The Mystery of Mercy Close

by Marian Keyes

  Zeezah was chatting charmingly to some of the hairy roadies. (And, all credit to them, they were making the effort. Beers in both hands and one of them had a bottle stored in his ponytail. I’d find out their names and put them forward for a ‘Highly Commended’.) Zeezah looked up and saw me and I thought I saw the hint of a shadow cross her face, then she gave a little wave and a sweet smile and I couldn’t help but smile back.

  There was Frankie, still looking a bit glassy-eyed in the Xanax aftermath. And there was Roger St Leger, casting a spell on some misfortunate woman who was wearing very small cut-off denim shorts and cowboy boots. She was throwing her sun-streaked head back and revealing her tanned throat as she laughed uproariously. I wanted to rush up to her and say: Oh, you’re laughing now. Oh, you’re delighted now. But give it six weeks. A mere six weeks before he’ll have driven you completely mad. Before you show up in A&E, after having tried to slice your veins open with the disposable razor you’d bought to shave your legs for him.

  But what can you do? You have to let people make their own mistakes.

  Speaking of mistakes, there was Jay Parker. He was engaging Lottie and one of her assistants in guff, waving his beer bottle about and gesticulating in his rolled up shirtsleeves.

  I set my shoulders, located my inner steel bar and set off towards him. As if sensing my purpose, the people in my path parted like the Red Sea.

  Just before I reached him, he spun himself towards me, swivelling on a nimble little foot, like he was in the Jackson Five. ‘Helen!’ He stamped his other foot to stop himself spinning. Nice timing. He looked thrilled to see me.

  ‘Listen, Parker, I’m out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He knew, I could see it in him. The smile stayed on his lips but his eyes had gone furtive and darty, already seeking a solution.

  ‘I don’t want to look for Wayne any more.’

  ‘Why not? I’m good for the money.’

  ‘I don’t care about the money.’ Now, there’s a line I never thought I’d hear myself say. ‘Here’s Wayne’s key.’ I handed it over, making sure I didn’t actually touch Parker. Reluctantly he took hold of it.

  ‘But Wayne might be in trouble,’ he said. ‘He might need to be found.’

  ‘He’s not, he doesn’t. He just doesn’t want to do the concerts. Leave him alone.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’ Parker nodded in the direction of Frankie, then Roger, who were both watching me intently. ‘They need the money.’ His eyes flicked towards John Joseph and Zeezah, who were also staring at me. ‘All of them. A lot of livelihoods are depending on Wayne coming back.’

  ‘So get somebody else.’

  ‘I don’t want anybody else. I want you.’

  ‘You can’t have me.’

  He reached out his arm and I stared at his hand, wondering if he’d have the gall to touch me.

  ‘Helen …’ He looked so desperate that I considered relenting. But only for a moment.

  ‘I hope it works out for all of you,’ I said, and moved to walk away.

  ‘Wait!’

  I turned back to look at him.

  He swallowed, then swept away the lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead. ‘Look, forget about Wayne. Could we see each other anyway? You and me?’

  I stared at him for a long, long time.

  ‘I miss you,’ he said, almost whispering.

  ‘Do you?’ Suddenly I felt very sad. ‘Well, I miss Bronagh.’

  As I turned and walked away, I had a paralysing moment when I wondered if I’d abandoned Wayne to some awful fate, but I knew I hadn’t. I was doing the right thing.

  So why did I feel so wretched?

  Nothing to fill my head now, that’s what it was.

  Nothing to do but go to my parents’ house and acknowledge that I no longer had a home of my own.

  Nothing to do but face the fact that I hadn’t had a shower in over twenty-four hours and there were no more excuses for putting it off.

  The wave of blackness that rushed up from my guts almost blinded me. It was like an eclipse of the sun. But I’d been here before. I knew what I had to do. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Until maybe I couldn’t any more.

  41

  As I drove to Mum and Dad’s, memories of Bronagh rushed back at me.

  She’d never worn jewellery – not earrings, not bracelets, nothing. So that day when she’d turned up at my newly acquired flat, I thought I was hallucinating.

  ‘Bronagh,’ I’d said. ‘Why are you wearing that ring?’

  She looked at her left hand, at the big square diamond, like it all belonged to someone else. ‘Oh. Yeah. Blake asked me to marry him.’

  ‘And … are you going to?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘I see. Well … aren’t we supposed to squeal and jump around the place?’

  ‘Yeah. And you’re supposed to hug me and cry and say how happy you are for me.’

  ‘Okay, let’s give it a go.’

  We held hands and lepped a bit and I tried squealing, but it’s like being asked to laugh on command, it’s very hard to get it to sound natural.

  ‘Now the hug,’ she said.

  Dutifully I hugged her and said, ‘I’m so happy for you.’

  ‘Where’s the crying?’ she asked.

  ‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘I think I might be in shock.’

  ‘You’re in shock?’

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s lie on the bed and complain about things and get our equilibrium back.’

  Side by side we lay on my Mother Superior bed, and to get things underway I launched into a diatribe about people who use tea trays. ‘I know it’s an efficient way to ferry the teacups and all that shit into the kitchen, but it’s so prissy.’

  ‘So nineteen-fifties!’

  ‘I’d rather make a separate journey for each individual spoon than use a tray.’

  ‘Will I have to wear a dress?’ she asked.

  ‘To carry a spoon?’ For a moment I didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘Oh, to get married in. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want. You’re Bronagh Keegan.’

  ‘Not for much longer.’

  ‘What do you mean? You’re going to take Blake’s name?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Cripes. You don’t have to, you know.’

  ‘But I think I want to. So will I have to wear a dress?’

  ‘You’re going to do the whole church thing?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll feel like such a thick in a dress. I’ll feel so stupid.’

  I didn’t think I’d ever seen her in a dress but I suspected she’d look quite odd.

  ‘Just wear your jeans and hoody,’ I suggested.

  ‘Maybe if they were white?’

  ‘Well … yeah, maybe.’

  ‘Will you be my bridesmaid?’

  ‘Course! Sure! Thanks. I mean, I’d be honoured. Will there be others?’ Although I couldn’t think who could possibly be in the frame.

  ‘No. Just you.’

  ‘Her only bridesmaid?’ Margaret later declared. ‘What an honour!’

  ‘Ah no, no, it’s not,’ I hurried to explain. ‘It’s because she has no other friends.’

  ‘I’m her friend!’ Margaret was wounded. ‘I get on great with her.’

  ‘Right, yes, of course, I’m not saying … just she has no other close friends.’

  ‘Am I not a close friend of hers?’ Margaret asked. She sounded like she was going to cry.

  ‘Of course, yes, I’m only saying, I mean, I’m not saying …’

  They say that every bride looks beautiful.

  But you couldn’t exactly say Bronagh looked beautiful. She wore the plainest wedding dress anyone has ever seen – she’d told her designer to just throw a white bedsheet over her head and cut out a neck-hole and, though it killed the poor designer, she did her best to fulfil her brief.

  Bronagh went up the aisle with the maddest look in her eyes, as if she had some wild stunt up her sle
eve. (Watching it back on DVD was like sitting through the early stages of a horror film, when you’re digging your nails into your palms because of the anticipation that something appalling is about to happen. Especially because Blake’s face was a soppy mush of love and gratitude.) Right up to the last second, I was expecting Bronagh to swivel on her heel and march back down the aisle, or do something taboo like snog Blake’s dad, but it all went off okay.

  42

  Back at Mum and Dad’s, my stuff had been unpacked and put away. Clothes were hanging smoothly in the wardrobe, underwear was folded tidily into drawers, and the nudie photos of Artie were placed with care beneath a small hillock of rolled-up socks.

  On the floor of the wardrobe, two dozen pairs of my very lovely, very high shoes were lined up neatly: sparkly ones, lizard-skin ones, ones with peep-toes or slingbacks or ankle-straps, such a variety. I looked at them, as if I’d never seen them before in my life. They were all so beautiful, but they looked like so much trouble. How would I even stand up in them? It was hard to believe that once upon a time – and not so long ago either – I’d actually been able to run in them.

  When I’d been going out with Jay Parker, I’d worn high heels for almost every single second. I’d been very glamorous back then. Being with Artie was way different, much more low-key. Yes, we had the occasional ‘date night’ (though both the phrase and the concept were very high on the List), but our time together and the way we spent it was still pretty much dictated by his kids.

  However, at least now they’d met me; they knew I existed.

  Artie and I had run into very choppy waters earlier this year when he was trying to keep his two worlds from colliding. It had been okay at first. We’d seen each other through January and February – sometimes he came to my flat and sometimes I went to his house. But we couldn’t just free-float and see each other whenever the mood took us. If the kids were staying with Vonnie, then it was a go, but if they were staying with him, he was off limits. I didn’t like it, but I liked him, and the whole business was too fragile to withstand analysis, so I decided to not think about it, for the time being anyway.

  I was mildly obsessed with Iona. Often – when Artie was out of the room – I stared at photos of her and tried thought transference to say: Fuck with me and I will make your daddy love me more than he loves you. But I would never have admitted it, not even under torture, not even if I had to listen to the phrase ‘good to go’ being said a million times while a hundred thousand eggs were fried, one by one, in front of me.

  But by March my non-existence was starting to piss me off and it came to a head one morning. I’d stayed with Artie the previous night and I’d got dressed and was ready to leave. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m off.’

  He handed me a bra, the one I’d worn the day before. ‘Don’t forget this.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, a little sarcastically.

  ‘What?’ Didn’t miss a nuance, Artie.

  ‘Yeah, better not leave a single trace of myself behind.’

  He looked at me, his face hard. ‘You know it’s complicated.’

  ‘So you keep saying and it’s starting to bore me.’

  I grabbed my bra and stuffed it into my bag and left without saying another word. He could fuck off. I was tired of being nobody.

  I’d decided to not answer his calls. But he didn’t ring. I didn’t ring him either and it was hard, harder than I’d expected. As each day passed without hearing from him, I started to realize that this was over. Well, I’d never expected it to last anyway; we were totally unsuited.

  Funny, once I thought about it, none of my relationships had lasted longer than three months. The day Artie and I had had the fight about my bra was exactly three months since we’d met at the Christmas fête.

  What was it with me? Had I deliberately picked the three-month mark to decide I no longer wanted to be the invisible girlfriend? Mum often said that when I was a little girl and got new toys I wasn’t happy until I’d broken them. It seemed that, even now I was an adult, nothing had changed.

  With that sort of attitude I was always going to be alone. Well, what could I do about it? That was who I was. So I began to package up my feelings about Artie, my sadness, the way I missed him. I pushed and compressed them, making them into a manageable little cube, the way they do with crushed cars, small enough to be stored in some rarely visited, dusty part of my head. I always did that with things I didn’t want to feel but this was much more demanding than I’d expected.

  After eight horrible days, he called. ‘Can we meet?’ he asked.

  ‘Why? So you can give me back my stuff? Oh, I forgot. There is no stuff for you to give me back.’

  ‘Can we meet? Can we talk?’

  ‘Is there anything for us to talk about?’

  ‘Let’s see. Let’s find out. Will you come for a walk with me?’

  ‘How do you mean, a walk? In the countryside?’ I thought it was a weird request but maybe it would be better than sitting down for a direct face-to-facer. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I suppose I could. What do I have to do?’

  ‘Wear trainers. Do you have a waterproof jacket?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Let me guess, you don’t believe in waterproof jackets?’

  ‘That’s right, I don’t.’

  ‘I’ll sort something out for you and I’ll bring a picnic.’

  ‘Ah … look, Artie, the word “picnic”, it’s very high on my Shovel List. Would you mind not saying it?’

  ‘Okay. How about I say I’ll bring some food? Portable food?’

  It was a beautiful day in the middle of March, the sort of day when, almost like a shock, you realize that winter isn’t going to last for ever, when your body suddenly remembers that there’s such a thing as summer.

  Artie picked me up and as I climbed into the car we warily said hello, but we didn’t kiss each other, we didn’t even touch. He drove us to some deserted, madly forested part of Wicklow called the Devil’s Glen and when he got out of his car I studied him: he was wearing proper walking boots, jeans, a blue jacket made of some modern technical stuff and he was carrying a rucksack.

  ‘Shovel List?’ he asked. ‘Is it the rucksack?’

  We were striving for a tone of olive-branch jocularity so I said, ‘I’m not keen on it. But luckily for you, you’re good-looking enough to avoid looking like a tool. Tell me,’ I asked, ‘what if it rains?’ The sun was bright in the sky, but this was Ireland.

  ‘You could wear this.’ Artie produced something from the boot of his car.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘It’s a jacket.’

  Reluctantly I took it in my hands. It was black and it weighed less than a bag of Randoms – one of the small ones that are barely even worth tearing open, there’re so few sweets in there.

  ‘Is it one of those technical ones? From one of those shops?’ A creepy thought occurred to me. ‘It’s not … Vonnie’s, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or Iona’s?’

  ‘No.’ He laughed.

  ‘So where did it come from?’

  ‘I bought it.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘For you.’

  ‘Like a gift, is it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Like a gift. Are you going to try it on?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose.’ I slipped my arms into it and he zipped it up for me. It was fitted at the waist and sat perfectly on my hips, not too tight and not too loose. It had Velcro tabs at the wrists and a neat little hood, and to my surprise (category: surprising), I found I liked it.

  ‘It fits me,’ I said. ‘Like, perfectly. How did you do that?’

  ‘There were three sizes: small, medium and large. You’re small. I got the small.’

  ‘Thank you for not saying, “It’s not rocket science”.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘And thank you for the jacket.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  He
took me down a path into deep forest, a small narrow valley, beside a busy stream. The light was strange and green, sunbeams breaking through the trees just now and again. The only sound was the wind rattling the branches and the water rushing and gushing over rocks. It felt like we were the only people on the planet.

  To my surprise (category: enchanting), now and again we came upon quirky quotes cut into stone alongside the path. They said things like, ‘We will hide here after the battle.’ ‘I can see a seahorse in the pool. In the distance are the bears and wolves.’ ‘So tired. I can’t walk any further. I’ll sleep here tonight.’

  ‘What are these?’ I asked Artie.

  ‘Just … stuff. Art, if you like.’

  Beside a rough little staircase of moss-covered rocks was carved, ‘I have to clean these steps.’ That made me laugh.

  Strange wooden sculptures appeared intermittently: a massive ball made of logs; a sinister piece that looked like a body hanging upside down; a four-paned window in a tree, framing our view of the valley.

  After walking for about an hour, we reached a waterfall and the path ran out. In a pool by the cascade was another quote: ‘When we find the ring I’ll propose.’

  I didn’t point that one out to Artie.

  He produced a waterproof rug sort of thing, cheese and coleslaw sandwiches, Mars bars and a bottle of Prosecco, and even though he’d obviously gone to a bit of trouble to make my favourite sandwiches, I couldn’t eat. I drank Prosecco out of a white plastic cup and waited. I didn’t know what Artie was going to say, I didn’t know where we could go with this, but I could feel he was working up to something. This was make-or-break time.

  Without looking at me, he said, ‘I missed you.’

  I said nothing. I wasn’t going to make this easy for him, and if he asked me to give him more time, he wasn’t going to get it.

  ‘Bella still asks about you,’ he said.

  I shrugged.

  ‘She’s told the others about you.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘They’re looking for a meet.’