Three Wise Men, page 39
‘I told you that?’
‘Guilty as charged.’
‘We didn’t believe in keeping secrets in those days, did we?’
It’s a casual remark but one that silences both. Kate is reminded of her affair with Jack; it’s a safe guess Gloria is thinking about Jack too.
‘Honesty wouldn’t have improved the situation any, would it?’ asks Gloria.
‘Impossible to say.’ Kate stops combing her hair and her hands fall to her sides.
Gloria shrugs. ‘You couldn’t have gone up to Eimear and said, “I fancy your husband, I’m going to have a fling with him,” any more than I could have said, “I’m borrowing a few million sperm off Jack so I can have a baby – all right by you?” We had to be secretive, we were protecting Eimear.’
‘Protecting ourselves,’ Kate contradicts her. ‘If we were concerned about Eimear, I’d have found someone else to have food-free lunches with and you’d have approached another man for a sperm bank deposit.’
Gloria’s eyes mist over. ‘My baby didn’t live for even a second,’ she whimpers. ‘I never looked into his eyes and he never looked into mine. Imagine if he knew what sort of a world he was being born into and deliberately wound the umbilical cord around his neck – what if he chose not to be born?’
Kate is aghast, Gloria’s plummeting into misery again.
‘Snap out of it, Glo,’ she orders her. ‘That’s superstition run amok. Babies don’t make choices, that’s a luxury saved for adults. You were incredibly unlucky, what happened to your baby is tragic and you’ll never forget him, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to. This will change you, but you’ll still be yourself at heart. Just braver and sadder for a while but you’ll come through this. You’ve taken a massive knock but you will recover, I promise you that. Life goes on, isn’t that what people say when they dig into their store of trite expressions to cover all emergencies. It does though, whether your heart is singing or breaking. And take it from me, one day you’ll dance again – you were laughing with me only a few minutes ago.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ Gloria moans. ‘How could I enjoy having you wash my hair and plan my future as an eccentric old biddy when my son is lying cold and alone in some Godforsaken part of this hospital.’
‘You’re a survivor. You turned Mick down and chose freedom and Dublin and –’
‘Friendship,’ Gloria finishes the sentence for Kate. And manages a wobbly smile.
‘Dublin’s not such a bad place to end up,’ Kate tells her. ‘Samuel Johnson said it was much worse than London but not as bad as Iceland. And that was in the eighteenth century, it’s improved hugely since then, we have cappuccinos now.’
The smile looks less tremulous.
‘You’d be dead by now if this was the eighteenth century, Glo,’ she reminds her.
‘From childbirth?’
‘Old age.’
‘With friends like you, who needs enemies,’ she shakes her head.
‘Just running through some reasons to be cheerful. Thirty-three doesn’t count as ancient any more, there’s life in us yet.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Gloria sniffs. ‘I’m ready for hibernation. And I’m finished with men – I’ve been in hospital twice in my life and both times it was because of an encounter with some fellow. If I steer clear of them there’s a fair chance I can avoid hospital beds too.’
‘There are advantages to a man-free life,’ agrees Kate. ‘You can abandon contraceptives.’
‘True, they were a palaver.’
‘Not as much of a palaver as in the olden days.’
‘We’re not back again in the eighteenth century, are we, Kate? I know you’re trying to distract me from my woes but you can have too much of a good thing.’
‘No, this isn’t the eighteenth century, keep going backwards. Think 2000 BC, think scouring the banks of the Nile for crocodile dung to blend with honey for a spermicide. Egyptian women used to keep some handy in the boudoir.’
‘You’re making this up, Kate. This is a twisted ploy to take my mind off my problems, the “there’s always someone worse off than yourself approach.’
‘It’s the God’s honest truth, Glo, I read it in a magazine. The dung’s acidity altered the pH level in the vagina, killing sperm.’
‘What use was the honey?’
‘Some kind of obstacle course for the tougher sperm to negotiate.’
Gloria’s face is wrinkled in disgust but at least she’s not looking depressed. ‘Is there a point to this, Kate, or are you simply entertaining me in your inimitable fashion?’
‘There is a point,’ she confirms. ‘It’s that condoms or pills aren’t so bad.’
‘I thought you said the beauty of not bothering about men any more is that you can give contraceptives a miss.’
‘Now, Glo,’ says Kate, ‘it may take six months, it may take six years, but you will meet a man you fancy again and you may even decide to go to bed with him. In the meantime, there’s something called life to get on with. And while it might seem like a heap of crocodile dung now, sooner or later you’ll find some honey mixed in along the way.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you’re labouring this,’ Gloria mutters.
‘Give us a smile or I’ll tell you what Chinese women swallowed as a contraceptive.’
She grins. And adds: ‘Tell me anyway, there’s nothing on television.’
CHAPTER 46
It’s a glorious day – a day for sundresses and sundowners. A day for the beach or the back garden. Instead Kate pulls a black jacket over her black T-shirt and wraparound skirt and walks through the heat haze to Gloria’s house. She’s sitting on the back step, watching a magpie.
One for sorrow,’ says Gloria.
‘That’s not a magpie, it’s a black and white pigeon.’ Kate joins her on the step.
Gloria’s wearing a dress as green as her eyes, with a full skirt and scooped neck. She looks as fresh as a daisy in it.
‘Aren’t you changing?’ Kate asks.
Gloria lifts a corner of the cotton frock and winds it around her finger; the material creases immediately in the heat.
‘When I was a little girl,’ she begins, ‘I remember my mother wearing dresses like this. I don’t see her in mini-dresses or slacks and cropped tops, she’s fixed forever in my mind in knee-length gowns with splashy rose prints and nipped in waists. That’s what mothers wear. I’m dressing like a Mammy today, for James.’
‘Good idea, Glo.’ Kate squeezes her hand. ‘What time is the car coming?’
‘Soon,’ she says vaguely. ‘Do you remember when it was just the three of us, Kate, before boyfriends and biological clocks elbowed their way into our triumvirate?’
‘Like it was yesterday.’
‘They were good times. We made wonderful wise men. I carried the myrrh, you had the frankincense and Eimear nabbed the gold. She was so exotic, in her turban and crown, with boot polish on her face and hands. She smeared it all over her mother’s quilted dressing gown but Eimear didn’t care, she knew her mother wouldn’t scold her.’
‘That’s because she never chastised her, perhaps the odd slap on the backs of the legs wouldn’t have done Eimear any harm,’ says Kate.
‘Kate, I’m surprised at you.’
‘Of course I didn’t mean it, Glo. The thought of Eimear makes me say stupid things.’
‘I miss her. We destroyed her, between the two of us.’
Kate rolls her eyes. ‘Gloria, trust me, you’re overreacting on this one. Eimear’s life is far from ruined: she has a new home, a new man and a promising new career as a crypto-feminist poet. Although her credentials for the sisterhood mightn’t pass inspection.’
‘I tripped on the belt of my robe climbing the steps to the stage and nearly dropped my box with the myrrh in it,’ says Gloria dreamily. ‘Eimear caught me by the elbow and winked at me.’
‘Six-year-olds don’t wink.’
‘Eimear did. And she insisted we weren’t wise men from the East, we were three kings from the Orient.’
‘That sounds like her all right.’
‘She’d have made a brilliant godmother,’ continues Gloria.
Kate holds her tongue and glances up the garden to the rose bushes they used to asset strip to make rose water perfume, before Mrs Mallon caught them and put a stop to it.
Gloria is speaking again. ‘Do you mind when we vowed eternal friendship – one night in summer camp, when we slept in tents and kept crawling out of our sleeping bags to look at the stars? You showed me the Plough. And do you remember how you’d been reading Enid Blyton books, about midnight feasts of plum cake and secret societies that caught smugglers red-handed, and you wanted us to make a fellowship pact and sign it in blood?’
The summer camp on the shores of Lough Erne crowds Kate’s mind. The other two were terrified of every mooing cow and twittering bird – they wouldn’t let her nick their fingers for blood so she had to use red ink, not nearly as dramatic as she’d imagined. They concocted a thrilling declaration between the three of them. Something to do with pledging eternal friendship through dungeon, fire and sword – they copied the line from a hymn sung at Assembly.
‘We were about eleven, weren’t we?’
‘Ten,’ corrects Gloria.
‘Whatever happened to that piece of paper?’
‘You drew skulls and crossbones on it and decided to bury it. Then you changed your mind in case somebody dug it up and the spell would be broken so you burned it in the camp fire on the last night.’
‘So I did.’
They sit in silence, Kate recalls how difficult she found it to draw skulls without a picture to copy them from – they looked more like balloons and crossbones.
‘Gloria, it’s time to leave for the church.’ Mrs Mallon appears at the back door.
Gloria flinches but makes no effort to move. Her mother looks helplessly at Kate, who takes her friend’s face in her hands and whispers: ‘Gloria, we have to do this now.’
Gloria nods slowly and stands.
It isn’t a full-scale funeral Mass, just a simple service. Kate listens as Father O’Kane attempts to explain the inexplicable. Even he realises it’s a lost cause. Kate scans Gloria’s face but she seems to have drifted into a trance. Gloria looks – unusual – in her summer dress, surrounded by people in black. She’s flanked by her mother and sister, while Rudolph and his wife Noreen are beside Marlene. Thank God Noreen doesn’t look pregnant yet. Kate’s in the pew behind.
Jack wanted to come to the funeral but she persuaded him to stay away. Warned him off, really. She painted an implausible scenario in which Mick arrived and squared up to him – under the fascinated gaze of assorted mourners. It was unlikely in the extreme but Jack seemed swayed by it. Kate still doesn’t know if it was right to deter him; she simply wanted to minimise flashpoints.
Poor Jack, she sighs, he’s grief-stricken too, they mustn’t forget that.
She plans to tell Gloria, when she thinks she’s able to hear it, about how distraught he is. About how he wanted to see their baby’s body laid to rest. About how he longed to offer her what comfort he could.
‘If it’s consolation you have in mind for Gloria, stay in Dublin – you could create tension at the graveside,’ she told Jack.
As the priest talks, Kate reflects on what Gloria said to her – that she’s a lad, an emotional retard, so frightened of failure she pulls the plug on relationships as soon as they hit the bend for home. But Pearse and herself lasted more than four years – that has to be worth something. Anyway he’s better off without her; she saw his wedding photograph in the paper and his wife looked gentle. He needs someone to make sure he’s wearing a scarf on frosty mornings and to give him hot milk with whiskey in it when he has a cold threatening, Kate was too much like hard work for him with her gadding about.
Perhaps she is a commitment phobic, she starts feeling hemmed in when men make plans around her. Not going-to-a-party-on-Saturday-night plans, she’s not that much of a sap, but the sort where they expect to spend Christmas Day with her. At least she knows her nature, she’s not trying to fit her square peg into a round hole.
Kate is still trying to justify herself to the critical stranger inside her head at the graveside. The sun shines unrelentingly, Gloria looks cool in her summer dress compared to the others in their heavy garb. It’s only the immediate family now – and Kate.
The coffin is lowered in on top of her father’s and Gloria is watching dry-eyed, though Mrs Mallon, Marlene and Noreen are weeping openly. Even Rudolph is blinking and rubbing his eyes. Kate moves towards Gloria and puts her arm around her shoulders. As she does, she touches another arm being stretched around her friend’s back. Kate looks over the top of Gloria’s bowed head and meets Eimear’s eyes.
‘I only heard last night,’ she says quietly. ‘I had to come by bus, Christy couldn’t lend me his car.’
Gloria raises her face to Eimear’s. ‘I knew you’d be here.’
The three friends stand, entwined.
Then Eimear reaches into her bag and produces three small boxes.
‘For the grave,’ she explains. ‘A mirror for Gloria, frankincense for Kate and gold for me.’
She crouches down and drops her box on top of the coffin.
Eimear has an unnatural streak, thinks Kate, as she peers inside her box and sees a phial of massage oil marked ‘frankincense’. But Gloria has a half-smile on her face as she copies Eimear so Kate replaces the lid and throws it gently on to the tiny coffin. It’s spooky but if Gloria’s willing to go along with it …
‘What did you use for gold?’ Kate asks Eimear.
‘My wedding ring.’
They leave the cemetery, arm in arm.
‘Mulholland’s?’ asks Eimear and Gloria nods.
As they approach the pub, however, she halts in her tracks.
‘It’s too bright a day to sit outdoors, let’s walk by the river.’
They find a bench near the Camowen and sit down. It’s a river as crooked as its name.
Its burbling sounds are soothing; there’s a silver flash and a splash downstream, two boys with fishing rods approaching them break into a trot.
‘For a while I wanted to die,’ says Gloria. ‘Just to lie in that hospital bed and not have the trouble of breathing. My thinking was scrambled. Or maybe it was my hormones.’ A grim smile flits across her face. ‘But I decided life might be worth living when Mick came to see me and suggested there was a spark left in our marriage.’
‘Mick offered to take you back?’ Eimear is incredulous.
‘It’s quite a story, I’ll fill you in on it later,’ Kate mutters.
‘Yes, I think he felt I might be cleaned up and made worthy of him again, once I wasn’t inconveniently carrying another man’s child. So he came along and rearranged my life for me, outlining his master plan to start afresh in Omagh. As he spoke I felt something – it must have been rage – whatever it was it glowed like an ember inside me and I was consumed by a rush of this emotion and I ordered him out. When he was gone I knew that life could be worth living again, and if I could feel fury maybe some day I’d feel other emotions too. Healthier ones.’
‘I know all about rage,’ says Eimear.
Kate shifts uncomfortably in her seat but Gloria seems unconcerned.
‘You’ve every right to,’ she agrees. ‘Is there something you want to say to me?’
Eimear looks from Gloria to Kate and back again. ‘Now’s not the time.’
They sit on, faces upturned to the sun. It’s not exactly a companionable silence, but Kate is surprised by the lack of tension. Considering. She’s just about to suggest they put in an appearance at the lunch laid on by Mrs Mallon when Gloria shivers, folds her arms across her body and says: ‘I have to go home now.’
‘We’ll come back to your mother’s with you,’ Eimear volunteers.
‘No, I mean home to Dublin. I have to see Jack.’
A wounded expression settles inexorably on Eimear’s face. She pushes past Kate and Gloria and climbs the steps to the street.
CHAPTER 47
‘Gloria!’ Kate protests, kid gloves abandoned. ‘What did you come out with that for? Haven’t we damaged Eimear enough between the pair of us.’
Gloria regards her blankly.
‘Don’t move, I’ll be back in a minute.’ Kate rushes after Eimear, catching up with her by the traffic lights.
‘She’s half-demented with grief, she doesn’t know what she’s saying,’ explains Kate, touching her elbow.
Eimear swings towards her, eyes navy with emotion. Two new vertical indentations are visible between her eyebrows.
‘I’d want to be a block of wood not to mind,’ she fulminates. ‘I’m sick to death of turning the other cheek where you two are concerned, it just encourages you to take advantage of me all over again. I came here today because I loved Gloria, because I wanted to show friendship means something to me, but she’s flung it back in my face. All she cares about is Jack, a man who’s the centre of his own universe.’
Eimear’s face twists. ‘I didn’t notice him here today, Kate, offering a shoulder to cry on. Jack’s only available for fun, when the going gets tough he wimps out, Christy said something to me once and it’s time I put it into operation. When you’re in a hole, stop digging. I’m throwing my shovel out of the pit and I’m climbing after it.’
She’s shaking as she steps into the traffic without checking the road.
‘Eimear wait!’ Kate drags her back on to the pavement, as an Audi speeds past, horn blaring.
‘You have it all wrong,’ she absorbs Eimear’s quivering body against her own. ‘We know we’re a pathetic excuse for friends but we love you, truly we do.’
Eimear tenses, straining away from Kate, then all of a sudden she uncoils and rests her forehead against the side of Kate’s head.
‘If only I could believe that. But every time I let my guard down something happens. How could Gloria say she’s going back to Dublin to see Jack? It’s beyond endurance.’
‘I know, angel, I know,’ Kate soothes. ‘But Gloria’s not thinking straight. She’s not involved with Jack, she doesn’t even like him, but the fact is he’s the father of that scrap she buried an hour ago and I imagine she feels some connection with him. He’s the only link she has with her child. We don’t know what’s going on in her mind, Eimear, but she’s bound to be in torment. The trouble is that sorrow can leave you blinkered, she probably hasn’t even considered your own link with Jack – he’d have no status to her other than as her baby’s father. Can you understand any of that?’
