Two For Joy

by Patricia Scanlan

  Lorna hadn’t spoken to Heather for a fortnight until she wanted her to go to a pub quiz with her and breezed into the accountant’s office where Heather worked as though nothing had happened. Arctic conditions still existed between her and Ruth and they had not socialized together since the handbag episode. Ruth wasn’t a bit put out. She had her own life to lead and Lorna, happily, wasn’t part of it.

  Heather came back to the present as the girl behind the counter called over to her to ask if she wanted salt and vinegar on her chips. One of these days, she too would put Lorna in her place and not be a wimp about it, she promised herself as the delightful sizzle of frying batter and the wafting smells of garlic and vinegar made her mouth water.

  Monday she was going to start. New diet. New fitness regime. New assertive attitude to life. And Lorna Morgan could take a running jump!

  2

  Lorna Morgan was thoroughly pissed off as she drove along North Road. There was no sign of her wishy-washy cousin. She’d hoped to overtake her trudging home in the rain and drive past with her head in the air. She gave a sigh that came from her toes. Heather was so staid and boring sometimes. She had no sense of adventure. Lorna had! She just knew that there had to be more to life than working as a receptionist in the Lake View Hotel and living at home with her parents and two younger brothers, Eoin and Aidan, who were the bane of her life. She was a month short of her nineteenth birthday, Heather was practically the same age, life was there for the taking and they were wasting precious time stuck here in the back end of nowhere. If only her cousin would come with her to live in Dublin. Everything would change. She just knew it.

  She could go on her own, she supposed, but it would be very lonely. She didn’t know anyone in Dublin apart from her obnoxious cousin Ruth, and she most certainly didn’t count. Lorna wrinkled her pert little nose. She hadn’t spoken to Ruth since she’d thrown her out of the flat and not even for a temporary place to stay in the city would she lower herself to ever speak to that ignorant cow again, she vowed, as she overtook a tractor at speed.

  If she went to Dublin on her own where would she live, though? Good accommodation was hard to come by. She didn’t want to live in a poky little bedsit in Rathmines. Certainly not. Or not even in a boring semi, like the one Ruth rented with her friends. Lorna had visions of herself in a smart apartment in town, or in the new, refurbished docklands. She was an avid reader of the property pages in the papers and spent many happy hours imagining herself entertaining new trendy friends in her own upmarket pad.

  But first she’d have to get a job. There was a shortage of hotel staff in all the large cities according to the tourist board, so finding a position shouldn’t pose a problem. Better get the job first before worrying about accommodation. Lorna sighed again. She’d had this conversation with herself a hundred times. If she didn’t go and do something about it soon, she’d be so over the hill no one would want to give her a job. It was time to be proactive, she decided.

  She liked the word ‘proactive’. It had impressed her when she’d heard the manager use it at a staff meeting. It was a sophisticated sort of a word. Lorna was all for sophistication.

  Yes, she thought, she would get the names of all the prestigious hotels in Dublin and send them her CV and references. Surely one of them would want a receptionist of her experience? The Lake View had a hundred bedrooms and a leisure centre, after all, and that wasn’t to be sneezed at. She’d been working in the hotel every summer since she was fourteen and had got the job as trainee receptionist when she’d finished her Leaving Cert. As far as she was concerned she was now a fully fledged receptionist and she certainly wasn’t going to mention ‘trainee’ in her CV.

  Lorna chewed her lip. If only Heather would come with her to Dublin it would be perfect. She’d have someone she knew to rely on. She wasn’t as brave as Ruth, going off to live in the city on her own. To tell the truth, she was a little in awe of her strong-willed cousin. She was much tougher than Heather. Heather could always be got around and prevailed upon to do what Lorna wanted her to do. Ruth was immovable once her mind was made up. For twins, they were chalk and cheese.

  It was a bad move being snooty with Heather when she was trying to persuade her to leave Kilronan, she reflected ruefully. She’d better be nice to her at Oliver Flynn’s wedding tomorrow. She’d get her pissed and try once again to persuade her to come and live in Dublin. Once they got there, Heather would love it, Lorna was sure of it.

  She might as well go and have a session in the gym, she decided. She needed to look her absolute best for job interviews and who knew, maybe one of the guests using the gym while she was there might be a rich businessman taking a few days out of the rat race of city life. He’d see her working out and start chatting her up. Then he’d invite her out for a drink, or even dinner, and who knew what it would lead to. If he was absolutely gorgeous she might even consider doing the business with him, she fantasized.

  Lorna was longing to sleep with a man. A real man, not a wimpy doormat who let her walk all over him the way Derek did. She’d read so many articles in glossy magazines about fabulous sex. It really was time for her to experience it and become a sexual, sensual woman. Lots of her friends had had sex – she and Heather were practically the only virgins out of all the girls in their class. Dolores Redmond had lost her virginity at fourteen and had slept with loads of blokes. So had Margy Collins. It made Lorna feel extremely inadequate to know that she was practically nineteen, and hadn’t done the business yet.

  Ruth had.

  Heather had confided this nugget to her one night when she was a bit tipsy. Lorna had been pea green. Ruth was not half as attractive as she was. Her cousin was well built, hardly a slender sylph like herself. She had thick, wavy chestnut hair that flew all over the place, unlike Lorna’s groomed silken blonde bob. Ruth had nondescript grey-green eyes while Lorna’s were the bluest of cornflower blue. And yet her cousin seemed to have no trouble attracting men. It was galling to think that she’d done it before Lorna.

  Although she’d never admit it to her cousins, the thought of having sex scared Lorna. Once, when she was a little girl, she’d seen a man, not her father, doing things to her mother, when her father was at work. Jane Morgan had been making funny breathy moaning noises and Lorna was afraid. She slipped out of the bedroom, her heart pounding. Should she call a neighbour and say her mother was being attacked, she wondered frantically? What if the man came after her? She should hide. She ran to the little cubbyhole under the stairs until eventually she heard the heavy tread of footsteps and the man’s voice calling a good-humoured farewell. When the man was gone her mother had been smiling and happy, humming to herself as she strolled into the kitchen in her dressing-gown, to make herself a cup of coffee.

  ‘Hello, Chicken,’ she’d greeted her, uncharacteristically warmly, when Lorna had slipped warily into the kitchen. Lorna knew something was different – ‘Chicken’ was an endearment that was rarely used by her mother, who was not maternal by nature. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were over playing with Ruth and Heather?’

  ‘We had a fight. Ruth always wants her own way,’ Lorna whinged sulkily.

  ‘Hmm.’ Her mother was miles away, her eyes dreamy and unfocused. It was clear she hadn’t heard a word Lorna’d said. Usually Jane would be annoyed to hear of the cousins fighting among themselves. It suited her much better if there was peace and harmony so that her children could play over with their cousins, out from under her feet.

  When Lorna was older, she’d seen a couple having sex in a film on TV and the memory of that distant, warm, Indian summer’s afternoon had come back like a tidal wave. She’d looked at her slim, pretty mother and realized that she’d been having sex with another man. It had shocked her deeply. She never thought of her parents as sexual beings. Parents didn’t do the things to each other that film stars did on TV, kissing and touching breasts and worse … And mothers in Kilronan definitely did not have affairs! She became hostile towards Jane. Ang
ry with her for not being like other mothers. Especially like her Auntie Anne, Ruth and Heather’s mother.

  Anne Williams, Jane’s older sister, was a good-humoured, motherly woman who seemed effortlessly to produce very satisfying dinners for her family and not worry if bedrooms were untidy, unlike Lorna’s own mother who was a poor cook but who went spare if anything was out of place in her spotless and immaculate home. Anne never worried about Hoovering and dusting, she was far too busy with her parish activities and spent as much time out of the home as in it. The Williams household was lively and chaotic, unlike Lorna’s own regimented palace.

  As Lorna grew into her teens she saw that her parents were not happy, and vaguely understood that Jane had looked to someone else for a need that was not being met in her marriage.

  ‘Marry a rich, ambitious man and don’t end up in a dead-end cul-de-sac like me,’ her mother had said to her one Christmas when she’d come home from a party and was the worse for wear for drink.

  ‘Go to bed, Jane,’ Gerard Morgan said wearily, but Lorna had seen the flash of hurt in her father’s eyes and felt a mixture of pity and contempt for him. Why didn’t he tell her mother to shut up? Why didn’t he stand up to her when she put him down? Which she did constantly, nagging and bickering until she got her own way.

  Lorna could get around her father too, wheedling and pleading until he gave in to her demands. He was a soft man and she could see that her mother despised him, despite the fact that he had given her a far better lifestyle than many of her peers, working all hours in his legal practice.

  Jane, too, had wanted to live in Dublin. When she’d married the young handsome solicitor she’d set her cap at, she’d been the envy of all her friends and had felt full sure that they would buy a big house in the city and entertain smart, successful couples like themselves. But Gerard wasn’t at the cutting edge of law. He’d only followed the career to please his father. He’d much rather have become a vet. Disappointment and resentment had slowly poisoned their marriage and although they put up a well-practised façade for their relations and neighbours, behind closed doors their relationship had long gone past the point of rescue.

  Lorna was sure of one thing. The man she married would have to have plenty of ambition and be prepared to keep her in an affluent lifestyle to which she certainly intended to become accustomed.

  Her current boyfriend, Derek Kennedy, was certainly not that man, she thought crossly. Derek had been trying to bed her for the last six months but she didn’t fancy him enough. He had wet lips, which she hated. The only reason she dated him was because his parents were loaded and he was always able to give her a good time. Besides, dating the doctor’s son gave her a certain social cachet in the town. He’d been invited to Oliver Flynn’s wedding with his parents and had asked her to accompany him. Heather and her culchie mechanic had to make do with just attending the afters.

  Derek was studying medicine at Trinity and he detested it. All he wanted to do was mess about on his boat on the lake. He came home most weekends, but tonight he’d had to stay late for a college event, hence the boring Friday night ahead of her. He didn’t have much get up and go either, Lorna mused as she swung into the car park of the hotel. It was practically full. There was a wedding on today too. The hotel was extremely busy with weddings and conferences and had been full throughout the summer season. She drove around to the leisure centre and found a space without too much difficulty.

  She looked through the big plate-glass windows, expectantly, and saw Nuala Logan and Ted Grimes, two locals, running on the treadmills. Not a businessman in sight, she thought dispiritedly as she trekked into the changing-room with a face like thunder. This could be her lifestyle for years to come if she didn’t do something drastic. Grim-faced, she slipped into her leotard, a black lycra affair with a very high leg to show off her toned thighs to perfection. She was going to work her ass off tonight. No more faffing around.

  It was time to get a life.

  3

  Oliver Flynn loosened the knot of his tie as he sat waiting for his wedding meal to be served. The sooner he got out of this monkey suit the better. He felt like a right idiot in his tails. He’d drawn the line at wearing a hat, much to Noreen’s annoyance. She wanted everything to be just so, but there were some things a man had to take a stand on and wearing silly hats was one of them. He’d be glad when this palaver was all over and they were back from their honeymoon.

  They were going to Malta. Noreen didn’t want to go to any of the ‘common or garden resorts’ as she called them. She wanted something different. Classy. Noreen liked to impress people.

  He didn’t care where they went. He’d left all those decisions to his wife. He glanced at the gold ring encircling the fourth finger of his left hand.

  He had a wife.

  He was married.

  He couldn’t quite believe it. Marriage wasn’t something he’d actively planned. It was just something that seemed to happen out of nowhere. Noreen had proposed to him. If it had been left to him, it would probably never have happened, he thought ruefully.

  Oliver still remembered the queer lurch his stomach had given when she’d turned to him one evening during a walk along the lake shore and said, ‘Oliver, I think it’s time we got married. Will you marry me?’ Otherwise she was considering going back to London. What could he say? He’d been seeing her for two years. He liked her, he got on well with her. He was a little bit in awe of her confident ways, she was good for him, but he didn’t long for her or dream about her the way he’d longed for and dreamed about Kate MacDonnell when he was sixteen years old and too shy to say more than a quick hello when he’d meet her on the street.

  Kate was curvy and flame-haired with sparkling blue eyes and a wide ready smile and he’d worshipped her from afar. The conversations he’d had in his head with her where he was witty and entertaining stayed in his head. He was far too tongue-tied and reserved to say the things he wanted to say to her and all he could manage was a pathetic ‘hello’ and a blush when he said it. He’d acquired more polish as he’d got older, but Kate had gone to London and never come back.

  The girls in Kilronan liked him for some reason, but even though he went to the odd disco and dated several of the local girls, the challenge of his bashful reserve would eventually wear off when he’d be late for dates due to work, or when he wouldn’t be free on Saturday to go to Dublin to shop and do the other things women wanted to do. Or when he’d want to jump out of bed after having sex instead of spending hours kissing and cuddling.

  Oliver sighed. There was only so much kissing and cuddling that you could do. But houses had to be built, contracts had to be fulfilled and new ones secured, and none of the girls he’d dated could understand that. They always took it personally, saying that he wasn’t interested in them. He was … to a point. But work was a demanding mistress and best of all … it didn’t nag.

  That a woman as sharp and focused as Noreen Lynch would want to be married to him still surprised him. He didn’t know what she saw in him sometimes. He cast a sideways glance at his bride. She was speaking to one of the waiters, issuing crisp, concise instructions. She looked so different in her white veil and elegant beaded wedding gown, her straight black hair brought back from her face emphasizing her wide, dark-lashed amber eyes, her best feature.

  Noreen was a brisk, no-nonsense type who knew what she wanted out of life. She was always on the go, full of energy, while he was content to plod along in his own quiet way, working all the hours God sent, building up his construction firm and enjoying a pint after a long back-breaking day on site. Not that he actually needed to do any of the physical work himself, these days. He could spend all day in the office if he wanted to. But he hated being stuck indoors, and besides, it was good for him to mix with his men and be on site. He could keep a sharp eye on things. A Flynn-built house was a well-built house. Oliver took pride in his work and expected high standards from his workmen.

  He was doing well, he though
t with quiet satisfaction. He had thirty men working for him now and the books were full for the next two years.

  He’d built a new home for Noreen and himself and it had given him pleasure to do the best job he possibly could. Noreen had been involved in every aspect, of course, but although he took her input on board, he was the authority on the project. One thing Oliver Flynn was certain about in life was his work, and no one could undermine him there. Noreen was impressed in spite of herself when he spoke with quiet authority as she argued with him about where she wanted her kitchen and utility room. She had a bossy side to her and he often agreed with her just for the sake of peace and quiet, but when he knew he was right about something, or just didn’t want to do what she suggested, he could dig his heels in with the best of them. Building the house was his responsibility – she could decorate it whatever way she wished, but he’d had his way regarding the structure.

  It was a fine house, nestled on a hillside overlooking the lake. A four-bedroom dormer, with ensuite bathrooms and a conservatory facing west. ‘Posh’ his mother had called it. He hoped it would be a very happy home. Now that he was married he’d put his heart and soul into his new life and not waste time regretting the romantic notions of his youth. True love was just something that happened in films. It was a crush that he’d had on Kate MacDonnell, nothing more, nothing less, he decided, but he felt a little pang at the memory of her, which he irritatedly banished. It was ridiculous to be thinking of another woman on the day of his marriage. He and Noreen had a strong bond and a lot in common. It would be a very good marriage, he promised himself.

  Hopefully he’d have at least one son to take over his business. ‘Flynn & Son, Building Contractors’ had a certain ring to it that pleased him. Noreen was anxious to have children sooner rather than later: she was five years older than him. Thirty-four, old enough for a woman to be having her first child. No more precautions once the ring was on her finger, she’d told him. If that was what she wanted that was OK by him.