The Valentine's Card

by Juliet Ashton

  ‘After this he is in better mood. As if he vomit you up and is over you.’

  Reappearing with a rattling tray of mugs, Maude was brisk. ‘Nobody could get over our precious Orla that easily. And Bogna, dear, take care with your metaphors.’

  ‘Tell him,’ said Orla carefully, ‘I said hello.’

  ‘No,’ said Bogna.

  Wet socks squelching, a demarcation line of damp mid-way up her jeans, Orla hobbled upstairs with her mug.

  She’d been waiting for Marek to make his move, but he’d made it long ago. More than once.

  The bathroom filled with steam, all the better to obliterate the stupid woman in the mirror as Orla ran a bath that was slightly too hot.

  Marek had made all the moves in their relationship.

  *

  ‘I’ve no Skype on the computer – Himself kept the snazzy one – so I’ll describe the new flat to you.’

  ‘Are you moved in already? I didn’t send you a card.’

  ‘No matter. Yes, as of the twenty-first January, 2013, I live at fourteen Zelda House, Sweeney Avenue. And I love it, Orla! I can’t stop jumping up and down in the sitting room.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘You know the block I’m talking about? The new build, yeah? We’re on the third floor. As I look around I see magnolia paint, Orla, a lot of magnolia paint. And it’s got that new-carpet smell. The communal hall has a bike in it which me and Jack always fall over. Hideous kitchen. And it’s small. Small, small, small.’

  ‘You and small don’t really go. Your old en suite was big enough to host a bar mitzvah.’

  ‘This whole flat could fit in there. It’s plenty big enough for me and the little fella. And listen – I’m going back to work!’

  ‘Come off it!’

  ‘I swear to God. I woke up one morning, rang my old boss, you know, the randy little sod with the wig, and hey presto, I’ve got three days a week.’

  ‘But you hated work.’

  ‘You and your elephant’s memory. I’m not going overboard, just the three days and Himself is paying for a childminder.’

  ‘How is Himself?’

  ‘It hasn’t hit him yet. He thinks I’m playacting at being independent. He’s humouring me, you know? Hoping I’ll come to my senses.’

  ‘I know what it’s like to live in hope. Be kind to him, Ju. He’ll be confident one day and then gibbering the next, in case all his hopes are false.’

  ‘Is that what you’re going through? Marek is coming back. I can feel it.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s been too long. Things have changed.’

  ‘D’you know what? These conversations belong to our teens. We don’t need men, Orla Cassidy. We’re strong independent women. Feck ’em.’

  ‘I agree, we don’t need men. But I want that man.’

  ‘Oh Orla, you poor thing. This is like when Sim died, when you—’

  ‘No, Ju. It’s nothing like when Sim died.’

  ‘OK. Sorry. Oops. Stepped on a corn there in me size eights.’

  ‘Has Rob stopped pestering you?’

  ‘Yes. At last. He’s in bits. I’m toxic, truly I am. I never should have encouraged him. It fed my ego, that’s all. And now I look back at the wedding, our house, all the Bang and Olufsen and the architect-designed conservatory and I think yuk! I’m ashamed, genuinely ashamed that I thought those things were important.’

  ‘Don’t be too ashamed.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not. You know me. I felt ashamed for half an afternoon and now I’m over it. But I should have been honest with Himself. We weren’t on the same page. He was in it for love and now he’s hurting.’

  ‘D’you know, you could be Sim talking about me!’

  ‘God, yes. Oh, yuk again. I don’t want to be like Sim.’

  ‘Well, you’re not any more. Sim didn’t live long enough to evolve. With a few more years perhaps he would have grown out of that feeling that there’s a better party somewhere else and he had to find it.’

  ‘Poor Sim.’

  ‘Yeah. Poor Sim.’

  Two weeks to go and cardboard hearts crowded shop windows.

  For anybody close to Sim, Saint Valentine’s Day was a grim anniversary, its significance at odds with flowers and bonbons.

  For Orla, besides being an anniversary of his death, the fourteenth of February marked four years since they’d met, and the end of a year unlike any other, one in which she and Sim had gone through more drama with one of them dead than they had while both were alive.

  After twelve months of change and revelation, Orla was in negative emotional equity: she’d found Marek and lost him again. The clean efficiency of her cackhandedness was impressive.

  There was shelter to be found in daydreams. On the tube, she’d loll in her seat and plan their perfect Valentine’s Day, the one they’d be looking forward to if she’d made the right choice at Christmas.

  She’d cook: he’d appreciate it, manfully finish his plate, but be candid in his summing up. She’d buy him something small, elegant, definitely nothing ‘themed’ – no teddy holding a polysatin heart for Orla and Marek.

  ‘Even you, Orochi?’ All the students, even Orochi who was infamous for his excuses, handed in their work on time.

  ‘I like this exercise,’ he said, his straight brows serious and beetle black. ‘I am in love.’

  ‘Aw.’ Orla smiled benevolently. She’d asked the class to write a love letter: it was impossible to completely ignore Saint Valentine. ‘I never realised how romantic you all are.’ For Orla, this day was as much about gravestones as it was about roses.

  I can change that. The thought let itself in without knocking. It didn’t even wipe its feet. And once in, it made itself at home.

  She was waiting, passive as a damsel imprisoned in a tower, for Marek to declare himself, to gallop over the horizon on a white charger.

  What’s with the passivity? There was no history of inertia in Cassidy women; if Cassidy men could get a word in, they’d dolefully confirm this. Orla had always been a do-er, a practically minded person who got on with it, whatever ‘it’ might be.

  Sitting on the radiator, pretending to listen to Abena’s letter, Orla experienced something that Pilates had promised but never delivered. She felt taller.

  She was done with waiting around. Where had it got her? She’d sat back like a geisha when Sim had trashed her Christmas and New Year when she should have had it out with him. She’d kept her head down around Lucy Quinn in case she let slip with a Jaysus or a feck when she should have been the red-blooded Irishwoman her parents had brought her up to be. And now she was hanging around like a schoolgirl waiting for Marek to come find her.

  Why should he?

  How could Marek trust her with his emotional well-being? He didn’t even know that she loved him. He didn’t know that she saw through the sophisticated exterior to the vulnerabilities beneath. He didn’t know that she wanted to protect him, just as he’d tried to protect her.

  A road forked ahead of her. By taking the correct path, Orla could leave behind a lot of burdensome baggage.

  ‘Please, are you listening?’ Abena was affronted.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You don’t look like you are listening. You look like you are making evil plot.’

  ‘Please carry on, Abena.’

  Abena’s letter, to a man who owned a garage back home, was long, filthy and ended with her promise to ‘bear many children and keep the house clean’.

  ‘But you want to be a teacher when you go back!’ Orla was dismayed at the collapse of Abena’s feminism in the face of love.

  ‘I do not tell him this,’ said Abena, a guarded look on her face. ‘He will find this out when he marries me and it is too late!’ She cackled, all her chins bouncing, and the room cackled with her. Being loved by Abena would be like standing in the blast of a jet engine, thought Orla. She rather envied, and rather pitied, the garage owner.

  Listening to the declarations of love from her p
upils, Orla scribbled one of her own on her notepad.

  Dear Sim, I forgive you, love Fairy x

  Hale and hearty, Maude switched roles and became the nurse, watching her patient for symptoms. ‘We’re a week away from you know what, dear,’ she said as the two of them shared a horrible cake that Sheraz had thrown in free with the weekly delivery. ‘How should we spend it? It’s horribly sarcastic, marking an anniversary of a death on a day when the whole world is celebrating love.’

  ‘I have something I must do,’ said Orla. ‘Something …’ She looked for understanding from Maude. ‘Something private.’

  ‘Very well.’ Maude patted her hand. Orla loved the papery feel of her skin. ‘I’m here if you need me.’

  ‘Thanks, Maudie.’ Orla knew that Maude had stepped in and shut down Bogna’s planned Valentine’s Day window display: she’d seen the tissue paper hearts in the bin. ‘I’m going to mark the day in my own way.’

  Sim’s journal

  14 February 2012

  5 a.m.

  Saint Valentine, you soppy bastard, I need all the help you can give me.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Pre-dawn, lamps lit against the mauve dregs of the night, the flat felt special, like a house on the day of a wedding. The sugar-coated valentine hysteria beyond the front door was not responsible for this electricity: it was of Orla’s making; it was bespoke. She was nervous, exhilarated and quite terrified.

  Click. Off went the radio. The avalanche of gooey requests she could withstand but a proposal of marriage via the good offices of the idiot DJ was too much.

  At times like this, Orla wished she smoked. Her hands needed something to do. She’d risen far too early, because the occasion had seemed to demand it, but now she prowled her abbreviated set of rooms, wondering where she’d be and how she’d feel by the time the next dawn rolled around.

  London roused itself and hit its stride, oblivious of her agitation. The tops of the buses that passed Orla’s windows went from empty to half full to sardine tin. Motorbikes whined. The crossing signal cheeped. The drunk – still there, still drunk – sang.

  And the doorbell rang.

  Orla took the stairs slowly and pulled open the door. She’d never seen that many red roses in one place before. They bristled slightly, then moved to one side to reveal the smiling man holding them.

  His smile drooped. ‘Oh. I thought it would be—’

  ‘Maude? Come in, George.’ Orla stepped back and the man–bush hybrid bustled past her. ‘This is a surprise.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking. I’m a silly old fool.’

  ‘No, it was a natural response,’ said Orla. This was the stuff of Valentine’s Day, not an email to Radio 2 requesting Celine Dion. At last, the real deal: the triumph of Cupid over logic. ‘She’s worth the trouble, I promise.’

  ‘Does she like roses?’

  ‘She adores them.’

  ‘Will I be welcome? Did you tell her about our conversation?’

  ‘That was between us. You’ll be very welcome. Top floor. Knock hard.’

  Watching George climb the stairs in his tightly belted raincoat – really, how did he breathe? – Orla was glad that Valentine’s Day was working its magic for Maude, and rueful already about her eager belief moments before that somebody else might be at the door.

  The phone rang. She believed again and overtook George in an awkward manoeuvre on the top stair.

  ‘Orla, love, it’s Ma. Are y’ in bits? Are y’ on the floor? Don’t go to work today, love. I’ll ring them for you.’

  ‘Ma,’ said Orla, eyes closed, leaning back against the dresser. ‘Ma, Ma, Ma. No, I’m not in bits. I’m happy, actually.’

  ‘I said a prayer for Sim, and I lit a candle and Father Gerry gave out his name at early Mass. I’ll go to the grave later.’

  Shuddering, Orla thanked her mother.

  ‘That’s very sweet of you, Ma. I’m remembering him, in my own way.’

  ‘Good, good. We won’t see his like again,’ sighed Ma.

  One day Orla would tell her the whole story. But not yet. Ma enjoyed a nice anniversary. ‘No, I guess not. Listen, Ma, I need to keep this line clear.’

  ‘Why?’

  In case he calls. In case this day explodes into a shower of sparks. In case it’s my turn.

  ‘Work, you know.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Now if you get tearful just offer up a quick prayer to Saint Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes. He’s your man.’

  The phone trilled again, as soon as Orla pressed the little red telephone symbol.

  ‘Juno. What can I do for you this fine Valentine’s morn?’

  ‘Just touching base to make sure you’re OK.’

  I might be, if the entire Republic of feckin’ Ireland would stop ringing me.

  ‘Thanks.’ Orla softened. She was lucky she had women, strong decent women who cared, checking up on her. ‘I’m on an even keel.’

  ‘The first thought in my head this morning was Sim.’ Juno let out a laugh/sigh. Or maybe it was a sigh/laugh. ‘After all the bastard did, I’m sad about what happened to him.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Orla.

  They left it at that.

  Today had to be about the future. If Orla was to salvage anything from the carnage of the last twelve months then she had to retool them, affix a happy ending.

  By now, Orla was generous enough to imagine that Sim would be happy to know that his last card to her, followed by a howling silence which wasn’t his fault, hadn’t broken her. If she spun the straw he’d left her into gold, then today could be her own wonky memorial to him: he hated wreaths, anyway.

  With time to kill, Orla opened her computer. Who would have thought a morning could last so long? Cruising through on-line newspapers, Orla stopped dead at an unexpected image. Sour memories reared up; Orla had only recently reclaimed the internet and reassured herself that this was not backsliding, but coincidence.

  VALENTINE SURPRISE FOR TOM BEST’S WIFE, smirked the headline.

  ‘Oh no.’ Orla read the copy.

  TV temptress Anthea Blake proves that life mirrors art by stealing her latest co-star from his wife of eight years. Tom Best, 32, is pictured leaving Ms Blake’s two million pound North London house in the early hours of this morning. From the look on his face, and Anthea’s dishevelled appearance in what appears to be a negligee, they weren’t learning lines. It won’t be a happy Valentine’s Day in the Best house.

  ‘Oh. You’re still here.’ Maude stopped dead as she passed Orla’s doorway. She was wearing lipstick, a first, and holding the sheaf of roses aloft as if it the Olympic torch. ‘No work today?’ She looked suspiciously at Orla, inspecting her face.

  ‘I booked it as holiday. Ages ago.’ Orla hadn’t told Maude. Today was hers and hers alone. ‘I have … plans.’

  Behind Maude, George stood patiently, politely, glad just to let her sun shine on him. All this and more Orla read in his face, and she admired his courage in knocking on Maude’s door, and for facing down his cowardice about her condition. Orla needed affirmation today that love was muscular, that love can conquer, well, all. And here was old George, affirming for all he was worth.

  ‘Are you expecting Marek to make an appearance?’ There was anxiety in Maude’s query, and protectiveness, and fear.

  ‘No. Not expecting. Although it would be nice if he did.’

  Maude and Orla read each other’s invisible subtitles.

  ‘I’ll leave you alone,’ said Maude, her subtitles spelling out I love you, dear.

  ‘Thanks.’

  I love you too, Maudie, said Orla’s.

  With five minutes to go, Orla had to force herself to stay in the flat. Better to leave on time. Stick to the plan.

  ‘Orla!’ Maude’s shout up from the shop had a frill of excitement. ‘ORLA!’

  ‘What is it?’ Orla’s body trusted Maude. If Maude was excited then it would be excited too: a glissando swept up and down her spine.

  ‘A recorded deli
very package.’ Maude was trying and failing to regain her composure. ‘For you!’ she added, then, ‘do hurry up dear!’

  Turning the sign on the shop door to SORRY WE’RE CLOSED, Maude tiptoed upstairs with George, who was baffled by the change in atmosphere but ready to follow his valentine like a spaniel.

  Alone with the package, a rectangle wrapped neatly and anonymously in plain paper, Orla knelt. She took a moment. Her intuition was adamant that this was significant and these days she listened to her senses.

  Orla tore the paper to reveal a box longer than it was wide. The cardboard creaked as she pulled back the lid and then the journal was as heavy as a bible in her hands. She ran a finger down the cord that bound the spine, and traced the words Simeon Quinn, His Journal sculpted on the cover.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘At last.’

  A square envelope was taped beneath Sim’s name. Its top edge jagged, it had been opened. The postmark was a year old and it was addressed to Reece at his flat above his office.

  Orla laid down the journal and peeled off the envelope. A scrawl on the front, in Reece’s hand, read The silly bugger put them in the wrong envelopes. You got my valentine. I got yours. He died loving you. I hope this brings you some peace. Keeping it from you has destroyed mine. R

  Orla took the card out of the envelope and opened it, barely taking in the Picasso portrait of Françoise Gilot on the front, the one that had always reminded Sim of Orla. Without pausing to think, she read.

  Fairy,

  Very very late in life I’ve learned something most people (you included) know from a young age. I’ve learned why honesty matters. It’s always been a theory up to now, but something has rocked the way I feel about you and my life and suddenly I get it. We can’t go forward together if I’m not frank with you.

  O, take a deep breath – I’ve been unfaithful.

  Take another – it’s not the first time.

  But this time I fell in love. The others are hardly worth mentioning, purely physical, just me being an opportunist. I always felt like poo afterwards but this time I planned to leave you and make a life with somebody else.