by Cathy Kelly
‘You know it’s your dad’s seventieth soon,’ she said.
Jojo looked up.
‘Ye-es.’ The one syllable was drawn out slowly.
Nora took a deep breath: bad news was best delivered quickly.
‘Bess has sent out invitations to a grand birthday party, in Lisowen Castle …’ She had the invitation in her bag, ready to bring it out.
For a brief moment, Jojo was mute, her hand in mid-air with a few muffin crumbs in it.
‘Lisowen was where Mum and Dad celebrated their silver wedding anniversary,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
Nora looked down at her empty plate. She always gulped her food when she was nervous.
Edward was such a moron. It was one thing for his new wife to suggest a big birthday party in a hotel near where he’d grown up, another entirely to say yes to it when he’d celebrated twenty-five years of marriage to his previous wife there. A wife who was mother to his two adult children, one of whom loathed said new wife. So, the wedding anniversary had been nine or ten years ago, but still.
He was a complete idiot. It was the only way to explain it. Either that, or Bess had some spectacular technique in bed which made his brain freeze over so she could bend him to her will. Something with ping pong balls or— Nora’s imagination went at this point. She did not want to imagine any of this. Damned Bess!
‘Here.’ Nora put the invitation on the table in front of her niece. Jojo had to see it.
Who knew how Edward would deliver Jojo’s invitation? He might phone Jojo to invite her and Hugh rather than send a cold card.
Jojo stared for a long moment at the words on the lovely cream card as if she were unable to read and could make no sense of them. Then, she abruptly jumped out of her seat, grabbing her handbag.
‘Nora, sorry, I can’t stay. I, I—’
Jojo couldn’t find the words. Her father’s wedding had been bad enough but this?
Without even hugging her aunt, Jojo crashed out of the café after banging into half of the small tables. Tears were streaming down her face.
Her parents’ silver wedding, nine years ago, had been so lovely. Before the party, Mum had gone with Jojo to Paris, a trip that had made Jojo even more determined to open her own shop one day, and they’d taken blissful trips into Galeries Lafayette, Colette and Hausmann, trying on fabulous evening gowns fit for a woman who was married twenty-five years.
‘It’s all so hideously expensive,’ Lottie had said, looking at price tags with horror. She liked nice clothes but not wildly expensive ones. Not when there were tiny babies starving in the world, the ice caps were melting and pandas were dying out.
‘Mum, please?’ Jojo had begged. ‘Just this once. I know you hate waste but this is special.’
The dress had been Balmain, a dusty rose around the curving shoulder line, the colour of the fabric merging from rose into the dark pink camellia colour of the wedding bouquet Lottie O’Brien had carried twenty-five years previously when she’d married the oldest Brannigan brother.
Jojo still had the dress, in acid-free paper, in an archival garment box. She now had almost all of her mother’s clothes because her father hadn’t been able to throw them out initially, and then he’d met Bess and once Jojo had heard of her – ‘You’ll love her, Jojo, she’s a wonderful person!’ – Jojo had raced round to her parents’ house in a frenzy and had ripped every personal item of her mother’s from the place.
That Balmain dress, still beautiful, stood for everything her mother had been: timeless, lovely and she’d looked like a golden angel in it. How could her father sully her mother’s memory by letting that bitch organise his birthday in the same hotel?
Jojo didn’t run back to the shop. Instead, she made for her car, sat in it and hit her brother’s number on speed dial. She needed someone who’d understand.
New York
Paul didn’t have time for the call but the phone identified the caller as his sister, Jojo, so he picked it up anyway. It was eight-thirty in New York, he was racing into a meeting and neither he nor his wife, Lena, had spotted that his tie was decorated with their little daughter’s eggy breakfast as he was leaving the apartment.
Heidi might only be fourteen months old, but she was a clever little bunny and had already worked out that Dada spent more time at home if she messed up his clothes in the morning.
‘Either that’s a new look or you’ve food on your necktie,’ said one of the laconic receptionists at FitzgeraldProject Inc., the cutting edge ad agency where he worked.
Breakfast on people’s clothes at Fitzgerald’s was something a creative person might just get away with because the dress code was fluid to say the least, but today Paul’s team were making a pre-presentation to a group of Big Diet Drink people who were very corporate and would be suited, booted and unhappy at any sign of Jimi Hendrix T-shirts, urban modern hair, too many facial piercings or dirty ties.
Paul pulled the egged tie off, while simultaneously answering the phone to his sister and beginning to search frantically in his desk drawer for an emergency tie-thing.
‘Yo, sis, what’s up?’ he said, about to follow this jokey hello with ‘I’m sort of rushing here so can I phone you back—?’
But Jojo wasn’t listening.
‘That bitch is having Dad’s seventieth birthday party next month in Lisowen, Paul. Lisowen! I will kill her, I swear I will.’
Paul sat down in his chair.
Big Diet Drinks or not, his beloved big sister was his beloved big sister.
‘I haven’t seen any invitations – are you sure?’
‘Nora told me about fifteen minutes ago. She brought hers with her. It’s going to be a “gala evening, black tie …” I hate that woman! Does she ever think about us, about Mum? How can Dad let her do this type of thing?’
Paul wondered the same thing and thought that while it was great that his father had found someone else after their mother’s death, he seemed to have had his sensitivity radar surgically removed at the same time as his second marriage.
Dad had to have known the venue would drive Jojo insane.
Paul looked at the photos of Lena and Heidi on his desk.
His mother hadn’t seen Heidi, hadn’t known of her existence because Lena had become pregnant after his mother’s death, and that was hard because Paul had been close to Lottie, she’d been a wonderful mother: kind, loving and yet tough when it was required.
And yet, what could he do?
People died, even parents you adored. You had to move on.
He loved Dad and Jojo, loved his cousins too, loved them all, but he had Lena and Heidi now: they were his family. Strange how a new family somehow shifted the balance of the old one. The allegiance, the ‘I will kill to protect these people’, moved.
Jojo and Hugh didn’t have that. He often wanted to say it to Jojo but he was afraid she was too fragile to hear it: that if she had her own child, she might come to terms with their mother’s death in the way that new life allowed people to move on.
He was going to say it, soon. Just not now.
‘Have you talked to Dad?’ he asked.
‘No. If he’s stupid enough to let her do this, then I won’t stop them but I won’t go either.’
‘What does Hugh think?’
‘I haven’t told him yet.’
She sounded as if she’d been crying for some time.
‘Jojo,’ said Paul, looking at his watch. He was now officially late. ‘I have to go, it’s important or I wouldn’t hang up. I’ll phone you in about two hours, OK,’ and because he had to keep his job as there were now two people entirely dependent on him, Paul Brannigan said ‘I love you,’ to his sister, hung up and wondered had his new stepmother ever stopped for one moment to consider that marrying a widower with children might require some vague hint of sensitivity.
In the offices of McConnells and Balcon, Hugh Hennessy sat in his high-ceilinged Georgian office and listened to his colleague and oldest college friend,
Elizabeth Ryan, as she sat with her head back, massaging an aching neck, and telling him how she was sorry she’d ever gone into family law in the first place.
‘It’s one of those horrible cases, ones where nobody wins, where they started proceedings for the judicial separation in the heat of the moment, where everyone’s bewildered by pain and where you really want to tell them to go away to Italy for a week, make love in the sun and forget about it all.’
‘George McConnell would stab you if you told any paying client to go to Italy for a week to forget about the case,’ said Hugh, trying to make her laugh.
‘What? With his Mont Blanc fountain pen?’ asked Elizabeth, and they both managed to laugh at the notion of the fastidious senior partner doing anything as déclassé as stabbing anyone. ‘Dear George, he only raises his voice above a whisper if he thinks your billing is down,’ Elizabeth went on.
‘Bad morning, then?’ said Hugh. His hadn’t been any better. His speciality was commercial law and the brightest spot in the morning had been when the coffee machine had finally broken for good and Finola, the assistant he shared, had gone to the café across the road and brought back proper espressos instead of the watery battery acid the machine had been hissing out for a month. For Jojo’s sake, Hugh was staying off coffee at home. He was also off wine, anything that she shouldn’t eat, and was going slightly insane making healthy smoothies and vegetable juices in case she fancied one because he worried about her health.
‘The worst morning,’ Elizabeth sighed. ‘Nobody knows other people’s marriages, but you have a damn good view in my job and this couple were not ready for it, not by a long shot. Hugh, you have no idea how many clients ask me am I married, and you can tell they’re hoping I say I’m divorced, so I know what they’re going through.’
‘You don’t have to tell them,’ said Hugh.
‘Listen, apart from the rare hard-as-nails types, they all look like dogs who’ve been kicked in the ribs and I can’t snap that it’s not germane to the business at hand to tell them whether I’m married or not. When I say I am, they either look as if they want to cry or else tell me I must be mad and that the spouse will cheat or disappoint me in some way at some point and then I’ll understand.’
‘Tell them you’re on your second marriage,’ Hugh said. ‘That shows them you understand and that there’s always a second chance.’
‘I should say “It’s complicated”, like they do on Facebook,’ Elizabeth said gloomily. ‘Wolfie is still in Berlin trying to get a gallery to exhibit his work, will be for another few months. I’d get a dog if I was ever home long enough to take care of it.’
Hugh’s private mobile vibrated in his suit jacket breast pocket.
‘Hugh,’ said Jojo.
‘Darling,’ he replied, happy to hear her voice. But he got no further.
‘Bloody Bess is having Daddy’s seventieth at Lisowen Castle. It’s where he and Mum had their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary!’
Hugh’s eyes caught Elizabeth’s and she stood up, waved goodbye and left the office.
He thought briefly of those times when he and Jojo had double dated with Elizabeth and Wolfgang, and the fun they’d had. Nights out at the cinema, followed by larky dinners in cheap restaurants where they’d talked non-stop and sometimes dancing later, because Jojo and Elizabeth loved dancing and were always keeping an ear out for clubs that played music for what they called ‘oldies’ like themselves.
Now Wolfgang was away a lot in Germany calling on old contacts to try to get his art career re-energised, because the market for white canvases with the odd navy blob on them wasn’t as good as it had been in the heady years of the late nineties, and Jojo didn’t want to go out with anyone, ever. She didn’t want to explain to people at dinners why she didn’t want even a teeny glass of wine or have anyone ask her how she was getting on since her mother had died, and wasn’t it lovely that her father had found love again, or, worst of all, bump into the endless stream of thoughtless people who liked to ask: ‘Any sign of babies, yet?’ with all the gravity of a person asking a physicist to explain string theory.
‘Honey, I have a gap in an hour,’ Hugh said, consulting his diary. ‘Could you get in to town to meet me for a coffee – sorry, herbal tea?’
‘I can’t,’ sobbed Jojo. ‘I have to go back to the shop and we got all these expensive dresses we didn’t order and oh, Hugh, I feel so miserable. I’m sorry, I’m always whining, always phoning you like this at work—’
‘It’s fine, darling. I love you,’ said Hugh, and then he had to go because Finola put her head round the door to tell him his next client was there.
Somehow, he put his work face on: the calm, confident face of Hugh Hennessy, the tall, well-built former rowing champion who’d run marathons for charity, who’d always made everyone in his life proud of him and who felt utterly hopeless because he couldn’t get his wife pregnant or comfort her about all the pain in her life.
Four
‘Remember that sometimes not getting what
you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.’
Dalai Lama
Edward Brannigan had a bronze relief plaque on his office wall: ‘Ancora imparo’, which meant ‘I am still learning.’
It was a quote by Leonardo da Vinci and Lottie had given it to him as part of a Christmas or a birthday present once. He couldn’t remember which one, a thought which made him smile wryly at the notion of the palaver surrounding the perfect gift for various occasions.
Soap, socks, ties with Santas on them – he had collections of them all and yet the presents that he remembered were unusual ones that lasted, even if he couldn’t remember when he’d received them. Like Lottie’s plaque because it was a quote he’d often repeated.
‘We’ll never know it all, will we?’ Lottie had said to him when he’d told her he’d hung it on his office wall the day before, and he could remember, very clearly, how he’d given her a quick hug and said ‘no’, and then gone off out to get his clubs ready for his Saturday golf match, yelling back that he should be in by seven but might have dinner with the lads at the club, and would she mind?
Lottie had never minded but when she was dead, and he was alone in the sprawling bungalow, listening to nothing but his own breathing because every radio or television show had something in it to make him cry and he couldn’t bear to cry any more, Edward had wished she had minded.
Or that he hadn’t been so selfish as to leave her.
Why play all that golf when they had so little time left together? He hadn’t known then, not when she’d given him the little da Vinci plaque. But he should have known. Damn it, he was supposed to be clever and yet he hadn’t seen any of the signs, hadn’t ever thought that one day Lottie might be taken from him and he’d be alone.
Women were the ones who were supposed to live longest. She was supposed to outlive him, not the other way round.
He, Mick, Nora and Lottie would joke about this on nights out. Before.
‘Lottie and I shall get ourselves toyboys,’ Nora might say, when Mick and Edward had got stuck into a cul-de-sac of an unwinnable conversation about football or hurling or the merits of one politician over another, and were oblivious to all around them, and Nora would decide to knock them off their perches and drag them back into the world.
‘Oh, toyboys, yes,’ Lottie would agree. ‘The nice man who packs my bags in the market, he’d be lovely.’
‘He’s a bit old,’ Nora might say, sounding scandalised. ‘A toyboy has to be at least twenty-five years younger or he’s no good to you, past his prime …’
And they’d laugh at the notion of it all and Mick and Edward would raise their eyes to heaven, and Edward might demand what the two women would say if he and Mick started discussing some young girl on the checkout counter, whereupon Lottie would gaze at him, so beautiful with those blue eyes, and say: ‘I know you wouldn’t.’
And he wouldn’t. Hadn’t. Had never so much as looked at another woman during his marriage.
There had been one woman after Lottie’s death – a disaster of an encounter abroad when longing for the touch of another human body had brought him to a woman’s room after a conference, and he’d nearly gone through with it. She’d been half-naked, his hands on her breasts and suddenly, in a flashback, Edward could see the frailness of Lottie at the end, and the breasts that had killed her, and any desire in him had died.
‘I’m sorry,’ he’d said, pushing himself off the hotel bed, feeling both stupid and embarrassed. ‘My wife—’ he began.
‘Too soon, huh?’ said the woman, covering herself up with a pillow and looking as defeated as he felt.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, like a broken record.
‘Me too,’ she said and Edward saw she was about to cry.
He bent down and kissed her gently on the temple. ‘You’re beautiful and any man would be a fool not to want you but you’re right, it is too soon for me. If it had been anyone, I wish it had been you.’
Loneliness seemed to be his future, until that night he’d met Bess. Love and actual desire had flooded him.
He’d barely been able to concentrate on the food or the conversation around him – all he’d thought of was this beautiful woman who wasn’t flirting with him, but was merely talking, and fascinating him.
He had thought of Lottie afterwards, when he went home and worked out how to see Bess again, and he knew Lottie would have approved.
White roses, she’d have said. Not red ones. Red is so obvious. Lottie had had such amazing taste. She’d taught him so much – how to be classy with his money, to give to charity without fanfare and how to keep his wealth out of the gossip columns, staying under the radar instead of becoming a byword for the nouveau riche.
Was it desperation to imagine that she would have liked Bess Reynolds, even though they were entirely different in every way?
His son Paul had liked Bess too but not Jojo, who couldn’t bear to be in the same room as her.
He’d talk to Nora about it, he thought: if anyone could fix this impasse between Jojo and Bess, it was his sister-in-law.