The Brightest Star in the Sky

by Marian Keyes

  “Steady! You said he’s steady. That’s the same thing as boring.”

  “I like Bryan!”

  “But you don’t want to marry him.”

  “Because you’re marrying him.”

  “You don’t want me to marry him either.”

  “I want whatever makes you happy.” That was one of the most useful lines she’d ever learned in her life, Lydia thought. Diplomatic without being dishonest. It wasn’t good to lie outright. A girl needs a code to live by.

  “But you don’t think being married to Bryan will make me happy.”

  “I do, Poppy, I do, I do, I do.”

  “But—”

  “Really, I do. Look, I’ll go now, leave you to it. Good luck and all.” She hung up, hugely relieved to have extricated herself from that downward spiral. Getting married sent people mad.

  Gloomily, Lydia considered her options for the evening. She could work—in fact, she should work to try to recoup some of the revenue she’d missed out on this weekend. She visualized herself going down the stairs and getting into the car and switching on her light and seeing what happened—but every cell in her body revolted. She simply hadn’t got what it took to endure a round of “Thanking you’s” and “Muchas gracias’s” Not tonight.

  She could go online and do some research but even work would be preferable to that. Paralyzed by the array of unpleasant choices on offer, she lapsed into a reverie, trying to decide which of her brothers she hated the most. How lucky she was, absolutely spoiled for choice. Murdy was obviously a total gobshite, you only had to look at him. He’d shaken off his taxi-driving roots and gone on to head up a bathroom-fittings empire, now boasting two showrooms in the county of Meath. He lived like a man of means, in a brand-new colonnaded mansion on the outskirts of the town, with a blond, jeep-driving wife and two chunky discontented children. He drove a Beemer and went on sunbeds and had people over for “supper” and teetered daily on the edge of bankruptcy. Only last night his golf clubs were repossessed. Pascal Cooper of Cooper Sports (“For all your sporting needs.”) had arrived at the house and there was a short muttered discussion at the double-height front door. Lydia had overheard a couple of terse phrases from Pascal: “It was a special order from Jackson Hole,” then, “We do this quietly or I send the sheriff—Ah howya, Lydia! You’re looking well. That’s a grand head of hair you have. How’s the smoke treating you?” “Hello, Mr. Cooper.” “Pascal, Pascal! This mister business makes me feel old. Right, Murdy, the clubs!” The clubs had been lifted out from the trunk of Murdy’s Beemer and into the trunk of Pascal’s ten-year-old Civic and, with a couple of loud backfires that Murdy perceived as a deliberate show of disrespect, Pascal roared away down the drive.

  Ronnie, Lydia’s second brother, was different. He lived from hand to mouth, was secretive, mysterious and had at least two unknown women on the go. (“His right ball doesn’t know what his tallywhacker is doing,” to quote Raymond.) Frequently, he’d go missing, anything from a couple of days to a week at a time, his mobile turned off, and when he reappeared, would offer no explanations. He had a black beard and thick black hair and he looked vaguely satanic. His personality was sort of satanic also, Lydia mused. Strong-willed, like, abnormally so. He never got angry, he could argue his case for ten years without ever raising his voice, and yet she was pretty sure that inhuman quantities of rage burned somewhere below the surface. Poppy used to say that Ronnie was half creepy, half sexy. She’d often said—this was in the days before Steady Bryan appeared on the scene—that she had a compelling curiosity about what sex would be like with him but suspected she’d feel quite sullied afterward.

  Then there was Raymond, who’d run away to Stuttgart as soon as he was old enough. As kids, Raymond had been Lydia’s favorite brother, the most fun. But over the last year and a half she had come to absolutely hate his fun-loving nature. Every time she tried to talk to him about something serious he twisted the subject away with another “funny” anecdote.

  She jumped to her feet. She wanted to get drunk and if it had to be alone, then so be it. Lone drinking wasn’t yet illegal. She went out and bought savory snacks and a bottle of wine and lined them up on the kitchen counter.

  For her starter she’d have the Sour Cream and Onion Pringles, she decided, and for her main, the Texas BBQ Pringles . . . What was that?

  Strange noises. She strained to listen. Coming from the Poles’ room. A sort of a quiet whimpering. She moved closer to the door.

  Was someone having sex in there? But who? Jan was away and there was no way Rosie would have dropped her panties for Andrei unless there was a ring on her finger. Lydia took a moment to savor her hatred of Rosie. She couldn’t abide her and her ironed clothes—she was only twenty-one, what twenty-one-year-old ironed her clothes?—and her neat ponytail and her fake air of injured innocence and the very uninnocent way she used sex as a bargaining tool . . . Maybe Andrei had finally got sick of her and was in there riding someone else? But that was almost as hard to believe as him riding Rosie; he was so right-and-wrong about everything . . . Then she heard the noise for what it was: crying! Andrei (or possibly Jan, but for some reason, despite his stoical nature, she suspected Andrei) was crying! Well, it was too funny for words. This she must see.

  She knocked on the door and opened it before Andrei (or possibly Jan) could shout at her to go away.

  It was Andrei, who, aghast at her presence, jerked around to face the wall, wiping his eyes furiously.

  “Oh hello, Andrei. Do you have a cat in here?” she asked. “I heard funny noises.”

  “No cat.” His voice was muffled.

  “You’re crying.”

  “Not.”

  “You are, you are. I heard you. What’s up? Did Rosie break it off with you?”

  “No.” That really would have been reason to cry.

  “Get up. Come out. I’m bored.”

  “No.”

  “It’s got to be better than boo-hooing in here on your own, like a girl. Come on, I’ve got wine and chips.”

  He wasn’t going to get any peace. She would keep at him and at him until he caved. Reluctantly, he swung his feet on to the floor.

  “So why were you crying?” Lydia asked.

  He thought about it. It was difficult to describe the bleakness that sometimes overtook him, but homesickness probably had a lot to do with it. Admittedly, he’d experienced similar bouts of despair while he’d actually been living in Poland, but he wasn’t going to think about that now.

  He shrugged. “I wish I could live in my own country.”

  “I wish you could too.”

  He lifted his head. Was she being kind?

  No.

  “It was a joke,” she said, almost in amazement. This had gone on for too long. “Don’t you have jokes in Poland?”

  “Of course!” They had everything in Poland and all of it much better than what was provided in this benighted country. “But you . . . when you say it, it is not funny.”

  “Right back at you, crybaby.”

  With great dignity, he surrendered the four Pringles he held in his hand and got to his feet. “I’m going back to bed.”

  “Stay where you are. This will cheer you up: I’m going to tell you about my weekend.”

  Well, he cried again. He was in a teary mood and it was all very sad. Such a story, he could hardly wait to tell Jan.

  And he saw Lydia with new eyes.

  “So this is why you are this terrible person!”

  “Ah, yes . . . I suppose.” Was she that terrible? “So what’s your e xcuse?”

  Day 54

  Lydia’s dad used to joke that she could drive before she could walk. Not that he was given to joking much. Too busy setting up unsuccessful businesses and inventing new political schools of thought and having heart attacks.

  Poor Dad, she thought. She didn’t really hate him. He’d done his best, he’d worked very, very hard and tried to hold it all together, it was just that he had whatever the opp
osite of the Midas touch is called and then he had to go and die at the untimely age of fifty-nine, leaving a big, fat mess behind him.

  Lydia was fifteen the first time she’d driven a fare. She was uninsured, unlicensed, but there was no one else available to do it and Peggy Routhy had gone into labor and needed a lift to the hospital and there was a spare car sitting outside the Duffys’ house, wasting money with every second that it wasn’t on the road, and Lydia’s dad was on the radio, shrieking at her to get behind the wheel and drive the fucking thing, how hard could it be, and to be sure to charge extra for soilage if Peggy Routhy broke her waters on the good upholstery.

  The Duffys were a taxi dynasty. Auggie had been the town taxi-man, with another three or four freelancers connected to him—and, more importantly—his radio. The radio of power. He who controls the radio controls the roads. And he who controls the roads controls the world. It sat in the Duffys’ front room emitting static and kept the Duffys constantly on their toes. They were never free from its intrusion but sometimes they picked up the frequency of the local police and would invite the neighbors in to listen and mock.

  Running a taxi business from the family home was chaotic. A call could come in or a hand might rap on the sitting-room window at any time of the day or night. (Respecting the divide between the public and private lives of the Duffys, those seeking a taxi knocked on the window while normal visitors came to the door.)

  It was always a struggle to pay the tax, pay the insurance, pay for anything, and Auggie Duffy’s income was never high enough to qualify for a mortgage.

  All the same, things had been scrappy for the Duffys, but not disastrous , until Auggie Duffy read The Communist Manifesto. It had a profound effect on him. The key to making money, if he had Karl Marx right, was to own the means of production. But he, Auggie Duffy, would subvert the basic teachings of communism and use them in the successful pursuit of capitalism. Oh-ho! They’d have to get up early in the morning to get one past him!

  Armed with his new theory, he somehow persuaded a bank to loan him enough money to buy four cars, then informed his drivers that from now on they’d have to lease a car from him. But why, these men wondered, would they lease a car from Auggie Duffy when they had a perfectly fine one of their own? Auggie reminded them of the small matter of the radio. He who controls the radio controls the roads, remember? But—and Karl Marx would have been thrilled—the workers revolted. These men had mobile phones and one of them had the bright idea of printing up little cards (Corinne’s Stationery would do a thousand for a tenner) bearing their numbers. They distributed the cards around the town, in pubs and drugstores and on the church notice board and, undercutting Auggie Duffy’s rates, business was soon coming their way.

  Auggie found himself in the unexpected position of having a massive bank loan, five cars (the four new ones plus his original) and no one to drive four of them. His sons, Murdy, Ronnie and Raymond, and his wife, Ellen, were press-ganged into service. Every second that one of his cars was sitting unused, Auggie felt it like an ache. No job was ever turned down.

  So when Peggy Routhy showed up and Auggie, Ellen, Murdy and Ronnie were all out on jobs (by this stage Raymond had run away to Germany to escape the stranglehold of the radio), Auggie was convulsed at the thought of losing a fare. Lydia was only fifteen, but she was a great little driver. Well able. “Do it,” he ordered.

  “I haven’t got a license.”

  “Good point. Make sure you don’t get caught by the police.”

  “I’m not insured.”

  “So don’t kill anyone. And remember what I said. Watch out for soilage.”

  Peggy was on her hands and knees outside the Duffys’ front door, roaring with pain, and Billy Routhy was banging on the window, shouting, “Lydia, would you come on, she’s going to have the baby right here on the path!”

  So, with a sense of destiny, Lydia took the keys to the Corolla from the hook and stood a little taller; she got into the car and drove seventeen kilometers to the hospital, breaking the speed limit all the way, Peggy groaning and shouting, on all fours, in the back. At their destination, the Routhys hopped out of the car and made straight for the doors of the hospital but Lydia called a halt and requested her fare. She even insisted on an extra twenty because, yes, Peggy’s waters had broken all over the back seat. Billy was hostile as he handed over the money and Peggy, crippled with pain, her face contorted, shouted, “That’s mean of you. I thought we were all in this together, like a film. I was going to call the baby Lydia.”

  Lydia shrugged. Business was business. The back seat was destroyed. And what if the baby was a boy?

  That was the start. When she turned sixteen, she got a license and began working full time for her dad. Just for a couple of years but it was enough to ruin her for any kind of regular work. When she moved to Dublin, she got a job in an office, until she discovered that if someone was annoying her, she couldn’t simply open the door and tell them to get out.

  Inevitably, she got the sack; they told her she had an attitude problem. To make ends meet, she went back to cabbing. Only temporarily, until her attitude changed. But the attitude change was taking longer than she’d expected and until then she was doomed to drive a taxi.

  Day 53

  “Jemima, what’s keeping you?” Fionn called. “The car is here.”

  “I’m coming.” She was struggling to close the button on the waistband of her skirt. How infuriating. Her skirt had unaccountably become too small. But she had no plans to purchase a new skirt, not at this stage of her life. She didn’t indulge in squanderbug behavior (could it be described as “squanderbuggery”?): she was eighty-eight years of age and, although she came from excellent stock, she was unlikely to get forty years’ wear out of a new skirt before she died. Which, incidentally, she had no intention of doing any time soon, regardless of that wretched presence hanging about.

  Nor did she intend to go on a reducing diet. That sort of thing was the province of other women, women different to her, those poor creatures who couldn’t control their corporal urges, who ate entire cartons of ice cream in one sitting. Food, she had always understood, was not to be enjoyed. It was simply there to fuel one’s body, in order to have the requisite strength for do-goodery. Since the age of seventeen, she’d been a stringy ten stone—except for a short spell four years ago, when she’d dropped to nine and a half stone during a clash with cancer, in which the cancer came off as the definite loser and had to limp away bruised and humiliated—and she did not intend to alter now, no matter what this recalcitrant button was trying to tell her—

  “Jemima, are you right?” Fionn called. “The driver keeps ringing me.”

  How entertaining! Fionn, the most unreliable creature alive, chivying Jemima Churchill, who had Punctuality Is Next To Godliness running through her bone marrow, like a message through a stick of seaside rock.

  Her hands slippery with effort, she forced the button into its hole and exhaled with triumph. But the enthusiasm of this breath proved too much for the waistband and the button pinged from its moorings and shot across the room like a bullet, catching Grudge bang-slap in the right eye. A great, high-pitched howl issued from Grudge, who was secretly delighted. The slap in the eye hadn’t hurt—it looked far more dramatic than it was—but it meant he had a grievance he could work for days.

  “Jemima!” Fionn roared. “Fecking Grainne’s after ringing. We have to go!”

  Jemima had to smile. Grainne Butcher ran a tight ship. This was only the second day of Fionn’s television career and already the early starts and long hours were taking their toll on him. He wasn’t used to having to be places at a certain time and then having to stay there once the novelty had worn off. Nevertheless, experiencing a schedule with a certain amount of rigor might do him some good.

  Jemima kissed Grudge again, smoothed her cardigan down over her gaping waistband and picked up her ancient brown handbag. Fionn was pacing in the hallway, looking cranky but so dazzlingly handsome t
hat it lifted her game old heart just to look at him. Grainne Butcher’s stylist had brought pressure to bear so that he had washed his hair, his jeans and his many-pocketed jacket. He was a prince, thought Jemima, a beautiful clean prince.

  Today is a very special day for Fionn. Except that Fionn doesn’t know it. Not consciously, anyway. Several layers down in his subconscious, continental plates are starting to shift, creaking apart, clashing, promising forthcoming upheaval.

  Today Fionn has been alive for 36 years and 128 days. He is a day older than the age his mother was when she died. He has outlived her. Up until this day, Fionn has had to work at keeping himself alive. So much energy had to be put into protecting himself that there was none left over to give to another.

  But today marks a new dawn.

  Today, for the first time in his life, Fionn is free to fall in love.

  Frankly, I’m on the edge of my seat . . .

  Like a grayhound out of the traps, Fionn was. Not a second to waste in this new exciting phase of his life. He hurried down the stairs, Jemima and Grudge, who were accompanying him on today’s shoot, bringing up the rear. He opened the front door . . . and a few feet away, standing in a pool of yellow light, was the most exquisite woman he’d ever seen. Stunned, he came to an abrupt halt, Jemima and Grudge tumbling into the back of his legs. He gazed at this woman’s succulent rosebud mouth, her pink and white skin, her tumbling blond curls, her freshness, her innocence, her bicycle, her—

  Alerted by the intensity of his gaze, the woman lifted her head sharply and an expression of frozen awe appeared on her face.

  Fionn bounded down the last few steps to the street, his hair flashing golden in the early morning sunlight. “I’m Fionn Purdue.” He extended his hand to her.

  The woman ignored Fionn’s hand. She remained silent and motionless and continued to stare at Fionn as if she’d been turned to stone.