Three Wise Men, page 7
Eimear. Kate considers her friend as she stares at the ravages that lovemaking has wreaked on her face. Obviously there’s the glow in her eyes that magazines always talk about when they write those ‘Sex – The Fun Alternative to Exercise’ articles but her skin is raw from Jack’s lunchtime stubble and a spot is threatening to erupt on her nose.
‘Of course, Eimear never gets pimples, her face is a no-go area,’ she mutters, debating whether to squeeze or simply use concealer on the intruder.
Her mind drifts back to the Eimear she first met. Some little girls are rosebuds, impossibly gorgeous from the tip of their long curling lashes to the top of their perfect patent pumps, forever looking like they’ve just been primped by the Mammy for a photograph. Eimear belonged to that variety.
Kate’s mother would tell her, ‘Beautiful children don’t end up beautiful adults.’
Mothers don’t have a clue, she couldn’t have been more wrong in Eimear’s case; she became more alluring, not less, the older they all grew.
Kate squeezes toothpaste on a brush and bares her gums for inspection. She and Gloria are attractive on a good day – that’s a word they have to describe girls with teeth that are white but crooked or hair that’s a pretty colour although it just hangs there. She slaps some concealer on her nose – this is ridiculous, she’s still getting freckles and spots at thirty-two.
Kate bangs the bathroom door after her; wouldn’t you think it could be one or the other at the very least. She thought she was finished with both by the time all three of them exited their teens on a flourish, vowing never to drink Snakebites again. At least not on the nights they’d be going on for a curry.
But you don’t become more grown-up in your twenties, all that happens is you’re better at masking the pimples. And in your thirties, well, then it’s major repair time – more than spots require masking; the lines and furrows are only the tip of the iceberg, you’ve secrets to hide as well. Kate takes the stairs down from her flat three at a time, in too much of a rush to wait for the lift to the ground floor.
She cuts through St Stephen’s Green, an oasis in the heart of the city centre, hands tunnelling into her pockets as she lectures herself.
‘I’m saying “you” but I mean me – you see how adept I’ve become at fooling myself. Me, I, is mise, moi, mio. I’m the one with secrets to hide. I have the trappings of adulthood: a partner-slash-lover, a mortgage, car loan, espresso machine, interest-free credit repayments on a dishwasher, wine in the rack that I leave there untasted for oh, weeks at a time. I’m kidding plenty of people with this mature adult pose but I’m not taken in myself.’
Inside, she’s sixteen again, gangly, spotty and ignored by boys, the one member of their troika with no dates and no prospect of any. Glo had her Mick and Eimear had anyone she liked but all Kate had was the two of them and they edged her out as soon as Mr Maybe came pounding up the path.
Kate dodges the tourists thronged around buskers on Grafton Street and quickens her pace towards her Dame Street office – her secretary Bridie will be nursing her fury at Kate for vanishing on a two-and-a-half-hour lunch-break. But Eimear continues to preoccupy her. Eimear was always special, a Charlie’s Angel. They were all three of them lanky for their age but tall on her was willowy, she was a gazelle.
‘My love is like a gazelle, see how he comes …’ Kate quotes.
Gloria chose that as a reading at her wedding and Kate and Eimear were doubled over trying to bank down the guffaws. Glo never was one for catching on to double entendres. That’s what you get for taking your inspiration from the Old Testament with all its begetting, they did nothing but rut. Mick may be a dear but he’s no gazelle.
Kate never understood why Eimear didn’t become a model instead of a librarian. Tall on her is frail; tall on Kate is a heifer. Kate’s father says she has solid child-bearing hips – to his generation that’s a compliment but she’d swap them gladly for a share in Eimear’s Waterford glass fragility.
Kate climbs the stairs to the reception at Reynolds, MacMahon and Reynolds, irritation welling up alongside a mental vision of Eimear’s swanlike appearance – even her neck is long and curved. Not that Eimear sets any store by it; she seems indifferent to her looks, she was always unimpressed by people who gushed about them. Maybe the reason they’ve been friends for so long is because they never flattered Eimear. Kate and Gloria simply acknowledged at the start that Eimear was sensational and then forgot about it, just as they recognised Kate would never pass O-level art and Gloria would never step out with anyone except Mick.
‘The Toners have been on the phone again about their house sale, Kate. That makes the third time today.’
Bridie regards her boss reproachfully over her half-moon spectacles. She’s extremely capable, has been with Reynolds, MacMahon and Reynolds for thirty years, and Kate worships her. But right now she’s making her feel like an errant schoolgirl.
‘I’ll get straight back to them,’ she promises, ‘would you dig out their file for me? And maybe, if it’s not too much trouble, a mug of coffee?’
Bridie tosses her head and grunts something Kate hopes to be an affirmative.
Bridie’s tetchy, as well she might be. She has to keep covering up for Kate when she slopes off to meet Jack, lying not just to the clients but to her partners as well. The conveyancing has gone to the dogs since she and Jack discovered horizontal lunches.
‘She can lump it,’ mutters Kate, closing the office door and dragging her mind from Jack to the Toners. Are they the Rathfarnham couple who’re selling up and moving to Greystones or the Glasnevin pair who’re cashing in on the Dublin property boom and moving back to the North?
Their file lands with a thump on the desk, followed by a mug of coffee – the one with a cracked handle. Bridie probably chose it deliberately in the hope she’d scald herself.
She opens the file industriously while her disapproving factotum adjusts the blinds but as soon as she retreats Kate’s mind drifts back to Jack, replaying their lunchtime encounter. She fills her senses with her lover, luxuriating in him.
A sliver of Kate that hasn’t yet strayed into the force field of Jack’s magnetism feels reservations about his casual infidelity: ‘If he can do it to Eimear he could do it to you,’ reasons an annoying voice she can’t still. But the inconvenient intrusion of common sense is ignored and the turmoil overlooked because her senses are intoxicated, she’s lolling in a languorous haze and she can’t think clearly beyond the next caress. She willingly subordinates herself to his hands, his lips, his weight – and for a woman raised on the premise of female independence, this abdication of responsibility is addictive.
Pearse materialises in her mind’s eye, souring Kate’s daydream. Not in a guilty way, she simply feels exasperated. She was the first to kiss him, for heaven’s sake. If they’d hung around waiting for him to take the initiative they’d still be at the hand-holding stage. They were seeing each other for a couple of weeks when she decided it was time he claimed her as his own. Fat chance. They saw a film (Pearse leaped like a cat when she brushed his thigh with her hand in the dark), then they had a few jars and went back to her place to drink the wine he bought over the counter at the pub.
They ended up on the sofa necking enthusiastically; still, when Kate stood up, adjusted her top and said it was time for bed he put his coat on and showed every sign of taking this as a dismissal. The sap. She had to throw modesty to the winds and say, ‘Hold your horses, big fellow, there’s room for two in there,’ before the penny dropped. Kate supposes she must have found it endearing once.
Now she’s bored with that diffidence – she’d like Pearse to be more assertive. But he wouldn’t know how to be masterful if his life – or his relationship – depended on it. She’s the one who always has to complain in restaurants if the food is cold, that’s the role she’s drifted into with him. It would be nice to be babied like Eimear for a change but that’ll never happen for her.
She’s not one of those women that men feel the need to pamper. One boyfriend told her he believed she’d be offended if he helped her into her coat, as though it implied she were incapable of looking after herself. He didn’t last long. Kate’s never been mollycoddled – that’s what comes of being a woman with hands and shoulders as wide as a man’s. She has neat little feet though, size four, which is tiny for her height (5 feet 10 inches), Pearse says it’s a wonder she doesn’t topple over because they’re hardly big enough to balance her. Eimear has size seven feet, hah!
Even Jack, who fetches and carries for Eimear as though she’d shatter like an eggshell if she so much as lifted a shopping bag, cheerfully tells Kate she’s a fine strapping armful of a lass.
‘Would you feck off, I’m only two inches taller than Eimear,’ she complains, but he treats it as a joke.
‘There’s a lot more of you to love,’ he laughs, grabbing her waist and massaging the excess flesh with a leer. Men think they’re flattering a woman when they’re sending her screaming for the nearest set of bathroom scales.
She’s never seen Eimear weigh herself, she wouldn’t give a second thought to the calorie-counting misery that consumes most women. Eimear has no appetite: the cigarettes help, but she’s never seen her study a cream bun with naked longing or work her way through a slab of chocolate as though rationing is about to be declared. Eimear is languid about food – she’ll take a biscuit if it’s offered but forget to finish it. Obviously Eimear’s the one with the food phobia, not Glo and herself, for all their stuffing and starving. But it takes more than a feeling of self-righteousness to squeeze a woman into a size 10.
‘No wonder Jack is straying,’ says Kate. (Oops. Is the intercom switched on or off?)
She can’t imagine Eimear wolfing into croissants dolloped with apricot jam in bed with Jack and deliberately dribbling some on to him so she has to lick it off. Not that Kate’s found an opportunity to do that with Jack yet but she has nothing against it in principle.
‘Admittedly I have no principles where Jack is concerned.’ She spins around in her adjustable chair for the pleasure of feeling light-headed. With Pearse she’d probably complain that they’d never wash the stains out of the sheets.
‘Shall I try to reach the Toners for you now, Kate?’ Bridie’s voice crackles over the intercom. (Rats, it was on.)
‘Not just yet thanks, Bridie; there are a few details in the deeds I have to sort out first.’
Kate is pseudo-businesslike. She shuffles the pages, determined to make the Toners and their seaside cottage her priority, but within moments she’s sunk in her reverie again.
Although they’re a trio, she and Gloria have always been closer. There’s an imbalance in friendships where one of the members is drop-dead gorgeous and the others are drop-dead ordinary. They didn’t feel jealous of the chosen one but they were aware she was different. Different as in better, different as in luckier: she had an edge. Eimear was allowed to get away with murder all her life and simply accepted it as her due.
She and Gloria rolled their eyes as Eimear sailed through a potential crisis, blithely unaware of the possibilities for disaster, while they doggy-paddled in her wake. Sometimes benefiting, it has to be conceded, from knowing this exquisite creature. Fellows would talk to them in the hopes of an introduction, they were guaranteed a certain level of popularity on her account.
That’s why the trio never extended to a foursome or beyond – Gloria and Kate were always suspicious that people wanted to be their friends as an entrée to Eimear and Eimear herself was serenely indifferent. She has the two of them, that’s friendship sorted.
Her attitude to Jack is the same: she married him, what more could he ask for? ‘She’s never spontaneously affectionate,’ he complains. ‘If you suggest a cuddle she weighs up the consequences of whether or not it will crush her blouse.’
Kate savours it when he’s mean about Eimear, his complaints help justify her disloyalty.
She flicks her intercom switch to ‘off and pretends to speak to her secretary.
‘Could you make a note of this please, Bridie. Eimear brings out the best in people but she doesn’t have that effect on me. I’m adept at dissembling but I hate her – I’ve loathed her for years.’
CHAPTER 9
‘Gloria on line one for you, will you take the call?’
Bridie’s voice buzzes in and frog-marches her back to reality.
‘Glo, how’s life?’
‘Same as ever.’ Her voice sounds quavery, like someone who’s been crying.
‘Mick all right?’
‘Same as ever.’
Kate’s suspicions are confirmed, there is a wobble, tears have recently been shed.
‘That bad?’ she jokes, but Gloria doesn’t manage even a pretend giggle.
‘Eimear tells me she invited you and Pearse to dinner tonight but you won’t come.’
There’s accusation now, as well as a tremor.
‘This is supposed to be a democracy, it’s not mandatory to accept dinner invitations. Anyway it’s not a case of won’t, it’s can’t. Pearse has a work party on and I promised I’d turn up and lend him some immoral support.’
‘Oh.’ Gloria sounds mollified. ‘Why didn’t you tell Eimear that, she says you just snapped a refusal and claimed you were dashing out and couldn’t talk.’
‘What’s so terrible about that? I was in a rush. Eimear’s being awkward, you know how she likes everything her own way. She probably decided on this dinner weeks ago but never bothered checking with either of us because she assumed we’d drop everything for her.’
‘I have no everything to drop, I’m only too pleased to escape the house,’ responds Gloria. ‘Are you sure there’s no way you can avoid this work do? I promised Eimear I’d try and persuade you to change your mind.’
‘I’ve been neglecting Pearse lately, I want to try and make it up to him,’ Kate lies slickly. At least the first half is true. She lowers her voice conspiratorially. ‘You know what I mean, I can’t go into details over the phone.’
‘Right, of course, I’m glad to hear you and Pearse are getting along better. Why don’t you come over tomorrow afternoon, Mick’s at a match and we’ll have the house to ourselves.’
‘Why not,’ agrees Kate. ‘You can tell me why you’ve been crying while you’re at it.’
‘Just the usual baby blues.’
Kate hesitates, it’s difficult to know how to comfort her. She tries flippancy.
‘Time to switch to baby pinks, those blues are too depressing.’
Gloria rewards her feeble attempt at humour with a chuckle. Then she adds: ‘You’ll never guess who my mother was talking to in the supermarket the other day – Miss McGinn.’
‘Amo-Amas-Amat McGinn?’
‘The same. She was asking after Eimear,’ says Gloria.
‘Naturally, she was her pet. I was the one who ponged out her class.’
Kate has three older sisters and became selective about perfumes from an early age, there were always crates of the stuff lying around. She’d wear nothing but Channel 5, as they called it, at a time when most girls her age were still squirting on the Parma Violet scents. It didn’t render her any more seductive, but it gave her a certain cachet in school.
‘Remember how she’d say, “Would the child who smells like a city tart’s boudoir kindly go to the lavatory and scrub herself down,”’ recalls Gloria.
‘Is she still seeing Ronan Donnelly the estate agent?’ Kate quizzes Gloria.
‘So my mother says, and still no sign of a ring. That makes it a thirty-five-year courtship, give or take a year.’
He was a source of fascinated speculation, this man licensed to snog their Latin teacher. He’d take her to the pictures on Friday nights; her hair always had that just-shampooed sheen on Fridays. They used to imagine their encounters. Eimear was best at imitating them.
‘I love you, Maura,’ she’d proclaim ardently in her Mr Donnelly voice and then she’d hold up a warning hand in Miss McGinn guise, as he reached to embrace her.
‘First you must decline love,’ she’d command, putting him through his amo-amas-amats. His reward would be a juicy smooch. They all made kissy-kissy noises at Eimear before collapsing in fits of giggles.
‘Of course with the benefit of experience we know now that a permanent courtship doesn’t make Miss McGinn odd in the least, it leaves her one of the sanest women in Ireland,’ says Kate. ‘It gives her all the advantages of a man in her life without any of the disadvantages. The only mystery is why more women don’t do a Miss McGinn.’
Gloria is unconvinced. ‘If life was so wonderful, how come she was always in a grump?’
‘Speaking of wonderful lives, I have to get back to my enthralling job. See you tomorrow, Glo.’
As she replaces the receiver, Kate spies an Evening Herald folded on a corner of her desk. She flicks straight to the star signs and reads Libra. There’s some space-filling drivel about Saturn in ascendant then it cuts to the chase:
‘A day to tread warily because nasty surprises are possible,’ she reads aloud.
She doesn’t like the sound of that, but before gloom settles she spots the date on the paper – it’s yesterday’s. Good, she’s off the hook for today. Now she really must get on with the Toner conveyancing.
Chance would be a fine thing. Kate’s concentration lasts all of sixty seconds before paralysis of the little grey cells sets in. The Toners may be champing at the bit to move but they won’t be any nearer completion today. Kate resigns herself to the inevitable, picks up a pencil and starts doodling.
Eimear Mulligan, she’s writing – not Eimear O’Brien, her friend’s married name. Her insides are churning as she thinks of Eimear, she may hate her but she loves her too.
She loves her when they’re together but hates her when she’s with Jack, maybe that’s partly guilt, her mother says you always detest the person you’ve wronged.
‘Between my mother and Gloria, I’m knee-deep in this bloody homespun wisdom,’ she chafes.
