What Happened to Us?

by Faith Hogan

‘Oh, I haven’t looked at it, not since…’

  ‘You should.’ He held his fork mid-air. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. Look at us, here tonight. You should start including reviews, places like this that most people up and down the country only hear about in the gossip pages. You could let them see what it’s like. If the review was favourable, you might even get the chef to share a recipe. Who knows? It would be fun, something to take your mind off Kevin and Valentina.’ It seemed strange to hear their names tagged together so easily. It made it more real, not just a figment of her imagination. Of course, it was all real, and maybe it was no harm to be reminded of it.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I mean, it’s not like anyone actually follows it, apart from my family and a few friends.’

  ‘Well, maybe that’s the problem, maybe you need to pick a topic that pulls people in. Seriously, what have you got to lose? You could be sitting on a gold mine, or at least a whole lot of fun.’

  ‘I don’t know, I…’

  ‘Come on, just do a post on this restaurant, and see how it goes, then after that, well…’

  ‘No one will read it, I was thinking of taking it down anyway.’

  ‘Do this one, as payment for your dinner, what do you say?’

  ‘You’re not paying for it anyway,’ she laughed at him; he was so earnest as if a silly blog could change her life. All it was, all it had been so far, was a running commentary on her dull life and no one was really interested. It was oddly depressing when she thought about it. After all, did she want to spend her spare time looking at a computer screen?

  ‘Come on, can you think of anything better than spending your downtime in places like this?’ It was like he could read her mind. ‘Seriously, just one and then we’ll see if it doesn’t lead to something better.’

  So she agreed, but only because with Clair’s Kitchen she could easily give it five stars and it deserved every one.

  It was late when they left the restaurant, ambling down O’Connell Street and heading for the last buses of the evening.

  ‘Tonight was great, thanks Andrew,’ Carrie said as they stood at neighbouring stops.

  ‘It was good, you needed it, you can’t spend every night sitting in with a dog at your feet, no matter how adored he makes you feel.’ He smiled at her thoughtfully.

  ‘Oh, Andrew, you know me so well.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that, I always wondered what you were doing with Kevin.’ He moved closer to her now, lowered his voice. ‘I mean, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but he’s a bit of a prat.’

  ‘Funny, but at the moment, I completely agree.’

  ‘He’s good at what he does, I can see that, but really, Carrie, the restaurant, even Clair said it. You are The Sea Pear. In the morning, you could bring in another chef and things would go on, but if you left…’

  ‘Oh, Andrew, if I wasn’t there, you’d run things as smoothly and efficiently, probably even more so…’

  ‘Carrie, the truth is, if you weren’t there, I’d have been working for Clair a long time ago.’ He shook his head smiling. ‘But I’m glad you’re taking time off, you deserve it and I’m happy to do the best I can until you get back.’

  She looked at him now, realising that she’d never quite understood how much his support meant to her. ‘Thanks for, you know…’ She wasn’t sure she could put words on it, but she had a feeling he knew she was thanking him for so much more than a lovely dinner.

  ‘It will all work out, you’ll see.’ His bus pulled up and the crowd around him began to move him forward towards the open door. As he was getting on, he turned towards her, ‘I’ll be checking your blog tomorrow, you have to get cracking now.’ He shook his head and she watched as he showed his commuter pass to the ambivalent driver. Then he was gone, into the night, and soon her own bus arrived and she found that somehow she was filled with an uncertain feeling that she was too scared to name as hope, but it was strong and pleasant and she luxuriated in it anyway.

  *

  Kevin had to admit, apartment living suited him. From here, he could see right across the city. The good parts – the parts that had been revitalised during the Celtic tiger years. His view took in the Aviva stadium, the Canal and far off on the horizon he could see the Dublin Mountains. Valentina loved it. She left the apartment each day dolled up to the nines. She really was the kind of woman he’d always dreamed of having on his arm.

  Sometimes, he thought back to when he was at school. Never the popular one, not even the clever one. He’d passed a dozen years and, mostly, he felt invisible compared to so many others. This was his time. He was living the dream. He was living in the swankiest address in the city, surrounded by the most successful people of the moment. He owned the best restaurant in town and he had Valentina. He’d like to see any of those boys who had laughed at him all those years ago now.

  He sat on his balcony, a cup of the finest espresso in the city in his hand and thought about how well life had turned out for him. Then, out of the side of his eye, he saw Valentina. Her heels echoed on the shiny marble-effect stone of the courtyard below. She was carrying bags with labels from the most expensive shops in Dublin. He had to hand it to her, she knew how to spend. From here, he admired her elegant walk. He loved the way she moved slowly, cat-like, her curves gathering pace at a fraction of a second behind those confident steps. She didn’t notice him, here in the shadow, and a shiver of desire shot through him as he thought of how she’d coaxed him into wakefulness hours earlier.

  On the still air of the deserted plaza he heard her phone ring out. It sounded out a tinny melody that parodied some song that probably travelled from Colombia, though badly. Valentina reached her hand into the oversized bag on her shoulder. One move, smooth and assured. She was the antithesis of Carrie. Carrie spent half her life emptying her handbag to find things that were invariably somewhere else. Valentina had the kind of sophistication that if Carrie lived to be a hundred and ten, she’d still never manage.

  Kevin squinted now, the sun Arctic bright, bouncing stinging rays off Valentina’s dark hair and gold bangles. She stood for a moment attending intently to the words in her ear. Kevin wondered who she was listening to. Then, he heard her strong accented voice ring out. She was speaking in her own language. Her voice lilted and her tongue rolled easily around the heavy consonants. Then, she threw her head back and laughed that deliciously dirty laugh and it sounded as though she might be sharing a joke that was far too crude for such a bright day.

  Kevin stepped a little closer to the edge of the balcony then, trying to hear her voice, she was nodding and running her hand through that luxuriant hair. Her voice was low and gravelly. He could just catch it on the wind, the kind of tone she used when they were together, an intimate sound that drifted lazily upwards. She looked then, towards the apartment, catching him off guard. He wanted to step back, but he knew he was too late. Suddenly he felt as though he’d been caught spying on her, as though he was a crass voyeur. Their eyes locked for a moment, an unspoken word passing between them, as though they’d both been caught in some illicit act. Then she waved at him and it felt as if he was standing in the sun again.

  *

  A parent’s infidelity, it made you insecure, that’s what Carrie said anyway. Kevin couldn’t see it. He hadn’t been insecure with Carrie. Had he? Maybe a little, in the beginning, but these last few years? No, they’d settled into something too comfortable for him to doubt her. He knew she’d never leave him. He knew that she’d always be there for him no matter what. His father had not managed to crush his ability to have a relationship without fear of being rejected.

  His father’s affair. Funny, but up until recently, he hadn’t given it a second thought. Even saying it now, sounded a little strange. His sister took it badly, at the time. Penny had always been a daddy’s girl and these days it seemed, to him at least, she used this as a kind of absolution, so the responsibility of their mother had fallen on his shoulders now that Carrie was no longer around. H
is mother? Who knew what Maureen Mulvey thought – certainly, Kevin wasn’t going to try second-guessing her now. He rang a taxi company earlier in the week. Sorted out a driver for Sunday mornings; Kevin had no intention of stepping into Carrie’s shoes and turning up every Sunday for a mass that meant nothing to him. It was going to cost, but it was worth it. It meant he didn’t have to face her, answer any more questions, not until he was ready at least. This would all blow over. He was sure of it. His mother had never really liked Carrie anyway. Oh, she pretended to, but Carrie knew it and Penny knew it too. She almost said something when he rang her to organise the taxi. He could feel it, over the silences between them on the call. She was biting her tongue.

  ‘It’s just really busy, Mother,’ he’d picked his words carefully. She worried about him working too hard. Worried he might have another ‘little turn’, as she called it, but that had been years ago, before he met Carrie. He’d been a fretting, spotty kid with a mother who liked to mollycoddle him. It was hardly surprising that his nervousness spiralled into anxiety that needed medication in the end to bring him back to par. Maureen still reminded him of that time when she saw his colour rise or heard that edgy tension tighten up his voice.

  ‘I hope that Carrie is doing her share, not leaving it all to you,’ she said, but then, perhaps he caught something else.

  ‘You know Carrie, she’d work until she drops, mother.’ He had to hand it to Carrie, she really did work hard and maybe she deserved a break away from The Sea Pear for now. He didn’t tell his mother she was on holiday for a week. It would open up too many enquiries, questions he didn’t want to answer.

  ‘It’s still your restaurant, Kevin, you make sure she knows it. You’ve worked just as hard for it and it wouldn’t be much of a restaurant without you.’ Her voice was severe, but he could hear the brittleness of age behind her words. She was right, of course, Kevin knew that. The Sea Pear was a success because people came back for the food. ‘I know everyone thinks that Carrie is the be-all and end-all of that place, but if you were serving up half-cooked food she wouldn’t be a lot of help to you then.’

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ Kevin said, but Valentina was pressing him on the subject of the restaurant too.

  ‘You have to sort it out, Keveen. You have to let her know who ees the boss. I can take care of the front of house for you and Andrew is there too, for now; he knows everyone. He could show me who is who, until I get the hang of eet.’

  ‘I can’t just dump Carrie and then sack her,’ Kevin tried to laugh condescendingly, but he lost his breath and managed to sound as though he might by crying. ‘This isn’t Colombia, Valentina, we have employment laws here. I can’t just get rid of her.’

  ‘Huh, in Colombia, we would not sack her. I would just take her out and sell her on to some old farmer looking for help in the fields.’ She laughed at this and Kevin hoped she was joking. ‘She would make good money, she has the thighs for eet.’ Valentina rarely talked of Colombia. Kevin had a sense that her life there had not been easy. He had a feeling that her journey to Ireland had cost more than her fare. These days, he didn’t ask her any more about the family she had left behind, fearing that he may be overrun with Colombian relatives if he enquired too often. The last thing he wanted was a rush of relatives like Simo and Reda applying for visas to study English and descending on him with loud voices, throaty laughs and expensive habits.

  ‘We have to be careful how we treat her, if we break any employment laws, she can sue the pants off us. It will cost me a lot of money.’ He had long since mentioned to Valentina that the restaurant was his. It seemed like a small lie at the time. It was a way of making him feel and look like the big man and it seemed harmless enough then. Now he regretted it. Now, it seemed all Valentina talked about was getting Carrie out the door of The Sea Pear. She had ambitions to run the restaurant in her place. He supposed it was admirable. He supposed he should be glad. After all, she was at least earning her keep. Well, sort of. God, but she knew how to spend money.

  He peeked into the shopping bags she left at the foot of the bed. How could anyone pay so much money for shoes? He picked up a pair of plain black patent heels, red soles beneath them. God, but she looked good in heels. He held them close to his face, just for a moment. He should probably feel bad about the lie. A lie like that would eat Carrie up. But then, he reasoned, where did that get Carrie in life?

  *

  ‘It’s really nice of you to offer to come in and freshen the place up for Jane,’ Carrie said as the little dog sniffed happily about the new territory. Teddy was enjoying the years of scents laid down by shoes that trod across the bar long before Carrie or Luke had ever stepped inside the front door.

  ‘I’m happy to do it for her, she’s a lovely lady,’ Luke said, looking about the bar. There was no doubt the whole place could do with a good overhaul, not even paint, but soap and water, good old-fashioned elbow grease could really make a huge impact on it.

  ‘You’re right, of course you’re right,’ Carrie agreed with him when he said it to her.

  ‘I think that if I just gave this place a good going-over, maybe cleaned out the chimneys, shined up the brasses. If we have the place looking and smelling like it’s welcoming her back, it would be good for her.’

  ‘And you don’t have anywhere else to be?’ she asked and, of course, he realised, she meant a job, a wife or a family or the many other commitments that most men of his age had.

  ‘Nope, I’m free as a bird.’ He smiled at her then, enjoyed the perplexed look in her eyes, matching it with a challenge. Perhaps he wanted her to ask him the obvious questions, but then, she hadn’t told him about Kevin Mulvey. Jane had told him all he needed to know. They were in partnership together, but Carrie was the brains and the heart of the business – they were an odd couple, Luke thought when he saw Kevin on Finch Street. But then, who was he to figure out someone else’s relationship. He was hardly an expert when it came to love and marriage, was he? ‘How about if I get cleaning and you supply the coffee?’ he said good-humouredly. ‘It doesn’t have to be the posh stuff you serve over in The Sea Pear, instant will do fine.’

  ‘I suppose, if you’re taking out the mops and buckets, it’s the least I can do.’ She looked inside the counter, filled the kettle and dropped spoons of coffee into two cups.

  Luke settled himself at the bar, watching her for a moment. ‘It suits you,’ he said then.

  ‘Oh?’ she smiled at him.

  ‘This place, I could imagine you working in a big old-fashioned pub, I’d say it’s steeped in history.’

  ‘You like history?’

  ‘You could say that,’ he laughed, then shook his head, ‘I suppose I should come clean, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Should you?’ Carrie didn’t lift her eyes from the old-fashioned kettle, although there was nothing much to see.

  ‘Well, a man, living in a bed and breakfast, all day long with nothing to do, it’s… intriguing, surely?’

  ‘No, not really.’ She smiled then. ‘Well, I did wonder…’

  ‘I’m between jobs.’ Teddy settled on the floor beside him, leant against his legs with the familiarity of a child who expects only ease.

  ‘And when you’re working, what is it you do exactly?’

  ‘Exactly, it’s hard to say. The last few years I’ve bummed around the world working on historical digs…’

  ‘So, you’re an archaeologist?’

  ‘You make it sound like it’s the last thing I should be,’ he laughed now, it was hard not to crease his face into a smile when he was talking to Carrie. ‘I know it doesn’t seem like the most fascinating work, but I’m a historian, I’ve written a few books, worked in universities, all that jazz.’

  ‘So would I have read anything…?’

  ‘It depends, do you usually borrow from university libraries?’

  ‘Emm no, but I like vintage markets.’ They both laughed at that.

  ‘Good enough, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I came back to Dublin
a few weeks ago, one job finished and there wasn’t anything special calling to me. My father lives in a nursing home here – Ballyglen – so it’s a chance to knock about with him, until after Christmas anyway, then I’ll definitely have to go back to work.’

  ‘We’re both kind of in the same boat, so…’ Carrie said, pouring boiling water into the two cups.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Well, we’re neither of us exactly teenagers and we’re both thinking about where we are in life.’

  ‘I would have thought you were well sorted, you seem so… together.’

  ‘Sometimes all that glitters and all that…’ There was a mismatched air between her eyes and her voice that she quickly covered over with a shriek of excitement, ‘Well, would you look at that?’ she pointed to an old photograph on the wall next to the bar. ‘Isn’t he the spit of you in that photograph?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, my God.’ Luke stood before the photograph. It was the strangest thing. He stood for a moment taking it in, it was as if he was looking at his twin brother – only there were more than three decades between them.

  *

  Perhaps it was their way of rendering release, a sort of clearing of the spiritual slate as well as the physical one before patients were sent home. The chaplain spoke in stops and starts, stumbling over his consonants and elongating his vowels. Uncomfortable around the conversational furniture of dying and conscience, he shuffled quietly from one patient to the next, offering what he could of well-worn quotes and derelict prayers. He was a man perhaps more suited to his crossword and allotment than sharing confidences with old women who expected answers rather than platitudes.

  We’ve heard all the psalms you’re likely to spring on us already, Jane wanted to tell him, but, of course, politeness kept her opinions fastened tight so they only played behind her eyes. The woman beside her snored loudly, a rocketing crescendo that never failed to halt as soon as he had left the ward. She had no time for silly men; she told Jane one afternoon, she’d much prefer to save her energy and her attention for the children and grandchildren who would descend upon her as soon as visiting time arrived.