The Valentine's Card

by Juliet Ashton

  *

  The Madonna and Child on quality paper was by far the most tasteful of Orla’s crop. She stood the card from Reece beside Ma’s garish blue-eyed, blond-bearded Christ, along from Juno’s naked Santa, and the handmade pop-up cracker from Niamh. On second thoughts, she moved Reece’s card in front of her brother Hugh’s traditional family photo shoot: the sight of that many braces and glasses and fat knees was un-festive.

  ‘Happy Christmas from all at Reece Dodds Artists,’ read the printed message. He’d added a personal scribble. I hope all is well. I’m here if you need me.

  Orla took a moment to digest that. In her place, Juno would toss the card away, choosing to read the innocuous words as both manipulative and condescending, but Orla had a more complex reaction to Reece, which was hard to pick apart.

  This didn’t translate into wanting to speak to him. For now, she was happy to keep him at arm’s length. She spotted a smaller, more untidy and less legible P.S. in the corner.

  I’ve got a present for you. Hope that’s OK. I’ll be away over the festive season (thank goodness) so I’ll be in touch after New Year. X

  Orla made a mental note to send him a card in return.

  Tinsel dripped drunkenly from the classroom’s centre light. Some of her students had already flown home before this, the last day of term. Orla sympathised when Abena burst into tears because she wouldn’t be tasting the Christmas barbecued goat this year, and invited her to Ladbroke Grove.

  ‘You are kind, but I am going to Sanae’s house. I will cry a lot but she says she does not mind.’

  Japanese Christmas cake sounded nicer than the dense aromatic leviathan that glowered annually on Ma’s sideboard: according to Sanae it was white sponge mounded with strawberries and cream. When Natalya spoke nostalgically about Poland, Orla visualised the twelve courses she described, the candles in a dark room evoking the star of Bethlehem, emphasising the mystical, symbolic aspect of the meal. A little heavy on the herrings for Orla’s palate: she was relieved that Marek had opted to go British with his menu.

  ‘I know what Marek buys you for Christmas,’ said Bogna in a sing-song, wouldn’t you like to know manner.

  ‘And I’ll know too when I open it on Christmas Day.’ Orla was not a peeker; she’d never joined Deirdre in the traditional pre-Christmas rummage at the bottom of her parents’ wardrobe. She preferred to wait patiently and relish the anticipation. She also ate her greens first and always said ‘thank you’: if Orla was a friend of hers she’d get on her nerves.

  It was the last Saturday before Christmas and the three Maude’s Books musketeers stood around, ready and waiting for the Christmas rush Maude had prophesied.

  ‘See?’ said the proprietor, proudly, when a man came in and purchased a Peter Rabbit anthology, closely followed by an elderly lady who bought all three of their Barbara Cartlands. ‘Told you so.’

  ‘Look!’ Bogna pointed into the foggy street. ‘George.’

  Hurrying by, George tipped his hat at the brightly lit shop, his gesture landing on no woman in particular.

  ‘Why does he not enter any more?’ Bogna scowled at his receding back. ‘Silly old fart.’

  ‘I scared him off. It’s my fault, not George’s.’ Maude watched him too. ‘Don’t call him a fart, dear.’

  ‘He is fart, though,’ insisted Bogna.

  Silently, Orla agreed.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Her tiny flat felt crammed, as if there were hundreds of people in it, even though there was just the four of them.

  With the decadence of pre-revolution Russian aristocracy, they drank champagne at breakfast time. Christmas’s magnifying glass made everything bigger, shinier, sparklier. There was food on every surface, a glass in every hand and the air was charged with bubbling good humour.

  Singing along to carols on the radio in his touchingly out of tune baritone, Marek wore a clean white apron over his chocolate cashmere jumper. Even in an apron, Marek looked dashing, as if about to leap on a horse and gallop to a duel. Perhaps it was the hair. Orla was a little over-keen on Marek’s hair, to the point of envy. It flopped just so, whereas hers flopped just wrong.

  When he and Orla met each other’s eye, they shared a sense of excitement that wasn’t to do with the packages under the tiny tree.

  This day was a step forward. The feeling Orla had in the National Gallery – that she was officially older now, more mature, more useful – had lingered. Marek, laughing his deep joyous laugh at one of Maude’s absurd tales, brought out something fresh in her, a depth of character she’d never utilised in a relationship before. They’d gone up a gear.

  There was no way to entertain that happy thought without remembering the one woeful failing that threatened to blot out all her virtues. With Sim, he’d been the problem. Orla had been the eye-roller, the tutter, the forgiver as he carried on being profligate, indolent, star struck, vain and, naturally, adorable. Now it was Orla’s turn to be the problem partner and the role chafed.

  Particularly as Marek was unaware of the problem. She passed him, and he paused his endless whisking, beating, dicing and cursing to grab her for a bear hug, nipping at her ear. Her scream delighted him.

  In a raspberry cardigan with swooping sleeves, Maude tweaked the table endlessly, primping the napkins, turning the silver candelabra she’d dug out to its best advantage, placing a mini poinsettia at each place setting. The pops of scarlet burned against the starched white linen cloth, ironed, incredibly, by Bogna the night before.

  Vocal about her dismay at the choice of venue, Bogna had threatened to boycott lunch unless it was at the mews. ‘Why squeeze us in crappy flat when you have fuck-off house?’ had been her reasonable question.

  Marek’s reply – ‘We’re eating at Orla’s’ – was so final that even Bogna’s prodigious belligerence wouldn’t tackle it. Orla had only told him about Maude’s agoraphobia because of the impossibility of taking her out on Christmas Day; he’d immediately begun to plot the logistics of cooking a three-course turkey lunch in such an abbreviated kitchen.

  ‘Christmas in Poland is about eating together, or visiting. It’s about family, and friends, and your neighbours,’ Marek said as he stirred the gravy, sexily. (Orla had discovered that the simple application of an apron made Marek’s every move sexy. He had peeled potatoes in an erotic fashion earlier, and she could hardly wait to see how he boiled carrots.) ‘We don’t place such emphasis on gifts as English people – and yes, Orla, yes, Irish people, I don’t need another lecture about the war of independence.’

  Bogna, feet up on the sofa while the others toiled, shouted through, ‘Ha! You scare her, Marek! Now she worries your present is rubbish.’ She downed her drink. ‘Champagne!’ she shouted.

  Marek took a deep breath in.

  Sexily.

  ‘Counting to ten?’ asked Orla.

  ‘A hundred,’ said Marek.

  ‘Happy Christmas Ma!’

  ‘And you, musha, and you.’

  ‘Did you like the place mats?’

  ‘Oh, you know me for place mats! They’re stunning! But you shouldn’t be wasting your money on me, Orla.’

  ‘I can hear everybody. Are they all OK?’

  ‘Sure, they’re grand. Although Deirdre has a migraine. She’s in me bed. She’ll force down a little turkey later, she says.’

  ‘Will you kiss the kids for me?’

  ‘I will. They’re all playing with their presents. It’s a mad-house. Is Mark there?’

  ‘No, because he doesn’t exist. Marek’s here, though.’

  ‘Feck off. I’m too old to be learning foreign names. Say merry Christmas for me.’

  ‘Mum, gotta run. Sheraz just came in.’

  ‘Sher-who?’

  After a brief chat and a ticking off for leaving his son at home at Christmas (‘He’s fine! He’s stock-taking!’), Sheraz left and the action sped up.

  Pots belched steam, the oven yawned like a hell-mouth, Maude lit the candles and Marek bade them sit
.

  The feast was ready.

  At Marek’s request, they all held hands. He said a short grace in Polish. Before he let go of Orla’s hand he squeezed her fingers, and she felt a perfect peace soon chased away by the clatter of cutlery, the handing round of sauce boats, the wordless exclamations of pleasure as all four of them fell on the food.

  How different the table looked at the end of the meal. From a glamorous still life to a boneyard of crumbs and napkins and a toppled glass, it was a testament to the meal.

  ‘My compliments to the chef,’ said Maude, sitting back, exhausted and dabbing her lips with a napkin.

  ‘To the chef!’ Orla lifted her glass and threw some wine on her own face. Classy, she giggled to herself as Marek dabbed it off. She was tipsy, and liking it, her body languid and her mind taking a day off from its hamster wheel.

  The journal was missing – that’s how it felt, even though she’d never owned it – but for today, at this candlelit oasis, she could bear it. She could put off the scheming until tomorrow. She could even feel confident that one day she would own it: a feeling that was elusive at best.

  The silver Tiffany bangle jangled at her wrist. ‘Bloody handcuff,’ Bogna had said. Orla liked the gentle heaviness of it, the way it circled her wrist but didn’t grab. ‘Thank you for my pressie,’ she said, leaning in to Marek’s shoulder.

  ‘You said that already. A few times.’ Marek had looked tense as she’d opened it, only smiling when she screamed, ‘Tiffany! Feckin’ Tiffany!’

  ‘A man who’s good at gifts,’ Maude murmured approvingly, sipping her coffee. ‘Unusual. Worth hanging on to.’

  ‘Next year, Maude, I’ll get a little something from Tiffany for you as well,’ said Marek.

  Next year.

  Orla shut her eyes as Marek and Maude chatted. He was perfectly at home with Maude: he’d grown up around his grandparents, he told Orla, and appreciated an older person’s perspective. His deep rumble and her silvery rise and fall were like a lullaby.

  Bogna’s return from the bathroom, in full magnificent warpaint and wearing a dress composed mainly of holes, broke the mood. ‘I told you,’ she began combatively, ‘I go to meet gang.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ said Marek, calmly. The sort of calm that seaside towns experience before a gale destroys the pier. ‘In fact, you promised you’d stay all day.’ He was concentrating on her face, Orla could tell, trying to ignore the outfit.

  ‘For god’s sake!’ Bogna was unselfconscious about her tantrums. She threw her head back and sagged at the knees, her whole body telling Marek just how boring, bossy and old she found him. ‘It’s Christmas. I don’t want to be here. No offence, Maudie.’

  ‘None taken,’ said Maude equably. She enjoyed Bogna’s displays.

  ‘Bogna!’ began Marek, before snapping his mouth shut. Orla had squeezed his knee under the table. ‘I insist that …’ She squeezed a little higher.

  ‘Bogna just wants to be with her friends,’ she said.

  ‘Well …’

  ‘You are young one day. Remember that day?’ asked Bogna, her head wobbling archly.

  ‘I remember it well. I was at work that day,’ said Marek. ‘I was helping to bring you up that day.’ Another squeeze of his thigh, and a change of tone. ‘Oh, go, you monkey. But don’t get too trashed, please. I like you all in one piece.’

  Bogna swooped and kissed his head, almost laughing out her gum at his surprise. ‘Happy Christmas, stupid brother. And you,’ she nodded at Orla. ‘Marry him, please.’

  As the door banged behind her, Maude looked on Orla’s ketchup features with fond humour. ‘Subtle as a wrecking ball, that one. Now. Let’s start on the clearing up.’

  Sly old fox, her offer was made with transparent disingenuousness. She knew Orla would refuse all offers of help. ‘You don’t know where anything goes, I’ll be quicker doing it on my own,’ she flapped, echoing Ma. Despatching Maude to her flat for a lie-down, and Marek off to the shower, Orla set about the pots and pans, impressed with how speedily she could wash up when sex with Marek was on the cards.

  The bedroom smelled of her favourite mimosa bath gel. ‘That was a quick shower,’ she said approvingly, kicking off her shoes. Marek lay across her bed, laptop open in front of him. Even in her sugar pink towelling dressing gown he was desirable and she felt a sucker punch of desire.

  ‘What are you …’ She guessed halfway through the sentence and the sherbet sweetness of the tableau soured. ‘… looking at?’

  Marek spun the laptop so she could see the screen. ANT FACTS, it proclaimed boldly at the top of a spreadsheet.

  Orla saw her own words, raw and dumb in the tender lamplight. ANT CALENDAR, she read, above a font that looked, through tears, like dancing gnats, but which she knew to be a list of Ant’s public appearances and some private ones. ANTSITES was a bullet-pointed index of web pages.

  But SPOTTED was the worst. It was a list, only two-strong but damning, of the vigils she’d kept outside Anthea’s house, the most recent only nine days earlier.

  Marek regarded her patiently.

  A defence along the lines of that’s private was possible but, Orla knew, pathetic. She remembered now that she’d left it open on the bed, almost daring the truth about her stinky pastime to emerge. Sinking into the wicker chair she aimed her clothes at when undressing for bed, Orla said limply, ‘So now you know.’

  ‘Why?’ Marek pushed out the word and stood up. ‘I had no idea. You kept all this,’ he gestured at the computer, ‘from me. How many lies have you told me?’

  ‘No important ones.’ There was a whine in Orla’s voice she didn’t much like and tried to iron out. ‘This is the only thing I’ve been dishonest about. Because I’m ashamed.’

  Marek snorted, like a horse. He looked down at himself, noticed the embroidered pink towelling and tore off the dressing gown as if was dusted with itching powder.

  Orla averted her eyes; she didn’t feel entitled to look at his body, the body she’d craved all afternoon. ‘Sorry.’ She wished the word had more syllables, so it would sound weightier as he crossly tugged on his jeans and forced his head through the neck of his jumper.

  ‘Sorry enough to stop?’

  This was no time for fobbing him off. ‘I have a problem, Marek.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ His face was alive with energy, his eyes black and bright. He looked healthy and she could feel him slipping away, leaving her to her disease.

  Orla stood, urgent now, to match his demeanour. ‘Try and understand. Watching Anthea—’

  ‘Stalking Anthea,’ said Marek crisply. ‘The word for what you do is stalking.’

  ‘No, it’s …’ Orla stumbled on the term, so long held at bay. It was an ugly word, dull and knobbly. ‘I stalk,’ she said wonderingly.

  Marek’s brusque assessment triggered an epiphany. She saw herself, in an unflattering flash of light, through his eyes. Her rational plan to win the journal was anything but.

  ‘Listen,’ Orla fanned her face, hot with the realisation of her own lunacy, and the repercussions it might soon have, ‘I don’t want to stalk her and I don’t want to keep secrets from you, but …’ another word she tried to avoid barrelled towards her, ‘it’s an addiction,’ she ended quietly. No use to deny the dark buzz that standing outside Anthea’s house gave her, even while it corroded her self-respect. She had something in common, it would seem, with junkies and alcoholics, with the flat-nosed wino singing up a Christmas Day storm in Sheraz’s doorway.

  ‘What do you get out of it?’ Marek was tying his shoelaces, sitting on the very edge of the bed.

  ‘In a way,’ began Orla, knowing how this would sound, but unable to phrase it any other way, ‘I’m doing it for us.’

  Another snort, as if almost amused. ‘Run that by me again,’ said Marek. ‘For us?’ His eyebrows were invisible, somewhere up in his tousled, damp hair.

  ‘Look, I know you hate to hear his name but Sim was—’

  Marek held up his hand and int
errupted. ‘You’re wrong. I don’t hate to hear his name. I am not such a monster of arrogance that I need you to forget him. It’s the way I hear his name. The way he comes between us.’

  He nodded; he was done; she could carry on.

  ‘OK, well, whatever.’ The nod had brought out Orla’s inner Bogna. ‘This year has been so, so awful, Marek. And I can’t get over Sim in a linear way. From the outside it must look messy, but I’ve been doing my best. I loved him, after all. I just need one detail tidied, put to rest. I need the journal. I need it.’ She banged her chest. ‘It will fix me.’

  Marek winced. ‘Fix you?’

  ‘Since reading the valentine, I’m broken,’ said Orla, sorry for herself, and for him: under his silverback blather she discerned his confusion. And hurt. ‘The journal will sort me out. If I can read – just once – about what really happened, get my head around it, stop feeling as if I’m unloveable, monstrous.’

  ‘Moje ztotko.’ Marek stood and took a step towards her, his eyelids heavy with compassion. He stopped short of touching her.

  Orla cursed the two feet of carpet between them.

  ‘If it’s about the journal,’ he said slowly, ‘why hang about outside Anthea Blake’s house? Why not walk up to her and ask for it?’

  ‘I will, I will.’ Orla shook with the need to impart this. ‘I haven’t because, well, I just couldn’t but I will.’

  ‘OK.’ Marek snatched up her phone. ‘Call her and ask.’

  ‘On Christmas Day?’

  ‘On Christmas Day.’

  ‘I don’t have her number.’

  ‘Reece will have it.’

  ‘He won’t give it to me.’

  ‘He’ll damn well give it to me,’ said Marek, with certainty. ‘Go on. Call. And this all ends. And you and I are fine, like you say.’

  He was offering her a way out, a resolution.

  A thought surfaced and waved: if she’d shared this with Marek earlier he’d have smoothed out her thinking, applied logic and muscle. This conversation would not be happening and she’d have read the ill-fated journal by now.