The Betrayal (16 page)

They’re still making music when I ring Jenny.

‘Did I tell you Shard’s new drummer is female?’

‘Yes.
You’ve mentioned it on a number of occasions.
Why?
Is that an issue?’

‘She’s downstairs playing the bongos.
Can you hear her?’

‘Are you jealous?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Then why should I listen to her playing the bongos?’

‘I think Jake’s having a thing with her.
Remember that New York text.’

‘What about it?’

‘I’m sure she sent it.’

‘Do you care?’

‘Not at all.’

‘So….’
Jenny pauses, coughs meaningfully.
‘Why are we discussing her?’

‘I’m not… it’s just… I can
hear
them.’

‘Doing what?
Shagging?’

‘
Jenny
.’

‘Okay…making love by the silvery moon…is that what we’re discussing here?’

‘No.
Sea Aster is off limits for
that
.’

‘An eminently sensible decision.
Did I tell you I’m seeing someone?’

‘As in serious?’

‘Could be.’
She utters a most un-Jenny-like giggle.

‘Tell me everything,’ I demand.

And she does.

Downstairs Feral has changed from the bongos to a mouth organ.
The melancholic strains writhe like an eel though the floorboards of Sea Aster.
It’s after midnight before I hear Jake’s apartment door opening.
I watch from the window as Feral walks with him towards her van.
The outside light has switched on.
I’ve a clear view as they stop beside the van and hug each other.
This is not a brief hug.
It’s spontaneous, filled with vigour and promise.
Does it matter?
Of course not.
He’s free.
I’m free.
I need to escape from here.
Watching Jake play out his new life in front of me is torture.
At last they separate.
Feral drives away, the wheels spraying pebbles.
Jake stands in the pool of light until the rear lights disappear around the side of Sea Aster.

T
he sense
of déjà vu startled him when Karin drove into Gracehills and they passed Nadine’s old house.
Karin stared straight ahead and made no reference to it.
She must have spent time there, stayed overnight, sat on the garden wall, walked to and from school with Nadine through Gracehills Park.
A different front door and windows, the front garden paved, it was hardly recognisable but Jenny Corcoran’s house was unchanged.
The same neatly-trimmed privet hedge, the rose bushes beginning to bloom.
Her parents still lived there.
Last year she had arrived home for Dan Corcoran’s seventieth birthday.
At his party she and Nadine sang a rap song they had composed for the occasion to thunderous applause.

Today, Joan Moylan was celebrating her birthday.
A white box on the back seat of Karin’s car contained a cake with her name and birthday wishes inscribed on the icing.
Jake had only the vaguest memory of meeting Joan during that summer in Monsheelagh.
Her face was usually shaded by a floppy sunhat and sunglasses.
Her hair was drenched that night when she entered the harbour pub where Shard were playing and Jake only caught a fleeting glimpse of her distraught expression before she disappeared into the storm.

She had made lasagne and a salad for the birthday meal.
Broken thread veins and the lines on her face suggested battles lost and won.
The conversation around the dining table was strained.
Joan spoke about a book she had read and a televised crime drama she enjoyed watching.
Jake found himself filling in the silences that inevitably fell once a topic had been exhausted.

Karin carried the birthday cake to the table.
Two waxen numbers six and eight were stuck like miniature plump ladies in the centre.
When Joan had blown out the candles Karin sliced the cake and poured tea.
No champagne.
Her mother was a recovering alcoholic, she had told Jake on the way to the house.
Joan could never be trusted, even after twenty-five years.
When Jake said that twenty-five years without touching alcohol suggested she was a fully recovered alcoholic Karin shook her head.

‘There’s no such thing,’ she said.
‘The temptation is always there.
That’s why I find it so difficult to be around her, especially on days like today.’

She brought Jake into her father’s study to show him Max Moylan’s books.
It reminded Jake of a shrine.
A museum filled with mementoes of his writing career.
One wall was lined with his hardbacks: Max Moylan in Africa, Vietnam, Japan, China, Nepal.
His desk was cluttered with pens and notebooks.
Photographs casually lying at the side of his typewriter created the impression that he had stepped outside for a breath of air before choosing the ones what would go into his latest work in progress.
The air was musty, a blind halfway down on a window that Joan Moylan must never open.
Flowers wilted in a vase.
Karin replaced them with the fresh bouquet she had brought with her.
She stabbed each flower precisely into place and stood back to admire the effect.
Uneasy in the fusty atmosphere, he sat on the edge of the desk and watched her at work.
Something blue on top of the filing cabinet caught his eye.
A stuffed bird in a glass case, wings spread as if it was about to land on a bed of river reeds.
One glittering eye was visible, the feathers gleaming.

‘Do you know the legend of the kingfisher?’
Karin asked.

‘I wasn’t aware there was one.’

She lifted the case down and ran a cloth over the dust on the glass.
‘They’re called the halcyon birds.’

‘This one doesn’t look very calm,’ he said.

‘It’s an ancient Greek legend.’
She rubbed harder on the metal base.
‘I’m surprised Nadine never told you about it.’

‘Why should she?’
He tensed at the mention of her name.
Living below Nadine was proving more problematic than he had anticipated.

‘Try to keep the noise down,’ she had said when he returned the corkscrew he borrowed the night Feral stayed on after band practice.

‘What noise?’
He had been genuinely surprised.
‘I never hear you.’

‘That’s because I respect your right to a peaceful existence,’ she said in the clipped voice she used when trying to hold on to her temper.
‘You’re no longer playing your guitar in a soundproof room.
You must be aware of how sound travels through this house.’

‘I’d no idea you were monitoring my life by sound effects,’ he replied with the same chilling politeness.
‘Don’t worry.
It won’t happen again.’

Since then, he returned from Karin’s apartment after Nadine had left for work.
Her initial efforts to clear out the attic had stalled and she had not taken him up on his offer to help.

The metal base was shining when Karin replaced the glass case on the filing cabinet.
She walked to the bookshelves and pushed one book that was out of alignment into position.
‘Nadine was with us that day,’ she said.
‘We were hiking in Monsheelagh Forest.
Would you like to hear the legend that inspired the name of my agency?’

‘Another time.
We should go back to your mother.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said.
‘Joan likes her own company best.’

Karin’s voice had an almost compelling intensity as she related the legend to him.
Lovers transformed into kingfishers so that they could be together in death.

‘I understand that kind of love,’ she said when she finished the story.
‘Do you have any sense of its compulsion?’

What exactly was she asking him?
He did not understand a love that drew a woman under the waves to join the man she loved.
It was a typical Greek tragedy, too dramatic for his taste.
He remembered Karin’s words on the plane.
She would choose her lover’s arms rather than a life jacket if the plane was plunging downwards.

‘I’ve never wanted to be a kingfisher that badly enough,’ he joked.
‘We really should go back – ’

‘He promised to bring me with him on his next trip,’ she said.
‘We were going to the Sahara to live with nomads.
He had it all worked out.
How we would tell my mother, persuade her to let me go.
I was only fifteen – ’

‘I remember.’

‘I know you do.’
A red telephone on the desk had an old-fashioned rotary dial.
She dialled a number, watched the dial rotate and settle again, dialled another.
‘Nadine said I was too young.
She sided with my mother.
I found that hard to forgive.
Have you been talking to her recently?’

The question was so unexpected that he hesitated before replying.

‘Have you?’
she repeated.

‘I spoke to her this morning.
She was flying to London.
Something to do with
Ludicrous
…I mean
Lustrous
.
Why?’

The repetitive whirr of the telephone dial was beginning to irritate him.
As if sensing his irritation she sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk and slowly spun it from side to side.

‘She threatens me.
I don’t mean physically.
Just the memory of her… all those years you had together.
How can you stay away from each other?’

‘I’ve explained our situation,’ he said.
‘Neither of us can change anything at the moment.
The debts…’

‘How do I know you’re telling me the truth?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Married men are programmed to lie.
It’s an inevitable consequence of cheating on their wives.’

‘I’m not cheating on Nadine.
We made a decision – ’

‘Then maybe you’re cheating on me.’

‘That’s a ridiculous accusation.
You’ve no reason to be jealous of Nadine.
She’s determined to leave Sea Aster as soon as she can afford to rent her own place.
I intend to do the same.
We just need time to get our lives together again.’

‘Why don’t you bring me to Sea Aster?
Let me see exactly what’s involved in this ‘under the one roof’ arrangement.’
She waggled a finger on each hand to suggest quotation marks.

‘That’s never going to happen, Karin.’
His irritation snapped into anger.
‘Not as long as Nadine is living there.
I made a pact with her.
It’s the only way we can handle this arrangement.
I’m not prepared to break it.
I don’t know why we’re having this
stupid
argument.’

‘Don’t you?’
She steadied the chair and parted her legs, trapped him between them.
‘It really turns me on when you get angry.’

‘I’m not angry.
I’m trying to explain…’ The tense clasp of her thighs, her skirt sliding upwards, the glimpse of a blue thong nestling like a feather in the nest of blonde hair, he wanted her with an urgency that made him forget the quiet presence of Joan Moylan in a nearby room.

‘You’re hard and I’m wet… so wet,’ she murmured.
‘I want you inside me right now… right now, Jake.’

He lifted her onto the desk and steadied her as she unzipped him.
Her tongue flicked against his ear and all was forgotten as she pulled him under the same riptide of passion that had swept a Greek goddess to her death.
It was over in an instant, a pulsating collapse into relief, his hand over her mouth to stop her crying out.

He was flushed, still breathless when they returned to the living room.
Joan was watching the evening news.
The same stories, austerity, repossession, despair.
Jake knew all about halcyon days.
The calm before the storm.
He sat down on an armchair and stared unseeingly at the screen.

‘We have to go now,’ Karin said.

‘Be a pet and make me a cup of tea first,’ Joan said.

She lowered the volume on the remote when Karin was in the kitchen and turned to Jake.
‘How long have you been seeing each other?’
she asked.

‘Three months,’ he replied.

‘You and Nadine…I have to assume your marriage is over?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry.’
Her eyelids sagged heavily over her eyes but she had the same disconcerting stare as her daughter.
‘How is Nadine?’

‘She‘s fine.
We’ve had an amicable separation.’

‘You’re one of the lucky ones then.
An amicable separation is not an easy thing to achieve.’

Did he imagine a dart of pity in her expression before she turned back to the screen?

‘We are where we are.’
The politician being interviewed on the evening news had the haunted look of a man clinging to a cliché.
‘Burning the bond holders is not in our best interests.’

Jake disagreed.
He wanted a pyre.
He wanted to strike the match, smell roasting flesh, hear the sizzle of gristle, the splatter of muscle.
He wanted a walk of shame, bankers, politicians, developers, speculators, all in handcuffs, in the stocks, being pelted with eggs and rotten fruit.
But all he heard was empty rhetoric.
We are where we are.
How blindingly obvious was that?