Hush Hush

by Mullarkey, Gabrielle

  She went back into the bedroom. Conor sat on the edge of the bed, his face ashen, the phone lying on the floor.

  Angela stopped. The phone call telling her about Robert leapt into focus from her warmly hazy mind. Who was it this time? Sadie! Oh dear God, not Shane.

  ‘It’s Kate,’ shuddered Conor. ‘She’s taken an overdose.’

  Chapter Nine

  Angela had no appetite for Sadie’s birthday lunch, a tradition started by her and Robert after Fenton’s death. Sadie bore the ordeal gracefully. This year, Angela had clean forgotten to book Baggio’s for the Sunday, so she, Sadie and Rachel (a stand-in for Robert) had decamped to Wilmesbury’s newest eatery, a garish American bistro, where waist-coated staff whizzed around on roller skates, claiming they found it a pleasure to be at your service.

  ‘I don’t like anything on this menu,’ Sadie informed their waiter, hoping to wipe the dazzling, transatlantic smile off his face.

  The waiter, whose name tag said ‘Davey’, hunkered down beside Sadie. Angela had seen him adopt the same pose with a stroppy toddler three tables away. ‘If it’s a question of soft food for the teeth,’ crooned Davey, exposing his own gleaming set, ‘I can have chef rustle up a nice runny omelette with a bit of salad. Would madam like that?’

  Sadie put her menu to one side, rejecting the idea of hitting Davey over the head with it. If only she had a stale bread stick handy. ‘Madam would like to see a little more imagination on the vegetarian dishes. I’m not a vegetarian, but I like a rest from meat every now and then. This menu assumes vegetarians eat truckloads of spinach with everything.’

  ‘We do a vegetarian burger made of soya extract,’ said Davey humbly.

  Sadie pondered while Davey held his breath, swaying uneasily on his cracking thigh joints. Not easy to hunker down on roller skates, reflected Angela.

  ‘I’ll have it,’ said Sadie imperiously. Davey stood up with relief, but Sadie wasn’t letting him away that lightly. ‘Is it in a sesame seed bun? I don’t like those sesame seed yokes. Can chef pick them off for me?’

  Davey looked at Angela in pity. ‘I’ll see what I can do, madam,’ he sighed, pushing off on his skates.

  Angela had a thumping headache. Rachel, resplendent in mint green, looked like a crisp lettuce leaf. She patted Angela’s hand sympathetically. ‘So how is Conor’s ex-wife after her little fiasco?’

  Angela grunted, swivelling away from Sadie’s beady look. ‘Chucking paracetamol and whiskey down your gullet is hardly a “little fiasco”. The doctor who pumped her out gave her a huge rocket, according to Conor. And, being Yanks, they’ve bunged her in compulsory therapy for alcohol abuse and its depressive side-effects.’

  Sadie clicked her dentures speculatively. ‘I feel sorry for the woman, I really do. It’s the classic cry for help, I suppose, and Conor certainly went running.’ Sadie paused. ‘As he should have done. He still has a responsibility to his ex-wife.’

  Angela grabbed her bag off the back off her chair and scrabbled about for the birthday present. She laid the small, gift-wrapped parcel by Sadie’s plate.

  ‘Here you are, it’s nothing special,’ she said almost shyly. ‘You can take it back if you don’t like it.’

  In fact, she had spent several lunch hours window-shopping for it with Pauline and Val.

  Sadie unwrapped the silver and amethyst Celtic brooch. ‘It’s lovely!’ she said sincerely. ‘With a lovely big clasp for my clumsy old fingers. Thank you, lovey.’ She puckered up for a kiss.

  Angela leant gingerly over the table and grazed the papery cheek with cool lips. ‘Did Owen remember this year?’

  Sadie, who’d considered trying to pin the brooch to her blouse, decided against with diplomatic haste and laid it back in its cradle of purple tissue.

  ‘I got a card. And a cheque.’

  ‘Oh?’ Angela was about to say something mean about her brother salving his conscience with a stroke of his pen, but took a sip of water instead. ‘For how much, if it’s not impertinent to ask?’

  Sadie glanced meaningfully at Rachel, who turned tactfully away to buttonhole a waiter. ‘A little something towards a new washer-dryer,’ hissed Sadie. ‘I mentioned in a letter a while back that it was on the blink. I think Candace must be behind it. I can’t see Owen giving a second thought to a wonky washer-dryer. Doubt he’s ever used one.’

  ‘Good for Owen ‒ and Candace,’ smiled Angela, raising her glass of fizzy water.

  ‘So,’ said Sadie, noting Angela’s ginger sips of water. ‘Are you ever going to tell us why Conor’s ex-wife made this desperate cry for help, or is it that he hasn’t told you?’

  Angela blinked over her glass at Sadie’s pert gaze and Rachel’s benign baby blues. ‘Look, if it’s a family thing,’ began Rachel mildly, ‘I can slip off and powder my nose for a few mins.’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ countered Angela edgily. ‘You are family where my far-from-private private life is concerned. Fact is, Kate wanted to come back and take up residence at 23 Pacelli Road, in a platonic context, to be with Shane. But Shane, as final arbiter of a parental patch-up, gave it the thumbs down. Conor’s plan B was to help Kate buy her own flat over here, so she could still return to England and be close to Shane. Kate agreed to plan B, then went off and took an overdose. I don’t think it’s fair to call it a deliberate act of sabotage,’ she ended defensively, as a knowing look passed between Sadie and Rachel. ‘We don’t know what was going through her head, what state she was in.’

  ‘Granted,’ said Rachel. ‘But she got what she was after, didn’t she? Her ex-hubby’s flight to her bedside, slap bang in the middle of his weekend with you. At least for the time being. It is a temporary arrangement, isn’t it, Ange?’

  ‘For God’s sake, I don’t know!’ Angela looked around for Davey to save her with the arrival of the first course.

  ‘But what did he say on the phone?’ probed Rachel. ‘Come on, he’s been gone over a fortnight! When’s he coming back?’

  Angela’s throat went dry. ‘He couldn’t be specific.’ No way could she tell them that Shane had gone out to New York to join his parents. That the family McGinlay were now reunited in Kate’s loft apartment, with Conor and Shane dividing the cooking between them, Conor phoning when he could from his makeshift office, sounding ever more defensive, embarrassed and distant.

  Not half as embarrassed as Angela, though. In their last conversation, she had blurted down a crackly line, ’I love you!’ and been rewarded with a final burst of static and a dialling tone. Had he heard her before he hung up in embarrassment? Had he successfully decoded those three little words as a plea not to be abandoned in favour of an ex-wife with whom he shared a lengthy past and a child?

  She turned to Rachel. ‘How goes it with Marshall?’ she challenged mildly.

  Rachel pinkened prettily. ‘We haven’t exhausted our sell-by date yet! You know, dare I say it, I think he might be the man for me.’

  ‘Honest to God?’ Angela faked a bit of polite enthusiasm, ashamed of her self-absorption. Not long ago, an update on Rachel’s love life would’ve shaken her out of even gloomy Robert-thoughts. But two nights of passion with Conor ‒ which was all their relationship really amounted to ‒ had been enough to throw her off-centre and off her guard.

  She picked at her meal. Then it was back to Sadie’s for the cake-cutting and sherry. Angela nibbled a strand of almond icing and examined the cards on the mantelpiece, while Sadie watched her carefully and Rachel kept the conversational ball rolling. But eventually, even she tired of flogging a rapidly expiring horse.

  ‘I must be off. I’ve got three evening shifts on the trot coming up. Thanks for the cake, Mrs F.’

  ‘Thank you for my lunch, Rachel.’

  ‘Can I give you a lift home, Ange?’

  Sadie stacked cake plates. ‘Angela will be staying to help me clear up.’

  ‘Huh? Oh, apparently I’m staying for a bit.’ Angela exchanged a conspiratorial look with Rachel over Sadie’s head. She was due
either a toe up the rear end for ‘sulking’ doing her civic duty in the restaurant, or a bracing pep talk about not giving up on Conor/not chasing after Conor.

  The front door shut. Sadie glared at her. ‘Time of the month, is it?’

  ‘No, as it happens,’ scowled Angela. Despite telling Sadie firmly, at the age of fifteen, that she wished a conspiracy of feigned ignorance to prevail on this subject whenever the bathroom bin filled up with blue boxes, Sadie had persisted with motherly intrusion ever since. Back in Angela’s teens, she’d insisted that Angela spirit away the blue boxes to the bin outside the back door, in case Fenton or Owen glanced into the bathroom bin and fainted.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ muttered Angela as her opening time-buying gambit.

  Sadie followed her into the kitchen. ‘I rang Conor in New York last night to find out the state of play.’

  Angela banged down the tea caddy. ‘You did what?’

  ‘Shane answered. They were all going out to dinner, so he couldn’t hang about. He offered to get Conor, but I decided not to bother, in the circumstances. Face it, lovey, Conor will have other things on his mind for a while. But just be patient. He’ll come back to you in the end if you don’t force the pace.’

  Sick disappointment flooded Angela. Now they were gallivanting off to family dinners! What man could resist falling in love with his wife all over again as he helped her recover from a brush with death? She could just imagine the touching reunion that had taken place at the hospital bed, Kate’s Titian locks flowing across the pillow, Conor covering her frail little hand in frenzied kisses: ‘Oh my God, Kate, I thought I’d lost you for ever! And with so much left unsaid.’

  This little tableau had been torturing Angela for some time. She didn’t need to hear about shared dinners! And she’d be none the wiser if Sadie hadn’t poked her snout in. ‘You’re the one forcing the pace, you interfering old trout! Now Conor will think I asked you to phone, that I’m pestering him from afar. For once in your life, will you kindly butt out and treat me like an adult!’

  Sadie sank into a chair, her face quivering with a spasm of pain. Physical, Angela presumed. She turned to the sink, shoulders braced and teeth clenched, deciding to interpret any signs of infirmity as play-acting. She began twisting a tea towel round and round the inner rim of a clean mug. ‘Where did you get the phone number of Kate’s flat?’

  ‘He gave it you, didn’t he, when he rang from the hospital in New York?’

  ‘But how did you get it, Ma?’

  ‘I looked in your address book in your bag one time, on the off-chance you’d written it down, and you had. I’m not proud of it!’ she added, as Angela gaped. ‘But you’re such a fool to yourself sometimes, you left me with little choice but to – take the initiative.’ Her instinct told her to now shut up. But force of habit, formed over years of dispensing unwanted maternal advice, got the better of her. ‘I liked Conor from the start, as you know. And I still believe he’ll come back to you. But it might be wise to brace yourself. There’s the odd chance he could be a dodgy bet for the long-term now, with the divorce papers still warm from signing, carrying all that guilt from his marriage failure first time round. What I mean is …’

  Angela turned. ‘I know it’s your sixty-eighth birthday, Ma, but you can decide now to forever hold your peace on the subject of me and Conor, or face celebrating your sixty-ninth alone!’

  ‘God, you always were a touchy one!’ clucked Sadie, a lemming hurtling towards the cliff-edge. ‘Calm down, lovey. You’re right, I shouldn’t poke my nosy old beak into your messy old life. Where’s that cup of tea?’

  ‘God! Now you’re patronising me! You’re doing exactly what you did to me as a kid. You wind me up until I snap and then you sit back with a superior little smile and humour me ‒ because that’s what you do to people whose childish reactions have to be soothed back into ‒ into whimpering passivity!’

  ‘Paranoia,’ muttered Sadie, needled. ‘You’ve had a paranoid streak ever since you were a little girl. Remember Caroline Lynch’s birthday party? You came home and said everyone got a bigger slice of cake than you. It was the same with Owen. You were always watching out in case his Easter egg was bigger or he had more presents under the tree.’

  She shook her head so sorrowfully that molten rage poured through Angela’s veins.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ she yelled at her mother. ‘You can’t even admit your own blatant prejudice. I’ll tell you what I remember from childhood. Owen pinching me black and blue when we were both lying on the settee, recovering from the measles. And you telling me that I was making a fuss and imagining things. Christ, I even had bruises all over my defenceless little body to prove it!’ Angela’s voice wobbled with self-pity as unrighted wrongs overwhelmed her. ‘But oh no, you took the side of your favourite, your golden only son. You weren’t interested in justice. There’s nothing worse to a small child than realising your parent isn’t interested in fair play. From an early age, I thought boys must be more important than girls. I thought you could never love me the way you loved Owen because I was too ordinary to matter!’

  Tears sloshed down her chin. She buried her chin in the tea towel and sobbed with passion for her childhood self.

  Sadie was horrified. She tried to heave herself off her chair, but flailed back into it. ‘You were never ordinary, Angela! How could you see yourself in that light? My God, the frozen food saga! When you came home and told me you’d packed in the job, you were going to Rachel’s for the weekend, and I could lump it. What a rebel! If I seemed to take Owen’s side when you two rowed ‒ and God forgive me, maybe I did ‒ it was because you always stamped your foot and stood up for yourself. God forgive me, I thought I was playing fair. I thought I had to put Owen’s case because he wouldn’t put it himself. He was the type to let you walk all over him.’

  ‘He was too clever to be walked all over!’ hissed Angela. ‘He was a sneaky pincher, a behind-the-back toy breaker. You just assumed that quietness equalled goodness.’

  There was a long silence. Angela turned back to the sink and fished a packet of paper hankies out of the cutlery drawer. She unfolded a hanky with deliberate care and honked into it. Whatever came next had to come from Sadie. She’d said too much already.

  ‘You’ve been nursing these petty grudges all these years,’ observed Sadie sadly. ‘Thinking I loved Owen more than you. Oh Angela, lovey, how could you?’

  Guilt flared briefly in Angela at Sadie’s stricken tone but, just in time, she recognised another favourite ploy of her mother’s. The emotional blackmail ploy. She wanted Sadie to feel guilty for a change. She wanted to lash out and give her mother’s self-assurance the battering it deserved.

  ‘Is this about Robert in some way?’ asked Sadie, wisely, gently and infuriatingly maternally. ‘Do you feel life kicked you in the teeth yet again by taking Robert, while Owen gets away scot-free? Let me tell you, Ange, there’s no such thing as scot-free in this life. Everyone has their woes, sooner or later.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Ma, spare me the Sermon on the sodding Mount! You want to know about me and Robert? Well, brace yourself, hang onto your support stockings, it’s going to be a bumpy ride of unpleasant truths.’

  She took a deep breath ‒ and said nothing.

  ‘Go on,’ urged Sadie, with a vague presentiment of doom. ‘Go on, Ange.’

  ‘All right, all right!’ snapped Angela. ‘Here it is. Robert had that heart attack because we rowed about you the night before! About whether you should come and live with us. I said let’s go for it, and Robert said, very prophetically, over his dead body. I’d never seen him so worked up. Must have sent his blood pressure through the roof. Oh, don’t worry, I played my part in bringing on his coronary and I’ve felt suitably guilty ever since. But the reason he couldn’t hack the idea was because he sussed long ago that you never really liked him.’

  ‘I ‒ well ‒ that’s just not true!’ gasped Sadie.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ demanded Angela. ‘Com
e on, Mum, cards-on-the-table time. You tolerated Robert, but you never saw him as my equal, let alone yours. He was yet another poor choice by me, along with passing up college, not having kids ‒ the whole gamut of second-bests. I’d learnt to live with disappointing you, of course. I’d had years of practice. But you’ve no idea how sensitive Robert was to your low opinion of him.’

  ‘So, you’re saying ‒ his heart attack was my fault?’ gulped Sadie.

  ‘No, no, don’t be stupid!’ snapped Angela, tugging helplessly at her hair. ‘Don’t you understand, it was my fault. Mine, mine, mine! But you were often a crap mother, and a crap mother-in-law. I don’t see why you should get away with pretending you liked Robert, any more than you should get away with imagining how nice you were to me growing up.’

  ‘I ‒ well, I ‒’ Sadie was floundering, a fish on a hot pavement. Her mouth even opened and shut in convulsive little Os. Her face had lost its colour and dignity.

  Angela suddenly felt like vomiting. Almond pastry disagreed with her.

  ‘Wait there!’ she croaked and dashed upstairs to the loo. She heaved without hurling. She spent as much time up there as she could, washing her face, gathering her thoughts, casting about for a mental lasso to rein in the bolted horse. Eventually, she crept back down, feeling sick for a different reason. What sort of mood would Sadie be in? The birthday girl. Jesus! Why did she have to pick today, of all days, to row big-time with her mother?

  Sadie was washing up. She raised crabbed hands from the sink, webbed with suds, and reached for a tea towel. Her voice was quieter than a stealth bomber.

  ‘You’d better go, Angela. I don’t want to see you or talk to you for a while. I want to think things over.’

  ‘Look, Ma, about what I said …’

  ‘Don’t make me ask you to leave.’

  Angela capitulated. This was the tenor of exchanges of old. Sadie’s deadly tone, gathering her strength for the storm, Angela’s huddled truculence before she fled and waited for her mother to calm down. But this time, Sadie was eerily calm. This time, Angela had gone too far.