Three Wise Men, page 25
‘Just like a normal woman.’
‘Just like a normal woman,’ agrees Kate. ‘But that was never Eimear.’
She resumes her pacing.
‘What does that have to do with sex?’ asks Gloria, mystified.
‘Everything,’ Kate throws over her shoulder, fingering the curtains.
Gloria waits. And waits.
‘You’ve lost me there,’ she says finally. ‘It’s so long since I’ve had sex I’ve forgotten what the rules are.’
Kate stares pointedly at her stomach. ‘What’s that, trapped air?’
‘This has nothing to do with grinding loins, pregnancy doesn’t come any more hands off,’ shrugs Gloria.
Kate smiles as she fiddles with the curtain tiebacks.
‘I’ll get you your own set if you like,’ offers Gloria.
Kate looks puzzled.
‘Of tiebacks,’ she explains. ‘You can have fringed or unhinged. Hours of entertainment guaranteed.’
Kate relinquishes them and joins her on the sofa.
‘Eimear’s worried that her boobs have started to droop,’ she expands. ‘She’s embarrassed to take them to bed with Christy in case he’s disgusted, so she prefers to have him think she’s playing hard to get. She’s also discovered a little dry patch of discoloured skin on her bottom which she can’t get rid of, she’s even been to the doctor’s about it in case it’s malignant but it’s just unsightly, nothing more.’
‘How unsightly?’
Kate sounds exasperated. ‘I don’t know, Glo, I haven’t been studying her backside at close range, I only have Eimear’s word for it.’
‘I’m sure her boobs can’t be that droopy,’ Gloria frowns. ‘Her chest isn’t big enough, for starters. You have to be born with one of those obscene double D-cup chests to develop saggy breasts or they might go a bit pear-shaped if you were breastfeeding your fifth child or something. I bet she’s imagining it.’
‘My prognosis entirely, Doctor Feelgood. But the point is, there’s no dissuading Eimear. She’s convinced she’s on the slippery slope and once Christy sees what a wreck she is he’ll bolt.’
‘So why doesn’t she wait till the light’s off before going about in the nip like the rest of us?’
‘Gloria,’ Kate reprimands. ‘I don’t think you’re taking Eimear’s problem seriously.’
‘That’s because it isn’t a serious problem.’
‘You’re right,’ she nods. ‘Heave-ho with your best friend’s husband, now that’s a serious problem. Accepting donor sperm from your best friend’s husband and keeping shtoom about it, now that’s a serious problem. The remote possibility of saggy bits is not a serious problem. Except to Eimear, who occupies a parallel universe on such issues.’
‘So has she explained this to Christy?’ enquires Gloria. ‘You never know, he might be the one man in a million with a fetish for droopy boobs.’
‘Doubt it. She’s told him she’s not ready yet and he says he’s prepared to wait until she is. Sure where’s the mad rush, they’ve only been seeing each other a few weeks. And in the meantime, they continue her house-hunting.’
‘Very convenient,’ remarks Gloria. ‘Trust Eimear to land on her feet. And stay off her back. Is she keen on this Christy fellow then?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, Glo. He’s good for her ego and he’s diverting her from the horrors of the division of spoils between herself and Jack. He may be a stopgap, he may be The One. Technically he’s only supposed to be her Interim Other, before she meets the man she’s really meant to be with. But sometimes people skip a stage.’
‘Kate,’ Gloria is severe. ‘You’ve been reading magazines again.’
‘It’s true,’ she admits. ‘I keep meaning to get stuck into something mind-improving, like all the authors on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist, but I can’t help myself. I walk past Centra and I look through the window and there they are, stacked in neat little racks, calling to me, calling, all shiny and pristine and begging to be handled. I go in thinking, “I’ll just flick through them,” but before I know it I find myself at the till with two or three in my hand and then I scurry home and curl up in bed with them.’
‘It has to stop,’ warns Gloria.
Kate turns rebellious. ‘What harm am I doing? I pull out the face-cream samples, I read the magazines and then I put them in a pile by the wardrobe. There’s worse I could be doing in bed, I could smoke and flick ash on the pillows or I could paint my toenails and drip polish over the sheets.’
‘You know it’s not as simple as that, Kate. You’re not just reading lifestyles of the rich and famous, you’re poring over silly articles about Significant Others and Dubious Others. And then when your Adjective Other doesn’t act out the scenario the article predicts, you’re dismayed in case you’re doing something wrong.’
Kate caves in unexpectedly. I’ll be straight down to Eason’s tomorrow and buy something you’d approve of, Glo. I’ll make you proud of me, really I will.’
‘Sarcastic scut. Will we go for a walk?’
Kate is dubious. ‘Are you on some health kick with this baby?’
‘Only as far as Gammell’s for brown bread,’ Gloria reassures her. ‘Of course we’ll have to walk past Centra, so I’ll be able to watch if you’re really trying to cure this addiction of yours or simply fobbing me off …’
As they stroll along, it starts to drizzle.
‘Ah, the gentle Irish autumn. Indistinguishable from the gentle Irish spring and summer. Don’t look on this as rain, treat it as a bit of moist air,’ remarks Kate. ‘Do you know there’s a desert in Chile where it hasn’t rained for four hundred years.’ She pulls up the hood of her bronze silk mac, bought in last year’s sale at Powerscourt Design Centre on Eimear’s instructions.
‘I like those Chilean wines,’ replies Gloria. ‘Or at least I used to’ – she turns pathetic – ‘in the olden days when I was allowed to drink.’
‘Poor Glo.’ Kate wrinkles her freckled nose and slips an arm through her friend’s. ‘Put your hood up – wedon’t want you catching a chill. Are you missing the demon drink?’
‘Not as much as I expected to. But I haven’t had a food craving yet, maybe it’s too soon. I’m quite excited to see what it’ll be. Ice-cream with chilli sauce? Sausage and peach sandwiches? My mother had a craving for liquorice allsorts when she was carrying me. Daddy kept a packet permanently in his coat pocket to be on the safe side or she’d have had him out scouring the streets at midnight. You didn’t get twenty-four-hour shops then.’
‘And do liquorice allsorts appeal to you at all?’ Kate smiles, as they pass the Indian restaurant and the off-licence.
‘Not in the slightest,’ Gloria admits. ‘But at least I don’t have an aversion to them, which is a marvel considering I was probably ingesting tonnes of the stuff inadvertently for nine months.’
‘Have you told your mother yet?’
‘No, I’m waiting till I reach the three-month stage,’ Gloria admits, as they come to a halt by Gammell’s. ‘They said at the hospital your chances of miscarrying are higher during the first trimester so I’ll leave it till I’m over that hurdle.’
‘Hey, Glo, you have all the jargon. And have you thought about what will happen with Mick?’
Mick. Deep down Gloria knows she’s disowned him unfairly. She could argue that she wasn’t thinking clearly when she threw herself on Jack’s mercy and passed him off as Mick at the Rotunda for impregnation purposes. Good job it wasn’t one of the nurses who’d met Mick on duty that day. But Gloria did know what she was doing, she weighed the consequences and went ahead anyway. It was a husband or a baby and she chose the baby. Husbands aren’t so hard to come by, babies are a sight more difficult.
‘Gloria?’ Kate’s voice jolts her from her reverie.
‘Let’s take you inside for a cup of tea,’ she says in her head prefect voice. ‘There’s a table by the door. Not the most private spot in the world but you have a bird’s-eye view of the cakes.’
She ushers Gloria into Gammell’s and keeps up a steady flow of chatter that requires no answer as they remove their coats and place their order.
‘It’s Mick, isn’t it?’ Kate looks steadily at Gloria, after a decent interval.
‘It is,’ she admits, stumbling over the sentences as though English doesn’t come naturally to her. ‘I’ve acted’ – she searches for the word – ‘dishonourably by him. There’ll be a price to pay somewhere down the line. But I’m willing to pay it. For the baby, you see.’
‘You mean, Eimear, is she the price?’
‘Maybe. Or it could be something else, something totally unexpected. You never know what the tallyman will demand.’
Even Gloria realises she’s raving, while Kate’s blue eyes have widened with worry.
‘It’s OK.’ Gloria stretches across the table and touches her hand. ‘I don’t mean to spook you. I almost said I was having a qualm of conscience but it isn’t even that, because I have no reservations. I’m just being superstitious.’
Kate smiles. ‘So what’s new? The day you stop being superstitious is the day I join the Scientologists. That reminds me, I’ve booked our session with Mrs Gilmartin.’
‘Give me a clue, Kate. Manicurist? Aromatherapist? Feng shui expert?’
‘Fortune-teller, woman, you’ve a memory like a sieve. And no blaming it on your handy hormones, you’ve always been like that. The three of us are going to throw ourselves on the fortune-teller’s mercy and hear what the fates have in store for us.’
‘I’m not sure I want to go,’ Gloria protests.
‘You must, it’s arranged,’ Kate sounds aggrieved. ‘Eimear was the backslider I expected to have trouble with, not you. You could probably pitch your tent and set up in opposition to Mrs Gilmartin anyway. “Gifted Gloria: she tells it like it is.”’
She finds herself giggling and Kate joins in.
‘Tell me, Gifted Gloria, what do you see for me?’
Gloria shakes the teapot. ‘There’s no leaves in here, it’ll have to be a palm-reading.’
She pretends to study Kate’s slim, freckled hand.
‘I see a fair stranger,’ she intones huskily. ‘I see a seaside wedding. I see a beautiful bride.’
‘That’s enough about Pearse,’ she objects. ‘What about me?’
‘Sure, your guess is as good as mine,’ Gloria returns to her real voice.
‘What are you going to do about Mick, Glo?’
That’s Kate for you, lightning conversational changes are her speciality.
Gloria shrugs. ‘Buy him out of the house, set a divorce in motion, invent a new life without him.’
‘You and your baby,’ notes Kate.
‘Got it in one. I’ll wish him well and that’ll be that, he’ll move to Omagh and I’ll stay here – our paths are unlikely to cross again.’
‘And he’s happy for you to keep the house?’
Gloria considers. ‘Happy doesn’t come into it. He doesn’t want it, he’s been accepted as assistant manager at the bank in the street next to his mother’s house so it’s no use to him now. I think I can just about afford to give him half of the equity. I have some money Daddy left to me and I can top it up with a loan.’
‘Maybe not from Mick’s bank,’ remarks Kate.
‘Maybe not from Mick’s bank,’ concedes Gloria.
She carries on in a rush: ‘We have a good deal on the mortgage already on account of Mick, which I suppose I’ll inherit, and if I budget carefully I’ll be grand. I’ll give up buying clothes, sell the Corsa and I have a few pieces of jewellery I can probably flog off if I get really strapped. Money will be tight, especially when the baby comes along, but I think we should just about manage. It’s lucky we didn’t sell up and move to a larger house – we discussed it last year – then I really would have been in over my head.’
Gloria thinks of her little two-bedroom terrace with its patio garden and imagines it with a baby in residence. Sterilisers on the kitchen worktop, a cot by the bedside, perhaps a swing in the yard. One might just about fit if she shifts the flower pots, just a tot’s swing.
They’re halfway home when Kate mentions Eimear again. Gloria can’t handle it now, she has to head her off. Inspiration strikes as she recollects her brown loaf still sitting on the café table.
‘I’ll run back to Gammell’s for you,’ offers Kate.
‘I couldn’t ask you to do that.’
‘Certainly you could, we can’t have you jiggling about in your condition. I’ll catch you up,’ she insists.
‘This isn’t a ploy to sneak into Centra and buy a few magazines?’
‘My dastardly plan is foiled,’ Kate twiddles an imaginary moustache. ‘Walk slowly.’
As Gloria rounds the corner towards her street, she sees a tall, lean figure waiting on the doorstep. She hesitates, panic sets in, she turns away but he spies her and calls out. ‘Gloria, I was just about to put a note through your door. I need to talk to you.’
It’s Jack.
CHAPTER 31
‘I can’t talk to you here, Kate is right behind me.’ Gloria glances over her shoulder.
Jack allows himself a supercilious smile. ‘Kate hasn’t transformed herself into your moral guardian, has she?’
She disregards the snipe. ‘Jack, you have to leave, I’ll ring you when it’s safe for you to call by.’
‘When, baby girl?’
He’s still smiling, leaning casually against his scarlet BMW. It’s exactly the colour of car you’d imagine him driving.
‘Tonight or tomorrow, soon,’ she gabbles, watching out for Kate.
‘Tonight.’ His white teeth shine against the tan of his face. ‘Don’t bother to ring, I’ll call here at eight.’
‘Make it nine, Jack, now please leave.’
He laughs, folding his arms, chin pointing skywards.
‘What a hurry you’re in. You must learn to take life easier, Gloria, especially now there’s a baby to consider.’
She feels her cheeks flame as she stares at the ground. So that’s what he wants to talk to her about, she suspected as much.
Suddenly Jack takes pity on her.
‘See you at eight then, baby girl.’
‘Nine.’
Her eyes challenge his.
‘You’re the boss.’ And with a last mocking laugh, he climbs into his car and drives off.
Gloria props her shoulder against the garden wall, shaken. There’ll be tears before bedtime – that’s what her mother used to say when Marlene, Rudy and Gloria were playing too exuberantly. It’s a mercy Kate didn’t come upon them, she’d be convinced Gloria was knee-deep in something clandestine.
Kate materialises around the corner, swinging her bread in a plastic bag.
‘Bumped into someone from work,’ she calls. ‘I didn’t realise Isabel Eccles lives in Ranelagh now. She’s just bought a house with her boyfriend, behind the picture framer’s, I’ve promised to call round and inspect it before I go home. Do you fancy a snoop? It’s legalised voyeurism, looking at other people’s houses. Even better when they aren’t at home, of course, but you can’t have everything. Or so we’re led to believe.’
‘To tell you the truth, Kate, I’m feeling a bit tired. I could probably do with a nap. It must be the –’
‘Hormones,’ she finishes Gloria’s sentence for her. ‘That’s fair enough, Glo, we’ll get you inside and settled, then I’ll be on my way. A chat with Isabel and it’s back to vacuuming up after the electrician and playing with my new dimmer switches. What a full life I lead.’
To tell you the truth, Kate. Sentences that start with that are never about honesty, Gloria reflects. As true as I’m standing here, honest to goodness, no word of a lie … all fabrications. Oh God oh God oh God. What does Jack O’Brien want with her?
He rings the doorbell at ten minutes to nine. She’s in the hall, studying her reflection in the mosaic-tiled mirror hanging there to hide a mistake in the wallpaper pattern. Too much lipstick. Dark shadows under the eyes, confirmation she’s having trouble sleeping. Jack’s bulk is visible through the stained glass, he shifts impatiently on the step and rings again. Hold your horses, man.
‘Gloria, you look delightful.’ He proffers a bunch of pink roses.
They’re her least favourite colour of roses in all the world. Jack’s eyes scan Gloria, size her up. She knew she shouldn’t have changed into a dress, she plucks nervously at its cotton denim folds; he’ll imagine she did it deliberately for him. Which she did – not to impress him, but to bolster her confidence against him.
He radiates self-assurance, big bold Jack. It’s the brown eyes, they snap at you. He doesn’t wait to be invited into the sitting room, he breezes in ahead of Gloria and she finds him sprawled on the sofa.
‘I’ll just put these in water,’ she stammers.
‘Any chance of a drink while you’re out there?’
‘I haven’t any wine or beer. I’m not drinking at the moment because of … I’m just not drinking.’
‘Anything will do,’ he shrugs. ‘Rustle me up a gin and tonic or a drop of Mick’s whiskey or a cooking sherry if all else fails.’
‘I’ll see what I can find. I can’t promise anything, mind.’
When she returns with a few inches of whiskey in a glass, she’s slightly scandalised to see he’s kicked his shoes off.
His eyes follow hers to his bare toes.
‘You don’t mind if I make myself comfortable, Gloria, these deck shoes are pinching,’ he smiles and pats the sofa beside him. But she moves to the fireplace and props herself against it, she feels safer standing – more in control.
‘So, how are you feeling, baby girl?’ He swigs half his whiskey and sets it down with a thump that startles her. He notices and a dimple twitches in his narrow face.
‘Grand, thanks, and yourself?’ she responds automatically.
‘I’m fine too, but then I’m not pregnant.’ His smile never wavers.
‘And what makes you think I am?’ she tries to stall him.
‘I rang up the hospital claiming to be Mick McDermott and they told me.’
This man is turning into the Cheshire cat, he’s going to vanish inside a gigantic smile, thinks Gloria, looking down on him from her not so advantageous vantage point.
