This Charming Man

by Marian Keyes

  Ashamed, I shook my head.

  ‘Like they’d have believed you anyway.’ Zara flicked her eyes heavenwards. ‘It’s hard enough ifyou’re getting lamped by a bloke, but ifyou’re being hit by delicious Paddy de Courcy, the housewives’ choice, you haven’t a hope. I don’t know why I bothered. Who would ever have taken my word over Paddy’s? Me, an ex-model in a crappy soap?’

  ‘But you’re not an ex-model in a crappy soap any longer,’ I said. ‘You’re now a Hollywood star.’

  ‘God, yeah, when you put it like that, I suppose I am.’

  ‘You’re powerful now, Zara. More powerful than him.’

  ‘God, yeah, when you put it like that, I suppose I am.’

  Marnie

  She was lying in bed in what had been her teenage bedroom, playing the Leonard Cohen record she used to listen to when she was fifteen. The original vinyl record. Some people would probably get excited about that – idiotic boys in black T-shirts.

  A person was at the front door – her bedroom was right over it, she heard everything that happened down there.

  ‘Grace!’ Ma’s voice declared. ‘What a lovely surprise. And in the middle of the working day!’

  Grace. Marnie had been expecting a conciliatory visit from her. In fact, she’d been starting to wonder what was taking her so long.

  ‘Where’s Marnie?’ Grace’s voice was terse.

  ‘Upstairs, in her old room. Playing that wretched Cohen man’s record. I should have snapped it over my knee the day she left home.’

  A moment later there was a light tap on the bedroom door and Grace’s voice called, ‘Marnie, can I come in?’

  Marnie contemplated refusing: she could simply send Grace away without seeing her. But she’d spent a sleepless night at the mercy of her imagination: the pictures in her head had been excruciating. What exactly had gone on with Grace and Paddy? She needed to know. ‘Door’s open,’ she said.

  Grace sidled in. She looked abashed but there was something about her she was trying to contain: an energy, an excitement. ‘Marnie, we need to talk. I – I’ve so much explaining to do to you. And I will. But something has happened and it won’t wait.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Marnie said. ‘Whatever is happening will have to wait. I want to know all about you and Paddy. Now. And,’ she added with as much hostility as she could muster, ‘don’t do a PG version to save my feelings so that I won’t drink.’

  Grace actually squirmed – then rallied with, ‘Are you sober? Not much point me telling the story if you’re not going to remember any of it.’

  ‘I’m. Sober.’ Marnie bit the words out, with icy dignity.

  She stared at Grace, hoping the bitterness she felt showed on her face. Grace stared back at her. They flat-eyed each other for several long seconds, then Grace dropped her look.

  ‘How come you didn’t drink…’ she asked.

  The truth was that Marnie had no idea why she hadn’t got drunk. The rejection she’d experienced last night, the humiliation, the self-hatred, the sense that she was an idiot and had always been an idiot – these were the exact feelings she usually sought to obliterate with alcohol. Add anger into the mix – anger with Grace and Paddy – and extreme drunkenness could be considered a dead cert. Instead she’d sat in the kitchen, chatting with Ma, drinking cocoa and eating poppy-seed cake and complaining about how the seeds stick between your teeth.

  ‘Perhaps I grew up a little last night,’ Marnie said with acrimony. ‘Perhaps my youthful ideals about people were stripped away…’ Or maybe I just couldn’t stomach Dad’s nettle wine. ‘So, Grace. Tell me about you and Paddy, your big love affair. And remember, I’ll know when you’re lying.’

  One of Marnie’s dubious ‘gifts’: the ability to recognize an attempt to humour her.

  ‘Okay.’ Grace sat down heavily, opened her mouth and told the story beginning with her first night working at the Boatman. At times she paused, choosing words with great care, perhaps – Marnie wondered – words that softened the most brutal parts? But when she eventually finished, Marnie knew instinctively that nothing had been left out.

  Grace was as white as milk from the ordeal. ‘I’m bitterly ashamed, Marnie, and that’s putting it mildly. From day one, I wanted to protect you and I’m the one to cause you so much pain –’

  ‘Stop, Grace, stop. Enough for now.’ This wasn’t over but Marnie couldn’t take any more.

  ‘So can I tell you what’s happened?’ Grace asked.

  Marnie nodded, her eyes closed.

  ‘There are two other women of Paddy’s, there might be even more. We’re going back again tonight.’

  ‘To Paddy’s?’

  ‘Yes. Will you come?’

  Would she?

  Why would she help Grace? Why would she return to the scene of her humiliation? But the truth, Marnie realized, was that she was glad of the chance. Why? Was she a sucker for punishment? But there had been too much confusion and shouting last night. This was an opportunity to do it again, but better.

  ‘We’re all swearing affidavits,’ Grace said. ‘We detail under oath what he did to us. Dee has given us a lawyer. You on?’

  Marnie nodded.

  ‘I’ll set it up. Can I tell you how we’re planning to play it tonight?’

  ‘No.’ She wanted Grace to go now. She was exhausted.

  After Grace had left, Ma came into Marnie’s room and sat on the bed. ‘Turn off that dirge,’ she urged gently. ‘He’d make Coco the Clown feel suicidal.’

  ‘Okay.’ Marnie lifted the needle and, mid-sentence, Leonard Cohen ceased.

  ‘That’s better,’ Ma said. ‘Would you like to tell me what’s going on?’

  Marnie was overwhelmed by the size of the situation. Helplessly she said, ‘Paddy de Courcy…’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘It’s… I… Grace… It’s really complicated.’

  ‘He was your teenage boyfriend. A long time ago. You’re married now, you have two children.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  “‘If a person continues to see only giants, it means he is still looking at the world through the eyes of a child,” ’ Ma said. ‘Anaïıs Nin.’

  Marnie nodded.

  “‘Things do not change,” ’ Ma said. “‘We change.” Thoreau.’

  ‘Good point.’

  “‘If at first you don’t succeed, you’re running about average,” ’ Ma said. ‘MH Alderson.’

  Marnie stopped looking at Ma.

  “‘Never grow a wishbone where your backbone ought to be,” ’ Ma said. ‘Clementine Paddleford.’

  Marnie stared at her lap.

  “‘When life throws us lemons –”’

  ‘Thank you, Ma, that’s enough!’ Marnie said.

  It was like a rerun of the previous evening, except that there were two cars this time. Marnie waited in one with Zara and Selma. Grace was in the other with Dee and Lola.

  It was ten to eleven and Paddy and Alicia were expected shortly.

  Selma looked from Marnie to Zara and laughed. ‘Paddy definitely doesn’t have a type, does he?’

  True. Marnie was fascinated by the other two. Zara had a face of transcendent beauty and was so lanky she was like a normal person who had been stretched to twice their length. Selma, by contrast, had a lean bony look, crinkly blonde hair and a short, wiry sportswoman’s body. Her calves were far too muscular for the spindly heels she was wearing. Marnie thought she looked like a sideboard.

  Even their personalities were poles apart: Zara was languid and sarcastic whereas Selma was confident and mouthy.

  As they waited for Paddy and Alicia to come home, they exchanged war stories.

  Zara had been his girlfriend for two and a half years. Selma had been with him for five – and actually living with him for three of those years. Zara had been pregnant – and raped – by him. Selma – when he’d broken a bone in her hand which had never healed properly – had had her career as a sportswoman effectively ended by him.<
br />
  ‘That’s horrific, Selma,’ Marnie breathed. ‘Why didn’t you go to the police?’ The words were out of her mouth before she’d thought them through.

  Selma gave her a hard look. ‘Why didn’t you go to the police?’

  ‘… Sorry, I…’ It was a ludicrous question, considering what Marnie herself had been through with Paddy. But when you heard that someone had been hurt by someone else, the automatic response was to suggest that they went to the police.

  ‘Because you loved him, right?’ Selma pressed. ‘You didn’t want him to get into trouble?’

  ‘Selma, I’m sorry, I just wasn’t thinking…’ God, she was scary.

  ‘Well, I loved him too,’ Selma said. ‘Or at least I thought I did, but we won’t get into that now. Obviously I was out of my fucking mind. Anyway, I did go to the cops. Four separate times.’

  ‘My God!’ Zara said. ‘I’m surprised you’re still alive. So how’dhe wriggle out of any charges?’

  ‘You know what he’s like,’ Selma said scornfully. ‘He always talked me out of it, swore to me on his mother’s memory that he’d never touch me again, blamed it on his job being stressful. The usual. And thicko here bought it every time. Kept thinking things would be different. Hope sprang eternal.’ She gave a little laugh, and added, ‘Then it stopped springing. And when he dumped me, I suppose then I could have gone to the cops, nothing stopping me, but well… I wasn’t myself, put it that way.’

  ‘Confidence destroyed?’ Zara said sympathetically. Marnie listened agog.

  ‘I was a fucking wreck,’ Selma said. ‘It took me a full year before I could eat peas.’

  ‘Peas?’ Marnie said. ‘Why peas?’

  ‘Because my hands shook so much they wouldn’t stay on my fork.’

  ‘How come there’s never anything in the papers about him?’ Marnie wanted to know.

  ‘Until someone actually brings charges there’s nothing to report.’

  ‘But what about, “Police were called to a disturbance at Paddy de Courcy’s house.” That sort of thing?’

  Zara and Selma both furrowed their foreheads and looked at Marnie with a sort of concerned pity.

  ‘Unsubstantiated innuendo?’ Zara raised her thin black eyebrows.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Selma cut in. ‘He’d slap a writ on them so fast their heads would spin.’

  ‘And he has the press in his pocket,’ Zara said. ‘Great relationships with editors and journalists. They love him.’

  ‘Duh!’ Selma added.

  ‘I live in London!’ Marnie felt she had to defend herself. ‘How would I know?’ She caught her breath. ‘Oh my God. Here’s his car.’

  All three of them slid down in their seats although they were parked too far away from his flat to be spotted.

  Selma couldn’t resist sticking her head up for a look. ‘Look at him, the fucker,’ she breathed, her eyes glittering.

  They’d decided upon a three-minute wait this time; Dee had deduced that last night’s eleven minutes had been far too long. ‘Go in fast and hard,’ she’d recommended. ‘Ideally before he has time to do a piss. Don’t let him get comfortable.’

  As they emerged from the cars, two groups of three, and joined forces, Marnie watched Selma walk like a sideboard up to Grace and ask, ‘After last night’s balls-up, will he even let you in?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Grace sighed. ‘He’s not a bit scared of us.’

  Dee got them through the downstairs entrance. ‘Courage, mes braves,’ she urged after them, as they climbed the stairs. ‘I’ll be with you in spirit.’

  Grace went first, then Lola, Selma, Zara and right at the back, Marnie. Her legs were buzzing with anxiety as they filed down the hall and gathered outside Paddy’s flat.

  ‘Do the knocker,’ Selma told Grace.

  ‘But he’s expecting Dee, he’ll open the door in a minute anyway.’

  ‘Bang the knocker,’ Selma urged. ‘Be proactive.’

  But it was too late. Paddy was swinging the door open, and when he saw the cluster of them waiting to see him, he exploded with laughter. Real laughter, Marnie thought, not the fake kind that people sometimes do in an attempt to undermine.

  We left it too late, she realized. He’s had his piss.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ he declared. ‘What now?’

  ‘Can we come in?’ Grace asked.

  He flicked his eyes heavenward. ‘Not for long. And I don’t want you making a habit of this.’

  ‘This will be the last time,’ Grace said.

  As they filed through the door he lavished compliments. ‘Lola, beautiful as ever! Selma, you look great.’

  It was only when he focused on Zara that Marnie noticed the tiniest loss of aplomb in him.

  ‘… Spielberg’s muse! What an honour! And Marnie, of course.’

  In the sitting room, the same venue as last night, everyone sat except for Grace and Paddy. Marnie had somehow ended up in the same seat as last night, which she feared augured badly. She watched as Grace thrust a large, fat, white envelope at Paddy and he ignored it.

  ‘Should I get Alicia for you?’ he solicitously asked Grace. ‘Will we be having a repeat of that strange little scene from last night, with you shoving her sleeves up?’

  Grace’s face flamed and she shook her head abruptly. ‘No need for Alicia.’

  Once again, she thrust the envelope at him and this time – to Marnie’s relief – he took it. ‘Present for you,’ Grace said. ‘Copies of affidavits made by the five of us, detailing what you did to us. The originals are in a safe.’

  Paddy took a seat, slit the envelope and flicked briefly through the pages before casting them aside as if they were nothing.

  ‘A lone woman making accusations,’ Grace said, standing in the middle of the room. ‘You could dismiss her as a nutter. Two even. But three, you’re getting into different territory. And when there’re five, it’s looking very bad for you. Especially when one of them is Hollywood’s hottest new star.’

  Paddy laughed.

  ‘And it’s only a matter of time before we talk to more of your exes,’ Grace said.

  An amused little grin sat on Paddy’s face. ‘Grace Gildee, you’re gas, so you are. The bees you get in your bonnet.’

  Then he turned to Zara and said, ‘Zara Kaletsky! Well, I must say I’m honoured to have you in my humble home. Tell me all about Los Angeles. Is it true what they say? That no one ever eats?’

  ‘I’m not here to discuss Los Angeles with you,’ Zara said coldly.

  ‘Because if they don’t eat, that would suit you down to the ground.’ Paddy winked at her. ‘You and your… ahem… old trouble.’

  Marnie had a vague memory of having read somewhere that Zara had had anorexia when she was a teenager. God, Paddy went straight for the jugular with everyone. This was going to be like last night all over again. He’d undermine them all individually and they’d just fall apart.

  ‘And Selma.’ He turned the warmth of his smile on her. ‘How’s the sports consultation going? Oh I forgot. It went belly-up for you. That must have been tough. No money coming in, life can’t be easy… Well, now!’ He gave a great big smile around the room. ‘It’s been a pleasure talking to you girls, but I’ve had a long day, so if you’ll excuse me…’

  ‘Paddy, the affidavits,’ Grace said. ‘We’re serious.’

  He stretched his arms above his head and gave a long, yowly yawn. ‘Serious about what?’

  ‘We will go to the press.’

  ‘Will you now?’

  ‘Unless…’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless –’ Grace inhaled and the entire room became frozen and focused. Marnie noticed that even Paddy, who was doing a great impression of someone who simply couldn’t be less interested, was listening.

  ‘Unless you resign from New Ireland.’ Grace counted on her fingers. ‘Announce that you’re opting out of Irish political life. Accept a lecturing post in a US university for at least the next five years –’ As the list
went on, Paddy barked with laughter.

  ‘– Apologize individually to each of us here. Withdraw the story about the Moldovan women from the Press. Call a halt to all other plans to undermine Dee.’

  Grace finished.

  ‘That’s it?’ Paddy asked, wreathed in smiles.

  ‘Yes.’ Marnie heard Grace’s voice betray the tiniest little tremor. Perhaps no one else heard it but she knew her so well…

  ‘You’re not asking for much, are you?’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘That’s the choice,’ Grace said. ‘It’s either that or we all go to the media with our stories and you’re sunk anyway.’

  ‘My word against yours,’ he said.

  ‘There are five of us. At least. So what’sittobe?’

  Paddy sat back in his seat and, watched avidly by everyone in the room, he closed his eyes.

  Marnie stopped breathing.

  Eventually Paddy straightened up and opened his eyes. He looked around the room, at each of them in turn.

  The tension in Marnie intensified; she thought her chest might burst.

  Then Paddy took a breath to speak. ‘No,’ he said.

  No? Marnie dug her nails into her palms. This was another disaster, worse than last night.

  ‘Resign?’ Paddy asked scornfully. ‘Give up politics? Leave the country? Lecture in a foreign university? Are you fucking mad? No way.’

  ‘Is there anything at all you’ll do for us?’ Grace asked.

  The tremor in Grace’s voice was really audible now, Marnie realized. Everyone – including Paddy – must be able to hear it. Marnie wished she’d shut up, she was humiliating them all.

  Paddy laughed. ‘No. There is nothing I will do for you.’

  ‘Not even call off the Moldovan story? You call off that story, we’ll call off ours. Surely that’s fair?’

  ‘Oh all right, all right!’ Still grinning Paddy said, ‘I don’t know where you get the idea that I’ve any influence with the Irish media. Sure, I’m only a humble TD. But I could have a word, see if, as a favour to me, some of the journos who have it in for her will back off.’ With a chuckle he added, ‘And – without prejudice – you can have your apologies.’ For what they’re worth, hung unspoken in the air. ‘But that’s it,’ he said. ‘That’s all you’re getting.’