‘I don’t know, Erika.’ I look at her warily. Maybe those calming herbal remedies have a bit more in them than she thought. ‘It all sounds very… interesting… but I don’t think a camper van would really suit me.’
‘But they have loads of different types,’ she protests.
‘And we’d need more money.’
‘We could be buskers. I’d buy a new guitar. And I could make more cats. And… and you could write articles about it.’
‘I think we should go home and discuss this when we’ve had more time to… you know… think about it.’
Erika purses her lips stubbornly.
‘Look, Erika, Sally is married,’ Fiona adds carefully. ‘Even though she sometimes seems to forget it, she has acquired a husband.’
‘That she doesn’t seem to know what to do with!’ Erika splutters. ‘Especially since he slept with Charlene.’
‘What?’ April exclaims.
‘Diarmuid slept with someone else,’ Erika says casually. ‘But Sally doesn’t really mind, because she’s in love with Nathaniel.’
‘Who’s Nathaniel?’ April leans closer.
‘He’s a gorgeous guy who’s in love with Eloise. It’s like Pass the Parcel.’
‘I see.’ April looks at me thoughtfully.
‘I’m not in love with Nathaniel!’ I protest. ‘I might be if I felt he was available, but I know he isn’t, so I’ve… I’ve reined in my feelings for him.’
‘You rein in horses and ponies,’ Erika says. ‘And even then they sometimes don’t stop.’
‘It’s an expression, Erika. You can rein in other things too… such as wild wishes to roar into the desert in a camper van. Sometimes it’s necessary.’
‘I’m going to have to go soon,’ April says.
‘Oh, no – you can’t!’ Erika exclaims dramatically. ‘You’re the only sensible person here.’
‘So you’re not going to come to California with me?’ April smiles at us.
‘I’d love to… another time.’ I get up and hug her. ‘It’s been wonderful seeing you again. We really must keep in touch now. I’m sorry I haven’t phoned more often.’
‘Don’t tell anyone what I told you, will you?’ She looks at me cautiously.
‘No, of course not. But I’m glad I know. Thanks so much for telling me.’ I throw my arms around her again and we hold each other. There must be a number of Aprils. I’m so glad I finally got to see this side of her.
‘Oh, feck – I forgot to get Mum a birthday card!’ she suddenly exclaims. ‘Would you buy it for me? Nothing too sentimental. Nothing with teddy bears on it. I’m not that sort of person.’
‘OK.’ I smile. This is a more familiar April. I’m not sure I could have got used to her being huggy and sweet indefinitely.
As she reaches for her bag, I say, ‘Actually, April, there’s something else I meant to ask you.’
‘What?’ She looks at me solemnly.
‘What exactly don’t you like about my lipstick?’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
There’s a black woman on the small stage, swishing a pink feather boa as she sings some jazz song. She sounds husky, experienced, weary in a way that isn’t plain tired. She thought life was going to be different, that’s what she’s singing: it’s been OK, but she thought she was going to get more out of it. She’s not complaining, but she’d just like us to know that. And she still has the diamond ring he gave her, the one she almost threw away.
There’s a saxophone solo at the end. It’s good. The whole thing amounts to something – I can’t say what, exactly, but it’s not cheap and not too simple. It’s an old song. We need the old songs. They remind us that what we humans want and need, deep down, really doesn’t alter.
Erika and Fiona and I should be eating dinner, but after we left Central Park we walked down some scary side-streets and got a bit lost and met a guy called Samuel. He told us the way back to the hotel, but he also told us about this place. It’s called the Furry Avocado and we were virtually standing outside it. Samuel said it was funky and we’d like it here. He also said he’d be singing himself in a while, and we got intrigued. So now we’re sitting here in this dusky little room. It’s smoky and shabby and wonderfully weird.
Erika and Fiona and I have decided that we are the kind of women who get down and boogie. Erika isn’t talking about Alex, and Fiona isn’t calling Zak every twenty minutes to check on Milly’s welfare. I have even managed to stop continuously thinking about April and what she told me, but I seem to have transferred my anxiety to the diamond brooch; I look in my bag every five minutes to check that it’s still in there safely. I’m somehow comforted by the fact that I am wearing lipstick that is a deeper shade of pink and isn’t ‘awful’. April said the other stuff was verging on white and didn’t suit my complexion.
Before he went off to tune his guitar, Samuel told us he works in a health-food store. That’s what I’m gradually figuring out about this place: all the performers haven’t quite made it. It doesn’t seem to worry them. They’re good, but they haven’t got that other thing – that thing that would make them famous and rich and on television and in big concert halls. But I sense they don’t mind too much, because they’re still singing. They’re still doing what they love on their own terms. And I like their terms. I like that we are in this dark, almost poky little room together. I like that a guy called Rik is singing about his banged-up old car that took him across the Midwest. He isn’t comparing himself to others and fretting that he doesn’t have a CD in the top forty. I bet he’s happy – and I really wish he were a first cousin. He’s just the sort of guy who would bring a real buzz to Marie’s uptight family gatherings.
Samuel comes on next. He’s short and chubby and smiling, and his hair looks as though he asked a friend to cut it when they were both drunk; it sticks out in strange places. Samuel picks up his guitar, and Erika starts clapping as though he’s Bob Dylan. And then he starts singing, in a strong, raspy voice, about this woman he knew and how he’ll never forget her; how being with her felt like home, the home he’d never had. And then she dumped him for a truck driver and he became a vegetarian, though his cat, Chuck, still eats meat. Erika is utterly enraptured.
They’ve lit some candles, old white candles stuck into beer bottles. A fellow starts playing the didgeridoo, big earthy vibrations. Erika and Fiona are getting through their beers pretty fast, but I am sipping mine; I have three interviews to do tomorrow, and I don’t want to have a hangover.
‘I’m ravished,’ Erika suddenly announces; then she blushes. ‘Sorry, I mean I’m famished.’
‘I’m ravished too.’ I smile. The only food they seem to serve here is nachos with melted cheese.
‘And me,’ says Fiona. ‘Let’s go and get some food.’
I suddenly realise I really want to leave this place, even though I love it. I love it, but it scares me, too, because it’s reminding me of Nathaniel. It seems like just the kind of club he and Ziggy would have come to with their friends. I can almost see them laughing and joking and dreaming at one of the small round wooden tables. Maybe he and Eloise will be sitting here together in a few months, and I can’t bear the thought of it. As I reach for my handbag and negotiate my way through the crowd towards the exit, I begin to wonder what Diarmuid would make of this place. A few months ago I would have known that he would hate it, but now I don’t know this – and the fact that I don’t know this seems far closer to the truth.
‘I wish I’d brought my guitar with me,’ Erika says as we try to find our way back to the hotel. ‘They seem to be allowing all sorts of people up to the microphone.’
Fiona and I don’t comment. We pass a hotdog stand and are suddenly even more ravished than before. ‘Easy on the mustard,’ Erika says to the guy, who looks rather gruff and businesslike. She sounds like she does this every day.
We eat our hotdogs and savour the hot, sultry evening. Every so often a jogger pounds past us – a New York jogger, determined and driven. So
me of them are listening to Walkmans, hearing the latest news about the yen or lost in jazz, Bach, the Red Hot Chili Peppers; they could be listening to anything at all.
When we get back to the hotel, we go straight to our rooms. It’s wonderful to be staying in such comfortable surroundings. Fiona has got such an enormous ‘business’ discount that I can even afford to repay her the money, out of the pretty basic expense allowance Greta has given me. Fiona has told Erika she can pay her back with massages. She says she’ll need loads of massages after Zak leaves her.
Even though I’m tired, I decide to watch a bit of television. American TV guides are as big as the Reader’s Digest. You could spend a whole evening channel-hopping. A mahogany-coloured guy with a black moustache is waving his arms around and shouting about low-cost diamonds. He suddenly breaks into Spanish. I watch the news for a bit, but it jumps around from big stories to small ones so much I get confused. They get all excited about a new bridge, and then there’s something about various wars and famines and terrorists and muggers. The newsreaders seem to be coated with super-thin transparent plastic; even their smiles remain unchanged for far longer than is normal. They get all joky about a lost dog that got on a train to Newark, New Jersey. That makes them laugh. Wally – that’s the dog’s name – gets five whole minutes. He’s some kind of terrier. When he got to Newark, he walked into a hairdresser’s and lay under the reception desk until someone called his owner. The number was on his collar.
I am so groggy I almost expect the next news item to be about April and this new father of hers. I get a panicky feeling just remembering what she told me, but then it mixes with the general strangeness of the night. I still don’t believe it, really. Every so often it lunges at me, but it seems unreal. In another way, though, it feels like something I’ve always known but couldn’t admit to myself. Like the fact that I didn’t love Diarmuid when I married him. I lied in that church. I thought he loved me, and his love would be enough for us both.
I search desperately for the Public Broadcasting Service channel, the one that does Armchair Theatre and imports all the best drama from the BBC. I feel sure I’ll end up watching Upstairs Downstairs, but what comes on is a wildlife documentary about baboons with big red bottoms. I turn off the television. The sound of the city is a background hum. Every so often there are big, scary whoopy noises.
I go to the window. It’s almost dark, but the streetlights cast an orange glow on the trees sprouting at the edge of the sidewalk – New York trees; trees that could tell you about rap music and prostitutes and drugs and women in brown fur coats carrying white poodles that wear red nail varnish. Taxis are drawing up at the front door of the hotel, disgorging businessmen with briefcases and svelte young women talking into mobile phones.
An elderly couple are walking arm in arm. They look as though they’ve just gone out to dinner. They must be in their seventies, but they don’t look old; there’s a spring in their step. Even their wrinkles seem enthusiastic. She’s wearing a cerise dress with a long indigo scarf slung around her shoulders, and he’s wearing a brown suit and a white shirt; he’s taken off his tie, you can see it peeping out of a pocket of the jacket he’s carrying. They’ve been to a musical and a meal. That must be it. Their hearts are still full of big swathes of longing – pleasant longing, longing that has some point to it. Dad says that certain chords reach the heart in the same way.
Suddenly April’s secret seems to fill the room. I have to talk to someone about it. Erika and Fiona are probably snoring by now. Who should I phone? I want to talk to Nathaniel, but I mustn’t. He’s probably with Eloise, anyway. Diarmuid – I’ll phone Diarmuid. He’s usually pleased to hear from me, and he’s very discreet. And sharing this secret with him will keep the lines of communication open.
He picks up the phone right away. Good, he’s actually at home. He so often isn’t these days. ‘Hello, Diarmuid.’
‘Oh.’ He sounds hesitant. ‘Oh, hello, Sally.’
‘I’m in New York!’
‘Oh.’ Now he sounds perplexed. ‘What are you doing there?’
‘It was all very last-minute. I’ve got to interview some people tomorrow, then I’m flying home.’
‘I’ll collect you from the airport if you like.’
‘Really? Are you sure?’
‘Yes, of course.’
I tell him when the plane is supposed to arrive. ‘This means a lot to me, Diarmuid,’ I say. I’m about to add that I’m feeling a bit odd, because of what April told me, when I realise he doesn’t sound like himself. In fact, he sounds very distracted.
‘Diarmuid… have I phoned you at an inconvenient time?’
‘Well, I…’ I can almost hear him scratching his stubble. Diarmuid’s facial hair grows at an alarming rate. ‘Well, actually, I’m just–.’
‘Diarmuid, do you want me to open the wine?’ A voice. A woman’s voice.
‘Yes… fine,’ he says. I can almost hear him blushing.
‘Who’s that?’ I demand.
‘Just a friend.’
‘Where’s the bottle-opener?’ The voice is closer now. This friend clearly doesn’t want her presence to remain a secret.
‘In that drawer.’
Silence. He must have put his hand over the receiver. ‘It’s Charlene, isn’t it?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘Just tell me. It’s her, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he says, after a moment. ‘It’s just dinner, that’s all. We needed to talk about some things.’
You should be talking about things with me, Diarmuid! I want to scream. How come you’ve got so talkative suddenly? You never wanted to ‘talk about things’ when we were married. But I don’t say it, because he knows my feelings about all this already. I have shouted and screamed and hollered and let his mice loose.
Maybe he just feels more comfortable talking with Charlene. And I’m tired. I just want to curl under my duvet and dream of nothing.
‘Sally?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll meet you in the arrivals hall.’
‘OK.’
‘Good night.’
‘Good night, Diarmuid.’
I don’t even get undressed. I just fall onto my bed. I dream that DeeDee is holding me, drying my tears and telling me she understands. Suddenly I wake up with a start and find myself reaching for my handbag. I can’t remember what I’m looking for, but my fingers close over the notebook. I draw it out and open it in a kind of daze.
There are some handwritten pages at the back that I didn’t notice before. The sides of them are frayed, as if they were stuck together with glue. I remember how the notebook got damp on the floor of Nathaniel’s car: the dampness must have softened the glue and released the pages. These notes aren’t about recipes. I can tell at a glance that they are intimate. Secret.
‘Nobody believes that Joseph forced himself on me. They think I’m making it up – Aggie most of all. She says she won’t talk to me again until I admit that I’ve been lying. They all think I’m jealous. They think I love him and want to marry him myself. And now I’m pregnant, and I don’t know who to turn to. They don’t love me. If they loved me they’d believe me about Joseph. “Oh, that’s just DeeDee – you know what she’s like.” That’s what they think. But they don’t know what I’m like. None of them really know me. I’ll have to go away and have the baby adopted. And then I’ll become an actress. I never want to see any of them again.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I have spent the day interviewing Top Young Irish Designers about fancy furniture and accessories. I met the first hip, happening person in a loft in SoHo and discussed his fabulous wallpaper. Then I moved on to a cramped studio in Greenwich Village and discussed the very latest developments in lamps. After that I bustled off to a small shop off Fifth Avenue and met a woman who can make coffee tables in any shape that appeals to you – breasts, cats, fruit, butterflies, parsnips, you just name it. She had a metal stud in her nose and a dog called Fra
nkie.
After hearing about symmetry and textures and organic curves and angles for two and a half hours, I staggered out into the late-afternoon sunshine and bolted into this coffee shop, where I am having a large cappuccino. I’ve kept my sunglasses on. I’ve decided I’m that sort of woman now: I wear sunglasses in shady corners of cafés.
I feel like I have suddenly been thrown into the Truth Club. Within hours, I have learned that April is my half-sister and that DeeDee got pregnant by Joseph and that Diarmuid is talking to Charlene – not just teaching her to drive and having sex with her, but actually cooking her dinner and having long conversations. I’m almost scared to phone my parents in case they suddenly announce that I am, in fact, adopted.
I wish Erika and Fiona hadn’t flown home this morning. We all got up early and sat in the jacuzzi for half an hour, and I told them about DeeDee. It made them both cry – which is not, I suppose, that surprising, since they’ve been close to tears ever since the jet landed. It made me cry too. We must be the only people on the planet who come to New York for a good sob.
Poor DeeDee. She was treated like an outcast. The thing is, now that I’ve discovered why she left, I don’t think it’s advisable to try to find her. She might march into Aggie’s bedroom and shout, ‘You old bitch!’ and rant and holler. I doubt very much that she could forgive what happened – surely Aggie must know that. But I’m fairly convinced that Aggie has now blanked many of the sadder details from her memory. How could she have dismissed her sister’s version of events so easily? She talks about loving her now, but did she love her then? Did any of them understand her?
I sigh and fiddle with the sugar sachets. I’m so disappointed in Aggie. I find it hard to accept that she was so callous. I liked Joseph, too, but now he seems like a brute – and DeeDee’s parents sound extraordinarily insensitive. I’ll never be able to think of them in the same way again. In fact, the truth about what happened to DeeDee is so horrible that I’m beginning to suspect it is, perhaps, best forgotten. What’s the point of bringing it up now? In the circumstances, it’s almost more comforting to think that she just disappeared.
The Truth Club Page 25