Matthew and Annie talked about everything and nothing. Mixed grills, the smell of rain after a sunny spell, and how long it took to walk from Sloane Square to World’s End. She asked if he had ever eaten pasta and he said, ‘No.’ Then he asked her if she had been to the National Gallery and she said she hadn’t.
‘I could take you there,’ he said. When she blushed and looked away in response he added, ‘If you would like that.’
She turned her head towards him again and smiled and took his breath away. ‘I would like that very much,’ she said.
Every vein in his body, from his heart out, was fizzing. He felt so full of energy, he feared he might have to get up off the chair and jump with joy.
Was this God?
Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. He knew the answer with every inch of himself. He joined the priesthood in search of his soul and found it in the paintings he studied. But he had never experienced that Godliness, that spirit, in himself. And yet, here in this girl’s face and the warm, teasing way she was looking at him, he felt something lift from deep within him. It seemed as if God had gifted his soul to this girl and she was returning it to him in her smile. Annie was the most beautiful piece of art he had ever seen. More beautiful than any painting because she was real. She was here. She was God’s art, the reason men painted. It was not simply her physical beauty, the pale skin and the curve of her neck, Annie was beautiful in every possible sense of the word. She was sweet and innocent, a rare example of untouched, untouchable perfection. Her warm, gentle manner lit a fire in him and made him feel alive. It seemed impossible to Matthew that this sublime creature, who seemed carved from another, better, age – an age before miniskirts and free sex and fashion – could be sitting here, in the flesh, in an ordinary cafe drinking coffee with him.
No. This was not God. Matthew was in love.
The exchange had not been at all what Annie was expecting. In some part of her, she had sat down to give a confession. She thought that, perhaps, she might be able to give an account of herself to this young man of the cloth. Seek some solace from simply being in the company of a good person. She could not give a full confession of what she had done. At least, not here in a cafe. Although it was something that she had considered and perhaps this young priest would be the person she could tell all to. Perhaps God had sent him in here to help cleanse her soul. But, instead of all that, Annie found herself laughing and flirting with him. She was unable to help herself. It was as if some strange force had taken her over. The groovy chick that had invented herself in front of the camera, That Girl, had tapped her on the shoulder, interrupted her melancholic thoughts and taken over the conversation. Annie would never have considered herself capable of deliberately trying to capture the heart of a priest. Such wickedness! Yet, she could tell he was attracted to her and the thought of that excited her. Even though, or perhaps because, she knew it could never go any further. It was almost as if in knowing that this young man could never be available to her, she was willing him to love her.
‘I could take you there tomorrow,’ he said. Then in a blaze of courage added, ‘We could have tea afterwards. I know a good cafe around the corner.’
She beamed and he felt as if a thousand angels were singing, then her face dropped.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’
The tea had been too much. He should never have suggested it.
‘No,’ she said, reading his mind, ‘I mean, I would really love to but I’ve made a prior arrangement.’
‘No that’s fine, really.’
‘I’m meeting a man.’
That sounded bad.
‘I’m modelling for him.’
Worse again.
An irrational surge of panic flooded through Matthew. Another man was painting her! Of course he was. A creature like this could not go unnoticed by the art world. Who was he? Some lecherous cad no doubt.
‘It’s for a magazine. Vogue. The photographer is nice and I promised my flatmate I would do it for her boutique. I don’t want to let them down.’
The realisation that this girl had a life beyond here, beyond this moment, brought Mathew back down to earth with a bang. How had he ever thought she might be interested in him? He didn’t even look like a real man – he was just a wimp in a dress.
‘Why don’t you come along?’ she said.
‘No really, I don’t think it would be…’
What was he doing? Say yes! Say yes!
‘…appropriate.’ Oh my Good God and Holy Saint Joseph, Matthew thought, did I just actually say that? The ritualistic indoctrination of his training was taking over. Human passion was no match for the judgemental monsignor that was meticulously inserted into the psyche of every Catholic seminarian. Matthew’s eyes tried to plead with her. Ask me again! Ask me again!
Annie was crestfallen. Imagine thinking a priest, a good, kind man like that would be interested in her. He could probably see what she was. And yet, he looked different and there was such warmth in his eyes. So, Annie took a chance. There was, after all, nothing to lose.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you change your mind we’ll be meeting at the Peter Pan statue at two o’clock.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
As he stood up to leave, she stayed seated. Her smile was small and timid. Matthew felt mortified, and he was not even sure why. All he knew was that he had blown it. Embarrassed the most glorious woman in the world. And himself.
‘It was nice meeting you,’ he said and held out his hand.
She took it, and when he felt the gentle touch of her warm hand in his, he thought he might cry.
‘You too,’ she said. She tried to smile, like before, but it wasn’t the same. That girl from the photo shoot had forsaken her. She was not appropriate.
All the way back to the seminary, Matthew cursed himself. And God. And, tripping twice in his rush to get back for evening prayers, his wretched frock. He was stuck now. There was no two ways about it. He had fallen in love and blown it in one afternoon. He was a worthless wimp of a man, good for nothing, only saying mass. He didn’t deserve to be with a woman. And even in thinking that – he knew the church had him now. The way the ‘appropriate’ had tripped off his tongue like that. He had said it – nobody else. He was that mimsy, judgemental, pinky-raising priest old women invited around to tea. If he wasn’t, he would have scooped that girl, Annie, up in his arms, skirts and all. But he hadn’t. And he never would.
❊
Arriving back at the seminary, Matthew immediately got the smell of lunch and was furious to note that, having not eaten his mixed grill, he was starving and would get nothing again until after evening prayer. He wished he was more resourceful like some of his fellow seminarians in Dublin who hid food in their rooms.
The pastor suddenly appeared at the door of the drawing room.
‘There is someone here to see you,’ he said, his face bent with distaste. Irish priests expressed moral disapproval more vocally, sometimes with a curse, often with a stick. The English clergy expressed it with a dry coldness that Matthew found infinitely more disturbing.
‘She has been waiting for quite some time.’
She? For a split second, Matthew thought it was Annie. Without thinking, he marched into the room.
Standing by the window, looking out, was an elegant woman whose raised elbows indicated she was holding a china cup and saucer in her hands. She turned when she heard him come in.
It was Lara.
28
Mrs Clarke left the pile of recent English newspapers on the good doctor’s desk.
He smiled across at her. At least she thought he was smiling. It was hard to tell since that terrible incident. A burglar brutally attacked him in his own home, one lunchtime, a few months ago now. They left him for dead, but his nurse came looking for him and called an ambulance. The hospital doctors saved his life, but his once handsome face had not survived the attack. The left side was completely paralysed with one eye lo
st and permanently sewn shut. He wore a patch over it now and held a handkerchief in his hand to wipe the drool from the side of his mouth in which he had lost all feeling. Such a tragic shame. Mrs Clarke and a few of the other church ladies had stepped in to make sure Dr Black was looked after. Up in that big house, a man on his own, there was every danger his house would go to rack and ruin. After all, poor Dr Black was widowed and that ungrateful strap of a stepdaughter had run off to America and not bothered to come back to nurse the unfortunate man. After all he had done for her.
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘you are so very kind to think of me.’
The interfering old biddy owned the local newsagents and always brought the papers in for him, a day late, when she came in with her myriad of complaints du jour.
He only ever read The Irish Times, but it was handy to leave them there in the surgery for what patients he had left to pick over.
‘And I have something for you,’ he said, handing over her prescription. He reached across and she lingered, for a delicious moment, before pulling it from between his perfect, manicured fingers.
Always so charming. Such a gentleman. Even with half a face.
‘How is your lovely daughter?’ he asked. ‘Darina?’
‘Davina,’ she corrected.
‘Of course,’ he apologised. ‘How old is she now? She must be twelve? Thirteen?’
‘Fourteen. Oh, she’s quite well thank you, Dr Black.’
‘Quite the young lady by now, I’m sure. Is she still playing the piano?’
‘She is – although she’s getting very cheeky.’
He smiled, in that pitiful crooked way.
‘Oh, I know all about cheeky daughters…’
His one good eye, as blue as ever it was, glittered. He reached up with his handkerchief. Was he weeping with sorrow, or simply leaking? The poor man. Missing his daughter and no sight or sign of her since the robbery. It was heartbreaking.
‘I’ll bring her with me the next time I drop out to the house,’ she said. ‘She can play piano for you again.’
‘I would like that very much,’ he said.
The truth was that pretty, young Davina had objected the last time, saying she found the doctor creepy. Bridget had given her such a whack around the head.
‘The poor man can’t help being deformed. He’s had a terrible life and he misses his daughter. It’s not much to give him an afternoon of your time. It’s your Christian duty.’
Davina had made a face. She’d send Davina up there on her own the next time – that’s what she’d do!
When she had gone, Dorian checked his book. He had an hour until his next appointment. He had let his nurse go since the ‘burglary’. The surgery wasn’t busy enough to justify employing staff any more, but, truth be told, Dorian wanted to be rid of as many chattering women as he could in his everyday life. Dorian had enough money to never need to work again. He had woken in hospital with such terrible pain, and not just physical. The trauma of finding his face missing paled against the heartache of realising what Hanna had done to him. The shock of her betrayal. The brutality of her actions against him. He was mystified. How could she have done this to him? Had he not loved her? Given her everything she wanted? In the weeks that followed, Dorian wanted nothing more than to be left alone. He could have locked the doors of his large house and stayed within its walls forever. But, after a few weeks, when his body began to recover, Dorian realised that he was still a man and he had needs. Dorian’s need for love could only be fulfilled by the very young, and he understood this was unconventional, and frowned upon by the ignorant (which was most people). So, he had to exercise caution in getting his needs met. With the added complication of his ghoulish visage, he had also to be patient. Although he secured the pity of their mothers, daughters were not so easy to reach when you looked like the bogeyman under the bed. It would take time, but he would get there. He had to. He had to love again.
Dorian went back to work because he needed to be connected with the local community. He became more active as chairman of the board for the local convent where, ironically, his disfigured face earned him even more trust among the already ludicrously trusting nuns. But, he had yet to find himself another Hanna. On good days, he mourned her by thinking about what might have been. Dorian hoped he might be able to stay loving Hanna beyond her girlhood. He hoped that she might have been the woman who would satisfy him and make him like other men. Being with Hanna into her adulthood might have sated his desire for young flesh by tricking his mind into believing that she was forever young. She was so beautiful, it was hard to imagine her never being so. On bad days, he hated her for what she had done. Hurting him, destroying his face, leaving him for dead, but, mostly, leaving him to his own desires again. Forcing him into this situation of desiring what he could not have. Of being loveless and alone.
The injustice of her escape was infuriating. She was out there, somewhere, but Dorian could not get the police to help him find her because the world did not understand men like him. If she had been an old woman, like her mother, he could have done what he liked with her and it would have been nobody’s business but his own. If she had been a grown woman she would never have got away with what she had done. Instead of going along with the clumsy lie she left behind for him (the fake letter, the bungled burglary), he would have told the police the truth, that his young ‘wife’ was greedy and insubordinate, and had run away because she didn’t want to toe the line. The police would have helped him hunt her down then brought her home to justice.
Hanna had committed this crime against him and yet she would never be punished because of the small matter of her age.
He was angry with himself, too, for not seeing it coming. Hanna was an evil, conniving bitch. He should have been harder on her. She had deliberately and systematically stolen his heart, his money, his mother’s jewellery and the good looks that she knew he needed so badly to replace her. When he thought like that Dorian became so enraged that all he could do was replay the punishments of the past that he had given her, and end them with her slow, torturous death.
It was close enough to lunchtime to justify going home for a sandwich. Dorian had learned to fend for himself, somewhat, although his housekeeper had grudgingly come back, out of pity more than need. There was some cured beef, which he ordered from a delicatessen in Galway and a loaf of brown bread, which one of the church ladies had left for him in one of their insufferable charity baskets he was obliged to accept. How he hated those women, but Dorian had to be smart and play the long game. He had to earn the affection of the dry spinsters and their flabby, fecund sisters if he was to, eventually, enjoy the fresh beauty of their offspring.
As he was leaving the surgery he grabbed a Daily Mail from the top of Mrs Clarke’s pile and it fell to the floor, opening on a page that caught his eye. Leaning down he saw the headline: Who’s That Girl? He collapsed onto his knees beside it. Caked in makeup, wearing a blonde wide, legs akimbo in a short dress, Dorian saw immediately that it was Hanna.
She was in London. The little bitch had been in London, all this time.
Dorian sat for a moment, hardly able to believe she had dropped into his lap like this. Hanna was a model. Showing herself off to the world. He was the only one who used to enjoy her, now she belonged to everybody. The slut. Did she not think he would find her? Did she not know he read the English papers? Perhaps she was sending him a message. Who’s that girl? Inviting him to come and get her. Teasing him. Or – perhaps she thought he was dead.
Either way, Dorian wasted no time.
He carefully tore the cutting out of the paper, folded the edges of it neatly and placed it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
The following day he took a flight from Dublin to London where he booked himself into Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair.
After dropping his bags he took a taxi to the Daily Mail offices on Fleet Street where he asked to see Penelope Podmore, the woman who had written the ridiculous fashion arti
cle accompanying Hanna’s photographs.
He was not taken into a private office but left standing at the reception desk while someone went to get her. She was a lanky woman and her eyes opened wide in barely disguised alarm when she looked at his face, making her appear rather like an angry ostrich and inspiring Dorian to spitting-point hatred.
‘I’m her father,’ he said, trying to looking charming and pathetic at the same time. ‘Her mother and I are worried she’s been led astray so I have travelled over from Ireland to see her.’
Penelope looked at him, more coldly than most women looked on a poor cripple. She had considerable experience of men, and there was something in this one’s eyes that told her he was lying.
‘I have no idea who the girl is,’ she said. When he didn’t move she reasoned that it wasn’t her job to protect models. Alex could play the hero if he wanted. ‘You could try the photographer,’ she said and gave him Alex’s address.
Dorian took another taxi to an utterly inferior end of town called Fulham, where he knocked on the door of an ordinary house, unearthing a very seedy looking individual who, he surmised from appearance and name, was Jewish. Was Hanna sleeping with him? Probably.
‘I am so sorry to trouble you, but I am looking for my daughter.’
Dorian hunched his shoulders, apologetically, trying to make himself look as affable as he could. A harmless cripple in need of help. Suspecting she may have changed her name, Dorian handed the cutting straight to the photographer.
‘Where did you get my address?’ he asked.
‘A nice journalist, Ms Podmore, at the Daily Mail was kind enough to pass on your information. She said you might be able to help me where she couldn’t. I’m just trying to find my daughter.’
Dorian tried to keep his voice steady and his eyes soft, but he was fuming. Who the hell did these English bastards think they were? He was an educated man. A doctor. And yet they wouldn’t just give him what he wanted.
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