Secrets of a Happy Marriage

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘How about a sobering-up coffee and I drive you two home?’ she said, turning away to text Hugh with the news that for now, at least, Jojo was relaxed. ‘You are not going to be able to sell much today.’

  ‘Oooooh!’ shrieked Elaine, bounding to her feet. ‘My Most Hated Poster. All those women who come into the shop, try everything on and don’t buy. I’m putting it up now!’

  Jojo collapsed into hysterical laughter. ‘Don’t let her, Cari,’ she begged, before she curled up on all the cushions and closed her eyes.

  Kit had begun to hate the sound of the postman. Years ago it use to annoy him because next door’s dog, a large creature of indeterminate breed, had gone ballistic every time the postman so much as put a foot into the Brannigans’ front garden.

  It wasn’t that Kit had a problem with dogs – in fact he loved dogs and he’d have adored it if they’d been able to have one. Trina had wanted a pet for years and had begged and begged for some sort of dog, but her mother wasn’t an animal person.

  ‘I do not want something dropping hair all over this house,’ Helen had said, shuddering.

  So the Brannigans had not had a dog, no matter how many times Trina cried at Christmas over Santa not leaving a puppy.

  No, what upset Kit about the concept of the postman coming was that the postman rarely brought good news. There were rarely any lovely cheques, although he had invested some money in the Prize Bonds, and occasionally he won 75 euros – which he always kept from Helen, carefully stashed away somewhere. It was his little nest egg and the irony of the man of the house having his own little nest egg in the way that women used to was not lost upon him.

  Helen ran through money the way water ran through pipes.

  All that spending was filling a hole in her somewhere, he knew.

  Once upon a time, Nora had explained it to him, when he and Helen had been spectacularly broke and he’d got a bit drunk at a family get-together and spilled his heart out to his dear sister-in-law.

  That was the lovely thing about Nora: you could say anything to her and she wouldn’t repeat it. She wouldn’t judge. She’d just try to offer kind and helpful advice.

  ‘Where’s the money going?’ she’d asked at the time, even though he was pretty sure she knew damn well where the money was going.

  The money was going onto Helen’s back from the endless expensive shops that she visited all the time, deciding that this dress or that blouse would change everything and finally pull her wardrobe together, make her perfect.

  The whole family used to socialise more in those days, the three brothers and their families going on holidays together or having dinners in each of their houses.

  It was clear that Nora never minded the fact that she and Mick hadn’t an extra penny to their names, and she’d wear the same dress again and again and not be even slightly bothered.

  Sometimes she wore one of the crocheted shawls she made and she wore those little bits of crochet with as much joy as if they were things from a posh designer couriered over from one of the world’s fashion capitals with the couture house’s compliments.

  But not Helen.

  No, Kit’s wife had to have new things, the best of everything, something to prove she was somebody.

  Nora didn’t need things to prove she was somebody.

  ‘I think we were all affected a bit by the past,’ Nora had explained to him gently that time. ‘It was where we came from, Kit, you know that, and the fact that there wasn’t any money around at the time. Lord knows, none of our families had spare money, and for some people, that fear never went away. That fear of never having new clothes or always having to wear hand-me-downs. I think that’s what Helen’s problem is – the fear of needing something and not being able to get it. It’s worse for her because of her father,’ Nora added casually, and Kit had shivered at the thought of his wife overhearing this discussion because she had almost convinced herself that her father had been a paragon of virtue instead of a drunk.

  ‘She never had anything because he spent it all on alcohol and she lived with that as well as the pain of being the daughter of one of the biggest boozers around. That has a huge effect on a person: how we start life. Those childhood years are crucial and if you feel scared or anxious during those years, if you feel like you lived in a war zone – which was, let’s face it, what Helen lived in – then you’re affected for ever. No matter what it looks like to other people, in her head, Helen is always making up for the fact that she was the poor kid with the drunk father.’

  ‘I understand the pathology of it all, but she’s making us broke with it,’ Kit had said and he’d been sorry as soon as he had said it, because it felt like such a betrayal of his wife.

  He knew how hard her young life had been, he’d seen her have nightmares where she woke, wild-eyed and sweating, and told him she’d dreamed of being back in her family home with her father drunkenly shouting and breaking every bit of crockery in the house.

  But Nora had managed to move the conversation along gently, as if he hadn’t said something disloyal about his darling Helen, as if she understood what he was feeling.

  She was an amazing woman, his sister-in-law, and, not for the first time, Kit thought how lucky Mick was to have her. No wonder they had such a strong marriage. They were both such good people, so straight and honest. There would be no things unsaid in their home. Not like in Kit and Helen’s where so much was unsaid, so much lost in the miasma of the past where to talk about what had gone before would be to start a war.

  ‘Look, why don’t you talk to her Kit, say you’re broke, say you love her having beautiful things and you understand why she wants them, but that for a little while you need to pull the horns in,’ Nora advised.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Kit with a firmness he didn’t feel. He had never been up to discussing his wife’s demons with her. But they had to talk about the money soon. He knew that the hole inside Helen would never be filled, not with designer clothes or jewellery that nobody else had. But they would run out of money soon, and that would break her totally. It would break them all.

  ‘That’s it, I’ll talk to her about it.’

  But of course he hadn’t talked to her about any such thing. Woe betide anyone who tried to stop Helen from going to the shop when she wanted to.

  It was her due, she felt. She had married into the Brannigan family and even if he was not the rich one of the Brannigan family, Helen felt people didn’t know this and would expect her to be dressed in the first stare of fashion, which is why he hated the postman and the bills and the credit card statements.

  Sometimes they went through them together and Helen would instantly get defensive.

  ‘Well that was just that little necklace because I was buying a top, and the necklace went so well with it, and I had to have it, I mean really would you deny me that?’

  Kit couldn’t deny her anything. Next door’s dog was long since gone, but Kit knew when the postman came anyway and he collected the post that morning and opened it wearily, knowing what he’d see, knowing that his wife would not have been able to control herself with this big party coming up.

  How was he going to tell her the full extent of their financial problems?

  Amy was on the phone to Nola when the text came in. Normally, she wouldn’t interrupt a phone call to peer at a text but the name on this one had made her sit up: Clive.

  ‘Hold on, Nola,’ she said, managing to sound calm. ‘It’s … er, a work thing.’

  ‘Are you around? I can drop in for half an hour and I’ve got wine! And guess what, tomorrow night I can stay the night!’

  Amy felt her heart leap. She hadn’t heard from Clive for so long, since that horrible day in the lift and in the intervening period, all his interactions with her had been cold and professional. And now this …

  ‘Nola, I have to reply. I’ll buzz you back,’ she said hastily.

  All her plans for the next day – plans to visit the shops to try to buy a dress for Edward’s blast
ed seventieth party – had gone out the window. Clive could come over and stay the night.

  During their whole relationship, he had never managed this, even though he said himself and Suzanne lived separate lives and did their own thing, and honestly it was hardly a marriage at all …

  In the early stages, Amy had asked him a couple of times to stay over in her little apartment – which she’d have cleaned and bedecked with flowers for this very purpose – and she had been heartbroken that he hadn’t been able to.

  Still, she couldn’t push it: people didn’t like to be pushed, men didn’t like to be pushed. She’d read this a lot in magazines. She would let this wonderful life-long love develop naturally, because he might reject her and then … she couldn’t manage that.

  At the heart of Amy was an enormous fear of rejection. She tried her very best to keep this fear hidden from her mother, from people she knew, from everyone except perhaps Tiana and Nola.

  They understood.

  ‘You fear rejection because of your parents,’ Tiana used to say before she went to New Zealand.

  ‘I mean, your mother is hardly the touchy-feely type and your dad – he was a sweetie, but he wasn’t really around.’

  ‘He did love me, though,’ Amy said sadly. ‘Does love me.’ She thought of the cards he sent but it had been years since he’d visited and he moved around so much, had never had a permanent home abroad where she could go to.

  ‘I’m sure he loves you,’ said Nola, the voice of reason, ‘but the reality is that when you were a child, he left for the UK and the stripper.’

  They all allowed themselves a little laugh at Granny Maura’s description of Amy’s father’s second love. Sometimes laughing was the only way to deal with things.

  Sylvia, the so-called stripper, was actually sweet, a little innocent, far too young for Dennis, and was actually one of many young women trying to earn a crust as a perfectly respectable dancer in West End shows.

  Whatever she was, it seemed as if being with Sylvia in London was preferable to Dennis than spending time with his daughter in Ireland.

  ‘That’s rejection number one,’ said Nola, who studied such things for her work on how to make yourself a better, stronger person.

  Having Bess as a mother – hard-working with not enough time for emotional closeness with her daughter – created the long-running rejection that was number two.

  ‘At least your mother had something solid behind her,’ Tiana used to say when they were comparing the madness of their mothers. ‘Mine had her knees worn out on the floor praying the rosary. The more I think about it, the more I think she was quite bonkers. She talked endlessly about hell and Satan and how if we didn’t pray, we were doomed. That is not normal.’

  ‘Oh, what’s normal, anyway?’ sighed Amy, who didn’t want to be psychoanalysed by her friends.

  Her mother was trying now but Amy had so much going on and she didn’t have time for Bess just now.

  ‘Normal’s a cycle on the washing machine, honey,’ Nola said gently. ‘Remind yourself of that every now and then but it’s important to work out all your issues too.’

  Amy had had her issues worked out perfectly well and she knew them all. But knowing your issues and avoiding the pitfalls they created were two very different things.

  That was why she had never told either Tiana or Nola about Clive. They would both hate him and everything he stood for: a married man who said his marriage was over and that all he cared about was Amy and his children. Yet he still was with said wife and children.

  He was still never able to spend the night and once, lately, he’d said that he probably wouldn’t be able to leave until the children were old enough, which had made Amy cry after he’d gone. How long would she have to wait? And she’d thought financial issues were behind his living with Suzanne?

  But a woman who was afraid of being rejected because she had been rejected before never pushed things, which was why when Clive said he couldn’t stay the night, Amy would always nod sweetly and say: ‘Of course, darling, I understand.’

  But now, she thought joyously, now he was going to stay. He must love her.

  She had bought new sheets ages ago, just in case: gorgeous ones that felt soft to the touch and she ironed them at high speed, made the bed with love and had to stop herself scattering rose petals on their snowy plumpness. Normally she didn’t bother ironing things like sheets. But tonight was going to be special.

  The big window of the sitting room of her apartment overlooked Delaney Gardens, which was small and pretty and was always full of children and people walking dogs, the sound of laughter and giggling mixed with the odd little terrier bark or a giggling argument over who was best at playing keepy-uppy with the football.

  It was a wonderful place to live, in the pretty community of Silver Bay, where the houses swept down to the great curving horseshoe that was Dublin Bay. There was a real sense of community and she loved it.

  She always felt that Clive didn’t entirely appreciate it because he belted into her house at high speed, as if terrified someone was going to see him. Amy would have liked to explain that her neighbours would hardly recognise Clive and what were they going to do even if they did? Put a picture in the paper and say, ‘This man spotted going into somebody’s house’?

  The following evening, she got home from work late because roadworks had delayed the bus, and she was anxious as there was still so much to do. She had to organise the fresh fruit and the slow cooker was bubbling away with a casserole but she hadn’t got the hang of the slow cooker yet and sometimes things came out of it wonderfully and sometimes meat came out as if it could be cut into thin slices and used as shoe leather.

  If the meal – a slowly cooked Thai curry – hadn’t worked out, she was going to race to the supermarket and buy something else. But no, a spoonful comfirmed that the Thai curry tasted lovely.

  Fabulous. This was going to be a marvellous night.

  She had the quickest shower ever, blow-dried her hair, put on pretty underwear and a lovely dress, floral and the colour of golden apricots to go with her hair, and then left herself with bare feet so she could pad around the apartment, her feet sinking into the lovely rag rugs that were placed on wooden floors she’d stripped and varnished herself.

  She lit candles and put on music, singing to herself all the time. It was almost an afterthought to check the letter box and see if there was any post, because she was too excited to think about anything else, too excited to think about what might be there. But finally, it was there.

  Not the enormous package she’d half expected: her manuscript back with a ‘Thank you, but no thanks’, the thing everyone in the online writers’ group talked about and dreaded.

  Instead, there was a letter from the publishers, a letter that had ludicrously clearly been stuck in the wrong letter box because Mrs Thompson, her neighbour, had scrawled: ‘Sorry, Amy, this landed in our box and we were away. It’s not your name but your address and I thought you might know what to do with it …’

  Amy thought she might be sick. The stuck-on label with A.J. Sharkey and her address on it had ‘Cambridge Publishing’ and their Irish address inscribed at the top.

  It had come weeks ago. Delivered to the wrong apartment in her building, in the first place, then the whole mistake compounded by the fact that she’d deliberately used initials that were not easily identified as either male or female, so that no preconception could be made. Just in case Cari had seen it, she hadn’t used the name Reynolds but had gone for Sharkey, her mother’s maiden name. Her neighbours hadn’t connected it with her and all this subterfuge had resulted in this.

  Full of fear, ready for the rejection, she opened it and read, then sat down on her couch and tried to take it all in.

  It was a letter from Cari Brannigan, who was – if Amy thought about it – her stepcousin, sort of. A thrill shivered through her.

  Cari writing back to her! And what a letter!

  ‘Dear A.J.,’ the le
tter went. ‘I wish I knew your proper name because it seems strange writing to A.J. Sharkey and not knowing if you are a man or a woman or two writers. I sense you are a woman, I sense that from something in your writing, but I don’t know for sure. All I can say is that I love your manuscript, I love the way you write and so does everyone else in our publishing department. We want to see more, please? You haven’t shown us the denouement and I know it must be fabulous.’

  Amy had never fainted before, but as she looked at the letter and felt the thrill of excitement rise from her feet up through her whole body, she thought it was entirely possible that she would collapse onto her floorboards.

  There followed Cari’s phone numbers, email address and another plea to please get in touch as soon as possible.

  Amy had read the letter five times, going over each word, mouthing them silently.

  ‘I love the way you write,’ said Cari. ‘but I need to know something about you, I need to see the rest of the novel. Is there more, please tell me there’s more, lots more? I feel you have got so much in you, I can sense it, please ring me as soon as possible, I want to talk to you, we want to publish your book.’

  It was the letter Amy had dreamed of all her life: for somebody to say she was a writer.

  Nobody knew, only Tiana and Nola, and they didn’t talk about it because Amy wouldn’t let them – she was too nervous of putting the kybosh on her dream. Her grandmother had been a big fan of the superstition of believing it was bad luck to think of further successes because to do so would invite failure and disaster.

  Nola was always so encouraging and after a while, Amy had asked her not to keep mentioning various novels she had tried to write over the years because it was embarrassing.

  ‘What’s embarrassing about trying to do something amazing?’ said Nola in that sparky, can-do attitude of hers.

  ‘It’s just that I keep trying things and they don’t work out, I have to delete them all and then I just feel like such a moron,’ said Amy. ‘I’m not telling anyone again.’