Read The Valentine's Card Online
Authors: Juliet Ashton
‘Slave
driver
, dear,’ said Maude, holding the ladder while Bogna groped at the decorations.
Orla stayed out of Bogna’s gravitational pull. Any innocuous snippet about Marek could wound: best to avoid the subject even though she longed to ask
how is he?
Eventually, Bogna mentioned him quite naturally. ‘At least coming to work gets me away from bad-tempered sod of brother,’ she muttered, buttering herself a piece of toast.
Maude and Orla exchanged looks. ‘Is he a bear with a sore bum?’ asked Maude, hyper-casual, placing a guide to Oslo on the shelf upside down. She often recycled Bogna’s more colourful gaffes.
‘No. He is bear with yeast infection,’ scowled Bogna, throwing herself full length on the sofa with her snack. ‘Try and cheer him up when you see him, Orla. Give him ten out of ten blow job or something.’
‘Lovely,’ whispered Maude with a frown.
‘Just off upstairs for a sec.’ Orla flew to her flat, emboldened by Bogna’s vivid scene-setting of a miserable Marek who hadn’t mentioned the break-up. Maybe it wasn’t a break-up. Maybe it was a break.
It felt like a break-up.
Not stopping to examine that, Orla scooped up her mobile and called Marek’s number. She sucked her lips until they disappeared, not thinking, putting off any such common-sense activity until he picked up.
There was a heartless click and the outgoing message told her Marek was busy and invited her to leave her name and number. Many times he’d picked up halfway through and she’d smiled at the contrast between the curt recording and the big cat purr of his real-time
‘Moje złotko
!’ Now she wondered if he’d seen her name and diverted the call.
‘Um, hi, how’s, you know, things? Er, yeah, so this is strange, isn’t it? Us not, you know, speaking. Just wondered if you’re OK, but you probably are. Probably better off without me! Ha! I’m fine. Well, not fine. No, not fine. I’m, well, I’m a bit, you know and oh yes! Actually, yes. My
stuff
, Marek! You’ve still got some bits and pieces of mine. I could drop round to collect it, no fuss, just a quick hello and I’ll be off, ’cos I, you know, need them and—’
Another click cut her off.
‘YOU FECKIN’ IDIOT!’
Orla roared at herself, flinging away the phone, clamping both hands to her head.
My stuff?
The ‘stuff’ she’d left at the mews amounted to a toothbrush, some
shampoo and a paperback: that call had made it sound like insulin and a fortune in Nazi gold.
Perhaps he’d smile. Perhaps he’d understand.
And then what? Back to square one? Marek was too sensible a man to visit square one more than once.
‘Poppy was the worst. I mean, I felt worst about her. Rob’s her Daddy, after all, and I’m her Aunty. She was so cute all day, playing with the wrapping paper instead of the presents. She made me feel sick with guilt.’
‘Did Jack like my pressie?’
‘The, let me see, what was it? Oh! Yeah! The painting kit. He
loved
it, Orla. He’s already painted you a thank you card with it. And I couldn’t even look at Himself. Or Fionnuala. She was making cow eyes at Rob all day. Desperate, feckin’
desperate
for a reunion.’
‘Poor Fionnuala. How was Rob?’
‘Well … serene, actually.’
‘Odd.’
‘Pleased, even. A bit. As if he was, oh
yuk
, Orla, he
enjoyed
it.’
‘Ah.’
‘Ah, indeed. If my poor mother had looked under the lunch table and seen his foot up my skirt she’d have died on the spot.’
‘That was a bit risky!’
‘Yeah.’
‘Was it …?’
‘Weird? Very. I mean, hello! These people are family.’
‘How can I say
I told you so
without sounding like a complete cow?’
‘You did tell me so and you were
right. When he walked in I thought,
how do I stop myself ripping his clothes off
. But as the day wore on I avoided being alone with him. I hid myself in the yard at one point instead of snogging the gob off him in the utility room.’
‘What now?’
‘We’ve arranged to meet tomorrow. He’s booked a hotel room.’
‘For unbridled nookie?’
‘I’m going to end it.’
‘What? Are you sure?’
‘Are you doing a U-turn on me?’
‘Not in the least. I’m delighted. It was guaranteed pain, like asking to be punched in the face. It’s just that your change of heart is very sudden.’
‘As sudden as the way I fell for him. He’s a symptom, Orla. Christmas Day is good for soul-searching.’
‘Hmm.’
‘It’s like time switches off. The world puts its feet up and
thinks
. Rob’s in love with love. And worse, he’s selfish. I’m no better. I know you’ve been kind about it, but I’ve behaved abominably. I’ve had a close shave and I’ll have to spend the rest of my life making it up to Himself and Fionnuala and Poppy and Jack without them even knowing.’
‘You really
have
woken up. Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty!’
‘Rob was a sticking plaster over my marriage. I got things the wrong way round. I should have sorted out my home life first. So wish me luck getting rid of Rob. He’s a rubbish kisser, by the way.’
‘How the mighty have fallen.’
‘And then tomorrow when I get
home from Rob I’m going to talk to Himself.’
‘Work things out. I’m glad.’
‘No. I’m going to ask him for a divorce.’
Three days until their New Year date. Three days’ radio silence from Marek. It was sinking in.
Orla had shed her pride. She wanted to roller-skate to Marek’s door and collapse on his step. The fantasy ended there: she couldn’t conjure up a speech to win him back because their showdown had been inevitable and any rapprochement would simply start the meter running to the next one.
It was becoming real, their estrangement. She’d refrained from filling Juno in on this latest hairpin bend in her love life. She’d tell her after New Year’s Eve; if Marek kept their date there might be nothing to tell.
The bangle gathered dust on its shelf, already sinking into the chintzy landscape. She envisioned herself clicking it shut around her wrist on New Year’s Eve, the way Maude visualised herself sauntering along the High Street.
Maude was on best behaviour still, visualising like billy-o, knocking back her tablets, yoga breathing loudly three times a day. Orla envied her discipline: Maude wouldn’t have made that absurd phone call. She could only hope that Marek chose to be charmed by her teenage gabble, but she could visualise all too well his face as he listened to her message, as he wondered when, if ever, she would do justice to what had happened between them.
‘Orla, dear!’ Maude called her down to the shop. ‘Something’s come. By courier. For you.’ She pointed to a bulky package. Her look of
excitement slithered off her chin when she saw Orla’s face.
The ornate European handwriting on the label, so quaint in comparison to the more modern British style, was Marek’s. Orla didn’t have to open the package to know it was her ‘stuff’.
‘At the risk of stating the obvious,’ said Maude, on Sunday night, the eve of New Year’s Eve, ‘
ring him
. That’s the second time you’ve moved Professor Plum diagonally and you know that’s strictly forbidden in the rules.’
The simple things that she and Maude were taking pleasure in had started to look similar to boring things. Orla couldn’t care which Cluedo character dunnit while Marek was at large, assiduously not getting in touch.
‘I did call him, remember?’
‘I mean call him and talk to him. Tell him how you feel. Be honest, for heaven’s sake.’
Maude wouldn’t suggest this if she knew about the systematic lying, the addictive behaviour. ‘I think Miss Scarlett did it. With her knicker elastic. In the lean-to. It has to come from
him
, Maudie. He’s the one who left. He either wants me or he doesn’t.’
‘Poor chap,’ muttered Maude, rolling the dice. ‘He has to do all the heavy lifting, doesn’t he?’
If Marek stood by his word, if he was the man Orla thought he was, if the new year was truly going to be, as he’d put it,
their
year, then he’d be back tomorrow.
When she would tell him that she had
withstood the allure of Anthea Blake and the journal.
Sim’s journal
31 December 2011
Only a few hours to go. I am NEVER spending new year in this madhouse AGAIN. Mum’s right. The Cassidys ARE mad.
It was the last five hours of the old year. A careful shower was in order, with neurotic grooming. Orla must be smooth of leg, glossy of hair, exfoliated, moisturised, perfumed.
The Trafalgar Square jaunt had been carefully planned. A cab was a must, Marek had said: he intended to drink a little too much. He’d pick her up at nine and they’d have a drink with Maude, who planned to ignore New Year as she always did – ‘too schmaltzy’ – before setting off for a late dinner in a W1 restaurant.
‘Anywhere will do,’ Orla had said.
‘Somewhere special. I’ve booked already.’
Then they’d make their way to the square on foot. ‘I’m bringing whisky,’ Marek had promised, ‘in a hip flask.’
‘I’ll bring my hand-warmers.’ Orla had neglected to say she’d bought them
en route
to Beatrice Gardens that second time. ‘If we hold hands it’ll warm us both.’
‘If?’ Marek had insisted that they kiss on each of the twelve chimes, before travelling home on the tube.
‘There’ll be vomit,’ Orla had warned.
‘We won’t care,’ Marek had said.
Blow-drying her hair, Orla clung to the fact that he hadn’t cancelled these elaborate plans. The doorbell would ring at nine o’clock. They would step over the threshold of 2013 together.
As she painted her wan face, a
memory intruded on Orla’s artistry. This time last year, she’d applied her make-up just as carefully, only to sob it off later. She paused, only half her cupid’s bow defined.
BONG! The long hallway of Ma’s bungalow as Orla approaches the spare room. From the sitting room behind her, the live broadcast has started its countdown to midnight. Ma is yelling ‘
Come on everyone! It’s starting!’
BONG! Hugh’s newborn is bawling – still – in the kitchen. Orla throws her brother a sympathetic smile as he paces up and down the lino, hair on end and baby to his chest. Above Orla’s head, a game of tag in the loft sounds like an infestation of child-size mice.
BONG! Ma yells ‘How many is that? Three or four? WAKE UP AUNTY ANNIE, IT’S NEARLY MIDNIGHT!’ Stepping over Hugh’s eldest mastering ‘Danny Boy’ on her new recorder – ‘Keep at it, Niamh!’ – Orla speeds up. She needs to wrap her arms about Sim, nose his neck like a pony, reconnect. They haven’t been alone since they arrived, not really, and he has the air of a man who needs to talk.
BONG! Conor and Martin, down from the loft,
en route
to the sitting room, knock into Orla, send her reeling. ‘Watch it, lads!’ The Cassidys are heading towards the chimes like fleeing wildebeest and Orla is the only one going in the opposite direction. The sitting room sing-song has begun.
BONG! Despite the spare-room door lacking a lock, Orla and Sim’s drought must end. They’ll make love. They’ll whisper special things. The glue between them is tacky, and gives a little. Orla stumbles on a
Barbie car pile-up, and pauses to place the pink plastic up on a shelf, out of harm’s way.
BONG! All it needs is a chair up against the door handle, a swift hand down the front of his trousers and a few choice words in his ear; they’ll be on that lumpy bed, between those manmade sheets, before Sim knows what’s hit him.
BONG! Deirdre appears from the loo, in a personal mushroom cloud of Coco Mademoiselle. She grabs Orla by the shoulders and says, ‘Aw, me little sis,’ kisses her roughly on both cheeks. ‘Happy New Year! You’re going the wrong way, you dirty-looking eejit! Is that my top?’
‘No,’ says Orla. ‘Happy New Year.’
BONG! On second thoughts, thinks Orla, almost at the door, primping her hair and smoothing down her skirt, we’ll bypass the bed and just drop to the rug. That bed is noisy: even in this pandemonium Ma’s Catholic ears will pick out rhythmic bedsprings.
BONG! She opens the door and steps into a dimly lit room (
Ah good! Curtains already pulled!
) and closes the door. The noise of New Year is suddenly turned down.
BONG! Sim is on the phone, he’s talking, fast, head down but looking at Orla. His face is that of a Saturday boy caught with his hand in the till. ‘Let’s discuss this back in London. No, no, nothing.’ He laughs, not the baboon masturbating laugh but a counterfeit one. ‘Yes!’ He says with artificial glee. ‘Exactly! Ha, ha, ha!’
BONG! Orla isn’t laughing, and the suggestive smile that’s been on her face since she stood up from the Buckaroo board has gone.
‘Who’s that?’ she asks, curtly.
Sim puts one finger up, mouths
hold on
, and
winds up the phone conversation with, ‘Gotta go! Yeah, you too. Bye.’
BONG! Down the hall cheering erupts. Squeaky baby voices, menopausal ones, gruff male ones, all mingle.
‘Who was that?’
‘Doesn’t that baby ever stop crying?’
‘It’s a
baby
. Who was that?’
Fiddle music breaks out. Somebody’s playing a jig. There is clapping.
‘It was nobody. What’s the face for?’
‘Who was it?’ Her lunge for the phone is clumsy. Sim, fresh from
Courtesan
fight lessons, dodges her easily. That he laughs makes Orla angrier. ‘Stop it, Sim, and tell me.’
‘It was Reece.’ Sim shakes his head, as if in disbelief at all this silly fuss. ‘Remember him? My agent? The man responsible for my entire career? Is it all right if I talk to Reece?’
‘It was
not
Reece at midnight on New Year’s Eve!’ Orla grabs again, misses again. Sim’s teasing giggle infuriates her. She wants to cry but doesn’t.
She knows they won’t make love. She knows that Sim will say, as he did last night, that he can’t perform in the lair of Ma Cassidy. And when they return to her cottage he’ll be too tired or in a mood.