Apartment 3B

by Patricia Scanlan

  The women were furious, Hugh and Incarna were highly amused and Liz was thoroughly browned off. Charity function or not, she was bored and restless and realized that this socializing had bored her for quite some time.

  There had to be more to life than all this carry-on, she reflected, as she sat at her table and watched various well-known people act out a game of charades, each contestant representing a deserving charity. ‘Try and look as though you’re enjoying yourself!’ Hugh murmured beside her. ‘Here’s a photographer!’ Dutifully she smiled. What was wrong with her? Hadn’t she a lifestyle that hundreds of women would envy. Fame, fortune. A highly-successful and lucrative career that was going from strength to strength. And an attractive desirable man at her side. Why was she so unsettled and fed up with her life?

  ‘Why don’t you go away for a few days and really think about what you want to do and what you want from life? Then you can do something about it?’ Eve urged her one day after a moaning session. ‘I’ve a surprise for you,’ she added, her eyes twinkling. ‘I’m pregnant again.’

  ‘Eve! Oh Eve, that’s wonderful!’ Liz hugged her sister-in-law and Eve hugged her back hard in her warm affectionate way. ‘Just when I’d got down to a size twelve and all,’ Eve said in mock disgust. ‘So much for getting into a bikini next summer!’

  ‘Fiona will be thrilled!’ Liz remarked as she put the kettle on for a cup of tea. ‘I wonder will Caitriona be jealous. Is she awake yet?’ Her niece was having her afternoon nap.

  Eve laughed. ‘Is it me or the children you come to see! Go up and look.’ Liz needed no second urging. She took the stairs two at a time. Two big blue eyes were peeping out of the cot, and when Liz went over Caitriona broke into a delighted smile.

  Liz’s heart melted into a puddle. ‘You’re beautiful,’ she smiled as she leaned down and lifted the child in her arms, inhaling the lovely scent of her. Caitriona nestled close, chattering away, her little hands playing with Liz’s face. Inspiration struck. ‘Liz, what a brainwave!’ she murmured to herself, nuzzling the little girl’s neck, enjoying the laughs she was getting out of her.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ she remarked casually, bouncing Caitriona up and down on her knee as Eve poured their tea. ‘Why don’t you and Don take off for a few days while you can still fit into a bikini? I’ll mind the girls.’

  Eve’s eyes widened. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Eve flew out the kitchen door. ‘Where are you going?’ Liz asked in alarm. Maybe Eve was feeling sick although that wasn’t like her. She usually thrived in pregnancy.

  ‘I’m just ringing Don and the travel agent before you change your mind,’ Eve laughed, her fingers busy dialling.

  Two weeks later Liz was ensconced in their big homely house. She had done as much work as possible the fortnight before. The only thing she had to do was to record her weekly art programme for TV and her mother had said she’d mind her grandchildren for the few hours it took. Liz thoroughly enjoyed the weekly television programme for children that she had been asked to do several months before. It was extremely popular, so popular in fact and the response so positive that the producer and director were seriously considering doing one aimed at adults. There was a resurgence of media interest and she was giving interviews regularly. Well for this two weeks, she decided, she was going nowhere, doing nothing, just looking after her two adorable nieces in cosy domestic bliss.

  ‘What about the Wexford Opera Festival?’ Hugh exclaimed in dismay when she told him of her plans. ‘We were supposed to be going down on the special train.’

  ‘Bring Brona,’ Liz teased. ‘I’m sorry, Hugh. I just want a break from it all.’

  ‘A break! But you’re going to be looking after two kids. That’s no break!’ He shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘It is for me. It’s just what I need right now. I’m really looking forward to it. And it will give me some time to think. I need to get things into focus, see where I’m going, assess what I’m doing. These two weeks will be just the time to do it.’

  Hugh put his arms around her and drew her close. ‘My complex little soul! What am I going to do with you?’ He smiled, bending his head and kissing her long and passionately. ‘Will you think about coming to America with me?’

  Liz stood contentedly within the circle of his arms. ‘I’ll think about it.’ Hugh at long last had achieved his goal of getting a toe-hold in American TV. His two months in the States the previous Christmas had paid off and he was now spending increasing amounts of time there. Soon he was going to have to think about making a decision to go there permanently. He wanted Liz to go with him. She did not want to go. She had spent a month with him in New York last Christmas and if it was an indication of what their life together would be like in America, she knew she’d hate it. Hugh had been working continuously but that did not worry Liz so much as she was well able to entertain and amuse herself. She had seen old friends, visited the galleries and done some painting. It was their lack of time together and his increased use of coke that worried her. Liz knew the drug was so easily available in New York and she knew that Hugh would continue to take it despite her protests. It was a source of friction between them that would not be resolved. She understood his great need to make it in America, but knowing Hugh, once he had made it there, he’d want to make it somewhere else. That was the kind of man he was. There was no settling him.

  She had felt vaguely depressed as this realization hit her after she came back from New York alone. It gradually began to dawn on her that lately she wasn’t getting as much satisfaction from her work as she had been. The excitement of success had worn off somewhat and the hectic pace of her life was leaving her drained. Hugh, deeply preoccupied with his career plans, couldn’t see her restlessness. Even after their lovemaking, where once they would talk for hours, he now fell into exhausted sleep, leaving her wide-eyed in the dark as she listened to his slow even breathing and felt his thigh heavy across her own.

  ‘Liz, I think you’re burnt out,’ Bryan Ross said to her one evening shortly before her two weeks’ babysit. They were having dinner and he was inviting her to exhibit in a gallery he part-owned in London. ‘Why don’t you take a year off like you did before and go off somewhere and relax for a couple of months. Wind down, catch a few rays, have some early nights and regular meals and walk and swim and then start painting again.’

  ‘Hmmm. It sounds lovely,’ she sighed wistfully.

  ‘Then do it!’ Bryan commanded, tucking into Kung Po barbecued pork.

  ‘I love it when you’re masterful. You remind me of Inspector Morse.’ Liz leaned across the table and sampled a forkful from his plate.

  Bryan laughed. ‘It’s a pity my wife can’t hear you. If she saw me eating this I’d get such an earbashing! She’s a terrible old bully.’

  ‘Barbara’s a dote and you’re crazy about her, you spoofer,’ chuckled Liz, enjoying being with him as usual.

  ‘Think about taking that break!’ he repeated as he walked with her to her car.

  ‘I will.’ Liz smiled, but his words stayed with her and the idea began to seem even more appealing as the long cold nights drew in. Liz hated the winter – she was a real sun-lover – and as the autumn progressed her thoughts turned back to that lovely six months in La Jolla when she had lived on the beach.

  ‘Come and spend a few days with me in Majorca when Eve and Don return,’ Incarna invited when Liz told her all about what Bryan had advised. ‘It will be a little break for you and you can think about your plans.’

  ‘I’d love to. Thanks, Incarna,’ Liz responded, delighted with the offer. ‘I haven’t been over for ages.’ It was a few years since she’d been to the villa and the thought of a short break there in Incarna’s effervescent company lifted her spirits.

  ‘Are you absolutely certain you don’t mind?’ Eve said as she carried her travel bag out to the car. Don followed with the cases.

  Liz laughed. ‘It’s too late now, so go while the going is
good.’ She held Caitriona in her arms, glad that she was wearing a sweater and jeans. She had food all over her, and Caitriona, who was now feeding herself, was trying to feed her aunt as well. Unfortunately her aim was not good and a mushy handful was currently reposing in Liz’s black curls. Caitriona, at her present stage of development, was not for the faint-hearted, but Liz, who had been puked upon and wet upon and dribbled upon by both her nieces when they were babies, was a sucker for punishment.

  Waving the other pair off enthusiastically, she decided a bath was in order for Caitriona. Then she’d have to have Fiona’s dinner ready as her elder niece had started school just a few months previously. Then maybe they might go out for a walk before tea and then it would be time for games before bed and Liz would spend the night reading the new bestseller that everyone was talking about. Eve had given it to her before she left, telling her that she wouldn’t be able to put it down. Then tomorrow was Saturday and they could do as they pleased. Organization was everything, she told herself happily, as she filled Caitriona’s bath. Twenty minutes later, she was as wet as her niece. By the time she had fed her and put her down for her nap, changed out of her own clothes and washed her hair to get the baby’s food out of it, Fiona was home and the dinner was just in the preparation stages. ‘I’m starving. Is my dinner weddy?’ her niece greeted her. She had been collected from her school by her Grandad who was on his lunch-break. He also gave her a lift in the mornings.

  ‘It won’t be long,’ Liz assured her cheerfully as she began to fry the plaice. The phone rang, there was a ring at the door and the baby began to wail. ‘Oh dear!’ muttered Liz, turning down the heat, as she rushed to answer the door and the phone. She was a little behind schedule so she decided to skip the walk after lunch.

  Fiona’s face fell and her lower lip began to tremble. ‘But you said I could go on the swings in the park, Auntie Liz.’

  ‘I’ll give you a push on the swing out the back,’ she cajoled.

  ‘But you pwomised,’ Fiona said tearfully.

  ‘Alright alright!’ Liz said hastily. After all a promise was a promise. It was dark by the time they got home, but it was lovely walking over to Johnstown Park, site of her many marathon tennis matches with her sister. The grass was covered with a carpet of dry, red-gold leaves that crunched underfoot and they enjoyed kicking their way through them. The mountains looked so clear and near in the late afternoon sun and the sky, a deep cobalt blue, was beginning to turn pink and gold as the sun sank lower and lower. Inhaling the crisp air as she pushed her niece on the swing, Liz sighed contentedly, thinking, this is the life!

  As she settled down to her novel, admittedly somewhat later than planned, she wondered if Hugh would ring. He had flown out to Saudi two days earlier to do a programme on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the plight of the Western hostages. He had promised he would phone at some stage. The children were fast asleep, the fire was blazing and she was as happy as Larry. Eve was right – Career Girls was unputdownable. When she had finished that she had Maeve Binchy’s Circle of Friends to read and then she had a load of Hellos to catch up on. And Hugh was worried that she would be bored and lonely! If this was being bored and lonely it was blissful and she’d settle for it any day, she decided, as she threw another log on the fire and sipped a mug of drinking-chocolate topped with cream and chocolate flake.

  It was one of the nicest times in her life, a time she would always remember with happiness. Things like washing the girls’ clothes and hanging them out and bringing them in and ironing them gave her a great sense of satisfaction. One day she even painted a still-life of a neat pile of her ironing. She actually enjoyed making beds and getting the house shipshape, and standing at the door waving Fiona off to school with her Grandant, as she called him. Was it because it was all new to her and so it was different and not yet routine, Liz wondered as she repotted a geranium while waiting for a washing cycle to finish. Maybe. And why did she feel this secret guilt about enjoying it all so much? Was it because women were so conditioned in this feminist era of the career woman to think that housework was mere drudgery. Liz discovered that she could spend hours pottering around the house doing this and that and not feel the slightest bit bored. Maybe she was odd, maybe it was a phase that she was going through. Well if it was, she was enjoying herself immensely and she wanted more of it.

  ‘For God’s sake, will you get Christine to babysit so we can go out for a meal!’ Hugh grumbled over the phone during the middle of the second week, a few days after his return from Saudi.

  ‘I’ll cook you a meal here,’ she offered.

  ‘Liz, no disrespect to your cooking but frankly I’m not in the humour for children and domesticity. We’ve stayed in every night since I came home.’

  ‘Well you weren’t moaning last night!’ retorted Liz.

  They had made wild and passionate love on the sheepskin rug in front of the fire and afterwards as she massaged him with body oil to erase the knots of tension in his body he had looked at her with his heavy-lidded, brown-eyed gaze and said slowly, ‘You look really well, very relaxed. You do really like this kind of thing, don’t you?’ He indicated Fiona’s neatly-pressed uniform lying on the back of a chair with her shoes and socks beside it, all ready for school in the morning.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’ Their eyes met.

  ‘It will never be me,’ he said honestly, taking her face between his hands.

  ‘I know that,’ Liz answered. It was the first time they had verbally acknowledged the differences between them and Liz knew that it was a turning-point in their relationship. ‘I love you Liz,’ Hugh said softly.

  ‘I love you too,’ she murmured against his chest.

  She hadn’t gone out to dinner with him and he had rung off in a huff but the following morning a dozen yellow roses arrived for her and she smiled. Hugh could never stay mad with her for long and maybe she had been a bit mean. She asked Christine to babysit that evening and he took her to the Trocadero. Over dinner, Hugh proposed to her. Liz had kind of guessed it was coming. He had been putting so much pressure on her lately about going to America. She had managed not to think about it during her babysitting session but now he gave her no option – she had to sit down and think about and confront it and decide what choice she was going to make. ‘I have to think about it, Hugh,’ she responded honestly, her blue eyes wide and troubled.

  ‘Well, I’m off to New York the day after tomorrow for ten days. You have until I get back. Is that fair?’

  Liz nodded. It was time to make up her mind. She couldn’t sit on the fence for much longer.

  She resolutely put the decision out of her head as she enjoyed the final few days of the fortnight that had passed so swiftly. Don and Eve had phoned often from the Canaries and were having a wonderful time. They were stopping off for two days in London before coming home on the Monday, the following day. Upstairs, her two charges were slumbering contentedly after a thrilling day at the zoo. Munching a slice of apple tart, Liz sighed deeply. It had all gone so fast and she had still put thoughts of a decision out of her mind. Well, she wasn’t going to decide tonight either, she thought stubbornly. Tonight she was going to enjoy her last few hours of solitude.

  Picking up the Sunday Independent she put a cushion under her feet and two under her head and settled back for a read. A while later she came to the Living supplement and saw her own face smiling out at her under the caption ‘Nineties Woman’. Liz groaned. She didn’t mind giving interviews at all, enjoyed meeting new people and chatting to them. It was just reading them back afterwards that she never got used to. She was always slightly mortified by the whole thing. And then after her experiences with two-faced Polly and her ‘chocolate-box art’ barb she had always felt a bit wary. But over the years she had done many interviews and most of the journalists had been extremely nice and friendly. When Susanna Nolan had phoned, asking if she could include her in a piece she was doing on successful Irishwomen, Liz had agreed. She had quite enjoyed the in
terview with the elegant journalist who had asked her intelligent probing questions without overstepping the bounds of privacy. Such a relief after some of the questions she had had thrown at her by others less polite. If she was asked once more when she and Hugh were going to tie the knot, she’d scream!

  Studying the attractive brunette as her pen raced swiftly over the pages of her notebook, Liz reflected that Susanna, like herself, was a new breed of Irish woman. There were so many successful Irishwomen around who really were getting out and achieving things and making their own choices. If she had a daughter, she’d have no fears for her growing up in Irish society. Fiona and Caitriona had everything to aim for in their future.

  Liz smiled as she read the opening sentence of the article. ‘Liz Lacey is the personification of the new Nineties Woman,’ Susanna had written. ‘Unbelievably successful, independent and talented, she has overcome adversity and emerged a stronger woman. Some would say Liz Lacey has it made!’ The rest of the article continued in that positive tone but Liz shook her head as she finished it. So many people thought she had it all, that she had reached the pinnacle, yet only she knew the emptiness she felt with increasing regularity these days. She threw another log on the fire and ran upstairs to check on the girls. Not a budge. After cutting another piece of pie and pouring herself a glass of milk, Liz returned to the sofa.

  Picking up a couple of Hellos she flicked through them. She loved reading about the rich and famous, seeing the fashions, looking at their houses. Liz spent a happy three-quarters of an hour dipping in and out of the magazines. Stretching her hand down to the floor she picked up the last one, which was also the latest. She felt a stab of empathy when she saw the bewildered and utterly shocked face of Princess Caroline as she stood watching her husband’s coffin being carried into Monaco’s cathedral. God love her, she thought sadly, knowing exactly what the bereft young widow was experiencing. Thinking back, she knew that she had gone around completely dazed for six months after Matt’s death. She could see the same stunned expression on the grieving Princess’s face and pitied her from the bottom of her heart. ‘At least she has the three children,’ she murmured aloud, dropping the magazine. At least she would not be left empty and alone as Liz had been. The memories brought the tears to her eyes and in the quiet of Eve and Don’s sitting-room she had a little cry.