The Love of My Life

by Louise Douglas

  I was working with an older woman called Jean, a nice woman.

  ‘What is it, Olivia? You’ve gone white as a sheet,’ she said.

  I chewed my lower lip and nodded over towards Nathalie and Angela.

  ‘Those two. I’d just rather not serve them.’

  Jean squeezed my elbow. ‘Don’t worry, chicken, I’ll look after them. You go and tidy up round the bridesmaids.’

  Gratefully I went over to the bridesmaids’ displays and started rearranging tiaras and fake bouquets quite unnecessarily in order not to hear what was being discussed some twenty feet away amongst the wedding gowns. Even so, Angela’s clipped voice travelled and the bridal phrases, light and shiny as the materials of the dresses, shimmied over to me: words like princess, beautiful, appliqué, petticoat, tiara, dreams, happiest, day, of, your, life.

  Any bride-to-be who came into this part of Wasbrook’s invariably stayed for several hours, trying on different dresses and shoes and veils and jewellery, and Nathalie was no exception. I kept myself hidden, finding bits of paperwork to do, organizing the tiny drawers of pins and silk flowers. After a while my attention was distracted by a miserable, heavily pregnant young woman and her mother, whose expression of tight-lipped martyrdom so resembled my own mother’s that I felt completely at home.

  My pregnant lady was in one of the luxurious changing cubicles with their little gilt chairs and flattering lighting when Nathalie came out of the other. She looked, to me, like a man in drag in a shepherdess-style dress with a froth of skirts, a deep, heart-shaped neckline and old-fashioned ribbon-and-lace sleeves. It was a shame she was so round-shouldered and so flat-chested. The dress didn’t fit right but both Angela and Jean clasped their hands to their chests and sighed when they saw her. Angela fished in her handbag for a tissue and dabbed at her nose. Nathalie twirled clumpily round in front of the huge, ornately framed floor-to-ceiling mirror with its permanent, elaborate silk flower displays and then stopped when she caught sight of me reflected in the background. There was nothing for it but to go over.

  ‘You look lovely, Nathalie,’ I said, smiling like an adult, like we were on equal terms, like I didn’t care about the way she had talked down to me in the past, like I didn’t care she was marrying Luca Felicone.

  ‘Thank you,’ Nathalie said graciously, but the smile had died on her lips and the light had gone out of her eyes. ‘Do you work here?’

  I nodded. ‘It’s a great job.’

  ‘Are you training to be a manager or something?’

  ‘No. I’m just an assistant.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘Horses for courses,’ said Angela. ‘I’m glad to see you’re sorting yourself out at last, Olivia. Your poor mother.’

  The pregnant woman’s mother’s ears pricked up. She was pretending to study the Pronuptia brochure.

  Now that I was out of Portiston, in my own territory, I felt more than a little irritated by Angela’s tone. Jean came to stand beside me in a supportive manner. Waves of warm Lancôme washed soothingly over me.

  ‘So, are you all ready for the wedding?’ she asked Angela. ‘There’s always so much for the MoB to do.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘MoB. Mother of the bride.’

  Angela and Nathalie exchanged coy glances, but they didn’t correct Jean.

  ‘We want it to be really special,’ said Angela. ‘For Nathalie and for Luca, of course. We’re so proud of both of them.’

  She bestowed one of her best smiles on Nathalie. The bare skin on Nathalie’s chest, shoulders and neck flushed a furious red.

  ‘Ahhhh,’ said Jean, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle out of Nathalie’s skirt. ‘How lovely for you all.’

  ‘Is Luca looking forward to the wedding?’ I asked.

  Nathalie looked at her feet. Angela bustled.

  ‘Of course he is. Oh, he pretends he’s not interested, but deep down he’s as excited as we are, isn’t he, Nathalie?’

  ‘He thinks weddings are female territory,’ said Nathalie.

  ‘They’re all like that,’ Jean piped up. ‘My husband couldn’t be doing with any of the preparations but you should have seen him on the day. He had the time of his life. And we’ve been married thirty years.’

  I smiled at Nathalie. ‘Let’s hope you and Luca last that long.’

  She opened her mouth but before she could speak my pregnant bride-to-be came out of her cubicle. While Nathalie looked like a character from a pantomime, my poor lady looked like something out of her own worst nightmare. It was nothing short of sadistic to make the poor girl marry in such an advanced state of indignity, let alone in a white dress that hung off her shoulders but strained at her waist.

  The mother pulled a face. ‘Not what I imagined,’ she said. ‘You’d better go up another couple of sizes.’

  The daughter shuffled back into the cubicle. I saw Nathalie and Angela exchanging amused, patronizing glances. I had had enough of them.

  ‘That was a lovely surprise to see you both. Please give my love to Luca and Marc,’ I said briskly, and turned to the martyr-faced mother of my bride, hoping to persuade her very subtly that they’d all have a much nicer wedding if they waited until after the baby was born. I thought it might take my mind off Luca. It didn’t.

  thirty-nine

  When Marc was gone to meet his friends in Limerick, I had planned to go for a walk on my own. In the event, however, I just lay on my side on the green candlewick bedspread and watched the pattern of sunlight dancing the shadows of leaves on the wall in front of me until I fell asleep.

  I had a nightmare and woke sweating and cold and confused. It took me a moment to work out where I was. The sun had gone down. It was dark. I had a shower. I wrapped myself in towels and moisturized my face, and then I stood at the window and, for a while, gazed out over the valley, where the lights twinkled just as they had the night before. Then I settled myself into bed, leaning up against the pillows like an invalid, opened the bottle of wine that Marc had left for me and drank from a china teacup while I watched a film with Cary Grant on TV.

  While I lay there, alone, miles from home, the situation I was in became clear to me and I knew exactly what I must do.

  No matter how painful it was, no matter how lonely I was, no matter how much I cared for him, and he for me, there was only one reasonable course of action to take.

  I resolved to end the affair with Marc.

  forty

  Luca and Nathalie were due to marry on Christmas Eve. I had not been invited to the wedding, but Mum was doing the flowers at the church. She went for an audience with Angela to discuss the colour of the bridesmaids’ dresses et cetera, and returned full of outrage at the opulence of the wedding, the amount being spent, the downright extravagance of it all. She was, at the same time, full of grudging admiration for Angela for the way she had organized everything down to the last little detail.

  ‘You should see the bridesmaids’ headdresses, Olivia, they are exquisite, like little Roman tiaras woven with silk flowers and silver and purple ribbons cascading down the back,’ she said. And then in the next breath: ‘Heaven knows how much they cost, it’s an obscene waste of money.’

  ‘Did you see Luca?’ I asked. I was peeling potatoes for dinner, my sleeves rolled up to my elbows, my hands white in the cold sink water. The pan was already boiling on the hob, steaming up the kitchen window so that I couldn’t see out to the wet orange and brown of the fallen leaves in the autumn garden.

  ‘I saw one of them but I can never tell those boys apart,’ said Mum, sitting on a kitchen chair and rubbing her foot. ‘Did you get the sausages out like I asked you?’

  It must have been a Thursday.

  I nodded. The sausages were on a plate, pricked and waiting to go into the frying pan.

  ‘Nathalie’s a lovely girl,’ said Mum. ‘She reminds me of Lynnette.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘She’s not fit to lick Lynnette’s boots!’

  ‘Well, Lynnette does
have a better figure,’ conceded Mum, ‘but Nathalie’s been through so much and still she always puts other people first. She’s such a help to Angela, you know. Such a hard worker and so reliable. Angela says she doesn’t know what they’d do without her.’

  I pulled a face and carried on scraping.

  ‘Angela says Nathalie’s the daughter she never had. She says Luca and her make the perfect couple.’

  ‘Good for them,’ I said, draining the water and scooping the poor pale potatoes out with my hands. They were like little naked dead animals.

  ‘Angela says it couldn’t have worked out better. Nathalie and Luca can take over the business and live in the flat, and she and that husband of hers are going to take things a bit easier. Perhaps even move to Watersford.’

  ‘Lovely.’ I was halving the potatoes, slipping them into the bubbling water.

  ‘Did you salt the water?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because Colin will be here shortly and you know how he likes his potatoes properly cooked.’

  I rinsed my fingers under the tap and collected the peelings from the drainer.

  ‘How did Dad like his potatoes, Mum?’

  She ignored me.

  ‘It’s going to be the most beautiful wedding, you know. Ostentatious, but beautiful. Of course Angela said I must go back to Marinella’s for a glass of champagne after the service. The whole place is going to be decorated in silver and purple and green. There’ll be a huge Christmas tree outside with lights, and flowers tied to all the railings, and they’re having a proper Italian opera singer. Such dreadful extravagance.’

  ‘Big wow,’ I said. I lit the gas for the frying pan and melted a triangle of lard and by and by the conversation turned to something else and by the time we sat down to eat Mum and Mr Hensley were happily assassinating the character of the Sunday-school teacher and I was left alone to dwell on my personal collection of ‘what if’s’ and ‘if only’s’.

  It was late October and Anneli was back from university for the weekend. She seemed scruffier and less well kempt than before, and was full of stories of her new life and her new friends, but I could tell from the look on her face that she was pleased to see me. We spent a whole day in her bedroom while she talked about living in hall, and what it was like getting to know all those new people, and how her room-mate was the daughter of a really famous liberal film star, and how it was really quite frightening and how she really really really wished I was there with her. And so did I. I’d forgotten how much I missed my best friend. Anneli knew how desperate I was to escape Portiston.

  The first evening Anneli was back we went for a walk along the seafront but it started to rain so we went into the Black Swan and drank a couple of beers and I told her about Luca and Nathalie’s wedding and she rolled her eyes and said, ‘That’s a marriage that’s never going to work.’

  I asked her why and she said that her mum was friends with the woman who did the laundry for Marinella’s and she had told her that ever since Luca had got engaged he’d been walking round like a condemned man.

  ‘Mum says you should never fight destiny,’ said Anneli. ‘Which isn’t exactly a scientific term but I do know what she means.’

  ‘What does she mean?’ I asked, blowing out cigarette smoke through puckered lips, an affectation Anneli had adopted and which I had immediately copied.

  ‘You know, you should always take the path of least resistance, that crap.’

  I stared at her blankly.

  ‘Oh, you know, Liv, if it doesn’t feel right, then don’t do it.’

  ‘You mean Luca shouldn’t marry Nathalie?’

  ‘Of course he shouldn’t. It’s basically an arranged marriage. It’s ridiculous in this day and age.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I said. ‘But I was there when Nathalie was choosing her dress and she seemed quite happy about the whole thing.’

  Anneli stubbed out her cigarette into the Courage ashtray on the wooden table between us.

  ‘Nathalie doesn’t know any better. She’s got this romantic notion in her head that she’s heading for happy-ever-after because Angela promised her that’s what’s going to happen. I feel sorry for her. She’ll be the one who ends up getting hurt.’

  ‘Shame,’ I said.

  ‘I know you don’t like her, Liv, but she’s a nice girl really. She’s just a bit scared of you.’

  I actually coughed at this. I coughed and spluttered and attracted bad-tempered looks from the elderly incumbents of the Black Swan.

  ‘She’s scared of me? Why would she ever be scared of me? She looks down her nose at me, is what Nathalie does.’

  Anneli shook her head and drained her glass.

  ‘No, she’s afraid of what you might do.’

  ‘Why? What could I ever do that might hurt her?’

  Anneli shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

  We changed the subject. A couple of our old schoolfriends came in and we chatted with them, but all the while we were drinking and laughing I was aware of a tiny little seed of potential in my mind. A dream that I had long ago put to sleep rubbed its eyes, yawned and came back to life.

  The next evening we went to Romeo and Juliet’s nightclub in Watersford. We didn’t know – how could we? – that Luca was going to be there.

  forty-one

  Marc was contrite.

  ‘I’m so sorry, darling, so terribly sorry.’ He was holding my hand between his knees under the breakfast table. Sunday morning, just a few hours to see the Cliffs of Moher and then back to our real lives. I was tired and missing Luca. I extricated my hand and stirred sugar into my tea. There was a light drizzle outside.

  ‘I just couldn’t get away. They weren’t as drunk as I thought they’d be. Steve kept checking heads to make sure nobody got separated from the group. I couldn’t get away.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I said. I really didn’t care.

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean … I meant I really don’t mind.’

  ‘All I wanted was to be here, with you.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Marc. Honestly it doesn’t.’

  ‘Is something wrong? Did something happen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’ It was the young landlord bringing us a rack of toast triangles, his eyes dark-rimmed from working so hard and the baby and all.

  ‘It’s all lovely, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Any plans for this morning?’

  ‘We’re going to see the Cliffs of Moher.’

  ‘Ah, you’ll love it there, it’s a lovely spot. You get a few tourists, mind.’

  ‘We’re used to those,’ said Marc.

  ‘It’s a shame you can’t stay longer. You’ll have to come again.’

  Marc beamed. ‘Oh, we will, we will, won’t we, darling?’

  I smiled feebly. ‘Maybe.’

  That morning I was overcome with fatigue, the old torpor had returned. While Marc paid for our lodging, I slipped back beneath the sheets of the wide, low bed and drifted off again. When Marc came back he climbed back into bed with me and made love to me, his hands cold, his breath loud and hot in my ear. I just lay there, gazing over his wide, pale shoulder, waiting for him to finish. He groaned and sighed and covered my face in kisses but I didn’t believe him when he said it had been lovely and amazing. I had felt nothing. No relief, no escape from grief, no shallowing of the well of loneliness. I lay on my side, staring at the wall, while Marc packed and tidied the room, and then he helped me out of the bed and into the hire car like an invalid. I was supposed to read the map, but I couldn’t be bothered. Instead I watched the countryside through the drizzle, the rocks and moors, the ancient monuments and the modern bungalows set out like miniature ranches with their electric gates and topiary. I was missing Luca. I was missing Luca with every breath and every heartbeat and every blink. Marc had turned on the radio and there was a phone-in about why fewer peopl
e were going to church on a Sunday in Ireland, yet all the churches we passed were surrounded by flocks of parked cars, the bulky, macho four-by-fours of prosperous family men and women. Marc was driving carefully and that was irritating me. I craved the thrill of Luca’s recklessness, his habit of taking corners too fast and too sharp, rocking the car, the way he would take his hands off the wheel and steer with his elbows while he lit a cigarette or consulted a map, or shift his hip to fetch his mobile out of his back pocket. I remembered how Luca would turn up the radio to any song he liked (and his tastes were eclectic and multiple) and tap his head in time to the music. If it was a rock song then his head would be going up and down, his hair all over his face. That wide, wide smile, those eyes.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ asked Marc.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘You were thinking of Luca?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Marc put his hand on my thigh in a companionable fashion, and I relaxed a little and cried, quietly and without fuss. It made me feel a little better.

  The Cliffs of Moher were reached via a path which cut through a green, bosomy swathe of the westernmost few acres of Ireland. At the side of the path were people selling CDs of Gaelic music, knitted jumpers and hats, all manner of jewellery and little pieces of artwork painted on to shiny grey slate.

  The rain had stopped and the sun had come out. There was a good breeze. We walked along the path hand in hand and then to the viewpoint where the Atlantic wind blew away my despair and I inhaled and held the hair back out of my eyes and gazed out over the sheer, dramatic cliffs, so different from Portiston’s own miniature version. Marc put his arms around me and I leaned back against him, feeling safe again.

  We climbed down on to a shelf of rock which jutted horizontally from the cliff-face. The sea was a long, long way below. I stayed away from the drop, keeping my palms flat against the warm grass growing out of the side of the cliff. I didn’t dare go even a yard closer to the edge; the very thought made me dizzy. Marc, like all the other young men, seemed drawn to the edge; it was probably some kind of display of machismo, for the rim of the shelf, where I stood, was fringed with anxious-looking women while the men sat at the edge, dangling their legs over the side. One little push, the tiniest tilt, and they would have been lost.