Evening Class (35 page)

‘I’m sure I said it more lovingly than that, Connie,’ he smiled. ‘It was the Bahamas, we were newly-weds.’

‘That’s what you said, and I was just pointing out to Father O’Hara and Mr Murphy that I hope it doesn’t seem like tempting fate, but it does seem to be more or less on course so far.’

‘Let’s just hope that Richard likes the insurance business.’

It was some sort of threat; he knew it but didn’t realise where it was coming from.

It was months later that a solicitor asked him to come to a consultation in his office. ‘Are you arranging a corporate insurance plan?’ Harry asked.

‘No, it’s entirely personal, it’s a personal matter, and I will have a Senior Counsel there,’ the solicitor said.

In the office was T. P. Murphy, the friend of Connie’s father. Smiling and charming, he sat silently as the solicitor explained that he had been retained by Mrs Kane to arrange a division of the joint property, under the Married Women’s Property Act.

‘But she knows that half of mine is hers.’ Harry was more shocked than he had ever been in his life. He had been in business deals where people had surprised him, but never to this extent.

‘Yes, but there are certain other factors to be taken into consideration,’ the solicitor said. The distinguished barrister said nothing, just looked from one face to the other.

‘Like what?’

‘Like the element of risk in your business, Mr Kane.’

‘There’s an element of risk in every bloody business, including your own,’ he snapped.

‘You will have to admit that your company started very quickly, grew very quickly, some of the assets might not be as sound as they appear on paper.’

God damn her, she had told these lawyers about the group that was dodgy, the one area that he and the partners worried about. They couldn’t have known otherwise.

‘If she has been saying anything against our company in order to get her hands on something for herself she’ll answer for it,’ he said, letting his guard drop completely.

It was at this point that the barrister leaned forward and spoke in his silky voice. ‘My dear Mr Kane, you shock us with such a misunderstanding of your wife’s concern for you. You may know a little of her own background. Her father’s own investments proved insufficient to look after his family when…’

‘That was totally different. He was a cracked old dentist who put everything he got from filling teeth onto a horse or a dog.’ There was a silence in the law office. Harry Kane realised he was doing himself no good. The two lawyers looked at each other. ‘Decent man by all accounts, all the same,’ he said grudgingly.

‘Yes, a very decent man as you say. One of my closest friends for many years,’ said T. P. Murphy.

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

‘And we understand from Mrs Kane that you and she are expecting a second child in a few months’ time?’ the solicitor spoke without looking up from his papers.

‘That’s true, yes. We’re both very pleased.’

‘And Mrs Kane of course has given up her successful career in Hayes Hotel to look after these children, and any more you and she may have.’

‘Listen, it’s a goddamn receptionist job, handing people their keys, saying have a nice stay with us. It’s not a career. She’s married to
me
, she can have anything she wants. Do I deny her anything? Does she say that in her list of complaints?’

‘I’m really very glad that Mrs Kane isn’t here to listen to your words,’ said T. P. Murphy. ‘If you knew how much you have misrepresented the situation. There is no list of complaints, there is a huge concern on her part for you, your company and the family you wanted so much to create. Her anxiety is all on your behalf. She fears that if anything were to happen to the company you would be left without the things you have worked so hard for, and continue to work so hard for, involving a lot of travel and being away from the family home so much.’

‘And what does she suggest?’

They were down to it now. Connie’s lawyers wanted almost everything put in her name, the house and a certain high percentage of the annual pre-tax profit. She would form a company with its own directors. Papers were shuffled, obviously names were already in place.

‘I can’t do that.’ Harry Kane had got where he was by coming straight to the point.

‘Why not, Mr Kane?’

‘What would it mean to my own two partners, the men who set this thing up with me? I have to tell them “Listen lads, I’m a bit worried about the whole caboodle so I’m putting my share in the wife’s name so that you won’t be able to touch me if the shit hits the fan”? How would that look to them? Like a vote of confidence in what we do?’

Harry had never known a voice as soft and yet effective as T. P. Murphy’s. He spoke at a barely audible level and yet every word was crystal clear. ‘I am sure you are perfectly happy for both of your partners to spend their profits as they wish, Mr Kane. One might want to put all his into a stud farm in the West, one might want to buy works of art and entertain a lot of film and media people, for example. You don’t question that. Why should they question that you invest in your wife’s company?’

She had told them all that. How had she known anyway? The wives at the Wednesday evenings… Well, by God, he’d put an end to this.

‘And if I refuse?’

‘I’m sure you won’t do that. We may not have divorce on the statute book but we do have Family Law Courts, and I can assure you that anyone who would represent Mrs Kane would get a huge settlement. The trouble, of course, would be that there would be all that bad publicity, and the insurance business is so dependent on the good faith and trust of the public in general…’ His voice trailed away.

Harry Kane signed the papers.

He drove straight back to his large comfortable home. A gardener came every day, he was wheeling plants across towards a south-facing wall. He let himself in the front door and looked at the fresh flowers in the hall, the bright clean look of the paintwork, the pictures they had chosen together on the walls. He glanced into the large sitting room which would host forty easily for drinks without opening the double doors into the dining room. There were cabinets of Waterford glass. Only dried flowers in the dining room, they didn’t eat there unless it was a dinner party. Out to the sunny kitchen where Connie sat feeding baby Richard little spoonfuls of strained apple and laughing at him, delighted. She wore a pretty flowered maternity dress with a white collar. Upstairs there was the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Soon the delivery van from the supermarket would arrive.

It was by any standards a superbly run home. Domestic arrangements never bothered him nor intruded on his life. His clothes were taken and returned to his wardrobe and drawers. He never needed to buy new socks or underpants, but he chose his own suits and shirts and ties.

He stood and looked at his beautiful wife and handsome little son. Soon they would have another child. She had kept every part of her bargain. In a way she was right to protect her investment. She didn’t see him standing there and when he moved she gave a little jump.

But he noticed that her first reaction was one of pleasure. ‘Oh good, you were able to get home for a bit, will I put on some coffee?’

‘I saw them,’ he said.

‘Saw who?’

‘Your legal team.’ He was crisp.

She was unmoved. ‘Much easier to let them do all the paperwork. You’ve always said that yourself, don’t waste time, pay the experts.’

‘I’d say we’ll be paying T. P. Murphy well to be an expert, judging by the cut of his suits and the watch he was wearing.’

‘I’ve known him a long time.’

‘Yes, so he said.’

She tickled Richard under his chin. ‘Say hallo to your Daddy, Richard. He doesn’t often get home to see you in the daytime.’

‘Is it going to be like this all the time, barbed remarks, snide little references to the fact that I’m not home? Will he grow up like this and the next one, bad daddy, neglectful daddy… is that the way it’s going to be?’

Her face was contrite. And in as much as he understood her at all, he thought she was sincere.

‘Harry, I can’t tell you how much I didn’t mean that to be a barbed remark. I swear I didn’t. I was pleased to see you, I was speaking stupid baby talk telling
him
to be pleased too. Believe me it’s not going to be full of barbed remarks, I hate it in other people, we won’t have it.’

For months she hadn’t approached him, made a gesture of affection to him. But she saw him standing there desolate and her heart went out to him. She crossed to where he was standing. ‘Harry, please don’t be like this, please. You are so good to me, we have such a nice life. Can’t we get the best from it, get joy from it, instead of acting watchful and guarded the way we do?’

He didn’t raise his hands to her even though her arms were around his neck. ‘You didn’t ask me did I sign,’ he said.

She pulled away. ‘I know you did.’

‘Why do you know that? Did they call the moment I left the office?’

‘No, of course they wouldn’t.’ She looked scornful of such a thought.

‘Why not, a job well done?’

‘You signed because it was fair, and because you realise it was for your own good in the end,’ she said.

Then he pulled her towards him and felt the bump in her stomach resting against him. Another child, another Kane for the dynasty he wanted in this fine house. ‘I wish you loved me,’ he said.

‘I do.’

‘Not in the way that matters,’ he said. And his voice was so sad.

‘I try. I try, you know I’m there every night if you want me. I’d like you to sleep in the same bed in the same room, it’s you who wants to be separate.’

‘I came home very, very angry, Connie. I wanted to tell you that you were a bitch going behind my back like that, taking me for every penny I have. I kept thinking you were well named Connie, a real con woman all right… I wanted to tell you a lot of things.’ She stood there waiting. ‘But honestly I think you made just as big a mistake as I did. You are just as unhappy.’

‘I’m more lonely than unhappy,’ she said.

‘Call it whatever you like,’ he shrugged. ‘Will you be less lonely now that you’ve got your money?’

‘I imagine I’ll be less frightened,’ she said.

‘What were you frightened of? That I’d lose it all like your old man did, that you’d have to be poor again?’

‘No, that’s totally wrong.’ She spoke with great clearness. He knew she was telling the truth. ‘No, I never minded being poor. I could earn a living, something my mother couldn’t do. But I was afraid of being bitter like she became, I was afraid that I would hate you if I had to go back to a job that you made me leave, and go in at the bottom rung again. I couldn’t bear the children to have grown up in expectation of one kind of life and end up in another. I know that from experience, so those were things I was frightened of. We had so much going for us, we were always so well suited, everywhere except in bed. I wanted that to go on until we died.’

‘I see.’

‘Can’t you be my friend, Harry? I love you and want the best for you, even if I don’t seem to be able to show it.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, picking up his car keys to leave again. ‘I don’t know. I’d like to be your friend, but I don’t think I can trust you and you have to trust friends.’ He spoke to the gurgling Richard in his high chair. ‘Be good to your mummy, kid, she may look as if she has it nice and easy, but it’s not all that great for her either.’ And when he had gone Connie cried until she thought her heart would break.

The new baby was a girl. She was called Veronica, and then a year later there were the twins. When the scan showed two embryos Connie was overjoyed. Twins had run in her family, how marvellous. She thought Harry too would be delighted. ‘I can see you’re pleased,’ he said very coldly. ‘That makes four. Bargain completed. Curtains drawn on all that nasty, messy business. What a relief.’

‘You can be very, very cruel,’ she said.

To the outside world they were of course the perfect couple. Mr Hayes, whose own daughter Marianne was growing up as a young beauty much sought after by the fortune-hunting young men of Dublin, was still a good friend of Connie’s and often consulted her about the hotel business. If he suspected that her eyes were sometimes sad he said nothing.

He heard rumours that Harry Kane was not an entirely faithful man. He had been spotted here and there with other women. He still had the pathetic devoted secretary in tow. But as the years went on the watchful Mr Hayes decided the couple must have come to some accommodation.

The eldest boy, Richard, was doing well at school and even playing on the first fifteen in the schools rugby cup, the girl Veronica was determined to do medicine and had no other aim since she was twelve, and the twins were fine boisterous boys.

The Kanes still hosted marvellous parties and were seen together in public a lot. Connie went through her thirties more elegantly than any other well-dressed woman of her generation. She never seemed to spend much time studying fashion, nor did she specialise in buying the designer outfits she could well afford, but she always looked perfectly groomed.

She wasn’t happy. Of course she wasn’t happy. But then Connie thought that a lot of people lived life hoping that things would get better, and that lights would turn on, or the film turn into Technicolor.

Maybe that’s the way most people lived, and all this talk about happiness was for the birds. Having worked in a hotel for so long she knew how many people were lonely and inadequate. You saw that side of life amongst the guests. Then on the various charity committees she saw many members who were there only to banish the hours of emptiness, people who suggested more and more coffee-morning meetings because there was nothing else to fill their lives.

She read a lot of books, saw every play that she wanted to, and made little trips to London or down to Kerry.

Harry never had time for a family holiday, he said. She often wondered whether the children realised that his partners went on family holidays with their wives and children. But children could be very unobservant. Other women went abroad with their husbands, but Connie never did. Harry went abroad a lot. It was connected with work, he said. She wondered wryly what work there could be for his investment company in the south of Spain or on a newly developed resort in the Greek Islands. But she said nothing.