by Cathy Kelly
Geraldine waited patiently while her daughter-in-law talked to her cleaner. Things were changing so quickly in the world. It wasn’t as easy to place people any more. Zareen talked about art as if she’d grown up surrounded by Picassos. It was all very confusing.
Finally, Rae moved on to the drawing room with Will by her side.
‘We’ve something to tell you, Mother,’ said Will.
Geraldine’s legs went weak and she had to sit on her beige velour pouffe.
‘You’re getting a divorce,’ she said.
Rae actually laughed.
How callous, thought Geraldine.
‘No, Mother,’ said Will, ‘we’re not.’
‘We’ve actually got an even bigger family now, which is sort of the reverse of that.’
‘You’re not pregnant! I think those fertility doctors should stay away from anyone over the age of forty-five,’ shrieked Geraldine.
Rae sat beside her mother-in-law. ‘I’m not pregnant, Geraldine. I had a daughter when I was sixteen and I gave her up for adoption. She contacted me and we’ve just met up.’
‘A daughter. Before you met Will?’
‘A long time before I met Will, yes. I was sixteen, I gave her up for adoption and I’ve regretted it every day since,’ Rae said calmly.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth was the only way forward here.
‘Goodness gracious,’ Geraldine said.
‘I know you’re a bit shocked,’ Rae went on. ‘She’s a beautiful woman of forty-one and, incidentally, she is pregnant for the first time.’
‘Really?’
Geraldine thought of Carmel’s daughter-in-law, the one with the tummy tuck scar and the new breasts. Compared to her, Rae was a plaster saint. And it wasn’t as if Geraldine didn’t know other people who’d been born the wrong side of the blanket.
Geraldine tried to think of the most forgiving question she could ask. ‘What does she do?’
‘She’s works in banking,’ Rae said.
Geraldine’s face lifted. ‘How handy. Someone to explain where all the money’s gone. When am I meeting her?’
24
Weddings
When your father and I got married, my mother made a porter cake and her mother iced it. Porter cake is still made here in Brooklyn, but it’s not the same, as Agnes likes to say. The stout isn’t as good as it is back home. The trick is in soaking the dried fruit long enough in the porter till it’s dark and soft as treacle.
It’s not the easiest cake to ice, but Agnes got plenty of experience at the big house and she could whip an icing up on anything.
We ate roast stuffed pork for the meal because it was September, just after we killed the pig, so the house was jammed to the rafters with pork.
Joe wore his Sunday best and I had a dress with a linen underdress and an overdress purely of the whitest knitted lace you can imagine.
It’s old now, yellow with time, but I still take it out sometimes to look at it and feel the finery of it.
It was one of the happiest days of my life, the one you were born being the other. I wasn’t travelling anywhere – Joe moved into the house with us because it was only my mother, Agnes and me, and it was easier than joining the house of men above where he lived, but still, it was like we were coming home to a whole new family.
The heat hit Megan with a hazy punch as soon as she left the airport in Ibiza. The little gold-framed glasses she was wearing as part of her disguise darkened with the sun. At passport control, when she’d had to take them off, she felt vulnerable. Strange how a centimetre of glass could make her feel safer. But nobody had recognised her.
Holidaymakers thronged the pavement heading to tour buses and taxis, joyful holiday mood bursting out of everyone. She joined the taxi queue and was soon in the back of a white cab on her way to Villa Aphrodite.
The name sounded stupid to her. Why did people give houses such ridiculous names? Only a palace would suit being called after a goddess.
Away from the airport and the serried apartment blocks, the island was quietly beautiful. Megan had been there once before and hadn’t noticed the tranquillity. The taxi finally deposited her on a road with many high walls in shades of white and pale pink behind which villas shimmered in the heat.
Suddenly anxious about her mother being there at all, Megan left her bags in the car and asked the driver to wait.
There was no chink in the vast wooden gate to see in. Megan rang the intercom at a matching wooden side gate and waited.
‘Si?’ said a female voice. Not her mother.
‘Señora Flynn?’ said Megan.
The only reply was a metallic clunk and the whirr of the wooden gate swinging open.
Megan got back into the taxi and he drove her through the gates into a small circular driveway. Villa Aphrodite was certainly pretty, though no longer an immaculately kept place. Like an ageing beauty queen, she was still glamorous but paint had chipped off the stone columns at the porch and the glazed blue-and-white tiles on the ground were broken in places. Yet the overall effect was of beauty: a classic Spanish seaside house with climbing flowers clinging to the walls, a tiled roof in rich terracotta, and cast-iron railings on balcony windows. Her mother had been living here for the past year with Vincente, a man Megan had never met.
Megan paid the driver, took her bags and waited.
At first, the only noises were the insects and the hum of heat. Then she heard the faint staccato of high heels on tiled floors, followed by a door slamming and then the front door was opened.
Her mother appeared. And all of a sudden, it was as if the sun had come out.
‘Megan, sweetheart!’ Smiling broadly, as if this was a wonderful surprise instead of something which had been planned, Marguerite Flynn held out her slender, tanned arms.
Megan hugged her mother tightly, smelling the familiar scents of Shalimar, sinking into the embrace. She hadn’t realised until she got here how much she’d wanted to be held by her mother.
‘You look wonderful, Mum,’ she said, finally, as they walked, arms linked, into the house.
Her mother looked years younger than her fifty-five years. She could pass for forties, easily. Her long fair hair tipped the edges of her eyebrows, hanging in casual ripples around her shoulders. She was still very slender, but it didn’t show badly on her face, which looked remarkably dewy. Her make-up was different around the eyes. The rock-chick heavy eyeliner had been replaced by a more sedate application of kohl.
‘You look very different, darling,’ Marguerite said. She put her head to one side, admiring Megan’s cropped dark hair. She’d had Patsy cut it again and put more dye in. It was inkier than ever, a sharper, tougher version of the old Megan. ‘I like the hair. Makes you stand out. Always important to stand out.’
Megan murmured yes. She didn’t want to talk about how she looked: it was how she felt that mattered right now.
‘I’ve missed you, Mum,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ Marguerite said lightly.
They’d reached an airy, marble-floored room that led on to the garden. It was clearly a room made for parties, with lots of couches and day beds, huge Spanish paintings on the walls, and many pots of orchids and exotic plants dotted around. On the verandah, a tiled table had been set with coffee and Marguerite led her daughter out there. In front of them, the Mediterranean glittered.
‘I thought we could sit here,’ Marguerite said, as if she were entertaining any other guest. ‘I like having my coffee here and looking out at the sea.’ She turned and shouted in the direction of the house: ‘Anna-Marina!’
A middle-aged woman appeared and Marguerite spoke to her in Spanish.
Megan sat down and breathed in the heady smell of the garden. Jasmine, she thought, with something else, a woody smell that reminded her of other houses she’d lived in with her mother.
‘It’s very peaceful,’ she said, taking in the view.
‘We love it,’ her mother said contentedly. ‘I
don’t know why you haven’t come before.’
Megan said nothing. She’d phoned her mother when the affair with Rob had made the newspapers and her mother had said it wasn’t a good time for Megan to visit. Marguerite had made it sound like a mild crisis with rooms. Vincente’s son and his family were staying, the house was full.
‘Next month?’ Marguerite had said vaguely.
And Megan had gone to Nora’s house in Golden Square instead.
‘Cigarette?’ Her mother proferred a packet.
Megan nodded. Even though she’d cut down so much lately, smoking was the perfect thing to do in this strange, in-between moment when they were together for the first time after so long. This was her mother, after all, but the time and distance between them made her feel strangely numb. She’d longed for a sense of homecoming, but there was none. She’d felt so much more peace with Eleanor at the ruined stone cottage in Connemara.
That had been truly beautiful. She’d felt healed there and she’d known then that she had to see her mother before she’d feel she’d done it all. Well, most of it.
Here, with her mother, there was only the faintest tide of sadness in her because she’d made the trip to visit Marguerite. Her mother hadn’t come to her. It wasn’t her mother’s fault, Megan realised now.
She watched her mother take two cigarettes from her pack, light one delicately, then pass it to her daughter. It was one of Marguerite’s little trademarks: lighting cigarettes for other people, usually men.
Megan used to think it sophisticated, but now she found it a little sad, a forced gesture to please men. This realisation jolted her.
‘It’s great to be here,’ Megan lied, determined to quash the feelings of anger and irritation. So her mother hadn’t come to Golden Square to comfort her. Big deal. Marguerite wasn’t the comforting sort of mother.
‘I’m so thrilled you’re here too!’ Marguerite’s face glowed with pleasure.
She’d had surgery on her eyes, Megan realised. It was subtle, but suddenly Megan could see it. Or rather she could see what was no longer there. The faint hooding over Marguerite’s eyes was now gone, leaving her looking girlish with high, arched eyebrows. That was why she looked so good. It shouldn’t have been surprising that her mother would have cosmetic surgery, and yet Megan was surprised. She’d always thought of her mother as ageless, forever youthful.
‘Vincente can’t wait to meet you. Nor can my pals. I’ve organised a little drinks party tonight in the club – you’ll love it. Smart casual, but you can wear anything, darling. After all, you’re the guest of honour. I’ve got lots of dresses if you didn’t bring anything suitable. I want to show my beautiful daughter off!’
After their coffee, they walked around the downstairs of the villa, with Marguerite showing her daughter photos of her friends, the huge jade elephants she and Vincente had bought in Bangkok, the diamond ring she’d got in Brunei. Vincente dabbled in many things: property management, leisure club management, the car business. Of course, money was tighter these days. Once, Marguerite said, he’d been very wealthy. Still, he was generous, kind, so wise.
‘We both love to travel,’ Marguerite said. ‘We were so lucky to find each other.’
In the many silver-framed photographs of the couple with friends, Marguerite looked like a movie star and Vincent, who was a short, full-figured man with a Roman nose and no hair, looked proud of his gorgeous girlfriend.
‘I’m glad you’re happy,’ Megan said.
Marguerite beamed at her. ‘You’re going to love him,’ she said, as if this trip was about nothing more than Megan meeting her mother’s latest man. There was no mention of Megan’s happiness or what had happened with Rob Hartnell.
Megan’s bedroom was a pretty blue-and-white room with a snowy bed dominated by broderie anglaise pillows and cushions. The sight of it made Megan tired, even though it was only late afternoon. But she longed to lie down and let her eyes close, not have to go out tonight and be the old Megan, the charming movie-star version people would want to meet.
She thought about phoning Nora to say hello, but in the sultry heat of Villa Aphrodite, Golden Square seemed a long way away. Nora would want to know how her mother was and would hope that Megan was happy to be able to spend time with her. Saying that Marguerite had organised an impromptu party for their first night together would result in a pause on the other end of the phone.
Nora’s way of nurturing Megan on their first night had been to insulate her with animal programmes, two dogs and love. Marguerite’s was to go out and party. There would be no chance of a heart-to heart about everything Megan had been through when they were in a noisy club.
Instead, Megan sent a text message.
At Mum’s house, all fine. Talk soon, love, Megan.
She wondered briefly how all her Golden Square friends were. Would Connie be out with the hunky Steve and cute little Ella? Megan certainly hoped so.
Nicky might be going to that cosmetic surgery book launch. She’d said it was this week and the surgeon had said nobody would turn up because he had no clients.
‘Officially, he has no clients,’ Nicky said. ‘Nobody will admit to knowing him. The people who go to him pay cash in case their husbands find out. The reality is, he has zillions of clients!’
Megan didn’t know what Rae might be doing. And Eleanor – suddenly, Megan longed to be sitting with Eleanor right now, just talking.
I came here to see her and it’s like there’s a screen between us. She knows it and I know it but we don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about anything. You’d think she’d want to know how I am, and how awful it all was, but she hasn’t asked a single thing. Is that normal?
In her mind, she could hear more of Eleanor’s advice and that low voice gently saying that she couldn’t change other people’s behaviour. She could only change her own, could only find her own truth.
Megan must have fallen asleep on the bed.
‘Darling, wake up! We’re going out soon. Vincente is home and I can’t wait for you two to meet!’
Marguerite was made up and wearing an ankle-length silvery dress with spaghetti straps. A heavy silver and pearl necklace was coiled around her neck. She’d obviously reapplied the Shalimar with a heavy hand as its scent was very strong.
‘You look great, Mum,’ said Megan sleepily. Her mother had turned the lights on in Megan’s bedroom and in the warm evening glow, with the familiar perfume filling her senses, it was like being a child again, waiting for her mother to go out. She and Pippa loved watching Marguerite put on her face: the careful anointing of her skin with cosmetics and how time seemed to stand still as Marguerite admired herself critically, checking, dusting on face powder, putting on her lips.
‘It takes more work these days,’ Marguerite said now, and for the first time since Megan had arrived, she hadn’t spoken in her bright shiny voice. She sounded tired, serious even.
‘You still look great,’ Megan said, surprising herself with the need to cheer her mother up.
Marguerite’s real laugh rang out. The low, throaty one and not the light, girlish one she used when she was with men. ‘The old girl’s still got it,’ she said. ‘But believe me, it takes longer to get the magic going. Now, sweetie, Vincente wants to go out for dinner. We’re going in ten minutes. Do you want one of my dresses or not?’
Vincente’s photographs didn’t do him justice. He was shorter in real life, and rounder, but no photo could catch the warmth of his smile or the genuine welcome in his tiny black eyes.
‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ he said, holding her hands in welcome as he kissed her on both cheeks. Aramis fought valiantly to overpower her mother’s Shalimar. ‘It is an honour to meet you at last. You look different in real life.’
‘It’s a disguise,’ Megan said, grinning at him.
Vincente’s black eyes twinkled back. ‘A clever idea,’ he said. ‘Everyone deserves privacy. You will find it here. Many famous people come to Ibiza and we do not like people
to take photographs of them. This is an island for being private. You are with me and your mother, you will be safe.’
The club wasn’t the sort of throbbing Ibizan hotspot she’d been to when she’d been here before. Her mother’s club was a large restaurant-cum-bar called Victor’s, and was the hangout of all sorts of expatriates who liked somewhere they could get their own brand of vodka and talk to people who remembered Berlin/London/Washington in the old days.
‘I haven’t a clue why, but everyone calls it the club,’ Marguerite said as she took Megan on a whistle-stop tour of the place. ‘They like the sound of it, I suppose. Whatever makes them happy, isn’t that the motto?’
Megan hadn’t expected to enjoy the night, but she did. She wasn’t the prodigal daughter on show: she was Marguerite’s little girl, and if there was an added factor in her being an actress who’d recently featured in all the gossip columns, then nobody seemed too bothered. Marguerite and Vincente’s crowd were an international gang who didn’t read gossip columns. Their stars were the people in their lives or the people back home. Why had Bobo and Sammy sold their house? Was it true that the widow of a Swiss millionaire was having tax problems?
Who had bought the restaurant beside the club?
Megan wasn’t the youngest person there. There were daughters, sons, grandkids, all eating and drinking, chatting or watching sport on the huge television in the bar area. There was no blasting techno beat: Julio and Enrique Iglesias CDs were on a loop all night, playing just loud enough to be heard over the sound of forks clattering and people eating tapas. Nobody wanted Megan’s life story or details about Rob, even if she spotted recognition in some of their eyes.
‘I did not know Marguerite had such a beautiful daughter,’ said one older man, with the profile and the manners of a Spanish duke. He kissed her hand in greeting instead of shaking it.
Megan loved it. She’d forgotten how nice it was to be flirted with, even if he was just being polite.