All She Ever Wished For

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘You look dreadful, Kate, this case is really taking it out of you,’ said Hilda briskly, taking in her client from head to foot. ‘You need to go home and try to get as much sleep as you can. Please take my advice; you’re no use to anyone unless you’re good and rested.’

  ‘Plenty of time to rest when it’s all over. Right now, you and I have mountains to move.’

  ‘Can I get you a sherry?’ Hilda asked, going to her drinks cabinet and pouring herself a small one.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Kate quietly. ‘I don’t drink any more.’

  Hilda took her drink and sat down in the armchair behind her desk.

  ‘You know, this may not be the game-changer that you think it is,’ she said, ‘and that’s my concern. Because I needn’t tell you that we’re on a knife-edge here. No sooner do I score a point, than bloody Oliver Daniels scores one right back. You heard Professor Proudfoot’s testimony earlier today. The King family trust have a tight stranglehold on that painting.’

  ‘But Mo testified that it was a gift.’

  ‘Yes, but that can easily be discounted as hearsay. And that jury is unreadable. Things really could go either way for us. I need to be fully upfront with you about that.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that,’ nodded Kate, ‘and that’s why I think we’ve got to do this. I want the truth to come out. For better or for worse.’

  Hilda sighed and leaned forward.

  ‘Kate, you’re exhausted and who could blame you? But it’s my job to tell you that you’re not thinking clearly.’

  Kate shook her head, but Hilda wasn’t finished.

  ‘If we do play this card, then you know how it’s going to read. You know how unfavourably it could play not just with judge and jury but with your whole reputation.’

  Kate stayed defiant.

  ‘It needs to come to light,’ she said. ‘And if I’m in any way criticised, then I’ll just have to take it. God knows, I’ve certainly taken worse.’

  ‘Criticised?’ said Hilda. ‘Kate, you’ll be vilified for this and you know it.’

  Kate took a moment to collect her thoughts and watched Hilda sip at the sherry from the glass in front of her. She felt numb, punch-drunk with day after day of nothing but accusations and snide comments being thrown at her from all corners of the court. And that was before she went back home to Castletown – while it was still her home – and switched on the TV to hear even more vile comments and abusive remarks about the case, mostly directed at her.

  ‘I can’t be pilloried any more than I already have been,’ she said simply.

  It was only the truth too. Last night in bed she’d accidentally tuned into a news panel show and of course the sole topic of conversation was the King case. She’d switched it off in disgust, but still couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Then on the way into court this morning, her taxi driver had one of those early-morning phone-in chat shows playing in the background, with the case as the chief topic running through it.

  Kate had listened in to about as much as she could stomach, correctly gauged that the balance of public opinion seemed to be squarely on Damien’s side and immediately asked the driver to switch it off. Listening to a taxi driver ranting on about water charges and roadworks was infinitely preferable to hearing her good name and reputation dragged through the mud any day.

  ‘Kate, we’ve talked this over already,’ said Hilda, hands clasped in front of her, leaning forward across her desk. ‘And you and I both know the subsequent price you may have to pay if we do call this witness. We agreed that if this could be substantiated, that we’d only use it as a last resort and nothing else. If it really looked like we were going to lose.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Kate quietly. ‘And I know you’re just doing your job by reminding me. But the thing is, I’m in the position of someone who’s been stabbed in the back a thousand times. What possible difference can one more knife wound make?’

  ‘And it’ll hit you financially too, you do realise that?’

  ‘Oh God, here we go with the money again,’ Kate sighed. ‘It’s all anyone ever thinks I was after, and it’s the last thing I’m interested in.’

  Hilda took another sip of sherry.

  ‘If you’re sure then?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  TESS

  The present

  ‘It was terribly thoughtless of me, sausage.’

  ‘Don’t forget insensitive.’

  ‘And insensitive.’

  ‘And just plain … dopey,’ I say, grasping around for a suitable adjective.

  ‘Well now, I wouldn’t quite go that far.’

  ‘Oh really? Because I would.’

  ‘Tess, I have a first-class honours degree, a Master’s degree, a PhD and a total number of sixteen letters after my name. I don’t really think that “dopey” is an appropriate sobriquet in this instance. Now do you?’

  ‘I thought this was supposed to be an apology?’

  ‘And so it is. But please understand that I really want our wedding day to be a classy affair. Elegant and understated.’

  ‘Bernard, I want all those things too, but I also want everyone to enjoy themselves and have fun. Particularly our families. Don’t you? Even if they do have widely different ideas of how things should be done.’

  He stops to think about this for a moment and whips off his glasses. It’s never a good sign when Bernard takes off his glasses. Always means he’s got something difficult to say but doesn’t know how.

  We’re back in the sitting room at Bernard’s higgledy-piggledy little cottage in Stoneybatter, which he insists on referring to as his study. I’m just lacing up my trainers gearing up for a run, while Bernard – who’s supposed to be coming with me – just flops into the armchair opposite, fingers steepled and deep in thought.

  ‘Sausage, need I remind you that your mother wanted to have an amateur musical society sing some sort of ABBA medley at our reception?’ he eventually says. And ‘ABBA medley’ is uttered in such contemptuous tones, you’d swear Mum’s pals wanted to get up and sing some Nazi war anthems from 1943. He breaks off here though, clocking the deeply unimpressed look on my face.

  ‘And I suppose I just reacted without thinking really,’ he adds. ‘For which I am of course terribly sorry to have caused any offence.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Apology accepted and let’s say no more about it. Now come on, get into your tracksuit, we’ve a two mile run ahead of us before it gets dark.’

  ‘Oh God, must we?’ he groans, slumping even further back into the chair. ‘Can’t we just stay in, order a Chinese and read our books instead?’

  Bernard’s idea of the most perfect night on earth is a takeaway order of beef in black bean sauce, with a full tub of Haagen-Dazs to follow, and a book on the Battle of Waterloo perched on his knee.

  ‘Come on, it’s good for your soul,’ I smile down at him, trying to pull him up by the hand so we can get moving. ‘Besides, then you’ll feel you’ll really have earned your dinner later on.’

  ‘Oh bugger it anyway,’ he mutters. ‘At this point I’d actually elect to listen to your mother’s friends murdering ghastly ABBA songs rather than go out running.’

  ‘Oh now come on, I thought we were past that? You’ve already apologised, so why are you bringing it up again?’

  Then I eye him up suspiciously.

  ‘This isn’t just a tactic to make me forget about taking you running? Because I might as well warn you, it won’t work.’

  ‘But we still haven’t made a final decision about what to do, have we?’ he says petulantly, making no attempt whatsoever to put on runners. ‘And while I’m awfully sorry to have caused offence, the fact remains that we’ve yet to decide whether we let the am-drammers hijack the wedding reception or not.’

  ‘Well … of course they’re going to sing,’ I say, confused now as to where this might all be leading. ‘Mum says they’ve been practising like mad and it would be really rude of us to cal
l a halt to it now. You know that!’

  He folds his arms stubbornly, most unlike him.

  ‘If you really insist then. But for God’s sake, for no longer than five minutes, max.’

  ‘OK then, in the spirit of compromise, I’ll tell her.’

  ‘Although I just can’t quite believe your mother really means to put our guests through this,’ he grumbles. ‘I mean really, Tess, an ABBA medley. In front of the Provost of City College. Do come on.’

  ‘And so what if she does?’ I say, determined to have this out once and for all. ‘Bernard, you have to understand that’s who my family are. We’re not high-brow like the Pritchards. We don’t go to galleries and opening nights and obscure art exhibitions by artists that no one has heard of. I’m sorry, love, but that’s just not the sort of people we are.’

  ‘Oh, now I really must protest there,’ he interrupts. ‘The exhibition of David Teniers the Younger that you and I went to last week really was a wonderful night out. There’s no possible way that anyone wouldn’t enjoy it. He was a supremely gifted and often overlooked Flemish Baroque painter, who I always felt was subsequently overshadowed by Rubens.’

  ‘You know, I think we’re just veering a little bit off the point here—’

  ‘Sausage,’ he says slowly, as though the thought is only just occurring to him. ‘You did enjoy coming to see the David Teniers with me, didn’t you?’

  I waver for a moment.

  ‘Well, to be perfectly honest … I have had more fun nights out,’ I say, then hastily tack on, ‘not that the paintings weren’t, you know, beautiful in their own way, but well sometimes it’s lovely to go to a movie or a gig or something just a little bit … lighter.’

  ‘You used to love coming to exhibitions with me,’ he says, sounding a bit sad now. ‘At least that’s what you always said.’

  I have to bite my lip a bit at that, when I see the hurt look on his big round face. Because it’s true, back in the early days of our ‘courtship’, as Bernard insists on calling it, he’d drag me off to every gallery and lecture going. Still does. And even if I were bored out of my tree, I’d still smile and be enthusiastic and thank him for a lovely evening.

  At the start it was because I’d just met the first genuinely kind-hearted man I’d come across in years. Back then, Bernard could have dragged me off to see six hours of some obscure art house movie in Mandarin with subtitles and I’d happily have gone along with him and said nice things about it afterwards, even if it had been a struggle to stay awake.

  And now – well, it’s habit more than anything else really. Habit and the fact that he’s such a gentle soul, the last thing I’d ever want to do is hurt him. It would be a bit like kicking a baby hippo.

  An immediate follow-on worry. This argument started out about something as trivial and insignificant as my mother’s pals just wanting to let their hair down and have a laugh and a bit of a sing-song at our wedding. And now it suddenly seems to have morphed into something a whole lot bigger.

  ‘Tess?’ says Bernard looking confused and a bit lost. ‘You do enjoy doing all these things with me, don’t you? You and I do have lots in common? Don’t tell me you’ve just been acting a part all this time?’

  It’s probably a bad sign that I have to think before answering. My phone beeps on the coffee table beside me and my eye gravitates towards it. It’s the bridal showrooms in Kildare, where I’m due to have a final fitting this weekend. I waver for a minute, mind racing. Should I be totally honest with the man I’m about to marry? Or else is this the moment to keep my mouth shut and forever hold my peace?

  Then something Will said about the rest of my life being way too precious to compromise comes back to me.

  ‘We’re very different people, Bernard,’ I say as he looks worriedly back at me. ‘And most of the time that’s fine, just so long as we agree to differ on certain things.’

  On a vast number of things, I might just as easily have said, but baby steps and all that.

  ‘Oh thank goodness, sausage,’ says Bernard, looking gratefully back at me. ‘For a moment there I thought you were going to tell me you were having cold feet. You looked so terribly conflicted.’

  *

  Hours later we’re cooped up in Bernard’s too-small bed, one he bought years ago when he figured he’d be single for the rest of his life, so this would just do him fine. An homage to his boarding school days, I figure. Nor did he see any reason to replace it when I came along, in spite of the fact we’re crammed up against each other like two sardines.

  The general plan is that I’ll move in here after we’re married, and I’ve been dropping subtle hints about upgrading the furniture and maybe giving the place a bit of a declutter, but so far it’s all fallen on deaf ears. Like his parents, Bernard barely seems to notice the dust, the piles of books that are scattered all over the place and the fact that his bedroom carpet looks like it’s been there since circa 1972.

  In fact every time I come here I physically find it hard not to twitch to get a duster and a bit of Mr Sheen so I can give the place a proper blitz. The one time I did try to tidy up, Bernard almost had a fit and claimed that he couldn’t find either his glasses or his original recording of Death in Venice by Benjamin Britten, featuring Gustav von Aschenbach, for two weeks afterwards.

  So I gave it up as a bad job. After all, it’s his home and for now I have to pick my battles, but I know that’ll be an ‘interesting’ discussion we’ll have to have, post-wedding.

  Right now he’s stuck into a biography of the Duke of Wellington so I snuggle up beside him, feeling drowsy and come to think of it, a bit frisky after the Chinese he insisted on ordering in earlier. I put my head on his chest and gently slide my hand under the stripy flannel pyjamas he always wears in bed. Then I playfully try to close his book and kiss him lightly instead.

  ‘Put the book away,’ I whisper suggestively, ‘and let’s have some fun.’

  ‘Oh not now, sausage, I just want to finish this chapter. I’m at the Battle of Assaye in India and it’s simply impossible to put down.’

  I lean back against the pillow, look up at the ceiling and sigh.

  BERNARD

  Six weeks ago

  Mornings were becoming by far the best part of Bernard Pritchard’s day. Not that evenings didn’t have their good points too, particularly when Tess came around and they had a perfectly enjoyable time together. And especially when he could talk her out of going for a brisk two mile run before what she’d laughably refer to as ‘dinner’, but which anyone with two eyes in their head could only possibly ever call a ‘mound of grass’.

  Kale was featuring strongly these days and Bernard had come to dread the very sight of it, appearing as it so regularly did, on his plate. Not to mention the astonishing variety of ‘healthy, protein-filled treats’, as Tess referred to the mountain of chia and pumpkin seeds which all his food seemed to come smothered in these days.

  Tess would invariably tell Bernard that not only was it good for him, but that he was looking so much slimmer and fitter these days. To poor old Bernard though, while he gamely put up with it – after all, that was what one did when on the verge of matrimony – as far as he was concerned he might as well have been eating handfuls of revolting, starchy birdseed. It stuck in his teeth and made him run to the bathroom far more frequently than a grown man ought to.

  Night after night this ghastly diet left him with nothing more than an unpleasant rumbling in his stomach, which frequently kept him awake in bed.

  For weeks though, he did nothing, said nothing … and then hit on a plan. A perfect solution to his problems and a neat way of both keeping Tess happy and him properly nourished, fully restored back to his usual state of equanimity with the world.

  At the college, he’d heard tell of a wonderful place where a lot of his students took summer jobs and where, they reliably informed him, you could get not just the best but arguably the cheapest breakfast in town. Egg muffins, sausage and egg, double sausage and e
gg if he was feeling particularly indulgent, pancakes quite literally swimming in syrup, hash browns and a wonderfully aromatic full-fat latte to follow. All terribly cheap and cheerful of course, but as far as Bernard was concerned, the food here tasted every bit as good as a Michelin-starred five-course dinner at Patrick Guilbaud’s.

  Why, he wondered for the hundredth time as he locked his bike to the gates at City College and walked the short distance to the bottom of Grafton Street, had he never stumbled on a find like this before? A few minutes later he was queuing up to place his order and to hear those wonderful words which had become such an integral part of his day by now.

  ‘Welcome to McDonald’s. How can I help you today, sir?’

  *

  One lovely, leisurely hour later, when he’d read The Irish Times from cover to cover and even got a sizable bit of the crossword done, Bernard strolled through the warm, spring sunshine back to the Art History department at the college, completely happy and at peace with the world again.

  Which was more than could be said for the Art History department, where there appeared to be some sort of commotion going on.

  ‘Bernard, you’re late!’ hissed his colleague Jasper Adams, Senior Professor of Seventeenth-Century Art History and a relatively recent addition to the college staff. He’d arrived at City College just about a year ago fresh from UCD, and he and Bernard had immediately bonded.

  Jasper was in his early-fifties, as an astonishing amount of Bernard’s friends seemed to be, and he’d recently joined the Royal Celtic Club on St Stephen’s Green, where he and Bernard often retired to after work for a tipple on their way home. Home to Jasper of course referring to the house he continued to share with his mother, who he described as his ‘best friend’ and who he occasionally went on walking tours of the Cotswolds with.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ said Jasper. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I even tried the gym,’ he added, saying ‘gym’ in exactly the same tone of voice that he might use to say ‘brothel’.