‘Where are you off to? Into town shopping?’ ‘Yes, shopping,’ said Christie, because after all she was dressed very grandly for such an hour on a Monday. If it wasn’t for the height of her heels and the silky sheerness of her stockings, a person might have thought she was on her way to see her bank manager, but no bank manager merited such a slinky outfit.
‘How’s your leg?’ Christie paused outside Una’s gate, not having the time to go in, but wanting to be sociable.
‘Not so bad now. Before you know it, the cast will be off and I’ll be a new woman.’
Would she? Christie wondered, getting that sense she had before of Una’s bones as fragile and lacy, instead of strong and firm.
‘You should take care of yourself, Una,’ she said, sternly.
‘Oh, I have Dennis to take care of me,’ Una said happily. ‘Don’t I, love?’
Dennis nodded enthusiastically.
‘How’s Maggie?’ asked Christie, because she knew that Maggie was the person who did the real taking care of in that house.
‘She’s in good form, you know,’ Una said. ‘Very busy with the committee. You wouldn’t believe all she’s organised - publicity, an official complaint to the council and they’re getting legal advice too.
It’s all go.’
Christie waved goodbye to the Maguires and headed past the cafe, which seemed unbearably comforting and homely this morning. Wouldn’t it have been nice if it was a normal day, before all this had happened, when she could sit there, eating a scone, chatting with people, thinking about her nice, safe simple life ahead of her? Life before Carey had come back.
Christie did not frequent many of the city’s grand hotels, but her very presence was commanding enough, so that when she walked into Carey’s Hotel, a stately block that overlooked the best square in Dublin, people looked up.
‘May I help you, madam?’ The young woman at the desk inclined her head graciously, like minor royalty greeting somebody.
‘Yes, I have a meeting with Mr Wolensky,’
Christie said coolly, hoping she looked like some important art dealer, rather than a woman with a past. ‘Mrs Devlin,’ she added, with a regal nod of her own. Christie didn’t play games but she didn’t suffer snubs either.
‘Oh, yes, Mr Wolensky’s waiting for you in the Maharajah Suite. Shall I get somebody to show you up?’
The receptionist’s attitude had changed at the mention of Carey’s name. Clearly he was just as good as he’d ever been at knocking pretension out of those around him, although he probably did it with money and power now, when once he’d done it with charisma and sheer animal presence.
‘That would be good, thank you.’ Christie said.
as if every morning of her life involved being shown into the Maharajah Suite.
A young uniformed man escorted her up five floors in the lift and into an ornate corridor where they passed several doors bearing the names of long-dead dukes and countesses before arriving at the Maharajah Suite. A second young man opened the door and brought Christie into a huge drawing room, decorated in the eastern style.
‘Tea, coffee or would you prefer something else?’
he asked.
‘Coffee please,’ Christie said, thinking that this was getting even more bizarre.
She sat on the edge of a fat, bronze-coloured armchair with her coffee in her hand and looked around. It was an opulent room full of plump brocade cushions, rich dark splashes of fabric and vast creamy candles that had never been burned.
It all screamed money, good taste and phenomenal success. What a different life Carey had led to hers.
And then, a door to the right opened and he was there in front of her.
‘Hello, Christie,’ he said and his voice was just the same, with the same power to thrill her, but his face was different.
He’d aged too. There was no Dorian Gray portrait in his attic. He was still tall and vibrantly alive, but now the dark hair was streaked like a magpie’s with brilliant white and his face was craggy, with heavy lines where there had been smooth skin, and he had a sadness about him that spoke volumes.
‘Hello, Carey,’ said Christie, thinking how stupid it sounded. Twenty-five years of waiting and at least six weeks of having panic attacks about this very moment, and the best she could manage was ‘Hello, Carey.’
‘It’s a beautiful room.’ She got up and walked over to the window, to give herself something to do. She didn’t really see the streets below her.
‘You haven’t changed,’ he said. His accent was still the same: deep and dark, the Polish edge as strong and caressing as ever.
Christie turned around when she judged it was safe to do so. ‘Of course I’ve changed, Carey. I’m older and wiser and so are you, I hope. So tell me, tell me about your life.’
She sat down on one of the Louis XIV chairs as if they were ordinary old friends meeting up after many years to chat happily about acquaintances, times past and the fun they used to have.
If she kept it at that level, then the conversation might stay there, might never stray into the terrifying territory of love, lust and passion.
‘You’re talking to me strangely,’ he said, sitting down opposite her. ‘What is this chatter? How are you?’ he said, ‘like we were strangers.’
‘You know that was always one of the annoying things about you, Carey,’ she said, ‘you always refused to play the games, the games other people played.’
‘You mean like pretending that we are just old friends, who mean nothing to one another?’ he asked. ‘You’re right, I never played the games, and I still made it.’
‘You made it because of your talent,’ she retorted. ‘It was nothing to do with your rudeness.’
‘If
speaking the truth is rude,’ he said calmly, ‘I’d prefer to live my life that way, not to lie, not to push the past away, like you’re doing.’
‘Well, that didn’t take long,’ Christie said and realised she’d spoken out loud. ‘We’re four minutes in each other’s company and already all the facade is gone.’ And she smiled at him, because it was impossible not to.
‘That is one of the things I liked about you, Christie,’ he said. ‘You were not good at pretending either. You tried to be, but you were not good.’
‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘I wasn’t good at the pretence. Carey, why did you come back?’ she said abruptly, and that was the right thing to say because it was what she’d wanted to know.
‘I came to have an exhibition here, you know that.’
She searched his eyes for answers. Years ago, he’d been good at hiding what he was feeling, but now Christie was older and wiser, she felt she’d be able to discern what he was really thinking.
‘No, you didn’t,’ she said suddenly. ‘Tell me the truth, why did you come?’
‘I came to see you,’ he said.
She’d known that was what he was going to say. She had never forgotten him and it seemed that he’d never forgotten her either.
‘Oh, Carey, Carey,’ she sighed, ‘I told you a long time ago that you had to go away, for my sake, for both our sakes.’
‘I just wanted to see you,’ he said gently, ‘to see what you looked like now, to see if you still had the power you had over me. And you do, it seems.
You’ve seen the paintings?’
It was a question and she nodded.
‘They’re you, you know, all those paintings, my dark lady.’
‘I’d worked that out,’ Christie said carefully, ‘and it frightened me, because I was afraid everyone would know and would guess it was me.’
‘I never showed your face,’ he said.
‘I know, thank you. I was always grateful for that.’
‘I could have, you know. I could have shown your face and broken up your marriage and you would have come to me.’ There was real pain in his voice for the first time and Christie wanted to hold him and comfort him, but she knew she couldn’t. She had never been able to touch him without feeling that flood of wild passion surge through her. It was a thing apart, a feeling she’d never been able to control. He was that other part of her, the fierce, wild side. And she’d had to give him up.
Now she picked up her coffee cup again. ‘It
would never have worked, you knew that. You didn’t want a wife and two children tagging around behind you. That’s not the life of an artist. And I had to think of my children first. I wanted my sons to know their father. If you and I had been together, they wouldn’t have known James, not properly, and they wouldn’t have had you either.
Quiet family life was never your destiny. Your only mistress is your art.’
Sadness flitted across his face.
‘That was true once,’ he admitted, ‘but it wouldn’t have been the case if I’d had you. I loved you more than art, I could have given it up for you.’
‘And made yourself unhappy not doing the thing you loved just so you could be with me? How would that have felt after a few years? You’d have resented me for ever,’ Christie said. ‘There was only one solution, Carey, you must see that,’ she begged.
There was a long pause, a pause filled with all the what-ifs that two people can contemplate over twenty-five years.
‘Why did you come here this morning,’ he said, ‘if this is all you want to say to me?’
‘I came,’ Christie said, and it was hard to say now that she was here, but she had to bury the ghosts, ‘I came because I wanted to end it fully, to say everything I never said before. I needed to make sure that you didn’t have the power or the desire to hurt me or my family because of what happened a long time ago. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Do you want a drink?’ he said, and got up to move to a sideboard behind them, where a full bar was laid out with proper crystal glass decanters.
Not your average minibar for him, Christie thought.
‘No,’ she said, ‘thank you. I don’t want anything.’
He fixed himself something dark and amber coloured in a tumbler, then another for her and laid it in front of her without saying a word.
‘You followed my career?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said, making a hopeless attempt at pretending she had never thought about him when there were times when he’d filled her thoughts to the exclusion of everything else.
‘You’re lying,’ he said, sitting down opposite her again, leaning forward. ‘I could always tell when you were lying. There’s a faint flicker of one of your eyelids, it’s a giveaway: a tell, they call it in poker. I play poker now, you know.’
‘Is this your poker face?’ Christie asked and it was like a fencing match, him parrying, she keeping him back.
‘No, this is not my poker face, but you have followed my career, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, all right, I have. I teach art, you know that. I couldn’t teach art, talk to my students about modern art without mentioning Carey Wolensky.’
‘But,’ he interrupted, ‘you never talked to them about the dark lady and who she is?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Christie said with irritation and, unthinkingly, picked up the glass of whiskey and downed half of it. It burned her throat as it went down. But there was something about that harsh violence hitting the back of her throat that brought her to her senses and stopped her playing a game with him. ‘How do you think I’m going to tell schoolgirls I teach that I’m the dark lady, that the woman who stands there naked in every bloody picture was me? Do a lot for my teaching career, that would, not to mention what it would do for my marriage.’
‘I like you better when you’re angry,’ he said, sitting back and smiling at her, looking relaxed for the first time. ‘You’re too passionate to hide it, Christie. We would have been so good together.’
‘No, we wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘I have too much and I couldn’t give it up and you know that.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and she knew he was sorry because of what might have been. ‘I needed to see you again, just one last time. I wanted to talk to you, look at you, remember you. I have pictures you know, but pictures don’t have warmth and their eyes don’t shine. I had to rely on my memories to paint you. And you must admit, my memories were good, the pictures look like you, don’t they? Did your husband ever notice?’
‘He never noticed,’ she replied. ‘He’s not interested in art and I thank God for that, because I love him, I always loved him.’
‘If you loved him,’ Carey asked, ‘then what happened with me?’
It was a question that always haunted her how could she love James, adore Ethan and Shane and then risk all that to be with this enigmatic man in front of her? There was no answer to that question. It was like asking why did the rain fall, why did the sun shine? It just happened, and she’d been swept along in the moment, a moment she’d been paying for ever since.
‘Women aren’t supposed to be able to love two men,’ she said, ‘but that’s not true. I loved James and I loved you. You were a door into another me, a Christie who was wild and had nothing to hold her back. Except I had two little boys and it wasn’t a simple choice of you or James. I had to choose my family and I don’t regret that. I’m not trying to hurt you, I’m explaining.’
She was determined to explain to him how hard it had been walking away from him but that it had been the right thing to do, and that she’d been so happy with James and her sons. Because the Christie who’d loved Carey was like a person from another world and she’d had to bury that person deep inside her and carry on with normal life.
She looked at Carey, remembering all they’d shared, remembering the passion he’d brought up in her, remembering how she’d touched his face in the past and thought she’d die if she didn’t have
enough of him. She had to put it all behind her now and move on.
‘In another world, Carey, in another life, you and I could have been together,’ she said.
She got up and sat beside him, not feeling any danger from the closeness now. He didn’t have the power to hurt her. She had made her mind up to say what had to be said. She was older and wiser so that any magnetism, any passion that there had once been between them, was now gone. And she’d paid for that bliss a million times over.
She touched his hand and she was astonished to find that his skin wasn’t the warm, vibrant thing she’d remembered, but felt old and papery and thin, like he was sickening, as though he was older even than he was in years. It confused her, but she couldn’t see it properly. What was hiding there?