Marian Keyes - Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married (13 page)

"I wish you would."

"Here goes! I'm even worse when I'm in a drug-free zone. There! I've said it! I suppose you'll be getting up and leaving me now?"

"Actually no."

"But don't you think I'm a lunatic and an embarrassment?"

"Yes."

"You mean to tell me that lunatics and embarrassments are your partic- ular bag, Lucy Sullivan?"

I had never really thought of it that way before but now that he had mentioned it...

"Yes," I said.

19 He took me by the hand and led me through the hall and I let myself be led. Where was he taking me, I wondered in excitement. I pushed past Daniel and he raised his eyebrows questioningly, then waggled his finger admon- ishingly, but I ignored him. He was a fine one to talk.

"Sit here, Lucy Sullivan." Gus pointed at the bottom stair. "We can have a nice, quiet chat."

That seemed to be very unlikely in view of the fact that there was more traffic up and down the stairs than there was up and down Oxford Street. I wasn't quite sure what was going on upstairs--the usual, I suppose, drug- taking, sex with your best friend's boyfriend on your best friend's coat and the like.

"Now, I'm sorry I scared you back there, Lucy, but I just lucy sullivan is getting married / 143

assumed that you had to be some kind of creative person," Gus said when I was installed on the foot of the stairs.

"I'm a musician myself and music is something I feel very passionately about," he went on. "And I sometimes forget that not everyone else feels the same way."

"That's fine," I said, delighted. Not only was he not mad, but he was a musician, and my favorite men had always been musicians or writers or anything that involved the creative process and behaving like a tortured artist. I had never fallen in love with a man who had a real job and I hoped I never would. I couldn't imagine anything duller than a man with a regular income, a man who was sensible with money, a man who knew how to live within his means. I found financial insecurity a great aphrodisiac. My mother and I disagreed rather violently on that point, but the difference was that she didn't have a romantic bone in her body while I would be hard-pressed to find a portion of my skeleton that wasn't. The radius, the ulna, the patella, the femur, the pelvic girdle (especially that!), the sternum, the humerus, the scapula--both of them in fact--sundry vertebrae, a wide selection of ribs, a whole plethora of metatarsals, nearly as many again metacarpals, the couple of tiny ones in my inner ear--you name it, they were romantic.

"So you're a musician?" I asked with interest. Maybe that was why I felt I knew him--maybe I'd seen him or heard of him or seen a picture of him somewhere.

"I am."

"Are you a famous musician?"

"Famous?"

"Yes, are you a household name?"

"Lucy Sullivan, I'm not a household name, not even in my own house- hold."

"Oh."

"I've disappointed you now, haven't I? We've only just 144 / marian keyes

met and already we're at a crisis. We'll have to go for counseling, Lucy. You stay here and I'll go and find a phone book and look up the number."

"No you won't." I laughed. "I'm not disappointed. I just felt like I knew you, but I didn't know from where, and I thought that if you were famous, that might be how."

"You mean we don't know each other?" he asked, sounding shocked.

"I don't think so," I said, amused.

"We must," he insisted. "At least in a previous existence, if not in this one."

"That's all very well," I said thoughtfully. "But, even if we knew each other in a previous existence, who's to say we liked each other then? I've always had a problem with that--just because people recognize each other from another life doesn't mean they have to like each other, does it?"

"You're absolutely right," said Gus, gripping my hand tight. "I've always thought that too but you're the first person I've met who's ever agreed with me."

"I mean, imagine if I had been your boss in another life--well you wouldn't be too pleased to meet me again, would you?"

"No! Oh Christ, wouldn't it be awful? Dying and traveling through space and time and getting born again and meeting the same terrible people that you met the last time around. Remember me from Ancient Egypt? Good, because you did a terrible job on that pyramid, so go back and do it again."

"Exactly. Or what about, remember me? I was the lion that ate you when you were a Christian in Rome? Remember me now? Good, let's get mar- ried."

Gus laughed delightedly. "You're wonderful. All the same, the two of us must have got along in whatever life we met in before now. I have a good feeling about you--you probably explained Pythagaros's theorem when Pythag lucy sullivan is getting married / 145

aros had run out of patience with me--he was a very short-tempered man, that fella--or lent me money at the turn of the century or something nice. Now is there any more of that Guinness?"

I sent Gus to the fridge and I sat on the stairs and waited. I was thrilled, delighted, bursting with happiness. What a lovely man. I was so glad I had come to the party--my blood ran cold at the thought that I could so easily not have come and then I'd never have met him. And maybe Mrs. Nolan had been right after all. Gus could be The One, the man I'd been waiting for.

Speaking of waiting, where the hell was he?

How long did it take to go to the fridge and steal the rest of Daniel's Guinness?

Hadn't he been gone forever? While I'd been sitting on the step with a dreamy, half-wit's grin on my face, had he started chatting to some other young woman and forgotten all about me?

I started to get nervous.

How long could I wait before I started to look for him, I wondered? What could be considered a decent interval?

And wasn't it a little early in the relationship--even for me--for him to start giving me the runaround?

My state of dreamy, happy introspection abruptly dispersed. I should have known that it was too good to be true. I became aware of the noise and the jostling of the other people around me--I had totally forgotten about them all while I'd been talking to Gus--and I wondered if they were all laughing at me? Had they seen Gus do this to thousands of women? Could they sense my fear?

But, no, here he was, looking a bit disheveled.

"Lucy Sullivan," he declared, sounding anxious and distracted. "I'm sorry I was gone for so long but I've been involved in a terrible fracas." 146 / marian keyes

"Oh God," I laughed. "What happened?"

"When I got to the fridge, some man was trying to help himself to your friend Donal's Guinness. `Unhand them,' I shouted. `I won't,' says he. `You will,' says I. `They're mine,' says he. `They're not,' says I. A tussle ensued, Lucy, where I sustained minor injuries, but the Guinness is safe now."

"Is it?" I said, in surprise, because Gus had a bottle of red wine in his hand and there was no sign of Guinness anywhere.

"Yes, Lucy, I made the ultimate sacrifice and it's safe now. No one else will try to steal it."

"What've you done?"

"Done? But, I drank it, of course, Lucy. What else could I do?"

"Err..."

I looked over my shoulder nervously and, sure enough, through the bars of the banisters I could see Daniel making his way through the hall, his face like thunder.

"Lucy," he shouted. "Some little bastard has stolen..."

He paused when he saw Gus.

"You!" he yelled.

Oh dear. Daniel and Gus had obviously met.

"Daniel, Gus. Gus, Daniel," I said weakly.

"That's him," said Gus, in great annoyance. "That's the light-fingered character who was stealing your friend's Guinness."

"I might have known," said Daniel, shaking his head in resignation, ig- noring Gus's accusatory finger. "I just might have bloody well known. How do you pick them, Lucy? Just tell me how?"

"Oh go away, you sanctimonious pig," I said, annoyed and embarrassed.

"Do you know this person?" Gus demanded of me. "I

don't think he's the type of person you should be friends with. You should have seen the way he..."

"I'm going," said Daniel, "And I'm taking Karen's bottle of wine with me." And he whipped the bottle of wine out of Gus's hand and disappeared back into the throng.

"Did you see that?" shouted Gus. "He's done it again!"

I tried not to laugh, but I couldn't help myself--I obviously wasn't as sober as I had thought.

"Stop it," I said, pulling Gus by the arm. "Sit down and behave."

"Oh, sit down and behave is it?"

"Yes."

"I see!"

There was a short pause while he looked down at me, a fierce frown on his handsome little face.

"Well, if you say so, Lucy Sullivan."

"I say so."

He meekly sat down beside me on the stairs, wearing an overdocile ex- pression. We sat in silence for a few moments.

"Ah well," he said, "it was worth a try."

20 Suddenly I had run out of things to say. I sat squashed up against him on the step, racking my brain for something to say.

"Well!" I said, too cheerfully and trying to hide my sudden shyness. What happens now, I wondered? Should 148 / marian keyes

we say it had been nice meeting each other and easily slip away from each other, like ships leaving their mooring bays? I didn't want that.

I decided to ask him a question--most people seemed to like talking about themselves.

"What age are you?"

"As old as the hills and as young as the morn, Lucy Sullivan."

"Would you mind being a bit more specific?"

"Twenty-four."

"Fine."

"Well, nine hundred and twenty-four, actually."

"Are you indeed?"

"And what age are you Lucy Sullivan?"

"Twenty-six."

"Hmmm, I see. You realize that I'm old enough to be your father?"

"If you're nine hundred and twenty-four, you're old enough to be my grandfather."

"Older, I'd say."

"But you look really good for your age."

"Clean living, Lucy Sullivan, that's what I put it down to. That and the deal I did with the devil."

"What was that?" I was loving this, I was having such a good time.

"I didn't age for any of the nine hundred years that I was waiting for you but, if I ever put foot inside an office to do a real job, I'll age instantly and die."

"That's funny," I said, "because that's exactly what happens to me every time I go to work, but I didn't have to wait nine hundred years for it to happen."

"You don't work in an office, do you?" he asked in horror. "Oh my poor wee Lucy, this can't be right. You shouldn't have to work at all, you should spend your time lucy sullivan is getting married / 149

lying on a silken bed in your golden dress, eating sweetmeats, surrounded by your admirers and your subjects."

"I couldn't agree more," I said warmly, "except for the bit about the sweetmeats. Would you mind if I had chocolate instead?"

"Not at all," he said expansively. "Chocolate it is. And speaking of a silken bed, would it be terribly forward of me if I asked if I could accompany you home tonight?"

I opened my mouth, feeling light-headed with alarm.

"Forgive me, Lucy Sullivan," he said, gripping my arm, his face a picture of stricken shock. "I can't believe I said that. Please, please, banish it from your mind, try to forget that I ever said it, that such a crass suggestion ever passed from my lips. May I be struck down! A bolt of lightning is too good for me, though."

"It's okay," I said nicely, reassured by his mortification. If he was that embarrassed, then surely he didn't make a habit of inviting himself home with women he'd just met?

"No, it's not okay," he said in alarm. "How could I have said something like that to a woman like you? I'm just going to walk away from you now and I want you to forget that you ever met me, it's the least I can do. Goodbye, Lucy Sullivan."

"No, don't go," I said, seized by alarm. I wasn't sure that I wanted to sleep with him, but I certainly didn't want him to go.

"You want me to stay, Lucy Sullivan?" he asked, an anxious look on his face.

"Yes!"

"Well, if you're really sure...hold on here while I get my coat."

"But..."

Oh God! I had wanted him to stay as in stay talking to me at the party, but he seemed to think that I had invited him to stay with me in the silken bed with the sweetmeats

and I was too afraid to upset him by explaining the misunderstanding to him, so it looked as if I had an overnight guest.

He was back, a lot more promptly than the last time, trailing scarves and a coat and a sweater under his arm.

"I'm ready, Lucy Sullivan."

I bet you are, I thought, swallowing with nerves.

"There's only one thing, Lucy."

What now?

"I'm not sure I have quite enough money to pay my full share of the taxi fare. Ladbroke Grove is a long way away, isn't it?"

"Well, how much money do you have?"

He pulled a handful of change out of his pocket. "Let me see, four pounds...five pounds...no, sorry, they're pesetas. Five pesetas, a dime, a miraculous medal and seven, eight, nine, eleven pence!"

"Come on." I laughed. After all, what had I expected? I couldn't wish for a penniless musician and then complain when he didn't have any money.

"I'll treat you right, Lucy, just as soon as I get my big break."

21 A long time later we arrived at Ladbroke Grove. Gus and I held hands in the taxi but we hadn't kissed yet. It was only a matter of time and I felt very nervous about it. An excited sort of nervous.

Gus insisted on chatting with the taxi driver, asking him lucy sullivan is getting married / 151

all kinds of annoying questions--who was the most famous person he'd ever had in his cab, who was the least famous person he'd ever had in his cab, that kind of thing--and only stopped when the taxi driver screeched to a halt somewhere around Fulham and, in a volley of short, brusque, Anglo-Saxon words, conveyed to us that if Gus didn't shut up we could both get out and make our own travel arrangements for the rest of the way.

The planets were not aligned in my house of taxi drivers that evening.

"My seals are lipped," shouted Gus and we spent the rest of the journey whispering and nudging each other and giggling like schoolchildren, speculating on why the taxi driver was so bad-tempered.

I paid for the taxi and Gus absolutely insisted that I take his handful of foreign change.

"But I don't want it," I said.

"Take it, Lucy," he insisted. "I've got my pride, you know," he added with more than a hint of irony.

"Well, okay." I smiled, happy to humor him. "But I don't want your miraculous medal, I've got thousands of my own, thanks all the same."

"I bet your mother gave them to you."

"But of course."

"Yes, Irish mothers are like a bottomless pit of miraculous medals. They always have one hidden somewhere. And do you find that she's always forcing things on you?"

"How d'you mean?"

Gus prodded me in my side with his finger, as I tried to open the front door, "Will you have a cup of tea? Yes, you will. Give her a whole pot, it'll warm her up."

He thumped up the stairs calling after me, "Will you have a slice of bread, go on, you'll have the entire loaf. Have a ten-pound bag of potatoes, have an eight-course 152 / marian keyes

banquet, go on, sure, you need fattening up. I know you've just had your dinner, but another can't hurt."

I couldn't help laughing, even though I was worried that the other resid- ents of the building would complain about being awakened at two in the morning by a drunken Irishman insisting that they would like a haunch of beef.

"Go ahead," he shouted. "I'll even cook it for you."

"Shush," I said, giggling.

"Sorry," he stage whispered. "But will you?" he said, pulling on my coat sleeve.

"Will I what?"

"Will you eat an entire pig?"

"No!"

"But we'll only be throwing it away if you don't eat it. And we killed it specially for you."

"Stop it."

"Well, you'll at least have a drop of holy water and a miraculous medal, won't you?"

"Okay, just to please you."

We got into the flat and I suggested tea, but Gus wasn't interested in tea.

"I'm really tired, Lucy," he said. "Will we go to bed?"

Oh God! I knew what that meant.

There was so much to worry about, not least the question of contraception and Gus didn't strike me as being in any kind of condition to care about such matters. Or even for them to occur to him. Perhaps he was a more responsible citizen when he wasn't drunk--although I wouldn't have counted on it--so it looked as though it was up to me to be the sensible, careful party. Not that I minded--I preferred men who erred on the side of wildness rather than caution.

"How about it, Lucy?" He smiled at me.

"Sure!" I said, trying to sound bright, breezy, uncon lucy sullivan is getting married / 153

cerned, like a woman in control. Then I thought that perhaps I had sounded too eager and while I didn't want him to realize that I was a bag of nerves, neither did I want him to think that I was desperate to go to bed with him.

"Er, come on," I muttered, hoping my tone was striking a neutral middle ground.

I realized that I hadn't been entirely wise. I had invited a complete stranger, a complete male stranger, a very strange stranger, into my empty apartment. If I ended up raped and robbed and murdered, then I would only have myself to blame. Although Gus wasn't acting like he had rape and pillage on his mind. He was too busy dancing around my bedroom opening drawers, reading my credit card bills and admiring my fixtures and fittings.

"A real fireplace!" he shouted. "Lucy Sullivan, you realize what this means?"

"What does it mean?"

"It means that we must pull up our chairs and sit in the flickering firelight and tell stories."

"Yes, but you see, we don't actually use the fireplace, because the chimney needs to be..."

But I'd lost him because he opened my wardrobe and was flicking through the hangers.

"Aha! A rough-hewn cloak," he said, pulling out an old coat of mine, a long velvet one with a hood. "What do you think?"

He tried it on (and, in fairness, that was all he seemed to be interested in trying on), pulled up the hood and stood in front of the mirror swishing it around.

"Beautiful," I laughed. "It's you."

He looked a bit like an elf, but quite a sexy elf.

"You're laughing at me, Lucy Sullivan."

"I'm not."

And I wasn't because I thought he was gorgeous. I was 154 / marian keyes

delighted with his enthusiasm, the way he found everything interesting, his unusual way of looking at things. There's no other word for it--I was enchanted.

I was also very relieved that he was playing dressing-up instead of trying to get me into bed. I did find him attractive--very attractive--but it seemed a little bit soon to be hopping into bed with him. But I had, after all, said that he could come home with me and I felt that in that case etiquette dic- tated that I couldn't really not go to bed with him.

In theory, I knew that it was my right not to go to bed with anyone I didn't want to, and to change my mind at any stage in the proceedings, but the reality was that I would be far too embarrassed to say no.

I suppose I felt that after he had come all this way it would be inhospit- able to send him away empty-handed. It went back to my childhood, where generosity to our visitors mattered above all else, where it didn't matter if we had to do without dinner so long as the guests were fed.

I also felt that Gus and I were somehow meant to be together and that was very seductive. Not only would it be unforgivably rude to refuse to sleep with him, but it would be actively flying in the face of fate, calling the wrath of the gods to be delivered down on top of me. It was a great relief to think that, actually, because it took all the "Will I, won't I?" out of it. I had no choice. I had to sleep with him. No agonizing, everything was nice and simple.

All the same, I was still nervous. I suppose the gods can't think of everything.

I sat on my bed and fiddled with my earrings, while Gus roamed around the room, picking things up, putting them down, and making all kinds of comments.

"Nice books, Lucy. Apart from all this California stuff," he muttered, reading the back of Who Gets the Car lucy sullivan is getting married / 155

in the Dysfunctional Family of the Nineties. I was glad to see that, while Gus was slightly eccentric, he wasn't totally neurotic.

I put my earrings back on so that I could take them off again. I had always found that wearing jewelry was a good idea in a seduction-type situation because, while it gave me the appearance of taking things off and made me seem as if I was a good sport and game for anything, in actuality the other person was down to his undergarments long before I ever was, giving me the chance to back out or change my mind without exposing, among other things, my own hand.

I learned that trick the summer I was fifteen and Ann Garrett and Fiona Hart and I used to play strip poker with some of the boys from our road. Ann and Fiona both had bosoms and in a summer that was awash with sexual undertones and overtones--none of them emanating to or from me, I have to say--they were dying to be forced into a situation where they had to display themselves. I had no bosoms, and even though I was de- lighted to feel that I had friends, I would rather have died than sit in the field behind the shops on a balmy summer evening in my undershirt and panties with Derek Wheatley and Gordon Wheatley and Joe Newey and Paul Stapleton.

So I solved the problem by wearing as much jewelry and accessories as I could lay my hands on. My ears weren't pierced--I didn't get that done until I was twenty-three--so I had to wear clip-on earrings, which stopped the circulation and turned my earlobes into two throbbing red balls of agony, but it was a small price to pay. (Although it was always a relief to lose the first couple of hands of poker.) And I smuggled out and wore my mother's cameo ring that she kept wrapped in tissue paper in a box in the bottom of her wardrobe and only wore herself 156 / marian keyes

on her wedding anniversary and her birthday. It was far too big for me and I lived in terror of losing it. And with three pink plastic bracelets and my Confirmation cross and chain, I made sure that I never had to take off more than my socks and sandals. But just to be on the safe side I wore three pairs of socks.

Curiously enough, Ann and Fiona never wore any jewelry.

And they seemed to be no good at the game either, throwing away aces and kings like they were going out of fashion and in what seemed like no time at all, they were down to their bras and panties, giggling and saying how embarrassed they were and sitting up straight with their stomachs in and their shoulders back and their chests thrust out. While I remained fully clothed, with just a neat little pile of pink bracelets and earrings on the grass beside me.

It was odd. I hardly ever won at anything but I somehow nearly always managed to win at strip poker. But the oddest thing of all was that none of the other players acted very impressed. It took me several years to realize that they hadn't been, as I so smugly thought, sore losers.

I was a very na�ve teenager.

I went on taking my earrings on and off while Gus familiarized himself with the contents of my bedroom.

"I'll just have a little lie-down, Lucy, if that's okay."

"Fine."

"Do you mind if I take my boots off?"

"Er, no, not at all." I had been expecting him to take off a lot more than his boots. If he just took off his boots I'd be getting away lightly.

He lay down on the bed beside me.

"This is nice," he said, holding my hand.

"Mmmm," I murmured. It was nice.

"D'you know something, Lucy Sull...?"