That Girl

  Coleman was in his office and there was no reason that Lara could not give them to him herself. However, Lara and Coleman had not spoken, at least not that Noreen had observed, since that afternoon when she had seen her come away from what she assumed was a passionate encounter.

  Noreen was finding the coldness between her and Lara increasingly painful. The resentment she held towards Lara for keeping her Coleman affair a secret from her had gone. Especially as it seemed that Coleman had been using Lara, after all, in which case, Lara had been right to keep quiet about their encounter. However, Noreen could not seem to find a way of breaking the ice.

  ‘No problem,’ she said, her eyes down.

  ‘Thank you,’ Lara said in a clipped singsong tone, before heading straight back up the stairs.

  As she watched her friend leave Noreen felt impossibly sad. It wasn’t just Lara. It was a lack of contact. No how are things? What are we having for dinner? Any news chitchat. The only people she had to talk to now were the punters and Arthur. Handsome had turned out to be a useless barman and a worse conversationalist. He was pretty but boring as all hell. Plus, Arthur’s dark warnings had taken any sheen off her fancying him whatsoever.

  She craved John. He was the one person she could tell everything to. Had she been wrong to let him go so easily? It seemed that everything had gone wrong.

  For the first time in her life, Noreen suspected that the empty feeling she had was loneliness. So she decided to go and visit her brother Matthew.

  She called the seminary and they informed her that he was at the National Gallery.

  As her bus trundled along the Embankment, Noreen looked out the window and realised that she felt better already. She wondered how she had managed to be in London for this many weeks and never been into central London before. The only places she had been since arriving here were Chevrons, the flat and Fred’s cafe. Yet, now that she was here, looking out on the River Thames, seeing Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Noreen did not have any great sense of adventure or excitement about being near the famous places she had seen in films and read about in books since she was a little girl. For Noreen, the kick she got out of life was from the people around her. What they were doing, who they were having sex with, who they wished they were having sex with.

  Perhaps her motives in seeing Matthew were not entirely familial loneliness after all. Noreen knew that Lara had been to see him. After all, she had given her his address. She was not in a position to ask Lara how the visit with her brother had gone but she was longing to know how they had got on.

  She managed to locate Matthew after traipsing around room after room, until she finally found somebody who unearthed him from the bowels of this huge, ancient place. This one building was the size of the whole of Carney. It was massive. Rather than be impressed or amazed, she felt rather uncomfortable in its grand, imposing environs.

  ‘Isn’t this the most amazing place?’ was, annoyingly, the first thing he said to her. ‘Have you been to see Caravaggio?’

  As much as she hated being in this huge, cold place filled with ancient old stuff, Matthew loved it.

  ‘Never mind that,’ she snapped. ‘Did Lara come to see you?’

  Matthew squirmed.

  ‘Yes she did. Last week.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And what did she say? What did you say? And don’t skimp. I want to know every minute detail.’

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  ‘She told you to mind your own business?’

  ‘No. I’m telling you to mind your own business.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m your sister. You are my business.’

  ‘No I’m not. I’m my own man, Noreen, and it’s time you realised that.’

  ‘That’s even more ridiculous. You joined the church so you wouldn’t have to be your own man and make your own life – and now they own you.’

  Noreen knew it was a bit harsh but she had to put a halt to his gallop. Except, Matthew threw his head back, lifting himself up a few inches above her and said, ‘Actually, I’m leaving the church.’

  She was not expecting that.

  ‘Oh really? And where are you going?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’ve fallen in love and plan to leave as soon as I’ve finished this restoration course.’

  Noreen laughed. The soft eejit. He must have read something into Lara’s visit. It wouldn’t be the first time her stupid brother had picked up the wrong end of the stick.

  ‘Look,’ she said, trying to sound kind. ‘Whatever Lara might have said to you, Matthew, take it from me, there’s no way that she’s intending to take you back.’

  ‘It’s not Lara,’ he said, a hint of sheepishness creeping into his voice. ‘It’s somebody else.’

  Noreen reeled. He had met somebody else. How? When?

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You don’t know her.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  He opened his mouth to say Annie’s name then looked at his bossy sister and realised she was right. He had to make his own life. Starting right here, right now, by holding his ground and telling his interfering sister to back the hell off!

  ‘Does Da know?’

  ‘I said, mind your own—’

  ‘Did you write to Ma? She won’t be happy.’

  ‘Noreen.’

  ‘If you tell me who this girl is then maybe—’

  ‘NOREEN! Will you please mind your own bloody business!’

  Cursing. From a priest. Well, nearly a priest. Noreen got up on her high horse.

  ‘Fine!’ she said. ‘Be that way but don’t come crying to me when…’ she couldn’t think what that ‘when’ was. Matthew was leaving the priesthood, as she always thought he should, to make his own life, as she has advised. She should be pleased. ‘Oh never mind!’ she finished then turned on her heels.

  As she flounced off across Trafalgar Square, Noreen wasn’t sure why she was so upset or crying as bitterly as she was. All she knew was that she was hurt by the fact that nobody – nobody – was confiding in her any more. She felt shut out of everybody’s life. Even her own brother was telling her to mind her own business. The problem was, Noreen realised, she still didn’t have any business of her own to mind. She had lost her lover, her friend and now, it seemed, a brother. The only business that was hers to mind was Chevrons. And, if she wanted to spend her life managing a pub, she could have stayed at home.

  As Matthew watched his sister bumble across the broad, magnificent square with her capable, mannish stride he could see from the hunch of her shoulders that she was hurt. He felt regretful about that. He also felt like a stupid fool for telling Lara, and now blabbermouth Noreen, that he was planning to leave the priesthood for a woman he had barely met. One who, in actual fact, he had blown off in that stupid, clumsy way of his.

  As Matthew watched his sister disappear behind the great lions onto the Mall, he checked his watch. What time had Annie said she would be at the Peter Pan statue?

  What was the point though? Yes, he told those two he was leaving the priesthood for Annie but, in reality, it was simply that meeting her had given him clarity that it was the right thing to do. He didn’t actually stand a chance of being with her. Especially after acting like such an idiot.

  Matthew looked down at his soutane. It felt not just uncomfortable any more, but wrong. His contemporaries all complained about the comfort of the soutane, but never about the symbolism of wearing a uniform that marked them out as God’s army. Most of the men he was in the seminary with were good men. Well-intentioned, honourable men. They struggled with their faith and their vow of celibacy, but they did so gracefully, manfully. Had Matthew ever been a proper man at all, he wondered? Certainly, he knew he was a fraud. And with that certain knowledge, his mind was made up. The pretence stopped today. Now. He would have to give up his studies and return to Ireland, in all likelihood alone, with his tail between his legs. There would be shame and recriminations, but the
lying had to stop.

  Matthew was wearing a priest’s black trousers and white shirt under his soutane. He reached up to his neck, unbuttoned and uncoupled his priest’s collar and stuffed it into the deep pockets of his skirt, pulling out his wallet from the same pocket. He had been to the bank the day before and counted through twenty-five pounds.

  Enough money, surely, to buy a pair of jeans and a colourful shirt, something that might send the right message to a girl. If he moved quickly, he might get up to Oxford Street, kit himself out and get to the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens to meet her by 2 p.m.

  33

  Alex picked Annie up from outside That Girl. Framed against the backdrop of the unapologetically modern shop front, she looked curiously old-fashioned, but stunningly beautiful. Lara had dressed her in a simple shift dress in cream silk. Lara, herself, had been held up. She was waiting for an order to come in from Wales and had called Alex to ask if he could collect Annie from That Girl and assured them both she would be there as soon as she could get away.

  Annie waved at Lara before climbing into Alex’s convertible. There was, Alex noticed, an air of confidence about her. They whizzed through London, the wind whipping Annie’s long hair in fluttering tendrils across her face. She could not help but smile. This, she thought, is what freedom feels like. Alex parked up on the pavement outside Lancaster Gate tube station and they walked through the gate and past the lawns and colourful, gaudy flower beds towards the statue. Alex was weighed down with his huge camera bags and Annie was swinging her arms by her side; they were an odd couple. Annie’s dress was light and the day was breezy, although warm. As they walked, Annie could feel the air lift the light down on her arms and legs. There was only one thing on her mind. Would he come? Was Lara right in what she had said yesterday? ‘… you’re so gorgeous, I’m sure he’ll be back.’ Annie had no idea but she did know that she wanted him to and, in that sweet longing, was happiness already. Dorian had taken so much from her but now, she knew, he had not taken everything. He had not taken her love. Not all of it. There was still a little trust left in her heart. And from a little, planted well and tended, more could grow. She wanted it to be with the priest, but if not him? At least in liking him she had hope there might be somebody, someday.

  These unspoken thoughts settled across her face in an almost unworldly glow. Alex put down his camera beside a large oak tree on a quiet piece of lawn, near, but not at, the statue itself and arranged Annie on a rug at its base. The afternoon sun dappled through the leaves and sent shards of soft light down on her. She looked like the most beautiful girl in the world. Alex’s stomach contracted with excitement. Not for the girl herself, but her beauty, and for what it would help him achieve.

  ❊

  Matthew could have worn his own trousers. They were black and perfectly functional. He could have simply removed his soutane, bundled it into a bin somewhere, and gone collarless. Nobody would have known. But, stupidly, recklessly, he now realised, in his despair at not wanting to be dressed even remotely like a priest, he had cut things too fine. You don’t mess about with time because, if you do, God might decide to have a laugh at your expense. Walking into a hipster jeans shop on Oxford Street wearing a soutane was not an option, Matthew decided. He would look less conspicuous in a large department store. So, he had gone into Dickins and Jones on Regent Street and run straight up to the menswear department.

  Faced with racks and racks of clothes, he realised he was in the wrong place and was about to leave when a middle-aged assistant slithered up to him and, bowing slightly said, ‘Can I help you, Father?’ Eugene, as his badge said, was so painfully deferential that Matthew found his obligation to be priestly outweighed his urgent need to get out of there. ‘Are we looking to go mufti, Father?’

  Matthew gave him an awkward smile, which Eugene took as ‘yes’ and set about measuring him from head to toe. He kept him for an age in the changing room when he came back with essentially the same outfit he was wearing – black corduroy trousers and a white shirt, albeit with an ordinary, attached collar and a ludicrously frilled cuff. Eugene then folded the soutane, wrapping it in tissue paper with great care, before finally placing it into a Dickins and Jones bag. This process took just short of an hour and cost Matthew all of the money he had on him, which put a taxi fare out of his reach and meant he had to run to Kensington Gardens.

  By the time he got there he was in a terrible state. The corduroy trousers had heated up to oven levels and the white shirt was sticking to his chest with sweat. When he finally managed to locate the Peter Pan statue, it was nearly 2.45 p.m. and there was no sign of Annie. She must have gone already. There was certainly no reason for her to have waited for him. If, indeed, she even remembered who he was, which he doubted. Still, he cursed Eugene for holding him up, but mostly himself for being such a weak-willed, pathetic creature, for joining the priesthood in the first place, and then imagining he could extricate himself when he couldn’t even assert his secular status with a shop assistant.

  This whole thing had been ridiculous; imagining a girl like that would be interested in him.

  ‘That’s lovely, sweetheart. Smashing. Now move that left arm over to the right a tad – no – too much, too much – that’s it, just there. Good girl. Lovely.’

  The inane banter was coming from behind him, on the other side of a tall, ornamental hedge. Curious, Matthew walked across and as he looked behind the hedge his eyes took in a tableau that took his breath away.

  Annie was sitting under a tree, surrounded by heather and bluebells. She was wearing a cream dress, like a bride. Her long auburn hair curled around her shoulder in unkempt flicks and her bare legs were arranged in a provocative curl to one side. When she saw him, her mouth opened in surprise, and she pressed her pinky finger to her pale, full lips. Matthew’s heart was in his mouth as he saw the recognition glitter across her eyes.

  ‘Oh yes. Loving that look – good girl – you’ve seen something over my shoulder.’

  The photographer didn’t know he was there and Matthew didn’t want to disturb the view. It was as close to a Raphael painting as he had ever seen. He had never in his whole life been as bereft of sketchpad and charcoal as he was now.

  Matthew gave a small wave, and Annie waved cautiously back.

  ‘Clever girl – you’re waving at somebody over my shoulder. Loving it. Good girl – keep your eyes off camera just like that! You’re on FIRE now. Keep that look in the eyes. Look at you, girl – you’re GLITTERING! Loving this look, lady – glowing from the inside out. Damn – hang on.’

  As he was quickly and expertly loading film into his camera Alex looked up at the sky, always checking cloud cover, then saw Matthew and jumped.

  ‘Christ! Who the hell are you?’ he snapped.

  For the first time in his life gentle Matthew had a manly desire to punch somebody. It wasn’t rational; he knew that. The photographer was a friend of Annie’s and was just doing his job. Still, it was a job that involved capturing the extraordinary beauty of this woman who Matthew, also irrationally, loved beyond all measure. Matthew felt, even if he didn’t entirely understand, that this should be his privilege, not that of this impolite little English squirt.

  He gathered himself and said, ‘I’m a friend of Annie’s.’

  ‘Well,’ Alex said, looking him up and down then quickly snapping shut his camera and raising it to his eye again, ‘whoever you are, just stand there and keep doing what you’re doing because she’s clearly loving it and it’s working a dream.’

  Alex went from being a class A rotter to an angel of mercy.

  Matthew beamed and waved at Annie. Annie beamed and waved back.

  Both were thinking the same thing. Matthew – the very moment this is over I am going to take that woman in my arms and kiss her and to hell with all propriety. Annie – the very moment Alex is finished, I am going to fling myself into his arms and kiss him – to hell if he’s a priest.

  Neither could barely wait.


  Although, in truth, Alex knew in those last few frames he already had everything he needed. Annie had given him as much beauty and mood as any editor could possibly want; he might as well keep it going as long as this soft light from the cloud cover held.

  ‘Alright you two,’ said Alex, ‘pull back on the smiles, Annie – keep it small and subtle like before. Let’s not lose that vibe. It’s a wrap.’

  When she heard Alex say the words, the excitement she felt reached a crescendo as she saw Matthew walk over towards her. She knew it was going to happen. She had been anticipating it since she first saw him standing over at the hedge, watching her, then every moment since. Still, when Matthew leaned in and kissed her, Annie felt as if she was floating, transported, lifted to a place so glorious that she never wanted to come down. And for the rest of the day, they didn’t.

  They left Kensington Gardens, hand in hand, and walked and talked their way around the London streets. Every now and again, they stopped and kissed. He would stop, lean down and kiss her, then she would stop, reach up and kiss him. He told her a bit about himself but it was all so pointless, so pedestrian that all he mentioned was that he had a sister and that his father owned a pub. He told her the most interesting thing about him, which was that he had been engaged once, and broken a girl’s heart when he joined the priesthood. He regretted it now. They settled on a bench under a tree in Hyde Park as the early evening sun was setting, and she told him her story. How her father died when she was young. Then, her mother moved them both to Mayo where she met a rich doctor and remarried. Matthew could not help thinking how his marrying a doctor’s daughter might soften the blow for his own mother when he told her he was leaving the priesthood. She was too perfect. Then, she paused.

  ‘I need to tell you something,’ she said.

  Matthew could tell she was uncomfortable.

  ‘Something bad happened.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’ He wouldn’t coax her.