Shit! Panic. Coleman had been intending to break it to Lara that the business wasn’t strictly set up like he had promised. She was making a name for herself, that was the main thing. Lara wasn’t a bread head. She just wanted to make dresses. The arrangement he set out with Chevron giving backing for a high profile premises on the Kings Road to be opened, more or less overnight, helped him do that quickly. At some point down the road, Coleman had planned for himself and Lara to buy him out. He had been going to fill her in, just the time had not been right. He thought their afternoon of lovemaking was signalling a new, intimate beginning that would have enabled him to tell her. But now that was gone. This was not the time for Lara to find out she was on the payroll of Bobby Chevron.
Bobby found his voice again.
‘Maureen needs some new dresses. To be honest, I’m getting a bit bored over here. I quite like the idea of getting stuck into a new venture. I always fancied myself as a bit of a fashion impresario. What do you think, Coleman? Have I got what it takes to be one of these nancy-boy designers? Poncing about in a blouse? Ha, ha.’
Did his laugh sound brittle and forced or was he being serious? Without seeing him, it was impossible to tell. It was impossible to know what to say for the best. All Coleman knew was he had to put him off. And quickly. Chevron was an impulsive sod. He could be on a plane from Spain by the end of the week. Earlier, if there was one.
‘Probably not such a good idea, Bobby. Having a few teething problems. Late stock, a few dodgy designs and that. I’d rather wait until everything is just right before giving you the grand tour.’
It didn’t sound convincing, even to him. But, after another of his pauses, Chevron took a sharp breath and said, ‘Yeah. You’re probably right, Coleman. I’ll leave you to it. I’ll tell Maureen she’ll just have to hold out for her new gear.’
Coleman had an idea.
‘Tell you what. Why don’t I get Lara to send Maureen over a package? A few bits and pieces. Got to keep the ladies happy.’
There was a break into which he heard Chevron’s heavy breathing. Lighting a cigar, probably.
‘Now that,’ Chevron said, ‘is an excellent idea, my son.’ Then his mouth stuffed with the stogie he added, ‘Nothing too fancy mind. Don’t want to keep the good stuff from the customers.’
‘Nonsense,’ Coleman said, feeling relieved, ‘only the best for Mrs Chevron.’
‘Coleman,’ Bobby said, ‘a pleasure as always.’ Before hanging up he added, ‘You do know you is like a son to me?’
‘Thanks,’ said Coleman. He never knew what to say when Bobby said that. He certainly didn’t feel like his son. Or even his brother. It felt like he was just saying it to keep him on side. Keep him in check.
In any case, the call had ended well, and he was relieved about that.
When he put the phone down, he also made a decision.
I love you. That could not happen again. Ever.
However this panned out, Lara, the business, Chevron – love had to be taken off the agenda.
There was a reason he had never let himself fall in love before, and Coleman had allowed himself to forget what that was.
Control. The business was sliding, Noreen was good but she could not be expected to run Chevrons on her own. She had just employed that lowlife Devers, and he had let it happen by taking his eye off the ball.
Lara didn’t love him back. That’s what happened when you took the risk of loving people and it was too big a risk for Coleman. If you were stupid enough to fall in love, as he had been, the least you could do was be a man about it, and not go around snivelling ‘I love you’. He cringed just thinking about it. Never again. Ever.
Coleman was going to toughen up.
If Lara wanted him, she could come and get him. He was happy to oblige, but otherwise, he wasn’t going to make a fool of himself. A man had limits, and Coleman had reached his.
Her silence had spoken for itself. Now he was going to do the same thing. He had lived without love for thirty-four years of his life. He wasn’t going to go whining about it now.
He put on his jacket and went out to the club where he found Noreen pushing the last of the customers out the door. He looked around and checked that Handsome was gone. Arthur had taken a rare night off, otherwise the psycho would never have got one foot inside the door. Coleman made a mental note to tell Arthur not to kick him out straight away, but to put up with him for a while, until Noreen was ready to get rid of him, which she would be soon enough, he felt sure.
‘You alright locking up on your own Noreen?’ he said, double checking.
‘Not a bother,’ she said. ‘Go on, I’m grand here.’ She ushered him out and locked the door behind him.
Then Noreen headed out to the back stock room where Handsome was changing a barrel.
She stood at the door and watched him roll the heavy, wooden casket across the stone floor. He had rolled up his sleeves and she could see the muscles on his arms hardening.
She leaned against the wall and arranged her legs in a seductive V.
‘Need a hand with that?’
He turned and looked across at her. In that moment, there was something in his expression that Noreen didn’t like. Something unpleasant. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Disdain? Arrogance? Whatever it was, it killed the fantasy she had been harbouring of seducing her new charge in the stock room after hours.
‘If you was offering more than a hand I might take it.’
The niggle grew to a no. Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow. If he behaved himself.
‘Now, now, Handsome. You just change that barrel for me like a good lad while I go upstairs and settle the bar.’
Handsome took two long strides towards her and said something, almost under his breath. It sounded like, ‘You fucking tease…’ But that couldn’t be right. Before it had time to register, however, Noreen felt her body being pushed to one side, and as Handsome looked behind her, a shocked expression slapped itself across his pretty face.
Before she turned, a big booming voice with a heavy Cork accent said, ‘Oi! Take one more step towards my woman, you filthy hound, and I’ll rip your head clean off your shoulders!’
30
‘You filthy hound?’
‘I know,’ John said. ‘It was the first thing that came into my head,’ he added, stuffing another one of Annie’s vol-au-vents into his mouth. ‘I just saw him coming towards you and I snapped.’
‘Well, I think you overreacted a bit.’
‘That’s what you say but what would have happened if you hadn’t left that service door open and I hadn’t arrived at that moment?’
John finished chewing and swiped a few crumbs off his bare chest before delicately wiping his mouth on the corner of the sheet. ‘No – don’t answer that question.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I won’t be leaving it open again. The place could have been robbed! Anyway – what the hell are you doing here?’
They had just made love. Twice. Once in the store room after Noreen calmed down a terrified Handsome and again, just now, in the flat, after she introduced him to Lara and Annie. Annie offered John and Noreen her bed after a short and rather embarrassing exchange in which Annie acknowledged that John might wish to sleep on the sofa for propriety’s sake and John looked in danger of conceding.
‘For goodness sake, Annie.’ Noreen had snapped. ‘We haven’t seen each other in nearly six weeks. We want to have SEX!’
Lara would normally have laughed delightedly at Noreen’s forwardness, but there was still a distance between them. She excused herself to go to her studio where she had been working through the night lately. Noreen tried to assume that it wasn’t her fault and had something to do with Matthew. She couldn’t do anything else as Lara had stopped confiding in her altogether. Noreen was feeling the strain between them terribly. She used work to distract herself and today she thought she might have found another distraction in her new barman. While John turning up to check on her, then muscling in on
her new life was very annoying, Noreen had to admit it was a huge relief to see him.
So had the orgasm been. It felt like ages since she had enjoyed herself as much. Which was also annoying.
‘I’m on holiday,’ he said.
She looked at him sideways.
‘I came over for you. I missed you.’
‘I know what you missed,’ she said.
‘That too,’ he said, grinning.
Noreen felt a flood of love for him. But she couldn’t give into it. This was her great adventure and this Cork lutherum* following her across was not part of the plan. Even though, in her heart, she knew she was glad to see him. Even though seeing him had chased away the loneliness and made her feel complete again.
Noreen rolled over in the bed and reached across John’s naked stomach for the last mushroom and cream cheese vol-au-vent. Annie had sent them into bed with a tray of them. It was an eccentric offering for a lovemaking couple although, Noreen had to admit, it had been equally eccentric of them to accept. Much as she mistrusted the source, Noreen could never refuse Annie’s offer of food.
‘She’s a great cook, your flatmate.’
‘Yeah. She works in the cafe across the road firing big breakfasts into big hairy lads, like you.’
‘I like her already.’
‘Yes, well I don’t. She’s weird.’
‘How so?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t trust her. She’s hiding something.’
‘What’s she hiding?’
‘I don’t know. Just something. Like her family. She’s cagey – you know? Doesn’t like talking about her past.’
‘Maybe she’s just a private person.’
Noreen waved that off as if the notion was ridiculous.
‘I’m pretty sure she’s lying about where she’s from.’
‘God, Noreen, can you not mind your own business… what are you doing?’
Noreen was down on her hands and knees rummaging under the bed.
‘She keeps a locked case down here. Who hides a locked case under their bed?’
‘Jesus, Noreen, get up out of there at once! You can’t go opening other people’s private—’
The brown leather case was already up on the bed and Noreen was securing the bedroom door with a chair under the handle.
‘You’re right. I can’t open it. I’ve tried. You do it.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Holy Saint Joseph. No, Noreen! Now, you’ve gone too far!’
Noreen was standing looking at him.
‘I know you can open it, John. You told me you can open any lock.’
The moral argument was already over. There was no sense in even trying once Noreen had made her mind up. But he had to try.
‘It’s a padlock. There’s no way.’
Noreen handed him a hair grip.
‘You told me Curly Boland taught you how to open any lock that time when you had him in custody.’
Then she pouted at him.
‘Please? Are you not just a tiny bit curious?’
He took the grip off her. ‘No, I’m not.’ He began to fiddle with the lock adding, ‘I can’t believe you’re making me do this.’ He easily removed the padlock and said, ‘This is illegal, Noreen. You know that?’ and clicked open the case.
Noreen threw open the lid and flung her hands in.
‘Oh. My. God. Look at this.’
Noreen was pulling out jewellery in clumps and sifting through them: pearls, gold bangles and a choker with tiny diamonds. As she put an emerald ring on her finger John reached over, snatched it off her and started returning the stuff as quickly as she was taking it out again.
‘Noreen, this is wrong.’
‘She’s a robber, John. A jewel thief!’
‘This is a suitcase in a person’s private room, Noreen. You have no evidence of that whatsoever. Lots of people keep their valuables locked up; if anyone’s committing a crime here it’s us.’
‘Nonsense. What woman keeps her jewellery locked up? Anyway, she’s not a jewellery person – so what is she doing with it? Aha,’ she said, taking out a diary and opening it.
‘Put that down, Noreen. Are you really considering reading another person’s private diary?’
‘Of course not,’ she said, flicking through it. John snatched it from her and put it back in the case, although not before Noreen had made a mental note of the name in the front, Hanna Black, Killa, County Sligo, Ireland. A different name. Her diary or somebody else’s. She recognised Annie’s writing.
‘She’s changed her name. Well if that’s not suspicious, I don’t know what is.’
‘Changing your name is not a crime,’ John answered as he frantically tried to arrange the jewellery and diary back in place.
‘What’s this?’ Noreen said, reaching across his work to grab a piece of old fabric. As she pulled it towards her it unfurled into a filthy apron. Dried flakes of large dark crumbs fell onto the bed.
‘Argh!’ she cried out. Then threw the apron down.
‘Shhhh,’ John said, his voice rising, ‘they’ll hear you!’
‘Oh my God, John,’ she said, looking at him, stricken, ‘it’s blood,’ she whispered. ‘We have to go to the police.’
John grabbed Noreen by the shoulder then looked her straight in the eye and said in a low, firm whisper, ‘Listen to me. I am not going to the police, Noreen.’ She opened her mouth. ‘And neither are you.’
‘But—’
‘No buts, Noreen. There’s probably some perfectly reasonable explanation for this.’
‘What is it then?’
‘She could have been butchering a pig or something.’
‘Usually you wash a bloodstained apron – not hide it.’
‘The point is we’re now breaking the law, right now this minute, in opening her private property. Whatever is in this suitcase cannot be used as evidence of crime. Even if there was a crime. Which there probably wasn’t.’
‘So I could be sharing a flat with a murderess and you don’t even care?’
If that slip of a girl Annie decided to come at his hefty Noreen with a knife, John thought, she would want to be very fast indeed, and even then, he didn’t fancy her chances.
‘I would worry a lot more about that cad you work with coming at you.’
‘I bet you would,’ Noreen said. ‘Jealous?’
‘Yes!’ John said. Then, more quietly, ‘Of course I am.’
Noreen felt a terrible pang of regret at having hurt him. Then remembered he wasn’t supposed to be here.
She let John lock up the case and put it back under the bed. She had what she needed anyway. A name. Hanna Black.
When he was done and the truce set, John propped himself up on the pillows and turned himself into a sofa for Noreen. She leaned back onto his chest, lit a cigarette and looked out of the long Georgian window at the Kings Road. It felt so good, to be just lying there with John, in London. But then, she remembered, she could be doing this at home. Lying there, on his chest, in between lovemaking bouts, eating sandwiches, smoking fags and talking aul’ rubbish. This intimacy and affection was so nice. It was what it would lead to she didn’t want. The whole ‘forever’ thing. John wasn’t here on holiday. He was here to try to drag her home to Carney. Shove her in a pinny, get her up the duff and trap her there for the rest of her life. Still, she would enjoy this while it lasted.
After a few moments John broke the silence.
‘Noreen, can I ask you a question?’
His voice was soft and Noreen felt a shiver of dread.
‘Are we still engaged?’
There were so many things that Noreen wanted to say in that moment. ‘Marriage is so bourgeois.’ ‘Why can’t people just live together?’ ‘This is the sixties. Chill out, man. Live a little.’ She wanted John to stay. She wanted to make love with him. She missed him. She knew, too, that even though she was playing the big strong girl in London, she needed him. More than all of that, she loved him. But did she want to marry him? N
oreen had been hedging her bets, distracting her family, her fiancé, but also, herself to try to hold off the inevitable. In that moment, being asked directly, Noreen knew that she owed it to John to give him an honest answer.
‘No.’
Even though she said it in an apologetic whisper, the tiny word filled the room, as if she had shouted it out in a loud, angry stab.
John paused. She felt his hurt move across his chest in a sharp breath.
There were things she could have said to try to explain herself. Can’t we just go along as we are for a while? Just because I don’t want to marry you that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. But she knew they were pointless. John was a devout Catholic and a deeply conventional man. He needed to get married. He wanted to get on with his life and have a wife by his side, producing children for him. Noreen knew she had already forced him to break with his traditional values by being with a woman who worked, luring him into having sex before marriage and now, running off to London to spread her wings. There is only so much a man could be expected to tolerate. John was a good man who deserved to settle down with a nice girl. Noreen didn’t want to be nice any more. Or good. She wanted to be free. She wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. But she knew what it didn’t mean. And that was getting married.
‘That’s it then,’ he eventually said. ‘It’s over?’
Noreen felt the awkwardness of their naked skin pressed together and wished she could take the words back. Or rather, make them not true. But she couldn’t.
It doesn’t have to be. I don’t want it to be.
But what was the point? She’d only be dragging things on longer. Leading him on. Ruining his chances of meeting somebody else. Living happily ever after with a sensible girl. God knows, they’d be lining up for him. The thought of that sent a little shard of rage through Noreen. Kitty Molloy would be first on his doorstep. With a stupid bow in her hair and a plate of scones. Maureen Munnelly? She’d be delighted to hear he was back on the market – so would her mother. Then, Oh God, there was Sheila Nolan. He’d taken Sheila to a dance in Fermoy the week before they got together. She was a proper dolly bird now, since she had the hair dyed. John would probably call on her straight from the boat.
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