s suicide mission, Pam’s near-hysterical conversation with the whinger about tuxedos for the boys for Christmas dinner at the Plaza and, most importantly, Toni’s private plane to dinner in Ashford Castle. Apparently, she found diamond earrings in her crème brûlée and would have swallowed them except the tin foil they were wrapped in had hit off one of her fillings. Her shriek could be heard in nearby Castlebar, according to Maggie. Millet mash didn’t even make it on to the agenda.
They’d had to skip brunch the previous Saturday so there was lots to catch up on, although Toni had insisted on a “Bend it like a Loos Beckham” stretch class, so named because apparently after a couple of sessions you were so supple that you could have phone sex by texting with your toe.
“Did anyone see the column on Saturday, by the way?” Pam asked as soon as they drew breath, after about three hours.
“No, is he back?”
“Yep, and raring to go, by the sounds of it. It was all about one-night stands.”
“Here it is, I kept it for you.” Maggie pulled a dog-eared page from her bag. “Like my purse by the way?”
They did. “Present from Doug. Anyway, listen to this. He’s talking about the difference between men and women.” She found the bit she was looking for.
“The consensus among the women I know is that men who only want a one-night stand are shits. It happens a lot, apparently. They meet a guy, arrange to see them again and then spend hours getting dolled up to the nines for the first real date. This involves several trips to the gym (if there’s time) or Andrews liver salts if they’re really up against it. Then they spend a week’s wages at the hairdresser’s, raid their friends’ wardrobes and have their teeth cleaned (bad breath being one of the worst first-date turn-offs, apparently). They meet the guy, offer to split the bill for dinner and invite them back home. This may appear to be a casual invitation but it involves taking bed linen to the laundry, having mini-maids in for two days and several trips to gourmet shops for some fabulous new muesli and the latest venison sausages. It all goes swimmingly, they spend the next day doodling, checking how their joint names might look on the wedding invites and he never calls. When they tell it like that, you can understand that they might be just a little bit miffed. ‘Why can’t they just be up front?’ my pal Julia screamed last week. She didn’t believe it when I said simply, ‘Because we are the biggest cowards on the planet.’ A few of my rugby mates were even more forthcoming. ‘Why ruin a perfectly good shag when you can just give her your mobile number with one wrong digit?’ Martin said over a pint. ‘I’d rather chew some of that stuff that Jordan had in the jungle, than get into an “I’m not ready for commitment” type chat.’”
“Doesn’t it just sum up everything we know already?” They all agreed it did.
“I’m dying to read it.” Ellie grabbed the cutting. “Anyone fancy a seaweed bath, by the way? They have them in Sligo, apparently.”
“Well, off you go. Have one after you’ve had your colonic.” Toni smiled sweetly.
“She’s right, you’re on your own there, sister.” Maggie wrinkled her nose.
“This peppermint tea tastes like toothpaste.” Toni grimaced. “Any chance of a cup of Nescafe?”
“Even better, I’ll make some of that nice Italian stuff in the plunger.” Ellie was up in a jif.
By eleven they were all talked out and one or two of them thought about visiting the chipper on the way home, so yawns began in earnest after Pam slipped Ellie a note asking if she wanted to meet her at Caffolas in ten minutes for a batter sausage and curry chips.
Next day Jessie was beating her dolls to death with a hairbrush and saying “bold Daddy” as she lashed out. Ellie had them ready at five o’clock when she tapped on his office door.
“Still on for the ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say’ lecture?”
“What? Oh yes, thanks, Nora.” He looked seriously distracted. “Actually no, I’m trying to answer this fucking Q & A thing for America. I hate these things. You’re supposed to be witty and I never am. They want to know if I played with hatchets as a child. Seemed quite surprised that I didn’t. The best I could offer was that I made blood potions out of Tabasco sauce. Pretty dull, eh?” She had no idea what he was on about. “You know, inspiration for becoming a crime writer?” “Oh I see.” She hadn’t a clue.
It was funny the four of them being out together, all muffled up against the shuddering winter blast that had hit the east coast of Ireland—and most of Europe—in the last day or so. There was a Christmassy feeling already and Ellie did her best to ignore it, although Sam was humming “Jingle Bells” in the car.
The chat went on for a lot longer than either of them had expected and Jack, to his credit, groveled and admitted that yes, they should have stayed and owned up and “taken their penance” as Sam suggested.
After humongous pizzas the girls wandered off to inspect the first Christmas tree of the festive season being erected by Antonio and Tomasso, and Jack ordered two glasses of wine and visibly relaxed for the first time all evening.
“Thanks, Nora.” He raised his glass and tried to ignore her smirk. “Christ, I need this drink.”
“It was all going fine until you tried to involve me in your wrongdoing. It was a rabbit my dog bloodied, not a group of pensioners.”
“You still tried to cover it up.” He wagged his finger at her.
“One more smart remark out of you and I’ll insert an anonymous notice in Artists’ Weekly.”
“Hello, you two. This is a nice surprise. The girls just told us you were here.” Kate and Bill arrived at their table clutching two glasses and a bottle of Chianti, Kate doing her best to hide her delight at seeing them so cozy. It wasn’t lost on either of them, Ellie suspected, judging by Jack’s leap into the air and rush to sit his sister down beside her. He practically joined the couple at the next table in his efforts to appear casual.
“Jolly cozy you look too.” Bill wasn’t nearly as cute as his wife. “So, what great mysteries of life were you unraveling, then?”
He topped up their glasses without asking and Kate had to shimmy hers under his nose. “Sorry, darling.”
“Oh, the usual.” Jack winked at Ellie. “Great art fiascos of our generation, you know the sort of thing.” Ellie smiled and kept mum. It was a light-hearted extension to what had turned into a very enjoyable evening.
Toni, meanwhile, was not a happy bunny. Gordon had canceled their date, twice. The first time he’d called from London, very apologetic and promised to make it up to her later in the week. Then, less than an hour before they were due to meet, his very
snotty secretary rang to let her know that Mr. Thornton had been unavoidably delayed and no, she didn’t know anything further. Her simpering “I’m sure he’ll be in touch later in the week” sounded very much like “don’t hold your breath” to an already frustrated, La Perla-clad nurse. She took her frustration out on the WWW Club, renaming it the Wimpy, Whingin’ Wagons in a ferocious e-mail, targeted specifically at the other three, as if she didn’t belong. They were to meet for a swim at eleven on Saturday, itself a shock to the system.
“Maybe all she got this week was a Prada handbag?” Pam rang Ellie on Friday evening to see what was going on.
“No, she told me they were planning a weekend in Paris when I spoke to her on Wednesday.”
“Well then, either her father has reduced her allowance or some old codger at the home has clapped it and not named her in his will.” Pam laughed. “You know how she expects her special sugar daddies to deliver.”
“Poor Toni.” Ellie understood her friend. “She equates money with love, ’cause her parents showered her with gifts every time they uprooted her from her friends and dragged her off to another new school in another new country.”
“I know, I know. Anyway, I’m just moaning about having to go for a swim. I’ll be fine once I get there.”
After a grueling aqua-aerobics class that saw Ellie’s right leg shoved over her left shoulder and Pam’s bum a bit too close for comfort, it was on to the latest health cafe, cheeringly named in neon as No Fatties Here. Pam was outraged and immediately rang the Sunday World and the Director of Consumer Affairs and they had to practically pull her off Toni.
“Remind us again why we’re not telling her that she’s really pissing us off,” Maggie whispered to Ellie. “Oh yes, I forgot, she had too many toys as a kid.”
“Relax, it’s a wind-up.” Maggie had read a review of the place. “It’s called the Slim for Life Cafe really, that other thing’s just a joke.” Pam was still muttering.
“Chill, babe, you’re wired.” Maggie smiled and nearly landed herself a black eye.
