Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
They’ve lit some candles, old white candles stuck into beer
bottles. A fellow starts playing the didgeridoo, big earthy
vibrations. Erika and Fiona are getting through their beers pretty
fast, but I am sipping mine; I have three interviews to do tomorrow, and I don’t want to have a hangover.
‘I’m ravished,’ Erika suddenly announces; then she blushes. ‘Sorry, I mean I’m famished.’
‘I’m ravished too.’ I smile. The only food they seem to serve here is nachos with melted cheese.
‘And me,’ says Fiona. ‘Let’s go and get some food.’
I suddenly realise I really want to leave this place, even though I love it. I love it, but it scares me, too, because it’s reminding me
of Nathaniel. It seems like just the kind of club he and Ziggy would have come to with their friends. I can almost see them laughing and joking and dreaming at one of the small round
wooden tables. Maybe he and Eloise will be sitting here together
in a few months, and I can’t bear the thought of it. As I reach for
my handbag and negotiate my way through the crowd towards the exit, I begin to wonder what Diarmuid would make of this
place. A few months ago I would have known that he would hate it, but now I don’t know this – and the fact that I don’t know this
seems far closer to the truth.
‘I wish I’d brought my guitar with me,’ Erika says as we try to
find our way back to the hotel. ‘They seem to be allowing all sorts
of people up to the microphone.’
Fiona and I don’t comment. We pass a hotdog stand and are
suddenly even more ravished than before. ‘Easy on the mustard,’
Erika says to the guy, who looks rather gruff and businesslike. She
sounds like she does this every day.
We eat our hotdogs and savour the hot, sultry evening. Every
so often a jogger pounds past us – a New York jogger, determined
and driven. Some of them are listening to Walkmans, hearing the latest news about the yen or lost in jazz, Bach, the Red Hot Chili
Peppers; they could be listening to anything at all.
When we get back to the hotel, we go straight to our rooms. It’s wonderful to be staying in such comfortable surroundings. Fiona has got such an enormous ‘business’ discount that I can e
ven afford to repay her the money, out of the pretty basic
expense allowance Greta has given me. Fiona has told Erika she
can pay her back with massages. She says she’ll need loads of massages after Zak leaves her.
Even though I’m tired, I decide to watch a bit of television. American TV guides are as big as the
Reader’s Digest
.
You could
spend a whole evening channel-hopping. A mahogany-coloured
guy with a black moustache is waving his arms around and shouting about low-cost diamonds. He suddenly breaks into
Spanish. I watch the news for a bit, but it jumps around from big stories to small ones so much I get confused. They get all excited
about a new bridge, and then there’s something about various wars and famines and terrorists and muggers. The newsreaders seem to be coated with super-thin transparent plastic; even their
smiles remain unchanged for far longer than is normal. They get
all joky about a lost dog that got on a train to Newark, New
Jersey. That makes them laugh. Wally – that’s the dog’s name –
gets five whole minutes. He’s some kind of terrier. When he got to
Newark, he walked into a hairdresser’s and lay under the
reception desk until someone called his owner. The number was
on his collar.
I am so groggy I almost expect the next news item to be about
April and this new father of hers. I get a panicky feeling just
remembering what she told me, but then it mixes with the general
strangeness of the night. I still don’t believe it, really. Every so
often it lunges at me, but it seems unreal. In another way, though,
it feels like something I’ve always known but couldn’t admit to
myself. Like the fact that I didn’t love Diarmuid when I married
him. I lied in that church. I thought he loved me, and his love would be enough for us both.
I search desperately for the Public Broadcasting Service
channel, the one that does
Armchair Theatre
and imports all the
best drama from the BBC. I feel sure I’ll end up watching
Upstairs
Downstairs
,
but what comes on is a wildlife documentary about
baboons with big red bottoms. I turn off the television. The sound
of the city is a background hum. Every so often there are big, scary whoopy noises.
I go to the window. It’s almost dark, but the streetlights cast an
orange glow on the trees sprouting at the edge of the sidewalk – New York trees; trees that could tell you about rap music and prostitutes and drugs and women in brown fur coats carrying
white poodles that wear red nail varnish. Taxis are drawing up at
the front door of the hotel, disgorging businessmen with
briefcases and svelte young women talking into mobile phones.
An elderly couple are walking arm in arm. They look as though
they’ve just gone out to dinner. They must be in their seventies, but they don’t look old; there’s a spring in their step. Even their wrinkles seem enthusiastic. She’s wearing a cerise dress with a
long indigo scarf slung around her shoulders, and he’s wearing a
brown suit and a white shirt; he’s taken off his tie, you can see it
peeping out of a pocket of the jacket he’s carrying. They’ve been
to a musical
and
a meal. That must be it. Their hearts are still full
of big swathes of longing –
pleasant
longing, longing that has
some point to it. Dad says that certain chords reach the heart in the same way.
Suddenly April’s secret seems to fill the room. I have to talk to
someone about it. Erika and Fiona are probably snoring by now.
Who should I phone? I want to talk to Nathaniel, but I mustn’t. He’s probably with Eloise, anyway. Diarmuid – I’ll phone Diarmuid. He’s usually pleased to hear from me, and he’s very discreet. And sharing this secret with him will keep the lines of communication open.
He picks up the phone right away. Good, he’s actually at home.
He so often isn’t these days. ‘Hello, Diarmuid.
’
‘Oh.’ He sounds hesitant. ‘Oh, hello, Sally.’
‘I’m in New York!’
‘Oh.’ Now he sounds perplexed. ‘What are you doing there?’
‘
It was all very last-minute. I’ve got to interview some people
tomorrow, then I’m flying home.’
‘I’ll collect you from the airport if you like.’
‘Really? Are you sure?’
‘Yes, of course.’
I tell him when the plane is supposed to arrive. ‘This means a
lot to me, Diarmuid,’ I say. I’m about to add that I’m feeling a bit
odd, because of what April told me, when I realise he doesn’t sound like himself. In fact, he sounds very distracted.
‘Diarmuid… have I phoned you at an inconvenient time?’
‘Well, I…’ I can almost hear him scratching his stubble.
Diarmuid’s facial hair grows at an alarming rate. ‘Well, actually,
I’m just–.’
‘Diarmuid, do you want me to open the wine?’ A voice. A woman’s voice.
‘Yes… fine,’ he says. I can almost hear him blushing.
‘Who’s that?’ I demand.
‘Just a friend.’
‘Where’s the bottle-opener?’ The voice is closer now. This
friend clearly doesn’t want her presence to remain a secret.
‘In that drawer.’
Silence. He must have put his hand over the receiver.
‘It’s Charlene, isn’t it?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘Just tell me. It’s her, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he says, after a moment. ‘It’s just dinner, that’s all. We
needed to talk about some things.’
You should be talking about things with
me
,
Diarmuid!
I want
to scream.
How come you’ve got so talkative suddenly? You
never wanted to ‘talk about things’ when we were married.
But I don’t say it, because he knows my feelings about all this already. I have shouted and screamed and hollered and let his mice loose.
Maybe he just feels more comfortable talking with Charlene. And
I’m tired. I just want to curl under my duvet and dream of
nothing.
‘Sally?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll meet you in the arrivals hall.’
‘OK.’
‘Good night.’
‘Good night, Diarmuid.’
I don’t even get undressed. I just fall onto my bed. I dream that
DeeDee is holding me, drying my tears and telling me she understands. Suddenly I wake up with a start and find myself
reaching for my handbag. I can’t remember what I’m looking for,
but my fingers close over the notebook. I draw it out and open it
in a kind of daze.
There are some handwritten pages at the back that I didn’t
notice before. The sides of them are frayed, as if they were stuck
together with glue. I remember how the notebook got damp on
the floor of Nathaniel’s car: the dampness must have softened the
glue and released the pages. These notes aren’t about recipes. I can tell at a glance that they are intimate. Secret.
‘
Nobody believes that Joseph forced himself on me
. They think
I’m making it up – Aggie most of all. She says she won’t talk to
me again until I admit that I’ve been lying. They all think I’m jealous. They think I love him and want to marry him myself. And now I’m pregnant, and I don’t know who to turn to. They
don’t love me. If they loved me they’d believe me about Joseph.
“Oh, that’s just DeeDee – you know what she’s like.” That’s what
they think. But they don’t know what I’m like. None of them
really know me. I’ll have to go away and have the baby adopted.
And then I’ll become an actress. I never want to see any of them
again.’
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
I have spent the
day interviewing Top Young Irish Designers
about fancy furniture and accessories. I met the first hip,
happening person in a loft in SoHo and discussed his fabulous wallpaper. Then I moved on to a cramped studio in Greenwich
Village and discussed the very latest developments in lamps. After
that I bustled off to a small shop off Fifth Avenue and met a
woman who can make coffee tables in any shape that appeals to
you – breasts, cats, fruit, butterflies, parsnips, you just name it. She had a metal stud in her nose and a dog called Frankie.
After hearing about symmetry and textures and organic curves
and angles for two and a half hours, I staggered out into the late-
afternoon sunshine and bolted into this coffee shop, where I am having a large cappuccino. I’ve kept my sunglasses on. I’ve
decided I’m that sort of woman now: I wear sunglasses in shady
corners of cafés.