He held on to her face so she couldn’t look away. ‘At least give it a few months – give it six months, till the end of the year. You’re barely twenty-three – a slip of a thing still. You can always look for a job somewhere afterwards if it doesn’t work out.’ His eyes slid to her mouth. ‘If it came to it –-’ he traced her top lip with his thumb ‘– I suppose I could support you for a while till you got going . . .’ she opened her mouth and tasted butter on his thumb ‘. . . provided that you paid me back in sexual favours of my own choosing. What do you think?’ He bent his head and kissed the side of her mouth. ‘Will you give it a try?’
She spoke softly, pressing closer to him. ‘Hmm, sexual favours . . . I don’t know . . .’ He kissed the other side of her mouth, and she closed her eyes. ‘. . . I suppose we could work something out – but you know I don’t come cheap. You’d have serious supporting to do if that was how I was paying you back.’ As he moved his head down towards the side of her neck – the first of her erogenous zones he’d discovered – her hands crept around his back, slid up under his t-shirt.
He spoke with his mouth on her throat; his words vibrated deliciously against her. ‘You’re worth every cent, young one. Just promise me you’ll think about it.’ Then he lifted his head and she opened her eyes reluctantly. ‘Let’s meet Tony and Marie for a drink and talk to them; you can show them your portfolio.’
She pushed his head down into her neck again and buried her hands in his hair. ‘I’ll think about it, I promise. Now, where were we . . . ?’
And a few nights later, over drinks in Jury’s bar, the four of them had come up with a few jokey ideas for the wedding planner business. And a while after that, she and Marie had got together and sorted out a few more serious ideas.
‘Kiss the Bride’, Limerick’s first wedding planner service, had slotted beautifully into the market gap. Marie and Tony included Laura’s designs as part of their overall package, and from then on she was rarely out of work – christening invitations inevitably followed the wedding ones; restaurant menus happened through a contact of Donal’s in the catering trade; company brochures came along now and again. Orders for various leaflets and booklets trickled in steadily. And now, thanks to a contact in the Art College, there was a potentially very lucrative schoolbook contract in the offing.
Not all the work appealed to her – illustrating leaflets for the likes of boiler companies, manufacturers of computer components or general hardware stores she found pretty soul-destroying. A few times she was asked to design a brochure for the kind of holiday centres she knew she’d run a mile from. Sometimes she had to work with writers who had quite definite design ideas of their own, and weren’t too happy if Laura begged to differ. She stayed up one entire night trying to make a block of horrendous apartments look inviting enough for someone actually to want to live in one.
But every now and again the fun jobs came along: a boutique needing to update its logo, invitations to a children’s party, a seaside-themed mural for a fish restaurant owner who was quite happy to let Laura have her way. And sometimes, whatever she was working on, she would find herself stopping and smiling, and thanking whatever lucky stars were responsible for her being able to make a living doing what she loved.
Eventually she found herself sharing a studio with two of her friends from Art College. It was small for three of them, and cold in winter, with not as much natural light as they would have liked, and the rent climbed steadily in return for a glimpse of the Shannon in the distance; but they got on well and had a laugh, and rounded off each week with a few beers in the pub two doors away.
Sometimes, especially when the jobs were plentiful, she felt guilty that it had all been so easy. Donal laughed when she confessed this to him.
‘My darling girl, it’s your skill that’s got you where you are – not luck. You’re a talented illustrator, but not any luckier than anyone else – apart from the fact that you’re married to me, of course.’ She lifted her head from the sketchpad in front of her, but his face was expressionless. ‘That was a lucky night, when I walked into The White House and put my eye on you.’
She grinned. ‘Yeah, lucky for you, managing to snag the glamorous young barmaid. Be serious, though – you know what I mean. Look at Andrew, slaving away in that horrible computer company five days a week: two weeks off when someone else decides. Same old routine, day in, day out – it must drive him mad. Every day is different for me; unless I’ve a tight deadline, I can get up when I want, go into the studio or stay and work here, stop when I’ve had enough. Every job is different from the last one. Why should my lot be so much better?’
He shrugged. ‘Look, love, he’s your brother and I’ve nothing against him –’
She shot him a disbelieving look. ‘Really?’
He smiled. ‘We’ll never be best buddies, but I can take him or leave him, you know that. And you and I both know that Andrew likes the easy life: he’ll be at that desk in that office till the day he retires. And who’s to say that he doesn’t enjoy it? I know it would kill you to have to sit in front of a computer screen all day, and it certainly wouldn’t be my idea of fun, but it might well suit Andrew – he’s obviously got some affinity with computers. And I’m sure he’s bringing home a healthy cheque at the end of all those boring weeks – programmers are well looked after.’
She nodded. ‘I suppose so.’ Donal always managed to make sense of things. She smiled across at him; she was lucky to be married to him – not that she’d ever give him the satisfaction of admitting it, of course.
He’d never learnt to drive – a quirk she secretly found endearing. ‘There are enough internal combustion engines polluting the planet without me adding to them. And the bike helps keep me in shape.’ He bent his elbow and made a fist, pointing at his barely bulging tricep. ‘Feel that for muscle. Go on, feel it.’ She tickled under his arm instead, and he grabbed her. ‘You’re just jealous of my perfectly toned physique. I’m getting you a bike for your next birthday.’
She put her most innocent face on. ‘How’ll you afford it though, after you’ve paid for the diamond necklace?’
She got used to being the driver for both of them, had always preferred to drive than be driven anyway. And she had to admire the stance he’d taken: cycling to work at dawn in the middle of an Irish winter couldn’t be anyone’s idea of fun, however environmentally friendly it was. But he never complained, and it was definitely cheaper – although she wasn’t convinced that cycling through all those petrol fumes was healthier than driving through them.
Once, she’d suggested that he wear a mask on the bike, showing him a magazine photo of masked cyclists in Tokyo. ‘I hate to think of you inhaling all those fumes every day.’
She was wasting her time – he’d been highly amused. ‘Right, I’ll pick up the mask when I go to collect the cape and the special powers, OK?’ Sometimes he could be too damn smart.
Now she reached out and pressed the slumber button on the radio, and Diana Krall sang ‘Cry Me a River’ in her chocolaty voice. Laura sank back onto the pillows – ten more minutes. There was an estate agent’s brochure waiting to be finished off that should have been gone two days ago; she’d better get it out of the way today.
She started to plan the menu for Thursday night.
Blast. Andrew O’Neill braked sharply as he reached the traffic lights, just gone red. If the garda car hadn’t been in his rear-view mirror he’d have kept going; everyone else did. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he watched the stream of cars crossing in front of him. One person in most of them; no wonder they all crawled home every day. He’d share if anyone suggested it – quite a few of the lads lived around the North Circular – but nobody else seemed too bothered, so why should he? Mind you, the traffic here was still nowhere near as bad as Dublin – imagine the poor sods who had to battle through that every day. He’d driven up there only once when he started seeing Ruth; after crawling all the way through Monasterevin, and arriving
two hours late to meet her and her flatmates in The Gravediggers, he vowed to switch to the train.
His stomach rumbled; he thought about dinner. Chicken, maybe – they’d had fish last night. With health-conscious Mother doing the cooking, they didn’t see a lot of red meat. Not that he was complaining; his mother’s meals were up there with the best, no doubt about it. Everything fully planned and meticulously timed, and beautifully presented. Nothing was left to chance in Mother’s kitchen.
He remembered watching her when he was a young boy – the way she’d cover the open page of her recipe book with a sheet of acetate to protect it before she started. How she’d peer at the page as she went along, measuring out the ingredients exactly – even quarter teaspoons of salt were carefully calculated. Everything was washed up as she went along; any rare spills were cleaned away immediately.
Then he thought of weekends in Dublin over the past few months, in the poky flat that Ruth shared with Claire and Maura. Their potluck casseroles, where they’d fling in whatever they could find in the fridge and hope for the best – inevitably, with more success some times than others. Every saucepan used; onion skins, red pepper seeds and eggshells littering every worktop. A couple of bottles of not very good wine to go with every dinner, once the few decent ones he’d brought up had run out. A lot more fun, he had to admit, than Mother’s perfect meals in Limerick – although he was tempted, once or twice, to hint that they try following a recipe occasionally. He’d held his tongue though – they might suggest he do it himself.
He thought about the food in Crete, when he and Ruth first met. Plates of stuffed vine leaves – Ruth went mad for them – salads drenched in salty olive oil, crowned with a thick slab of feta sprinkled with herbs. Tender chunks of chicken wedged between deliciously crisp vegetables on a skewer, slow-cooked lamb, rich with oregano and basil. Inch-thick monkfish steaks that melted in your mouth. Spinach and cheese pies, still warm from the oven, which they brought to the beach every day. He remembered leaning over and licking the flakes of pastry off her bare stomach, and Ruth laughing and pushing him away, probably not wanting him to notice that she wasn’t as flat there as she could be.
Funny how he’d ended up marrying someone like Ruth really, when he’d always gone for someone so different. But Mother was right – Ruth had exactly the qualities a man should look for in a wife. She’d look after him, put his needs first, support him in whatever he did. And she’d have children too, without worrying about her figure, or whether babies would interfere with her career – Ruth wasn’t a bit like that. Didn’t really have a career anyway – you wouldn’t call hairdressing a career – so it would be no big deal for Ruth to give it up when the kids came along. Not, indeed, that he was in any hurry for kids – time enough for all that responsibility when they were well into their thirties, like his mother had been – but Ruth had hinted often enough that she wanted a few; he’d be able to put her off for only so long.
He’d enjoyed their fling in Crete, of course – who wouldn’t get a kick out of being so patently adored? Andrew was used to his mother’s adoration, but to find this in a girlfriend was something new and delightful for him – girls usually played such games. But Ruth was different – so innocent, so eager to please; really, he’d felt a pang when his two weeks were up and she’d seen his coach off. Waiting for her at Dublin Airport two nights later – no need to tell her that he’d been planning to stay with pals in Dublin for a few extra nights when he flew back anyway, before heading down to Limerick – he’d quite looked forward to seeing her again. And her face when she’d spotted him – well, that was gratifying. That in itself, that depth of feeling that she wasn’t experienced enough to disguise, was enough of a novelty to keep him interested. Enough to keep them together for a few months, until Mother started asking him when he was going to bring Ruth down to meet her.
And then, when they’d met, when his mother had taken to Ruth so strongly – well, that clinched it. Mother was no fool; if she thought Ruth would make a worthy wife for him, that was good enough for Andrew. His mother had looked out for him all his life, had kept him from making some disastrous decisions; and while he mightn’t always have agreed with her advice – would almost have resented it sometimes – he’d had to acknowledge that she always had his interests at heart. He had always come first with her; he appreciated that. And so he had married Ruth, and made both his women happy.
He wondered how it would be when they moved into their own house. They’d have to work out some kind of a routine when Ruth started working again. If she got a job in town, he could drop her in on his way to work. Mind you, with this traffic every evening, she’d be better off walking home – it wasn’t that far out to Farranshone. Give her a chance to put the dinner on, rather than be hanging around waiting for him. And let’s face it, Ruth was going to be the one doing the cooking – he was useless at it, never had the chance to learn, with Mother insisting on doing it for him all his life. He wouldn’t have minded having a go now and again; he might have been quite good at it actually. But there wasn’t much point now, with Ruth probably delighted to do it. And Mother had that fancy cookbook ready to give to Ruth as a house-warming present – that would help her along nicely.
Not that they’d abandon his mother when they moved, of course not. They’d only be a few minutes away anyway – probably go over to her for Sunday lunch or something. Thinking about Cecily’s typical Sunday meals – stuffed roast chicken, tender baby vegetables, homemade potato croquettes – his stomach rumbled again. And they could have Mother over to their place some night during the week maybe, Ruth could make a bit of an effort. It might be hard for Mother initially, on her own for the first time in years. But then, she had her book club, and her friends. Such a strong woman his mother had always been. So capable.
He pulled up in front of the house as Ruth opened the front door and walked towards him, smiling. She must have been watching out the window for him.
He noticed that her tan was fading.
‘Mama.’ Polly’s flour-covered hands reached out as she toddled over to the door, grin almost splitting her fat little face in two.
‘Oh great, dinner’s here; I’m starving.’ Breffni scooped her up and nuzzled into her neck, making munching sounds. Polly shrieked with glee, trying to push Breffni’s head away, kicking against Breffni’s hip with her miniature trainers. ‘Stop, Mama.’
Breffni lifted her head up – ‘Hang on; I’m nearly finished. Just a few more bites’ – and dived under Polly’s chin again. Polly squealed and giggled again, squirming. ‘Mama – tiddle, tiddle.’
‘Well, I don’t know which one of you is worse.’ Mary finished filling the teapot and walked over to Breffni, who put her free arm around her shoulders and hugged her.
‘Me, definitely. Polly would never eat a person, would you, Pollywolly?’ She poked Polly in the side, making her squirm again. ‘You’d prefer fish fingers.’
She put Polly down and looked back at Mary. ‘I hope she was good for you.’
‘She was of course, as good as gold. It’s great to see her over that old bug she had.’
‘It is – it knocked her sideways for a while. And how are you, Granny Mary? You look great, as usual.’
Mary flapped a hand at Breffni. ‘Great, my foot – I look like a holy show. I’m getting a perm on Saturday.’ She reached out and stroked Breffni’s glossy hair. ‘Now if I had your head I’d be fine; you were blessed with that hair. I hope you appreciate it, not having to run to the hairdresser’s every month trying to look presentable.’
Breffni grinned – ‘God, no – I want a head of blond curls, like Shirley Temple here,’ – ruffling Polly’s hair. ‘Would you ever tell me how Cian and I ended up with a blonde? There’s never been anything lighter than dark brown in my family – and none of Cian’s relations I’ve met are fair.’
Mary considered, looking down at Polly, who was rummaging through Breffni’s shopping bags. ‘I had an uncle who was blond like that –
not curly though. And his daughter, a good bit older than me – she went to Canada and settled there – she was fairly light, I think. And actually I was quite fair myself, before age caught up with me and washed it all out. Now the only choice I have is grey or blue, or maybe lilac.’
Breffni laughed. ‘Stick to the grey, I think. And what are you up to, Missy?’ Polly had discovered a stick of French bread; after a struggle, she managed to pull it out of the bag, but the momentum knocked her backwards and she thudded down on her well-padded behind. She looked up at the women and grinned, showing a row of tiny teeth. ‘Bump a daisy.’
‘I’ll take that, thanks.’ Breffni whisked the bread away, and before Polly could react, replaced it with a mandarin orange, which she pulled quickly from the bag.
Polly looked at the little fruit in her hand and slowly her smile vanished. ‘No.’ She threw the mandarin on the floor and it rolled gently under the table.
Mary immediately stretched out her hand towards Polly. ‘I think I know what you want, darling. Come with Granny, and we’ll get the surprise for Mammy.’ Polly immediately struggled to her feet, bread forgotten, and grabbed hold of Mary’s little finger. ‘We made scones, didn’t we, lovey? Let’s see if they’re ready.’ They walked over to the worktop, the older woman leaning down towards the little girl.
Breffni retrieved the mandarin and sat at the table watching them. ‘You’ve her spoilt rotten, Granny. She never gets this kind of love and attention at our house.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it. She’s very lucky to have the parents she has. Now, upsadaisy.’ Mary helped Polly onto a chair by the worktop. ‘Hold on now, or you’ll fall.’ Polly stood on the chair and grabbed the edge of the worktop, watching carefully as Mary took a scone from the wire rack and split it.
‘Me, Ganny?’
Putting Out the Stars Page 5