Foreign Affairs

by Patricia Scanlan

  ‘Helen, it was great. I know I’m going to love it here in Dublin.’ Paula dumped her schoolbag under the stairs and followed her aunt into the bright airy modern fitted kitchen which was a far cry from the old-fashioned cramped kitchen they had at home. ‘I’ll make you a cup of coffee,’ she offered.

  ‘No! I’ll make you one,’ Helen declared. ‘Sit down there and we’ll have a natter. You tell me all about it and then we’ll have dinner around six. How does that sound?’

  Paula gave her the thumbs-up. ‘Sounds good to me, Aunt!’

  ‘Oh stop calling me Aunt, for heaven’s sake!’ Helen laughed. ‘It makes me feel like a geriatric.’

  ‘Thirty-five’s practically geriatric,’ Paula teased. It was nice to see her aunt in good humour. When Anthony left her to go and live with his secretary she had been deeply upset. Paula was stunned to hear that her uncle had left Helen and that he’d been having an affair. Helen had covered it up and kept it to herself. She gave Paula the bare outline of facts. Tears welling in her eyes as she spoke. Paula hadn’t pressed her. Now that she was living with her aunt, there’d be plenty of time for Helen to talk about it, if she wanted to. Paula was trying to be as kind as she could to Helen. She knew that her company had helped to ease the loneliness of Helen’s separation.

  Actually, Paula didn’t miss her uncle at all. It was nice that there were just the two of them in the house. She could waltz around in her nightdress in the mornings and spend as long as she liked in the bathroom. Anthony was always nice to her but he was a bit dry and pompous. Helen, once she got over him, should go and find herself a man who enjoyed a laugh and a good time. She was much too young to bury herself at home pining. Paula intended to see that she didn’t.

  ‘Did you meet anyone nice at school?’ Helen interrupted her reverie. She placed a mug of milky coffee and a plate of jam doughnuts in front of her. Paula took an eager bite out of her doughnut. This would be a treat at home. Here in Helen’s it was commonplace. ‘I met a very nice girl called Jennifer Myles. I’m sitting beside her because her best friend, Beth, had a very serious accident and she’s got to have lots of operations and things. She won’t be back at school for ages,’ Paula explained. ‘We came home on the bus together. She lives in Wadelai.’

  ‘That’s not too far from here. If you want to invite her to the house anytime, or any friends you make, you’re welcome to do that, darling.’

  ‘I’ve joined the basketball team. I’m having a try-out tomorrow. Jenny introduced me to everyone. So I’ll be late coming home from school,’ Paula explained as she licked her fingers to get the last bit of jam and sugar.

  ‘Here, have another one.’ Helen pushed the plate towards her. Paula didn’t know the meaning of the word diet, and didn’t need to know it either. She took one enthusiastically.

  That night she sat at the neat desk Helen had bought for her in her lovely cream and yellow bedroom. She was writing a letter to her mother and father. Paula had promised that she would write each week and let them know how she was getting on. Her parents were particularly anxious to know how she liked her new school. Paula sighed. She couldn’t honestly say she was missing home, because she wasn’t. But her mother would have been hurt if she knew that.

  Paula loved being in Dublin and being with Helen. It was like a permanent holiday. She did miss her parents and her sisters and brothers. But she wasn’t dreadfully homesick. Far from it. She didn’t miss St Margaret’s Bay one whit. She wondered if she was a bit odd. When her sister Rebecca heard that Paula was going to live with Helen and go to school in Dublin, she told Paula that she’d hate to leave home and her family and friends to go to a big city and have to start at a new school where everyone was a stranger. And Rebecca was older than she was! Paula didn’t see it like that. A new school held no fears for her. It was all a great adventure.

  Paula felt that it was fated that she should come to live with Helen. That night when she’d had the brainwave, when she’d suggested it to her aunt, it had felt so right somehow. Her parents had been surprised, and a bit dismayed. But Paula pleaded with them. Wheedled and begged as only she knew how. She grimaced as she remembered the arguments and how terrified she’d been that her parents would refuse to let her go.

  ‘You can’t just go and land in on top of Helen like that. It’s not fair on her,’ Maura argued.

  ‘Don’t let that stop her coming, Maura,’ Helen said quickly. She thought it was a wonderful idea. ‘I’d love her to come and live with me. It’s very lonely up there on my own. I’d love Paula’s company and I’d take good care of her. But it’s a very big decision to make and I think you and she should talk it over. I’ll stay down here for a few days and see what you decide,’ Helen suggested.

  ‘What happens if you and Anthony get back together? He mightn’t want to have Paula living with you.’ Pete frowned. Her father wasn’t happy with the idea, Paula could see that.

  ‘There’s no likelihood of that. Ever!’ Helen declared emphatically. ‘I don’t want him back, even if he leaves her. It’s too late now. I never thought I’d say it, but I’m glad I have no children. All I have to think about is myself and I don’t want Anthony Larkin or his goddamned mother back in my life,’ Helen said bitterly.

  ‘Yes, but Helen, what if he decides you should both sell the house?’ Maura asked gently.

  ‘He won’t do that,’ Helen explained. ‘When we got married, he bought that house with money an uncle left him. There’s no mortgage on it. He and that secretary of his bought an apartment in Ballsbridge. It’s not as if he hasn’t got a roof over his head. He’s told me the house is mine. It’s his way of salving his conscience.’

  ‘Please, Mam, Dad. I’ll work really hard at school. And anyway I’ll be leaving home to get a job in a few years’ time, so I’ll just be going a bit earlier, that’s all,’ Paula interjected.

  ‘It’s a big upheaval, Paula. And you’re doing your Inter Cert next year. Your mother and I will have to think about it,’ her father said firmly.

  ‘Please, Daddy, it’s what I really want. It was my idea in the first place. It would make me very, very happy,’ Paula begged earnestly, giving her father’s arm a squeeze. His face softened.

  ‘We’ll see, Paula. It’s a big step to take and we’d miss you.’

  ‘But Dad, I’d be home some weekends and the holidays. You’ll probably see just as much of me as you do now.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be hard,’ her father said fondly. ‘You’re always gadding about.’

  In the end, after much discussion, her parents agreed to allow her to go to live in Dublin with Helen, if her aunt could get Paula into a secondary school. They would see how things were going before any final decision was made. If, at Christmas, her school report was not impressive, or if Helen changed her mind about having her there, Paula would come back to St Margaret’s Bay.

  There was no way that was going to happen, she assured herself. She was going to work damn hard. Paula didn’t mind work. She knew it was vital to get decent marks in her exams. The harder you worked the better you got on. Parents and teachers drummed it into you. If that’s what it took, well so be it. Helen got her into a secondary school in Drumcondra and Paula was delighted.

  She wasn’t going to have much choice about hard work, anyway. That Sister Barty was a tough cookie and she’d given the Inter Cert year a stiff talking-to. Usually, the first day back at school was fairly relaxed but they’d got right down to their studies today. They hadn’t even been given a half-day. Much to the dismay of her new classmates.

  Paula sucked her pen thoughtfully. On the whole, she felt she was going to like them, except for a girl called Eilis McNally, who had a very superior air and who told her that she’d probably find a school in the city totally different from one in the country. The way she said ‘the country’ sounded extremely dismissive and sneering. As if she was suggesting that life in the country was like something from the dark ages.

  ‘Don’t mind her,’ Jennifer Myles
murmured. ‘She’s a right little bitch. She thinks she’s absolutely IT. Just because her father’s some sort of producer in RTE. She’s always name-dropping. You’d think she knew Gay Byrne personally the way she goes on.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Paula said and Jennifer smiled. Paula had been relieved by this friendly overture. For the first hour or so the other girl had been very quiet, and, Paula thought, a little standoffish. But later, when they got talking between classes, Jennifer confided that her best friend Beth had had a terrible accident and was in hospital having operations on her discs. She had been advised to stay back a year. No wonder Jenny hadn’t been bright and bubbly or over-friendly. But as the day progressed they’d shared a fit of the giggles, when Eilis, reciting a stanza of Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, declaimed, ‘Thou wast not born for death, immoral Bird!’

  ‘Tsk! Good gracious, Eilis McNally, don’t you know the difference between immoral and immortal? And you’ve chosen to do Honours English,’ Miss Walton tutted, much to the Superior One’s chagrin. ‘Kindly consult your dictionary tonight and write out the words immoral and immortal and their meaning. Show them to me tomorrow,’ the English teacher ordered. Paula enjoyed every minute of the other girl’s discomfiture. Eilis blushed to the roots of her hair, amid titters and giggles from her classmates. That was a mistake the girl from ‘the country’ wouldn’t make, Paula thought with satisfaction. She was going to be extremely careful to shine at her studies. Eilis McNally was not going to get the chance to watch a teacher make a show of her. As soon as she’d finished her letter home, she was going to do her homework to perfection. ‘Start as you mean to go on,’ she murmured as she began her epistle.

  Eilis McNally scowled to herself as she searched through her English dictionary for the word immoral. Miss Walton was a sarky bitch and it had been mortifying to have made a mistake like that in front of that stuck-up new girl, Paula.

  Eilis knew she didn’t like Paula from the minute she walked into the classroom, and had Sister Imelda making a fuss of her as if she was the Queen of Sheba. She couldn’t explain it. Eilis just knew instinctively that Paula was a threat. Eilis considered herself the most popular girl in the class. People looked up to her and were impressed by her background and all the famous people her father knew. She even had a book of autographs which her father had collected for her. The girls at school would give their eye-teeth for it. When they had friendly basketball matches at lunch-time, everybody wanted to be on Eilis’s team. It was considered an honour to be picked. Well one thing was for sure. She wouldn’t be picking that Paula one. With her huge blue eyes and her shiny blond hair. She acted as though she was a film star. You’d think that a new girl coming into the class would be a bit shy, but she’d swanned in full of confidence as if she owned the place. With any luck, she’d prove a dud at basketball. Maybe she was as thick as two short planks. Brains and beauty were a very rare combination, Eilis decided hopefully as she buckled down to the onerous task of explaining the difference between immortal and immoral.

  Paula finished pressing her school uniform and laid it neatly on the back of a chair. She’d written her letter, done her homework, and was all prepared for school the following morning. It was ten-thirty and she felt tired. It had been a long and somewhat stressful day. At least now that she knew what to expect it would be easier. She was glad she was sitting beside a girl as nice as Jenny Myles. She was looking forward to her basketball try-out tomorrow. If there was one thing she was good at, it was basketball. She’d played a lot of it at school in Waterford and had gold and silver medals to prove it.

  She made the hot chocolate for supper. Helen was relaxing in front of the TV. She’d spent the evening practising her shorthand, trying to get her speeds up again. She told Paula that she wanted to get herself a job. She didn’t want to be supported by Anthony for a minute more than she had to. Pete and Maura sent a postal order for Paula’s keep every week. Helen protested. But Pete insisted. Fair was fair, he said.

  Paula sighed, leaning her elbows on the fitted kitchen counter. She’d love her aunt to be her happy, bubbly self again. It would be good for Helen to get a job. She could get out of the house and stop brooding. Paula gazed out at the back garden, noting that the lights were on in the house next door. The detectives must be in there, she mused.

  Helen had told her that the house next door was let to three detectives while the owner was away in Africa. So far she’d only spotted them briefly, going from the front door to their cars. One of them was a fine thing, she decided. She looked forward to getting to know him. The lights of the houses at the end of the long garden still fascinated her. Paula loved looking at the windows of the semi-detached houses, wondering who lived in them and what they did.

  It was so different. At home their house had fields behind it and the sea in front of it. It was still strange to lie awake at night and hear the subdued continuous sound of the traffic on Griffith Avenue, instead of the roar of the sea. Sometimes she had to pinch herself to let herself know she wasn’t imagining it all.

  Conor lived in digs somewhere on the other side of the city. He’d begged her to get in touch with him when he’d heard she was coming to live in Dublin. He was crazy about her, he told her, and he wanted them to spend a lot of time together.

  ‘I’ll see,’ Paula told him coolly. She felt differently about him since the night she’d lost her virginity. His swaggering man-about-town image had always impressed her. Until he’d had to prove it. What a chancer! He’d pretended he’d slept with his other girlfriends. Boasted about it even. And then, when it finally came to the crunch, he’d showed that the nearest he’d ever come to having sex was in his dreams. Paula would never forgive him for the disappointment of her first time. She’d been so looking forward to it, after all those months of heavy petting. She was not going to give him a second chance. But she might keep him dangling. If he was going to university, he’d be going to parties and the like. Conor might come in handy, Paula decided as she stirred the hot drink. But he needn’t think for one minute that he was going to sleep with her again. The next time she slept with a man, it would be with someone who knew what he was doing. She wondered what the detective next door would be like in bed. She smiled. He looked impressive anyway. Six foot, shoulders like a barn door and lean and rangy for good measure. Her eyes sparkled with anticipation at the thought of the flirtation to come. Jauntily, she picked up the tea-tray and walked in to her aunt. ‘Supper is served, Madame,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘Paula, you’re a darling! I’m so glad you’re here with me,’ Helen declared.

  ‘Me too, Helen. Me too,’ Paula agreed happily.

  The nights were getting chilly, Helen brooded. She hated getting into a cold bed. She should have switched on the electric blanket earlier. It was something that had never bothered her when she was sharing a bed with Anthony. She’d always cuddled into him and been warm in minutes. She felt a surge of rage and resentment as she slipped in between cold sheets. Anthony was the cause of this, Anthony and his two-faced sweet-as-pie secretary was the cause of everything. Her humiliation. Her loneliness. Her fear of the future. She veered from exuberant optimism to deep depression. All this was the fault of her shit of a husband and his designing little whey-faced fancy woman.

  Helen gingerly stretched out and waited for the electric blanket to warm the bed. She hated the nights now. During the day she could keep herself occupied. But alone in her room at night, all those horrible thoughts and emotions crowded in on her and she couldn’t evade them. Every night she went to sleep angry.

  Stephanie Larkin, her vicious, malicious mother-in-law, had opened Helen’s eyes to her husband’s affair. She’d phoned one evening to talk to Anthony. But he wasn’t at home. When Helen told her this, her mother-in-law said sweetly, ‘Oh yes, I forgot. He must be having dinner with Molly. He mentioned something to me about it. She’s such a sweet girl. So sympathetic. She’ll make some man a wonderful wife and of course she’s devoted to Anthony. He’d be los
t without her.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Helen said calmly, furious that Stephanie seemed to know exactly what her Anthony was doing. All he’d told Helen was that he was working late. Come to think of it he seemed to be working late a lot recently, she reflected as she put the phone down. You’d think that he and Molly were having a rip-roaring affair the way her mother-in-law was talking. The thought amused her. Anthony was the last person in the world who’d have an affair. He was far too strait-laced.

  She asked him where he’d been when he came home late that night. ‘Working! The auditors are coming next week. I want everything to be spot-on.’

  ‘Your mother said you were having dinner with Molly,’ she said lightly, as she made him a cup of tea. A dull red blush suffused his face.

  ‘Yes . . . well yes, we did have a bite to eat,’ he said hastily. ‘She’s worked very hard the last few weeks.’

  ‘Where’d you go?’ Helen was a bit miffed that he hadn’t mentioned it. She didn’t particularly like Molly. She was always very polite to Helen but she felt that it was an insincere politeness. When Helen ever heard the phrase ‘still waters run deep’ she thought of Molly Kelly.

  ‘I took her to the Russell,’ Anthony said stiffly. Helen was astonished. The Russell Hotel was posh and expensive. A place you’d go to splash out for a birthday or wedding anniversary if you were fairly affluent. Molly must have been doing Trojan work.

  ‘Very nice,’ she murmured. ‘Some people have all the luck!’ She meant it as a joke but Anthony turned on her angrily.

  ‘Molly’s an extremely hard worker, Helen. She deserved a night out. And I can tell you one thing, she’s a very loyal employee.’

  ‘What’s bugging you, Anthony? I only made a simple remark,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You can be very smart with your remarks sometimes, Helen,’ Anthony said huffily as he left his tea and stalked up to bed.

  ‘God, you’re touchy,’ she shouted up the stairs after him. ‘What difference does it make to me whether you bring her to the Russell or Bewley’s?’