2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie

by Brian Gallagher

  “Ronan told me he loved me again,” she says suddenly.

  “Did he, now?”

  She nods.

  “He loved you.”

  “He loves me.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “Last night. After you left me in the hospital he came in.”

  “And he told you he loved you, in the hospital?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Julianne,” she pleads. “Sex had nothing to do with it. He said that to me even though I looked the worst in the world…don’t you see?”

  I see. This is as bad as I’d thought.

  She stands up and refills her glass with Cointreau. And I don’t mean a simple measure. I mean bite-size. She’s clearly addicted to the stuff. She refills my glass too, then sits down again and runs her fingers through her voluminous hair.

  Suddenly she stiffens and becomes alert and rabbit-scared. She’s heard something.

  The door opens.

  Nicole practically spits the next mouthful of Cointreau out through her eyeballs. She attempts a speedy self-composition, then stares at the floor just as he enters the room. I calmly turn my head for a full frontal close-up of her beater.

  26

  At once I can see why Nicole would fancy him.

  He is stocky, firm-jawed, broad-foreheaded and good-looking. His sturdy nose locks into the thick bone of his eyebrows. He doesn’t so much move across the room towards the drinks cabinet as pace. Like a leopard. He is commanding, uncompromising, territorial, shorter than Ronan, but physically strong. Very possibly, he’s not too bright either.

  I flash him my installation smile.

  His expressionless, hard-shell blue eyes glance off me like a bullet off granite and lock on to the drinks cabinet towards which he’s moving. What is it about them? I shiver involuntar-ily.

  Nicole and I watch him as he pours himself a Boru vodka.

  Now is my chance; it will be over in seconds.

  Nicole’s head is bowed in vulnerable humility. Submissive-ness. Can I do it to her?

  Yes, I can.

  After all, has she not branded me a thieving hooligan? A pesterface spouse? A jealous neurotic? An unfit wife?

  Oh, and another point: has she not tried to steal my husband?

  And I’m supposed to show her mercy?

  I can do it: face her down, kick her in the teeth, shove her in the gutter and leave her for Harry. She deserves it.

  He turns round and glares at Nicole.

  “This is Julianne,” is her pathetic attempt to introduce me.

  “How do you do,” he says ignoring me.

  “How do you do,” I reply, trying my best to sound bored.

  “I’ve been thinking about what happened,” he says to her, sipping.

  “Harry – can we talk about that another time?”

  He sniggers, swirling the vodka in his glass. “Has Nicole told you about her fancy man?”

  Nicole lowers her head.

  “Are you talking to me?” I ask.

  “No, I’m talking to the wall.”

  “Slight problem.”

  “What?”

  “The wall’s not responding. Seriously, though…”

  He turns towards me.

  “Harry!” Nicole beseeches. “We already discussed that issue.”

  “Did we?”

  He’s still staring at me.

  “I already told you the truth,” she insists.

  He turns back to her. “The truth being?”

  He’s just used the gerundive, he can’t be as thick as all that.

  Nicole, begging: “There is no one else.”

  He swirls his vodka again, examining the glass fastidiously.

  “There really isn’t.”

  Dear, dear – she’s as bad as me for lies.

  My heart is thumping like a monkey in my chest. Have I the heart to do this?

  I have.

  I turn to Nicole, suddenly ruthless, and open my mouth to speak.

  I close it again.

  I turn back to Harry, who is still examining his glass. And back to Nicole who is guiltily sipping her Cointreau as if it’s stolen property, her frightened eyes flicking up and down at Harry’s massive form, her slender fingers wrapped nervously round the stem of her glass.

  I can’t decide.

  Suddenly he turns on me: “Do I know you?”

  I blush. “Not at all. Why?”

  “Your voice.”

  “They tell me I speak like Demi Moore,” I reply, secretly shitting a condominium.

  “Would you leave my house, please,” he says. Since he has addressed the floor, it’s unclear whether this is meant for me or for Nicole. Or for both of us.

  Nicole: “How, how do you mean?”

  “I’ve thought about this,” he says calmly, “and I want you out of my house.”

  Nicole: “Who?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re not to be trusted.”

  “But…”

  “Now!”

  Dear dear! It was so much more pleasant before Harry interrupted our little conversation about Bagua mirrors and Fu dogs, and rhododendrons and coffee tables, and the four elements and fish cakes, and Ronan’s pitiable wife.

  He points to the door. “Out of my house, you two-timing bitch.”

  She starts sobbing.

  “There’s no need to talk to her like that,” I suggest.

  “I’ll talk to that slut whatever way I like.”

  “She’s not a slut.”

  I bite my lip. Did I just say that?

  Harry is glaring at me now. “Oh, she’s not a slut, is she not?”

  Nicole herself has no opinion on this fairly crucial point.

  “Even if she is a slut,” I respond, “she’s not your slut.”

  His head turns to me. He shouts: “What do you think I hit her for? Jump-starting the car? ”

  “Well, now, that’s logical.”

  “Julianne – please…” says Nicole.

  Harry flushes. “The two of you. Get out. You can make yourself useful and help her pack her bags.”

  I will let him get away with this – just this once.

  He turns and fills up his glass again. “I want you both out in half an hour. Oh, and I want the rest of your stinking fish out of my bath.”

  “But I have nowhere to put them.”

  “They’ll go down the toilet otherwise.”

  A man after my own heart.

  “But they’ll die.”

  “And I want your ridiculous canvases out of my attic.”

  It’s odd, the quarters from which you least expect moral support. He sniggers.

  “What are you laughing at?” demands Nicole, offended.

  “You hardly expect me to hold on to that shite,” he observes.

  I feel like telling him that we are totally at one on that issue.

  “Okay,” she says, mouth hardening. “I’ll go if you want me to.”

  “And you can take that stupid cat with you. He gets on my nerves. Always slinking around the place following you as if you’ve done something wrong.”

  This is amazing! He’s paranoid, like myself. He’s my very own soul-brother! We should suggest coffee some time. We agree on fish, on Nicole’s painting, on Max. We’ve both been treated as asswipes from the same roll. Such a lot in common, it’d be a shame not to follow it up, to laugh a little together about life and its unexpected fate turns and quirky ironies.

  One thing suddenly occurs to me, though.

  What will Nicole do if she’s kicked out? Where will she go? Some hostel for the homeless? I don’t think so.

  She will want to be with Ronan.

  “Harry,” I begin, starting to panic again.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to clarify something about this whole issue. I think it will help.”

  “Help. Of course, you’re the great Florence Nightingale.”

  “I’m so
rry?”

  He sniggers at my etiquette. “You, who’ve taken it upon yourself to pick sluts up off the road and bring them to hospital.”

  I don’t want to get sidetracked, but I’m afraid I can’t help it.

  “AH it was, Harry,” says I, with the utmost charm, “is that I was passing outside your house yesterday and I saw that Nicole was bleeding…”

  “Your time’s up,” he replies, pointing to the door behind me.

  “…so I thought I’d stop to inquire after her health.”

  “She can take care of herself.”

  “I thought it best not to leave her semi-crippled on the pavement.”

  “We have a real Mother Teresa here,” he jeers.

  “No, just ordinary human decency.”

  “Julianne,” Nicole whispers.

  I admit it, I have this irreversible designer defect: it consists in the fact that, like Sylvana, I can’t bear giving pricks the upper hand.

  Harry is glaring at me now, rubbing his chin, though not as intelligently as Ronan is accustomed to rub his chin. Harry’s gesture has something ill-mannered and stupid about it, completely lacking in Ronan’s savoir faire.

  “What was I supposed to do? Walk past her and say: “Is that blood I see dripping from your face? Are they bruises? How interesting! Well, have a nice day.””

  He appears to be studying me with a measure of doubt. “Harry, you deserve to know the truth about Nicole,” I say with perfect condescension, but he’s too thick to pick up on it.

  Nicole sits down suddenly on the couch, clasping herself like a tender wounded mammal. Through watery, anguished eyes she stares up at me, her apocalyptic face white as a sheet.

  “I hardly know Nicole,” I begin. “I met her yesterday for the first time. Being honest, she’s not even my friend.”

  I glance at her sunken, crushed posture.

  “My own husband cheated on me. So I know what it feels like. It cuts you apart. I have no sympathy for women who do this and the last thing I’d want would be to protect them.”

  Nicole is trembling like a tractor.

  “I took Nicole to hospital yesterday because I saw her outside, injured. She was shaking and confused and in panic. She kept telling me she couldn’t understand why someone would try to split you and her up like that. She insisted there was no other man. She was in such a state of shock she could hardly speak. People tell the truth in that state. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true.”

  He takes a sip of vodka.

  Jesus, the things I have to do.

  “Nicole told me she couldn’t understand why you beat her like that, when you were the one she loved. Yes, that’s right: she told me she loved you.”

  Both Nicole and Harry stare at me with something approaching astonished bafflement.

  “You’re lying,” he says.

  Lying. It’s such fun! Being a barrister, I get a lot of practice. An important part of the technique is the following assurance. “I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true.” Then you dive on to your king-size-bedded orgy of truth suppression and mass perjury, and have a whale of a time.

  “I swear to you, Harry, on my mother’s grave…” (She’s not dead yet.) “…that I’m telling you God’s honest truth…” (I haven’t been to Mass in a while.) “…I really am.”

  The atmosphere in the room is suddenly clogged up with extreme awkwardness.

  “Nicole,” I command, “did you not tell me yesterday in the hospital that you loved Harry?”

  She lowers her head.

  “Didn’t you? ”

  She nods. She’s got no choice.

  Harry to Nicole: “I don’t believe you.”

  Me: “Tell him it’s true, Nicole. Go on.”

  Pause.

  She looks up into his hard eyes, nods her head almost imperceptibly and affirms out loud that that is precisely what she told me.

  Harry snorts phlegm up through his nostrils.

  His way of saying that he is reconsidering events.

  The room is a morgue of silence.

  I open the door fully, step out and close it very, very quietly behind me.

  I should demand top consultancy rates.

  27

  When I left Nicole’s I came straight into town. I’ve been in Brown Thomas, doing what all jerked-on wives are supposed to do: purchasing strictly unnecessary merchandise.

  More precisely, I’ve been on a revenge witch-hunt courtesy of Ronan’s Mastercard, which I borrowed earlier from his wallet. I’ve been cunningly copying his signature, R. Fitzgerald, and I’ve had a terrific time: the lot came to just over one and a half thousand pounds.

  I bought myself three pairs of black leather shoes, two pin-striped suits, a black leather jacket, jewellery including a new solid-gold watch strap (the metallic one I had gave me allergies), a floppy black hat I know I’ll never use, new silk sheets, a new bathrobe and (believe it or not) a lemon-yellow Wonderbra to see if I get a response from him.

  This time with matching knickers.

  Having dumped the bags in the boot of my MG in the nearby car park, I am now on my second binge of the day. I am sitting in Bewley’s café, lounging on one of its soft red-wine benches underneath a high stained-glass window and opposite a huge painting of white, blue and green surf, dunking my face into an enormous cup of cappuccino, eyeing my plate whereon reside a load of these utterly decadent cream cakes. There’s a coffee eclair and a chocolate eclair with cream seeping out of them like two fat sidelong grins. Both as yet untouched. There’s a strawberry cheesecake, already ransacked by my good self. And a chocolate fudge gateau, third-munched. Oh, and one caramel slice.

  I called Sylvana but she informed me that she had a man by the balls and that it was the wrong time to let go, so could I perhaps call later. I was unclear whether she was at a business meeting or whether she was in bed, but I felt it best not to press the point at such a critical juncture in her life.

  I could have called my other acquaintances for some succour and relief – and to help me with all these cakes, which I’ll never manage on my own – but I have told nobody else about my marital indignities. Only Sylvana.

  So what do I do? I call my mother.

  “I’m only calling you, Mother, because I’m in Bewley’s and I’ve bought more cakes than I can chew, and I was wondering if you’d care to join me.”

  “What cakes?”

  “So whether or not you decide to meet me in here depends on what cakes I bought.”

  She grunts.

  I tell her what I bought.

  “You’re bingeing,” she concludes and this from the woman for whom eating pastries is a religion.

  “So?”

  “It’s a sign of depression.”

  “Good.”

  “Sorry, Julie, I can’t meet you.”

  “Would you have preferred a better selection of cakes?”

  “It’s not that. I’m expecting a delivery.”

  “The fish tank?”

  “No, it’s my baby grand piano.”

  I mull over the enormity of what she’s just said. “Mother, there’s no room for a baby grand piano.”

  “It’s organized. There’s no way I’m leaving it in the house for the new people: it’s a valuable antique.”

  “Mother, it’s an ancient relic.”

  “You learnt to play on it.”

  “But it won’t even fit through the door.”

  “The men assured me it would. Sideways.”

  “Ronan will have a fit.”

  “Well, it’s a pity about him.”

  “He happens to co-own that apartment.”

  “Then why has he been avoiding me like the plague all day? I go into the lounge, and he gets up and goes into the kitchen. I follow him into the kitchen and he slips back out to the lounge, or escapes me altogether to the bedroom. With him it’s all artificial politeness. It’s no wonder you find it hard to live with him, what with the fish tank episode, et cetera.”
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  “So you’re moving in your piano to antagonize Ronan, is that it?”

  “The point is, if he thinks he can survive in that apartment and pretend I don’t exist, wait till he sees the piano.”

  “Mother, I don’t want to predict what’s going to happen if you do this.”

  Before she says ‘goodbye, I love you so’, she gives me strict instructions to carefully wrap the chocolate and the coffee eclairs (her personal favourites) in a separate tissue and bring them home to her. I am not to touch them, she says, because they’ll make me break out in all kinds of nasty spots and I’ll put on a stone in weight.

  She hangs up without giving me a chance to defend myself.

  I order another cappuccino.

  I wrap the chocolate eclair in tissue and discreetly place it in one of my bags beneath the table. No one saw that.

  While I’m waiting for nobody to arrive and keep me company, I just stare miserably at my other eclair. Things are going very badly indeed. I take a sip of coffee and I sit back in the warm comfort of the soft bench.

  I stick my hand in my jacket pocket and pull out the booklet on Feng Shui. The one I coolly ripped off from Nicole’s sitting-room. On each little page are scribbled a few lines of wisdom on a particular subject. There’s a table of contents. I look up ‘cats’.

  According to the page on cats, they have the inner capacity to ward off harmful spirits. Also, they can counteract passive yin energy, which develops in your home when you’re out all day at work. Fine. ‘Jasmine’. She’s right: jasmine is known as the plant of friendship. ‘Magnolia’: known to the Chinese as the secretly smiling flower, this plant increases a woman’s beauty. Must try it some time.

  ‘Colours’: yellow. Yellow stimulates mental energy, and the expansion of wisdom and consciousness. Nothing about yellow on front doorknobs. It is appropriate, the booklet says, to paint the walls of your relationships area (?) or your children area (?) in yellow. Green represents harmony and peace to troubled minds. When mixed with red it can encourage travel. And jealousy.

  ‘Money’: be careful of it. Money has powerful energy, but it comes with the danger of taking you over completely when it’s out of balance. A fast way of losing money, apparently, is to keep your toilet seat up. So there.

  ‘Fish’: very auspicious. Place a tank of lively guppies in the northern corner of your living-room and your career will come alive. Okay.