The Truth Club

by Grace Wynne-Jones

  I stare at Erika long and hard. She seems to have got over the disappointment of not being Milly’s godmother. I have not, of course, told her that Fiona wanted me to be the godmother, only she was worried that it would make Erika feel rejected. We had a long discussion about it and agreed that it might be best if she asked a cousin called Louisa to be the godmother instead.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t phone you back,’ I say, vaguely recalling Erika’s indignant message about Lionel and his Chinese takeaway. ‘Things have been pretty busy. In fact, I had to go to London a couple of days ago.’ If only I could tell her what happened there!

  ‘Oh, that’s OK.’ Erika tosses off my apology with rather too much nonchalance. ‘Your hair really does look nice, Sally.’

  ‘Did he turn up?’

  ‘Who?’ She looks at me innocently.

  ‘Lionel. Did he arrive with the Chinese takeaway?’

  Erika looks at me blankly, as though I have asked her to recall a distant and not particularly significant detail. ‘Yes, he did, actually.’ She gets up and goes over to the window again. ‘Where on earth is that taxi?’

  ‘Something happened between you and him, didn’t it?’ I say.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lionel, of course.’

  ‘Yes, I had a meal with him.’ She takes out her make-up bag and carefully freshens up her lipstick. ‘It was a very nice meal – one of those meals for two you can buy; it must have cost him at least thirty euros. We had –’ She is clearly about to list every morsel.

  ‘Did he bring some wine?’ I ask.

  ‘No, he didn’t, actually. He wanted to go out and get some, but I told him we didn’t really need it.’

  ‘What did you drink instead?’

  Erika shifts uneasily in her seat.

  ‘You gave him some of that wildflower liqueur, didn’t you?’ She looks sharply away from me.

  ‘That’s why you’re looking so satisfied!’ I exclaim delightedly. ‘You slept with him. You slept with Lionel!’

  There is a potent silence; then Erika sighs. ‘Yes, I did sleep with him, actually. I suppose I might as well admit it.’ She peers at me, worried. ‘Do you think it was very foolish of me, Sally? I really didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Was it nice?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answers, without the slightest hesitation. ‘It’s just that it came as quite a surprise; I never really saw him in that way before, you know. To be honest, I was going to tell him that I hadn’t the slightest interest in him and he should go after someone else.’

  ‘What made you change your mind?’

  ‘I think it was the ear-nibbling. He’s a very good nibbler. He’s actually been getting lessons.’

  ‘In ear-nibbling?’

  ‘No!’ she laughs. ‘In overcoming shyness. He must be a fast learner.’

  ‘That’s because he adores you, Erika,’ I say softly. ‘He is gorgeous and extremely desirable and far nicer than Alex. I hope you see that now.’

  She still looks doubtful. ‘We had a very nice evening, that’s all. And we’re going to a film at the weekend. I suppose he’ll do for the time being.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I just can’t take our relationship that seriously… though he really is an excellent lover.’ A broad and extremely satisfied smile spreads across her lips. ‘And he takes direction without a murmur of complaint.’ I can almost sense her toes curling contentedly. Then the taxi arrives, and we both sprint to the door.

  Five hours later, I lurch slightly tipsily into Aggie’s bedroom. I have been neglecting her lately. I want to sit and hold her hand and talk to her; only I find that she is sleeping.

  I sit by her bed anyway. The christening was magnificent. Fiona eventually hired a small and highly professional team to attend to the more important details – ‘It was either that or muesli for the main course,’ she laughed. She was wearing a soft apricot and rose jersey dress that looked like it had just been flown in from Paris, and she, naturally, looked very beautiful. There seemed to be hundreds of people there, but it wasn’t a frightening kind of gathering; nobody left it wondering if they’d said the right thing or worn the right clothes or brought the right presents. The christening, of course, was solemn and beautifully poignant, but the party that came after it was greatly aided by ebullient hits from the 80s and large quantities of excellent wine and food. Guests wandered happily between the large dining room, whose more ample furniture was stored elsewhere, and the huge sitting room with its vast windows and views of one of the area’s grander leafy squares. Fiona’s mother seemed particularly attracted to the kitchen; she watched in awe as plates of stuffed leaves and sushi and prawns wrapped in filo pastry were carried guestwards.

  ‘What are these, exactly?’ she asked Erika and me before she ate anything. Then she added, ‘Didn’t little Milly look wonderful? She really takes after our side of the family.’

  And Milly did look lovely. She only cried, very briefly, when she was leaving the church. She seemed to enjoy the attention. At one point during the ceremony she appeared to be smiling and gurgling.

  ‘Erika slept with Lionel,’ I whispered in Fiona’s ear, when the party was winding to a close. She looked knackered and extremely contented and she had a milk stain near the right shoulder of her new dress.

  She looked at me with a mixture of joy and amazement. ‘Wildflower liqueur,’ I muttered. She beamed from ear to ear. No further explanation was required.

  I am just about to kiss Aggie and go home when she stirs and looks up at me. ‘Is that you, Sally?’

  ‘Yes, Aggie.’

  ‘How lovely to see you, dear. What have you been up to? I haven’t seen you for a while.’

  I ache to tell her about DeeDee. I still can’t believe that I have to keep it a secret. It seems so unfair.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been pretty busy with this and that,’ I tell her cheerfully. ‘In fact, I’ve just been to a christening. Fiona – you know, my friend?’ She nods vaguely. ‘Well, she’s had a lovely little daughter called Milly, and –’

  Aggie reaches out and clutches my hand. ‘I’m sorry about Diarmuid, dear.’

  I gulp. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That he ran off with that other woman. Your mother told me all about it.’

  ‘Well, actually, I sort of –’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. You left him and went back to your cottage, but that’s only because you sensed things weren’t right between you.’ She holds my hand more tightly.

  ‘The details are a bit odd, to be honest with you,’ I mumble. ‘Mum seems to want to blame him, but it was my fault too.’

  ‘Let her be biased, dear,’ Aggie says softly. ‘She enjoys standing up for you.’

  ‘We didn’t really love each other, you see,’ I say. I don’t know why I’m telling her this. It must be all the wine. She was always my confessor. ‘He only became involved with that woman when he realised that. He asked me to come back many times.’

  ‘Your heart wasn’t in it, dear. I sensed that.’

  ‘Did you?’ I stare at her.

  ‘Yes. Sometimes, when you talked about him, I felt you were talking about someone else.’

  I blink hard. Age hasn’t diminished her intuition. I think of Nathaniel. That’s who I was talking about: the man who will always be just a dear friend.

  ‘Anyway, we’ll stand up for you at Marie’s party,’ Aggie announces gutsily. ‘Don’t worry. If anyone starts pestering you about Diarmuid, I’ll tell them about the angels in my bedroom.’

  I smile. I never realised my close relatives were going to be quite this supportive. It seems that some of them also find Marie’s parties rather awkward. I really wish I’d known this earlier.

  ‘Marie’s gatherings have got very staid,’ Aggie continues, almost as if I’ve prompted her. ‘There’s no real oomph to them any more. Joseph used to bring along jazz records when you were younger.’

  I wish she hadn’t mentioned his name. Jazz records… yes, I vague
ly remember the strange, floaty music livening up my enjoyment of fizzy lemonade and crisps and sausage rolls.

  ‘I’ve asked Fabrice to come along, to give the whole thing a bit more style and bounce. A bit more fun,’ Aggie says firmly. ‘She’s such a dear friend, and I think she’s rather lonely.’

  I don’t know what to say.

  ‘She says she might even do some songs from the shows.’

  ‘What shows?’ I frown, somewhat irritably.

  ‘Oh, you know – the big shows.’

  ‘Can she sing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Aggie chuckles happily. ‘Anyway, she’s been so kind to me, I feel I owe her a little treat. She has no real family of her own, you see.’

  I bite my lip. Aggie never mentions DeeDee any more. It’s as if she’s decided to forget her because she knows she will never meet her again. Who am I to complain if she has turned to Fabrice for comfort and friendship? But I still resent it somehow. I don’t like Fabrice, especially now that I know she’s become so pally with Nathaniel too. There’s something odd about her.

  ‘Well, that’s nice,’ I say, lying politely. ‘Maybe I should invite my friend Erika along and get her to play her guitar.’

  I laugh ruefully, but Aggie says, ‘Perhaps they could do the songs from the shows together.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I’ll invite her, actually,’ I reply quickly. ‘She’s not very good at remembering the words to songs, and she can’t really play the guitar.’

  Aggie chuckles. ‘Did you bring any mints?’

  ‘Yes.’ I hand her the bag.

  She unwraps one and pops it into her mouth. ‘Well, at least Marie’s party should be a bit livelier this year,’ she smiles.

  ‘Yes,’ I find myself agreeing. ‘In fact, it might be the least boring party Marie’s ever given.’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  ‘I love you.’ ‘I love you,’ I repeat very carefully. I am in a large and somewhat shabby room near central Dublin, teaching English to Erika’s refugees. Time seems to have flown since I returned from London: it’s September already, and Marie’s party is tomorrow. I suppose I should be glad I’m not at home fretting about it.

  They are not, of course, Erika’s refugees, if one is to be strictly accurate; but, in a way, we have all become refugees from Erika herself – or from her guitar-playing and singing, to be precise. She persuaded me to come to her first class, and as we listened to her wailing, I felt these poor people had been through quite enough already. She sang ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ over and over again, and then kept trying to get her students to discuss the lyrics. Since it is a rather sad song, this wasn’t particularly uplifting. She also didn’t remember all of the words and kept asking me to prompt her. No one laughed; they just watched us solemnly.

  ‘I think it’s a bit too advanced for them,’ Erika hissed at me. ‘What should we do?’

  ‘What about just… just general conversation?’ I suggested.

  ‘But what is a general conversation?’ Erika enquired. She can be rather pedantic at times.

  ‘It’s about anything, anything at all.’

  Erika stood up before the group, visibly quivering with nerves. She has a fear of public speaking, but not of public singing – which is ironic, since she has quite a nice speaking voice. ‘How much English do you actually know?’

  No one answered. ‘English,’ I said, standing up myself. ‘Speak? You?’ I pointed at them.

  There was a long silence, and then someone mentioned the name of a pop song. A rather dashing young man stood up and said, ‘This is the BBC World Service’ in a very gentrified Home Counties accent. He had obviously listened to this announcement many times. ‘Please have exact fare ready,’ someone else commented. ‘Stand clear of the doors,’ one woman remarked. ‘Guinness is nice thing,’ a young girl giggled. Soon they were all giggling. Some of them were almost falling off their seats with laughter.

  ‘They’re getting out of control,’ Erika whispered nervously. ‘Should I start playing the guitar again?’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly, because if she did there would be an exodus, and I had noticed that some of them were talking to each other – and they appeared to be speaking very broken English. The laughter was easing their self-consciousness. I decided to address the confident-looking young woman who was sitting nearest me.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Katya.’

  ‘It is nice to meet you, Katya.’ I held out my hand and she shook it. Then I turned to the class and said, ‘It is nice to meet you,’ and they stared at me blankly.

  ‘It is nice to meet you,’ Katya replied suddenly. Then she turned to her classmates and waved her arms around like a conductor. ‘It is nice to meet you,’ she said encouragingly.

  ‘It is nice to meet you,’ they chorused in unison. We clearly had a leader in our midst.

  ‘What would you like to talk about, Katya?’ I asked her, thinking I would have to repeat the sentence several times and possibly draw a diagram.

  ‘Love,’ she replied, her big brown eyes shining. ‘I very much need talk love. And forms.’

  ‘Forms?’ I enquired.

  ‘Yes, forms you fill after.’

  ‘Fill in,’ Erika corrected her.

  ‘Yes, many forms.’

  ‘Do you have the forms with you?’ I asked. This was clearly just the sort of practical help she required.

  ‘No,’ she sighed.

  ‘Bring them next time,’ Erika said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, speaking very slowly, to the class. ‘Make a list of the things you most need to talk about.’ I thought of the bewildering array of bureaucracy they must have encountered. ‘And give it to us at the end of the class, so that we can prepare next week’s lesson.’

  ‘Love,’ a middle-aged woman said. ‘She need talk love, too.’

  And so the entire class learned of Katya’s attraction to a man called Sergei – a man with big legs and arms and ‘many shoulders’.

  ‘Not many,’ Erika corrected. ‘People do not have many shoulders.’

  ‘Broad shoulders?’ I suggested.

  ‘Big, like so.’ Katya made an expansive gesture. ‘And white teeth and many hairs.’ The language of love was losing something in translation, but the class seemed eager for more details.

  It turned out that Sergei was staying in the same B&B as Katya and her family. Sometimes he gave her his fried tomatoes at breakfast. This was clearly enough reason to desire him – or at least it had to be, because her grasp of English wasn’t sufficient to go into greater detail.

  This is how I have found myself trying to improve her vocabulary. ‘I love you.’ I say it many times.

  ‘I love you,’ a young man near the front says. ‘Your arse, it is like a rhino’s.’

  ‘No! Don’t say that,’ Erika says firmly, while I try not to giggle. ‘Whoever told you to say that was… was very naughty.’

  There follows a long, and sometimes virtually incomprehensible, discussion about whether Katya loves Sergei or simply likes him, in which case she should say, ‘I like you,’ or perhaps just, ‘Thank you very much for the tomatoes, Sergei, you are a very nice man.’ I begin to get rather worried about Katya and Sergei. What if he just wants her as a friend? What if he already has many other admirers he hasn’t told her about?

  ‘Sex,’ a matronly women comments. ‘Men, that is thing they want.’

  I begin to feel rather frustrated that most of the people in this room don’t speak better English. We could have a most interesting philosophical discussion. I might even ask them what I should do about Nathaniel. Should I say, ‘I love you,’ and see how he reacts? He hasn’t phoned me in weeks – not since we got back from London. Surely that tells me everything I need to know. I gaze sadly out the window. Maybe he’s beginning to realise how much I care about him, and he doesn’t want to mislead me. Maybe Greta has had a word with him and told him he needs to be more careful with his affections.

  Erika
is saying, ‘Not all men just want sex. Some can be very kind and considerate and… and forgiving.’ She is clearly talking about Lionel. He’s growing on her. I knew he would.

  The class ends shortly afterwards. As we spill out onto the street, I realise I have enjoyed myself. This was better than sitting at home worrying about April and DeeDee and whether I want Diarmuid’s slimmed-down kitchen cabinet – not to mention Nathaniel. In the circumstances, it’s probably best not to mention Nathaniel at all.

  When I get back to the cottage I get a call from Mum. Apparently April has decided to get a later flight and won’t be arriving in Ireland until tomorrow morning, the day of Marie’s party. So they won’t be able to take her out to dinner and give her the Waterford crystal bowl and discuss where and when they should tell people about Al. She’s going to take a taxi straight from the airport to Marie’s house.

  ‘Oh, God,’ I moan. ‘Oh, well… I suppose the plane could be delayed.’

  ‘Don’t say that, dear!’ Mum exclaims. ‘Everyone is so looking forward to seeing her.’

  Mum obviously still believes April will not make her grand announcement. But, judging from the conversation I had with April yesterday, she hasn’t changed her mind about it at all.

  ‘I even suggested to Mum that she just tell Marie to start with,’ April said. ‘That would have been enough for me – for the moment, anyway. But she wouldn’t even do that. She just went on about some special birthday present she’s bought me.’ April sounded almost tearful. ‘I don’t think she plans to tell anyone – not ever.’

  I didn’t say so, but I suspected she might be right.

  Since I can’t seem to prevent April from attending Marie’s party, I feel a real yearning to absent myself from it instead. This is not a new yearning, of course; I’ve been feeling it for most of the summer. But this time it isn’t my own distress I’m concerned about. I can’t stand to think of Mum and Dad, and even Marie, being so hurt. But I need to be there for them. I wish I had someone to bring with me, someone wise and kind, someone… Feck it, I must stop thinking about Nathaniel.