Their goodnight lasted twenty minutes. He cradled her head and whispered that he was very, very happy
to have found her, and she wanted more than anything to stay in the dark car, within the warmth of his arms.
They saw each other every Friday and Saturday night. He’d given her a silver bracelet for Christmas, she’d given him Queen’s
A Night at the Opera
LP. All she could think about was him, and all that mattered were the weekends. It was 1976, and she was finally, finally in love.
‘You’re
blushing again,’ Christine said, and Sarah threw a cherry across the table at her.
T
wenty-three minutes into the evening she’d knocked back two large glasses of awful red wine, and eaten a single stuffed mushroom, and rejected everything else on offer – sausage rolls, chicken drumsticks, skewered something or other – from the long trestle tables that lined one side of the room.
She couldn’t remember the last party she’d attended, except that it must have been with Cormac, probably before Alice had been born. She was deeply regretting her decision to come to this one – what had possessed her to let Catherine talk her into it?
She’d escaped the newspaper’s last Christmas party by playing the widow card. ‘It’s the first Christmas without my husband,’ she’d told Catherine. ‘I really don’t feel up to it’ – and Catherine had been all sympathy and understanding, as Helen had known she would. Anyway, with just a handful of articles written by then, and no direct contact at that stage with Breen, she hadn’t felt particularly affiliated with the newspaper.
This year she hadn’t got off so lightly.
‘Say hello to him,’ Catherine had urged her on the phone. ‘You needn’t stay long, just enough to show your face and tell him you’re happy to be on the payroll. It’ll stand you in good stead, believe me.
And I’d really like to meet you too.’
Catherine might like to meet her, but Helen wasn’t convinced that Breen would. In fact, she considered it a safe bet that he wouldn’t give a damn if they never came face to face. Over the eighteen months or so that she’d been working for him, from the few conversations they’d had over the phone – he called her with commissions, she called him with queries – she’d got the impression of someone who was always on the verge of losing his patience.
‘Breen,’ he’d snap as a greeting, managing to make her feel she was already in trouble. No ‘Hello’, no ‘Hope I’m not interrupting anything’, no small-talk at all. After the briefest possible conversation, his sign-off was usually an equally clipped ‘Right’ – because ‘Goodbye’, presumably, was out of the question.
Helen had never heard a word of praise from him, never got a hint that he’d actually liked any of her pieces, even though he had turned down not a single one of them. When she’d taken a chance and submitted her first unasked-for book review, a couple of weeks after the Agatha Christie piece, it had appeared in the following day’s paper – and not long afterwards she’d taken delivery of two book proofs by authors whose names she didn’t recognise.
500 words on each by Friday week latest
he’d written –
latest
underlined twice – on the compliments slip that had accompanied them,
MB
at the bottom so she’d known it was him. Even his spiky handwriting looked annoyed.
God help Mrs Breen, in the unlikely event that such an unfortunate creature existed – would any woman in her right mind take him, for better or worse? Anyone who did would have to be as cantankerous as him. Maybe she’d turn up on his arm tonight, lording it over the plebs.
To make things worse, getting to the party had involved enlisting the help of her parents. There’d been little choice but to ask them, with Anna from across the road, Alice’s regular babysitter, having taken the ferry the day before to spend Christmas and New
Year with her married daughter in England.
Helen was well aware that her career as a journalist was a source of continuing bemusement to her parents. Writing for a newspaper wouldn’t be much of a step up, in their eyes, from earning a living as a musician, and the fact that she was working in a male-dominated area – according to Catherine, Helen was one of just two female writers on the paper’s list of freelancers – didn’t help.
Then again, she was working for her parents’ newspaper of choice, which she knew her father held in high regard, and she was supporting herself and Alice, so there wasn’t much they could legitimately object to.
‘A Christmas party,’ her mother had said. ‘How sociable. Of course we can take Alice. Have you got something to wear?’
Helen had resisted the impulse to tell her that actually she’d decided to go nude. ‘My black trouser suit.’
The one I wore to Cormac’s funeral
, she might have added, but didn’t.
‘That old thing? You’ve had it for years. Let us treat you to something new.’
Throwing money at her, like they’d always done. Still believing she’d mistake it for love.
The trouser suit
was
old – Helen had bought it before she met Cormac – but it would do fine for a party where she knew nobody, where she didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of her, or her outfit. Far cry from the hours she’d spent getting ready to go out to the parties Cormac and the boys would be invited to.
She felt the alcohol begin to soften her up around the edges, despite its unappealing taste. The not-very-large room – presumably the main working area of the paper – was full of noisy, laughing people, the air heavy with their cigarette smoke. Helen had spoken to nobody apart from Catherine, who thankfully had been on the lookout for her, and who’d turned out to be both older and heavier than Helen had envisaged, and every bit as friendly as she had always sounded
on the phone.
‘I just love your writing,’ she’d told Helen, dabbing at her large, rosy face with a red napkin. ‘So original and witty, and you can write serious as well as funny. And your book reviews are always so direct.’
Breen, apparently, had yet to arrive. ‘He’s not really a party person,’ Catherine had admitted, which didn’t surprise Helen in the least. ‘He’ll definitely show up at some stage, though, and I’ll introduce you.’
But Catherine had gone to the toilet a few minutes ago and hadn’t reappeared – tired, no doubt, of having to babysit the freelancer. One more glass of bad wine and Helen would make her escape, Breen or no Breen. She edged her way through the crowd to the makeshift bar and refilled her glass, managing to splatter her jacket in the process when someone’s elbow connected with her.
‘Helen!’
In the act of reaching for a napkin, she turned. Catherine was making her way back through the crowd, followed by someone in a dark suit – presumably the famous M. Breen, dragged over to meet her so he could be duly thanked for his patronage. Helen gave a quick swipe at the damp stain with her sleeve and summoned as much of a smile as she could muster.
‘There you are,’ Catherine said. ‘Mark, this is Helen O’Dowd – or should I say Fitzpatrick? Helen, meet Mark Breen.’
The navy suit looked expensive – having grown up with her father, she knew a well-cut suit when she saw it. Immaculate white shirt, dark grey tie. Almost-black hair, cut so short it stood in bristles around his head. Startlingly blue eyes that met hers full on, the barest ghost of a smile on his face as he nodded once, crushing her fingers briefly in his.
Not handsome – the nose a shade too wide, the cheeks a little pocked, the skin about the eyes deeply creased and shadowed – but a face you wouldn’t easily forget, with the intensity of that gaze. Hard to put an age on him: somewhere between forty and fifty, she thought.
She opened her mouth to say something suitably grateful, like Catherine had suggested – but
the words refused to come. She was working for her cheques, for Christ’s sake, he wasn’t handing out charity. She was a decent writer: if she wasn’t, he’d have told her to take a running jump.
She raised her glass. She’d say what she chose. ‘Happy Christmas. Thanks for the invite. Good to put a face to the voice.’ There, that would do him.
He inclined his head again, the smallest hint of a nod. She had the feeling he was taking her measure. She saw his glance flick to the darker patch on the front of her jacket. ‘Someone bumped into me as I was pouring,’ she said. ‘I’m not blotto yet.’
‘It wasn’t an accusation,’ he pointed out mildly. The voice was familiar, if less peremptory than she was used to.
‘Just thought I’d explain.’ She indicated the bottle. ‘Can I get you one?’ It was a party, for crying out loud. Did he have to look so damn serious?
‘Not just now.’ As he spoke, his gaze drifted from her face to wander off to her left. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,’ he went on, extending his hand towards her again. ‘Good of you to come, help yourself to the wine.’ Another finger-crushing shake and he was gone, disappearing into the crowd.
Helen looked after him, prickling with annoyance. Clearly, the great M. Breen didn’t consider her interesting enough to spend more than thirty seconds in her company. Help yourself to the wine indeed, as if she should be grateful for his atrocious plonk. As if all she’d come for was his free booze.
She turned back to Catherine. ‘That went well.’
The PA didn’t notice, or chose to ignore, the sarcasm. ‘It went fine. I’m delighted you finally got to meet him. Let me introduce you to some more of the gang.’
But Helen decided she’d had more than enough. ‘Thanks,’ she said, setting down her untouched glass, ‘but I really must
be going – I promised the babysitter I’d be home by ten.’
The white lies she told, the fronts she put up, the hard shell she’d grown around her heart over the last two years. She stood on the path outside the newspaper offices, pulling the cold, crisp air into her lungs, ignoring the people who pushed past her. Everyone looking happy, three days before Christmas.
On the way to the bus stop she went into an off-licence and bought a bottle of their second cheapest whiskey.
‘Happy Christmas,’ the youngish bearded man behind the counter said, and Helen took her change and wished him the same, because for all she knew he deserved one.
Back home she felt her way along the tiny darkened hallway until her foot touched the bottom stair. She climbed halfway up and sat, taking the bottle from its brown paper bag and unscrewing the cap. As she drank, she conjured up her first Christmas with Cormac, just a few weeks after they’d met. The marvel of what they’d found still new and fresh, their hunger for one another all-consuming.
This house had been their sanctuary, all they needed under its roof. The Christmas Day chicken drying and shrivelling in the oven, everything forgotten in the wonder of their entwined bodies, the miracle of the love that had swept away everything else.
People passed in the street outside, their cheerful shouts climbing the dark stairs to her. She pressed a black-jacketed sleeve to her wet face, remembering the length of tinsel that he’d threaded between her toes, trailed up her calves and thighs and across her abdomen and breasts. She remembered the tantalising tickle of it along the mounds and valleys of her body, the delicious tease of its feathery touch making her hot with desire, forcing her finally to pull it away from him and draw him closer—
She put the half-empty bottle down gently and bowed her head to rest it on her knees. Her sobs shuddered from her and merged with the sound of the group on the street outside who had gathered with their collection buckets to sing
about angels they had heard on high.
‘T
his is awful.’
Neil made no response.
‘This book review, it’s horrible, really cruel. Here, have a look.’
He glanced at the newspaper page but made no move to take it. ‘What’s
the book?’
‘It’s a debut novel, a thriller, and Helen O’Dowd is tearing it to shreds. Imagine how he must feel.’
‘How who must feel?’ His
eyes drifting back to the sports section.
‘The
author
, of course. I hate when you only half listen to me. Read it and see – it’s awful.’
‘I’m already reading,’ he pointed out mildly. ‘Or trying to. I’ll get to
it later.’
‘Sorry.’ She dropped the newspaper onto the bed as Helen Reddy began to sing. ‘Oh, I love this, it’s so spooky.’ She reached out and turned up the radio before leaning back to lift his arm and slide under it. ‘I adore Sunday mornings, don’t you?’
‘Mmm.’
She turned to look up at his face. The rectangle of the window was reflected in both lenses of his glasses. ‘You have a lot to put up with, don’t you?’
He smiled, eyes still on the paper.
‘I never let you read in peace, do I?’
‘Nope.’
She grinned as she settled into his chest. ‘But you married me, so you’re stuck with me forever.’
‘Or until divorce comes in.’
‘In holy Catholic Ireland? Not a hope.’ She eyed the newspaper section she’d just discarded, lying in a crumpled heap on the eiderdown. ‘I’ve a good mind to write to her.’
‘Hmm?’
‘I feel like writing to Helen O’Dowd and saying I thought she was far too harsh.’
Neil lowered his paper. ‘My dear soft-hearted wife, the woman is reviewing a book. It’s her job to tell it like it is, even if it’s not what you want to hear. If you had your way, nobody would ever say anything vaguely negative, in case someone’s feelings were hurt.’
‘But she’s being so cruel,’ Sarah insisted, reaching again for the page. ‘Just listen to this bit –
If he wants to write so badly, let him keep a diary: that way, nobody else has to read it.
Now you have to agree that that’s just downright nasty. It doesn’t add anything to the review. Stop
smiling
.’
‘It’s funny, though. Helen O’Dowd has a sharp tongue, you know that, but she’s also entertaining. She loves to court a bit of controversy – it’s what makes her interesting. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.’
‘Well, I’ve read it now, and I think it’s too harsh.’
‘And have you read the book she’s talking about?’
‘That’s beside the point. Even if it isn’t much good, the review is still cruel.’ She folded the newspaper. ‘I’m going to write and protest. I think it needs to be said, even if I’m the only one saying it. It might make her choose her words more carefully in future. She can still tell the truth, but in a kinder way.’