by Cathy Kelly
‘Thank you for the vote of confidence,’ said Amber earnestly, ‘but I’m going to learn my trade first. You need to learn how to paint an apple straight before you can paint it abstract. I want to go home. Then, I’ll be able to paint.’
James had been gone over a week and Christie, who’d often thought that her beloved dogs were the best companions in the world, found that Tilly and Rocket’s adoration didn’t mean quite as much when James wasn’t around.
She tried hard to be her old self, but it was almost impossible. Her hands shook sometimes for no reason, as if her body was trying to express the shock she was desperately trying to suppress. She felt exhausted every evening and fell into bed early, drifting into a heavy sleep and then waking in panic in the middle of the night. She could never go back to sleep and lay alone in the big bed she and James had shared for so long, her whole chest aching with sadness as the dawn rose. She couldn’t even cry. Tears weren’t enough to express what she felt.
During their married life they had spent so little time apart.
James had gone off on a few fishing trips and she’d gone away on school trips a couple of times, but all added up together, it wouldn’t account for more than a few months apart, over thirty-five years. She told nobody what had happened, she felt too ashamed and embarrassed.
Shane and Ethan still knew nothing, for which she was eternally grateful. At least James hadn’t decided to destroy her totally by telling their sons how she’d cheated on him with another man. But Christie knew that if James never came home, the boys would have to learn someday. Which was the scariest thought—James never coming home or Ethan and Shane learning about Carey Wolensky?
Ana had dropped in unexpectedly one day, smiling as usual, full of chat about what she and Rick were up to.
Christie hugged her longer than was necessary, feeling the familiar remorse at how she’d betrayed her sister. If Ana ever found out…Christie paled at the thought of that. She’d lost her husband, please let her not lose her sister too.
Citing James’s working too hard and ignoring her was not a valid excuse for what she’d done to Ana. She hoped she would never have to tell her. Living with the guilt of it was punishment enough.
‘Rick says we should downsize,’ Ana was saying as they walked up to the Summer Street Café. Ana was mad on the new lemon muffins there. ‘The house is big and so’s the garden, but it’s got character. Not as much as your house, but still, I don’t fancy moving into something characterless, even if we made money on the move.’
Christie ordered coffee and cake, although her mouth was so dry she might as well have been eating ashes.
‘Did you ever go ahead with seeing Carey Wolensky?’ she asked finally.
Ana gave the irrepressible grin that reminded Christie of what she’d been like as a child, with her fair hair tied in pigtails, a dimple on either cheek.
‘No,’ admitted Ana. ‘It was wishful thinking really. It’s not as if we ever had anything to say to each other when we were going out, so what would we say now, twenty-five years down the line? And I saw a photo of him in the papers. He looks about a hundred now, you know. I suppose you always have a thing for the ones who dumped you.’ Ana took another bite of her muffin and looked thoughtful. ‘And he gave me a great bit of advice.’
‘What did he say?’ asked Christie lightly.
‘That I should stop going out with men like my father, tough, controlling ones, and find a decent, nice man who’d appreciate me.’ Ana beamed. ‘He hit the nail on the head there—that’s what you used to say to me too. But you were both right. So I went off and before long I met Rick, who turned out to be the love of my life and still is. And there aren’t many people my age who can say that, now, are there? Well,’ Ana added, ‘apart from you and James, obviously.’
With an absence of anyone to talk to and with no work, now that school was closed for the summer, Christie did the only thing she could do under the circumstances. She set up her easel on the terrace where the pergola gave her shade and began to paint. She’d planned to do one of her botanical pictures, the detailed representations of irises and orchids she had always loved to draw, but found she couldn’t concentrate on them. Perhaps she could only work on them when she was happy. So she gave up and began painting a portrait instead.
For her, painting was like therapy: as she painted, she thought of the mistakes that had brought her to this point.
She and Carey had had two days of a love affair. Two days of pure, joyful pleasure when they made love on the day bed, and curled up afterwards talking, Carey smoking the unfiltered cigarettes he adored, the ones Christie hated.
It was like being in a dream, one where none of her actions could hurt either herself or anyone else. A lovely dream from which she would awaken with a pleasurable memory and no guilt.
‘If I were your husband, I would wonder where you were every day,’ Carey murmured in the late afternoon of that second, glorious day.
‘My husband hasn’t even noticed I’m not at home every day,’ Christie said bitterly. ‘It’s as if I don’t exist for him. Right now, he’s only interested in his work. I’m just someone to look after his children and cook dinner each night.’
‘Is that why you did this? To get back at him?’ Carey asked, like a scientist probing a rat in an experiment.
‘No,’ said Christie. ‘That’s not why. He never notices me these days, but you do. That’s why I wanted to be with you…’ Saying it out loud make the words sound feeble. Her husband was busy so she’d betrayed him.
It was more than that, wasn’t it?
‘We need to talk,’ Carey said. ‘I am going to London next month. I have an important commission, it could make me rich. Christie, leave, come with me. Bring your little boys. I can love them too. I love their mother.’
It was talking of the future that made Christie’s daydream crumble. The future. Life without James, life ferrying her beloved children back and forth between them. Anger, hurt, betrayal. Ana hating her. James hating her more.
The dream shattered and she felt the iron grasp of guilt around her soul. What had she done? She must have been mad.
‘No, Carey,’ she said, getting up. She was naked, and she found her clothes where he’d thrown them on the floor after ripping them from her in the heat of desire.
‘I can’t. This was a mistake. I have to go. I can’t see you again, sorry, but it has to be that way.’
Shoes, where were her shoes? She couldn’t see them for tears.
‘You don’t mean this?’ he demanded, uncurling his body from the day bed and grabbing her by both arms. ‘You have to come with me. We were meant for each other, you know that. This is not tawdry sex between an artist and his model, this is real love, true passion. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before,’ he said, almost in wonderment. ‘You can’t go.’
‘I can,’ said Christie wildly. ‘I’ve got to. I’d lose so much, I’d lose all the people I love if I go with you. I’m sorry.’
She found her shoes, put them on, flung her coat over her shoulder and went to the door. She made herself take one last look at him standing there, looking bewildered and hurt, and so devastatingly attractive. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.
‘You’ll be back,’ he snapped.
‘I won’t,’ she said.
When she’d emptied her head of all the tumbling thoughts, Christie painted quickly and furiously.
The next day, she was outside, standing putting the finishing touches to her painting when she heard footsteps in the hall, moving into the kitchen. The dogs, who’d never been much good in the watchdog department, leaped to their feet, yapping happily and ran into the house. She could hear a man’s voice, James’s.
She could imagine him bending down, petting Tilly’s ears, rubbing Rocket’s soft belly. But Christie stayed where she was. He mightn’t want to see her, he might have just come to pick up more things.
‘Christie?’ came his voice.
‘I’
m in the garden,’ she called, not knowing what to expect. She put her brush down and sat down on the chair. She thought she might need to be sitting for this. James walked over towards her, then hesitated. The easel stood between them.
‘How are you?’ she said tremulously, her eyes glued to his face. He looked tired, pale.
James gazed back at her steadily, and Christie wished she knew what was in his heart. Please, she prayed, please.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said.
‘Me too,’ she answered quickly.
‘Thinking about our lives then. How hard I was working, how hard you were working. It must have been difficult, with me so busy and you coping with the children and work and everything at home. We had no time together, no time at all. I wasn’t the best husband ever at that point.’
Christie held her breath. He hadn’t said, Goodbye, I’ve come to pick up my stuff. There was some hope.
‘I don’t know if I can ever forget what happened between you and him.’
Again, he didn’t say Carey’s name and Christie felt her spirits sink at his words.
‘But,’ James went on, ‘I could try.’
‘You could try?’ Christie asked. ‘Try to forget? Try again?’
He nodded. ‘I love you, Christie. You’re my whole life, you always have been, ever since I met you. That’s what hurts, to think that there was a time when I wasn’t your whole life, to think that we’ve been living a lie.’
‘But we weren’t,’ Christie pleaded. ‘It only happened for a short time, it was stupid, and then it was over. It didn’t rewrite our history, it doesn’t negate everything we had, our love, our children, our life together.’
‘I know that,’ James said. ‘Doesn’t make it any easier to handle, though. I kept imagining you and him—’ He stopped. ‘I can’t bear to think of that, Christie. And then, when you left the pictures for me to see, I was so angry and hurt. All I could think was you were trying to show me how much he loved you, because he’d been able to paint you. I don’t understand art, that’s your world and I was never a part of it. But I felt bad because I’d never tried to be a part of it and, at the same time, furious with you for having him, having that other life.’
He was being so honest and it was so heartbreaking that Christie wanted nothing more than to get up and to put her arms around him. But she couldn’t. She had to let him speak his piece. That was his right. She’d done what she thought was right, now it was his turn.
‘When you showed me the pictures,’ he went on, ‘I thought you’d done it for a reason: that you wanted to be with him again. When you said it wasn’t that, that he was dying and that he wanted to see you one last time, I don’t think I believed you. I still thought you must be trying to hurt me.’
‘I’d never hurt you, not intentionally,’ she said. ‘Although I have hurt you, I didn’t mean to.’
‘I didn’t go fishing,’ he said. ‘I took some time off to think. I stayed in the B & B beside the lake, but I just walked and walked every day. I couldn’t bring myself to actually fish,’ he said ruefully. ‘And I realised I couldn’t let the past destroy us. We’re stronger than that. You’re an honest person and that’s why you told me, I know that now. You could have left me in the dark and I would never have known and some day, a hundred years from now, someone would put two and two together. You’d be named as the dark lady and I’d be the fool, the cuckold, the man who never knew. I don’t want to be the man who never knew, that’s not what I married you for. I can’t say I’m glad you told me, but now that you have, it’s not going to end our marriage.’
‘Oh, James,’ said Christie and she ran to him.
He held out his arms and pulled her into his embrace.
‘Thank you,’ she sobbed, ‘thank you. I couldn’t ring you or try to get in touch with you, I knew you had to do this on your own. I never meant to hurt you, not twenty-five years ago, not last week, not ever, you know that. I just don’t want there to be any more secrets. I’ve lived my life frightened that this would come out and destroy what we had. I just couldn’t live with that any more.’
He held her close, saying nothing, stroking her hair, her head burrowed into his shoulder.
‘I missed you,’ he said. ‘That’s what made me come back. Thinking of a life without you, what it would be like to live on my own. We’d sell this place, split the money and both of us live out lives of quiet misery because of my pride, because of something that happened twenty-five years ago. And no, I didn’t want to do that,’ he said. ‘Carey Wolensky nearly took so much away from me, he wasn’t going to take you away again.’
And Christie stood in his embrace and prayed thank you to whoever was watching over them. They stood there for a while, until the dogs got tired of sniffing around their feet and lay down and fell asleep. It was nice just to stand there and be held by the man she loved most in the whole world.
‘What are you painting?’ asked James, eventually.
Christie moved back and wiped her eyes with her hand.
‘I started doing one of my flower pictures,’ she said with a sniffle, reaching into her cardigan pocket for a tissue. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘But I couldn’t concentrate on it, couldn’t concentrate on anything really, I was just waiting for you. And then, I found this old photo and it came to me that’s what I should be painting.’ She led James around the other side of the easel and stood while he stared at the picture. In her own style, she’d copied an old family photograph of when the boys were young. Shane and Ethan sat on a couch and behind them, leaning over the back of the couch, smiling, arms around each other, were James and Christie. It was a beautiful family shot, hidden in an album for far too long, and she’d captured the joy on their faces perfectly.
‘It’s a family portrait,’ James said.
‘Because my family is what’s important to me,’ Christie said. ‘You’re what’s important to me.’
He put an arm around her waist and squeezed.
‘I know,’ he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Autumn on Summer Street came very slowly. The gently curved road was a sheltered place and, by September, the leaves of the maples that lined the pavements were only tinged with the most delicate hint of gold. The Japanese maple in Una Maguire’s front garden, however, had turned a startling dark crimson attracting admiring glances from passers-by. Christie Devlin’s soft white blousy roses were losing their petals daily, except for the creamy climbing rose that crept up over the wall and wrapped tendrils around the ever-open gate. That still bloomed, sending a heady rose scent on to the breeze and making people talk of an Indian summer.
But in spite of the good weather, the summer indolence of barbecues and sitting out sunbathing on front steps was over.
There was a sense of business about the whole street, the feeling of a new start. Holidays were over and the new school term had arrived.
At the Summer Street Café, Henry took in all but two of the little tables that stood on the pavement. His customers were drifting indoors now, preferring their coffees looking out over Summer Street. He liked autumn with its sense of renewal; it reminded him of being a kid going back to school with a bagful of clean new copy books, ready to be filled with wisdom.
‘I think you were always a wise man,’ teased Xu. She’d really come out of her shell, Henry thought proudly, feeling a certain responsibility for that. He and Jane had done their best to welcome her warmly, and her growing friendship with Maggie Maguire had helped integrate her into their community too.
Xu was a lot different from the shy woman who’d come to work for them at the start of the year. She was a big part of Summer Street.
Xu herself was excited that her mother was coming from China to visit her.
Henry and Jane had insisted that Xu’s mother stay in their spare room.
‘You’ve only got a tiny bedsit,’ Jane pointed out. ‘There won’t be room to swing a cat there.’
‘She doesn’t have a cat,�
�� Xu said gravely, then laughed. She loved being able to make jokes in English now. Everyone assumed her to be so sober and serious that they didn’t expect her to make jokes.
‘We’ve taught you too well,’ smiled Jane. ‘You’ll be as bad as Henry soon with the jokes.’
‘I told you the Irish and Chinese were similar,’ said Xu. ‘We have the same sense of humour, except it’s more hidden in my people.’
‘It’s not hidden now,’ said Jane cheerfully. ‘Come on, you pair, let’s get those chairs in or the customers will be tripping over them.’
At number 34, Christie Devlin was getting ready for another teaching year, her last, she’d decided.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ James said to her the night before school started. ‘Don’t do it just because of me.’
‘I’m ready to retire,’ said Christie. ‘Think of all the places we can go then, the things we can do together.’
Although James could stay another two years before retirement, he’d decided to go early. He’d stop working when Christie did the following summer. They had already amassed a collection of brochures about long holidays abroad for the adventuresome spirit. Christie particularly liked the sound of the trip around India, although Ethan and Shane had been a bit anxious when they had seen the brochure.
‘A month?’ said Shane, the brochure opened to the fares page. ‘For this price, you’re hardly going to be staying in old maharajahs’ palaces,’ he said doubtfully. ‘And what about the food, what if one of you gets sick?’
James and Christie looked at each other and laughed.
‘If we get sick, we get sick!’ James said cheerily. ‘We’ll bring plenty of medicine to bung us up from each end. We’re grown-ups, you know,’ he added, ‘we’re not ready for the nursing home yet.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Shane explained.
‘I know, I know,’ said his father.