The Love of My Life (23 page)

‘No, I didn’t mean . . . I meant I really don’t mind.’

‘All I wanted was to be here, with you.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Marc. Honestly it doesn’t.’

‘Is something wrong? Did something happen?’

‘No.’

‘Is everything all right?’ It was the young landlord bringing us a rack of toast triangles, his eyes dark-rimmed from working so hard and the baby and all.

‘It’s all lovely, thank you,’ I said.

‘Any plans for this morning?’

‘We’re going to see the Cliffs of Moher.’

‘Ah, you’ll love it there, it’s a lovely spot. You get a few tourists, mind.’

‘We’re used to those,’ said Marc.

‘It’s a shame you can’t stay longer. You’ll have to come again.’

Marc beamed. ‘Oh, we will, we will, won’t we, darling?’

I smiled feebly. ‘Maybe.’

That morning I was overcome with fatigue, the old torpor had returned. While Marc paid for our lodging, I slipped back beneath the sheets of the wide, low bed and drifted off again. When Marc came back he climbed back into bed with me and made love to me, his hands cold, his breath loud and hot in my ear. I just lay there, gazing over his wide, pale shoulder, waiting for him to finish. He groaned and sighed and covered my face in kisses but I didn’t believe him when he said it had been lovely and amazing. I had felt nothing. No relief, no escape from grief, no shallowing of the well of loneliness. I lay on my side, staring at the wall, while Marc packed and tidied the room, and then he helped me out of the bed and into the hire car like an invalid. I was supposed to read the map, but I couldn’t be bothered. Instead I watched the countryside through the drizzle, the rocks and moors, the ancient monuments and the modern bungalows set out like miniature ranches with their electric gates and topiary. I was missing Luca. I was missing Luca with every breath and every heartbeat and every blink. Marc had turned on the radio and there was a phone-in about why fewer people were going to church on a Sunday in Ireland, yet all the churches we passed were surrounded by flocks of parked cars, the bulky, macho four-by-fours of prosperous family men and women. Marc was driving carefully and that was irritating me. I craved the thrill of Luca’s recklessness, his habit of taking corners too fast and too sharp, rocking the car, the way he would take his hands off the wheel and steer with his elbows while he lit a cigarette or consulted a map, or shift his hip to fetch his mobile out of his back pocket. I remembered how Luca would turn up the radio to any song he liked (and his tastes were eclectic and multiple) and tap his head in time to the music. If it was a rock song then his head would be going up and down, his hair all over his face. That wide, wide smile, those eyes.

‘What are you smiling at?’ asked Marc.

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘You were thinking of Luca?’

‘Yes.’

Marc put his hand on my thigh in a companionable fashion, and I relaxed a little and cried, quietly and without fuss. It made me feel a little better.

The Cliffs of Moher were reached via a path which cut through a green, bosomy swathe of the westernmost few acres of Ireland. At the side of the path were people selling CDs of Gaelic music, knitted jumpers and hats, all manner of jewellery and little pieces of artwork painted on to shiny grey slate.

The rain had stopped and the sun had come out. There was a good breeze. We walked along the path hand in hand and then to the viewpoint where the Atlantic wind blew away my despair and I inhaled and held the hair back out of my eyes and gazed out over the sheer, dramatic cliffs, so different from Portiston’s own miniature version. Marc put his arms around me and I leaned back against him, feeling safe again.

We climbed down on to a shelf of rock which jutted horizontally from the cliff-face. The sea was a long, long way below. I stayed away from the drop, keeping my palms flat against the warm grass growing out of the side of the cliff. I didn’t dare go even a yard closer to the edge; the very thought made me dizzy. Marc, like all the other young men, seemed drawn to the edge; it was probably some kind of display of machismo, for the rim of the shelf, where I stood, was fringed with anxious-looking women while the men sat at the edge, dangling their legs over the side. One little push, the tiniest tilt, and they would have been lost.

The light of the watery sun on the sea was scorching my eyes. Marc was just a silhouette against the light. He was one of thirty or forty silhouettes, I wasn’t even sure which one he was. So I turned away and climbed back up on to the grassy path and pulled myself to my feet.

I looked straight into the face of Mrs McGuire, the cleaner at Marinella’s.

She was standing on the path, not six feet away from me, snug in a long coat, sheepskin boots and a headscarf, and her arm was looped through that of a younger version of herself. She looked slightly perplexed and I realized that she recognized me, but couldn’t place me. I turned away quickly, but not fast enough, for Marc was already behind me, one hand on my waist, his voice in my hair.

I didn’t speak, just turned and walked away from him and Mrs McGuire.

I kept my back to them, walked away back up on to the path, and then, going as fast as I could, headed south. After about half a mile I stopped and sat down, my chin on my knees, looked out to sea and waited for Marc. He came soon enough.

‘Did she recognize me?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Marc. ‘But it was pretty bloody obvious we were together. Shit.’

He picked up a pebble and lobbed it out over the cliff-edge. I had a vague memory of Luca doing something similar a long time ago.

‘What can we do?’

‘Nothing. Nothing.’ He delved into his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. ‘Do you want one?’

I shook my head. Marc sat down beside me, and I cupped my hands around his to help him keep the match alight long enough for the tobacco to catch. He took a long drag and looked out towards the horizon.

‘Funny to think that if you jumped in now you’d have to keep swimming until you reached America. Maybe that’s what we should do.’

I smiled, picked at the grass.

‘She’s bound to say something, Marc. To your mother, if not to Nathalie.’

‘I know.’

Marc blew a gust of smoke into the wind. It blew back in my face. He leaned over and kissed me. ‘Of all the dramatic cliffs in all of western Ireland . . .’ he said.

‘Don’t joke about it. Aren’t you worried?’

‘Of course I’m bloody worried. But it could be worse. Mrs McGuire doesn’t know you. I’ll just say you were a friend of Steve’s or something. I’ll say we were just messing around. I can talk my way out of this.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Well I can’t tell the truth, can I?’

‘It’s a sign,’ I said. ‘It’s a sign that we must stop this, now. Before anyone gets hurt.’

‘It’s not a sign,’ said Marc. ‘It’s doesn’t mean anything. Don’t get paranoid.’

I knew though. I knew that somehow or other Mrs McGuire would be the undoing of us.

forty-two

Romeo and Juliet’s was the place to go drinking and dancing and pulling in Watersford. At one time it had been the old Top Rank, and probably before that it had been a dance hall or a bingo hall or something. The club was over some of the post-war, less nice shops in Watersford, in a non-residential district where there was nobody to be disturbed by hundreds of drunk young people spilling through the streets shouting and laughing and arguing and having energetic, standing-up sex into the early hours. Inside drinks were expensive and hard to come by (the queues at the tiny little bars were extensive) and, as we couldn’t rely on being bought drinks straight away, Anneli and I had come prepared with several glasses of Bacardi and Coke in each of our bloodstreams and a quarter of vodka tucked into the waistband of my skirt. It didn’t show beneath my winter coat. The doorman looked in our handbags but wouldn’t have dreamed of body-checking. Not in those days.

Girls were allowed in free before 10 p.m., so at 9.55 we tripped through the external glass doors and then climbed the carpeted stairs with golden ropes looped along the flocked walls on either side, feeling like princesses. We exchanged our coats for raffle tickets in the cloakroom which was to the side of a large, open lobby area at the top of the stairs, and then followed the noise through swinging double doors into the club itself. Inside it was dark and warm and packed and throbbing with sound so dense it was like a physical presence. The dance-floor was already heaving – predominantly with girls taking advantage of the ten o’clock rule. The boys would come later, once the pubs closed. Anneli and I went to the ladies’ and shared a cubicle where we had a wee and a large swig of neat vodka each. It burned my stomach and made Anneli retch and giggle. We had to queue for the mirror to put on new lipstick. There was a huddle of bare arms and hair and perfume. Everyone was drinking from illegally imported bottles. It reminded me of the staff cloakroom at Wasbrook’s, only there was less powder and more swearing.

Out in the club again, we found somewhere to sit. It wasn’t a desirable spot, a bench against the wall tucked away almost behind one of the little bars, not on the mezzanine where the older, wealthier, more confident clubbers leaned and preened and sipped their cocktails, but on the bottom floor, where the music was so loud we could only communicate by speaking right into the other’s ear, with one hand cupped around our mouths to protect the words.

We didn’t have to wait long before two young men came over and offered to buy us drinks, which we accepted of course. We couldn’t hear a word they said. The DJ was playing disco hit after disco hit. My young man, a square-shouldered, shaven-headed soldier with bitten-down fingernails and metallic breath, kept trying to kiss me, which I didn’t much like, so when we finished our drinks Anneli and I slipped away on to the dance-floor. We hadn’t been there five minutes when somebody stepped on Anneli’s foot, and that somebody was Luca. He was there with Marc and a small group of Portiston boys and the younger members of the town’s Sunday League football team. I looked all round, but there was nobody else. There was no Nathalie.

We couldn’t hear one another. Luca’s face was green and then blue and then red and then covered in silver raindrops in the disco lights. But we laughed and embraced and he shouted in my ear that this was his informal stag night.

‘Not the proper one with Pop and my uncles and cousins. We’re going to bloody Naples to meet up with the rest of the Felicone mafia. This is my getting-hammered-and-falling-over stag night,’ he shouted.

‘No stripper?’ I shouted back.

‘Not yet,’ he replied, ‘but I live in hope.’

It was natural that we would dance together. Why wouldn’t we? I felt on fire, it must have been the vodka hitting my bloodstream, I was mad for dancing. I shimmied and I shivered and I flicked my hips and I glowered out from under my hair (a look that I’d practised for hours in front of the mirror and that I thought was alluring), and then some stupid song would come on – ‘Thriller’ or something – and we were together, doing the actions, laughing so much I thought my mouth would split at the corners and I knew Luca was looking at my chest and that my small breasts were pretty in the lacy confines of a tight, low-cut little top and I was so, so happy.

When Luca’s hair was stuck to his face and his shirt was dark with sweat stains, he indicated that we should leave the dance-floor to cool off for a moment. We went out of the double doors to the lobby, where the draught from the entrance was chimneyed up the staircase. It was blissfully cool. I leaned up against the flock wall, easing my feet out of my tight shoes. There was a blister on the side of my little toe. Luca knelt to examine it and told me it wasn’t terminal. He blew on my foot to cool it down. There were lots of other people milling around, people snogging, people crying, people shouting at one another. To our right, a girl was being sick into an overgrown plant pot which contained a plastic tree done up with red fairy lights. Her friend was holding her hair back away from her face and rubbing her back sympathetically. The sick girl had lost a shoe and her tights were horribly laddered. I turned away.

Luca stood up and lit a cigarette and took a drag and then somehow the cigarette was gone and he was kissing me, his hands in my hair, his mouth sour with tobacco all over mine and I could feel him pressed hard against me. For the first time in my whole life, I felt I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to do. I heard the doors into the club open and expel a burst of noise and heat, and then shut somewhere to my right, and glanced over Luca’s shoulder to make sure nobody we knew was in the lobby, and nobody was.

‘Oh God, Liv,’ Luca gasped into my ear, leaning against me. ‘Let’s get out of here . . .’

‘No, no, shush,’ I whispered, touching his damp face with my fingertips and then dropping my hand down to the zip of his jeans strained tight. Nobody could see, Luca was covering me with his body and the wall was behind me. My right leg was bent at the knee, my bare foot on the wall. ‘It’s your stag night, you can’t disappear.’

Luca groaned. ‘Don’t do that, please don’t do that.’

‘Shhhh,’ I said, undoing the zip and working my fingers into the tropical heat of his pants.

Every atom of my body was zinging. I felt like a universe of nerve endings, all of them sparking and twitching. Luca nuzzled his face into my neck, his mouth was on my ear, he was breathing deeply and quickly like somebody who is afraid.

‘If you keep your hand there one more second I will come,’ he whispered.

‘One . . .’ I whispered back.

A little later, we returned to the dance-floor. Luca looped his arms around me and breathed thanks and wonderment into my hair.

It was terribly crowded in the club now, there wasn’t room to dance and Luca looked dazed and fawn-like. Marc kept trying to dance with me, which was getting on my nerves. I wanted him to go away. In fact I wanted all of them to go away, and to leave me and my darling on our own. It didn’t happen, though. The millionth time Marc’s face bobbed up grinning in front of mine, I picked up Anneli’s handbag with what was left of the vodka in it and headed for the ladies’.