by Cathy Kelly
I’m the only divorced mother in the school which is like telling people you’ve killed several people and are out on bail. They think the very notion of divorce might be catching, except the ones who sidle up to me and ask me how exactly we did it, given that divorce is not yet legal in the Republic of Ireland. Lots of happy marriages out there!
I’ve told Amy that we do fine on our own, but she wants to be like everyone else. And where does that get a person? I want to cry. You might as well be yourself. It’s not an easy road but at least you’re true to yourself.
Also, my ex-husband is looking for more money, I don’t have it and his new love is possibly a stripper – in which case, she might make more money than I do. But he does keep in touch with our daughter and I can’t deny her that. If I stop sending him the odd few hundred quid, would he phoning her stop too? I can’t take the risk – it’s too important to the poor child.’
Yet again, not the stuff of which Christmas letters were made.
A few years later, the letter might have moved on to more worries:
‘Amy blames me for not keeping the channels of communication open between her and Dennis. The channel was actually money. I can’t tell her that, can I? No teenager wants to know that their father only rang on birthdays because he could remind his ex-wife where to send the cheques.’
And then – when Bess was fifty-eight, Amy was raised and Dennis was no longer on the payroll, having married and then divorced his dancer – Edward Brannigan had come into her life: Edward with his courtly ways, his wonderful sense of humour, low golf handicap so he could beat Bess on the course but not low enough that he bored her with tales of holes lost and won, and a sex appeal that made something inside Bess – something that had laid dormant for years – awaken.
They’d met at a business dinner and Bess had found herself seated beside Edward, widowed head of a big engineering company, supposedly very wealthy with vast investments but not flashy, rattling-giant-gold-Rolex rich. He was far more subtle and elegant, a silver fox, with that luxuriant silver-grey hair that looked so good on men. He was tanned from the golf course, yet had the strong wrists and shoulders that told of days reared on a farm.
Bess didn’t notice men, not any more. She knew better. Divorced women who looked at men at events were labelled as manhunters. But she couldn’t stop noticing this one.
He wore a soft jacket in a warm colour, like beech leaves turning in autumn, and in it he stood out among all the men in their greys and navys. His eyes were hazel and warm, and some sort of amber and vetivert scent surrounded him, making Bess think of sun holidays where she could find a private little beach, set herself up for the day with her books and let her skin warm gently.
‘I’d been told you’re a tough cookie, Ms Reynolds,’ he’d said. ‘Nobody mentioned how lovely you were.’
Bess, who could command a room in a moment and would have sworn she’d never blushed in her life, turned a faint pink colour. She was beyond the hot flush of menopausal hormones, she knew: he was making her blush, he was heating her up. Mr Silver Fox was flirting with her and she loved it.
That night as she took off her mascara, she told herself it was all ridiculous and she’d been imagining the attraction. Instead, she focused on one thing at a time, the way she always did. She patted her eyelids with the remover stuff, reflecting how she was forever promising to give up wearing mascara because removing it was a nuisance, and yet tonight, she was glad she had. She had good eyes: always had. Good bones, too, and a strong, handsome face as her mother said when she wasn’t lamenting Bess’s mistakes.
Somehow, she stopped removing her eye make-up and thought about how it felt to be sitting beside a man who both found her attractive and was obvious about it. The unusualness of the whole situation made her breathless. And it was a long, long time since Bess had been breathless over anything but a fast walk.
In the mirror was a woman reaching the cliff face of sixty, whose face said as much, but who still had the elegant collarbones of her youth, and whose dark hair still rippled around eyes that had once burned with passion for feckless Dennis.
She must have been mad, Bess told herself, and yet continued to rub the coconut body lotion into skin still tanned from that week in Sicily where she’d left the buttoned-up Bess Reynolds behind and let herself go, wearing flowing skirts, gypsy blouses and revelling in stripping down to her swimsuit to dive into the sea.
‘Dinner?’ The request, one single word written in a strong hand with fountain pen on Edward Brannigan’s headed notepaper, delivered to her office with – oh joy, how original! – velvety white Vendela roses the following Monday had made her melt even more.
How could she reply with equal brevity and wit?
She drew a box, put a tick in it, and wrote ‘YES’ in capital letters under it as a reply.
An hour later, she sent a second note via courier – shocked at her own spendiness – and wrote ‘Friday?’
She giggled, actually giggled, when he wrote back: ‘I hope you mean this Friday but I’m not sure I can wait that long. Should I choose and pick you up? Did you like the roses? I thought red were too obvious for a woman like you.’
Days before, Bess Reynolds would have thought that men sending roses and women being thrilled by that was too dully stupid for words, but now she thought it was the most original gesture ever. It was the person who sent them that mattered. Clearly, she had never met the right person before, had never known such a person existed.
Now, a year shy of her sixtieth birthday, Bess was at a new stage in her life. Amy was grown up and Dennis was a long-forgotten legal battle – ‘try working’, Bess had finally told him when he’d married his dancer and moaned about no more cheques from Ireland. ‘The gravy train is stopping.’
He’d disappeared from both her and Amy’s life when the money dried up, a fact for which Amy still blamed her mother.
And Bess, although she could hardly believe it herself, was married again.
‘Mrs Bess Brannigan’ – the very words still thrilled her in a way she thought she was far beyond feeling.
Her new husband loved her, adored her. He hugged fondly, said he needed a proper kiss after a day in work, brought her tea in bed at the weekends, and brought her flowers for no reason.
At weekends, they lay lazily in bed in the mornings, making love, then reading the papers, and when Bess took a bath in the giant cream stone oval bath that suited Edward’s long frame, he sat on the edge of it, reading funny pieces from the newspapers to her, as if he couldn’t bear to be parted from her.
Now she could write a Christmas letter.
‘Amy is so happy with her new job—’
Bess paused. The absolute unvarnished truth was not required in these letters.
Bess adored Amy, yet despite trying very hard had never managed to be the uncritically adoring mother she’d planned to be.
‘Don’t be your mother!’ would flash into Bess’s head when Amy did something she disagreed with. But steely, uncompromising Maura would somehow channel her way in and create a distance between Bess (trained and accustomed to a hard life) and her daughter (whom Bess had tried so very hard to insulate from pain).
Now thirty-two, Amy appeared to like the place where she now worked, but dressing shop windows for a cheap chain store was not a career by any stretch of the imagination. Bess had seen the windows: men’s work trousers alongside cheap athletic gear and the odd bicycle from Lord knew where thrown into the mix. It was better than Amy’s previous jobs, all of which had been random, none with any clearly defined path.
If only Amy had found a career she loved or even – the Bess of old would have never thought this but, newly married, she did – found a man she loved. Romantic love had come as a shock to Bess. She’d thought it didn’t exist, but thanks to Edward she now knew it did and perhaps if Amy found proper love …
‘Amy made a beautiful bridesmaid at our wedding in June, for all of you who couldn’t make it.’
That was true at least. Bess had taken one look at photos of her soon-to-be stepdaughter, Jojo, and Jojo’s three girl cousins early on and decided that if she and Edward ever did tie the knot, Amy would need a revamp with professional help. She would not blend into the background by comparison with Edward’s admittedly stunning daughter and nieces. There were four Brannigan girls: Edward’s daughter, Jojo, who was Viking blonde, and his nieces Cari, Maggie and Trina, all utterly stunning brunettes.
Stunning – there was no other word for it.
They were something, those Brannigan girls – in a quartet, they looked like an aristocratic portrait of European royalty shipped around the Empire in the 1800s to be shown as prospective brides to heirs to thrones in important kingdoms. There was something of the Ralph Lauren model thing about all of them that had annoyed Bess without her knowing why: all good skin, all with incredible eyes, confident gazes … yes, that was it. All four looked happy and confident in a way that Amy never had.
Bess, hit with the dual feeling of guilt that her daughter had no confidence in her, and terrified it was her fault, was fiercely determined that Amy would not feel lacking beside these girls. She would look just as good as the Brannigans.
Amy’s dress had been a special order Vera Wang that had cost a small fortune, a gown in a subtle peach that suited her pale freckled skin and the rippling strawberry-blonde hair that was her most beautiful feature.
Amy wasn’t slim like the four Brannigan girls, being more of a curvy girl, and she hadn’t a clue about clothes or make-up, which Bess refused to feel guilty about, because she’d been earning a living when the girl was growing up and hadn’t had time to sit and play dressing-up like some mothers did.
OK, she did feel guilty. Hideously guilty. But she did her best to quash the guilt. Relentlessly.
Before the actual wedding, guilt meant Bess insisted the make-up artist come three times to try out different looks.
Bess had felt like she was hitting a baby seal at the look in Amy’s pale blue eyes that third night as Bess had instructed the make-up girl in layering on the make-up with a trowel.
‘She has lovely eyes, she doesn’t need it this heavy,’ the make-up artist had said, while Amy had sat, mute.
‘She does have nice eyes but you have to make the best of them,’ Bess said desperately, ignoring Amy’s sad face.
She had seen the endless photos of Edward’s daughter, Jojo, and his son, Paul, and of their cousins, Cari, Maggie and Trina. All stunning with that rippling dark hair. Jojo was blonde like her mother.
She’d met Jojo too once, although Jojo had been white-faced with suppressed rage at the time, so she hadn’t looked quite so well, but still.
Any nineteenth-century princedom in Europe would have snatched her up in a moment, rage or not. She had been like an exquisite racehorse: quivering with nerves, beauty and breeding.
No, Bess vowed, determined to do right by both her daughter and herself on this important occasion, Amy would be done up and that was it. Couldn’t Amy see? It was important to Bess that her beloved daughter be as beautiful as Edward’s daughter and nieces.
‘Do that thing with the eyebrows, the darkening and winging it out thing that’s all the rage,’ Bess ordered, having seen the look in the hairdressers when she was having her roots touched up to hide the grey.
‘I’m not sure it suits her colouring,’ insisted the make-up artist, who was so over the eyebrow thing.
‘Look, just do it,’ Bess said crossly, ignoring her daughter.
Amy said nothing.
In work when mentoring women, Bess had always pointed out that you had to say what you thought. Nobody would ever get by in business with slight glances at each other. How had she missed these vital steps with her own daughter? If Amy didn’t like the make-up, all she had to do was speak!
‘In marrying Edward, I have gained a wonderful family, chief among them my two beautiful stepchildren, Jojo and Paul. I also have a fabulous son-in-law, the handsome Hugh, and lovely stepdaughter-in-law, Lena, and best of all, the most darling step-grandchild named Heidi. Here’s a photo from the wedding.’
Heidi was fourteen months old and was a darling. Bess had adored holding her, hugging her and thinking that, at last, she had her own grandchild, even if she was truly Lottie’s grandchild, but still. Having Heidi at the wedding helped no end, particularly at the photographs, because there was always a diversion in saying, ‘Look at the camera, Heidi!’ in a loud, happy voice to divert attention from the fact that one segment of the wedding party was displaying a cold front towards the other. It was the Cold War in fancy clothes with music.
The photograph Bess had sent out with her Christmas missive had taken an age to choose. Despite there being scores of wedding photographs, Bess wanted one where Jojo wasn’t standing as far away from her new stepmother as possible so that it wasn’t instantly obvious that Jojo loathed being at her father’s wedding a mere two and a half years after her mother had died.
At least Jojo had come to the wedding – Bess had Edward’s sister-in-law, Nora, to thank for that. Nora had convinced her, apparently.
‘Paul has come round to the idea of it all, he says I should be happy. Jojo will get to that stage too, darling,’ Edward said, but Bess had the strangest feeling that he either wasn’t telling the truth – or was hoping that if he said it often enough, it would become the truth.
Edward was a successful businessman because he had drive and ambition, like Bess herself. But in this case, Bess wondered if he was trying very hard to convince himself that his daughter would be reconciled to this wedding, and ignoring all the evidence to the contrary.
For all that men were supposed to be strong, Bess found that sometimes they couldn’t face reality.
Paul was a different case entirely when it came to his father’s wedding. He was a son. He’d adored his mother but he had a life, a wife and toddler, and he lived in another country. All entirely different.
Everybody knew that girls adored their fathers – look at poor Amy and the absent Dennis – and Bess had certainly loved her own.
But Jojo was an adult. Didn’t that make a difference?
Bess had resolutely not done any research into blending her family into Edward’s. She didn’t hold with such mumbo jumbo. People had to get on with things. But she knew girls took fathers remarrying differently than sons. Daddy’s little princess and all that. It would blow over.
But it hadn’t, not at the wedding, anyhow.
The perfect wedding photo had been captured finally because the photographer, whom Bess had warned in advance, had positioned the family group in a tiny floral bower so that everyone had to stand close, whether they liked it or not.
Jojo was beside her father, leaving a very anxious Amy in her Vera Wang to stand next to her, with Paul beside Bess, his new stepmother. Paul’s wife, Lena, holding the gorgeous Heidi, stood beside Paul, and Hugh – Jojo’s lovely husband – stood on the other side of Amy, looking more relaxed than any of the rest of them.
Amy looked as well as she ever had, but despite the dress, the make-up, the eyebrows, even the diet Bess had forced her on, nothing could dim Jojo’s spectacular beauty.
An almost Scandinavian blonde like her departed mother, Jojo was lean, willowy and standing in Bess’s way.
Jojo needed to know: Bess would win this battle.
And yet, it wasn’t easy. With his daughter present, Edward was infinitesimally different with Bess. At the wedding itself, there was less hand-holding and kissing even when Jojo wasn’t around, and when she was, there was almost no hand-holding at all, no touch of Edward’s lips on her collarbone, his favourite place on her body, he murmured.
Time, Bess hoped. Time would fix it …?
She looked at the few invitations for Edward’s birthday that still lay on her desk. Everyone would have the invitations by now. She’d spent ages choosing them. Not too expensive-looking, she’d decided. Simple cream card with gold lettering:
Ed
ward and Bess Brannigan invite you to celebrate Edward’s seventieth birthday party in the glorious surroundings of Lisowen Castle, Co. Kerry on the weekend of 25th March. We would be delighted if you would be our guests for a weekend of celebration.
There followed details of the Friday night dinner (semi-casual) and then the grand black-tie dinner on Saturday, where Bess had decided not to mention, on paper, that there would be a band and dancing, and vintage champagne.
To make too much of it all on the invitation might raise too much ire. She felt as if she’d been judged enough by the Brannigan family as it was and she didn’t want Edward’s birthday to turn into an event about herself instead of about her husband.
Because she did love him, very much, despite what some people thought. Only a fool or a masochist would marry a man for his money when his beloved wife was dead a mere two and a half years, a wife whom everyone treated as if she were Mother Theresa and Audrey Hepburn rolled into one perfect package. And Bess was no fool.
If she hadn’t loved Edward, she would have taken one look at the Brannigan family with all their cabals and tribal alignments and run as far as she could. But she did love him. And that was that.
She thought of Jojo and her naked hatred. Bess had had people hate her before, people in business who might not have expected her to be so scrupulously honest, so determined to stick to the letter of the law.
It wasn’t a nice feeling being hated. But it happened.
Having Edward’s seventieth in the hotel beside the old family home, where all of them, Edward’s dead wife included, had come from was certainly a risk, yes. But why not. She was doing it for her husband. She adored him and he adored her back.
Didn’t that trump everything?
Three
SECRETS OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE #1
Perfect true love exists only in fairytales. In real life, tempers get frayed, princes forget birthdays and princesses somehow end up doing more of the housework! Take the fairytale out of the equation and things will improve.