My Husband's Wives

by Faith Hogan

  She didn’t like Grace Kennedy. Not from the moment she set eyes on her in that awful hospital. Truthfully, her dislike predated ever actually meeting her. Too much arty coolness mixed with sophistication for Annalise to handle with sang-froid. She tried to tell herself the woman was just a walking cliché; she wore charcoal urbane clothes and expensive hair, silver clanging jewellery and edgy rich perfume. God! She wasn’t looking forward to this. What would it be? A showdown? Paul never spoke about Grace or when they’d been married. He never spoke about Delilah and Annalise was glad of that. Sometimes she pretended that he’d forgotten Grace Kennedy. Annalise always thought that must be a good thing. It was obvious that Grace Kennedy was not the kind of woman men ever forgot. Despite her youth and her pretty face, Annalise hadn’t the advantage, after all, in a comparison with that intimidating woman. Annalise had a feeling that nothing would overwhelm Grace.

  And bloody hell, there was Evie as well. Annalise couldn’t think about Evie Considine. She couldn’t believe that Paul might once have been married to someone older than Madeline. Each time Evie threatened to rise up in her consciousness, she pushed her down as swiftly and fiercely as her emotional strength would allow. Annalise wasn’t even going to try to get her head around that union.

  Madeline had said she didn’t think Annalise had taken it in yet. ‘The shock, darling. It’s natural. You need time. I’ll take the boys home. You have a bath. You need to come to terms with it. Call me if you need me. But darling, you need to grieve. It’s important.’ She’d said words like those over and over again, as though trying to convince herself as much as her daughter. And she was right to have left her alone. Annalise was beginning to feel the enormity of it all hitting her. Paul was dead. In a car accident. With some girl young enough to be his daughter, for Gods sake. Some foreign girl that Annalise had never heard of before, travelling in Paul’s car in the dead of night. A pregnant girl. Had Paul known? Was it Paul’s? Her brain, the rational part, was telling her that it couldn’t be.

  And she had to come to terms with the fact that Paul Starr had never really married her. How could he have, not when it looked as if he never divorced Evie? He had never truly married Grace Kennedy either, and now it seemed as if he had been about to move on again. With Kasia Petrescu. Was it really that simple? And with his death, it was out in the open now.

  Part of her, the part that could not make up her mind if she loved or hated him anymore, wanted to pick up the phone and tell the world. Well, tell her agent at least. She was not sure what had stopped her so far.

  Bastard! Dying, with some strange woman, leaving her condition of matrimony in doubt! Had he even loved her?

  Had she loved him? Sure, she’d needed him; he took care of her, and protected her from the harsh world in which she’d found herself back then. Her knight. Her hero. So, gratitude, yes. But love?

  And now she had to trail all the way out to Evie Considine’s house. The funeral would be an understated blip with her in charge. Not what she wanted for her husband, not what she’d have chosen if he’d actually been hers. She stood, straight and rigid. If the Connollys were old money, she could imagine her grandmother living somewhere like Carlinville. While her own father’s mother lived in a small cottage, one in a row of seven with a narrow backyard that ended too close to the railway tracks. She could imagine lounging across one of Evie’s antique sofas, telling some awestruck reporter about her family’s illustrious lineage. Ahh well.

  But when she arrived at Carlinville later that day, Annalise found something that surprised her. Although prosperity was visible in Carlinville House, there was also something else here. It reeked of decay and desperateness. Annalise couldn’t quite articulate what it was at first, but she only had to look at Evie, then she knew. She knew without any doubt. This is what it was like when you had nothing and no one to live for. Loneliness pervaded everything; a silent, stealthy presence that eventually overtook everything else.

  7

  Evie Considine

  The Romanian girl arrived first. ‘It is the Dart – I am still getting used to the timetables here. In Romania, either you are there early, or better to stay at home. In Dublin, I always seem to be too early for everything – or maybe it is just that everyone else is late?’ She laughed; her heavy eastern accent was at odds with the timidity that hung behind her eyes. She was an angular girl, pretty, with auburn hair that pulled the colour of her eyes to a warmer brown than Evie had ever seen before. It seemed she smiled more than she should, her lips never quite covering her milky-white teeth. When Evie shook her hand, she was surprised not by the coolness of her skin, but rather by the strength in such delicate-looking hands. How had this girl come into Paul’s life without her knowing?

  ‘We’re lucky to have it. When I was young, it was as if we lived at world’s end; the bus connections brought you about the county just for sport.’

  ‘You never drove?’ Kasia peered at her quizzically. She’d spotted the photograph hidden behind all the others – the house was full of black and white prints of relatives long since dead. This one, a smiling Evie, pictured behind the wheel of the mustard Mercedes echoed back to a time of innocence, maybe happiness too. A faded, instamatic snap, taken on a sunny afternoon long before she met Paul.

  ‘Oh, that was a long time ago.’ Evie warmed at the memory. It surprised her that, still, when she thought of those days, they could raise a smile on her unwilling lips.

  ‘That is a beautiful car.’ Kasia reached in for the small photograph.

  ‘It was my father’s. I’m afraid it caused a bit of bother at the time.’ It was so long since she’d even thought about it.

  ‘Oh?’ Kasia raised her eyes, only slightly from the picture in her hand. ‘You have to tell me, I am – what is that word – fascinating now.’

  ‘You are fascinated?’

  ‘Yes, if that is how you say it.’ She smiled a shy quiver on her lips. ‘I am not forgetting your story of the car that caused the trouble.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a silly story. It was a ridiculous thing – I was just a stupid girl with too much freedom too soon. Oh, but I loved to drive that car,’ Evie whispered wistfully. She’d taken the picture out only a few months earlier, mostly left it in one of the lesser-used rooms. She had a feeling Paul would not approve. ‘The locals weren’t keen on how I drove: Too fast. Then one evening, I managed to overtake the local sergeant on his way home and he came up to Carlinville to complain to my father. I’d been doing over eighty – which was a fair old speed back then, especially on the roads about here.’ The memory made Evie smile. ‘Of course, I wasn’t laughing at the time. My father grounded me for months, took the car off me and told me to put any more daft notions out of my head. Oh, I cried bitterly, but when I look back, of course, he was right. It was all too outrageous; who ever heard the likes?’ Evie shook her head, but when she thought about those times, she could almost feel the exhilaration come back to her.

  ‘What notions did you have?’

  ‘I wanted to race cars for a living. I wanted to be just like Rosemary Smith; she was my hero. I wanted to show everyone that I could handle a car better than anyone. It wasn’t just about the speed either – although, I have to admit, it was a big part of it.’

  ‘It is strange; I couldn’t have imagined you as a, what do you call it?’ She searched a moment for the words, ‘A rally driver? Not before, but in that picture – well, it is a shame.’

  ‘Oh, no. Kasia, it’s just the way life was. My father didn’t want my name in the paper for speeding, and as it turned out, he was probably right.’ Evie shook her head and elevated her voice so her father and Paul would be proud of her terseness. A little sadly, she put the photograph back behind the others. Later she noticed that Kasia had moved it to the front. It made her smile.

  *

  It had not taken long, in the end. They sent someone around from the local undertakers and the whole thing had been civil and a lot less stressful than Evie expected. It was not t
he time for questions or accusations so they agreed on a casket quite quickly; the same for the hearse. The other women were happy to go along with anything she chose. There was no mention of cost; of course it would all come out of Paul’s life assurance. Annalise asked if he could be buried in the suit he wore for their wedding. Of course they agreed. And he could wear the cufflinks Evie had given him for their wedding anniversary almost twenty years previously. They had tea and scones purchased by Grace from a little bakery nearby and everyone fell into an uncomfortable silence once the details of the funeral were agreed. Grace rang St. Mary’s Deanery and Reverend Lynott said she would call by within the hour. Annalise was silenced, perhaps a little taken aback, and Evie wondered if she even knew that Paul was Church of Ireland.

  Emma Lynott was a round-hipped motherly woman who wore a dark trouser suit with the ease of an executive. She was used to making quick decisions, she spoke sensibly and she listened shrewdly. If she wasn’t brusque, she was certainly businesslike. The jobs of hatching and despatching were just that to her. There was some sympathy of course, but no false wallowing. It was exactly what Paul would have wanted; no forced keening or hallmark eulogies, no long clock-stopping faces.

  ‘It has to be tasteful; it’s what he would have wanted.’ Grace cast a side eye towards Annalise.

  ‘Are you trying to say something here?’ Annalise whipped back at her.

  ‘Not at all. But Paul didn’t want his life spread across the centre pages of a gossip magazine. Neither would he want his death there.’

  ‘Please, will you give me some credit?’ Annalise pitched her eyes up to heaven, which made her look like a sullen teenager. ‘I can’t be responsible for who turns up though. Already the fact that he’s died has made it to the red tops.’ She shook her head.

  ‘So you’ve checked,’ Grace blurted out. Then she glanced up and bit her lip. ‘Sorry. It’s just… surely you remember how he felt about his privacy.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Grace.’ Evie cut across at Annalise. ‘She’s just thinking about Paul. She’s not trying to get at you. You are the one the papers are interested in. None of us want to see Paul’s funeral made into a circus.’ Oh, yes, Paul liked his privacy, and Evie could see why now. She wished she was brave enough to out him as the bigamist it seemed he was. How could she not have realized that these women thought he married them too? Of course it was useless; her loyalty would win out in the end.

  ‘Can we make it private?’ Grace directed her question at Emma Lynott.

  ‘We can make the church private, of course. But if you want Paul to be buried in the family plot…’

  ‘No. No way.’ Annalise was shaking her head. ‘I’m sorry, but no. He’s not being buried out here, in the middle of nowhere, with people who…’

  ‘Yes?’ Evie kept her voice even; she knew she had the upper hand here.

  ‘Well, no offence, but we didn’t even know he was Church of Ireland.’ Annalise waved her hand about wildly.

  ‘I knew he was,’ Kasia Petrescu said quietly from the enormous chair that threatened to swallow her up whole. ‘He took me to St. Patrick’s once. He knew a lot about the church. We sat for ages, just in silence. I never met anyone before who could do that, and still you didn’t feel alone.’

  ‘Yes, he was very special,’ Evie said lightly, but she regarded Kasia carefully. Perhaps there was more to this girl than she had realized.

  ‘Well, doesn’t that just say it all?’ Grace glared at Annalise.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Annalise sounded stricken.

  ‘I mean, how well did you actually know Paul?’

  ‘And how well did you?’ Annalise said sharply, the tension of it all finally cutting through everyone’s reserve.

  ‘Please, ladies.’ Evie managed to keep her voice even. ‘Paul has already set most of this out in his will.’ She said the words tightly, aware as she did so that the expressions looking back at her were blank. Paul had not shared with them that he’d drawn up a will. ‘I have a copy of it; of course, it will have to be properly read, but…’ Evie said to Emma Lynott who was sipping tea, unfazed by the unusual situation in which they found themselves, ‘I don’t think he’d mind, under the circumstances, if I shared his final wishes. It might just make things easier.’

  Paul was very clear. He wanted a short ceremony: three hymns and no eulogies, then to be buried with Evie’s parents in the little plot that ran alongside St. Mary’s. In time, Evie would lie next to him as they had always planned.

  ‘So, a poem?’ Grace asked. She covered her surprise at Paul’s instructions as best she could, but it had to hurt, the idea of him buried with Evie’s parents and Evie admired her stoicism more than she expected. Then again, none of them could argue with Paul anymore; he’d managed to get the last word on all of them.

  Evie seemed to have taken the reins by default. ‘He loved Robert Burns.’ They hadn’t actually chosen a piece, but it was true. In the last few years, they’d often read from one of the large volumes that lined what had once been her father’s den.

  ‘There’s the “Epitaph for William Muir”,’ Emma Lynott said as she rested her cup and saucer on a small table that had come from India with a grand-uncle of Evie’s mother. ‘It’s quite lovely, and even though Paul might not have chosen it for himself, he sounds like the kind of man it would be appropriate for.’

  ‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’ Evie got up from her chair and went to the den. She turned her attention to the wall of shelves containing the volumes that dominated the room. There were several poetry anthologies containing between them most of Robert Burns’ work. She handed one each to Annalise and Emma and began to trawl through the oldest and most often read.

  ‘Yes, here it is.’ Emma Lynott cleared her throat and then began to read, ‘An honest man here lies at rest…’ Grace caught Evie’s eye, neither of them brave enough to voice what they thought. ‘Well, what do you think?’ she murmured and gazed at each of them in turn when she had finished.

  ‘It is nice, but…’ Evie didn’t want to say what they were all thinking. Was Paul Starr an honest man? Did he even deserve the sentiments in those words?

  ‘I think it’s perfect,’ Annalise said, and everyone felt that she was just saying it to get it over with. Grace glanced at Evie; they both knew that if she disagreed with Annalise the younger woman would only stick her heels in further.

  ‘I think he’d have been honoured to have such nice things said about him.’ Kasia spoke in a low voice. ‘He was a very modest man; he wouldn’t have been able to ask any of us to include a piece like this. It is simple too. He would have liked that.’ With that, she began to fold away a small piece of paper she’d been holding.

  ‘Did you have something prepared, Kasia?’ Grace asked gently.

  ‘It is nothing, only some words that came to me at the hospital, but they are silly. I’m sure even the English is not so good in them.’ She smiled and tucked the page in her pocket.

  ‘Well, if you’ve prepared them especially, we’d like to hear them.’ Evie couldn’t help being curious about the girl. In many ways, she was Paul’s biggest secret and yet she found she couldn’t dislike the girl, although part of her dearly wanted to.

  ‘No, really, I do not think it is a good idea, not when you have such a lovely poem.’

  ‘Please, for Paul?’ Evie said.

  ‘I, well, I will read it for you, Evie, but I really think that Paul deserves the best and I don’t think I can compete with your Robert Burns.’ She smiled, then cleared her throat while she straightened out the page. ‘You must remember, I am no poet; these are just my thoughts.’

  ‘Of course.’ Grace’s eyes were encouraging. Annalise continued to flick through the book of poetry though she didn’t settle on a page to read.

  ‘It is a small poem. I am calling it “Memories of Paul”.’ She cleared her throat once more and then began.

  ‘Where there was suffering, he brought some calm.

  Hi
s hands were strong, his voice was balm.

  He asked no questions, offered only kindness.

  Would give his eyes for others’ blindness.

  His eyes were dark and full of love,

  For brother, sister, Lord above.

  He asked for nothing in return,

  But offered always true concern.

  He was Dublin, Ireland welcoming host

  And in Romania; we loved him most.

  He saved old and young, rich and poor,

  His voice was tranquil, calm to the core.

  He was gentle, joyful, noble, honest.

  His likes we’ll never see – the finest.

  Until that day he welcomes us

  To join him in our father’s house.’

  ‘I love it,’ Evie said. It was simple, but the girl must have put a lot of time into it, considering her English, and at least there was no mention of men, honest or dishonest. ‘It is Paul and it is heartfelt.’

  ‘I agree,’ Grace said, ‘if you didn’t feel up to saying it, I’m sure that Emma wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘Oh, fine, so I guess I’m outvoted. Whatever,’ Annalise said and she focussed her attention on something in the garden.

  They settled on a time around the church services of the next few days. Emma had two weddings and a choral service for the local retirement group to fit in also. She pencilled in Paul’s funeral for the following day. It would be better for the children if they didn’t drag things out, they all agreed. Maybe too, Evie felt, it would mean they could quickly cut the ties with each other, get on with what was left of their lives.

  ‘Well, I must be off.’ Annalise cast her eyes about the room, somewhat guiltily, Evie thought. ‘I have to pick up the boys. Do you need a lift?’ She spoke to Kasia Petrescu and Evie had a feeling that it would be an uncomfortable journey for both women.