Semi-Sweet

by Roisin Meaney

  She hung up and tried Nora’s mobile, but it rang and rang and remained unanswered. She called directory inquiries and got the number of the newspaper offices—the first time she’d needed the main number—and the receptionist told her that Patrick had left for a meeting and no, she didn’t know where. Could she give Leah his mobile number?

  “I have that,” Leah said, “but I can’t contact him. I can’t get through to him. Is his PA there?” Surely Nora would have a number where he could be reached.

  “I’m sorry,” the receptionist, whom Leah had yet to meet, replied, “but she called in sick this morning. Can I take a message at all?”

  The pain came again then, and Leah hung up and bent double, gritting her teeth. When it faded, she called her mother. “I need you,” she said, her eyes closed. “I think the baby’s coming.”

  As she hung up, she felt a warm gush of wetness between her legs and looked down to see a puddle seeping into the pale green carpet.

  The first thing Alice saw when she opened the front door was a brown envelope on the floor and a scrap of paper lying next to it. She picked up the envelope and saw Tom’s name, and the government harp above it. She tore it open and pulled out the page and read that Tom Joyce was summoned to appear at the district court on Friday, the eighteenth of June, at half past eleven.

  She bent and picked up the scrap of paper and saw that it was a receipt from Boots for some toiletries. She turned it over and read “Tom, please get in touch—Stephen.”

  “Right,” she said aloud in the empty hallway. She walked to the stairs and sat on the third step, holding the letter and the receipt. After a while she got up and climbed the rest of the stairs to her husband’s bedroom. She walked in and crossed to the window. She pulled the curtains apart and shoved the window open.

  “Tom, get up,” she said, turning to him. “You need to get up now. I have to talk to you.”

  As Nora pulled on her top, she heard a soft beep. She turned to see Patrick switching on his phone.

  “Well,” she said, “can’t wait to get back to the real world, can you?”

  “Shit,” Patrick said, looking at the screen. “Shit.” He jabbed buttons rapidly and raised the phone to his ear.

  Nora reached for her skirt. “What’s all the—”

  “Shh,” he said, listening, holding up a palm to Nora. After a few seconds he snapped the phone closed and grabbed his briefcase. “Come on,” he said, “we have to go.”

  “What’s the big panic?” Nora asked, zipping up her skirt.

  “Leah,” he said, already halfway out of the room. “She’s having the baby.”

  “Jesus.” Nora stepped into her shoes, snatched up her bag and jacket, and hurried after him. “I thought it wasn’t due for a fortnight.”

  He didn’t answer, stabbing at the lift button, checking his watch, tucking his shirt into his trousers. “Come on, come on,” he muttered.

  “Calm down, would you?” Nora struggled into her jacket. “A few minutes aren’t going to make much difference at this stage.”

  Patrick shot her a look she hadn’t seen before, and then he turned back and banged his palm against the lift button. “Fuck.”

  The journey back to Clongarvin was mostly silent. Patrick drove fast, passing other cars recklessly, hooting impatiently at anyone who got in his way.

  Nora hung on, enjoying the ride. “Is she in the hospital?”

  “Yes,” he answered shortly.

  “What did her message say? How long ago was it?”

  He made no response, and Nora gave up. When they approached Clongarvin’s outer limits, forty minutes later, Patrick pulled in to the curb.

  Nora looked at him. “I hope you’re not expecting me to get out here,” she said. “It’s miles—”

  “Call a taxi,” Patrick said, leaning past her and opening her door. “Do it, Nora. I haven’t got time to argue.” He yanked his wallet from his jacket and shoved a twenty-euro note at her. “Here.”

  She took the money and got out. “I don’t believe—”

  But he was gone, screeching toward Clongarvin’s maternity hospital.

  “Charming,” Nora said aloud. She took out her phone. “Absolutely bloody charming.” She couldn’t walk ten yards in these shoes, and he knew it. She dialed a number and said, “You couldn’t come and pick me up, could you? Long story.”

  Adam sighed. “Where are you?”

  Where are you? Leah had said in her second message. Patrick, please ring me—I need you. Her voice tight with tension.

  And Fiona’s message, less than an hour later. Calmer, much calmer. Patrick, in case you’re at all interested, my daughter is having your baby. We’re at the hospital.

  And no other messages, just twelve missed calls. Leah, Leah, Leah, Leah, Fiona, Leah, Leah, Fiona, Fiona, Fiona, Fiona, Fiona.

  He ran through the sliding doors. “Leah Bradshaw,” he snapped to the girl behind the glass screen. She tapped her computer and asked if he was a relative.

  “I’m the father,” he answered shortly, his gut a tight knot, his shirt stuck to his back, the urge to urinate nagging in his bladder.

  Fiona met him at the entrance to the labor ward. The skirt of her navy suit was creased, but otherwise she was as unruffled as ever.

  “You have a son,” she said, looking at him as if he’d just spit on the floor in front of her. “Congratulations.”

  John looked at his mobile and read DANIELLE.

  “Sorry,” he said to Patsy. “Better take this.”

  “Hi, Dad,” Danielle said.

  “Hey there. What’s up?”

  “Nothing…” Danielle’s voice sounded far away. John pressed the phone closer to his ear. “I just got your letter.”

  “Yes?” He preferred writing. He was never good on the phone. “When will I see you?” He’d suggested a week, longer if she wanted. He’d have to invest in a camp bed of some kind, but they’d manage.

  “Dad…I don’t think I’ll be coming over. Not this summer,” she said.

  John transferred the phone to his other ear and moved farther from the counter. “You’re not coming?”

  “No.” A short silence, and then she said, “I think I should be here, with Mum.”

  “I see.” He hesitated. “Maybe you could come later in the summer? Don’t you have a few months off?” He heard the neediness in his voice, so of course she’d hear it too.

  “I think it’s better that I stay here,” she said, and then he understood. She was choosing, and she’d chosen Lara. She’d taken sides, when he’d thought there was no battle.

  “Okay, love,” he said. “That’s no problem. I’ll see you next time I’m home. How’s everything else?”

  When he hung up, he turned back to Patsy. “Sorry about that,” he said again.

  “That’s all right, dear,” Patsy said. “No bad news, I hope.”

  “No,” he said. “Not bad.”

  He’d go back for a few days as soon as he could organize it; he’d see her in Scotland instead. Maybe she’d have a change of heart if they spent some time together on Bute. Maybe she’d come over later on. And until then he had Hannah.

  The thought of her lifted his spirits. After so many years, he’d forgotten the pleasure of affectionate physical intimacy. The warm feel, the scent of a woman’s body next to his, the whispered words, the soft sounds of her reaction to his touch—

  “Your change, dear,” Patsy said. “You’re miles away.”

  “So I had to rescue Nora today,” Adam said.

  “Rescue her? How?”

  “She was stranded on the Galway Road. She said she’d had a row with the driver of the car she was in, and she’d made him stop and let her out.”

  “Whose car? Where was she coming from?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me. She said it didn’t matter, it was over now. I presume it was the mystery man she was hiding from me when I called round that time.”

  Hannah emptied chopped walnuts from the scales in
to a bowl. “Shouldn’t she have been at work, instead of gallivanting around the place with some man?”

  “I didn’t ask.” He picked a cherry from an open tub. “Nora will do as she pleases, as always.”

  “That job won’t last,” Hannah said. “Stop eating those cherries.”

  “I don’t think she cares about the job, to be honest. I wouldn’t be surprised if she heads back to the U.S. soon. There’s nothing for her in Clongarvin. She’s grown out of it.”

  Hannah said nothing.

  “Well, time for my clarinet practice,” Adam said, moving toward the door.

  “I like that little piece you’re learning now.”

  “It’s Chopin. I’m getting a musical education, if nothing else.”

  Left alone, Hannah wondered again about Nora O’Connor. Clearly she’d gotten involved with someone she shouldn’t have. Someone, maybe, who wouldn’t worry too much about being faithful, who wouldn’t object if Nora made it plain that she was interested.

  Someone like Patrick Dunne, who’d already been unfaithful to Hannah, maybe with more than one woman. He’d taken on Nora as his PA and they’d been working closely together for the past few months now.

  She measured flour and tipped it into the stand mixer’s bowl. She could be wrong—she hadn’t a shred of evidence to point to Patrick. He could have changed. She shouldn’t judge him on what had happened between them. And it was none of her business anyway.

  As she weighed sugar, Chopin wafted from upstairs. And a few seconds later, from the sitting room next door, Kirby joined in for the very first time.

  Geraldine had refilled the teapot twice. She hadn’t had to refill the biscuit plate, because it hadn’t been touched.

  He started drinking after it happened, Alice had said. I know he always liked a drink, but this was different, this was serious drinking. And it was whiskey, which he never used to drink. And lately he’s taken to spending most of his time in bed—at least he’s in bed whenever I’m in the house.

  She hadn’t cried. She wasn’t crying now. But she looked older, and more tired, than Geraldine ever remembered seeing her.

  I did nothing, Alice had told them. I saw what was happening to him, and I did nothing. I said nothing. I was too angry. I thought, if he wants to kill himself, let him. I didn’t care—or I told myself I didn’t care.

  Her hand had shaken when she’d lifted her cup. The tea had trembled as it moved toward her mouth.

  He’s agreed to go to the doctor, she’d said. I haven’t mentioned AA yet, but if he doesn’t, I will. And he’s going to phone you tomorrow, Stephen. He’s going to ask if he can take unpaid leave, until…

  She’d faltered then, and Stephen had said quickly, We’ll sort something out Alice. Don’t worry.

  He’s been called to the district court, she’d told them. On the eighteenth. The solicitor says he’ll be formally charged and then we’ll have to wait until the case is heard in the circuit court, another few months.

  Geraldine had pushed the plate of biscuits toward her, but she’d shaken her head. Geraldine had asked her if she’d like apple crumble, left over from dinner an hour earlier, but she’d said no.

  I visited the little boy’s grave, she’d told them. I brought him flowers. I visited him often, sometimes every day.

  And then she’d gone home.

  “I’m so sorry,” Patrick said. “I honestly didn’t think there was a chance anything could happen.”

  “I know,” Leah said.

  “If I’d had the smallest idea, of course I’d never have gone to that meeting.”

  “I know.”

  “I’d have stayed at home, not gone in to work at all. You know that, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should have said if you weren’t feeling well before I left.”

  “I know. I should have.”

  “But of course I shouldn’t have gone off without being contactable, I can see that now. I should have left my phone on.”

  “Yes.”

  “At least your mother was here. You weren’t on your own.”

  “No.”

  “And we have a beautiful son.”

  “Yes.”

  Nora had taken the day off, she’d phoned in sick. Patrick was gone to a meeting and couldn’t be contacted, and Nora was off sick and not answering her phone. Leah’s friend Nora, who couldn’t be trusted an inch. Nora who would walk over her own grandmother’s corpse to get to a man she fancied.

  “Could you get me some tea?” she asked Patrick.

  She wanted him gone. She didn’t want to look at him.

  “Listen to this,” Stephen said. “‘Bradshaw-Dunne, on June eleventh, to Leah Bradshaw and Patrick Dunne, a son, Reuben William.’”

  “What? Show me that.”

  Stephen passed the paper across the table, and Geraldine scanned the notice. “Bradshaw-Dunne—that’s Fiona’s doing anyway; she’d be into double-barreled. And what kind of a name is Reuben?”

  Stephen sliced the top off his egg. “It’s biblical.”

  Geraldine studied the notice. “June the eleventh, and this is what?”

  “The fifteenth. The eleventh was last Friday.”

  “So that explains Fiona missing bridge. I thought she was avoiding me.” Geraldine tossed the paper aside and returned to her half grapefruit. “She’ll probably be a right pain when she gets back. She’ll be handing around photos, and we’ll all have to ooh and aah.”

  Stephen smiled. “Under the circumstances I hardly think she’ll be expecting much oohing and aahing from you.”

  “No…Not that I care about that anymore, not now that Hannah’s found someone much nicer.”

  Stephen made no comment. Nice new man notwithstanding, he very much doubted that Geraldine had forgiven Fiona’s daughter for breaking up Hannah’s previous relationship.

  “We’re holding interviews today,” he said instead, “for Tom’s replacement.”

  “Isn’t there someone replacing him already?”

  “Yes, but now that he’s officially taking unpaid leave, we have to interview. It’s a legal thing.”

  Tom was due in court on Friday, and he and Alice were traveling to Dublin on the following Monday. Alice was dropping Tom at the treatment center his doctor had organized, then returning home alone. He would be gone for at least a month. Visits, particularly in the first two weeks, were not encouraged.

  “She’ll find it lonesome on her own,” Geraldine said.

  “I suppose she will.” Stephen finished his egg and got to his feet. “Well, I’d better be off.” He bent and kissed the top of Geraldine’s head. “Don’t get up,” he said, as he always did, and Geraldine, who never got up, went back to the paper and read the birth notice again.

  Bradshaw-Dunne. A bit of a mouthful. She’d never seen the point of double-barreled names. And Reuben sounded too like Ruby to sit comfortably on a boy.

  June the eleventh. She worked backward to the middle of September, two weeks before Stephen’s fifty-seventh. They’d gone out to dinner for his birthday, the four of them. Hannah and Patrick had given Stephen the boxed set of Seamus Heaney’s poems. Hannah had been full of chat, Geraldine remembered, about having made the decision to look for a suitable site for her shop. Patrick had mentioned a cruise his father had just booked, sailing around the Greek islands in January. And the whole time…

  Ah, who cared about all that? Ancient history now. She turned to the television listings.

  It was his fifth music lesson. They’d spent four hours together so far, and Vivienne remained as out of his reach as ever. Adam was becoming dispirited.

  I like the name Vivienne, he’d said at the end of the second lesson. That had gotten no response. When he realized that she answered questions but generally ignored comments, he stuck to questions.

  Is your brother older or younger than you? he’d asked during a pause in lesson three. Have you any other siblings?

  What music do you like to listen to? End
of lesson three.

  How old is the cat? At the break in lesson four, as he tried not to taste the milk he forced himself to drink.

  And at the end of lesson four, in desperation, without thinking: We’ll have to stop meeting like this. She’d blushed deeply at that. He’d kicked himself and retreated hastily.

  He felt as if he were maintaining the most delicate kind of balance, tiptoeing toward her until he felt her drawing back, easing off until she relaxed again. Forward and back, in and out, like a pair of dancers performing some preordained routine, the distance between them never lessening.

  Maybe he should just give up, admit defeat. But he couldn’t.

  And now they were on the fifth lesson, and he wondered how much longer it would be before she kicked him out for asking too many questions, or for not concentrating enough on the music.

  This evening she wore a dark blue top and a gray skirt. The top was buttoned almost to her chin; the skirt skimmed her ankles. He wished she wore brighter colors and showed more skin. He wished, just once, that she didn’t tie up her hair. He wished she wasn’t still terrified of him.

  “I design Web sites for a living,” he told her as he unzipped his jacket. “Making music is just about as different as you can get from that, I suppose.”

  “Actually,” Vivienne said, “it’s not. Music is as logical as computing.”

  Adam tried not to show any reaction. This was a first: This was the closest they’d come to a real live conversation. He’d made a comment, and she’d responded.

  “Really?” He was careful to keep the surprise out of his voice. Casual, keep it casual.

  “Of course.” She rummaged through the bundle of pages on the card table. “Music is the most logical thing there is.” She pulled a sheet from the pile and brought it to where he sat. “It’s even got its own symbols—I’ve pointed out some of them already.” She indicated a flowing, curlicued sign that appeared at the start of each set of lines. “See that? Do you remember what it’s called?”