Laceys Of Liverpool

by Maureen Lee

  Orla nodded and pulled herself together. She reminded herself that she was with a devastatingly attractive man. The first minute she’d set eyes on him, she’d sensed a magnetism about him. Now they were alone together and it was her opportunity to . . . to do what?

  To make eyes at him over the whisky, flutter her lashes, lick her lips and pretend she was a scarlet woman? Except she wasn’t a scarlet woman. She was Orla Lavin from Bootle, married, with four children whom she badly missed.

  ‘What company do you work for?’ Louis asked. He had the faintest of French accents. ‘I didn’t ask the time we met before.’

  ‘Lacey’s of Liverpool. It’s my brother’s firm. We make cosmetics. As from April, I’ll have me own office back home. Would you like some samples? You can give them to your wife.’

  ‘I haven’t got a wife. Do you have a husband?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Orla paused. ‘We’re separated.’

  ‘He must be mad, this husband, allowing himself to be separated from a woman like you.’ His narrow lips twisted in a smile.

  Orla forgot the house in Pearl Street and its occupants. She traced the rim of her glass with her finger as she’d once seen an actress do in a film, someone like Ava Gardner or Elizabeth Taylor. ‘I’m not very nice,’ she said seductively. ‘That’s why me and me husband parted.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘You seem exceptionally nice to me.’ He moved his legs so that their knees were touching.

  Orla’s flesh felt as if it was on fire. A pulse throbbed in her throat. She was trying to think of an answer, when Louis said, ‘Have you eaten yet?’

  ‘I forgot to eat.’

  ‘Would you join me for dinner here?’

  ‘They serve meals?’

  He shrugged and spread his hands, a very foreign gesture. ‘Not very good meals, but edible. There aren’t any restaurants nearby and it’s too awful a night to go searching for one.’

  ‘In that case I’ll be pleased to join you for dinner.’

  Louis was right. The meal was just about edible: badly cooked lamb, very dry roast potatoes, frozen peas. He ordered a bottle of wine to make the food go down more smoothly.

  On top of the whisky, it also made Orla more than a little light-headed. She began to see the romance of the situation: two virtual strangers, stranded in a third-rate hotel, snow whipping against the windows. All that was needed was some haunting music.

  During the meal he told her about himself. He’d been born in a little village north of Paris. His parents had a smallholding. The village was very dull, nothing ever happened. He’d been taken on by a local engineering firm to train as a draughtsman. At twenty-one, he’d gone to work in Paris. He kissed his fingers and threw the kiss into the air. ‘Ah, Paris!’ He pronounced it Paree. ‘Paris is très beautiful. Very, very beautiful. And so full of life. It has everything a man – or woman – can possibly want.’

  ‘I’d love to go there,’ Orla breathed.

  His brown eyes smiled into hers. ‘I’ll show it to you if you like.’

  ‘I would like.’

  ‘In the spring?’

  She felt dizzy. ‘Yes, in the spring.’ She’d never met anyone like him before. He seemed so grown-up and sophisticated compared with the other men she’d known, particularly Micky, who was a child by comparison.

  No one else had come into the dining room by the time they finished the meal. They returned to the lounge where an elderly couple had bagged their armchairs by the radiator. Otherwise the room was empty. The other reps must have wisely stayed in town and found bars with a bit more life in them. The clock showed half past nine – the last few hours had raced by.

  Louis took her elbow. ‘Would you like another drink?’

  ‘A whisky and soda,’ she replied, though she’d already drunk far too much. ‘Just a little one.’ She swayed and almost fell into an armchair.

  ‘One more drink and I think we should go to bed.’ He regarded her challengingly, eyebrows raised.

  ‘If you say so,’ she said demurely. Every nerve in her body felt alive. She couldn’t possibly sleep on her own after tonight. A memory returned, of the night in a Bootle entry when she’d first made love with Micky. She had the same feeling now, of wanting to be touched all over, but this time by Louis Bernet.

  Orla quickly drank the whisky. Louis held out his hand and helped her to her feet. She wondered if he felt the same pounding excitement as she did. She could hardly stand and it wasn’t all to do with the amount of alcohol she’d drunk.

  Her room was on the third floor. They took the lift, where they kissed for the first time and Orla felt a rush of raw desire when she felt him pressed against her.

  In the corridor she stumbled and Louis grabbed her arm. He supported her as far as her room where, to her surprise, he paused. There was a look of what might have been irritation on his face. ‘I didn’t realise you’d drunk enough to get in this state and I find drunken women rather unappealing. Tonight you’d go to bed with any man who asked.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ Orla cried. She didn’t want to be alone. She couldn’t stand it, not tonight. ‘I don’t usually make a habit of this sort of thing. I’m only doing it because it’s you.’ There was a sob in her voice. She unlocked the door, put her hands round his neck and drew him into the chilly room. Snow was whirling crazily against the windows and the traffic outside was muted. ‘I’m more tired than drunk, but not too tired to . . .’ She paused, blushing. ‘. . . To make love with you.’

  Perhaps it was the blush that convinced him she was, at least partially, telling the truth. He sighed and said huskily, ‘You’re also extremely beautiful – and very hard to resist.’

  ‘Please don’t try.’ She removed the jacket of her black suit. The blouse underneath was blue and very frilly.

  He came over and took her in his arms, buried his head in her shoulder. She could feel his lips through the thin material of the blouse. Then he began to undo the buttons, so slowly and deliberately that she wanted to scream at him to hurry. He slid the blouse off her shoulders, his hands warm on her skin as he pushed her down on to the bed and her head swam. He took off his jacket and kissed between her breasts, then pulled down the straps of her underskirt and bra so that she was exposed to him. She felt both vulnerable and wanton as she took his head in her hands and directed his lips on to her right nipple. He sucked greedily, kneading the flesh around with his fingers. Then he transferred to the other breast and Orla moaned.

  Suddenly he released her and lay back on the pillow, all passion apparently spent.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Orla asked, bewildered.

  ‘Nothing. Let me hold you, come here.’ He slid an arm round her shoulders and put the other across her waist.

  Orla began to touch him, but he caught her hand and held it tightly. ‘Let us lie still a minute, chérie,’ he said softly.

  ‘But why?’ What had she done wrong? It can’t have been anything all that bad, because he was being so gentle with her. But it was very mysterious all the same.

  ‘Because there are times when it is good to stop and think, just stay quiet for a while.’

  She began to catch his mood, her own passion having vanished with his, and relaxed against him. He was still almost fully dressed and he felt warm and comfortable.

  ‘Do you ever get lonely, Orla?’ His voice was little more than a whisper.

  ‘Lately I feel lonely all the time,’ she said with a sigh.

  ‘Me, also. All the time. But unlike you, I have no family to return to.’

  ‘You poor thing!’

  ‘I am very much a poor thing. I have spent the last ten years travelling across Europe, searching for something I have yet to find.’

  ‘Love?’

  He nodded. ‘Love, possibly. Happiness, maybe. Who knows what? It might be God. And what are you searching for, chérie?’

  ‘I’m not searching for anything. I’m just doing me job
.’

  ‘No, you’re searching, like me. I could see it in your eyes.’ He laughed quietly. ‘I’ve seen the same expression in my own, that’s how I know. You weren’t satisfied with what you had. It’s why you left your husband and children. After a while, the searching can become very tedious.’

  ‘I suppose it can.’ She wondered what he was getting at. Was he leading up to something? He had turned out to be a very strange man. She liked him more now than she did before, even if she couldn’t understand him.

  The hotel was exceptionally silent and it would have been easy to believe they were the only two people in it. Apart from the traffic, there wasn’t another sound to be heard.

  ‘You are a lovely woman, Orla.’ He caressed her face and touched her hair with his lips. ‘I like you very much. I think I could very easily fall in love with you if given half a chance. You pretend to be so sophisticated, but you’re not. You’re vulnerable, like a child. I shouldn’t have asked you to come to bed with me. I was taking advantage of your need, not for sex, but for something else: romance perhaps, which is a very different thing. I feel ashamed, but I only did it because, like you, I didn’t want to spend the night alone.’

  ‘Why are you saying all this, Louis?’ Orla whispered. ‘Why didn’t you take advantage? What stopped you? Was it something I did?’

  ‘No, I just wanted to say these things before I told you. I want you to realise how hopeless your search is, so you’ll understand you’re not missing anything when you go back home to your family.’

  ‘Told me what? And I can’t go home till Saturday, and then it’s only for the weekend.’

  ‘I think you should go now. You see, chérie, you have a lump in your left breast, a large one. Now is the time for you to return to the people you love – and the people who love you.’

  All she wanted was for him to leave. She appreciated being told so kindly, if rather strangely, about the lump –another man might have noticed, made love and said nothing. But now she knew and all she wanted was to be with her mam.

  Louis understood how she felt. He helped her pack and took her in his car to where hers was parked. It was still snowing.

  ‘I meant it about Paris,’ he said when he had put her things in the boot and came round to the driver’s side to say goodbye. Orla rolled down the window. ‘I hope and pray it might still happen. Here’s my card in case you feel like getting in touch when you’re better.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you for everything, Louis.’

  As she was driving out of the car park, Orla threw the card out of the window, then closed it.

  The journey to Liverpool was a nightmare. Snow kept sticking to the windscreen. The wipers were useless. Lorries thundered past, spraying her with slush. She couldn’t see. The car kept skidding on the icy surface, but she managed to steady it. She wasn’t sure if she cared if the car crashed or not. Would her children, her family, find it easier to cope with her death in an accident rather than a long, slow death from cancer? She reminded herself that the lump might be benign and, even if it wasn’t, you could have treatment. Patsy O’Leary, who worked for mam, had had breast cancer and recovered. She’d had a breast removed. But Patsy was nearly sixty. Orla was only thirty-seven and to lose a breast would be the end of everything.

  ‘This is a funny time to come home, luv,’ Mam said when Orla came in just as she was making the first cup of tea of the day. ‘It’s only just gone seven and I’m not long up. Don’t tell me you’ve driven all night in this weather? No wonder you look exhausted.’

  Mam looked so welcoming and comfortable in her candlewick dressing gown, her greying hair all mussed. Orla burst into tears. ‘Will you come to the doctor’s with me later, Mam. I’m too frightened to go on me own.’

  A week later and tests showed that the lump was malignant. And there was a smaller lump in the right breast that was malignant too. Orla was advised to have a double mastectomy.

  ‘Oh, Mam!’ she screamed in the hospital when the doctor conveyed the terrible news.

  ‘I wish it was me, luv,’ Alice whispered. ‘Oh, dear God, I wish it was me.’

  ‘You can wear a padded bra,’ Fion said practically later that night when the family gathered together in Amber Street for a conference. ‘No one will know.’

  ‘I’ll know,’ Orla yelled. ‘I’ll be deformed for the rest of me life.’

  ‘Orla, you’ll still be as beautiful as ever,’ Cormac assured her. ‘After the operation you can carry on with the job exactly as planned, with your own office in St Helens.’

  ‘I’ll be as ugly as sin. And you can stuff the job, Cormac. I don’t want it.’

  ‘I’ll pray for you, Sis,’ Maeve said softly. ‘I’ll pray every minute of every day, I promise.’

  ‘It’s too late for prayers.’ Orla wept. ‘It’s happened. Anyroad, I don’t believe in prayers. They don’t work. I used to pray for all sorts of things, but I never got them.’

  Instead, she’d got a husband in a million and four lovely children, Alice thought sadly. Enough to make most women happy, but Orla had always wanted the impossible.

  ‘I imagined one day I’d get married again, but no man will ever want me now.’

  Cormac shuddered and turned away. How would he feel about Andrea if both her breasts had been removed?

  Alice glanced at her other daughters. Fion made a face and Maeve shrugged. No one quite knew what to say.

  ‘Jerry, I want a baby. I want to conceive tonight,’ Fion told her new husband when they got into bed.

  ‘I’ll do me best, darling. I’m already trying hard, but I’ll try twice as hard if you like. Anyroad, why the urgency all of a sudden?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ It was something to do with Orla, something stupid, as if a new life growing inside her would act as protection against what was happening to her sister. Or perhaps it was a wish to grab at things that mattered before it was too late. ‘Just a minute.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’ Jerry enquired patiently when Fion got out of bed.

  ‘I’m going to kneel the way we used to do when we were little and say a proper prayer for our Orla.’ At the end of the prayer, Fion slipped in a little one for herself. ‘Please God, please make me conceive tonight.’

  ‘How’s Orla?’ Martin enquired stiffly when Maeve came home. He was sitting in the lounge with a typed letter on his knee.

  ‘In a state, as you can imagine. I’d be in a state meself if I was in the same position. She’s having an operation next week.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Oh, by the way . . .’ He waved the letter, ‘This is from that double-glazing firm who contacted us last year. Remember we said we might be interested in the spring? I rang and told them it’s off because my wife has given up work. Another thing, I think the clutch might be going on the car. We really need a new one – car, that is – but I suppose we’ll just have to do with a new clutch instead.’ He sniffed disdainfully.

  ‘Did you tell the double-glazing firm exactly why I’d given up work?’ Maeve enquired. ‘That I’m having a baby in three months’ time?’

  ‘It was none of their business.’

  ‘Nor is the fact I’ve given up work. I suspect you didn’t tell them that at all. It’s just another little dig at me for getting pregnant without your permission. You’d sooner have double glazing and a new car than a baby.’ Maeve’s usually serene face darkened with anger. Normally she was patient with him, but tonight, thinking about Orla, she wasn’t in the mood. Her voice rose. ‘You’ve got your priorities all wrong, Martin.’ If he didn’t buck up his ideas, there’d soon be another divorce in the Lacey family.

  Orla opened her eyes. A familiar face was bending over the hospital bed. A kiss brushed against her lips. ‘Micky!’

  ‘Hello, sweetheart. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Still a bit dopey. You look well.’ She’d forgotten how handsome he was, even if his dark hair was slightly thinner and his face had filled out somewhat.

  ‘You probab
ly won’t believe me, but so do you. A bit pale, that’s all.’ He stroked her cheek. ‘Do you mind me coming to see you?’

  ‘Of course not. For a moment I thought you were here because I’d had a baby. Doesn’t Caitlin what’s-her-name mind you coming?’

  ‘Caitlin left a while ago, Orla. She couldn’t compete.’

  ‘Against who?’

  ‘You, luv. She said I still loved you and always would. I couldn’t help but agree.’

  ‘What about the divorce? I’ve kept expecting to get a solicitor’s letter.’

  He looked sheepish. ‘I never got round to seeing a solicitor.’

  ‘Micky.’ She took a long, shuddering breath. ‘Has me mam told you?’

  ‘Yes and I want you to come home with me. I’ll do everything for you, wait on you hand and foot. I’ve already arranged it with work. I’ve got leave of absence until . . .’ He bit his lip.

  ‘Until I die?’

  ‘Sorry, luv. I didn’t mean to put it like that.’ He began to weep. His tears stung her face and she left them there to mingle with her own. ‘Don’t die, Orla,’ he pleaded. ‘The kids are going crazy back home. Lulu keeps ringing up from New York. She’s ready to get on a plane at the drop of a hat.’

  ‘It’s going to happen, Micky. The lumps have been removed, but the cancer’s everywhere. I’m too far gone to operate. They’re going to try something called radiotherapy, but they don’t hold out much hope.’ She was amazed that she could speak so sanely and sensibly when she knew that she was going to die in the not too distant future.

  ‘Will you come back to Pearl Street with me and the kids, luv?’ His good-natured face was screwed up anxiously, as if nothing before had mattered to him as much as her reply.

  ‘Have you discussed it with Mam?’

  ‘She says it’s up to you. You must do as you think best.’

  ‘I’m in an awful mess on top, Micky,’ she whispered.

  ‘Lord knows what I’ll look like when the dressings come off.’

  He began to cry again. ‘Oh, Orla. I know it’s terrible for you, but it doesn’t bother me. You’re still the best-looking woman I’ve ever known.’