Apartment 3B

by Patricia Scanlan

  She had thoroughly enjoyed living on the beach, painting morning noon and night, taking little trips across the border into Mexico with Dean, having Trish and her husband down at weekends, cooking barbecues for Brett, Rachel, Dean and the kids. It had been like living on a permanent holiday. But the six months passed and it was time to pack up and go home. She had an exhibition to mount, the biggest challenge of her career, but she’d always look back on her stay in California as a healing, happy time in her life.

  Wednesday 18 July 1984

  Liz flew out of LAX with a few pangs of regret, but by the time she got to Washington she was excited at the thought of getting home. She was spending a few days with the same friends she had stayed with on her arrival eighteen months ago. They met her at the airport, exclaiming in delight at the change in her. ‘You look fantastic!’ Antoinette hugged her as Bobby, her husband, whistled in approval. Shrugging off her jet-lag she sat with them until the early hours, telling them of her adventures.

  ‘We’ve arranged a little farewell party for you,’ Antoinette informed her as she showed Liz to her room. ‘Nikki and Hugh and Marty and Jo and Ken are coming. And a few others.’

  ‘That sounds like a bit of crack.’ Liz was delighted at the thought of seeing her old friends once more before she left, and stretching like a cat in the bed, cramped after hours of flying across the continent, she yawned hugely and fell asleep.

  Friday 20 July 1984

  Antoinette and Bobby went to so much trouble with the party. They hired caterers and flower-arrangers and the whole thing was really swinging along. Liz was enjoying herself immensely. She looked a million dollars with her Californian tan, her black, soft curly hair cut short, emphasizing her darkly-lashed vivid blue eyes. Men were falling over themselves to get her a drink and talk to her. She was laughing at something someone said when she heard Antoinette. ‘Liz, I’d like to introduce you to someone. Hugh Cassidy, this is Liz Lacey. Liz . . . Hugh.’ She felt her hand taken into a firm grip and found herself staring at a vaguely familiar and very handsome man.

  Monday 30 June 1986

  ‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ Liz murmured to Hugh as two other viewers also stepped out on to the balcony of Apartment 3B. ‘And the light is superb. I could turn the second bedroom into a studio; I suppose it would be ideal, really.’

  ‘No supposing about it. It’s perfect for you,’ Hugh assured her.

  ‘I like my little granny-flat, though, and now that Eve has the baby, I’m not sure I want to move,’ Liz said doubtfully.

  ‘Well, you know what the accountant told you. You’re going to be hammered for tax unless you go and do something like buying property,’ Hugh pointed out. ‘And besides, that baby is interfering with your painting. As far as I can see, you spend most of your time gooing and gaaing at her.’

  ‘Oh, but Hugh, she’s beautiful! I’ve never seen such a beautiful baby. Oh you should hear her!’ Liz enthused. ‘She’s learning to talk and she’s making the most comical sounds. You’d die laughing.’ She caught his eye. ‘I’m doing it again, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes you are! I’ve heard of adoring mothers – but adoring aunts! Just as well you don’t have too many nieces, otherwise you’d go bankrupt with all those presents you buy,’ he teased. ‘Mind, if you’d goo and gaa over me as much, I wouldn’t object at all.’

  ‘Now, now!’ Liz reproved. ‘Aren’t I cooking dinner for you tonight? Who cooked dinner for you yesterday so you could watch Maradona and his gang dance around a little football?’ Hugh had been bitterly disappointed when Argentina won the World Cup.

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Hugh’s tone was serious. ‘We’ve been seeing each other well over a year now. Don’t you think things should progress? You’ve no idea how my ego is suffering.’ He spoke lightly but Liz knew he was serious. She sighed deeply, staring out at the view of purple-green Dublin mountains in the distance. That would be a nice view to paint, she thought idly.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Hugh enquired.

  Liz jumped.

  ‘What were you thinking about? It wasn’t about us!’ he grumbled. Honestly, he was getting nowhere with this woman.

  ‘I was just thinking this would be a nice view to paint,’ Liz answered mildly.

  Hugh raised his eyes to heaven. ‘I give up.’

  ‘Thank God!’ teased Liz, and he burst out laughing.

  ‘Well are you going to buy this place or not. Don’t forget, I haven’t got all day. I’ve to go home and pack and fly to Manchester first thing in the morning to see what’s happening with this Stalker thing,’ he moaned. ‘We’re doing a programme on it.’

  ‘Aw, poor Mr TV personality,’ Liz grinned. She knew he loved getting his teeth into a job.

  He had apologized when they met to view Apartment 3B. They had made plans to go to the theatre, but as often happened with their plans, something would come up and Hugh would find himself off on an assignment. Liz was used to it at this stage. ‘Definitely something fishy is going on. John Stalker was suspended from duty pending an investigation of his alleged association with “known criminals”. I’m sure it’s a set-up to discredit him. He was getting too close to the bone in his investigation of the RUC “shoot to kill” policy. Well I’m going to leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of this. This is corruption at the highest level, Liz, and we’re going to try and prove it. Sorry about tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Eve asked as she and Don emerged on to the balcony to join them.

  ‘It’s a good buy, I’ll tell you that for nothing, and you’re buying at an ideal time – the property market is in an awful slump,’ her brother remarked.

  Eve caught Liz’s eye. ‘Well at least it’s only down the road from us. Isn’t the kitchen something else?’

  Liz nodded. The kitchen was fabulous. Fully fitted with all mod cons, it was a dream. Liz decided to have one last look around. There were several other interested parties and she realized that she could be bidding against any of them.

  She had liked the apartment from the moment she had entered it. It was bright and airy, a most important consideration. A flower-filled balcony ran the length of the apartment with access from the sitting-room and master bedroom. The second bedroom which she envisaged turning into a studio also had its own little balcony facing west. So she’d always have sun. Well, whatever sun was to be had! Liz liked the master bedroom with its enormous Sliderobes and its en suite tiled bathroom. It was all very luxurious, just the thing for a successful artist. Christine would really give her a slagging if she bought Apartment 3B. But of all the places she had looked at, it was the place she felt most at home in and besides, as Eve pointed out, it was only down the road from her house, and only ten minutes away from her parents. And after all, she was twenty-nine, successful and independent. It was time she had a place of her own. Not that she wasn’t happy in the granny flat she had lived in since Matt had died seven years ago. It was comfortable and cosy and she would have been quite content to stay there. Eve and Don were also perfectly happy for her to continue living there but her accountant had advised her to buy property for tax purposes and if she bought somewhere, she might as well live in it.

  Liz had looked at a good few places, houses, townhouses and apartments, and, so far, Apartment 3B, Mountain View, Glasnevin, was the place that was ideally suited to her needs. It was a small classy complex with superb amenities: swimming pool, floodlit tennis court, laundry. What more could a person ask for? And the price was well within her means. Property prices had never been so low, as her brother said, so it was the time to buy. And Hugh liked it.

  Hugh. He had become important to her, she acknowledged. Little did she think that their first meeting in Washington would have any effect on her life. But it had. She had liked him from the very start when he had stood smiling at her. Once Antoinette said his name she recognized him immediately. Hugh Cassidy was a big media star in Ireland and a journalist of renown. He was pretty good-looking too, in a
Cary Grantish sort of a way, she conceded – square of jaw, lean and muscular, of medium height. She could understand why women fell at his feet at home.

  ‘I don’t believe it. Liz Lacey!’ he was saying, his eyes smiling into hers. ‘You’ll never believe this, but before I left home I was thinking that I’d like to interview you some time. You’re one of my favourite artists.’

  Liz smiled politely. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

  ‘No honestly – you are!’ he assured her. ‘I bought your works before you became famous. I’ve a watercolour of Killiney Bay and the Sugar Loaf at home. I bought it from you in Stephen’s Green. Don’t you remember?’

  Liz grinned. ‘Well I don’t actually remember you but I remember selling the painting. It kept me in paints for six months. That’s a long time ago.’

  ‘It is,’ he agreed, ‘but I’ve got a lot of pleasure out of that painting. I’d like to buy another one some time.’ Liz sensed that his interest was genuine. Lots of people assured her they’d like to buy one of her paintings but they were only flattering her. They moved along the buffet together. ‘Are you on holidays?’ he asked, popping a stuffed mushroom into his mouth. ‘Here, try these, they’re gorgeous,’ he urged, handing her the plate. They were too.

  ‘I’m just going home actually. I’ve been in the States for eighteen months preparing for an exhibition.’

  ‘An exhibition! That’s great!’ he said enthusiastically between mushrooms. ‘Where are you holding it?’

  ‘The Ross Gallery on Baggot Street.’

  Hugh let out a low whistle. ‘The Ross Gallery no less! You couldn’t do better.’

  ‘I know. It’s a great opportunity.’

  ‘And richly deserved, if I may say so,’ he said, munching on a smoked salmon savoury. ‘Here try these. Melt in the mouth. The food here has me ruined. I always put on weight in the States. What are those things? They look interesting.’

  Liz laughed, handing him a plate of seafood savouries. ‘Here, take the plate and try them all.’ They had a most enjoyable time sampling everything and they chatted away easily, having a lot of mutual acquaintances in the society set in Dublin. Hugh brought her up to date on the gossip.

  ‘And did you know that Angela Kennedy left Marcus? You did a magnificent job on that mural of his, I must say.’

  ‘Angela left Marcus!’ Liz was astounded.

  ‘Yep. Seemingly he’d been having an affair with this gorgeous French model, and it had been going on for years. And she had a child by him that no-one knew about. Angela found out and told him she’d had enough. She walked out on him, took nothing from him and has set up her own interior design business. She’s doing well too, I heard. Ken Healy asked her to refurbish the Majestic Hotel for him, and she’s doing a lovely job by all accounts.’

  Liz was stunned. That bastard Marcus. All the time he’d been trying to seduce her he’d had a mistress on the side as well as his wife. He was something else. She was delighted for Angela. The only way she could go was up.

  Liz enjoyed the evening with Hugh and the rest of her friends but when he asked her out to dinner the following evening she told him that she had made plans she couldn’t break, and that she was returning home the following day. He was doing a programme on Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, and then he was taking some holidays before heading west to do an item on the opening of the Olympic games in Los Angeles.

  ‘Maybe when I get home?’ he suggested.

  ‘Maybe,’ Liz agreed non-committally. She knew that when she got home she was going to be up to her eyes with her exhibition. Incarna had phoned her a week before to say that she had several commissions lined up if she was interested and the publishing firm that she had worked for previously had written to her asking if she would do several covers for them. Her holiday was well and truly over.

  The excitement of arriving home was wonderful. The entire family greeted her at the airport and hugged the daylights out of her. Her mother was delighted at how well she looked and Christine and Eve pretended great disgust at her glowing tan. Then they all went back to her parents and tucked into a banquet of a breakfast.

  ‘Oh the taste of Irish rashers and sausages!’ Liz exclaimed, starving after the flight. She took a bite out of her mother’s home-made brown bread, savouring every delicious mouthful. ‘This is the life,’ she smiled at her family, delighted to be with them again. Then it was time for giving out the presents and for talking and catching up on all the news. She stayed a few days with her parents and then headed across the road to her little granny flat.

  Before she settled down to work, Liz made a trip to Connemara to see Mrs Lacey and to visit Matt’s grave. Her mother-in-law, older and frailer, had welcomed her warmly and they had both gone to visit the lovingly-kept grave. Liz was so glad she had had her husband buried in Connemara rather than Dublin. It was his place – the wild beautiful West of Ireland. It was home for Matt and Liz had always recognized that.

  She stood for a long time with her hand on his headstone, thinking about him. How her life had changed after his death. She had reached undreamed-of pinnacles of success. She was successful and independent, the epitome of the Eighties career woman and yet deep down Liz knew that she would trade every bit of it to be Matt’s wife and the mother to his children. ‘That’s not the way things turned out, my darling. I love you. I always will,’ she murmured in farewell before going to join Mrs Lacey in the little church. The resentment she had once felt about Matt’s death had passed and for the first time in many years Liz sat in a church and felt a serenity envelope her. Much to her poor mother’s dismay, she had stopped going to mass, hating God for taking her husband from her. Now, sitting in that little country church with ribbons of multi-coloured light streaming through the arched stained-glass windows, Liz reflected that Incarna was right. She had been lucky to meet and love a man like Matt, even if it was only for so short a time. He had been a gift from God to her and she would always have her memories to sustain her. Liz returned to Dublin more at peace with herself than she had been for many years.

  Immersed in preparing for the exhibition, she had been surprised one day to get a phone call from Hugh Cassidy. She heard a smiling voice on the other end of the receiver. ‘Hi! Remember me? We shared some magic food together.’

  ‘How did you get my number?’ she asked, knowing that she hadn’t given it to him.

  ‘Well I am an investigative journalist of the highest calibre, who retains information long after it’s been given to him, and I just rang Bryan Ross and told him I was interested in doing a documentary about you and your forthcoming exhibition,’ he informed her calmly.

  ‘Oh!’ She exclaimed at his coolness. ‘And are you going to do a documentary, Mr Cassidy?’

  Hugh laughed. ‘I do happen to have my own company, which does happen to produce documentaries and I just happened to be looking for some new subjects, when who should appear on my horizon but a certain extremely talented artist who just happens to be mounting her first exhibition. How could I resist?’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘If you’re interested. It would be good for you publicity-wise and good for me work-wise. How about discussing it over lunch?’

  ‘I’m awfully busy.’

  Hugh was not to be put off. ‘I could come to your studio. We could discuss it as you work if you prefer.’

  ‘Why not!’ Liz laughed. He had an answer for everything.

  ‘Leave lunch to me,’ he said cheerfully as she gave him the address.

  Hugh arrived the following day with a picnic hamper and a bottle of champagne. ‘Don’t let me stop you working,’ he said matter-of-factly as he laid a rug on the floor and proceeded to set two places. Liz stood open-mouthed as she watched him arrange two beautifully pink salmon fillets in a bed of lettuce, radishes, and chives. He had dishes of potato salad, Waldorf salad, coleslaw and Russian salad as well as French bread and a variety of cheeses. ‘Tuck in,’ he invited, handing her a l
inen napkin.

  ‘You don’t do things by halves, do you?’ Liz said in amusement.

  He smiled at her, his brown eyes twinkling. ‘I have business lunches like this all the time.’

  Hugh’s public persona gave the impression of someone rather serious but in reality he had a boyishness that was rather endearing. He wasn’t a bit affected by his celebrity status and Liz liked his direct manner. To her surprise, she enjoyed her lunch very much and in fact it was he who rose to leave, saying he had an engagement in the city. The terms he offered to do the documentary about her were more than reasonable and he asked her if she would have any objection to a camera crew arriving the next day.

  ‘No problem,’ she replied calmly.

  As she stepped around cables and sat under bright lights while the young director posed her for a close-up, she began to have second thoughts. But eventually she got used to the crew and continued painting away as they filmed her.

  ‘I’m raging I didn’t take a few shots of you while you were in the States,’ Hugh remarked one day as he supervised the filming of her painting the Halfpenny Bridge. ‘Never mind, we’re getting great stuff. This will sell all over the place.’ He was the eternal optimist, Liz was learning, as she got to know him. Mostly he left the filming to the director, but if he had free time he joined them all on ‘the set’, as he laughingly called it, to see how they were getting on. The next big thing was the opening of the exhibition itself. Hugh had the camera crew all lined up for it, and they knew exactly what he and the director were looking for.

  Incarna was ecstatic about it all. She was delighted that Liz was back home and that her career was zooming off in all directions again. ‘Now, my dear, you will have to look so glamorous on your opening night. Tomorrow, you are taking a day off to go shopping for a dress,’ she said over the phone.