The House On Willow Street

by Cathy Kelly

  She’d heard rumors of other women on this particular tour.

  “Jethro isn’t the sort of dog to stay faithful for too long,” Leona, one of the makeup girls, had told her. Suki hadn’t listened. She was everything Jethro wanted. Okay, so she wasn’t a twenty-four-year-old babe, but she was famous in her own right, intelligent, fierce, passionate. She was someone, and that’s what he wanted, not some identikit beach babe with enhanced breasts and long legs.

  At that moment, Jethro opened his eyes properly and saw her standing there. His face, that famous face that had graced millions of album covers and posters, creased up into a big smile.

  “Hey, Suki, honey, where did you get to? Come on, join us! I got you a little surprise.”

  “Join you?” she said, feeling an unbelievable headache start to pound into her temples. “What are you doing with that other woman in our bed?”

  “Ah, come on, honey, don’t get all heavy on me. It’ll be fun, you’ll like it.”

  “I won’t like it. I’m not into that shit,” she managed to hiss.

  But Jethro wasn’t listening, he was lost in erotic fantasy land.

  Suki turned and ran back into the bathroom, slamming the door and locking it. She stood under the shower, washing herself clean. She was sure she had some tranqs in her toilet bag; if not, Jethro was bound to have something in his. Never very much, he never carried too much, he had people on tour to do that for him, in case anyone searched his stuff and he got held up. That would never do. The tour was about money, and Jethro was the cash machine. Someone else would take the rap for transporting his drugs and they’d be royally rewarded for it. That was how rock stars did it.

  She found a tranq, popped two. There was nothing in Jethro’s bag except the remains of an empty baggie of coke. Wrapped in the bathrobe, she marched out of the bathroom, desperate not to look at the bed and hear the moans. The suite had a separate dressing room and she pulled on some clothes. Then, with her hair wet and clinging to her skull, she marched out, went to the lift and went down to the fifteenth floor, the club floor, where there was breakfast all morning. None of the band or the tour entourage were there. But the manager was: a wily, skinny guy, named Nico.

  “Hey, Suki, what’s up?” he said.

  Nico liked Suki, he liked the fact that Jethro was sticking to one woman for a while. It was good for the band. There had been a few instances with girls of dubious age, sixteen-year-olds who looked twenty-five, and that was hard to handle. But now that Jethro was hanging out with Suki, it was good. She seemed to be keeping him on the straight and narrow. Well, as straight and narrow as Jethro could ever be, given the large amounts of alcohol and drugs that he consumed.

  But Suki didn’t look too good today. Without her hair all fluffed up and without the war paint properly applied, she looked her age. Definitely forty-something, despite all the Botox and fillers and the eye lift.

  “Hi, Nico,” Suki said, grabbing herself some water and drinking it straight down.

  “You’re up early,” Nico said. “Do you wanna sit with me?”

  Suki looked at him, wondering whether she could confide in him. She and Nico got on really well. Plus he knew she wasn’t the sort of person to go and dump Jethro and sell her story to the tabloids the way so many other girls had tried to do.

  She sank into the chair opposite him.

  “Coffee?” asked a waitress.

  “Yeah, loads of it—strong, thank you,” Suki growled. She started to light up a cigarette.

  “Not in here, I’m afraid,” said Nico.

  “Aw shit,” Suki said. She put a couple of lumps of sugar in her coffee.

  “You look tired,” Nico said.

  She’d tell him, Suki decided. “Jethro has another woman in our bed,” she blurted out, and then felt stupid. She shouldn’t have said anything. Now she’d look like a sad loser who couldn’t keep her man.

  “Ah.” Nico poured some more coffee into his cup. “That tends to happen with Jethro. I would have liked to have told you, but . . . y’know, sometimes people don’t like to be told these things. They have to find them out for themselves,” Nico said delicately. “That’s the way he is. I’ve known him for twenty years and that’s the pattern, Suki. You can stay or you can go, but if you stay, you gotta put up with that.”

  “But he’s never done that before, not to me. I mean, why now?” Suki wailed. “We’re so happy, everything is great.”

  “He gets bored.”

  Suki took that one. It felt like a body blow, but she took it.

  “And he likes . . . younger girls, sometimes. Not the teenage ones, but the early twenties: the ones who’ll do anything so long as they can say they’ve been to bed with Jethro.”

  It was the word “younger” that did it.

  “Younger women,” she breathed. “I thought I was enough for him.”

  Nico looked at her pityingly. “Nobody or nothing is enough for Jethro,” he said. “You wanna stay on the tour, you need to remember that. He wants it all.”

  After an hour, she went back to the suite, let herself in quietly and walked into the bedroom. Jethro was lying in the bed, looking happy, smoking a cigar. She hated the smell of cigar smoke. He didn’t smoke many, but when he did, it always signified that he was in a particularly good mood. And today, it wasn’t her who had provided that good mood.

  “Jethro,” she said, determined to be calm, “we need to talk.”

  “About what, honey?” he asked, a dangerous glint in his eyes.

  “About the fact that you had another woman in our bed. I can’t live with that,” Suki said. She felt herself growing stronger with every word. “It simply isn’t acceptable, Jethro. You and I have a great relationship; we can’t mess it up with other women. And how disrespectful is that to me, to bring her into our bed?”

  “Honey,” he said, and this time his voice was the low throaty growl that had so captured her the first time they’d met, “this isn’t our bed, this is my bed. I allow you to sleep in it. Whoever else I want to bring in—that’s my business. If you don’t like it, you can get out. Stas says he’s always fancied having a few rounds with you.”

  Suki stared at him, horrified. Stas was the band’s guitarist. She considered him a friend, but much as she liked him, she didn’t fancy him in the slightest. Stas had always joked that if he wasn’t in TradeWind he’d still be a virgin.

  She looked at Jethro in horror. “What do you mean, go to Stas? After all that we’ve been through? After all this time, after all these years.”

  Jethro stared at her, uninterested. “I’m bored, honey,” he said. “So you can either take what I’m offering . . . or get out.”

  Suki tried to gather her dignity about her. She looked at the man lounging in the bed, the face and body that so many women wanted, and realized that it was over. She couldn’t stay with him if he brought other women into their bed.

  The calmness of the tranquilizer allowed her not to break down and cry.

  “Okay, Jethro, if that’s the way you want it, fine. Goodbye.”

  She walked into the dressing room and started packing, half hoping he’d come in and say, “No, baby, I didn’t mean it, I’d be lost without you. None of those twenty-four-year-olds can talk with me late into the night. They’re not like you—superbright, clever, funny . . .”

  But he didn’t come.

  When she’d gathered her stuff together, she hauled it out into the hall. There were ten bags in all. Everything she’d amassed in her time with him. Finally, she took off the big watch. It was one of the few things he’d bought her that was actually valuable, and she threw it at him in the bed.

  “You can have this for your next girl,” she said.

  And then she left, head held high.

  Suki got out of bed and went downstairs to make herself another cup of coffee. Then she sat outside on the deck with blankets wrapped around her and thought about the psychic she’d met in the trailer park.

  Addicted to powerfu
l men, she’d said.

  Suki tapped out a cigarette and lit up. The woman had been right. Suki had always been waiting for some guy to fix it all—and she still was. Even with no-hoper Mick, she kept praying he’d get a decent job and support her. So much for her feminist principles! She might have been talking the talk but she’d never really walked the walk. Instead, she’d moved from one man to the next all her life. And that had to change.

  18

  Mara was flinging Danae into Avalon’s social scene as if her very life depended upon it.

  First up was the town meeting to discuss what last-ditch efforts they could make to salvage Christmas, with shoppers staying away in droves thanks to the recession. It was being held in the town hall and as mayoress, Belle was in charge.

  On the agenda were a series of festive-themed shopping nights. Mulled wine and nibbles, and a choir singing carols had worked a treat the previous Christmas. This year, there had been resistance to the idea, led by Dessie, who feared his takings might suffer if drink was being given away for nothing.

  “We aren’t all runnin’ fancy hotels, making a fortune,” Dessie protested, with more than a whine in his voice. “Sure, I’m only breaking even. I don’t hold with all this prettifying the place for Christmas. I have the odd decoration and that’ll have to do you. I’m not shelling out money for any old tinsel or other daft things.”

  Others had protested that, with takings down, they couldn’t afford to contribute either. Now, with shoppers going elsewhere, it seemed they couldn’t afford not to.

  Danae, who wasn’t open in the evening and had no real reason to get involved, was reluctant to attend the meeting, but Mara had insisted.

  “We’re a part of this town,” she said, “and we’re going.”

  Danae was entirely astonished to find that she was enjoying getting out. She didn’t quiver with nerves when she put her hand up to say she’d donate money for wine and some spices for the mulled bit.

  “Thanks, Danae,” said Belle, who was thinking of ways of dispatching Dessie into the great hereafter. “At least some people understand the concept of community.”

  “Dessie’s not the worst, Belle,” Danae said. “He doesn’t see the bigger picture, not the way you do. This is a wonderful idea for the town, you’re a marvelous organizer.”

  Ruffled feathers smoothed, Belle relaxed.

  After the meeting, Danae found herself sitting in the café with a coffee and a scone, surrounded by people she’d been acquainted with for years but had never really known. Mara was there in the middle, chatting away.

  “. . . well, it’s different for her because Brenda works!” shrieked someone, and they all roared with laughter.

  A private joke, Danae thought. Life was all about private jokes and you were either in or out of it. She’d always been out of it, one way or the other. But she was determined not to be on the outside in future.

  Seeing Danae’s confusion over the joke, Lorena from the café explained: “It was something Margaret’s husband said once. According to him, Brenda couldn’t be expected to do normal things because she worked. As if we don’t.”

  “Tell me, is Brenda good looking?” asked Mara shrewdly.

  Danae admired her niece for being a part of it all.

  “Lord, yes! Stunning.”

  “So she should be—she’s got the time and money to have her hair done!”

  Tess had gone along to the meeting but she’d felt like an interloper. Before long, she wouldn’t have a shop anymore. There was no point kidding herself: Something Old was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Nevertheless, she’d found herself swept up in the great exodus to the café. Tonight, Danae from the post office and a few other local women, including dear Mara, were deep in conversation at a table near the door. Tess walked past them quietly and ordered tea and a scone.

  She had some auction house catalogs in her handbag but she didn’t have the heart to read them. What was the point? She was nearly broke. It was only the thought that she had to get the shop and the family past Christmas that was keeping her going at all. Christmas was the final hurdle. For all their sakes, she had to keep the shop limping along a few weeks more. Then, in the New Year, she could consider her options and make decisions.

  She ate her scone, drank her tea and found her eyes wandering again. It was odd how Danae seemed to be everywhere now that they’d broken that barrier of politeness which encased so many relationships. Years of saying hello and nodding, and suddenly they were friends, and here was Danae, all over the place.

  As if sensing that someone was looking at her, Danae’s head lifted. She smiled as soon as she saw Tess.

  “I wasn’t avoiding you all,” Tess said when Danae sat down beside her.

  “I understand,” said Danae. “Sometimes it’s nice to be on your own, isn’t it?”

  Tess nodded. She didn’t want to confide in this lovely woman or she might cry.

  As if she knew how Tess was feeling, Danae got to her feet again.

  “I better get Miss Mara home,” she said. “We both have work in the morning and she’d stay here all night if I let her. Do drop in on us any time you’re in the mood for a chat,” Danae added, feeling daring. She liked this new feeling of going out and meeting people.

  Tess bent her head to her scone again, undone by Danae’s kindness. She wouldn’t cry, not here. She wouldn’t cry because her business was going to collapse, her husband had found a new love, and the first man she’d ever loved had been back in town the last month and hadn’t even come to see her, not once.

  Danae was lovely, but she had neither husband nor children to cause her anxiety. She lived happily on her own most of the time; how could she understand Tess’s pain?

  Mara found that she adored December in Avalon, even though the ground was covered with a hard frost and Freddie the builder was forever muttering about how it was going to be a very long time before work on Avalon House could get under way, what with the frost and the rain and the prospect of snow. She loved it. There was a clearness to the air beside the sea, and when you were standing close to the house, with the protective circle of Avalon’s woods all around, you could see down to the curving bay with the golden sands and the white-capped water where waves rocked under the stormy wind.

  Her home in Galway had been right beside the sea—the Atlantic, that vast force of nature—and yet she’d never felt as close to it as she felt now. In Galway, she’d lived in an apartment block, somehow removed from nature. Here, she was in the middle of it.

  Her car was not made for negotiating the slippery drive up to Avalon House during the cold snap, so she’d taken to leaving it at Danae’s house and clomping her way up the avenue in her biker boots to meet architects and designers.

  It was fun working for Cashel—manic, but fun. He demanded the very best and could afford to pay top dollar, which meant he generally got the best. Of course, these people, brilliant in their own fields, had very firm views. Since day one Lorcan the architect and Freddie the builder had been at war over the plans. The designer and his team were keeping out of it and, wisely, so was Mara.

  “Best to let them fight it out among themselves,” she told Danae at night, snug in the beautiful cottage at the end of Willow Street. “He chose all men. Isn’t that interesting? Apart from Judy, the gardener, I’m the only woman on the team.”

  “He chose you because you were good,” said Danae. “That’s the simple answer.”

  “Yes, well, good and sensible,” said Mara, “and keeping out of any rows. They can slug it out between them until Cashel steps in and decides one way or the other—not me. I’m not going to be living there, after all. Although I do wish I was,” she added wistfully.

  The house would be beautiful when it was finished. It was beautiful now, even in its raw, unlived-in, unloved state.

  “Imagine what it must have been like to live there hundreds of years ago,” she said, thinking out loud. “It must have been like something from Jane Austen, a
ll beautiful tea gowns and balls and . . .”

  “Yes,” Danae finished for her, “and tenants living outside on nothing but potatoes.”

  “Don’t ruin my fantasy world,” said Mara. “Okay, we don’t have to go that far back then. I must ask Tess.”

  Next day, good as her word, she dropped into Something Old and asked.

  For a moment, Tess said nothing, simply exhaled slowly. “I lived there a long time ago,” she said finally. “And I . . . I’d prefer not to talk about it. I’m sorry.”

  Anyone else might have left it at that, but not Mara. Fresh from her success with making her aunt open up the pain of the past, Mara decided to press on. She refused to let Tess hide behind the facade of not wanting to talk about it. Bottling things up never helped, so she wheedled away, asking for more and more information until finally Tess gave up.

  “All right, I’ll tell you. What do you want to know?” she said.

  “Well, first you could be so helpful to me, from the point of view of remembering what it was like in the old days. We don’t have many pictures to go on—apart from a couple of the inside that Lorcan has tracked down—and it would be wonderful to have somebody working with us who knows what the house was really like when it was truly loved and lived in. It would really help Cashel, actually.”

  Tess’s laugh was a little harsh. “Mara, one piece of advice: if I give you any information at all, you are not to tell anyone where it came from. Understand?”

  “Yes, Girl Guide’s honor,” said Mara.

  “Were you a Girl Guide?” Tess asked suspiciously.

  “No,” said Mara, “but I can make a fire by rubbing two Boy Scouts together.”

  Tess had to laugh. “No, seriously,” she said, “you can’t tell anybody, particularly Cashel. He and I don’t get on. He would be very upset if he knew you were asking me for advice about the house. Is that understood?”

  “Loud and clear,” said Mara. “That’s interesting,” she added, giving Tess an arch look.

  “Oh, Mara, you’re incorrigible!” Tess said.