What Happened to Us?

by Faith Hogan

  Jane looked across at the woman next to her. She was right of course, but what of Jane who had no-one coming after her. Neither herself, nor Manus had a relation left between them, or at least none that they knew of. And, there it was again, that notion that going back to The Marchant Inn was so futile, what on earth was she keeping it open for? Albeit half-heartedly, but there was no-one coming behind her to thank her for the effort.

  Jane sighed, considered closing her eyes, but too late, the chaplain spotted her. He smiled a thin line of constant abbreviation – as though a full smile might require a quote so great it would be the breaking of him. He was moving away from a woman who had arrived just the night before, a moaning, tiny form in the far corner and something in her pathetic shape castigated Jane for being so ungrateful. She had her health, or enough of it to leave here at least and she had visitors, two people who had thought enough of her to come and sit and talk to her for hours at a time.

  ‘Our Lord works in mysterious ways,’ seemed to be the chaplains’ favourite quote. He’d spun it out half a dozen times in this ward already. It was Jane’s last day; tomorrow she would return to The Marchant Inn and the solitude of living with only ghosts for company. She was surprised when Mr Donoghue, the chaplain, dropped into the seat beside her and wondered, for a moment, if perhaps he knew it was his last opportunity to toss another canticle at her.

  ‘But what of the rest of us?’ she ventured mildly.

  ‘The rest of us?’ he asked, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose.

  ‘Well, people like myself, the non-believers, those of us who are just too tired waiting for his mysterious ways to make a difference to us?’ Jane had grown up with the nuns, the daughter of a woman who didn’t have the courage to keep her at a time when it was easier to leave your child behind and make a new life somewhere else. It meant that she had no family, or none that she was ever able to find at least. It also meant that she knew by heart every psalm the chaplain could think to throw at her, and if she tried, she didn’t doubt she could dredge up some he’d never even heard of for herself.

  ‘Well, aren’t we the ones in most need of faith?’ he said easily and she thought that wasn’t much of a help really, expected him to say that the darkest hour came before the dawn or some other such nonsense. ‘Be strong and take heart, all you who hope,’ he muttered, then his eyes rested on her for a long moment. ‘You’re not as alone as you think,’ he said softly before moving on to the next ward. Oddly, his words brought Jane some comfort and she lay quietly on her pillow, letting them wash over her for some time. Perhaps, he was right. After all, either Carrie or Luke had visited her each day since she’d arrived here. Maybe, she was not alone after all.

  Seven

  Carrie was making her way back from the bank, a hundred things running through her mind when Anna rang her. Anna nearly had a fit when she told her. Of course, she couldn’t tell her face to face, even Carrie wasn’t that brave.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I know, I know, I know, it was a stupid thing to say.’ She knew it at the time. What in God’s name had possessed her? But it was Melissa and she couldn’t upset Melissa for the world. Telling her that she’d met someone new seemed the only way to convince her that she was absolutely fine with Kevin being best man while she was maid of honour at their wedding.

  ‘Well, she’ll be pretty upset if she finds out you lied to her,’ Anna said, still spluttering, it had to be Chardonnay, Carrie decided. Only Chardonnay made her friend splutter.

  ‘No. I’ve thought about it. I’ll make it a hot torrid affair, it won’t last any longer than a week or two and then I’ll dump him, because…’

  ‘Well, you’ll probably have worn him out by then. Look at the state of Kevin after all and we all know what a stud he was when you met him.’ Sometimes Anna could be downright cruel or too funny for words.

  ‘Stop it.’ Carrie giggled in spite of herself. ‘Anyway, that’s how I’m playing it, so, for heaven’s sake, don’t let me down if you run into any of them.’

  ‘Sure thing.’ Anna sipped whatever had almost caused her to gasp earlier. ‘It’s a pity Andrew is gay, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose it is. He’d have been lovely for Valentina.’ They both giggled at that, neither of them could imagine Andrew having anything to do with someone as obvious as Valentina. ‘Anyway, how’s The Mousetrap?’

  ‘Actually, it’s doing really well. It looks like we could be running for an extra month and they’re talking of a tour.’

  ‘Oh, Anna, I’m delighted.’

  ‘Don’t get too excited, now, nothing’s set in stone, and it’s not as though I’m a main player, so even if it does tour…’

  ‘Of course, you’ll be on the tour. It’s time your luck turned, this is it, I’m sure of it.’ Neither of them said that they’d been waiting for Anna’s luck to turn for almost twenty years. No one could accuse them of pessimism.

  ‘Anyway, the reason I rang you. I have a meal for two at the Otter’s Lodge for Friday, do you fancy coming along?’

  ‘Has Andrew been talking to you?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘No reason. I’d love to come with you and I’ll tell you all about Andrew’s plan for me when I get there.’ Carrie hung up the phone quickly, before Anna could wheedle any details out of her about the blog. Carrie managed to put a piece together on her night out with Andrew. She was quite proud of it and even though it was only posted a few hours already she’d garnered a dozen comments.

  *

  Kevin woke up in a bad mood. He wasn’t sure why. He looked across at Valentina, her soft dark hair resting in a shiny coil across her shoulders. Even asleep, she was beautiful. No, Kevin wasn’t pissed off with Valentina, how could he be? The next thing that popped into his mind was The Sea Pear, but no, everything was ticking over nicely there. He rolled over onto his back and lay looking up at the pristine white ceiling and, for a moment, he thought, heaven must be like this. Except, in heaven, people were happy, weren’t they? But Kevin was happy, of course he was, to suggest anything less was just preposterous. He had a beautiful woman lying next to him, he was living in a fabulous apartment and he had a thriving business. If it was six weeks earlier, well then, maybe…

  Six weeks earlier, things had come to a head with Valentina. She was sick of feeling as if he was ashamed of her. The excitement of a secret affair was wearing thin and she was tired of playing second fiddle to Carrie, as she saw it. She gave him an ultimatum. One of the worst she could give, in his opinion.

  ‘If you don’t tell her, I weel.’ She’d roared in that passionate way she had. He still thought it was so cute, if a little scary. He wondered if some day it would irritate him.

  ‘I will, my darling, I will. It’s all about timing. Carrie will be heartbroken.’

  ‘She should have thought about that when she wasn’t keeping her man happy,’ she’d said and drew him closer, pulling open his shirt to reveal his pasty white chest. Of course, when Kevin was with Valentina, she made him feel like a god. Maybe in some ways, to her, that’s what he was.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself, mate,’ Jim said when he’d first told him about Valentina. ‘She sees a full wallet and an easy catch who is lusting for a trophy girlfriend. I mean, seriously, what do you even have to say to each other?’

  ‘We have lots in common,’ Kevin had drained his pint at that, it was true. There was never a lull in conversation. Valentina found everything he had to say interesting and amusing. Perhaps it was the age difference, or the cultural difference. Where Carrie would have told him to bugger off and stop annoying her, Valentina could sit for hours gazing into his eyes.

  And that was it, wasn’t it? That was niggling at him, just a bit. The notion that Valentina had taken charge. It was on Valentina’s terms that he had ended things with Carrie. They were living in Valentina’s apartment – her choice, even if he did pay the lease. Mostly, when he wasn’t at work, he was here alone. Valentina always seemed to be off
somewhere. Either she was going into college or the library or meeting up with her college mates. Kevin wasn’t keen on college kids, he couldn’t imagine what Valentina could have in common with a bunch of yobs in bad clothes with collectivist ideals and breadline budgets. He’d met some of them once. They were all foreign, older as it turned out than he had expected. Like Valentina, it seemed to him, college was just a way in, a stepping stone to a work visa, these people were unskilled labourers, not doctors or lawyers or academic bright lights in the making. It was a couple of weeks ago now, she brought him into the Buttery bar in Trinity. Their little group sat unevenly in the hallowed surroundings, out of place among the budding intellects. They were an unusual bunch to see Valentina ensconced in. They were a tribe of bouncy-haired, bearded and booted pseudo-intellectuals; they just irritated Kevin. Valentina seemed to be as relaxed among them as she was in the restaurant or with Simo and Reda in the flat. That was the great thing about Valentina. She wafted from one group to another, and wherever she went, she brought glamour and that radiant beauty which made conversations stop when she entered a room.

  No, he wasn’t angry at Valentina.

  He was angry at Carrie. He was angry because she was going to Ben and Melissa’s wedding without so much as consulting him. He was angry, because, he had been looking forward to the luxury of a castle hotel for a couple of nights with Valentina. He was looking forward to turning up there and showing her off. He was looking forward to watching Jim and Ben and all those other losers who’d settled in life. He couldn’t flaunt Valentina about with Carrie there, even he knew that would be callous.

  As for the idea of Carrie bringing some new lover? Hah! He’d believe it when he saw it. It had to be some huge mistake. There was no way Carrie had hooked up with some guy already. Of course, she’d taken the week off – she’d never actually volunteered where she’d been. Jim had really set him off suggesting that perhaps she’d met this bloke while they were still together. But that was just Jim, trying to wind him up again. He wasn’t jealous, he was sure of that, wasn’t he? He was just a bit…He sighed, trying to pick out the right word – perturbed, that’d be it. He was perturbed.

  ‘You are dreaming?’ Valentina shifted herself a little so she was facing him.

  ‘No, wideawake,’ he said.

  ‘You haven’t forgotten that we have the party tonight?’

  ‘No. No, of course not.’ That was it. That was what had woken him in such a foul mood. Valentina had managed to get them invited to a party in the penthouse at the opposite end of the building. Kevin had met the couple, Rayleigh and Dean, in the elevator. He seemed pompous and she had more plastic in her face than Barbie. When she smiled, it seemed to Kevin that she leered at him. ‘I’ll just have to make sure the restaurant is okay and then I’m good to go.’ He tried to sound upbeat, it wouldn’t have fooled Carrie, but then with Carrie, he just wouldn’t have bothered turning up.

  ‘The party starts at nine, so you weel have to be back here and changed in time. Keveen, I don’t want to be late. They seem very nice and it is our first time to meet all of the neighbours.’ She slid from the covers, with hardly a movement of the bed or sheets, and slinked into the bathroom for her usual morning half-hour shower. Carrie would be horrified, think of the climate. He was quite sure that the last thing on Valentina’s mind was global warming.

  ‘So,’ he asked her when she came into the kitchen later. He had made coffee and toast for both of them. It was much too cold to eat on the balcony, they would have to save that for warmer months. ‘What does a man wear to a party in a penthouse?’

  ‘Well, not your chef’s uniform, that’s for sure,’ she said, snatching his toast from him. That irritated the hell out of him, he’d just buttered it so all the bread was evenly spread and then placed the marmalade on top, having taken out all the bits. Then he’d cut off all the crusts so the marmalade fell down the sides. It was a work of art, and she bit into it like she was eating gruel and then discarded it after one bite. ‘You weel look good no matter what you wear, after all you weel have the best-looking girl in the room on your arm.’ It was true, of course, but Valentina said it with such conviction that for a moment it sounded mean. Normally, Kevin would have made fun of her and said that, likewise, she’d have the wealthiest man in the room, but this time, that wouldn’t be true.

  *

  When Andrew poked his head about the office door, Carrie had a feeling that something was up.

  ‘Well, maybe it’s nothing and perhaps you have a simple explanation,’ he looked ruffled.

  ‘Go on, whatever it is, it can’t be that bad,’ Carrie said, pushing her chair back from her desk. It was her first day back, really, she had every excuse to hide among the accounts for the whole day if she felt like it.

  ‘Someone has emptied the tips jar,’ he said, flatly dropping to the seat before her. ‘All the notes and I’d say there was about a hundred euros in it, because we hadn’t emptied it in almost three weeks, it’s just the coins at the bottom left over.’

  ‘Andrew, that’s terrible. Are you sure one of the others didn’t just empty it to count it up?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure and… there’s something else.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, I noticed the jar last night, put it on my mental to-do list, you know, and so I’m pretty sure that…’

  ‘It’s an inside job?’ To be fair, it was unlikely that a customer would get the chance to drop their hand into the tips bowl. ‘Oh, God, perhaps we can replace the cash from the takings, I’ll talk to Kevin.’

  ‘It’s not just that, Carrie.’ Andrew studied the floor intently, his face burned pink, then he brought his eyes up to meet hers. ‘You see, here’s the thing, there were only four people who could have taken it – me, you, Kevin and…’

  ‘Valentina?’ Carrie whispered hoarsely. She was the only unknown quantity among them, really.

  ‘You see, if you mention it to Kevin, the last person he’ll suspect is Valentina and the first person he’ll want to blame is…’

  ‘Oh, Andrew, you’ve been here for years, I couldn’t have kept this place going without you, especially these last few weeks.’ She shook her head, pulled out her wallet and took out two fifty-euro notes. ‘Here, put those into it for now, if anyone asks, we’ll say we took change out and replaced it from the till. Will you ask one of the other girls to split up the jar between all of you this evening? Anymore, we keep our eyes open, yes?’

  ‘Of course, I think we’ll be on our guard from here on.’ He shook his head sadly, it was the first time they’d ever had a problem like this in The Sea Pear. ‘Maybe I’m wrong, you know, about Valentina.’

  ‘God, Andrew, for all our sakes, I do hope so.’

  *

  The nurses couldn’t be nicer, they’d organised for a lovely young woman to come and talk to her about going home. Jane had been a little unsure, after all, she wasn’t crazy, just a little nervous.

  ‘It’s okay, I’m not the one they send for the crazy people,’ Justine, a South African woman, shook her hand and explained that, as a social worker, it was her job to make sure that Jane was able to take care of herself when they sent her home from hospital. ‘Have you thought about moving into somewhere with people of your own age?’ she asked gently. ‘You know, lots of people about, you’d be surprised what a difference it can make.’ She smiled, ‘You’ll find that a lot of younger people, in their sixties even, are choosing to downsize, live closer to their families, but they don’t want to be… too close.’

  ‘You mean a burden?’ Jane shook her head. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t be that. I don’t have any children or grandchildren to burden.’

  ‘But you have regular visitors?’ Justine bent forward a little, taking her large folder up as though she might capture some of Jane’s life within its pages.

  ‘A neighbour and a… friend,’ Jane said easily, because when she thought about Luke Gibson, that was, unexpectedly, what he was becoming. He visited her
each day on his way to visit his own father. He always brought along something small, a bar of chocolate, a newspaper, fresh flowers, something she could claim as her own beside the overflowing locker of the woman in the next bed.

  ‘Well, think about it, at least,’ Justine took some brochures from her large bag, propped them on the locker, blocking Jane’s view of the lovely freesias Luke had brought the day before.

  ‘I’ll certainly do that,’ Jane said and she meant it, because even now the thoughts of going back to The Marchant Inn and closing her door on a deserted Finch Street each night filled her with a kind of panic that she knew would only grow.

  *

  Raleigh and Dean were even more sickening in their home than they were in the elevator. Dean made his money in property, during the bust, capitalised on the wrecked economy and now he was happy to crow about it. ‘People can’t be sensitive about it anymore, for God’s sake, it’s life. You win some, you lose some, right Kenneth?’ he slapped Kevin on the back, hard, so his Martini almost choked him. Dean didn’t notice and continued to talk about himself making grand gestures so there could be no doubt just how wealthy he was.

  Raleigh whipped Valentina across the room as quickly as they arrived. Soon she was deep in conversation with a group of women who looked like they might be twice her age. Somewhere between the bankruptcy and eviction stories, Kevin lost sight of her. He assumed she disappeared into the kitchen. Eventually, when he got a chance, he went in search of her.

  Dean and Raleigh’s apartment was five times the size of their place. The living room alone was like an airport hangar. It was a medley of muted greys, walnut and glass. A wall of windows looked out into the Dublin night sky and Kevin had to admit it was as impressive as he’d ever seen. He walked slowly through each of the rooms, a sprawling sitting room, then a study, then some kind of long corridor that was probably meant to be an exhibition space. Eventually, he came to the kitchen. Outside he could hear Valentina’s delighted shrieks. It sounded like a completely different party to the sedate one that was taking place in the main lounge. Here a moody rhythm sounded out. Inside was the low hum of a group deep in conversation, punctuated by occasional raucous laughter and Valentina’s sporadic shriek of delight?