My Husband's Wives

by Faith Hogan

  At four o’clock, she walked into the modern white and steel foyer of Liffey Hospital. A young receptionist, efficient and friendly, led her into Paul’s office, an insipidly cream space crying out for adornment. He had been waiting for her, and they sat for a while making small talk about art and business, but really, she could hardly concentrate. He was even more attractive than she remembered.

  ‘You really do need a few paintings around here,’ she said as they made their way to the café through a tunnel of endless naked walls and cream carpet designed to absorb bad news and good alike.

  ‘Well, maybe that’s something you can help me with.’ He held the door open for her. She couldn’t manage eye contact.

  They sat at a small table on a mezzanine overlooking a courtyard decorated with colourful shrubs, wooden furniture and a privet maze. In the polished glass of the window, she could see their reflections. They made a striking couple. Her dark hair and clothes edgy compared to his clean cut good looks.

  ‘I’m glad you called.’ He ordered the coffees and leant across the table towards her. ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t. I thought I might crack and ring you first; then I realised, I didn’t have a number for you. You kissed me and then you ran away.’ He smiled through a lopsided generous mouth that was much more used to being set in serious mode in these surroundings. ‘Of course, I couldn’t.’

  ‘No?’ Was it her imagination or did his wedding ring constantly wink in the afternoon sunlight?

  ‘I’m married. You must know that?’ He broke their gaze, sadly looking down at the courtyard below. ‘Well,’ he scrutinized her with those astute eyes. ‘Marriage? What does it mean anymore? Eh?’

  ‘Probably means a lot to your wife.’ Grace sighed, sitting back a little in her seat.

  ‘It isn’t straightforward.’ He’d caught the fleeting look of resignation. ‘Seriously, it isn’t what you think. Evie is much older. We’ve never had… a…’ He took the milk jug, concentrated for a moment on pouring it. ‘We’ve never had a family, never had what you’d call a conventional marriage.’

  ‘She doesn’t understand you?’ Grace had dipped her voice, though she knew she shouldn’t make light of it. He caught her eye, and it felt as if she’d missed a heartbeat and everything in the world had just toppled slightly. This was not funny, not funny at all.

  ‘She understands me perfectly, as it turns out. She recognizes what we have, and, well, she wants more for me. She has her life, I have mine. She understands how I feel about… things.’

  ‘So, she’d be happy with you, say, taking a mistress?’

  ‘I’m not sure that those are the words she’d use, but yes. Look, I don’t expect you to understand this, but when you love someone, really love them, well, you want what will make them happy.’

  ‘And that’s me?’ Grace whispered the words. This was insane; they hardly knew each other.

  ‘You’re looking at me as though I might be an escaped lunatic.’ They both laughed at that. He shook his head, lowered his voice still further so it was little more than a whisper. ‘I told her that I met you.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Grace moved forward. This was not what she was expecting – what had she been expecting? That they might discuss the merits of charcoal over pencil? No, she should be honest with herself at least. She’d been expecting more than that. ‘You told your wife? That you met me?’

  ‘I had to, I couldn’t move on without being honest with her. You don’t just stop loving someone, not altogether. It may have changed, as the years have gone on, but I wouldn’t hurt her for the world.’

  ‘And, meeting me, here, having this conversation, that wouldn’t hurt her?’

  ‘No, she’s ready for me to move on. She wants me to find happiness. She is very content with her life as it is. She has, if you’ll excuse the old-fashioned way of putting it, given me her blessing.’ He smiled at Grace, a winning smile; it was game, set and match to Paul Starr. ‘If you feel the same as I do.’

  *

  It didn’t take long; he asked her to dinner a few nights later. The Trocadero, in the city centre, a public place. When she got back to the safety of her little flat, she danced about the cramped space to whatever mindless tune played on the radio. The next day, she headed for Switzers, blew a huge hole in her credit card and walked out the door with a sexy half-price Valentino blouse that left less to the imagination than it left in her wallet. She was falling for him, regardless of marriage, blessings or any other stupid notions that might be playing in the back of her mind.

  ‘You look beautiful, even more so than the first time I noticed you.’ He all but fell inside her blouse as he was talking to her. It was a magical night. He was full of plans, dreams and ambitions. ‘And that,’ he told her was half the problem with his marriage to Evie. ‘We’re stuck, have been maybe since before we got married.’

  ‘My sisters are like that. They don’t understand why I’m…’ She inclined her head, knowing instinctively that he’d understand, ‘…the way I am.’

  Four hours later, they walked around Stephen’s Green. The city smelled of promise. Across the railings of the green, viola, stock and jasmine coasted on the night air. It seemed the moon shone orange and low in the silken empty sky, just for them, and the horses stood a little taller to attention as they passed. Somewhere down Grafton Street, a busker played his heart out for a love he had lost, or maybe never knew. And Paul looked at her with desire Grace had only ever expressed in her paintings. He’d leaned in to kiss her, and then stopped. She thought that she’d turn herself inside out with hunger for him. She managed to play it cool.

  ‘I have to see you again,’ he whispered into her hair, his body skimming hers so she could feel the length of him against her.

  ‘I suppose, we might manage that.’ She laughed at him then, enjoying the game. It was the same the next time and the time after that. If he wasn’t being unfaithful exactly to Evie, he looked at Grace with more longing than any other man she’d ever known. Then, after five whirlwind months, when Grace had hardly eaten a bite apart from when she’d been with him, her whole body a knot of pent-up nerves and sexual tension, he’d rung her at the studio one afternoon.

  ‘I’m off to Paris at the weekend. Fancy it?’ He said the words lightly, but they both knew what they implied.

  ‘What about…’ first rule of affairs – don’t mention the wife’s name.

  ‘I thought it’d be something special, memorable for us.’ She could swear she felt his breath warm and spicy on her hair.

  ‘Work or pleasure?’

  ‘I don’t see why it can’t be both.’ He chuckled in a way that made him seem much older, worldly-wise. Patrick had told her that she was trying to replace her lost father. He was joking, she hoped.

  ‘Maybe I can get a little business done while I’m there too.’

  As it turned out, she never took the sketchpad out of her bag. Paris had been wonderful. It truly was the city of love. It was as intoxicating as the connection between them and that ran far deeper than Grace had expected. Cemented by their shared sense of humour; they were anchored by voracious desire. Paul begged off the conference with food poisoning. A hackneyed excuse but, surprisingly, they bought it. They flew back on Sunday night, exhausted, but exuberant. Things had changed in Paris, and they both knew it.

  Grace got home before midnight, oddly bereft at being without him. She did not want to leave him at the airport, and then it hit her that he was not hers; he still belonged to Evie. She climbed the four flights of stairs and cursed the Georgians for making people live in nests above the city. She lived alone. The only company she needed in the evenings were a remote control and a cat she called Moses that sometimes dropped by from the flat downstairs. She switched on the phone when she unpacked her weekend bag. One new message. She dialled the mailbox. It was her sister Anna – the middle one.

  ‘Grace, I’m sorry for leaving a message like this, but we’ve been looking for you since Friday night. It’s Sunday mornin
g now and we’re getting really worried. Anyway, will you ring us the minute you get this message, it’s about Ma.’ Grace sat on the side of her cast-iron bed – a gift to herself. For once, its creaky welcome was lost on her. Hard to believe that only hours earlier she lay in his arms and all the world seemed right. She redialled the number on the call log.

  ‘Hi, everything all right?’ In her mind’s eye, she was back there. In that big cold farmhouse, the whitewash no longer white, ignored since long before her father died. She could smell the inescapable smell of damp, dust settled stubbornly in corners best avoided and the ceilings moved just a little closer to the floor with each passing year.

  ‘Oh Grace.’ It was Clair who answered and she never got upset. She was much too flaky for that, a small angular girl with deep blue eyes and a leaning towards bad men. ‘We’ve been trying to track you down for days, its Ma… she’s…’ Clair didn’t have to say the word. Grace could picture her, standing against the dripping kitchen sink, her drawn face chalky pale, and her hand shaking. She was eight again, the news of their father hitting home.

  ‘How? When?’ It was all Grace could manage; the last thing she expected, and yet, not unexpected after all. Mona had been intent on dying for almost twenty years. She’d taken to bed after their father was buried. Effectively, she’d abandoned them then, fallen into a ravine of mourning and left Grace to get on with running the house and raising the girls, although she was little more than a child herself.

  ‘You have to come and help us get things sorted. Ma would want you to take care of the funeral.’

  ‘Of course. I was away for…’ There was no point explaining. It would only be another thing for Anna to throw back at her. ‘I’m on my way, sorry you couldn’t get me. I’ll leave straight away.’

  ‘Well, get here as quickly as you can. There’s so much to be done.’ Clair put the phone down, in her usual absent-minded way.

  Grace left a message for Paul, something insanely short about not being able to meet him because her mother had just died. She didn’t expect him to come, didn’t imagine that he would feel the need to get involved. Then, there he was, his car outside her flat, waiting to bring them both home and she wondered, for a minute if he’d even made it back to Evie.

  ‘You really don’t have to do this…’ She dreaded the uncomfortableness of having an outsider among their dysfunctional family.

  ‘I wouldn’t let you go through this alone, Grace. It hasn’t hit you yet.’ He smiled at her. Soon they were leaving Dublin behind, heading towards the open road. The flattened midland bogs swept by her, a maelstrom of brown, purple and tawny green patches toiled large across the central plains. Then the land began to narrow, centuries of subdivision where farmers cut their hands on stones to mark out their hard-won sod of turf, heralded their arrival in the west. Here the rocky land prevailed long after Boycott and the Leaguers fought their wars and lost so much along the way. Grace had a feeling that all you could do was capture it in the briefest moment, commit it to a painting and hope to match the meanness with the majesty. She murmured the thought aloud. ‘My father could have done justice to that; he could have painted it in his sleep.’ She believed she’d never be as good as him, never have his touch.

  ‘Your father was the artist? Everyone has heard of Louis Kennedy,’ he said as the car purred along the uneven westbound roads. ‘Tragic, is the word most people call to mind when they think of him, tragic and brilliant.’

  ‘He was an odd mix of both. He was a quiet man, who spent more time painting than he ever did with us, but my mother adored him. He made her existence worthwhile. Does that sound strange?’

  ‘No, I can imagine how you could fall beneath the shadow of someone so talented.’ He stared ahead, thoughtful, his silence as loaded with more clever comprehension than any words could convey.

  ‘She married above herself – that’s what she felt, and I suppose it’s what people made her feel, and when he died, well, it was as if she became a shell.’ Her mother’s response to her father’s death was one of the reasons Grace had long since decided she would not live in someone else’s shadow. Husbands and children were definitely off the radar. She was making an exception for Paul – but, after all, he wasn’t her husband.

  In the end, Grace read the eulogy – a three-stanza set of lines, with unequal rhyming, clunking language. Mona wrote it, before she lost all hope, verses of autumn and moving on. She was a poet once, but that was long ago. Grace stood at the top of the small church, the only dry-eyed one among them. She wasn’t one for weeping at weddings or funerals, she’d leave that to Anna. She hadn’t cried for her father, and knew she wouldn’t cry for her mother. It wasn’t natural, was it?

  They buried her mother next to her father in a small plot on the mountainside, gazing across the vast undulating countryside. The county spread in a hazel bog before them, purple heather punctuating the tawny land. Overhead, grey skies conspired to cap any more emotion on the day; it was a Louis Kennedy landscape begging to be captured. She hadn’t visited the grave in over a decade. She pulled her dark cloak closer to her and was glad of Paul’s steadying hand on her back.

  The funeral was all her mother would have wanted. The house filled with tea drinkers and near-professional mourners. Grace sat amongst them, listening to their stories, looking at the house, a faded apparition of a place she once knew well. The dresser seemed smaller, the paintwork scruffier and the chintz more faded. On the mantelpiece, there was a family photograph – the last one taken. Happier times, when they were all together. She got up to make more tea. It was the only way to cope here. Keep moving. Stay busy. Paul poured tea or whiskey, depending on the request, then turned his hand to dishwashing after charming first her sisters and then the neighbours with his winning bedside manner. They would probably remember him more than her for the day.

  *

  For two more months, life breezed along for Grace. Painting consumed her and Paul was pleasingly attentive. Had it not been for the fact that he told her about Evie, she’d never have believed he was married. Mistresses were meant to feel they were second on the list, weren’t they? Then one night, as they clinked glasses on her little sofa, everything she’d eaten for a week threatened to come rushing back up her throat. She raced to the bathroom just in time to catch the nauseous feeling. It returned like an avalanche when she glimpsed in the cracked little mirror. She seemed different, peaky, bloated, yet she was in top health, her face flushed with what she thought was happiness. The sudden feeling of gaseousness had nothing to do with her stomach and everything to do with the tampons she held in her hand. She’d bought them before the funeral, before the trip to Paris. They lay on the shelf still unopened.

  Next day, she bought a test. It took less than three minutes for her world to numb, spiking her completely so she couldn’t paint, couldn’t think. She was aware that Paul called her sometime after most people had lunch. By five, he’d rung four times. She knew she’d have to answer him sooner or later. It turned out she didn’t need to; he was standing at the door of the studio, phone in hand waiting for her to let him in. He spotted the test before he managed to switch on the kettle. It had become a bit of a habit; he stopped by on his way home from the hospital, and they shared the day’s events over a pot of strong tea and biscuits.

  ‘Oh my God.’ His eyes danced, his voice was a little shriller than usual. ‘I can’t believe it, how long?’ He was trying to do the maths, but he couldn’t stop smiling, his hands an uncoordinated knot of giddy action. ‘I really can’t believe it – I’m so happy!’ He took her in his arms, and if he didn’t notice her own shocked response immediately, it didn’t take too long. ‘Are you okay?’ he said, holding her at arm’s length for a moment, searching deep in her green eyes for some kind of hint of how she felt.

  ‘I’m just a little…’ stunned was probably the best word, but she managed, ‘surprised…’ They’d never talked about children – well you didn’t, did you? Not when he had Evie, and she woul
dn’t dream of asking why it never happened years ago, before her.

  ‘But you’re happy, right?’

  ‘I don’t know, not yet, it’s too soon, it seems too soon.’ She heard her words faltering; she wasn’t going to ruin it for him. ‘It probably needs some getting used to.’ All sorts of things were flying through her brain. Funny, she’d often think as things went on, never once had she thought of getting rid of it. The nuns had done a good job on her, ingrained the Catholic guilt so well, she didn’t even realize it was there anymore.

  ‘Move in with me?’ he said.

  ‘And Evie?’

  ‘No, we can get a place together… She’ll understand.’ His eyes darkened for a second and she knew; it would be hard to tell Evie that he was moving on so quickly, so utterly, so finally.

  ‘I…’ Perhaps it was shock, but something made her stop.

  ‘Isn’t it what you want?’ She wanted to kick herself for causing the hurt that lingered in his face.

  ‘It’s just, I suppose,’ she wasn’t sure what to say. She had planned things, but Paul had changed all that. ‘I can’t imagine life without you; it’s probably just the shock – the surprise.’

  ‘You haven’t answered me.’

  ‘No,’ she said simply. ‘No, I haven’t answered you, have I?’ She needed time to think. ‘Let’s get through the next few days first, get used to the idea?’

  *

  The next days and weeks took on a surreal quality for Grace, as though she was living outside the action of her own life. Paul was great; he took it all on, seemed to be on hand whenever she needed him. He picked up brochures, narrowed down places they could live. ‘For a while, until we get settled and decide what we want,’ he told her reassuringly, as though there was a greater agreed plan. She still hadn’t settled on the idea of living together just yet – it was all too sudden. She hadn’t told her sisters about Evie, but now there seemed little point in holding back any of the finer details.