Cathy Kelly 3-book Bundle (87 page)

‘Kathryn, was it?’ said Ingrid. She’d heard about Kathryn, a sweet girl David had brought to many dances as a youngster. He’d thought of marrying her, he’d said.

‘Lord, no! Not Kathryn, the one after her–Star Bluestone.’

‘I never heard him mention her,’ said Ingrid.

‘You’d have liked her,’ Babe went on. ‘Very wise, even though she was young.’

‘Do you think it could have been her?’ Ingrid said, struck by the thought. ‘He was having an affair with her?’

‘No,’ said Babe firmly. ‘But she was an interesting woman. David’s mother said she was a white witch, could see into the future and such like. David used to get very upset when she said that. We might be a long way from the Salem trials, but the old magic still frightens the bejaysus out of most people.’

‘Was she a witch?’ asked Ingrid, fascinated. She couldn’t imagine David being involved with a woman like that. He was straight as an arrow, never so much as read his horoscope, thought Feng Shui was rubbish, and she could remember him changing channels when a woman came on the
Late Late Show
and talked about seeing angels.

‘No, but she had that long white-blonde hair and she was very into herbs and suchlike; that’s enough for most people.’

‘White-blonde hair?’ repeated Ingrid. ‘There was a woman like that at his funeral. I saw her: Molly’s friend Natalie fainted, and the woman was beside her, all in white–very bizarre for a funeral.’

‘She did wear a lot of white,’ Babe mused, then glanced up at Ingrid, who looked bleak.

‘I keep finding out more things about David that I never knew,’ Ingrid said sadly. ‘What else will I find out?’

Babe shook her head. ‘You knew the real David,’ she said briskly. ‘People have secrets, that’s all.’

‘I don’t have secrets,’ Ingrid countered.

‘’Course you do! We all do,’ Babe said. ‘Just think how boring we’d be if we didn’t.’

The Past

As soon as he heard her name–a name he hadn’t heard spoken for many years–the hairs stood up on the back of David Kenny’s neck.

‘The woman who makes them is called Star Bluestone,’ said Lena, smoothing a tapestry out on the table in his office. ‘She’s a fascinating person and the tapestries are just beautiful.’

Lena was telling him about her newest find, a craftswoman who lived on the outskirts of Ardagh in a windswept cottage on the coast, where she ran a small business producing exquisite tapestries.

‘She started off making the dyes herself,’ Lena explained, detailing the production process as she would for any new line she was trying to sell to David. ‘Like woad, for example. Did you know it’s not some mythical paint people put on their faces in pre-Christian times, it’s actually a dye made out of this cabbage-like flower. She grows it in her garden–she showed me. She’s so knowledgeable, it’s fascinating to hear her talk about it all. As the range expanded, making all the
dyes became too difficult and time-consuming, so she buys some from abroad now. But they’re still hand-made,’ went on Lena, ‘there is nothing synthetic in Bluestone tapestries, so that’s very good from a “green” point of view. As you can see, the tapestries themselves are lovely. Sort of mystical, aren’t they? She’s incredibly creative. What do you think? I’ve got some more to show you, if you want to see them?’ Lena said.

‘That would be great,’ David said, managing not to sound even a little shocked at the mention of Star’s name. He didn’t want anyone to know about their involvement in the past. Keep yourself to yourself was a good motto; not one that his father had taught him, but one that David had learned along the way.

The tapestry Lena had unrolled on to the table was a seascape, a rendition of the Twelve Apostles, the rocks that jutted out of the sea near Star’s home. David had seen them many times and here, with her wonderful embroidery, Star had made them look almost like sea creatures rising out of the foam.

‘I took a picture of the house and of her,’ Lena went on. ‘I was just thinking that we could do a brochure. You know: make it a little bit different from the way they sold them in the craft shop. It’s very cute, the craft shop, actually,’ she said. ‘Lots of pottery, a few horrendous paintings, some nice watercolours, but nothing else we could use, nothing like this. These are the gems.’

David nodded and pretended to look at the second tapestry, which showed a little house hidden in the woods, but all the while his eyes were drawn to the pictures Lena had laid down on the table. The pale blue shingle house he could remember so well and the picture of Star herself shook him. She looked as if she hadn’t aged. There was still something very exotic about her, even though she was dressed in faded jeans and an old T-shirt–clearly what she’d happened to be wearing when Lena had called in.

‘She didn’t want to pose, I can tell you that,’ Lena said. ‘But I begged her. I said that at Kenny’s we believe art is about the artist, too.’

‘Absolutely,’ David said. ‘I like her work; I think it would be good to stock these tapestries. Can you talk to her about terms?’

‘Don’t you want to meet her yourself?’ Lena asked, surprised.

‘There’s no need,’ David said. ‘You’re a director now, Lena.’ It was just after Lena had been appointed to the board, and he made it sound as if this was part of her new brief, rather than his trying to avoid meeting someone.

‘Of course,’ Lena said, pleased.

When Lena had gone, David still felt unsettled.

It had been well over thirty years since he’d seen Star. So much had happened since. He’d taken over Kenny’s, he’d married Ingrid and had two beautiful children. Molly was in her first year of college, Ethan was playing lots of sports at school and not doing much else, and Ingrid–well, Ingrid was one of the most recognised people in the country. So David had done well for himself.

But buried inside him was a sense of shame about the past, a feeling that he hadn’t done the right thing by Star Bluestone.

He’d loved her, no doubt about that. Adored her. Back then, he used to write poetry, inspired by her beauty, her wisdom, her wild sexual energy.

But he’d known they were too young and too different. Their sort of love wouldn’t have coped with being poor and struggling to pay a mortgage, waking in the night with a colicky baby. He couldn’t imagine Star doing anything so mundane, even though she was pretty practical around the house and grounds that she and her mother owned. That was how he remembered her: hair flying as she helped her mother in the garden, the pair of them digging away at some plant,
hatless no matter what the weather, laughing, rejoicing, even if it rained. While everyone else David knew hurried indoors as soon as the first drops began to fall, Star and her mother enjoyed rain, the same as they enjoyed sun: as though it was a gift, a gift they had no control over but enjoyed all the same. Elemental, that was the word for them.

‘She’s a lovely girl, son, but she’s different, isn’t she?’ his father had said all those years ago.

Andrew Kenny had a way of speaking without raising his voice or sounding angry yet leaving you understanding his meaning just as strongly as if he’d yelled it from a megaphone.

Star was too different for their world. With Star, David would stay writing poetry under the moonlight, and would never be the man to take over Kenny’s. Not that he wasn’t able, but Andrew Kenny had invested far too much of his life in the store to let anyone take over the running of it if his judgement wasn’t true.

David understood the subtext of his father’s remark:

Choose Star or choose Kenny’s. You can’t have both.

Thirty-five years ago, he’d chosen Kenny’s, but at least once a week for six months after he’d told Star it was over, he found himself driving along the sea road towards her home with the intention of telling her he’d made the wrong decision. His father could keep the store.

But each time he had turned for home before the cottage came into view.

It was a couple of years after the split with Star that he met Ingrid. Nobody had said,
This is the sort of girl you should marry; she’s clever, ambitious, ethical, strong and passionate
–all the things that Ingrid undoubtedly was. No, he’d fallen in love with her all by himself. With her passion, her energy, her beauty. It was a very different sort of beauty to Star’s rather wild attractions. Ingrid was classy, and now that David was working in Kenny’s there was a part of him that appreciated her elegance, style and charm.

His mother, Sarah, who was delicate and highly strung, had adored Ingrid from the start. She’d only met Star a few times and she’d liked her–everyone liked Star, that innate kindness meant you couldn’t not like her–but David’s mother saw in Ingrid the sort of woman she would have liked to have been.

Ingrid never flattered her or fawned, but nor did she discount Sarah Kenny, which other people were prone to do. Some women, knowing she was what was euphemistically known at the time, as ‘bad with her nerves’, even flirted with Andrew Kenny in her presence. David had seen it happen many times.

He could remember Ingrid’s outrage the first time she’d witnessed this.

It had been a Christmas drinks party at the family’s house outside Ardagh and several women in gleaming cocktail gowns were crowded round charismatic Andrew Kenny, as if poor Sarah, standing helplessly by with a tray of canapés, didn’t exist.

‘How dare they ignore her!’ Ingrid said, outraged. ‘What sort of female solidarity is that?’

David had been startled by her reaction. He’d never really thought about the way people treated his mother before. His mother was his mother and he loved her, even though he’d had to get used to her taking to her bed when the stress got too much for her. Something that seemed to happen a lot.

‘Well, you know, they’re friends of Mum and Dad, it’s harmless,’ David told Ingrid.

Ingrid had rounded on him: ‘It’s anything but harmless,’ she said. ‘There is nothing harmless about flirting with another man when his wife is right there beside him. How appalling is that?’

It wasn’t the first time David had seen this fiery side of Ingrid’s nature, but it was the first time it had been directed at him.

‘If you’re not going to do anything about it,’ Ingrid said furiously, ‘I will.’

She might have been only twenty-five, but she’d been vice-president of the students’ union and her thesis was on ‘Female Equality’. Ingrid’s hair had been longer then, more blonde, and she’d swept over to where his father stood with two women. They were giggling girlishly, hanging on his every word. One kept touching his arm and he was clearly enjoying the attention. David followed at a safe distance, fascinated and slightly horrified at what was going to happen.

‘Mr Kenny,’ Ingrid said, in her most charming voice, ‘Mrs Kenny was just wondering if you’d speak to her a minute about the party?’

She stared pointedly at the other two women. ‘It’s such hard work organising a party like this, making sure everything runs smoothly.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Andrew Kenny, and moved off. If he was surprised that his meek wife required his presence, he didn’t show it. Ingrid turned to the two women, both much older than her, matrons, glittering with jewels.

‘We haven’t been introduced,’ she said coolly; ‘Ingrid Fitzgerald. I think I’ve met both of your husbands, though. Have you finished with them, ladies? I’m assuming you must have, the way you’re talking to Mr Kenny.’ The women’s jaws dropped.

‘I should just tell you,’ Ingrid said, ‘I’m working on a paper on feminism and I’d love to interview people who are interested in demolishing the archaic values of monogamy. For instance, latching on to a new man while you’re still married someone else–it’s an absolutely fascinating notion. I didn’t think it would catch on in Irish society, but I see it has.’

Under their heavy layers of foundation, the women went pale.

‘Excuse me, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ snapped one.

Ingrid stared her down. ‘I think you do,’ she said. ‘And if you think it’s good form to come into a woman’s house and flirt with her husband, I can assure you, it isn’t.’ And she looked them both up and down, then swept away to where David was watching, just as astonished as the two women.

‘Was it a bit too much?’ Ingrid murmured into his ear as they walked away.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I mean, their husbands are very good friends of Dad’s, and if they say anything…’

‘And you really think they’re going to go home and tell their husbands about this encounter, do you?’ demanded Ingrid. ‘God, David, I can see I have a lot to teach you about people!’ And she’d hugged him. ‘I couldn’t let those women hurt your poor mum.’

He’d loved her so much at that moment for her absolute fearlessness. There was nothing that would stop Ingrid fighting for something that she believed in. It was a heady feeling. It wasn’t so easy when her fearlessness was trained on you, though.

‘Your wife is on the line,’ said Stacey, dragging him back to the present.

Star’s tapestry was still on the table in his office. Lovely Star. For a moment, he felt irritated by Ingrid. For all she stood for: security, the right person, someone with ambition. The sort of woman who made his father proud of him. He loved her absolutely, but she was the exact opposite to Star.

He picked up the phone and she didn’t say hello, just burst into conversation: ‘Sorry, David, but I’m delayed at work. An emergency. The Department of Health is having a press conference and I have to cover it in studio. I probably won’t make the dinner party, I’m really sorry.’

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Good luck, I’ll see you later,’ and hung up. She was always too busy. Busy and fearless. Sometimes he got tired of it.

A few days after Star had come circuitously back into his life, Ingrid had to go to a ceremony to receive an award. The
Irish Tatler
Inspiring Woman of the Year. She’d had quite a few awards over the years, but she was very excited about this one.

‘I’ve never seen you like this before,’ David remarked as he lay in bed on Saturday morning watching Ingrid trawl through her wardrobe looking for a suitable evening dress for the event.

‘What do you mean?’ she said crossly.

Bloody menopause, he thought.

She hadn’t gone for HRT tablets, had ventured down the alternative route instead, using supplements like Black Cohosh and Q10. David, too, had been made to take supplements every day, until he rattled. He didn’t mind really, though he used to tease her about it in front of Marcella.

‘She’s trying to turn me into a young fellow, Marcella,’ he’d say plaintively, and Marcella would laugh.

‘Too late,’ she would say. ‘You’re too far gone for that.’

‘You don’t normally get this het-up about award ceremonies, that’s all,’ David said mildly and Ingrid murmured, ‘Don’t I?’ and went back to her trawling.

‘This is a big one,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve been feeling a little off the last week.’ Nobody was better than Ingrid when it came to saying sorry. She readily admitted her faults. ‘I tried on that red beaded dress I love and it’s too tight. I’m not eating any more than usual, I’m still going to the gym, but despite all that, I still look like I’ve got a big wad of packing around my middle. It’s so depressing,’ she added, more to herself than to him. ‘I’m just fed up with the feeling that I’m falling apart. When I deal with one problem, another bit of me falls apart.’

Her joints were giving her trouble, he knew that, and her neck was sometimes painful because of a displaced cervical disc. That had been bad lately, which always made her cranky.
‘Everything bulges,’ she said gloomily, and he saw her put her hand up to her neck. ‘And why is it that, without anything I’ve done, the muscles in my neck are taut and the muscles in my belly are flabby? I have a six pack in my neck where I don’t want it. Why can’t you decide where you want the taut bits and have them all nice and loose in your neck and taut in your belly?’