Temptation

by Dermot Bolger

  ‘That’s terrible.’ Alison took his hand, shocked to feel a tremor there. If she stroked his chest she knew she would be able to feel his heart thumping like a trapped bird. ‘What can you do?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I can’t leave things the way they are.’

  ‘Well, you can hardly start rolling up your sleeves and mixing cement,’ she replied. His voice didn’t sound like his own, with all the fight knocked from it. Peadar, her rock, who needed her. She worried about his heart and hated the children seeing him this upset. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘When you’re a headmaster, everything is your fault,’ he said. ‘Like my father always says, it comes with the job. I’ll have to go back in the morning.’

  This time Danny overheard. Alison spied the boy, sitting very still on his bed. Then his lip began to quiver and suddenly he was crying, setting off the younger two, even though they didn’t know what was happening.

  ‘We’re going nowhere, we’re staying here,’ Danny shouted. ‘This is our holiday.’

  ‘Of course you can stay,’ Peadar tried reassuring him. ‘Your Daddy will just have to pop home for a night or so. Mammy will be here with you and everything else will be just the same.’

  A knock came, the babysitter arriving early. Of course it wouldn’t be the same, Alison thought, nothing would be the same. It would be no holiday for her. She looked at Peadar who shook his head. This wasn’t the time to argue, they would have all evening for that. Sheila was still crying and Shane was upset too. They needed to put up a cheerful front or leave three sobbing children with the babysitter, who, thankfully, was a mature woman with grown–up children. If she sensed the tension she didn’t let on, making a great fuss of Sheila and getting Shane to show her his colouring.

  Soon the youngest two were excited again, bringing the woman books for bedtime reading. Only Danny remained uneasy. Alison noticed how his giraffe was carefully placed on the floor beside his bed – far enough away that it might belong to Shane, but within reach for him to cuddle into when the babysitter turned the light out. He looked up at Alison suspiciously as she kissed him. All year long he would talk to her about Fitzgerald’s. She knew that these five days stretched before him like a paradise which nothing must be allowed to disturb.

  ‘We’re going nowhere,’ he hissed fiercely, holding tears back. She kissed him again and stroked his hair.

  ‘Of course not,’ she whispered. ‘You read your book and get to sleep soon. I’ll talk to Daddy and sure maybe he won’t have to go at all.’

  I’ll talk to Daddy. The words mocked her, walking down the corridor in silence. This was the night when she had meant to talk to him, to tell Peadar her worries from the previous months. She knew it was childish to have looked forward to being told how brave she was and scolded for keeping the tests from him. But she had fantasised so often about what she would say and Peadar’s reaction to it. When she closed her eyes during those tests she had even been able to conjure up the taste of Irish coffees and the smoke from his cigar.

  What was the point in saying anything now? Her false alarm seemed meaningless compared to his loss that could be measured in tangible bricks and mortar and vanished money.

  The dining room was filling up, a warm hubbub of noise greeting them as they waited to be seated. She looked around, wondering in which alcove Jack Fitzgerald seated Chris Conway every evening. She knew from Peadar’s face that he had already slipped back into his school principal mode. The relaxation she’d seen there after his golf was gone, the mood in which she felt she had him all to herself. She wondered if Peadar had personally gone guarantor for anything, if their house could be at risk. It didn’t seem likely but during these last weeks Peadar would have signed anything to get this job completed. Even this holiday stretched their finances, with hopes of a new kitchen abandoned for another year at least.

  They didn’t discuss the subject over their starter or soup, as if trying to keep some outward semblance of a holiday alive. Peadar chose the Chianti Classico Grande Reserva he would normally keep as a treat until their final night. She looked across at him as the waiter removed the bisque he had barely touched.

  ‘I’ve no choice,’ he said quietly. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘I know.’ She reached for his hand, knowing Peadar would sort out the pieces of this mess, slowly and methodically, like he had done with their lives after she lost the child. At first she hadn’t allowed him to, by running away, trying to pretend it had never happened. But his healing came during the nights before they married when he had held her and allowed the tears to come. His calmness was vital, when she spent her life perpetually flying off the handle, perched in mid–air between tears and elation. But Peadar wasn’t so young any more. She had to mind him.

  ‘Let’s cancel the holiday,’ she suggested. ‘We can have a word with Jack Fitzgerald. Maybe he’ll find us a summer cancellation.’

  ‘How?’ Peadar asked. ‘A long–standing guest virtually has to die before you get a summer slot here. There’s no way I can take a week off during term time and we haven’t the money anyway. The kids have been looking forward to this all year, so we can’t drag them home.’

  ‘Tell me the truth, Peadar,’ she said. ‘I won’t get upset. Have we lost any money ourselves?’

  He looked at her blankly. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, are any of our savings mixed up in the money the school is after losing?’

  ‘The school isn’t after losing money,’ he replied. ‘Obviously the job was bonded.’ He saw her puzzled stare. ‘Before a job like this starts, myself and the builder enter into a bond with a bank. Basically I lodge the money up front to prove I have it and the bank holds onto it to pay the builder once the job is completed. As soon as the courts appoint a receiver, we can fix an amount to pay for work done so far, then put the remainder of the job out to tender.’

  She could tell that Peadar was baffled by her expression. Even she was unsure whether to feel relief or anger.

  ‘So you mean the blasted extension will get built after all?’

  ‘Not immediately. We’ll lose a few months but it will get done.’

  ‘So all you’ve really lost is time.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ he explained patiently. ‘In addition to disruption there will be other expenses, legal fees and so forth. But once I sniffed danger I made sure to keep a close eye on Nolan.’

  ‘So what will you be doing in Dublin?’

  ‘Talking to the solicitors, though I’ve already filled them in on the phone. Then setting up meetings for next week and generally being a presence around the place.’ He stopped. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘A presence around the place?’ she repeated, incredulously. ‘McCann is a presence around the place. He’s been a presence in our bloody marriage for years. You say these meetings are for next week. I know this has sent your precious plans haywire, but what exactly can you do in Dublin between now and Friday that you couldn’t do with a few phone calls from here?’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  She knew Peadar wanted her to keep her voice down. The couple at the next table had ceased their own conversation, their stiffened shoulders betraying the fact that they were listening. Jack Fitzgerald was seven tables away and closing. Peadar glanced in his direction.

  ‘What is the point?’ she asked.

  ‘The point is that I’m school principal, captain of the bloody ship. As my father says, if there’s trouble I’m suppose to be on deck, strapped to the wheel.’

  ‘You’re not your bloody father,’ Alison snapped.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  It was an old argument, one Alison didn’t want to get side–tracked into. ‘You often work till after midnight,’ she said. ‘Nobody doubts your commitment. So what’s so important to prove that you can’t take five nights off to reintroduce yourself to your family?’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate.’ Jack Fitzgerald had skipped
tables and was now only one away. ‘It would be taken badly if I didn’t show my face. I’ll try to get back down for Thursday night. There’ll be other holidays, I’ll make this up to you, I promise.’

  He tried to squeeze her hand but she withdrew it, clenching her fist in frustration under the table. Part of her knew he was right, but she wanted him, just for once, to shag his precious commitments and put her first. He had needed her so badly once. That had been a terrible shock to discover when he came looking for her again after three years, to find how this strong confident figure desperately needed her in his life. So why couldn’t he show it now, or had that vulnerability faded with the years?

  ‘There are lots of people you know here,’ he reassured her. ‘I’ll talk to Jack and make sure the staff treat you like a queen.’

  ‘I don’t want to be left alone,’ she protested. ‘It won’t be a holiday.’

  ‘It will be for the kids.’

  Peadar looked up as Jack Fitzgerald reached their table, his hands joined in front of him, leaning down, anxious to ensure their comfort. It had taken her years to adjust to this routine of senior Fitzgerald’s staff moving between the tables every evening. It was embarrassing if her mouth was full when somebody stopped, yet she could never bring herself to stop eating when one of them drew near in case it looked like she was seeking attention.

  Jack listened carefully as Peadar outlined the situation. Arrangements were being smoothly made between them. Alison knew she would be waited on hand and foot. Jack was the fourth generation of his family to own the hotel. There was nothing he hadn’t seen before, nothing which ever perturbed him. It was nobody’s fault that he had appeared just now at their table, but she resented the fact that she had never finished her conversation with Peadar who gave the impression of everything being decided between them. A waitress was named to help her at the lunch buffet. Geraldine would be asked to give the children extra attention. Jack even foresaw the difficulty of the boys getting changed in the leisure centre.

  Peadar’s mood was improving with every moment. The analytical side of his brain was at work, breaking her holiday down into a series of logistical problems. She longed to kick him under the table and suggest he arrange a gigolo as well, for good measure, or for a life–size rubber replica of himself to be erected on the tennis courts that she could take her frustrations out on with a baseball bat. She wanted him to stop planning her life, so she cut in, asking Jack about Chris Conway instead.

  ‘You know him?’ Jack Fitzgerald sounded surprised.

  ‘He worked with Alison years ago,’ Peadar said. ‘Had a soft spot for her, if I remember, though it was harmless adolescent stuff.’

  Jack Fitzgerald laughed politely, taking his lead from Peadar, so that Alison felt forced to laugh along, though by now she was truly angry. Could that really be how Peadar remembered it? If Chris’s feeling were adolescent, then what were Peadar’s own feelings back then? Perhaps he had always viewed her as a set of logistical problems to be solved, so confident of his own strength that he never felt the need to be concerned about the attentions of anyone as hesitant as Chris Conway.

  ‘We were thinking of inviting him for a drink later on,’ Peadar said. ‘I mean, does it help him to talk about the accident?’

  ‘I get the impression he just wants a quiet holiday,’ Jack Fitzgerald advised, discreet and circumspect as always when asked about any guest. ‘I think he’s going away afterwards, leaving Ireland as far as I know. His house is up for sale in Dublin. I’d tread carefully if I were you. I never expected to see him here again, but when he phoned last Tuesday he wanted everything exactly the same, even down to the room. He offered to pay extra because it was a family room on the ground floor corridor, just down from yours. But I refused the money. I’ve warned a few guests who might remember him, in case they put their foot in it. But I think the man just wanted to come back one last time for his own reasons and is happier to have no fuss.’

  Jack moved on to the next table and Peadar noticed her look.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Don’t “nothing” me. I had to arrange things when I got the chance. I’ve a meeting with the solicitors at half–nine tomorrow.’

  ‘When did you arrange that?’

  ‘On the phone.’

  ‘Before checking with me? Before we discussed a single thing?’

  Her anger sounded tired and soured by a hundred petty grievances. It wasn’t even directed at Peadar. He was the man he always would be. Absolutely correct in his absolutist world which made more sense than her intuitive one. It was herself she was angry with, for expecting him to be someone different. Maybe he was and she just couldn’t see it. The hours he spent since his mother’s death in his office in the spare room demanding not to be disturbed. The way he threw himself into this school building project. Was it simply a way to avoid dealing with his family or dealing with himself, his ageing, the disappointments blunting any life? She knew uncles like that in Waterford, men who kept building onto their family homes even after their families left. Perpetually mixing cement, digging foundations, anything to avoid having to venture indoors to their wives.

  Peadar was patiently explaining how he had no choice. The scaffolding was an insurance danger. People would keep arriving until he secured the site with the receiver. Alison found herself switching off. She might have been watching a goldfish, they lived in such different worlds at times. That dream image came back, the woman trapped at the porthole of a capsized ship. Surely to God herself and Peadar were happy, but was she sure?

  Her friend Ruth was sure until she found that her husband had been meeting another woman for two years. Peadar wasn’t like that, but sometimes now Alison didn’t know what he was like, what inarticulate hurts he carried inside. Peadar, beaten by his father in class to show there was no favouritism. Picking fights against older boys, getting battered just to try and prove himself to his classmates. Peadar, who had to drink harder, play harder, chase girls harder and was still treated with the same suspicion as the local sergeant’s son. For him Dublin had been a far greater escape from a cage than it was for her. He ceased his monologue.

  ‘Do you understand?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, knowing it would do no good. He was off again, justifying his decision as much to himself as to her. How McCann was incapable of doing a headmaster’s job, but resented the fact that anybody else could. He would be secretly thrilled by the chance to tell everybody how his own misgivings were overruled. But the more Peadar repeated himself the more Alison sensed that at heart he knew he could stay here if he put his foot down. Surely his return to Dublin couldn’t be over anything as childish as a dread of what his father would say when he finally phoned Oughterard with the news? Peadar looked at her sharply.

  ‘I’m thinking ten years down the road,’ he explained. ‘University, colleges abroad, the sort of money we’ll need. Things have to go smoothly if I’m to land a better job elsewhere. I want our kids to be able to afford any course they’re good enough for. This is what fathers do, you know.’

  More jobs, more targets, more points to prove. I gave up my happiness to make another person happy, she thought.

  At twenty–two the responsibility of Peadar’s need had overwhelmed her when they got back together. This assured young man reduced to tears as he talked about his loneliness in the years since she left him. The cramming he had done for his finals, getting straight As in everything, except for a B in art. How his mother had sighed when he phoned home and just said, ‘What a terrible pity about the art.’ That first night they got back together again it had taken hours before he finally came inside her, like he was all clenched up, as if nobody had ever taught him how to let go. ‘You wouldn’t care if I was a roadsweeper,’ he used to say. ‘You don’t know how kind you are to people. You’re not even aware of your specialness.’

  Yet she had never felt special, except with Chris, before Peadar said that. His words had made her
feel so truly loved that she never took time to question her own love for him. Perhaps it was inevitable that married life never quite matched the intensity of those first months. This wasn’t true, she told herself, she was reinventing the past. Everything was upsetting her, the ruined holiday, even Chris Conway’s presence. Peadar was her rock, chipped around the edges, but still the only person she could trust. It would be nice if he was happier, but the gnawing disappointment was with himself and not her. She reached across to touch his fingers.

  ‘I understand,’ she lied. ‘But let’s not have that drink with Chris tonight. Let’s just talk instead.’

  They didn’t though. They sat in silence, nursing their Irish coffees. How could she begin to tell him about her health fears that had come to nothing and therefore proved unnecessary? He would respond all right but no matter what he said it would never be enough. It was like the kids’ reaction to their arrival here. She always seemed to want more than people could give.

  Peadar wanted her body. All the way up the corridor she could sense his need. An empty house awaited him in Dublin, with pre–packed microwaved meals as he dealt with problems. In bed in the dark she could feel him waiting for a sign, for her to turn and run her hand down his bare chest. When none came his fingers stroked her hair. They stopped, feeling her wet cheeks.

  ‘You’re crying. I’m sorry, Alison, I hate to make you cry.’

  How could she tell Peadar that he wasn’t the reason she was crying? Ever since turning the light out it wasn’t his face she was imagining. It was Chris Conway’s, lying in an empty room down the corridor. His wife, what must she have looked like? His daughters laid out on mortuary slabs. The anguish and pity she had kept in check all day came rushing in. Peadar held her as she sobbed, soothing her, promising that he would make up for everything. She could see the wrecked cars meshed together, the funeral with three coffins, the bedrooms of toys and clothes to be cleared out.