by Maureen Lee
‘I wouldn’t say no.’ He grinned and, for a moment, she saw the teenager who’d charmed her all those years ago. Perhaps if she could lose herself in him, recapture the magic of those days . . .
They went upstairs. There was a time when they would have leapt naked into bed, but now Orla put on her nightdress, Micky his pyjamas. He went to put out the light, stopped and said in a voice she’d never heard before, ‘Who does this fuckin’ watch belong to, Orla? And what’s it doing beside our bed?’
Orla turned up in Amber Street late one Sunday night just as Alice was thinking about going to bed. Unusually for Orla, who was inclined to arrive in a flaming temper over something, she appeared pale and listless.
Alice sat her down and made her a cup of cocoa. ‘What’s wrong, luv?’ she asked sympathetically.
Orla didn’t look at her mother but stared at her shoes. ‘Mam, don’t get mad at me, but I’ve done something awful.’ There was a pause. ‘I’ve slept with someone and Micky found out.’
‘Jaysus, Orla!’ Alice’s sympathy vanished, to be replaced with anger and alarm. ‘You stupid girl,’ she snapped. ‘Who was it?’
‘It doesn’t matter who it was, Mam.’
‘Then why are you here? What d’you expect me to do about it?’
‘Nothing, Mam,’ Orla said in a subdued voice. ‘I just wanted to tell someone, that’s all. Micky’s making me life hell.’
‘I’m not surprised. Most men would if they found their wife had been sleeping around.’ Alice frowned. ‘He’s not hit you, has he?’
‘No, Mam. He just won’t talk to me, that’s all.’
‘You can hardly blame him, luv.’ Alice thought what a perfect world it could be if only human beings, including herself, could bring themselves to behave sensibly. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Last Monday. Micky hasn’t spoken to me since. Not that I mind, to be frank, but there’s a terrible atmosphere at home. The children have noticed and it’s making them dead miserable.’
Alice remembered Sheila Reilly had been in Lacey’s the Saturday before last having her hair done for her son, Niall’s, wedding. She’d mentioned Orla was seeing Dominic, her eldest, before he went back to Spain. Alice immediately put two and two together. Micky Lavin was a nice, hard-working lad, but as dull as ditchwater and without an ounce of Dominic Reilly’s glamour. She didn’t approve of what her daughter had done, but could understand Orla being bowled over by a man so entirely different from her husband.
‘I should never have married Micky, Mam,’ Orla cried tragically. ‘I wish things had been different then, the way they are now. No one’s nagging our Cormac and Pol to get married.’
‘No one nagged you to get married,’ Alice reminded her.
‘No, but it wasn’t on in those days to have a baby out of wedlock. I felt obliged to marry Micky for Lulu’s sake. If I had me time over again, I wouldn’t go anywhere near an altar.’ She buried her face in her hands and began to cry. ‘I’m ever so unhappy, Mam. I have been for years. All those dreams I used to have are dead and I feel all dried up inside. I ache for something nice to happen, something interesting or unusual or enjoyable. I long to go out and have a good time or go on holiday abroad, somewhere like Spain. I wish we had a car so I could learn to drive, and I’d just drive and drive and drive till I came to the end of the rainbow. I wish – oh, Mam,’ she sobbed. ‘I wish all sorts of things.’
‘I know, luv.’ Alice patted her daughter’s knee. She was like a beautiful wild animal trapped inside a cage, the exact opposite of her mother who gave the slightest opportunity of excitement a wide berth. ‘I’ll buy you a car if you like. As long as Micky doesn’t mind.’ She knew she was being too generous, too indulgent. After all, Orla shouldn’t be rewarded for her bad behaviour. But a car would make things better for the whole family.
‘Oh, would you, Mam?’ There was something terribly pathetic about Orla’s excited reaction, as if Alice had opened the door of the cage a few enticing inches. ‘It would help with me job as a reporter. I could go further afield, not just stick to Bootle. And I could take the kids out weekends, to Southport and Chester and places. I’d take them on the train, except I can never afford the fares. As for Micky, I don’t give a fig if he minds or not.’
‘Sweetheart, I don’t want to make things worse between you two.’ She remembered Micky had adamantly refused to let her buy them a house and wasn’t likely to take kindly to a car – he had more character than people gave him credit for.
‘Oh, you won’t, Mam. A car will make me happy and if I’m happy then so is Micky.’
Alice thought this an exaggeration. No doubt Orla had been happy making love with Dominic Reilly, but it hadn’t exactly sent her husband into paroxysms of delight. Her main concern, though, was her daughter, who’d arrived wan and pale, and now looked happy and excited, as if she’d just been handed a million pounds.
Chapter 15
1970
The air on Easter Saturday was as heady as wine: pure and sparkling, with that exceptional clarity only evident in spring. When the Nuptial Mass was over and the bride and groom posed for photographs in St James’s churchyard the sharp, fresh aroma of recently cut grass combined with the earthy smell of upturned soil, adding to the flavour of the day.
Lulu Lavin made an exceptionally pretty bride. There were appreciative murmurs from the waiting crowd when she stepped out of the grey limousine in her simple white voile frock with short sleeves and a drawstring neck. Calf-length, the hem hung in points, each decorated with a tiny rosebud. More rosebuds were threaded through her dark hair arranged earlier that morning in Grecian style by her Nana Lacey. Her shoes were white satin, flat, like a ballerina’s. She looked for all the world like a nymph, as did the bridesmaids, in the palest of green: her sister, Maisie, her cousin, Bonnie, and Ruth Mitchell, great-grandpa’s daughter, who was Lulu’s great-aunt, though three years her junior.
From across the churchyard Orla Lavin, fiercely proud, watched her daughter while the photographs were being taken. Lulu was about to escape the narrow, suffocating streets of Bootle. In two weeks’ time, after their honeymoon in Jersey – a present from Alice – Lulu and Gareth would live in his tiny one-bedroomed flat in an unfashionable part of London and Gareth would continue with his ambition to make a living as an artist, though he hadn’t so far sold a single painting. The people who had seen his strange, incomprehensible pictures anticipated he never would. The couple had met on a demonstration in London that Lulu had gone to with her Aunt Fion.
Everyone, except Orla, considered it a most inauspicious start to married life: the husband not earning a bean and reliant on his eighteen-year-old wife to put food on the table.
But Orla had given her daughter every encouragement. ‘Go for it, girl,’ she whispered, more than once. ‘Even if things fail, you’ve given it a try. You’ve had your fling. You won’t spend your life thinking that you’ve wasted every minute, that there’s a million things out there to do and you haven’t done a single one.’
‘Things won’t fail, Mum,’ Lulu had assured her, clear-eyed and full of confidence. ‘I love Gareth and he loves me. I can’t wait for us to be together.’
And now it was done. Lulu was Mrs Gareth Jackson and would shortly be starting on a great adventure.
‘Can I have the parents of the bride and groom?’ the photographer shouted.
Micky nodded curtly at Orla and they posed for several photographs with the newly married couple; with the bridesmaids; with each other; and with Gareth’s widowed mother, Susan, a feisty, bizarrely dressed woman, something of an artist herself, according to Fion, with whom she’d immediately become friends.
Orla was making awkward conversation with Susan, hoping she hadn’t noticed the tension between the bride’s parents, when she saw the middle-aged, strikingly good-looking man lurking just round the corner of the church. He grinned when their eyes met, then stepped back, out of sight. What one earth was he doing here? she wondered fearfully. How d
id he know about the wedding? How the hell was she going to get rid of him, not just from the church, but from out of her life?
‘I want a photie with Great-grandpa,’ Lulu announced.
‘Go on, luv.’ Bernadette pushed Danny forward. ‘It’s you she wants, not me,’ she insisted when Danny tried to pull her with him.
Bernadette watched the erect, silver-haired figure of her husband stand stiffly between the bride and groom. It was obvious he was making a determined effort to hold himself together and her heart filled with aching sadness. In the not too distant future she was going to lose him. He hadn’t told her what was wrong. She hadn’t asked. But for the last two months he’d eaten like a bird and hadn’t touched the ale he’d always been so fond of. In bed at night he held her tightly in his arms, as if worried he might never hold her that way again.
Alice came up. She nodded at the wedding group. ‘How is he?’
‘Not so good, Ally. He was sick again this morning. I thought he’d never stop vomiting.’
‘It still might not be too late for him to see a doctor.’ It had become a bone of contention between the women, whether Danny should, or should not, seek medical attention.
Bernadette shook her head firmly. ‘Danny’s the most intelligent man I’ve ever known. He knows where the doctor lives, but when it comes down to it, he’d sooner die in his own way, luv, quickly and as painlessly as possible, not have long-drawn-out treatment and operations. He’d hate me and the children to see him an invalid.’
‘Whatever you say, Bernie.’ Alice tried not to sound cold. She had no more wish to lose Danny than did Bernadette and she longed to interfere. She felt an outsider in the relationship between her father and her best friend.
‘Your Cormac’s girlfriend looks very studious,’ Bernie remarked, changing the subject. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Vicky. She’s not a girlfriend, just a colleague from work. She’s the one he’s starting the business with.’ Alice’s gaze drifted from her son towards Pol and Maurice Lacey. Pol was expecting her third baby. Alice still found it shocking the way Pol had transferred her affections from Cormac to Maurice not long after baby Sharon was born, though Cormac had taken it incredibly well and there was a surprising lack of animosity between the cousins. Of course, the switch had caused no end of gossip at the time. It was hard for people of her age to get used to the way some young people behaved these days. Morals seemed to have gone out the window during the Sixties. In Alice’s opinion it had started with rock’n’roll, and men growing their hair long and wearing earrings.
‘As soon as they’ve finished the photographs I’ll show you the three Lacey salons,’ Cormac said to Vicky. ‘We’re lucky, starting off with an outlet, even though it’s only small.’
‘Have you discussed it with your mother yet?’ Vicky enquired. She was a serious young woman wearing an ill-fitting brown costume, flat shoes and round, hornrimmed glasses. Her dark, crisp hair was boyishly cut.
‘Alice was all for it. We’re an entrepreneurial family, Vic. My father had his own business. So does my cousin, Maurice. Mind you, his is just ticking over.’ At that moment a beaming Maurice didn’t appear concerned that he just managed to scrape a living from Lacey’s Tyres.
‘Why do you call your mother Alice?’
‘It’s just a habit I’ve got into,’ Cormac explained.
‘I’ve not long turned me house into a refuge for battered women,’ Fion was informing Susan Jackson, the bridgegroom’s mother. ‘Why don’t you come and take a look after the reception? You can stay the night if you like. It’s a big house and there’s plenty of room.’
‘Don’t the neighbours mind, about the refuge, that is?’ Susan asked.
‘Oh, yes. They’re forever complaining, to me and to the corpy. I just don’t take any notice.’
‘Good for you. I’d love to stay the night, save rushing home on a late train. And next time you’re in London you must stay with me.’
So many children, thought Maeve Adams as she watched them bent like birds searching for confetti, swinging on the railings, getting their new clothes dirty. The older children tried to look grown-up in the new gear bought specially for the wedding. By this time next year Orla could be a grandmother, yet her . . . She was thirty-five, getting on. But there were still so many things needed for the house – a bigger freezer for one – and she and Martin had always promised themselves they’d have a garage built on the side. And Martin didn’t like driving a car that was more than a few years old, worried it might be unreliable. And the kitchen was getting a bit old-fashioned – she’d like plain white units for a change – and while the workmen were there, they might as well have the floor retiled; terracotta would look nice.
But none of these things would be possible if she stopped work to have babies.
Martin came over and took her hand. ‘Penny for them, darling.’
‘I was watching the children,’ Maeve said wistfully. All of a sudden the kitchen and a new freezer didn’t seem to matter.
‘We don’t need children when we’ve got each other.’
‘Don’t we?’
‘No, we jolly well don’t,’ Martin said. Perhaps he didn’t mean to sound so irritable. ‘I hope you’re not getting broody on me, Maeve. Our lifestyle would have to change drastically if we only had my salary to live on. We’d have to go without all sorts of things.’
Maeve sighed and supposed that, to keep Martin happy, she’d have to go without children.
Orla managed to escape the guests and make her way round to the side of the church where Vernon Matthews was leaning against the wall, smoking. He threw the cigarette away when she approached and tried to take her in his arms.
She pushed him away and said angrily, ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’
‘Worried your hubby might see?’ His smile was almost a sneer.
‘Naturally, but I wouldn’t want you touching me if we were stranded alone together on a desert island.’
‘You didn’t always feel like that.’
‘Well, I feel like that now.’ She had been mad to sleep with him. It had happened two years after the incident with Dominic Reilly. In all that time Micky hadn’t touched her – he still hadn’t, though Orla had got used to it by now. But this was before she’d got used to it, when she used to drive the second-hand Mini Mam had bought deep into the countryside, singing to herself, feeling liberated. Mixed with this was a sense of gut-wrenching frustration, a longing for something even faintly interesting to happen.
After a while she got into the habit of stopping at out-of-the-way pubs for a drink of lemonade or orange juice. It made her feel sophisticated, a woman of the world. She would get out her reporter’s notebook and pretend to make notes, so people would think she was a businesswoman on her way to an important meeting.
The second time she stopped a man approached and asked to buy her a drink. Orla told him politely to get lost. A few weeks later, when she was approached again, she accepted the drink. The man turned out to be a commercial traveller who’d been on the stage in his youth. He was interesting to talk to and asked if he could see her again. Orla refused, though she had quite enjoyed the illicit excitement of the occasion. She hadn’t felt like herself, but a different person altogether.
The next man who bought her a drink asked if she’d like to come upstairs with him to his room.
‘You mean, you’re staying here?’
‘No, but I very quickly could be.’
‘I’d sooner not.’ Orla was beginning to feel like a character in a novel. She called herself unusual, romantic names whenever she met a man, which was happening regularly: Estella, Isabella, Madeleine, Dawn.
Micky wanted to know where she took herself every day in the car. ‘Nowhere in particular,’ Orla said vaguely. ‘Just around. Sometimes I interview people for the paper.’
‘I suppose anywhere’s better than home,’ Micky said nastily.
‘You said it first,’ Orla snapped.
&nbs
p; They were nasty to each other most of the time. They slept in the same bed, their backs to each other. They got dressed and undressed in the bathroom.
She told Vernon Matthews her name was Greta. They met just before Christmas in a little thatched pub in Rainford that did bed and breakfasts. There were silver decorations and a lighted tree in the lounge. He was about fifty, with dark hair and dark eyes, and a Clark Gable moustache. He told her he was a representative for an engineering company and always used the pub as a base when he was in the north-west.
He also told her she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met. His dark eyes glistened with admiration when he said this and Orla’s stomach twisted pleasantly. She felt very strange, almost drunk, though she’d only had orange juice. Afterwards, she felt convinced he’d slipped something in her drink.
Orla couldn’t remember agreeing to go upstairs, but she must have, because the next thing she knew she and Vernon were lying naked on a bed together, making love. Her first thought was how to escape, but she knew it was no use trying to push away the heavy body on top of hers. She thought about screaming, but if someone came they might call the police and it could get in the papers – it was the sort of situation she was always on the lookout for herself in her role as a reporter.
Eventually, Vernon reached a noisy, gasping climax and collapsed on top of her. Orla slipped wordlessly from beneath, got partially dressed and went into the bathroom where she washed herself from tip to toe. When she came out, Vernon Matthews had emptied her bag on the bed and was going through the contents.
‘How dare you!’ she expostulated.
He merely laughed and picked up her driving licence. ‘Orla Lavin, 11 Pearl Street, Bootle,’ he read aloud. ‘So you’re not Greta, after all. And according to this, you’re married. Does your hubbie know you spend your afternoons playing the whore?’
‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’ She snatched the licence out of his hand.