The Valentine's Card

by Juliet Ashton

  ‘What’s your strategy?’ asked Reece, baffling her. ‘I mean, do you want me to introduce you around? I can get you to some key people, let them know you’re Sim’s lady. Even though he’s not here, everybody’s talking about him. He’s the biggest star at this party, which is, as we well know, just how he’d want it.’

  ‘Oh no, no, don’t introduce me to feckin’ key people!’ Orla found it funny that Reece didn’t find it funny: this was where they diverged. He was an agent to his fingertips and she was, well, she was a civilian, as Sim called non-actors. ‘Just let me prowl around incognito.’

  ‘Food,’ snarled a deep voice. Marek’s white fingers found Orla’s and tugged her up from the velvet throne. ‘There,’ he pointed to a long table obliterated by dainty nibbles and nuggets arranged on platters and stands like an edible Caravaggio, ‘I’m starving.’ He inclined his head to Reece with a curt, curiously Ruritanian nod. ‘Excuse us.’

  ‘Remember!’ called Reece, after them. ‘Midnight. Find me.’

  ‘Marek!’ Orla shook her hand free. ‘That was our host.’

  ‘He’s not my type.’

  ‘Reece has been a saint to me.’ Orla, nearing the buffet and feeling her spirits lift a little at the sight of all those carbohydrates, admitted, ‘Although, I have to say, he was chilly with you for some reason.’

  ‘Not chilly. Rude.’

  ‘OK, rude. I don’t know, perhaps, you know, Sim’s best mate and everything, he’s feeling … conflicted.’

  ‘You’re not being unfaithful. Sim isn’t here. I am,’ said Marek, a little too passionately for a man standing over a row of quiches.

  But Orla’s conscience felt differently. It told her she was being unfaithful and that love doesn’t end with a piffling thing like death. She had lost her appetite. Was she the only romantic left on earth?

  ‘It’s boiling in here. Can we just go …’ Orla looked longingly at the plate-glass extension that ran the width of the house, peeled back to reveal a purple night hanging over the garden.

  ‘Sure.’ Marek turned regretfully away from the food. ‘You know, you shouldn’t get between a Polish man and his dinner,’ he grumbled. ‘I’m very tetchy if I’m not fed regularly.’

  ‘They’re just the canapés. According to the invite there’s a hog roast. That’ll be outside, surely.’

  Marek picked up the pace, his hand on the back of her neck. Orla sped up too, to escape the hand. Its casual pressure had made her skin fizz. Outside on the stone terrace, the roast hog, with its primitive, stimulating aroma, was the belle of the ball, but Orla barely nibbled at the squashy roll Marek fetched for her.

  ‘I’ll have it – if you don’t …’ he said, hopefully.

  ‘I don’t.’ She handed it over as they settled down on a wrought iron bench a little distance from the house.

  ‘I was very surprised by your call,’ Marek despatched the pork roll in a three bites.

  ‘I needed a plus one,’ Orla said, shrugging.

  ‘All these compliments. How does my ego cope around you?’

  Checking to make sure he was joking – the pout was set to maximum – Orla thudded her palm to her forehead. ‘I’m sorry, Marek. That was so bad mannered.’

  She remembered the car journey, his jokey, This isn’t a date either, right? Orla steeled herself to tell the truth and hoped the card wasn’t listening.

  ‘I did want a plus one, but I wanted it to be you. Marek Zajak. Because …’ She was uncertain how to phrase it. ‘Because you’re kind,’ she ended lamely.

  Marek’s sooty brows descended. He looked as if she’d hit him. ‘Kind? That’s … a good thing but – kind? Is that all I am to you?’

  ‘No. I wanted to get to know you better,’ she said, all in a rush, as if confessing to murder. ‘There. God. Am I bright red?’

  ‘Like a tomato.’

  There was that transformative smile again. Marek looked so glad it made Orla smile too. The soppy delight of smiling back at a man who’s smiling at you had been forgotten during Orla’s purdah.

  ‘I think we are a good fit.’ Marek said this so quietly that she had to draw her head nearer to his to hear.

  ‘Are we?’ She could only be evasive and non-committal. Orla was a fiancée manquée and one of the things that drew Marek to her, she knew, was how seriously she took such commitments.

  ‘Yes, we are.’ Marek seemed sure about their fit and its goodness.

  The hubbub receded. The night air made the tiny hairs on Orla’s arms prickle. She touched her throat, where a pulse leapt. Marek kept his eyes on hers.

  A woman passing on silver platforms stumbled in the grass and gate-crashed their bubble, apologising as she nudged Orla’s hand and spilled her wine.

  ‘Sorry, oh look at you, I’m such a—’ Anthea’s solicitous babble ceased when she recognised Orla. ‘Good god,’ she said, ‘the little colleen.’

  The actress wore a turquoise scarf tied as a headband and Orla had time to think two disparate thoughts concurrently – A headband? Jaysus! and She looks amazing – as she said, ‘Hi, Ant.’ The nickname came out tentatively and Orla immediately felt a fool.

  ‘You look lovely,’ said Anthea. ‘And who’s this handsome creature?’ She held out a hand to Marek, who shook it firmly, and dropped it decisively. ‘You don’t hang about, you dark horse,’ she said, admiringly, to Orla.

  ‘What?’ Orla flinched.

  ‘Nothing, nothing, please don’t take fright and bolt like a wounded deer.’ Ant tapped Orla’s chin with a fan. (A fan! thought Orla. A feckin’ headscarf and a feckin’ fan. And still she looks better than me.) ‘I didn’t expect to see you here. You’re much too wholesome and Oirish for Reece’s annual debauch. I assumed it was client list only.’

  ‘Well, I guess, because of Sim …’ Orla tailed off. She felt her cheeks burn. She was Irish, not Oirish, but she couldn’t protest; Anthea’s celebrity had such force that it left her thwarted and powerless.

  Not so Marek. ‘Do you work in Reece’s office?’ he asked, very, very politely.

  Anthea treated Marek to a glare Orla recognised from her mid-eighties biopic of Elizabeth I.

  ‘No?’ Marek pressed. ‘Then are you perhaps his moth—’

  ‘Do tell me you’ve brought the famous valentine’s card!’ Anthea barged across Marek’s question.

  ‘Famous?’ Somebody had turned up the volume of the speakers in the trees and the lanterns flared. ‘Did Reece tell you about it?’

  ‘Yes and I disapprove wholeheartedly.’ Anthea leaned in, sombre suddenly, her breath perfumed with gin. ‘Are you trying to keep the poor bastard alive? Let him rest!’ She swayed. ‘We all loved him,’ she said, blinking rapidly, ‘he was lovable. Lovely lovely Sim. So easy to love.’

  The tribute sounded like an insult, the way Anthea said it. She looked up at Marek, who stood as straight and tense as a soldier. ‘Did you know your little girlfriend talks to an envelope?’

  ‘Orla is not my little girlfriend.’ Marek had leeched every ounce of good humour out of his face. ‘She can talk to a toilet seat if she wants to.’

  Anthea ignored him, turned back to Orla. ‘Give it to me, darling, and I’ll tear it up for you.’

  ‘No. Really.’ Orla took a step back from this whirlwind of offence.

  ‘Is it in there?’ Anthea eyed the beaded bag.

  ‘Look, it’s – can we just drop the subject?’ Orla heard herself jabbering. In her mind’s eye she saw herself punch Anthea – a cartoon kerpow! that would launch the actress into the koi pond – but ingrained good manners and a peculiar fear of what might come out of Anthea’s mouth next kept her polite.

  ‘You’re absolutely right, none of my business.’ Anthea shook her head and the scarf’s tassels danced. ‘But you’re a fool, Oirish, if you read that thing. And Reece? Well, the man’s a fucking vulture and I shall tell him so. Now. Where was I?’

  She looked about her, then broke into a vivacious grin, waving her hand high and giddily in the air. ‘
There’s the controller of BBC2. I must rescue him from that dreary bint.’

  ‘What a witch,’ said Marek with feeling when she was out of earshot.

  ‘She’s tipsy.’ Why she defended her, Orla couldn’t say.

  Marek said nothing.

  ‘More grub?’ suggested Orla.

  ‘She interrupted us. We were talking about—’

  ‘Loo!’ interrupted Orla brightly.

  With a sigh, Marek accepted the glass Orla pressed on him. ‘OK. You don’t want to talk about us. I get it. Go. I’ll wait here.’

  Inside, a small door in the panelling gave on to a spacious room papered in toile de jouy, impossibly pretty, with a mirror so cunningly lit that it doubled as a time machine and offered Orla an airbrushed vision of herself ten years ago.

  Closing the toilet lid, Orla sat down heavily. She took the valentine out from her bag.

  There was chatter outside the door, the jangling laughter of women on their umpteenth spritzer. A tentative knock. A giggle.

  Orla held the valentine in front of her face. ‘Tonight isn’t the end. We can’t have an end, you know that, Sim, don’t you?’

  A vision of Sim scuttled crab-like under her defences. Carrion, with earth pressing down on empty eye-sockets. Orla whined and squeezed her eyes shut, holding her stomach as if about to vomit.

  ‘You all right in there?’ An estuary accent more intrigued than concerned.

  ‘Fine. Won’t be long.’ Orla held the valentine to her cheek, swooning with need, wishing it were warm and real. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, a woman canoodling an envelope on a toilet.

  This, she thought, is the shore that grief washes you up on.

  Orla peeled the valentine from her cheek, confronted it.

  ‘Listen, we have to talk about Marek. I know you think I fancy him. Well, I do.’ Orla cleared her throat. ‘But it’s not just about that. Marek’s a good person. Strong. He allows things to have meaning. I feel he might honour what we had. Oh God, Sim, I’m getting hopelessly wanky here. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?’

  Lately it took more effort to conjure up the valentine’s retorts. The card was quiet. Sullen perhaps, even disapproving: just a piece of paper, she thought with terrible clarity. Orla worked her finger under the flap at one end of the envelope and pushed it across. The edge was ragged now, like a wound.

  ‘Excuse me? Hello?’ It was a different voice this time. Male. The estuary girls had fetched help. ‘Is everything OK?’

  Before the disembodied voice got any closer, Orla stuffed the card back into her bag, unlocked the door and pushed through the little crowd on the other side of it. On the far side of the room she saw Marek stepping in from the garden. Orla took a pace towards him, then paused and observed.

  He fitted right in. His tuxedo was as black as his hair and as elegant, its cut emphasizing the emphatically male proportions of his shoulders and the length of his legs. Yet his mascu linity wasn’t bullish: there was a grace to Marek that was all of a piece with his colouring. He’s a panther, thought Orla, surprising herself with such a simile at a time like this, and he’s perfectly at home here, just like he’s perfectly at home in Maude’s Books or a café that smells of cabbage.

  The girl talking to him was familiar. Hair a paint-box red, breasts surely not as God made them, she was a soap opera stalwart. She was laughing immoderately, and Marek was grinning back.

  Orla felt jealous. She didn’t like that, stowed it discreetly away. After her insistence that this wasn’t a date, it was absurd to be possessive. All the same, she thought, squaring her shoulders, I’ll see off that pile of fillers and botox.

  ‘There you are.’ Reece put a hand on her arm before she could move. ‘It’s been an hour. Are you standing me up?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ Orla lifted her chin. ‘I’m ready.’

  The phrase landed between them.

  ‘I didn’t think I’d ever hear you say that.’

  ‘You’re not the only one.’ Orla took a deep breath. ‘Let’s do this, Reece, before I change my mind.’ She let Reece take her hand but dug her heels in as he dragged her away. ‘Hold on. Marek.’ She pointed at him. God, he was laughing loudly with that girl. What was so feckin’ funny?

  ‘No. Never mind old Dracula. We’ll do this together.’

  ‘Don’t call him that.’

  Reece, shouldering through the crowds, ducking from puckered lips and outstretched hands, didn’t catch her tone, and laughed.

  ‘Really, don’t.’ She wasn’t Oirish and Marek wasn’t Dracula.

  ‘Through here.’

  A heavy door swung shut behind them and the party was on mute. The walls of the darkened room shivered as if they were alive, abstract blue ribbons snaking up and down them.

  ‘I’ve made this off limits after Sim’s party piece last year.’ Reece led her along the side of the pool, through the pearly blue in the gloaming, past ferns and grasses in pots, to a small round table with two café-style chairs. ‘Sit, darling. Gather yourself.’

  The air was sticky and tropical, cut with the discordant tang of chlorine.

  ‘Let’s see it,’ said Reece.

  Fumbling in the bag beneath the table, Orla was conflicted at this eleventh hour. A surge of certainty galvanised her into a decision and she put the envelope on the table. ‘There.’

  Reece bent down and took a ceramic plate from beneath a potted plant with fat succulent leaves. ‘This’ll do,’ he said.

  Inert, sitting back, Orla was grateful for his forward motion. She was tired of the endless advice about the valentine, weary of sifting through muddy motives and loaded comments. She sat up again when Reece produced a lighter. Platinum and yellow gold, it was very slim, very Reece.

  ‘Put the card in the saucer,’ said Reece.

  Doing as she was told, Orla put the pink envelope on the plate. She nodded to Reece and he lowered the lighter until the flame lapped at one corner. They watched, their faces golden, as the blaze drew a black swath across the pink. Ash drifted on the drugged air.

  ‘It’s done.’ Reece’s face was bluish again as the tiny bonfire subsided. He was whispering, as though they were in church. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure. Thank you. For being with me.’

  Reece’s face looked full, as if crammed with feeling. ‘This is such a relief. I don’t want you to go under, Orla. Sim really loved you, you know,’ he said, with a downward inflection.

  ‘I know he did.’ Orla allowed the past tense to sit, uncorrected. ‘D’you know what, I think I’ll go now. I’m whacked.’

  ‘Of course.’ Reece stood, took her hand unselfconsciously as if she were a child. ‘Did you find Ant?’ he asked.

  ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

  ‘Why so?’ Reece stopped, his face alert in the glitter-ball shimmer of the pool.

  ‘She was odd. Kind of aggressive. I thought I liked her but tonight she was, well, she was bitchy, actually. No other word for it.’

  ‘It’s not you.’ Reece seemed keen to impress this on Orla. ‘It’s fashionable to have demons these days and Ant has more than most. She drinks a little too much, partakes of Columbian marching powder a little too much. And she doesn’t get enough love, if you want my opinion. Ignore her, really. Just ignore her.’

  ‘There are bigger things going on in my head, to be honest.’

  ‘Good. Stay away from Ant. She’s not your type.’ Reece opened the door back to Narnia. ‘Wait outside with Dracula and a car will whisk you off to the hotel just up the road. Separate rooms, as sternly requested.’

  ‘Why do you call him Dracula?’ Orla had spotted Marek’s dark head among the mob and, as if he’d felt her gaze alight on him, he’d turned and was making his way over.

  ‘Just a nickname. You know, he’s pale and intense, with that rumbling Transylvanian kind of voice.’ Reece saw Orla’s expression, looked chastened. ‘Sorry. I’m still a public school boy at
heart.’

  ‘You look washed out,’ said Marek, before he even reached her. ‘Are you all right?’ He put a hand to her brow, an oddly mammy-ish gesture from a tall dark handsome man in a dinner jacket.

  ‘I’m fabulous,’ smiled Orla, taking his arm. She telescoped out, saw a fetching couple, the woman casually taking the man’s arm. ‘Thank you again,’ she said to Reece, ‘for having me.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The view was, deservedly, the hotel’s pride and joy.

  Slowly, shyly, an untidy line of trees had emerged in the deep trench of the valley as the night drained away. After some hours in the cane lounger, bundled up in a hotel dressing gown, Orla was as familiar with the trees’ outline as she was with the view from her Tobercree bedroom.

  The veranda served the back of the inn, a communal space on to which all the ground floor rooms opened. The adjacent pair of French windows were Marek’s. The light around the edges of his curtains had clicked off about 2 a.m. An invisible thread between the figure in the lounger and the doors, until then quite tense, had slackened.

  The purplish mist was dissipating: today would be bright and clear.

  They hadn’t spoken on the ride to the hotel, looking obdurately out of opposite windows as the taxi bumped over potholes. Her hand had lain curled on the seat beside her and Marek had put his hand on top of it, gently, like the mist landing on the trees. Orla remembered looking down at the strong fingers, the splash of dark hair on milky skin, the blue slender ropes of veins over finger bones.

  The air in the cab had become denser as she sensed him playing chicken with her, waiting to see whether she would pull away. Or not. Orla had chosen to leave her hand beneath Marek’s, drawing comfort from it, feeling safe the way she’d used to when her father took her little paw in his bigger one on the way to Mass, letting her know she was his favourite.

  The other hand, however, she’d kept on the valentine.

  It had been easy enough. She had already opened the envelope, so when she realised at the party, with absolute clarity, that she did want to read the card – and she wanted to read it alone – she had simply removed it from its pink carcass under the table. Only the trappings had gone up in flames.