Hush Hush

by Mullarkey, Gabrielle

  ‘I’ll get me coat,’ she tried half-jokily, but Sadie wasn’t familiar with the catchphrases of popular culture. Angela got her coat, stepped onto the porch, closed the front door slowly. ‘Well, bye then. I’ll ring tomorrow. You can break out the sackcloth and ashes for my next visit.’

  She wanted to say more, but what? ‘Hang on, Ma, before you go volunteering for martyr of the month, remember you’re the one who snooped in my bag and went off half-cocked ringing Conor in America’? The cutlery clanged onto the draining board. Binky stalked past the front door and towards the kitchen, pausing to reproach Angela with all-knowing green eyes. Bloody cat! It was true what Sadie claimed. He had a face to fit every occasion. This face said, how could you? OK, so she could snoop for MI5. Maybe M16, if I knew what the difference is. Which I don’t, being a cat. Point is, she’s your mother! And she’s got arthritis!

  Conor found the postcard in the bottom of his bag, while looking for a clean shirt. It was a big night in Kate’s recuperation programme. She’d survived a week of intensive therapy and her stomach was starting to lose its tender resistance to solid food. They were all going to a bistro in Greenwich Village to celebrate.

  The bathroom door opened. Conor shoved the postcard back in the bag.

  ‘Shane!’ His tone was exasperated. ‘Can’t you ever knock before storming through a bathroom or bedroom door?’

  ‘Ye wot? There’s no privacy here, anyway. I have to share a room with you, listening to you grunt and slobber all night. I dunno why they call it snoring.’

  Conor sighed. ‘Who was that on the phone?’

  Shane shut the door carefully behind him. ‘Old Mrs Wotserface, Angela’s mother. Ringing to ask how Mum is.’ Shane paused, conveying added meaning with a look. The word ‘ostensibly’ was outside his vocabulary.

  ‘That was nice of her. Did she want to talk to me?’

  ‘I said we were halfway out the door. I told Mum it was work ringing for you. It’s going to be awkward if Angela and her fan club make a habit of phoning here.’

  ‘Angela won’t phone again,’ said Conor gloomily. ‘And if she was going to, she’d use my mobile, for obvious reasons. Now bog off and let me get changed.’

  ‘What reasons? Wouldn’t it be well cheaper ringing the landline here? Oh …’ The penny suddenly dropped with Shane. ‘She doesn’t want to risk talking to Mum. Well, then she’ll text or email you. D’uh.’

  ‘Thanks for the technology update. Now get out. Please.’

  With a final eye-roll, Shane finally scuttled off, leaving Conor alone in the bathroom. He looked around. The dinky little bathroom had no shelves or rails to drape clothing. Even the hand towel was spread over the top of a chest-shaped linen basket.

  Everything was pink and edged in fake gilt. ‘A bleedin’ Barbie boudoir,’ in Shane’s spot-on opinion.

  He’d no sooner got rid of Shane than Kate’s marmalade tresses snaked round the door. ‘Are you decent yet? Only the cab’s due in a minute and I wasn’t sure if you’d shaved yet.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I tackled that first.’ How easily they’d settled into old spousal routines and returned to old pet hates. She’d never liked his hirsute whiskeriness. Kate’s preferred male ‘type’, by her own admission, was the clean-shaven dealer in off-shore portfolios who inhaled wine through a patrician nose and knew a fish fork wasn’t for picking his teeth. Conor had often wondered if she’d chosen him to spite herself as much as her father; if her self-destruct sequence was always on the verge of countdown.

  When he emerged from the bathroom, she was doing a twirl for Shane. The little black dress was velvet. He thought, with a pang, of peeling Angela’s black velvet straps off her bony, supple shoulders. The hilarious thong. His rudeness. Angela’s hurt pride and readiness to see the joke. ‘You look lovely,’ he told Kate honestly.

  She smiled, sped over to administer a wifely fiddle to his tie-knot. ‘And so do both my men.’ She held out another arm to encompass Shane, who crept under it, pleased and proud of his beautiful, fragile mother.

  How does she do it, marvelled Conor, as Kate’s skin glowed, her hair shone, her eyes and teeth sparkled. She looks as if she’s spent the last few weeks being pampered at a top health spa, not lying face down in her own stomach contents and then hauled off to a detox centre, to tell a roomful of fellow manic-depressive dipsos, ‘My name’s Kate, and I’m an alcoholic.’

  The cab honked outside, briefly distinguishable to Conor’s ear from New York’s long night of lamenting sirens. He thought again of the postcard. Angela had bought it for Sadie and never written on it or posted it. In the mad departure scramble, it had ended up in his luggage.

  As he held out Kate’s black serape for her, he recalled their frantic leaving of Curracloe, the undignified end to what should’ve been a leisurely weekend of discovering each other. Then the flight back to London, knowing only that Kate was critical, leaving Angela to find her own way home on the Tube, while he dashed back to Pacelli Road, gave Shane some face-saving story about Kate and appendicitis, and packed for another flight.

  As they climbed into the taxi, and Kate brushed his knee with her elbow, he thought of his last phone call to Angela, thanking God the bad line had camouflaged his craven tone of prevarication. And then, some final words from her, wavering through the crackle, sounding like ‘I love you!’ But all he got was the heat of passion. Could just as easily have been ‘I hate you!’

  ‘Do you miss her?’ asked Kate softly in his ear.

  He jumped. It was calculated to sound sympathetic. But all it sounded was calculated, sussing out her own hold over him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, sliding his cool hand across her own. ‘I can’t switch my feelings on and off, can I?’

  She held his gaze steadily, allowing it to stray just for a second towards Shane, who was interrogating the cab driver. ‘Do those feelings apply to me, as well?’

  The bistro was heavy on ambience and scornful waiters. Shane sat very upright, grappling with a leather-bound menu and hissed at Conor, ‘Shall I ask if they’ve a kiddies’ menu?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ responded Conor mildly, his attention distracted by Kate studying a different-coloured menu. He plucked it out of her hands. ‘The wine list,’ he observed, and slammed it shut. ‘Over my dead body. Or yours, to be exact. The mineral water probably costs more than the house plonk, but I’m prepared to pay for it by the bucketload.’

  Kate tossed her head, two hectic spots appearing on her cheeks. ‘I was just looking.’

  ‘And I’m just looking at that strawberry sundae on the next table, but I know strawberries bring me out in a rash, which tends to keep temptation at bay. And I like strawberries,’ he added in case she’d missed the point.

  Kate looked warningly at Shane, then dredged up a martyr-like smile. ‘You’re right, of course. I’d forgotten how much I need you, Conor.’

  He scowled. He’d walked right into that one. Luckily, Shane still seemed engrossed in his menu.

  After that, the bonhomie was laced with tension. Kate, Conor knew, was just itching for a drink. When they got back to her place, he had every intention of checking the usual places for stashed hootch.

  As it was a clear, moonlit night, he suggested they take a taxi halfway back to the flat, and walk the rest of the way. ‘You serious?’ frowned Kate, climbing into the taxi. ‘This is New York, not Ballykissangel.’

  ‘That’s what comes of watching The French Connection and treating it as a documentary. In the real New York, tourists like us outnumber the drug dealers and wise guys at least ten to one.’

  ‘You just made that up!’ accused Kate.

  ‘I’ll have you know, I only make up statistics twenty eight per cent of the time.’

  ‘If you’re talking stats,’ put in Shane helpfully, ‘rats outnumber New Yorkers four to one.’

  Conor was adamant. Paying off the driver, he prodded them onto the sidewalk for the second half of their journey. He had a particular reason for wanting to
walk the latter half of the journey. He had something to show Kate.

  As they drew near to the alleyway in question, he slowed purposefully and paused near its entrance. Then he strode down it without warning, leaving the other two puttering along in his wake.

  ‘Conor, wait!’ called Kate.

  ‘You mad, Dad?’ puffed Shane, tripping over a cardboard box in the dark.

  The alleyway panned out suddenly into a square of concrete, ringed on three sides by a chain-link fence. A fire burnt dully in one corner. Round it sat a ragbag circle of people, hunched in filthy clothes, snatching back their fingers from the fire’s grudging warmth to cradle liquor bottles in brown paper bags. There was no communal passing of the bottle round this campfire. It was impossible to tell either ages or sexes.

  No one looked up from the ebbing heat. The winos’ passing interest in the outside world didn’t extend to curiosity about who or what might be watching them from the shadows.

  Kate was furious. ‘This is your idea of shock therapy, is it, Conor? You’ve got a bloody nerve.’

  Conor was just as angry. ‘And you’re a bloody ostrich-head. Take a good look and see yourself in a few years’ time.’

  ‘A nice sight and sentiment for your son!’

  ‘Let it be a warning to him, too. If alcoholism is hereditary, I intend to make sure it begins and ends with you.’

  Angela picked up the phone, gnawing her bottom lip. This would have to be a whopper apology ‒ without giving the game away. The truth loomed in her mind behind a school essay title: What Really Happened That Night Between Me and Robert.

  Angela dialled, more in sorrow than in hope. It was possible that Sadie would never forgive or recover from the twin accusations of being a lousy mother and a slow-burning contributor to a fatal heart attack. Maybe she’d lose the will to live and surrender to the sword-thrusts of arthritis. Then Angela would be responsible for two untimely deaths, thanks to a tongue that was a fully loaded missile without a guidance system. Goddamit, mother, answer the phone, she thought despairingly.

  Sadie let the phone ring out. She was cold. She had no energy to lean forward and switch on the fire. Binky came to complain about it, twining his wiry body around her stiff legs. The rasping caress of his body against her tights was comfort of a sort, if also a reminder that Fenton wasn’t there to put his arms around her. When Binky began to purr impatiently, it sounded like a murmur of compassion, and she let the tears come then, watching them fall on her pleated skirt with almost dispassionate interest.

  She rarely cried. Like a real man, Sadie prided herself on this fact.

  The last time she’d cried was a few days after Christmas Day, when Angela had gone home, refreshed and all cried out, but leaving Sadie exhausted by her dry-eyed counselling role. She’d cried then out of sheer fatigue after all that cooking and listening. It had been a relief to know it was just a physical response to a punishing schedule.

  But these tears splashing down on Binky’s aggrieved head were big, salty pools of self-pity. She felt helpless, worthless and ashamed.

  Angela had grown up resenting her as a punitive, unfair mother. While Sadie, complacent as you like, had walked in the sun of a flattering self-belief, feting herself as a strong but even-handed mother and encouraging others (especially Fenton) to share the illusion.

  Had she got things so wrong? Her natural confidence rose up to rebuff Angela’s claims. But just as quickly, it melted away. After all, she addressed the cold bars of the fire, look no further than Owen. A boy showered with love who scarpered to the New World at the first opportunity and put his parents and sister on the long finger, dropping occasional parcels behind the lines when guilt and anniversaries tweaked his conscience.

  Oh yes, she liked to tell herself that Owen was doing well. It had been easy to fool herself that ‘doing well’ meant shaking the dust of home from your heels and fleeing to the other side of the world, because that was how the Irish traditionally did well.

  But Wilmesbury wasn’t a blighted potato field. Owen had left home to get away from his family; the parents who’d coddled and curtailed him, and the sister he’d apparently mistreated. Sadie had read somewhere that oppressors feared their victims more than the other way around.

  She had lost her son by the time he was a teenager, and now she’d lost her daughter, too. Or maybe Angela had been keeping up a daughterly pretence all along, until Sadie finally goaded her into dropping it.

  Robert must indeed have got himself so worked up that he’d brought on his heart attack. If she’d only tried harder to see the good points in him that Angela saw with clarity. Who was Sadie to criticise anyone, even in her heart? A cranky old woman with clicky hips, deserted or kept at a distance by children she had alienated. It was no less than she deserved.

  Sadie put her head down in the fusty pleats of her skirt and cried much harder. Alarmed by the unfamiliar noise, Binky ran for cover in the kitchen.

  ‘I hate to say I told you so,’ said Pauline across her keyboard.

  ‘Then don’t!’ pleaded Angela, tired eyes fixed on her screen. Her other departmental colleagues were off sick or loitering in the kitchen. It had been a mistake to confide in anyone at work, even the tight-lipped Pauline. Angela had come to realise that Pauline’s ‘weirdness’, as far as the likes of Val were concerned, was an unnatural disregard for the office traditions of sharing and spreading gossip. At least Pauline could be trusted to keep her trap shut. But she should’ve stopped short at confiding in Rachel. Rachel was her true friend. Besides, Pauline now persisted in seeing Angela as a kindred spirit, a failure in the relationship stakes.

  ‘Your only hope is if Kate remarries or tops herself with a bigger OD next time. Any chance of her falling for the hunky doc who pumped her out?’

  ‘I don’t wish any ill towards the woman. Anyway, he told me in Ireland that he doesn’t love her.’ Angela jabbed her keyboard miserably.

  Pauline snorted. ‘She’s got a bigger hold over him than love! Emotional blackmail. What if she tops herself, and leaves a note for the kid, blaming Conor? He can’t take the risk. He has to humour her, bend to her will, sacrifice his heart’s desire. And that makes you the fall-guy, Ange. He’ll have to give you up for the greater good. Nice for him ‒ he gets to go through life with the glow of self-sacrifice keeping his principles warm. Not so nice for you ‒ seeing as you’re the actual human sacrifice in all this.’

  ‘Pauline, don’t ‒’ Angela’s throat tightened. A treacherous tear splashed onto the delete key.

  Pauline stared, not unkindly. ‘Made it up with your mum yet?’

  Oh great! A fresh can of worms. ‘No, she won’t answer the phone or her doorbell. I’ve tried catching her at work, even waylaying her in the cemetery, but she pretends I don’t exist. To be honest, my rehearsed, cringing apology is unravelling at the edges. I’m beginning to feel justified in going off the deep end in the first place. I can’t bear sulking. My husband was a marathon sulker,’ she added as a disloyal afterthought.

  Pauline was fascinated to hear more, but struggled to be tactful. ‘Look, I’m having a party at my place this Saturday. More a gathering of wimmin than a party. We sit around on scatter cushions, get rat-arsed putting the world to rights and return an overwhelming vote that men are a bunch of shits. Fancy it?’

  ‘Has your latest relationship gone down the plughole, then?’ sniffed Angela tactlessly.

  ‘I’ll give you chapter and verse if you come on Saturday.’

  Angela considered. ‘I like the rat-arsed bit. Can I be excused from voting on men? I don’t want to think about men for a whole night.’

  Pauline nodded. ‘I understand. Solace in the sisterhood. Bring a sleeping bag and you can crash out for the night as well.’

  Pauline only half-understood. Angela didn’t believe in the sisterhood of wronged wimmin. She believed they had a tendency to blame all their misfortunes on men, going back to the patriarchal reactionaries who’d written the creation story with that A
dam’s rib nonsense. She could just imagine the teenage Pauline haranguing a mild-mannered father with rantings about Freud and penis-envy.

  Still, right now, Pauline and her wronged wimmin offered an umbrella of sympathy to shelter under. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. It sure beat sitting at home, being sad enough to pretend that he might ring, after all, tonight. As if! He hadn’t rung now for over a week. And who else was going to phone her on a Saturday night? Not Sadie.

  Conor was staring at Angela’s number on his mobile when Kate appeared in the flat’s hallway, pearlescent in a silk kimono wrap. ‘You can’t sleep either?’ she yawned, padding on cat-like feet past him, and into the kitchen. ‘I’m going to heat up some milk. Care to join me?’

  He slipped the phone into his pocket and followed her into the kitchen. Stealing a moment of privacy to make a phone call was becoming an issue. Shane shared his bedroom, the bathroom door lacked a lock, Kate seemed to be everywhere he turned …

  She passed him a mug of hot milk, sugaring it with her smile. They sat at the small kitchen table, echoing the few months of cosiness at the start of their marriage. ‘I’ve been thinking about that dramatic little episode on the way home from the restaurant the other day, and I can see why you did it.’

  ‘That’s a start, I suppose.’

  ‘You saved my life, Conor. I’ll never be able to thank you,’ she said softly.

  Conor frowned furiously. ‘The doctors saved your life, Kattie!’

  ‘You know what I mean!’ She smiled even more sweetly. ‘You haven’t called me Kattie for years. Remember when you came to visit me after Shane was born, and you picked him up for the first time? “Oh Kattie!” you said over and over again, with manly tears running down your cheeks. You looked so sweet. Even sweeter than Shane.’

  She lit one of her wispy cigarettes, dragging in the taste with her eyes shut. She cut down her intake when Shane was around. She’d given up altogether during pregnancy, he recalled, and made the bi-monthly gesture of chucking out half-full bottles. Fair play to her for that. Shane had been a skinny rather than an underweight baby, a wizened walnut with a critical gaze that had quickly proved myopic.