Apartment 3B

by Patricia Scanlan

  ‘I might go to London myself and see what’s happening in the book trade over there.’

  ‘You could always go back to your permanent and pensionable job in the libraries.’ Anne’s eyes were twinkling.

  ‘No thank you!’ retorted Lainey in amusement. ‘Anyway things are so bad there. The cutbacks have really decimated them; there’s an embargo on recruitment and the service is really being degraded. Marion Matthews, you remember her?’ Lainey quirked an eyebrow at Anne who nodded, unable to talk as she forked spaghetti into her mouth. ‘Well she was telling me they’re even talking of shortening hours and making branches like Finglas and Drumcondra and Pembroke part-time! Isn’t that woeful! She said they’re run off their feet and no-one’s complaining. The public moan to them but won’t bother to complain to their public representatives. I think we got out just in time.’

  ‘I think you’re right. That sounds pretty grim. Although I must say I really enjoyed the crack when I worked there. I wonder did Mellory O’Neill ever manage to persuade “gold medallions” to marry her?’ Anne asked.

  Lainey giggled. ‘Don’t be so nasty. You haven’t changed a bit.’

  Anne grinned. ‘Well he was an awful dose so they were well matched. Do you remember how mad she was when Mariette Donohoe got engaged to Declan Brennan. “I might have got my promotion but she’s got her man,” she said one day at the desk. It’s bad enough thinking like that, Lainey, but imagine saying it in public. I couldn’t believe my ears!’

  ‘You’re joking! I never heard that,’ exclaimed Lainey, agog at this little titbit of gossip. ‘As sure as I’m sitting here,’ Anne assured her. ‘And she always pretends she’s such a career girl. If he asked her to marry him she’d say yes so fast it would be indecent. And she wouldn’t stay in the Corpo either, for all her guff about getting to the top of her tree, as she used to put it. That one’s as two-faced as they come.’

  ‘Yeah!’ agreed Lainey of her one-time boss. ‘Remember how she used to do the real holier-than-thou bit at the staff meetings, telling us to keep up standards and how being late for work was as bad as stealing from the Corporation. And that we were to remember that we were officers of the Corporation and conduct ourselves as such. And then she’d be in making sneaky STD calls to Manchester and down the country and by God, they never went down on the phone sheet. The old hypocrite!’

  Anne guffawed. ‘Remember how we used to all stand at the desk, counting the clicks of the dial when she was ringing from the office and we always knew when she was making one of her “illegals”. I wonder did she ever cop on that we all knew about her Wednesday afternoon phone calls. We were bitches, weren’t we?’

  ‘Still are,’ grinned Lainey. ‘Did you know Lindsay Johnson got a big job in London? She was ever so impressed with herself. But then, of course, she always thought she was it.’

  ‘Really!’ Anne devoured this little snippet with relish. She and Lindsay had never got on. ‘Imagine her even going to the trouble of filling out an application form!’ she remarked caustically. ‘I think she was the laziest one of them I ever worked with. She and her posters. She spent the day doodling and making out impressive reports that no-one ever read. Remember all the time in lieu she used to take? She took more time in lieu than she ever worked. She really used to hog the office, didn’t she?’

  ‘She sure did,’ agreed Lainey, who was thoroughly enjoying herself. There was something so immensely satisfying about a good juicy gossip with someone you hadn’t seen for ages. Men couldn’t possibly understand the pleasure women got from it. Catching up on the news was as good as going on a spending spree. ‘Do you remember’, Anne laughed, ‘the time Anita Andrews was in charge and she was going on a date and wanted to go home and shower and change and she wanted to leave work an hour early. So she decided she’d pretend she was sick with diarrhoea and she put on such an act that Lena Connolly felt sorry for her and made her some hot milk and pepper and she had to drink it.’ Lainey shrieked with laughter at the memory. ‘And now look at her. I believe she nearly breaks her neck to get in to the office to draw the line at nine-forty. She’s supposed to be a demon for giving lates.’ They chatted away until Anne had to leave, enjoying themselves hugely. Their gossip was interrupted by many a good laugh and when they parted they exchanged phone numbers, promising to meet up again.

  In fact, a week later, Anne rang Lainey from London to tell her excitedly that Eastern Gulf Airways were recruiting staff, and would she not give it a try. The conditions were excellent. The salary was tax free. The accommodation in Jeddah was free if she was based there; otherwise she would get an accommodation allowance. All she’d have to pay for was her food, and anyway you ate free on the aircraft when you were working, so that wasn’t a huge expense. The social life was terrific. Even though Anne was working for Air Saudia they’d still be able to meet up on stopovers and they’d have a ball. ‘Come on over,’ her friend urged. ‘You can stay in my friend’s place and give it a try.’

  A month later Lainey was on a training course in Jeddah in preparation for becoming a stewardess with Eastern Gulf Airlines. It was a six-week course. She shared an apartment with three other girls on a compound the size of a small town. It was a spacious apartment with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen and living-room. It was cleaned each day by a little Filipino maid called Scarlett. All the Filipino girls had names straight out of American TV. There were Crystals and Graces and Bettes; it was amazing. They were overworked, under-paid and very badly exploited. Lainey always made her own bed and kept her belongings tidy, but it was sickening how some of the girls wouldn’t even pick their dirty uniforms off the floor once they knew they had a maid to do it for them. It was far from maids they were raised. Cecily would love it out here, Lainey had written to Joan.

  It was a completely different culture, one where women were very definitely second-class citizens. Once off the compound Lainey and all the other women had to dress with extreme modesty, wearing the abaya, the black cloak that covered them from head to toe. They could not be driven by a man other than their husbands and Lainey had been told of unmarried girls who were caught by the Muttawaah, the Saudi religious police, driving in the company of their male colleagues and they had been jailed, and then deported with the word ‘Prostitute’ stamped across their passports. ‘Just be careful!’ Anne had warned her. ‘And for God’s sake whatever you do, don’t stop to help at the scene of an accident. If the person dies you could be held responsible.’

  Of course they had been told all this at their orientation course in London, but to experience it all was something else.

  The three Bs ruled the expats’ lives. No Booze, Bacon or Broads. And no Marks & Spencer products either. The Saudis were fanatically anti-Jewish like all the rest of the Arabs out there and anyone with an Israeli stamp on their passport would not be allowed to enter the country. Lainey thought it was all pretty pathetic. She couldn’t understand religious bigotry in any shape or form. What matter if you were Protestant or Catholic, Arab or Jew? Surely it was the kind of person you were that mattered, not what your beliefs were, or your sexual orientation for that matter. Tony had thrown up his hands in horror when he had heard what she was planning to do?

  ‘No booze, Lainey! You’ll never survive!’ he exclaimed in horror.

  ‘The cheek of you,’ she laughed. ‘You make me sound like a hardened alcoholic.’

  In fact the three Bs might as well not have existed for all the notice that was taken of them on her compound. Practically everybody was an expert on homebrew. Lainey had drunk some mighty potent concoctions at some of the parties she had been to. There were all manner of intrigues and affairs and she had even tasted rashers smuggled in by a stewardess under her abaya on a flight from London.

  The training was demanding. They arose each morning at six, had breakfast, caught the seven-thirty bus to the training centre and finished around four. Then Lainey would lie at the pool for a couple of hours before doing a bit of study, or heading off to
a party. The first three weeks had been inflight service training, the last three weeks safety training. The customer was always right, they were told. Don’t argue with the passengers! She spent her evenings practising with her colleagues in the confines of their living-room. ‘Shai/ Gahwa’. The Arabic for tea or coffee became imprinted on her brain. Fortunately for Lainey she had always taken great care with her appearance. She was always well made-up and well groomed. The grooming checks were rigorous. She had seen girls given a grooming slip for a single chipped varnished nail. Too many grooming slips and you were called up and smartly told to get your act together or else. Lipstick had to match nail varnish. A ponytail could be six inches in length and no longer. Tights had to be a certain colour. Weight no more than 65 kilos. They were very strict, but it wasn’t a huge problem to Lainey though many of the girls found it tough going.

  Her first flight was to Kano in Nigeria. She was flying Jumbos. Her zone was full, she was kept going on the five-hour flight, and she didn’t have time to be nervous. She soon got into the swing of things, bidding for her lines to take her all over the world. They would be given a sheet and could select the flight they’d like to be on. She stayed in five-star hotels in cities in every continent: The Singapore Meridian; The Gulf Meridian; The Holiday Inn in Madrid; The Soragaon in Bangladesh; the Sheratons; the Hiltons. Cecily was nearly apoplectic each time Lainey came home. She got home quite frequently and when, during her second year on the job, she was based in London she was home as often as when she had been in Dublin. Dominic was delighted when she was sent to London. He had really missed her, as she had missed him, and one of the delights of her homecoming, which she always tried to arrange for when he was in Dublin, was knowing that he would be there waiting for her. It was only in the last six months that she had been based again in Saudi and she’d had to get used to the heat and the lizards and the cockroaches and the invariable dust all over again.

  Lainey had no intention of staying a stewardess for ever. She enjoyed the travel, enjoyed meeting people and was saving a lot of money, but in the end she wanted to go back to publishing. It had got into her blood, and she kept up with all the news and trends with subscriptions to Books Ireland and The Bookseller. Once she had the money to buy a place of her own she’d be back, she told Dominic with certainty when he was browned off at her having to leave London for Jeddah.

  He had bought himself a little apartment in a luxurious complex called Mountain View in Glasnevin and Lainey thought it was gorgeous. There was even a swimming pool in the complex and any time she stayed over she always swam in it. Something like his place would suit her down to the ground, she had told him enviously. The one-bedroomed apartment had everything. A fabulous fitted kitchen. En suite bathroom. Small second bathroom. Huge living-cum-dining-room and because he was on the ground floor a lovely enclosed patio which looked out on the magnificent grounds. Dominic was very proud of it. It was his treat to himself, he told her, for all the years of slogging he had put in. His business was extremely successful and he felt he deserved more than just the room off his office that he had had for as long as she had known him. He had not told his wife about the apartment. That was his business, Lainey decided. Let him work it out his own way.

  There was a letter from him when she finally got to the apartment in the compound, weary and suffering from aching feet. And one from home too. Oh goody! she thought. Slipping out of her uniform, she sat down on the sofa and stretched. The apartment was cool and shaded, the air-conditioning on to the highest degree, the wooden slatted blinds drawn against the heat. None of the others that she shared with were home. They were all flying so she had the place to herself. She was beginning to get a headache and she’d no paracetamol to nip it in the bud. Damn! she’d have to go down to the pharmacy. She wasn’t getting into that uniform, she decided wearily. She’d just slip her abaya over her pale ivory silk camisole and briefs. It was handy in some ways, the abaya. It hid a multitude. She could be starkers and no one would know. It didn’t take long and when she got back she decided she was hungry. She’d order a Chinese meal from the coffee shop which was open twenty-four hours a day and it would be delivered by a little Filipino boy on his three-wheeler bike. Lainey rang, placed her order, then went and got a basin of tepid water and plonked her aching feet in it. She wrinkled her nose at the pong and grinned. Once she had read a Mills & Boon novel in which the heroine had traipsed round Rome, shopping with the hero. When they arrived at his villa he had begun to kiss her starting at her head and ending at her toes. This after a day on her feet! Well if anyone attempted to kiss Lainey’s feet right now, they’d expire. It never failed to amuse Lainey watching the glossy soaps on TV just how immaculate the heroines always were, always ready to be seduced, dressed in freshly-laundered underwear. Her La Perla lingerie was sticking to her after her long flight and – wriggling her toes in the water – she decided to have her shower before her Chinese arrived, so all she’d have to do then was eat her meal and tumble into bed.

  Ten minutes later, refreshed and dressed in a cool silk nightdress, she was showered and relaxed and ready to eat. Picking up her letters she read Dominic’s first, lounging on her bed. She smiled at his endearments as he wrote of how he missed her and telling her the news about work and the apartment and the like. Her mother’s letter was full of news too. Martin, Lainey’s younger brother, had got engaged to Maura and they wanted to know if she’d be free some time next summer and to give them a date so they could arrange the wedding. Lainey was delighted for her brother and Maura was a dote, a lovely girl altogether, the complete opposite to Cecily in nature and temperament. Lainey looked forward to having her as a sister-in-law. She smiled to herself. She’d keep an eye out for something spectacular to wear. That was the joy of travelling to the fashion capitals of Europe. She’d get something nice for Joan and her mother as well. Give Cecily something to annoy her. Yes, she was going to get Joan something exclusive and expensive. Something that Cecily couldn’t compete with, as no doubt she’d be determined to appear in a designer label. Well this time she wouldn’t look down her nose at Joan or her mother-in-law. The next time Lainey was in Paris she was going to splash out. A Chanel suit for her mother maybe. A Karl Lagerfeld creation for Joan and, her own favourite, an Yves Saint Laurent for herself. It would cost a mint but she didn’t care. She’d saved really hard since she got the job with the airline. If she couldn’t treat her mother and sister once in a blue moon, it was a poor look-out. And Cecily, the silly snob, would be so put out. An added bonus. Humming to herself, Lainey went to answer her doorbell and pay for her dinner.

  DOMINIC

  Saturday 9 February 1980

  ‘Goodnight Kimberly!’

  ‘Goodnight Kieran!’

  ‘Goodnight Mam!’

  ‘Goodnight Dad!’

  ‘Goodnight John Boy!’

  ‘Go to sleep you pair!’ Dominic admonished his two giggling youngest children as he switched off the light and put his arm around his wife. He hadn’t slept in a single bed with Rita since he’d been a student, twenty-two years before. Imagine to think he was forty-one with four children. Where had the years gone?

  ‘I hope to God Michael will be all right at home,’ Rita murmured drowsily from the crook of his shoulder.

  ‘Why wouldn’t he be all right? He’s sixteen, big enough and bold enough to look after himself,’ Dominic assured her.

  ‘He’s probably having a party,’ Rita retorted.

  Dominic laughed. ‘Michael’s too lazy to go to the bother of having a party. He’s probably sitting in front of the video with a few mates, eating chips.’

  ‘As long as he’s not drinking,’ Rita said worriedly.

  ‘Rita, will you stop worrying. I don’t think Michael would drink behind our backs,’ Dominic reassured her.

  Rita stretched, feeling cramped in the small confines of the bed. ‘No, I don’t think he would,’ she agreed. ‘I hope Denise is OK.’

  Dominic sighed. ‘Denise is fine
. She didn’t want to come, she wanted to stay in Mona’s and the way she’s carrying on lately, it’s just as well she didn’t or there’d only be rows.’ His eldest daughter was going through a rebellious ‘I hate the family’ phase and, at fourteen, thought she knew it all.

  ‘Ah Dominic!’ remonstrated Rita. ‘She’s going through a difficult stage. Her hormones are awry.’

  ‘So are mine,’ he murmured, pressing close against her and nuzzling her earlobe.

  ‘Dominic!!’ Rita hissed in a shocked whisper, giving him a dig in the solar plexus. ‘The children!’

  ‘Ouch! That hurt!’ he whispered back indignantly. ‘They won’t hear us. They’re asleep. I’ll close the door.’

  ‘Kieran might be afraid if he wakes up in a strange place. Leave it open and go to sleep, Dominic.’ Rita was not in the mood for fun and games.

  So this was nothing new, Dominic thought discontentedly. There were times he felt as though he came a very poor second to his children. Were all marriages like this, he wondered in the dark as his wife began to snore softly. How did you keep the magic going in a marriage? Rita would never come away with him, being reluctant to leave the children for even the shortest period. Dominic loved his children and spent many happy hours with them. But he wasn’t as completely engrossed in them as Rita was. He could contemplate a week’s holiday away from them with equanimity. He didn’t think he was in the slightest bit an unnatural father. He loved his children, he provided ably for them and would always be there for them. He didn’t view their desire to become more independent of their parents as the disaster Rita did. It was the way of things. A week’s holiday away from the kids would not cause major psychological trauma, he had assured his wife. But to no avail. ‘When they’re older,’ she had been promising for the previous five years. At this rate, he’d be a geriatric before they ever got away.