Foreign Affairs

by Patricia Scanlan

  ‘Listen, Anthony, don’t you dare come and lecture me on how to behave. What a nerve. I have nothing to discuss with you. Absolutely nothing. Now or ever. You don’t have to worry about me. It’s a bit late for that now. You made your choice, now I’m making mine. So if you’ll excuse me I’m leaving to go to Louise’s wedding. On my own . . .’

  Paula breezed into the linen room all ready to relieve Maddy Carroll, who went eagerly to her lunch. It was hot and very stuffy and there was a constant noisy drone from the big washing-machines and dryers. Paula was glad she didn’t work in here all the time. It was very hard work. She had just filled one of the huge washing-machines with sheets when a call came on the internal phone to tell her she was wanted at reception by one of the American guests who was checking out. She left what she was doing and walked swiftly down the corridor and along by the offices.

  ‘Paula,’ Miss Kelly called her as she passed the head housekeeper’s office.

  ‘Yes, Miss Kelly?’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in the linen room?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Kelly, but a guest is asking for me at reception,’ Paula explained. The housekeeper smiled. ‘That will be Mr Munroe. He was asking me about you earlier. It seems he was very impressed by your courtesy and helpfulness and he wants to say thank you personally. Congratulations. That’s the kind of thing we like to hear. It gives the hotel a good name.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Kelly,’ Paula murmured. Mr Munroe was an old dote. She had given him extra pillows and blankets and flirted away with him. After all, he was harmless, he was nearly eighty.

  ‘Go up and say goodbye to Mr Munroe then, he’s waiting,’ her boss instructed.

  Where was Paula Matthews sneaking off to, Monica wondered as she saw the petite blonde marching down the corridor looking as if she owned the place. She peered into the linen room. It was empty. She might as well have a quick fag, she decided. She was starving but she was on late lunch, she had a bar of chocolate in her pocket so she could scoff that to keep her going. She munched away happily and lit up a cigarette. Still no sign of Princess Matthews. Monica’s gaze alighted on the only silent washing-machine in the room. The door was still open and a pile of dirty sheets were waiting to be washed. A devilish thought made her eyes gleam and she peered around looking for the starch. She found it among the huge containers of washing powders and set to work with great haste. When she had finished that little task she set the dials to the hottest boil wash and started to laugh.

  Ha ha, ya little Queen of Tarts, she thought happily. Let’s see the smug smirk wiped off your face when this lot comes out of the wash.

  ‘Ah, Monica,’ she heard a familiar voice say. ‘It’s nice to see someone happy in their work. I’ve just come to attend to that last wash. Paula told me she hadn’t done it, but I see you’ve done the job for me. I let her go early. I’ll stay here for the next twenty minutes until Maddy comes back so you can get back to your rooms. I’m sure you’ve a few to finish yet?’

  Monica swallowed hard . . . twice.

  ‘Mmm . . . aah . . . yyy . . . yes, Miss Kelly,’ she muttered, raising a mental fist to the Almighty. Couldn’t He have let her away with it just once?

  Like Eliza Dolittle, she could have danced all night, Paula thought happily as Conor whirled her around the dance floor. It had been a wonderful wedding. After the Mass in the Star of the Sea, they had all driven in convoy to the hotel in Waterford where the reception was being held. Paula was the Belle of the Ball in her aquamarine off-the-shoulder bridesmaid’s dress. There was no denying it. She was having a great time. There was as much fuss being made of her by the friends and relations as there was of Louise, who was a vision in white satin and tulle.

  Conor could hardly keep his hands off her and when they danced the slow sets he got a huge erection. Paula smiled at Helen, who was dancing with Pete. Helen smiled back but her heart wasn’t in it. Her aunt looked awfully strained and tired, Paula reflected. She definitely wasn’t her usual bubbly self. Anthony had to go on an unexpected trip so he’d missed the wedding and Helen drove all the way from Dublin after leaving at eight a.m. Maybe she was just tired. Thoughts of her aunt were instantly banished as Conor nuzzled her ear. Paula smiled to herself. She had great plans for them later on. She pressed herself against him and heard his breathing quicken.

  ‘Oh Paula! Oooh Paula Paula,’ Conor groaned, rubbing himself frantically against her thigh as he shoved her petticoats and voluminous dress up around her waist in his desperate search for her panties. Gasping for breath he struggled to move them down Paula’s lissom legs.

  ‘Don’t be in such a rush,’ she murmured. His frenzy excited her enormously. Louise wasn’t the only one who’d be losing her virginity tonight, she thought with satisfaction as Conor panted noisily.

  ‘Calm down.’ She smiled into glazed eyes. ‘We have all night.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t! Oh I love you I love you I love you!’ He moaned and then, before she knew it, he entered her, gave two hasty thrusts and collapsed in a heap on top of her.

  Paula’s eyes opened wide in dismay and her jaw dropped. Was that it? Was that what all the fuss was about? What a swizz. What an absolute and utter swizz. She was so annoyed she felt like shaking Conor off her and going home.

  ‘That was awesome,’ her lover breathed, using his current favourite Americanism.

  Paula did not share his enthusiasm. He had let her down . . . badly. According to himself he had had more women than hot dinners. What a spoofer. He’d been just as much a virgin as she had. She’d stake her holiday savings on it. And she’d been so looking forward to tonight. Well Mister Conor Harrison was not going to practise on her. She wanted a real man who knew what he was doing. Tomorrow she’d be going to Dublin and Mr Magnificent was going to be dropped like a hot potato. The cheek of him, letting on he was a man of the world. She was mad with herself for having fallen for it.

  ‘Bring me home,’ she snapped, hoping that Louise was faring better than she had.

  Conor couldn’t believe his ears.

  ‘But I’ve a free house! The folks are in Provence and Amy’s gone to Cork for the weekend.’

  ‘I have to pack to go to Dublin.’ Paula wriggled out from underneath him and adjusted her clothing.

  ‘Ah Paula!’ he wailed, ‘you said we had all night.’

  ‘I changed my mind,’ she retorted, hauling her hoop up under her petticoats.

  ‘All right,’ he said sullenly, reluctantly pulling up his trousers and underpants, which were at half mast around his calves.

  If he’d told her to get lost and go home by herself she’d have had more respect for him, she thought glumly as they walked down the street to her house in silence. But no, he’d let her walk all over him and acted the wimp. Now that he’d fallen off his pedestal she was going right off him . . . even if he did love her. Hearing him say it hadn’t been half as gratifying as she’d anticipated. The night was a complete fiasco as far as she was concerned.

  ‘Goodnight, Conor.’ She gave him a swift peck on the cheek and, before he could protest, she was inside her house and the door was shut firmly in his face. Paula paused for a moment to compose herself and an unaccustomed sound made her frown. It was the sound of crying. Something was wrong. What was it? She opened the door of the sitting-room and saw Helen cradled in Maura’s arms sobbing her heart out. Her father looked grim-faced.

  ‘What’s wrong? What is it?’ she asked in alarm.

  ‘It’s Anthony. He’s having an affair and he’s left Helen. The bastard.’ Maura swore.

  ‘My God!’ Paula was dumbfounded.

  ‘Go to bed, Paula,’ her father said quietly. ‘Helen will be up in a while.’ Silently she did as she was bid, too shocked by what she had heard to say anything. It was totally incredible. Anthony was the last person in the world she would ever have thought would have an affair. He was mad about Helen. He was always buying her treats and bringing her out to dinner, not to talk about the expensive holidays.
How on earth could he prefer another woman to her glamorous, gorgeous-looking aunt? She just couldn’t fathom it. She tossed and turned waiting patiently for Helen to come to bed. There was no need for the couch tonight. Rebecca was staying with a friend in Waterford and Helen was sleeping in Louise’s bed. Her own little drama was almost forgotten as she tried to imagine the reasons for her uncle’s affair.

  Dawn was breaking before her aunt slipped into the room, red-eyed and exhausted-looking. Paula sat up in bed and held out her arms to her. ‘I’ll tell you all about it on the way home tomorrow, my darling,’ Helen whispered. ‘I’m too tired now.’

  ‘Helen, I’ve been lying here thinking. You’ll probably need company and someone to help you through this,’ she said breathlessly, her eyes shining. ‘Why don’t I come and live with you in Dublin?’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘I’m scared, Jim,’ Kit Myles said in the taxi that was taking her to the Rotunda Hospital. She was having labour pains, it was her first baby and she was absolutely petrified.

  ‘Don’t be, you’ll be fine. The doctor said there was nothing to worry about,’ her husband sought to reassure her. She gripped his hand even more tightly and he tried not to grimace. Her nails were digging into the palm of his hand.

  It was all right for him to tell her not to worry, he wasn’t going to have to face what she was, she thought miserably. Pain and lots of it, as well as being shaved and having an enema. After that it was the great unknown.

  Last week she’d been coming home from town on the bus and a woman sat beside her. Seeing Kit so obviously pregnant she’d settled down and proceeded to regale the horrified Kit with every gory detail of her five confinements. Each birth was considerably worse than the last, she assured her with relish. Kit got off the bus pale-faced and cried for hours afterwards. She’d never ever do that to someone, especially someone expecting their first baby. It was too cruel for words.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Jim said comfortingly. This had the effect of doubling her heart rate and making beads of perspiration stand out on her forehead. She thought she was going to be sick she was so nervous. It was a Sunday afternoon and people walked through town, carefree and happy. She saw couples going into the Gresham Hotel and envied them so much. What she would give to be strolling down O’Connell Street hand in hand with Jim. Without a care in the world. Kit walked through the portals of the Rotunda Hospital as if she was going to her doom.

  ‘We’ll take care of your wife now, Mr Myles,’ a nurse said reassuringly. ‘You can wait in the fathers’ waiting-room.’ Jim kissed her and gave her an encouraging hug. As she watched her husband disappear down the corridor, Kit had never felt so alone and scared in her life.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Myles, you’ll be fine,’ the nurse comforted her. ‘Just relax and do what we tell you and you’ll have no trouble at all.’

  ‘I bet you say that to everyone.’ Kit gave a shaky smile. But to her surprise she started to feel less nervous.

  ‘Of course I do,’ laughed the nurse. ‘Just think, this time tomorrow it will be over and you’ll have a little girl or boy in your arms. You’ll have forgotten all about this. Just keep thinking like that and you’ll be grand.’

  This time tomorrow it will be all over, Kit told herself as she was shaved.

  I’m never having another child, she promised herself as she endured her first enema.

  I’m never speaking to Jim Myles again, she vowed fiercely, trying not to yell as the pains gripped her. There was hardly any respite between them. The woman next door had no compunction about yelling. The screeches out of her as she called her husband all the names she could think of would have been funny at any other time. Right now, Kit was incapable of finding it funny. She didn’t want to make a fuss, but she was very much afraid that if the pains got worse she was going to end up screeching too and she knew the names she’d be calling Jim. If he thought for one minute that he was ever going to have sex with her again, he was very much mistaken. Their sex life was well and truly over and that was for sure.

  She was never ever going to go through an ordeal like this again. And the only way to ensure that she never got pregnant again was by never having sex again. The nurse laughed when Kit told her of her decision through gritted teeth.

  ‘If I had a pound for every time I heard that, I’d be a rich woman. You’ll be here again, Mrs Myles, don’t even doubt it.’

  ‘Oh no I won’t.’ Kit groaned as she gave her final push and heard a baby’s cry.

  ‘It’s a girl, Mrs Myles. Congratulations, you were great!’ the nurse praised her as Kit burst into tears.

  Later, the nurse handed Kit her baby. ‘Now! Wasn’t it all worthwhile?’ Kit looked at the downy little black head nestling against her breast.

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled tearfully. ‘She was. Tell Jim, won’t you? I hope he won’t be disappointed, he was hoping for a boy. We were going to call him Brendan.’

  ‘He’ll be thrilled,’ the nurse assured her. ‘You’ll be able to call her Brenda now.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Kit smiled happily as she forgot all about her ordeal and enjoyed the truly special pleasure of holding her first-born child.

  ‘Brenda suits her down to the ground.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I want to wear my pink dress, Daddy. Mammy always lets me.’ Four-year-old Brenda Myles stamped her little foot as her father looked on helplessly. It was three days after the birth of his second daughter and he was bringing their first-born to the hospital to see her mammy and new baby sister.

  ‘It’s not ironed, Brenda, and we don’t have time. Now put on this gorgeous white dress and come on, Mammy’s dying to see you and wait until you see the baby.’

  ‘Don’t want to see the baby,’ Brenda said sulkily. Baby! Baby! Baby! that’s all everyone was talking about these days. She was just getting fed up with it, she thought as she put her arms up for her daddy to put the hated white dress on. She didn’t like all this carry-on. She wanted her mammy to be at home and not in that place they were going to this afternoon. Everybody kept asking her if she was excited about the new baby. Everything was going to change, she just knew it was. Mammy and Daddy kept talking about this new baby who was coming to live in their house. Brenda didn’t want anyone else living in her house. Just Mammy, Daddy and herself. They could give this new baby to Auntie Ellen. That’s what she’d tell Mammy. Why didn’t she think of it before? ‘Am I beautiful, Daddy?’ Brenda did a happy twirl.

  ‘Beautiful, like a princess,’ her father assured her, lifting her up and swinging her till she screamed with delight.

  Brenda felt very pleased walking beside her daddy up the stairs of the big place where her mammy was. Her mammy would be home soon and the new baby was going to go to Auntie Ellen’s.

  ‘Look, there’s Mammy and the new baby.’ Daddy pointed a finger into a room with a lot of beds in it. She could see her mother in the middle of the room, sitting in a big chair beside her bed. Brenda ran across the floor, her shoes making a loud noise on the wooden floorboards. ‘Mammy, Mammy, Mammy.’ She held out her arms and was enfolded in a hug that she didn’t want to end. Brenda buried her face in her mother’s neck. ‘Will you come home today and you can give the baby to Auntie Ellen ’cos she’s no babies?’

  ‘Oh Brenda,’ she heard her mother laugh. ‘Holy God gave me the baby for you.’

  ‘Tell him it’s all right, we don’t need one,’ Brenda said in desperation. Somehow she knew the Auntie Ellen plan wasn’t going to work. Her heart sank and she wanted to cry. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair and why did Holy God want to go interfering sending down a new baby to her when she’d much prefer to have had a new doll or even better, and what she really longed for . . . a puppy.

  ‘Look, Brenda,’ she heard her mother say. ‘Say hello. Say hello to your new sister, Jennifer.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘But it’s my birthday, Mammy. What about my party? You said I could have a party. I don’t want to go into the hospi
tal to see Jennifer. Why does she always have to be sick and ruin things? It’s just not fair.’ Brenda flung herself down on the sofa and started snivelling.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Brenda,’ her mother said impatiently. ‘We’ll be having your party after we’ve gone in to visit Jennifer. Stop being selfish.’

  ‘I’m not being selfish,’ Brenda screeched. ‘Nobody cares about me anyway. It’s always the same. Everyone always makes a fuss of Jennifer and the boys. I just hate being the eldest.’ She was feeling ever so sorry for herself. She’d been really looking forward to her party for ages and ages. All her friends on the street, and some of her friends from school, had been invited. Then Miss Jennifer had gone and got sick yet again and all the attention was on her. She did it on purpose, Brenda knew she did.

  Her mother sat down beside her.’ Come on now, lovie, don’t be like that. I know you’re looking forward to your party and we’ll have one. It’s just unfortunate that poor old Jenny had to go into hospital again. And if you were in hospital, wouldn’t you like the family to come in and see you?’ Kit Myles tried to keep the irritation out of her voice.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Brenda said sulkily, feeling very hard done by. She wanted to make her mother feel guilty for upsetting her party by insisting on going into Temple Street in the afternoon.

  ‘Run up and put on your new dress and brush your hair and give Sean’s hair a brush while I change the baby’s nappy.’

  ‘Ah Mammy, do I have to brush his hair, he always yells?’ Brenda pouted. ‘And anyway it’s my birthday. No-one has to do anything on their birthday. That’s the rule.’

  ‘Oh go on,’ her mother sighed. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

  Brenda gave a martyred sniff. Now she was being made to feel guilty. It was always the same, she fumed as she headed up to the bedroom she shared with Jennifer. It was such a nuisance being the oldest. She always had to help out with the baby, and Sean, and of course Jennifer. Jennifer who was always sick with that kidney thing and ended up in hospital getting loads of fuss made of her. Brenda plonked herself down on the bed and gave a deep sigh. She longed to break an arm or a leg or an ankle or a wrist, just so she could land herself in hospital and get tons of sympathy. She’d never been in hospital in her life. Except when she was born, of course, and that didn’t count because she couldn’t remember it. Her friend Kathy was in the same boat. She was the eldest too and had to look after her younger brothers and sisters too. She was even worse off than Brenda. There were five younger than Kathy in her family.