by Cathy Kelly
‘This is his fourth book, not the twenty-seventh novel from some bigwig who won’t let anyone edit them and considers each word sacrosanct. John Steele wants to be edited, he wants the help. He’s one of those writers who needs nurturing. You’ve heard that word before, Gavin? Nurturing. Now when Freddie and I spoke to you in the first place you said you were up for the nurturing, you said you were up for the phone calls telling him how good he was, phone calls discussing all parts of the plot, you understand?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Gavin, trying to sound stunned at this implication that he wasn’t up for editor of the year at industry awards. ‘I’ve edited many people.’
‘Like Evelyn Walker,’ said Edwin drily, reminding Gavin of that hideous old woman that Gavin had hated, who’d caused him no end of trouble because his idea of editing and her idea of editing had not gelled.
‘Edwin, please don’t worry. I’ll take care of this. I’ll fly to West Cork, we can sort it out.’
‘You did that already,’ said Edwin. ‘The game is up, Gavin, you’re no longer editing John Steele. Freddie told me to deliver the message. He was trying to get hold of you himself, but you haven’t been returning his calls – which is not a good plan either. At Cambridge Publishing, we return agents’ calls. Now why don’t you telephone Freddie right now and apologise to him, telephone John Steele and apologise really meaningfully to him and then let me get on with the tricky business of finding an editor for John Steele.’
‘Not Cari Brannigan?’ said Gavin quickly.
‘What have you got against Cari Brannigan precisely?’ said Edwin.
‘Nothing,’ said Gavin, which was true because he didn’t have anything particular against her – it was just that she was clever and ambitious and therefore stood in his way. That was all it took with Gavin.
‘It will be Cari Brannigan because John wants her back.’
‘Whatever makes him happy,’ said Gavin piously.
‘And I’ll see you first thing on Monday morning in my office because we need a talk,’ said Edwin. ‘John Steele is an important author to us and you could have screwed this up. I only hope we can fix it, I only hope that Cari agrees to edit him again and hasn’t already been looking for another job because she hasn’t been treated very well in all of this. If she walks, and Steele thinks she’s the only editor for him, then he’ll walk right after her.’
‘Should I phone her too?’ said Gavin, then regretted it instantly.
‘Hell, no! As I said,’ said Edwin, gravelly voiced, ‘we’ll talk first thing on Monday morning.’
Not much happened in Lisowen village that Mrs Gwen Carlisle didn’t know about.
Pregnancy, people who were off the sauce going back on it, affairs, a broken exhaust on the mobile library van – she knew it all. And could be persuaded to tell you all about it under the correct circumstances.
Today, she was up and out of the house earlier than usual because she wanted to be at the church early in order to deliver the latest news. Mass was at ten and half nine was a good time to hit the café for a small tea and to hold court. The church was half a mile away, five minutes in the car, but Gwen had been banned from taking to the roads in her Morris Minor since the incident with the herd of Aberdeen Angus cows.
Mr Ryan was out at his postbox. ‘Grand day—’ he began, but Gwen was already whisking past.
Mr Ryan was a sweet bachelor who lived on his own in the cottages at the end of Station Road, where Gwen lived in lonely splendour in the old manse, Mr Carlisle having shuffled off this mortal coil many moons ago.
‘Grand,’ agreed Gwen, as she kept going. Bachelors were rarely any good for gossip. Mr Ryan liked talking about trains (he had model ones) and tomatoes (he had a greenhouse), in that order. No point in wasting good gossip on him.
Lady Lucas drove past in the Land Rover, muck and rust shimmering in the air as she passed. She waved but didn’t stop.
Lady Lucas was as bad as Mr Ryan – no time for talking about local affairs – and she steered as if she was handling a nervous young horse over a tricky jump, so it was safer to say no to her kindly proffered lifts.
Finally, Gwen reached the shops, Clara’s Coffee Shop and headquarters central for anyone with a nose for local information.
As if they knew, as if the information had been swirling around in the air along with the bees and the drifts of dandelion heads blown by children aching to be off school, the girls were all there.
They were all, excepting Mrs Tansy Porter, widows and Tansy might as well have been as her poor husband was in his dotage and regularly rolled up at Mass in his combination drawers with the family Bible in one hand, a flat cap on his head, and a worn-out Tansy beside him.
‘It’s hardly news, is it?’ asked Lizzie McGovern, who’d grown up only a hair’s breadth away from the small Brannigan farm. ‘They’re all back for Ed’s big party and renting out the whole castle. Sure, we know that.’
‘That’s not the news,’ said Gwen, relishing the fact that, yet again, she knew more than anyone else. ‘Fáinne’s coming.’
There was a silence, a rarity at these get-togethers where silence only occurred after news of a death or a piece of information so shocking that everyone had to breathe deeply just to take it in.
‘Fáinne?’ said Tansy, who was old enough to remember them all, older than Edward, even, though they’d all called him Ned back then.
‘How do you know?’
‘She’s staying at The Regal. An American’s booked in but called Faenia. Has to be her, has to. Two rooms.’
‘Ooh,’ said someone.
‘Family coming too?’
Faenia had rung PJ up a few days after meeting him and he was completely surprised to get the call.
‘Remember me?’ said that husky elegant voice he remembered from the airport. ‘It’s Faenia Lennox, I gave you a lift from the airport—’
‘— to my house. Have totally forgotten it,’ laughed PJ.
She wasn’t sort of the person people forgot.
‘How have you been?’ he asked.
‘Oh, not so bad,’ said Faenia. ‘I was ringing to ask you a favour, actually.’
‘A favour?’ said PJ, wondering what he could possibly do to help this woman out.
‘I have to go to a family event in Lisowen in Co. Kerry this weekend and I would love it if someone would drive me. I was thinking of you, if you’re free. I’ve got a hire car and everything, but it’s a long old way. I’m not much of a driver, to be honest. I’d pay you, of course, that might help.’
‘I’d do it for nothing,’ said PJ and he meant it.
It didn’t matter that he was entirely broke and his father was making irritable noises about when was PJ going to get a proper job, like working for him in the builders’ yard, instead of going to interviews about teaching jobs. PJ knew exactly what his father thought about teaching drama and none of it was good.
‘Now you’re back from chasing the dream, you’d want to settle down,’ his father said on a daily basis.
PJ wanted to settle down but in his own way, not in a settle for sort of way. Giving up his dream of drama would be settling for and he couldn’t do that.
‘No, I want to pay you,’ insisted Faenia.
‘Why me?’ said PJ in a rare moment of suspicion. ‘It’s not as if you couldn’t afford to get one of those lovely limos to drive you down, the way you had the limo to pick us up at the airport.’
‘I’d like the company for the whole thing,’ admitted Faenia. ‘You’d be my guest. It’s a family party and I don’t want to go alone.’ She paused and PJ could picture her lost in thought at the memory of the family who’d been unaware of her coming back. A big party with them all might not be much fun, if you thought about it, no matter that she had money. Family could be tricky no matter what age or stage in life you were at.
‘In fact,’ Faenia went on, ‘you’d be doing me the most enormous favour, so I should really pay you double for that.’
On the oth
er end of the phone, PJ laughed. ‘There is no need to pay me double for anything,’ he said. ‘I’d love to come and you don’t have to pay me at all.’
‘No, I would like to pay,’ she insisted. ‘And secondly, you’re going to need a dress suit.’
‘By dress suit do you mean the full monkey suit?’ asked PJ, who had worn one precisely twice in his life: once to his big, end of school dance and again to his slightly stuck-up cousin’s wedding, but they had both been hired and hadn’t fitted him very well to be honest.
‘Yes, the proper monkey suit,’ said Faenia. ‘I’ll pay for that too. You see, I don’t want to go on my own and if you were there as my guest at the party, it would make me feel better.’
PJ didn’t need to think twice. There was nothing romantic in his decision to accompany Faenia Lennox on this trip. She had to be easily in her sixties and his next big birthday was going to be his twenty-sixth. But there was something special about her, something that made PJ feel protective of Faenia Lennox. If she wanted him to go along, then he would.
When Faenia arrived at PJ’s house in the rented car, PJ was surprised to see that it was a small car. He’d half expected her to roll up in something glamorous and glossy, some expensive marque of German design with automatic steering and probably the capability to go to Mars. But she suited this neat little Toyota hatchback.
‘I didn’t know what to wear so I brought a lot of stuff,’ she said, indicating the pile of luggage in the back.
He laughed as he hung his hired tuxedo in its suit cover on one of the hooks in the roof and threw in a duffel bag.
‘You’re a bit of a snail, aren’t you?’ he said, sliding into the front seat and ratcheting it back so it could accommodate his long legs. ‘You like to bring all your things with you.’
Faenia grinned. ‘You are very wise for one so young,’ she said. ‘I do like to take my things with me, very perceptive of you.’
‘You may call me Yoda for the rest of the trip,’ PJ joked, and they set off.
At first Faenia was full of questions. How was he getting on with the job search, was his father still nagging him to go into the family business, and was his mother completely delirious that he had finally come home from America? The job search was going slowly, PJ admitted. His mother was entirely delirious he was home from America as was his young brother, and his father – well, Dad was happy he was back, but there had been some very heavy hints being dropped about how drama wasn’t a proper career and he must know this by now and surely a job that gave a decent wage like the one that was waiting for him in the builders’ yard would be a better bet.
‘He just wants to see you settled that’s all,’ Faenia said. ‘Parents are like that. They like to see their kids settled and happy and then they can stop worrying quite so much.’
‘Have you kids?’ PJ asked.
‘No, I was never blessed with any,’ said Faenia lightly. ‘It wasn’t meant to be. My second husband had children himself but they were nearly grown-up when I met them. I’m very close to them, though.’
‘Second husband,’ said PJ, pretending to be surprised but not really being surprised at all. Faenia had an air of glamour and excitement about her and it was quite normal for people like that to have been married several times, certainly people from the West Coast and he had met enough of them in his time in LA. ‘How many times were you married?’ he asked.
Faenia laughed her deep throaty giggle. ‘That’s what I love about the Irish,’ she said. ‘They ask you these things. People in California ask too, you know. I think we are very similar really, that’s why I settled down so well there. People in Ireland and California will ask you absolutely anything. And New Yorkers are the same, utterly upfront – there’s nothing they won’t ask you: what you earn, whether you are thinking of leaving your husband, and if you are leaving your husband, can they have his phone number.’
It was PJ’s turn to laugh. ‘Ah now,’ he said. ‘I met a few mad people all right, but I never met anyone who asked that.’
Faenia hadn’t been able to get a room in Lisowen Castle, obviously.
‘The place is jam-packed and the family have booked it all out,’ Isobel told her.
‘That’s fine, that’s what I expected,’ Faenia said.
‘I’ve booked you into The Regal,’ Isobel said. ‘The two rooms like you asked.’
Isobel hadn’t blinked an eye when Faenia had turned up with PJ, who was probably young enough to be her grandson, never mind her son.
‘This is my friend, PJ,’ Faenia said proudly, when they finally rolled up at Isobel’s house early in the afternoon on the day of the big party. ‘We haven’t known each other long, but he has taken on the big job of driving me around and taking care of me, because I can’t get the hang of these Irish roads and driving on the other side. At least half the drivers don’t use their indicators, they just launch themselves wherever they want to go.’
‘Some people do see the indicator switch as more of an ornament than an actual aid to driving,’ Isobel agreed.
‘Delighted to meet you,’ PJ said formally to Isobel. He had taken in the information that Isobel was the police sergeant’s wife and was behaving with great formality.
‘Ah, you can stop that,’ said Isobel kindly. ‘There’s no need. Plenty of people around here suck up to me and, honestly, I have no power over the law.’
‘I suppose not,’ said PJ thoughtfully. ‘It’s just that you always imagine that in a small town that—’
‘— that the sergeant’s wife is going to know every bit of dirt and tell him who to arrest?’ laughed Isobel. ‘Not a bit of it, I’m afraid, although there have been times when I have felt the need to arrest a few people myself. But still, my husband is the one who is a guard, not me. Now, a cup of tea? I won’t offer you a drink since you are driving,’ she said to PJ and twinkled her eyes a little.
They made it to The Regal by four and it was a lovely hotel, nothing like the castle, mind you, which Faenia had already Googled to see it in its new incarnation. With its glamorous décor and spa, it was nothing like the place she’d remembered from her youth.
The rooms in The Regal were nice and clean, plus there was a swimming pool and PJ decided he’d go down and do a few lengths before the evening.
‘Are we eating at this thing or what?’ he said to Faenia, which was a perfectly normal question and yet threw her.
For a brief moment Faenia had wondered if she was completely mad to have driven all the way down to Kerry when nobody knew she was coming, to a party where she actually had no answer to the question of them staying for dinner.
She and PJ were not on the guest list, but she didn’t want to tell him this.
They might be eating and they might not be eating. She wasn’t sure which.
‘We could have a little pre-party snack before we go,’ she said thoughtfully. That would cover all the bases.
While PJ swam, she sat in her room, unpacked and checked her email for any message from Nic. There was none, had been none since that first text where Nic had said: ‘Where are you, I came to see you and you were just gone. I can’t believe you did that. Where have you gone?’
There has been a few little x’s, but that hadn’t been enough for Faenia.
Nic knew how the phone worked and, incredibly, it worked in both directions. You didn’t send random text messages wondering where they were.
No.
You rang them, with worry in your voice and wondered where the heck they were because you were sick with anxiety, and they were about to call 911, thinking you had been kidnapped. Or else you said that if it was your fault, you were sorry and, please, could you start again. They had made mistakes but it was over now.
That was what you did with someone you loved when you had messed up as seriously as Nic.
But then, Nic had some serious decisions to make and it seemed they hadn’t been made yet. Perhaps never, and Faenia would have to live with that, live with a broken heart.
She dressed carefully. The gown she had chosen to wear was one she had owned for years and it was quite timeless: a silvery sheath that had been cut so well it hid a multitude of sins. Faenia had once been very slender but she had the inevitable thickening around the middle that women of her age developed. She still had great legs though. Nic had noticed them first thing.
‘I bet you were a dancer when you were younger,’ Nic had said early on, in those delicious courtship months.
Faenia looked at herself in the mirror and wondered at what she was doing here, about to meet people she hadn’t seen for forty years, away from the one person she loved in the whole world, a person who couldn’t love her back properly.
PJ must think she was mad, coming on this wild goose chase across the country when she couldn’t answer the question as to whether they would actually eat at the party or not.
He didn’t know they didn’t have proper invitations, that they were going to crash Edward Brannigan’s seventieth birthday party. But then Faenia had always been brave.
Bess looked around the beautiful presidential suite in Lisowen Castle, knowing it had been completely redecorated since Lottie and Edward had been there before. It was amazing that she could say Lottie’s name now – Nora had done that for her. Nora had allowed her to break through that strange barrier and say Edward’s first wife’s name, Lottie.
Lottie who loved art and painting silly statues with yoghurt and using railway sleepers all over the garden even when they were lethal because people slipped on them. Lottie who’d had a tiny greenhouse in the back of Tanglewood, where she had grown tiny hopeless little seedlings. When she’d been sick, she obviously hadn’t been able to do anything with her greenhouse and when Bess had moved in, she had found it overrun with weeds and broken panes of glass and she hadn’t felt sorry at all.
She’d just ordered people in to take it all away. But now, she realised, she should have seen this was another woman’s life, a life that had been snuffed out too early.
Lottie was everywhere. Too late, Bess realised that there was room for her and Lottie in Edward’s life and that the threat to her marriage was not Edward’s dead wife but his very much living daughter.