by Marian Keyes
When she exited the plane at Heathrow, a man was waiting with a whiteboard featuring her name. He took her away down some secret steps and her back was aflame with the accusing, jealous stares of all the others who’d been on the flight. “Where does she think she’s going?” she heard someone say. “Snotty bitch.”
The man put her into a big fat car and drove her a short distance to—what was this?—a helicopter. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“You get on the helicopter.”
“But where am I going?”
“I don’t know. You could try asking the pilot, I suppose.”
But the pilot was too caught up in making sure she put on her headphones and a safety harness.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Pull that a bit tighter.”
“It’s tight. Where are we going?”
“Glyndebourne.”
And Katie was thinking, Glyndebourne? What did she know about Glyndebourne? Opera, that’s what she knew. But perhaps other things besides opera happened at Glyndebourne. Because she detested opera and Conall knew she detested opera, so he was hardly going to bring her on a date to something she detested.
When the chopper came in to land Conall was standing waiting, wearing a dark suit and looking like a handsome undertaker.
With her hand on her head, she ran across the asphalt and said, “What on earth—”
He smiled, appearing very happy, and said, “Just one favor. Don’t ask questions yet. Trust me. You look beautiful, by the way.”
Trust him. But they were at the opera place. Everyone was dressed up and walking around the beautiful gardens holding programs and talking about—yes!—opera. Conall ferried her off to a secluded little arbor, where they drank champagne and he refused to answer questions. Then he said, “Time to go.” Everyone else was moving in the same direction and he led her into an auditorium and she was thinking: This can’t be opera because I told him how much I hate it. She gave him a searching look and he stared into her eyes and repeated, “Trust me,” and even though she was extremely unsure, she said, “Ooooookay.” The lights dimmed, the curtain went up and the next thing was there was a load of fat people on the stage, singing their fat pompous heads off. Yes, opera. She was so stunned, she didn’t know what to think. She decided that she was very angry. Then she changed her mind and decided that she was very sad: why did nobody ever listen to her? For a thrilling instant she considered standing up and pushing her way to the exit, but she envisioned a sniper with night-vision goggles killing her with one shot to the head. Interruptions were frowned upon at the opera; you couldn’t even cough.
After an epoch of screeching elapsed, an interval finally came.
“Well?” Conall said, as the lights went on.
“Are you having a laugh?” Katie asked, getting to her feet.
“What?” He looked stunned.
“An expensive, elaborate laugh?”
“What?” He hurried behind her, trying to keep up.
She turned to face him, as people streamed past them. “It’s opera. Yes? I told you I couldn’t abide opera. Didn’t I?”
“But why don’t you like it?”
Enraged, she spluttered, “I just don’t. For one reason, not that I have to give you any, the men singers always sound like they’re constipated.”
“I thought if you heard good stuff you’d change your mind.”
This, his apology, actually incensed her further. “What? You thought that I was so . . . uncultured that I couldn’t have an informed opinion?”
“No, I—”
“You didn’t listen to me.”
He looked pale and chastened. “I was wrong. I’m sorry. Because I love it, I wanted to share it with you. I wanted to surprise you.”
“Oh you surprised me all right.” Even though she worked in the music business and was exposed on a daily basis to gigantic egos, she’d never before met such a selfish, self-willed megalomaniac. “I couldn’t have made myself clearer.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I actually think—” she furrowed her brow and shook her head—“I actually think you’re slightly insane. And I want to go home now.”
“I’ll ring the chopper.”
But the chopper was two hours away.
“What do you want to do while you’re waiting?” Conall asked.
“Sit in the bar, drink a bottle of red wine and send texts to my sister and my friend, telling them what a mad bastard you are.”
He swallowed. “Would you like me to keep you company?”
“No.”
Day 59 . . .
Things Lydia loves (in no particular order):
Chips
City names ending in “sk” (e.g., Gdansk and Murmansk)
Her mum
Gilbert. Possibly.
Please note: this is a complete list.
Lydia’s day hadn’t got any better. Each fare was more annoying than the previous. In quick succession she’d had a “Thanking you,” a “Thank you kindly,” a “Ta, love,” a “Muchas gracias” and a “Merci bow-coup”—all five of them receipt-seekers! Was there no end to her trials! But these pains-in-the-arse were as nothing compared to Buchanan, the American tourist who explained the U.S. electoral system to her, beginning each sentence with “Here’s the thing.” She’d tried to shut him up by asking her fail-safe “Christ Jesus” question (she’d noticed it scared people lots more when it was “Christ Jesus” rather than “Jesus Christ”), but he actually already had accepted Christ Jesus as his lord and savior and was happy to have a good chinwag about it. Hoist with her own Christ Jesus petard!
The traffic was appalling. She was caught by red lights, roadworks, pedestrian crossings and, worst of all, crossing guards. When she finally knocked it on the head for the day, she hoped the lads wouldn’t be at home.
But the lads were at home. Jan too had had a bad day. A woman in Enniskerry had got tarragon vinegar when she had ordered white wine vinegar, while a woman in Terenure, whose entire life was dependent on the tarragon vinegar, had received the white wine vinegar. It was a disaster and it was all Jan’s fault.
Jan was sorrowfully recounting the scolding he’d received when Lydia came in, cranky and exhausted. She saw them sitting in the living room and stopped dead.
“Love of God!” she declared. “A more miserable-looking pair I’ve never seen. What’s up?”
“We are glum,” Jan said, almost happily. What a useful word this glum was. Glum, glum, glum.
“Why?”
“I mix up order. I give wrong vinegars to womans. My boss, she go apeshit. I get bollocked.”
Lydia looked at him in surprise. “My God, Jan, your English is really coming along.”
“Thenks.” He smiled with shy pride.
“So Andrei, why are you so glum?”
Andrei didn’t tell her the truth, which was: I am glum because I have to live with you.
He shrugged. “I did not come to this country to be happy. I came to earn money for my family. I do not expect to be happy.”
“That’s no way to live.” Mind you, she was a fine one to talk. She’d left the beautiful flat she’d shared with Sissy for this poky hole. She was working seventy hours a week but was too afraid to buy new summer clothes—last week’s splurge in Primark of a mingy seven euro on a three-pack of undershirts had made her feel so shitty she’d nearly taken them back.
“I am strong,” Andrei said. “I will endure.”
“Yeah, me too.” She sighed extravagantly. Then, without warning, the itch was upon her: she had to go on the net. She had to check again. Maybe this time it would be different. She pulled the stool up to the little plastic desk wedged into the corner by the window and started bumping and battering the mouse.
Behind her Andrei asked, “You goingk out tonight?”
She clattered the keys and glared at the screen. Come on, come on. What’s taking you so long?
“Lydia? Goingk out tonight?”<
br />
“. . . You’ll be happy to hear I am.”
The boys were indeed happy. They had plans to plonk themselves in front of The Apprentice and take detailed notes. One day they too would be like Donald Trump. Without the dodgy hair.
“You goingk out with Poor Fucker?”
When Lydia had first moved in and mentioned she had a boyfriend, Andrei hadn’t been able to hide his disbelief. “You have boyfriend?”
“Of course I’ve a boyfriend!” The nerve of him.
Andrei thought his heart would burst, so great was his pity for this unknown man. There was no Polish phrase that adequately expressed the extent of his misfortune so Andrei was obliged to utilize English.
“Poor Fucker.”
“Yes, I’m going out with Poor Fucker. And don’t call him that. His name is Gilbert.”
Day 59 . . .
So! Gilbert! What kind of man was he? Surely he’d have to be someone fairly special to handle Lydia. (And was he the mystery person she cleaned for? The reason she refused to wash the pots in her own flat?)
Gilbert was to be found in a small, dark pub, almost an illicit bar, in a side street on the north side of the city, gathered around a table with four other men, going at it hot and heavy in Yoruba. Originally a native of Lagos, Nigeria, he had made Dublin his home for the past six years.
When Lydia came through the door, the argument among the men was so angry and intent that they didn’t see her. Lydia didn’t speak Yoruba—apart from the few vulgar phrases Gilbert had taught her for wheeling out at Nigerian parties, to make people laugh in delight—but it sounded as though they were planning a coup.
“Forest Floor,” she heard. Then, “Strawberry Delight.” Hmmm.
Suddenly, they noticed Lydia and the conversation ceased abruptly and the four men melted away, leaving only Gilbert sitting at the table.
“Baby,” he said. His voice was like Valrhona. He reached out to her with his long fingers (he had beautiful, elegant hands, the hands of a musician) (which he wasn’t). He was, like Lydia, a taxi driver, which was how they’d met—at some café frequented only by taxi drivers and only in the middle of the night. It was a safe haven from the public where drivers could have a cup of tea and rant about the obnoxious behavior of their customers.
On the night in question Lydia slowly ate her rasher sandwich and checked out Gilbert’s tightly cut hair, his beautifully shaped head, his long, long eyelashes and thought, yes, indeed. She knew she wasn’t to every man’s taste—something to do with her caustic tongue scared loads of them away, the spineless saps—but she reckoned Gilbert was man enough for her.
I, unlike lesser beings, am not swayed by appearance but by vibrations, and Gilbert’s spiky life force alerts me to his tendency to secret-keeping. He’s a little too fond of compartmentalizing his life, keeping certain areas of it from colliding with others. I don’t entirely trust him, but I cannot help but like him.
A man evidently partial to fancy clothing, Gilbert. Tonight he sported a pair of midnight-blue boots that were—if one were to speak frankly—a little girly. More worrying still was his jacket. There was something very odd about the waist region: nipped-in, almost like a corset.
Lydia seemed like the kind of person who would make extravagant fun of those who took their look too seriously, but she snuggled into Gilbert like a cat and no mockery ensued.
“Hi, guys,” she called to the four men who had got up at her arrival. She knew them well; they were all taxi drivers. “What’s going on? What were you shouting about?”
They began to edge into her orbit, drawn back toward the seats they’d recently vacated.
“Be gone,” Gilbert said.
“No, let them sit down. I want to know what’s happening.”
The four men resumed their seats.
“Well?” Lydia asked. “What was all the shouting about?”
Eventually, Abiola spoke. “It’s Odenigbo.” At this, Odenigbo exploded into heated Yoruba, then so did everyone else.
Lydia picked up the occasional English word—lemon meringue, rainstorm—and she held up a hand, silencing the men. Irritably, she said, “Little trees? Again? I’m sick of this conversation.”
Unlike Lydia, who owned her own car, the Nigerians shared three taxis between seven drivers. One man’s choice of little tree air freshener had consequences for everyone.
“I like Strawberry Delight,” Odenigbo said, with a defiance that suggested he was alone.
A splutter of disagreement greeted his words. “Strawberry Delight is detestable,” Gilbert said.
“Worse than the smell of smelliness,” Modupe said.
“Worse than the smell of the passengers!”
“We’ve been through this a million times!” Lydia said. “Forest Floor is fine, so is Spice Market, the rest are gank! End of. Now, who wants to buy me a drink?”
It quickly became clear that Gilbert treated Lydia like a queen. After he’d bought her two drinks in the bar, he ferried her off to his home, a big, old, ramshackle house that he shared with six others. In a kitchen that pulsed with music, he cooked dinner for her—a humble pizza. Not due to his limitations as a cook but out of respect for her cautious Irish palate. Wafting in the air were the hangovers of previous experiments in which he had served up Nigerian delights for her delectation: spicy oysters, goat soup, jollof rice. They had not been a success. The words rank and gank still lingered. It seemed that Lydia’s taste for the exotic was only in men.
She ate her pizza with silent concentration. Gilbert tried to engage her in conversation but she cut him off with a curt, “Shush.” She brooked no distractions while she was eating. When she’d consumed all six triangles and licked pizza grease off her fingers, she shoved her empty plate across the table at Gilbert and he then clattered it into the sink.
“Thanks,” she remembered to say.
In accordance with house rules, Gilbert made a desultory effort to clean up, using a sopping cloth to wipe the table surface in sweeping, lackluster arches, leaving visible semicircles of droplets behind, then he dashed the plates under a lukewarm running tap.
Lydia sat and watched him. She didn’t lift a finger. Whoever it was that she—oh so resentfully—housekept for, it was obviously not Gilbert.
“Right,” she said, getting to her feet as soon as the plates had been deposited on the draining board. “Let’s go.”
They went to a party in a cavernous club, with very loud music and very little light. The other revelers were almost all Nigerians, many of whom interrupted Gilbert’s and Lydia’s kissing in order to respectfully fist-bump Gilbert. When Lydia tired of the incessant shoulder-tapping and of shouting above the music, “What am I? Invisible?” she insisted that they leave and they made their way back home to his bed.
There was a strong connection between them and they were well-attuned physically but—mark me here—their hearts did NOT beat as one. However, that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t at some stage. There were no obvious impediments . . . except for the large sums Gilbert shelled out on his fancy duds.
Not that Lydia seemed concerned. She lay on his bed, watching as he lovingly secreted his corset-like jacket inside a dust-cover. “You’re a dandy,” she said.
He liked this. “Say it again.”
“Gilbert Okuma, you’re a dandy.”
“Dandy.” He laughed, his teeth very white in his dark face. “Do you know any other words?”
She loved his accent, the deliberate drawl and the tiny little pause between each word.
“A peacock,” she suggested. “A fashion victim? A fop? A banty-cock? A gadfly?” Indeed, the local youths, Dublin natives, were happy to supply another description. Spanner. As in, “Look at that spanner! Look at the shoes on him! And the coat!”
But Gilbert was unconcerned. Those boys were uneducated peasants, hobbledehoys who knew no better.
Gilbert, an interesting man, lived for the moment.
For the moment . . .
But all
that might be about to change.
Day 59 . . .
Matt and Maeve enjoyed a leisurely evening during which they ate a large, meat-based dinner followed by a variety of confectionery, all the while entwined tightly on the couch, watching home makeover shows. It was an uplifting demonstration of two people very much in love—and yet now and again there was that faint whiff of a third party, the presence of some man curling his way, like cigarette smoke, through the flat.
At 11 p.m., Matt and Maeve retired to their bedroom and I was keen to see what would happen this time. Just like the first night, they got undressed and then got dressed again, as if they were about to go jogging. But instead they got into bed. They read for a while then Maeve opened a bedside drawer and I braced myself for furry handcuffs, blindfolds and other sexy folderols. But instead of sex toys, Maeve produced two notebooks, one with a glossy photograph of a red Lamborghini on the cover, the other bearing a reproduction of a Chagall painting, a man holding hands with a woman who was flying over his head like a balloon.
With a certain amount of gloom, Matt accepted the Lamborghini notebook and a pen. At the top of a blank page, he wrote TODAY’S TRIO OF BLESSINGS. Then he seemed to run out of inspiration. He gazed at the empty page and sucked the top of his pen like he was sitting an exam and knew none of the answers.
He needed to locate three good things that had happened today. But nothing was coming. God, he hated this, so he did.
With a gold-colored pen, Maeve wrote, “I saw a green balloon by a green traffic light.”
On the next line she put, “A little girl smiled at me for no reason.”
And her third blessing? “Matt,” she wrote, and shut the notebook, feeling peaceful and satisfied.
Matt was still sucking his pen; he hadn’t produced a single word. Then! Struck by sudden inspiration, he scribbled: