The Better Half Page 13

  Shannon shrugged. ‘I guess I found it hard going from negotiating big sexy deals to discussing the logistics of freezing baby food in ice-cube trays. And that made me feel guilty as hell. But work was so damn ordered – a nice male world where everything ran smoothly and you could take refuge from home. When the boys were younger, Jimmy would say sometimes at the weekend, “I think I need to go into the office.” What he really meant was “I want a break from this food-spattered mayhem.”’ She shook her head. ‘I used to really resent him for that.’

  ‘You still have your legal brain.’

  Shannon frowned. ‘I’d like to think so. I’ve been home for nearly ten years, though. Sometimes I feel my brain’s gone to pot. And,’ she said, with a rueful smile, ‘I guess there is the possibility that while I’ve been wiping the heinies of the future generation my human capital has diminished. I don’t know where the years have gone. One minute you’re tying bibs on them, the next you’re wondering when you should have the sex talk. I’m definitely going to look into going back after the summer,’ she said. ‘The problem is that I trained in a different legal system – as a US attorney, I’m not licensed to practise here. I’d have to do a conversion exam.’ She paused. ‘I guess even if I was to get licensed, I’d prefer a part-time job, with lots of dough, so I still got to spend plenty of quality time with the kids.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Maeve, drily. ‘Wouldn’t we all?’ Then she said, ‘I was happy to kiss Monday mornings goodbye.’ Maeve had never gone back to accountancy after her first pregnancy. My hunch was that privately she had made the decision to give up the second Ultan Mohally had planted a rock the size of Skelig Michael on her finger. That had been seven years ago. Since then she had firmly planted her flag in the camp of the stay-at-home mothers.

  ‘Your kids are still small,’ I said. ‘They’re at a quite demanding stage.’

  ‘That’s not why I haven’t gone back,’ she said. ‘I saw what happened in the office when women came back after maternity leave. Straight away they were on the back foot. It was just the way the system worked. And if Ultan or whoever wants to call a meeting for ten o’clock at night that’s his right. And if some woman can’t go because her kid has the measles and she’s got to get home, well, that’s nobody’s fault but she’s going to end up stressed out of her mind. She either misses the meeting or misses sitting with her kid. There was no way I was being marginalized like that.’

  ‘I gotta say,’ Shannon said, ‘there’s definitely something in what Maeve says. Corporate life is tricky for women. If you can’t wield a golf club or do all the locker-room stuff with the guys you’re at a disadvantage. But there are jobs I guess that seem more conducive to being a mom. Jimmy’s sister teaches school in Kildare. She has three kids and she seems to have a pretty cool work–life balance.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Maeve, ‘I’m going to tell Madison when she grows up to pick something less challenging to do, not to bother killing herself. The best thing a girl can be is good-looking with a nice shapely arse. Nobody really gives a shit if she’s good at Shakespeare or calculus. The currency of looks is far more important for women. You’re better off teaching your daughter to avoid croissants.’

  Yeah, that strategy had really worked for me, I thought, allowing a big mouthful of champagne to slip down my throat.

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’ said Shannon. ‘That’s so damn depressing.’

  Maeve shrugged. Then she said, ‘The minute they put Max on my chest I just knew I couldn’t go back.’

  I saw Shannon and Ciara trade looks. ‘You never get that precious time back,’ she added.

  This was a bit rich coming from Maeve, who spent a significant amount of her time shopping and slugging champagne between massages and private sessions with her Pilates teacher. And hot dates with the tennis coach.

  ‘Maeve,’ I said, fixing eyes with her, ‘I can’t believe you don’t miss your career. I bet you were brilliant as an accountant. You’re very clever and you love money.’

  She threw me a vicious look.

  That had come out wrong. I was riding the cocaine highway now, my manically paced thoughts insisting on being aired. A volley of words spewed from my mouth. ‘Ciara was a stylist and not just any old stylist but one who worked with Mario Testino and Vogue.’

  ‘God,’ said Shannon, admiringly, ‘that’s so cool.’

  Ciara’s eyes glittered with narcotic pride.

  ‘Ciara had ambition that propelled her from Navan all the way to London.’

  ‘Navan!’ said Maeve, her eyes assessing. ‘I never knew you were from Navan.’

  Ciara flushed a dark red. She was from Navan, a fact she seemed to regard as the fourth secret of Fatima. And she certainly didn’t have a Navan accent. She had three brothers but didn’t mention them often. Her da was a policeman. I only knew that because we’d bumped into her uncle on Grafton Street when he was up for a GAA match. ‘Podge’ was a mountain of a man with a burst orange for a face who said ‘persun’ instead of ‘person’. A nice, warm man but you’d never have had him down as a relative of Ciara’s.

  Ciara hadn’t said much about him after we’d left him on the street, only that he was a garda like her father, which was how I found out what her father did. Her ma was a housewife, I think, but beyond that I didn’t know. Their names cropped up rarely. And while she certainly had her parents, ‘Joe and Marie’, up to the house now and then, it never seemed to be when her friends were around.

  Ciara seemed a lot keener on discussing her husband’s crowd. A bit like Will himself. We knew all about the Whites. They sailed and skied and had houses in Provence and Italy and played rugby and generally seemed to keep the Irish medical system going with their medical genius. His old man and his granda had both been doctors, one playing rugby for Leinster, the other for Ireland.

  ‘It’s like death by fucking anecdote, listening to Will,’ Frank had said once, after Will had rolled out a tale of his da’s derring-do on the rugby pitch. ‘Heir to a shit-load of self-entitlement and a shit-load of shit stories. Check my fucking pulse there to see if I’m still alive, will ya, after that last hilarious one?’

  Frank never gave poor Will a break.

  ‘I’m sure Navan is a great place,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve never been to Navan,’ said Maureen, in a tone that suggested she thought this was a good thing.

  ‘I grew up in a tenement flat not far from the York Street buildings,’ I said, to divert attention from Ciara, who looked like she’d swallowed a wasp.

  Eight mascaraed eyes were suddenly trained on me. I, too, had been sketchy about my background. I’d been most honest with Shannon because I trusted her – but also because she was American and she probably didn’t get what I was on about. Plus she’d been very open about her own background, which was blue-collar.

  ‘Near St Stephen’s Green. A five-minute walk from here. My mother was a cleaning lady and my father was a conductor.’

  ‘In an orchestra?’ asked Maureen.

  ‘A bus conductor,’ I told her. ‘He was the one who used to stand on the bus and shout, “Fares, please,”’ I said, in a broad Dublin accent that made Maeve and Ciara giggle.

  Shannon snorted with laughter. ‘I’m sorry – it’s the way you said that.’

  ‘It’s grand,’ I said. ‘I had my wedding reception in this hotel. No member of my family had ever seen inside the door before except a cousin who was a kitchen porter. To my family it was as exciting as the moon landings. I’ve spent the last twenty years trying to erase my accent. This is how I used to talk,’ I said, putting on the Dub accent again. I plunged my teeth into my bottom lip. ‘Look at us,’ I said. ‘Shannon and I spend half of our life in the gym, pounding away on the treadmill on the road to nowhere …’

  ‘I’d be like the size of a house if I didn’t,’ protested Shannon.

  There was a chorus of dissent. When it had died down, I
went on, ‘We all shop a lot. Particularly Maeve and I.’

  ‘I don’t shop that much,’ Maeve shot back testily, her back stiffening. ‘I buy less than you but what I buy is more expensive.’

  ‘Maeve, I’m surprised they haven’t erected a statue to you outside Harvey Nichols,’ I said, which provoked more laughter. I set down my glass too quickly and champagne splashed onto my lap. ‘And when you’re not shopping you’re talking about what you bought. Or shopping on-line.’ I was sharing thoughts now that I should have kept to myself but my tongue wouldn’t sit still. ‘That big brain of yours goes to waste, Maeve. All that mental energy of yours ploughed into gossiping, trawling over the minutiae of other people’s lives, dissecting them like insects. Would you not like to do something with your wonderful intellect?’

  ‘Fuck off, Anita,’ Maeve said, and Maureen’s small sad eyes bulged.

  There was a sort of clutching at my chest now but I was like a runaway train that couldn’t stop. That was the thing about coke. When the effects wore off it made you lapse into a sullen silence and your greedy little brain could think of nothing but the next hit.

  ‘And Ciara – it’s a wonder she hasn’t grown a third nostril.’

  Maeve had once memorably described Ciara to me as ‘compulsively perfect’. ‘I’ve always been surprised that she takes coke,’ she had said. ‘You wouldn’t think she’d risk the loss of control when she’s so compulsively perfect.’

  ‘Sometimes, Ciara,’ I said, ‘I think you take coke to anaesthetize yourself from boredom.’

  ‘Sorry –’ said Maureen, but Ciara cut her off.

  ‘Jesus, Anita,’ she said, her eyes flashing, ‘you’ve gone too far. I’m very happy with my life, thank you very much.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m extremely happy being a mother and wife,’ she said, her cheeks scarlet with anger. ‘Just because you’re unhappy – don’t blame your bad situation on me,’ she said, prodding the air with a long, slender finger. ‘You’re projecting,’ she said, and the others swivelled their gaze to me.

  ‘Frank and I are having problems,’ I said flatly. ‘Big problems.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Maeve, her eyes widening.

  ‘I can’t talk about it now,’ I said. ‘I just can’t.’

  Maeve looked either disappointed or annoyed, I couldn’t figure out which. She was probably pissed off that Ciara had known before she did, I decided. I tried to catch Ciara’s eye, but she avoided mine. ‘I didn’t mean you weren’t happy with your life.’ I was groping for the right words to make things better between us. ‘I just meant that sometimes I wonder if you miss parts of your old life. You seemed so happy earlier when you’d styled the show. What I said came out wrong.’

  ‘Don’t you dare psychoanalyse me,’ Ciara said, reddening again. ‘I do not miss my old life as a stylist. Not in any way. I like being at home. It’s a decision I made. Nobody forced me to do anything. I chose this life.’

  ‘Different strokes for different folks, I guess,’ said Shannon. ‘Come on, guys, let’s not be mad at each other.’

  Shannon was very often the peacemaker. Along with me. Normally.

  Maureen sat forward in her chair. ‘What did she mean about Ciara growing a third nostril?’ she asked Maeve.

  Ciara tried to stare Maeve into silence. It didn’t work.

  ‘She’s referring to coke,’ Maeve said.

  ‘Thanks a lot, Maeve,’ snapped Ciara. Her face contorted. ‘I’m pretty sure you’ve had the odd toot. In fact, I know you have.’

  ‘Oh, well, off with my head,’ said Maeve.

  Maeve did coke only infrequently. Like me, she preferred booze. It was the illicit aspect of the whole thing, the procurement, the whiff of law-breaking that attracted her more than the actual hit. And she was more than willing to ’fess up to it because, unlike Ciara, she didn’t care what people thought of her.

  The usual politesse had completely broken down. Thanks to me, I thought guiltily.

  ‘You don’t seriously take cocaine, Ciara?’ Maureen asked, her eyes boggling.

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Maeve, ‘hold the front page. “Women In Cocaine Shocker”. What planet have you been on for the last ten years, Maureen?’

  ‘Maureen, I don’t normally do cocaine,’ I told her, in the spirit of honesty that seemed to be going around, ‘but tonight I’m bombed out of my mind on it. I’m so high on coke I think my heart is going to leap out of my chest.’

  Maureen, who was extremely religious, looked at us as if we’d just had a whizz in the tabernacle.

  My heart was seriously racing now. Rat a tat tat. I put my hand on my chest as if that would calm it. It was an effort not to cry. ‘I feel like I’m on the scrap heap,’ I said.

  Frank had been like the Pied Piper, I thought, feeling the tears build at the back of my eyes. I had listened to his call and dropped everything, immersing myself in complete and total Frankness. I had followed the sound of that tune unquestioningly for twenty-six years.

  The aroma of Shannon’s perfume hit my nostrils. It smelt of orchids, I thought. The pain in my chest was sharp now. ‘What is there for me now? What happens to me now that my mothering is pretty much done?’ And my husband seems to be gone, I thought, a lump forming in my throat.

  No one spoke for a moment. Then Maeve snorted. ‘You certainly know how to kill an evening, Anita, I’ll grant you that.’

  ‘In Christ’s name, is this it?’ I asked.

  ‘Your nose is bleeding, Anita,’ Ciara said icily.

  ‘Are you okay, hon?’ Shannon asked, half standing up and bending over me.

  Bright red blood poured down my face into my lap. She yanked a napkin from the table and handed it to me.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ I heard Maureen say. She was fanning her face with her hand. Then she whispered, ‘She isn’t having an overdose, is she?’

  ‘It’s only a burst blood vessel,’ Ciara said stonily. ‘Trust me, she’ll live.’

  ‘Has it stopped, Anita?’ Shannon asked. ‘Tilt your head back – that’ll staunch the flow.’

  ‘I only wanted to come out for a few drinks and do my bit for charity,’ Maureen said, with a clenched face. ‘I’m not able for this. Gigolos … and swinging and snorting cocaine.’

  ‘Interesting how your first thought is for yourself, Maureen,’ Maeve said, which even in my bloodied state I recognized as rich coming from her.

  ‘You okay?’ Shannon asked, resting her hand on my arm. ‘We should go to the bathroom.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘It’s stopping, I think.’

  Maureen said grimly, ‘This country has gone to the dogs.’

  Maeve made a rude snorting noise. ‘Oh, drop the rose-tinted back-in-the-good-old-days schtick, Maureen. Multi-partner, multi-orifice sex might be new in Termonfeckin, but priests were beating people out of fogged-up Morris Minors a long time and it wasn’t for playing Scrabble. I read The Ballroom of Romance. They did a lot more in those fields on the way home from dances than fumble.’

  Maureen went to protest but Maeve cut her off rudely. ‘Anyway, you’d want to come down off the HMG.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Ciara.

  ‘The high moral ground.’ Maeve fixed eyes with Maureen. ‘I know for a fact, Maureen, that your local chemist can’t keep the Solpadeine on his shelves because you and some of your golfing cronies take so much of the stuff. I’ve heard about your coffee mornings where you’re all popping it like nobody’s business.’

  ‘I beg your pardon …’ said Maureen, two pink spots appearing on her cheeks. ‘I certainly don’t take Solpadeine.’

  ‘But some of your pals do. And for your information, Maureen, the codeine in Solpadeine is an opiate from the same family as heroin and morphine so you could say that some of your friends are on the hard stuff.’

  In spite of everything Ciara giggled.

  �
�Anyway, I thought as a holy roller you’d know that “he who is without sin shall cast the first stone,”’ Maeve concluded.

  Maeve was pretty drunk, I realized, watching some of her violently coloured cocktail sluice onto her lap. She was drinking champagne and a cocktail at the same time. But she had a point, I thought, dabbing my nose.

  ‘At least let me bring you down to the bathroom,’ Shannon pleaded.

  ‘Oh, good Lord, I’m not able for this at all,’ quavered Maureen.

  I stood up, the napkin over my nose. Tears stabbed at my eyelids. I could feel my bottom lip trembling. ‘I’m not able for it either,’ I mumbled, and began to push my way through the throng.

  6

  I thought I was having a heart attack. My heart felt like a mandarin orange being squeezed inside a giant fist. I stumbled outside through the hotel’s revolving door, past the top-hatted doorman, looking for a taxi as torrential rain coursed down. People ran past, coats on their heads, laughing and talking. I thought my number was up and that I might never see my husband and children again.

  You stupid, stupid bitch, Anita. The blood was pumping from my nose and down my front. I lifted my hand and a cab stopped beside me. ‘St James,’ I said to the taxi driver, trying to stay calm.

  When he saw the state of me, he didn’t want to take me. But I hopped into the back before he could drive away and, fair play, once he’d got going he thundered through the streets like Superman. We beat a path through the hordes of people milling on the streets, knots of wet revellers, the odd fella pissing on the side of the road, one or two puking, glammed-up girls with fellas’ jackets on them, gardaí loading people into paddy wagons, all part of the usual Friday revelry in Dublin.

  Up past Dublin Castle we went, past the graceful stone arches of Christ Church Cathedral, down Thomas Street, zooming past the Guinness brewery, bumping along over the Luas tracks and swinging into St James Hospital with a squeal of brakes. All your man was missing was the cape and the S on his front.