by Maeve Binchy
‘Would you believe Ascot?’ he said.
‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ she said.
Before she left she went through her post quickly. Hardly anything to do with work came to her apartment, all business mail was addressed to her main shop. There were a couple of bills, circulars and a letter that looked like an invitation. It was from Anna Doyle, the eldest of Deirdre O’Hagan’s children, a formal invitation to a silver wedding for their parents and a note saying that she apologized for the ludicrously early notice but she wanted to make sure that the key figures were able to come. Perhaps Maureen could let them know.
Maureen looked at it almost without seeing it. A silver wedding seemed such a small milestone compared to what she was about to embark on herself. She wouldn’t think now about whether she would go or not.
It was a very comfortable guest Home, Bernard James Barry had left the colonies in style, Maureen realized. She had hired a car at Heathrow and driven to the address he had given her.
She had taken the precaution of telephoning the Home herself to inquire whether her arrival would not put too much strain on her father, who said he had bad rheumatoid arthritis and was recovering from a mild heart attack.
She had been told that he was in the best of health and was already eager for her to arrive.
He was dressed in a blazer with some colourful crest, he had a carefully tied cravat, he looked the perfect gentleman lightly tanned, a lot of thick grey hair, a cane and a slow walk, but in every way the kind of man her mother would love to have entertained back in Dublin. He had a smile that would break your heart.
‘I have the Egon Ronay guide, Maureen,’ he said after she had kissed him. ‘I thought we should go out and have a proper lunch to celebrate.’
‘You’re a man after my own heart, Bernie,’ she said.
And he was a man after her own heart. There were no apologies, no excuses. In life there were only just so many chances for happiness, he didn’t regret his daughter Catherine taking hers, he didn’t blame Sophie for seeking happiness through status, it was just that he couldn’t stick with it himself.
He had known all about Maureen, he had never lost contact, not until Kevin O’Hagan died. He had written to Kevin at his club and asked him for news of his little girl. He showed Maureen a scrapbook he had made, cuttings from the newspapers about Maureen’s shops, photographs cut from society magazines about Maureen at this dance or that reception. Photos too of Maureen with Deirdre O’Hagan, including one showing her in bridesmaid’s outfit.
‘They’re having a silver wedding would you believe this year.’ Maureen winced at the picture of the very inelegant 1960 wedding outfits. How could they have known so little then, had she only developed a clothes sense much later?
Mr O’Hagan had written regularly, it was only when his letter was returned from the club with a note that Maureen’s father had heard of his friend’s death. He had been instructed to leave no evidence of the correspondence in his house, part of the deal had been that Bernard Barry be mourned as a dead man.
They talked easily, old friends with a lot in common, it seemed.
‘Did you have any great love that you didn’t follow?’ he asked as he sipped his brandy. At seventy he felt entitled to a little luxury like this, he said.
‘Not really, not a great love.’ She was uncertain.
‘But something that could have been a great love.’
‘I thought so at the time, but I was wrong, it would never have worked. It would have held us both back, we were too different, it would have been unthinkable in many ways.’ Maureen knew that her voice sounded like her mother’s as she said this.
She found it easy to tell this man about Frank Quigley, about how she had loved him so much when she was twenty she thought that her whole body and soul would explode. She found it not at all difficult to use such words, although she had never even articulated them before.
She told how she had done everything but sleep with Frank that summer, and the reason she held back was not the usual fear of pregnancy that had held every other girl back, but simply she knew that she must not get more involved than she already was as he would never fit into her life.
‘And was this something you believed or was it something Sophie told you?’ His voice was gentle, without accusation.
‘Oh I believed it, I believed it utterly. I thought there were two types of people, us and them. And Frank was definitely them. So was Desmond Doyle but somehow Deirdre O’Hagan managed to get away with it. I remember at the wedding we were all pretending Desmond’s people came from some estate in the West instead of a cabin on the side of a hill.’
‘She didn’t get away with it entirely,’ Maureen’s father said.
‘You mean Mr O’Hagan wrote to you about that?’
‘Yes, a bit. I suppose I was someone he could talk to who wasn’t involved, who never would be.’
Maureen told how Frank Quigley had come to Dublin uninvited for her Conferring day. How he had stood at the back of the hall and made whooping sounds and shouted as she went to receive her parchment.
He had called to the house afterwards. It had been terrible.
‘Did Sophie order him away?’
‘No, you know Mother, well maybe you don’t but she wouldn’t do that, she killed him with kindness, she was charm itself … “Oh and tell me Frank, would my late husband and I have met your people when we were in Westport” … you know the kind of thing.’
‘I do.’ He looked sad.
‘And Frank somehow behaved worse and worse, everything she did seemed to make him more bolshie and thick and badly behaved. He took out his comb during supper and combed his hair, you know, looking at himself in that bit of mirror in the sideboard. Oh and he stirred his coffee as if he were going to go through the bottom of the cup. I could have killed him, and I could have killed myself for caring.’
‘And what did your mother say?’
‘Oh, something like “Have you enough sugar, Frank? Or perhaps you would have preferred tea?” You know, terribly polite, not a hint that anything was out of place unless you knew.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘Afterwards, she just laughed. She said he was very nice and laughed.’
There was a silence.
‘But I went along with it,’ Maureen said earnestly. ‘I can’t say she threw him out, she didn’t, she never denied him the house, she even inquired about him from time to time with that little laugh, it was as if somehow by mistake we had invited poor Jimmy Hayes who did the garden in for supper. And I went along with it, because I agreed with her, I went along with her way of thinking.’
‘And did you regret it?’
‘Not at once, he was so foul-mouthed and called me all the snobby bitches under the sky, he almost proved Mother’s point, my point. He said he’d show me, that he would be received in the highest houses in the land, and that one day my crabbed old mother and I would regret that we hadn’t welcomed him to our poxy house. That’s the way he spoke.’
‘Out of hurt.’ Her father was sympathetic.
‘Yes, yes of course. And of course he did become a merchant prince and Deirdre O’Hagan married his equally ignorant and non-acceptable best friend … so he was right. His day did come.’
‘And is he happy?’
‘I don’t know, I think not. But maybe he’s like a lark in the spring. I don’t know.’
‘You’re lovely, Maureen …’ her father said suddenly.
‘No I’m not, I’m very stupid, was very stupid for too long. It wouldn’t have hurt anybody to use your phrase, it wouldn’t have hurt anybody at all for me to say to Mother when I was twenty-one that I was off with Frank Quigley, pedigree or no pedigree.’
‘Maybe you didn’t want to hurt her, after all I had abandoned her, you didn’t want it to happen to her twice.’
‘Ah, but I didn’t know you’d abandoned her, I thought you got an awful virus and died.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He loo
ked contrite.
‘I’m delighted, you old devil,’ she said. ‘Nothing has given me as much happiness in my whole life.’
‘Come on out of that, an old man, ready for a wheelchair.’
‘Will you come and live with me in Dublin?’ she asked.
‘No, no, my dearest Maureen, I won’t.’
‘You don’t need to be in a home, you’re as fit as a fiddle. I can see you well looked after, not in Mother’s house, we’ll get somewhere together. Some place bigger than my flat.’
‘No, I promised Sophie.’
‘But she’s dead now, you kept your promise while she was alive.’
His eyes were sad.
‘No, there is a kind of honour about a thing like this, they’d reassess her, you know, they’d go over everything she said, it would be degrading her afterwards. You know what I mean.’
‘I do, but you’re being too honourable in a sense, she didn’t give you the chance to stay in contact with your own daughter, she didn’t give me that chance, she didn’t play really fair with us. I thought you were dead until a few days ago.’
‘But at least she told you in the end,’ said Bernard Barry, his face happy.
‘What?’
‘Well at least she told you that she wanted you to find me. I heard that from the solicitors. When she knew she was dying she wanted you to have the chance to meet me again.’
Maureen bit her lip. Yes, that was what she had said at the outset, when she was making those early inquiries to Bulawayo.
She looked closely at her father’s face.
‘I must say I was touched and pleased at that. I thought she was implacable. Kevin O’Hagan told me that there was an anniversary Mass for me every year.’
‘I know,’ Maureen agreed, ‘it’s coming up again shortly.’
‘So she did something she needn’t have done, I owe it to her not to go back and disturb her memory. Anyway, child, I don’t know anyone there any more, not since Kevin died, and I’d only be an object of curiosity to them all. No, I’ll stay here, I like it, and you’ll come and see me from time to time, and your sister Catherine and her young man will come, I’ll be in clover.’
Her eyes filled with tears. She would never tell him that Mother hadn’t sent her to find him, she would let him think something good as he sat in the sunset thinking he was in clover.
‘I’ll find lots of excuses to come and see you then, maybe I’ll open a shop in Ascot here or in Windsor. I mean it.’
‘Of course you do, and won’t you be coming over for Kevin’s daughter’s silver wedding? Won’t that be another excuse?’
‘I mightn’t go to that. Frank Quigley was the best man, you know, it’s meant to be a kind of a reunion of everyone who was there, dredging up all the past memories and everything.’
‘Isn’t that all the more reason to go?’ asked Bernie Barry, the man with the tan and the twinkle in his eye who fell in love on a business trip forty years ago and had the courage to follow his star.
7
FRANK
HE NEVER KNEW why everyone made such a fuss about travelling, Frank loved to get into his car and head off a hundred miles or more along motorways past signposts. He felt free and as if there was a sense of adventure about it all. Even if it was only a catering exhibition that he had been to a dozen times before he enjoyed it. And why wouldn’t he? As he often reminded himself, not everyone else on the motorways had a Rover, this year’s model, with fitted stereo and radio filling the sleek comfortable world with music. Or whenever he wanted it with Italian for Businessmen. Nobody in Palazzo Foods knew that Frank Quigley could understand every single word of Italian spoken in his presence. He never let a flicker of the eye acknowledge that he had understood what might be being said. Even when it was about him. Particularly when it was about him.
Sometimes Frank thought that his father-in-law Carlo Palazzo might have a suspicion, but if he had he kept it to himself. And he would have admired Frank all the more for it. He had let Frank know a long time ago that they had been watching him and grooming him, and that he would never have got to first base with the boss’s daughter unless Carlo Palazzo and his brother had wanted it that way.
Frank had known this already, it came as no surprise that a wealthy girl like Renata would be heavily protected by her father and uncles from fortune hunters. He knew that he was suitable because he didn’t need to marry the Palazzo Princess to rise in the company. He didn’t even need Palazzo, Frank Quigley would have been able to walk into any business in Britain. He had no initials after his name, he had never finished his formal schooling. He didn’t need any of it. He had the flair and the ability to work long hard days and nights. They had known all that fifteen years ago when they let him take Renata out to dinner. They knew he would lay no untoward hand on the dark shy heiress to the Palazzo fortunes until they were wed. And the Palazzos knew that if ever he were to be the teeniest little bit unfaithful to his wife it would be something anonymous and discreet and far from home. There would be no hint of scandal.
Frank sighed about the unwritten rules. He had sailed a little near the wind on one or two occasions but nothing he couldn’t handle. Until now. Now the situation was very different, and he needed every moment alone that he could seize in order to work out what to do. If it were business, if it were only business … ah, then he would know exactly what to do. But Joy East was not business. Not when she was in her yellow tee-shirt and nothing else, walking confidently around her house proud and sure of herself. And sure of him, as he lay there admiringly afternoon after long sunny afternoon smiling at her mane of streaked brown and gold hair, her perfect teeth, her long tanned legs.
Joy East the designer who had got Palazzo into the smart magazines, who had raised their image from the tatty to the stylish, as Frank Quigley had raised their sales and their progress from the mass of small so-called supermarkets to the very front rank. Joy East who had told him the first night they had looked at each other with non-professional eyes that they would be the ideal match. Neither wanted to change their lifestyle, neither was in any position to force the other to do so. Joy wanted her independence and freedom, Frank wanted to remain in his marriage with the boss’s daughter. Who better to suit each other than two people with everything to lose by being silly and everything to gain by enjoying each other’s company discreetly? She had told him this partly in words, partly by her look and partly by the way she had leaned across the restaurant table and kissed him full on the lips.
‘I checked first,’ she had said, laughing. ‘There’s nobody in the place except tourists.’
It had been exciting then, it had continued to be exciting. Frank had rarely met women like Joy. The finer and indeed the main points of the women’s movement had passed him by, this new independence seemed to him very exotic. Joy East was proud of her single state, she had almost married, she told him, a very lucky escape when she was twenty-three but she had called it off days before the wedding. Her father had been furious and they still had to pay a huge whack of the wedding reception cost, and the cake, and the limousines. Not to mention all the talk and the fuss. Everyone would have preferred her to get married just to save all the embarrassment. And the man? Oh, lucky escape for him too, Joy thought, laughing and thinking about him not at all.
She lived in a small house on the corner of a road which had been not at all fashionable when she found it but which day by day was seeing the removal vans of ever smarter neighbours. Her white-walled garden was private and had vines on the walls. Her long comfortable living room could fit sixty comfortably at one of her parties. Joy gave wonderful parties and often said that it was terribly easy to flatter and please people by asking them for two hours’ drinks and canapés to your house.
And they loved her in Palazzo for doing it. So generous of Miss East, the board always said, above and beyond what Miss East needed to do for them. It bought her further goodwill. Their admiration was unstinting. Joy East could invite clients, press pe
ople, foreign contacts and local dignitaries into her house with such ease. She hired caterers and then contract cleaners afterwards. Joy told Frank that it was no trouble, in fact it was positively useful. She had her house cleaned once a month professionally, she had a freezer full of hors d’oeuvres. She always cleared away her ornaments and valuables before any gathering. You never knew if strangers might be light-fingered, much better to leave out forty big blue glass bowls as ashtrays. They had cost £1 each in some warehouse. She had another forty in a cardboard box in the garage. On a high shelf over the small sports car.
Frank Quigley the handsome Managing Director of Palazzo and Joy East the Design Consultant who had been in charge of Palazzo’s image from its Art Deco building to its smart carrier bags had been having an affair for three years and they could both say with certainty that nobody knew about it. They were not fooling themselves like so many other lovers in the world who believed that they were invisible. They knew that nobody else had the slightest suspicion. Because they had been very careful and they had lived by a set of rules.
They never telephoned each other except on legitimate business for the company. And Joy made no telephone calls to the Quigley apartment about anything at all. Once the affair had got under way Renata was never brought to Joy East’s house whatever the social occasion. Frank Quigley felt that it would be undignified for his wife to be entertained in a house where he himself had been entertained so many afternoons a week in a very different sense of the word. Frank would not let his wife lay her fur coat across the wide bed where he and Joy had spent so many hours. Even though he swore to himself that Renata would never learn of the relationship, he still felt that he owed it to her not to betray her by pretending to be an equal guest in a house which was in reality so much his home. He didn’t think about any other kind of betrayal because Frank had always believed that his strongest quality was an ability to compartmentalize his life. He had always been able to do this. He never thought of his violent drunken father and his weak forgiving mother … not once he had left them to live in London. But when he had returned to visit them and his brothers and sisters who had never left the small town in the West of Ireland he brought no tales and even no thoughts of his London life back with him. He had managed to come back if not exactly shabby at least unkempt. None of them would have guessed at his lifestyle in the business world and the social life of retailing. He had bought Renata a shapeless tweed coat for her one-off regulation visit there and had told her they should play down the comfort they enjoyed back in Wembley. Renata had understood very quickly, she had gone almost wordlessly to help in the kitchen with the women while Frank had talked to his brothers, and offered a little investment here and buying into something there … all of them polite ways of giving money without being seen to do so. During the four days he had spent in the place where he had grown up, his leather briefcase and hand-made shoes were locked in the boot of the hired car with Renata’s silk scarves and jewellery roll.