by Maureen Lee
‘Thank you, Maurice. Are those for me?’ She gasped, as if he’d presented her with a magnificent bouquet of roses. ‘They’re lovely. What are they?’
‘Dunno.’
‘They’re very pretty, whatever they are. I’ll ask the nurse to put them in water after you’ve gone. How’s business?’
Pol was one of the few people in whom Maurice had confided the true state of Lacey’s Tyres. If anyone else asked he would reply modestly, ‘Not bad.’
‘Bloody awful,’ he said gloomily. ‘I’m worried sick, if you must know.’
‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she said, her blue, doll-like eyes so full of sympathy that Maurice easily could have cried. He longed to bury his head in her small breasts and sob his heart out. ‘Things will buck up soon, Maurice. They’re bound to.’
‘I hope so.’ He explained about not earning enough to pay back the loan. ‘It’s me dad who worries me. He’s the one who’ll get into trouble, not me.’
‘Perhaps you should expand, Maurice, sell more than tyres.’ She waved her arm vaguely. ‘Other bits for motor cars, fr’instance: brakes and stuff.’ She patted his hand, when it should have been him patting her hand, her being the one in hospital, like.
‘Gosh, Pol, I hadn’t thought of that.’ It was a good idea, but he hadn’t the cash to buy so much as a tyre gauge. Still, she meant well. ‘You’re very clever, Pol,’ he said admiringly.
‘Me!’ She laughed. ‘What a lovely thing to say. Everyone usually thinks I’m very stupid.’
‘You’re anything but stupid,’ Maurice said, meaning it sincerely.
Cormac was about to enter the ward when, through the glass panel in the swing door, he saw his cousin, Maurice, sitting beside Pol’s bed. He always felt uncomfortable with Maurice, as if he had stolen from him something of incalculable value. One of these days, when Alice was dead, he might tell Maurice the truth about their parentage, something that was out of the question while Alice remained alive. He, Cormac, had lived twenty-one enjoyable years of Maurice’s life, while Maurice had endured twenty-one years on his behalf with Cora.
Once again Cormac went to push open the door and once again he paused. Maurice was leaning on the bed, arms crossed, laughing at something Pol had said. Unaware he was being watched, his face was naked, showing everything, hiding nothing, and Cormac realised with a shock that his cousin was head over heels in love with Pol.
Was he jealous? No, Cormac decided calmly, standing aside to let a nurse into the ward. What was the point of being jealous over something that couldn’t be helped?
Did he mind? Cormac wasn’t sure. He was in love with Pol himself. He had assumed that one day they would get married, have more children and spend the rest of their lives together, that they would be happy. It wasn’t until now that it came to him that something was lacking, because he had never looked at Pol the way Maurice looked at her now, so absolutely. Cormac felt almost envious. Would he ever look at a woman like that?
And Pol? Sometimes he wondered if Pol would have gone just as willingly with Wally or Frank the Yank, had they asked. Pol loved everybody. She was like a kitten, happy any place where she was warm, comfortable and petted. She could just as easily be in love with Maurice as with Cormac.
He owed his cousin so much. Justice would be partially done if Maurice were allowed to steal Cormac’s girl, just as Cormac had, inadvertently, stolen Maurice’s mother.
A man came out of the ward and nearly hit him with the door. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he muttered and rolled his eyes in disgust when he noticed Cormac’s rainbow knitted jumper, full of snags, his green flared trousers, dirty feet, his sandals. For the first time since he left Amber Street Cormac felt slightly ashamed of his clothes. He smiled ruefully. Alice used to keep him so neat!
It was time for another cup of tea. He’d return to the ward five minutes before the bell went to indicate visiting time was over. And from now on he’d give his girlfriend and his cousin every encouragement. He’d invite Maurice round to Fion’s, then make excuses to go out, leaving him and Pol together.
After all, it was only fair.
It didn’t feel very fair, not right now, not to Cormac. In fact, he felt quite depressed. Sniffing audibly, he wished Maurice hadn’t come to the hospital, that he’d never discovered he was in love with Pol.
Lord, he’d give anything for a spliff to blunt the rawness of his misery. He had been looking forward to life with Pol and his daughter. Well, there was a one-in-three chance she was his daughter and probably no chance at all if you took into account the red hair.
The debt to Maurice had to be paid some time.
‘Christ, Mam, you’re not half bad-tempered lately,’ Lulu said acidly. ‘Every time anyone opens their mouth you bite their head off.’
‘Don’t you dare swear in this house!’ Orla screeched.
‘I hate you, Mam.’ Maisie’s lip curled.
‘So, hate me. I don’t care.’
‘I hate you too.’ Paul’s lip wobbled. He was the most sensitive of the Lavin children.
‘Join the club,’ Orla snarled.
‘I’m leaving home,’ announced Gary. ‘I’m going to live with Nana Lacey.’
‘Well, don’t let me stop you. Shall I pack a suitcase?’
Orla and her four children glared at each other across the breakfast table. Then Orla’s face collapsed and she held out her arms. ‘Oh, come here. I love you! I adore you! You are the most beautiful children in the world and I am the most horrible mother. I don’t deserve you. I truly don’t deserve you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.’ She kissed their heads one by one. ‘So sorry,’ she whispered.
‘Are you in the club, Mam?’ Lulu asked. ‘Nana Lavin said you might be.’
‘No, luv.’ Orla sobbed. ‘I’m not in anything as far as I know.’
‘Is it an early mennypause?’ enquired Gary. ‘Granny Lavin thought it might be that as well.’
‘It can’t be both, luv. It can only be one or the other and it’s neither. It’s just that your mother’s been in a state with herself lately.’
‘What sort of state?’
‘An upside down, inside out, up in the air, down in the dumps, topsy-turvy sort of state.’
‘Wow!’ said Gary, impressed.
‘I promise not to be bad-tempered again, least not till tonight, then you’ll just have to excuse me and tell yourselves I don’t mean it.’
The children went to school. Orla washed the dishes, dried them, made the beds, dusted, threw herself on to the settee in the parlour, burst into tears, cursed her husband . . .
‘I hate you Micky Lavin,’ she said aloud.
No, she didn’t. She loved him. But she wished he’d try to understand just how unhappy she was, how unutterably and stultifyingly bored she was with life. The trouble was, putting it bluntly, Micky was too thick to understand. Micky felt exactly the opposite and was so lacking in imagination that he couldn’t understand anyone feeling different. He was as happy as a sandboy. He enjoyed his lousy job without a future, he was perfectly content living in this grotty little house. Going to see Liverpool or Everton play football at weekends was the ultimate joy, particularly if they won. Micky didn’t want a car, holidays abroad, flash clothes, posh furniture. He didn’t mind seeing the occasional film as long as lots of people in it got killed, but as for the theatre, it belonged in an alien world, as did books that contained words of more than one syllable, anything intellectual on television, politics and newspapers that weren’t littered with pictures of naked girls.
It meant they had nothing to talk about. Even sex had lost its thrall and become a tiny bit tedious with someone who was essentially a moron.
Micky had refused to let Mam buy them a house somewhere nicer with a garden for the children to play.
‘Why not?’ Orla screeched. She seemed to screech an awful lot these days.
‘I’ve got my pride,’ Micky said huffily.
‘You weren’t too proud to fill this house with stuff
that had fallen off the back of a hundred bloody lorries.’
‘That’s different.’
‘In what way is it different?’
He shuffled his feet. ‘I dunno, it just is.’
She’d grown past him. He wanted to spend his life standing still, but she wanted to go forward. She would have got a proper job, but it would mean giving up the newspaper and the extra money wouldn’t have been enough to make a difference. Besides, although she would have denied it till she was blue in the face, she got a thrill out of attending various pathetic functions and announcing, ‘I’m from the press,’ and occasionally seeing her name under the headline of a news item she’d sent in. She kept hoping the Crosby Star would take her back in the office so she’d be a real reporter, but there hadn’t been a vacancy in ages.
This afternoon, she was interviewing some stupid ex-Everton footballer – anyone willing to take up kicking a ball up and down a field as a career had to be stupid. She’d only been asked because Dominic Reilly came from Pearl Street. His parents still lived in the house opposite. His mam, Sheila, had had twelve children. Orla shuddered delicately: twelve! Dominic, who at thirty-two was the same age as herself, had come back from Spain for the wedding of one of his numerous brothers and was returning that night. She had no idea what he’d been doing in Spain, but it was the first on the list of questions she’d prepared. At least it broke up the tedium of the day.
She went out and bought the Guardian, and read everything except the sport. Would that great intellectual Micky Lavin be interested in the fact that the war in Vietnam was escalating? No, he bloody wouldn’t. Nor would he care that Mrs Gandhi had become Prime Minister of India, or that Great Britain had just elected a Labour government led by the vaguely dishy Harold Wilson. Orla had sent him out to vote, but he’d met a mate and gone for a game of billiards instead.
Seething, Orla rolled the paper into a ball and flung it across the room. It was time she got ready for the interview.
It was also time she had some new clothes, she thought irritably when she examined the miserly contents of her wardrobe. Except there wasn’t the money.
‘You’d look lovely dressed in rags,’ Micky insisted when she complained.
In that case she was bound to look lovely, because there was nothing but rags hanging on the rail. Orla sulkily removed a black skirt and a white blouse that mightn’t look so bad if they were ironed. She didn’t just need new clothes, but a new house, a new husband, a new life.
She left her long brown hair loose, made her face up carefully and, promptly at three o’clock, knocked on the Reillys’ front door. Sheila Reilly opened it. She was a pleasantly pretty woman, lumpily overweight, though anyone would be overweight if they’d had twelve children. Sheila was as old as her mother, but had children younger than Orla’s. Two toddlers hung silently to her skirt who, unless Sheila had had more babies when no one was looking, were grandchildren – she had hordes.
‘Hello, Orla, luv. I suppose you’ve come to see our Dominic.’
‘If he’s available, Sheila. I’m from the press.’
‘I know, luv. He’s expecting you, though where you’ll find the quiet to talk I don’t know. I’ve half a dozen of the grandkids here to see their Uncle Dominic.’
‘We can go over to our house if you like.’
‘I’m sure he’d appreciate that, if only for a bit of peace.’
Dominic came into the hall. He was casually dressed in pale blue linen slacks, a white, short-sleeved shirt and white canvas shoes. ‘Hi, there. I’ve seen you around, but I don’t think we’ve ever spoken before. I vaguely remember you from school.’
‘We didn’t move in till you’d left home. I vaguely remember you from school too.’
They shook hands. Orla hadn’t realised he was quite so good-looking, quite so tall, quite so tanned. He reminded her a bit of Robert Redford, with his dark-blond wavy hair and broad build, his dazzingly warm smile.
‘Orla said you can use her house for the interview, luv.’
‘That’s a relief, otherwise I won’t be able to hear meself think.’
They crossed the street to the Lavins’. Orla felt super conscious of Dominic’s arm brushing against hers when she showed him into the parlour. She asked if he’d like a cup of tea. ‘Or sherry?’ There was sherry over from Christmas.
‘Tea would be grand, ta.’
When she returned he was sitting on the settee, arms stretched along the back, legs crossed. A gold watch glinted on his brown wrist, muscles bulged in his arms, his waist was very slim.
Orla swallowed and looked away. She settled in a hard chair, pad on her knee, pencil poised, coughed importantly and asked her first question: ‘What were you doing in Spain?’
For some reason Dominic choked on the tea. She hoped it wasn’t too hot. ‘Playing football,’ he replied.
‘They play football in Spain? I didn’t realise. What part of Spain?’
‘Barcelona.’ His face had gone very red.
‘They have stadiums there, just like in Liverpool?’
‘Just like in Liverpool.’ He nodded and she wondered why his brown eyes were glinting with amusement.
‘And what made you go to Spain in the first place? Couldn’t you get a job playing football in this country?’
He regarded her silently for several seconds. ‘That’s right,’ he said eventually. ‘I was on me uppers, if the truth be known. The offer from Barcelona was a lifeline.’
‘You poor thing,’ Orla said sympathetically, making a note in her pad. She glanced at him surreptitiously. He looked very odd, as if he was about to bust a gut. Perhaps he was dying to use the lavatory.
‘Is this for publication?’ Dominic asked.
‘Of course.’ Orla tossed her head importantly.
‘In that case I think we’d better start the interview again, otherwise you’re going to make a right fool of yourself.’
‘Am I, now!’ she said huffily. ‘In exactly what way?’
‘For one, you clearly know nothing about football. Barcelona is one of the leading clubs in the world, with a stadium every bit as good as those in this country, if not better. For another, I was offered a hundred quid a week to play there, twice as much as I was getting with Everton. I live in a flat overlooking the Mediterranean, I drive a sports car, I have a beautiful girlfriend – though she’s not as beautiful as you. All in all, I live the life of Reilly – appropriately, considering me name.’ He burst out laughing and didn’t stop till tears ran down his cheeks. ‘Oh, Gawd!’ he gasped, wiping them away with the flat of his hands. ‘I haven’t enjoyed meself so much in a long time. It makes a change to have a reporter feel sorry for me; they’re usually so sycophantic it makes me want to puke.’
Orla felt dizzy with shame and embarrassment. If only she had condescended to tell Micky about the interview he would have filled her in on Dominic’s background. ‘Jaysus!’ she muttered, unable to meet his eyes. ‘I wish the floor would open up and swallow me.’
‘I don’t, because then I wouldn’t be able to look at you any more.’
She found herself blushing on top of everything else and remembered he’d said something about his girlfriend not being as beautiful as she was. There was silence in the world for a while as Orla stared at her shoes and Dominic Reilly stared at her, and her stomach trembled in the way it had done in the early days with Micky. Then Dominic gave her a challenging look and patted the cushion beside him and Orla knew that if she responded to the challenge everything would change, even if it appeared nothing whatsoever had altered when the children came home from school and Micky from work.
The notebook and pencil fell to the floor as Orla got up and moved into Dominic’s welcoming arms. After a while they went upstairs to the bed where she’d lain with Micky for almost fifteen years.
She was sorry afterwards – deeply, wholeheartedly, wretchedly sorry. Perhaps she wouldn’t have felt like that if it hadn’t been so wonderful. For half an hour, an hour, she’d g
limpsed another world, a world of blue seas and golden sands, of beautiful clothes, good times, parties, a world in which every day was different from the day before, where exciting, unexpected things happened, as opposed to the drab, colourless world she occupied now, in which every day was the same as the next, counting Sundays when she went to church and to tea with Mam or one of her sisters, or they came to tea at hers.
Then Dominic rose from the bed, kissed her gently and went home, and the wonderful world came crashing down around her ears.
After a few minutes she went and soaked in the old-fashioned bath that had fallen off the back of a lorry, using the last of the bath salts Micky had bought her for Christmas. At the time she’d thought how little imagination he showed: he gave her bath salts, talc, cheap perfume, every year, usually Boots’ own brand. She noticed a scratch on her wrist from Dominic’s watch. He’d had to take it off. She’d put disinfectant on it when she got out.
The events of the afternoon hadn’t made her love Micky more, she wasn’t suddenly counting her blessings, appreciating what she already had. On the contrary, she would much sooner not have glimpsed that other magical world. It made the one in which she lived seem drabber, even more colourless than it had been when she woke up. There were so many things she would never know, never do, sights she would never see if she lived to be a hundred.
She was gentle with the children when they came home. Nothing that happened would ever make her love them less. Lulu was the reason she’d been stuck with Micky, but that wasn’t Lulu’s fault but her own.
‘What’s the matter?’ Micky asked that night when they were watching telly – least he was watching. Orla was miles away.
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re very quiet. It’s not like you.’
‘Isn’t it?’ She looked at him and noticed his hair was receding slightly at the temples, that he had a small paunch. He also had a hole in his sock that needed mending. ‘Shall we go to bed early tonight?’
