by Laura Elliot
“Have you forgiven me for telling Razor?” She is awed by the momentous event soon to take place and is relieved that the decision she made was the correct one.
Virginia smiles enigmatically, rests her hands on her stomach. “Time will tell.”
“Marry in haste, repent in hell,” intones Aunt Josephine who wears a lavender hat with a feather. Des Cheevers arrives with a frail blonde woman. Sonya does not look like a vamp in red stilettos – and Josephine is heard to say, “Those who sleep with dogs will rise with fleas.”
No one is sure whether she is referring to her son-in-law or her ex-husband.
At home, Lorraine waits for the phone call that will announce the baby’s arrival. It comes in the small hours of the morning. At first, she is unable to recognise Razor’s voice. It rasps down the line, as if something is lodged in his windpipe. Tears, she realises, feeling her heart plunge in shock when he tells her that their baby died during delivery. A distressed heart. By the time a caesarean operation was performed, it was too late to save him. He talks for over an hour, endlessly repeating his story as if repetition will bring understanding, some form of acceptance.
Lorraine returns to London and is waiting to greet Virginia when she arrives home from hospital. She has tidied the apartment, removed the baby clothes. Her heart ached as she folded vests and baby shoes, removed the carry-cot and pram. Virginia lies in bed and gives vent to a low keening wail that reminds Lorraine of banshees, old Celia stirring the shadows with her ghostly tales. Her scalp prickles as the hours pass and Virginia continues to cry, dredges her past, lacerates herself for the carefree, dangerous life she led throughout her pregnancy. Razor is reticent in his grief, as if her overwhelming sorrow drains him of any energy or expression. Her outburst, its very intensity, cannot last and by the time Lorraine returns to Ireland Virginia is calm again. She will return to work and develop some really wild promotional ideas.
Punk is dead. Sulphuric Acid have buried the remains and Virginia now refers to Razor as Ralph. She sends Lorraine a photograph taken on Tower Bridge. Her hair is long and back to its natural black. Under a wide-brimmed hat, which she clutches with one hand, her eyes seem enormous in her heart-shaped face. The wind is blowing across the bridge, flapping her skirt against her legs. Ralph’s hair is long at the back and he wears a sharp pinstripe suit with a pink shirt. Lorraine is surprised to realise he is handsome when he smiles. That night she uses the photograph to paint her first portrait. On her next visit to London, she presents it to them as a gift.
Their lives are in the fast lane, hectic. Razor and Virginia have gone into business together, setting up their own public relations company and working closely together on many high profile promotions. His briefcase has monogrammed initials and his Filofax is as essential as his right arm. The cramped flat where Lorraine lived for a summer has been replaced by a spacious apartment with a sun-filled balcony overlooking the Thames. With life in the fast lane there is no time for babies or hormonal urges.
Lorraine has a boyfriend, Louis, a sculptor who casts her hand in bronze and claims that life is a terminal illness. Their relationship, as far as Lorraine is concerned, is in terminal decline and even the dubious distinction of being a bronze casting no longer has any appeal. She is alone in her house one night when the doorbell rings. Afraid that Louis is returning to plead his case one last time, she does not open the door but waits, instead, behind the curtain until the figure retreats to the gate. He is taller than Louis, blonde, not dark, and there is no mistaking Adrian Strong’s graceful prowl. She raps the windowpane, calls his name, flings open the door and blurts out explanations about bronze castings and terminal life patterns. He is equally excited and brings a blast of Californian sunlight into the kitchen where she makes coffee, suddenly gloriously, insanely happy. He has returned to Ireland to establish the Strong Advertising Agency. What does she think of the name, he asks, sitting opposite her.
“It’s strong.” She laughs back at him and resists the temptation to stroke the golden hairs on his arms. They talk until after midnight when her parents return, merry from too much wine and a chicken curry with the Ruanes next door.
Donna invites him to stay in the spare room until he has found accommodation. Three months later he is still living with the Cheevers. Afterwards, Lorraine will remember those months as an idyllic phase in a relationship that will change its shape in many ways, allowing them a marriage of consuming highs, painful lows and settling finally into a contented flow that carries them through the years of career building and parenting. But for those three months their passion burns like a subterranean fuse – which is carefully disguised under Donna’s watchful eyes. At night Lorraine tip-toes across the landing to the spare room, it being furthest from her parents’ bedroom. She is aware that Donna will probably awaken at the first squeak of wood and, as she slips into bed beside Adrian, that need for silence adds an exquisite tenderness to their lovemaking.
He is a charming lodger, praising Donna’s cooking, respectful of her opinions yet able to tease her, to flatter her and compliment her sense of style when she dresses to go out for an evening. She remains adamant that he must find his own place and pencils rings around the rental sections in the evening newspapers before handing them to him.
“What’s the rush?” Lorraine demands one evening when Adrian has followed up one such advertisement. “We have the spare room and he’s not exactly eating you out of the house.”
“Do you take me for a fool?” Donna retorts. “All that flitting across the landing at night. I know what’s going on and it worries me. I don’t want him to hurt you again.”
“Why should he hurt me?” Lorraine’s initial embarrassment fades when she hears the concern in her mother’s voice.
“You came back from London looking like a scarecrow. And even before then, after Trabawn, he was handy with his kisses but it was another story when it came to keeping in touch.”
“We were young then,” Lorraine retorts. “Things are different now.”
“How so?” Donna demands. “What’s to stop him heading off again? His plans haven’t exactly come to fruition, have they? I thought he was setting up his own business. So far, from what I’ve seen, he’s talked a lot but done little else.”
“That’s because his loan didn’t come through on time and the landlord let the premises go. It’s all taking longer than Adrian expected but that’s not his fault. He has brilliant ideas, you’ve said so yourself. Why can’t you believe in him?”
“I said he was creative – and he is a talented young man. Full of ideas and dreams. But he needs to walk on terra firma more often, especially when my daughter is besotted with him.”
“I’m not besotted. I’m in love … and he’s in love with me.”
“How can you be sure? Words come very easy to his lips.”
Stung by her mother’s comments, Lorraine feels herself floating back to the uncertainty that dominated her summer in London. For a shocked instant, she sees Virginia’s head bent at the side of the bath, hears again her violent sobbing. She stares at Donna, her anger overflowing. “What is it with you? Why can’t you be happy for me? You’re forever making remarks, trying to undermine me. I want to live my own life, in my own way, and I won’t put up with any further interference from you.”
Besotted. She hates the word. It spells dependence, rose-tinted glasses, a love that weighs too heavily on one side. Such an image is far removed from the love Adrian whispers to her at night. When they are alone together she is incapable of doubt.
Shortly after her row with Donna, his loan is passed and a new premises acquired. He invites Loraine, her parents and his own parents, who travel across from Galway, out for a celebratory meal. Before leaving the house, he asks Brian Cheevers for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Brian is flattered by his future son-in-law’s old-fashioned courtesy and gives them his blessing. The sun shines on their wedding day and eleven months after their marriage Emily is born.
Lorraine tries to frame time but the shutter clicks too fast. One Sunday afternoon they sit on a bench in Stephen’s Green and watch Emily running on sturdy legs around the edge of the duck pond. She flings bread towards the ducks and Lorraine imagines a small brother or sister standing beside her. She would like another baby. She was a lonely only child, envious of friends who came from larger families, but Adrian basked in the privilege of being the sole pride and joy of his parents and is happy with a one-child family. But on that afternoon they are of similar mind. When Emily is taking an afternoon nap they make love and lie contented in each other’s arms.
She does not become pregnant and, as the months pass, Adrian becomes more insistent that they cannot afford another baby. These are difficult years and companies are reluctant to invest in expensive advertising campaigns. He rails against the Irish system of begrudgery and caution, the reluctance of banks to invest in the talent of young people who return from abroad with vision and energy. She agrees to wait another year, then another. Soon, the subject of a second child becomes so laden with emotion that they stop discussing it. When did that happen, she sometimes wonders. The moment she deluded herself it no longer mattered.
They have remained friends with Virginia and Ralph, regularly visiting each other for long weekends, flying back and forth between London and Dublin. They enjoy leisurely meals around the table, the conversation spinning on until the small hours, the women shopping on Saturdays, the men bringing Emily to the zoo or other places where she can be entertained. The conversation sparkles when they are together. Virginia is the pivot of their attention, amusing them with anecdotes about unmanageable clients and salacious gossip she has picked up on the public relations grapevine. Lorraine settles into the role of passive listener, often allowing her attention to wander and settle instead on the other diners surrounding them, observing their expressions, their gestures and body language.
The term “Celtic Tiger” has yet to be coined when the Blaides sell their companies for a substantial sum of money and move to Ireland. They purchase a newly refurbished building in the Dublin docklands. It is, they have been assured, a dream location with substantial tax benefits and, indeed, there is a dream-like quality to the docklands; a fairy-tale sense of rejuvenation after many years of slumber. The building – which will be known as Blaide House – is long and narrow with two storeys and a spacious attic. Ralph (impossible to ever imagine him as a Razor) is tired promoting petulant musicians and singers whose music he despises. Nothing remains of the gawky, skinny punk who used to sit on the floor of his London flat, dressed in shorts and a singlet, scribbling down the lyrics he would later put to music. Words that would ignite the anger of his fans, playing on their anxieties, hatreds, vulnerabilities. It was a talent, he discovers, that can be put to good use in advertising and so the partnership of Strong–Blaide Advertising is born.
Adrian’s ideas are as numerous and light as thistledown but Ralph is the one who moulds them into successful advertising campaigns, which cause outrage and controversy and much admiration. They start small and grow at a steady pace. On the floor above them Virginia decides to specialise on the corporate sector and Ireland, poised on the crest of an economic boom, is loaded with potential clients. She is sure-footed and self-assured. Her cut-glass English accent impresses her clients and is a decided advantage, she confides to Lorraine, when it comes to making an impression. The Princess of Spin, says Ralph, which, somehow, does not sound like an endearment – yet when he calls her his “vampire bitch” it is as soft as a caress. As in London, their private and public lives are inextricably linked. A party at their house in Howth feels like a lively press function or networking launch – and Virginia’s official receptions have an intimate, party atmosphere.
Lorraine subsidises her income through art classes and continues to experiment in the realm of dreams. She is fascinated by the depths of nightmares: the scream that turns to a whimper on waking, the terror of falling through dark spaces, the laden footsteps that struggle but never reach that safe destination. Her paintings achieve critical acclaim but few sales. One afternoon, shortly before an exhibition opens, Virginia and Ralph visit the warehouse where she has her studio. She belongs to an artist’s co-operative and they are planning to hold a collective exhibition. Virginia shrugs aside any attempt by Lorraine to explain the concept behind her paintings and is obviously bored by what she sees in front of her.
“Rather too Gothic for my liking,” she states. “I’ve never seen the merit of hanging nightmares on my walls.” She has lost none of her ability to be blunt, nor her inability to understand why such thoughtless remarks should upset Lorraine. Her attention suddenly fixes on the portrait of a pianist with dramatic dark hair swept back from his brow. Lorraine has focused on the pianist’s hands, the delicacy of his fingers as they rest on the keys of a grand piano. He is dressed formally in black with a white dicky bow and wing-collared shirt. But instead of the stately lines of a concert hall, she has placed him in the vaulted surroundings of a railway station. No spotlights, no candelabras, just the flashing overhead timetables and the headlights of trains in the background. The piano lid is tilted, a gleaming mirror reflecting the whirl of rushing commuters, their attention caught momentarily on the drift of music soaring above them.
“Tell me the name of this incredibly magnificent hunk,” Virginia demands.
“It’s Eoin Ruane. You must remember him? He was always practising the piano when we were kids.”
“No.” Virginia slaps her head in amazement. “Not the skinny kid with acne who lived next door to you?”
“That’s him. It’s a surprise for his birthday.”
Eoin’s family are musicians and Lorraine grew up listening to the strains of Mary’s violin and Eoin’s piano playing. The wail of his father’s saxophone filled her with loneliness and she plugged her ears whenever his sister Sally took out her tuba.
“Portraits!” Virginia exclaims. “This is where your future lies.”
Lorraine has been working on the portrait for weeks, snatching a few hours when she has time, enjoying the juxtaposition of images which link the pianist’s past – when he busked on a keyboard in railway stations during his student days – and his present career as a concert pianist. As she paints she is conscious of this fusion of movement and music and hears, in her head, the notes rising to overpower the clattering footsteps. But the portrait is a diversion, nothing more, a gift commissioned by Meg, his wife, who will present it to him on the night of his birthday.
“Why don’t you take over the attic in Blaide House?” The suggestion comes from Ralph who has had difficulty renting the space. The slanting ceiling and bulky supportive joists are too cumbersome to work around and there has been a rapid turnover of dissatisfied tenants.
Virginia shakes her head dismissively. “Not a good idea, Ralph. Lorraine would find it far too claustrophobic.”
“I don’t agree. It’s got wonderful light, loads of space. She can bring her stuff through the back staircase. It’s perfect for an artist.”
“It’s a crazy idea. Look around you.” Virginia waves her hand at the warehouse with its high ceiling and cluster of studios. “Blaide House would be much too stultifying for her.”
Lorraine is the catalyst for their argument but she is forgotten as they square up to each other. It is an ongoing battle, this need to dominate, and Lorraine is never sure whether they are seriously fighting or simply playing with each other’s tolerance. The arguments that occasionally flare between her and Adrian are short-lived; fire crackers that spark and splutter rather than the explosive Catherine Wheels that flash between Virginia and Ralph.
The warehouse is damp and cold in winter, an airless oven in summer. She has already seen the high, wide skylights in the attic and knows that the luminosity splashing across the floor and walls would be just right for her needs. She raises her voice and brings the argument to an abrupt close by agreeing with Ralph. Virginia’s bottom lip pouts aggressively as s
he strides from the warehouse. She is not used to Lorraine disagreeing with her, but the studio is installed and she raises no further objections. Within a short time she is introducing Lorraine to her clients, who commission portraits and spread her reputation among the business community.
Virginia has had no problem adapting the odd Irish colloquialism to her cut-glass vernacular and at a party in her house one night she declares that Ralph is behaving like a “fuckin’ bollox”. She simmers with annoyance as she confides in Lorraine. “He’s trying to tie me down,” she adds and laughs reluctantly when Lorraine asks if she should take this statement in the literal sense – or metaphorically.
When Lorraine allows herself to think about Virginia’s sex life her thoughts automatically return to the summer of ’82 and the games being played in the bedroom next to her own. But times have moved on and Ralph, it appears, is playing the jealous husband, brooding over some slight indiscretion Virginia has committed with a young photographer. Virginia has the recklessness of a moth, always flying too close to the flame, and Ralph accepts these indiscretions as the price he is willing to pay for maintaining her love. Only occasionally does he confront her and when this happens Virginia acts as if he has personally chained her to a dungeon wall and thrown away the key.
They never mean anything, these “slight indiscretions”, which she views in much the same way as she would a tonic or an energising pick-me-up. On occasions, Lorraine has suggested a multi-vitamin supplement as a safer alternative but her advice falls on deaf ears.
“Do you think they’ll split up?” In bed that night she tells Adrian about the photographer and Ralph’s furious reaction.
“He’ll never let her go.” Adrian switches off the light and yawns, pulls the duvet over his shoulders. “I’m absolutely knackered. You should see what I’ve got to face in the morning.” He kisses her forehead and turns his face to the wall. “I’d be better off with my own agency. Ralph struts around the place like he owns it but when it comes to pulling his weight he’s off wining and dining and leaving the full workload to me.”
