What She Wants (25 page)

the wrong thing.’ She must have missed some subtle hint about Delphine and Eugene’s relationship. Delphine always spoke of him so lovingly that it was hard to imagine them having a row or anything. ‘It’s not your fault, Virginia,’ Delphine said, snuffling a bit. ‘Don’t tell me, it’s your business,’ Virginia said, distraught at having upset her new friend. ‘No, I’d like to tell you. You’d understand,’ Delphine said. ‘It’s Eugene and Christmas, you see. He was married before and he’s divorced and …’ She gulped miserably. Mary-Kate handed her niece her drink and finished the story. ‘My dear sister Pauline is one of those high-minded people who think that married people have no business going off and attempting to get divorces and she believes that Delphine is ruining her immortal soul by living with Eugene. She refuses to talk about him, absolutely refuses to have him in the house and has only recently started talking to Delphine again. Mind you, the level of conversation never rises above the “when are you going to come to your senses and dump that immoral man or are you going to shame us all forever?” sort of thing.’ ‘Christmas is going to be just awful,’ wailed Delphine. Both Virginia and Mary-Kate leaned over to give her a hug. ‘Last year, I hadn’t told her about him and he had his own place but this year we’re living together …’ Delphine pulled a paper napkin from the table and wiped her eyes with it, ‘and she keeps going on about how I have to come home for Christmas and how it’s God’s day. and it’s a sin what I’m doing and I’ll never be able to get married now in the church. She’ll kill me if I don’t go home but I can’t leave Eugene on his own on Christmas Day, I just can’t.’ ‘And there’s no way you can say anything to Pauline?’ Virginia asked Mary-Kate, who looked at her with resigned eyes. ‘You haven’t met my sister,’ Mary-Kate said glumly. ‘She

wasn’t just behind the door when the Lord was doling out compassion and understanding - she was in another room entirely getting more than her supply of prejudice and signing up for the gossipmongers’ guild.’ ‘You got her supply of compassion,’ Virginia joked gently, trying to lift the atmosphere. ‘Delphine’s lucky she’s got you.’ Delphine grinned stoically. ‘I’d go mad without Mary-Kate,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll hit the loos and repair myself,’ she added. ‘It’d be bad for business for all the people in the pub to see the local beautician looking like she applied her mascara with a paintbrush.’ She hurried across the room, russet curls dancing as she went, causing many a man to look up from his pint. Even an over-sized tangerine man’s jumper and a flowing silk skirt couldn’t hide her Rubenesque figure. ‘Poor Delphine,’ Virginia said. ‘I’m sorry I put my foot in it.’ ‘It’s not your fault,’ sighed Mary-Kate. ‘It’s bloody Pauline’s.’ Virginia was startled. She’d never heard Mary-Kate swear. ‘I do not know under God how we are sisters because she is a million miles away from me. She hasn’t an understanding bone in her body,’ Mary-Kate raged. ‘She has put that poor girl through hell and all so that she can prance first in the queue up to communion on Sundays.’ ‘But so many people get divorced now, surely she can see it’s common,’ Virginia said. ‘People have to live their lives differently, even the Church sees that. One of my friends in Dublin was on the church baptism committee and they were taught to treat all new parents the same whether they were married or not. That type of blinkered thinking is a thing of the past, surely.’ Mary-Kate laughed sourly. ‘The Vatican will be announcing the election of the first female cardinal before Pauline changes her mind about marriage being for life. She’s entitled

to her views but she’s not entitled to ram them down Delphine’s throat.’ ‘What about Delphine’s father? Does he think the same?’ They both spotted Delphine emerging from the ladies. ‘My brother-in-law, Fonsie, gets on very well with Eugene but is too afraid of Pauline to say anything. His notion of independence is to secretly buy one of those gossipy Sunday newspapers as well as the one that Pauline considers suitable.’ Mary-Kate turned to her niece. ‘Delphine, will you order us another round, we’re parched. Tell us about your day,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Don’t ask. I had to give a manicure to that bitch Miriam Concannon from the television show. She’s staying in a huge suite in the hotel and in between flirting madly with Christy, who was flirting back, I can tell you, she bitched about everyone on the planet. Believe me, she may come across as sweet on that programme but she thinks she shits chocolate and pisses eau de cologne,’ sniffed Delphine. ‘Where do you hear these sayings?’ demanded Mary-Kate. ‘You’ve a mouth on you like a docker.’ ‘We get lots of interesting people into the salon,’ said Delphine, unperturbed, ‘and they’ve got these very colourful turns of phrase. That’s a real Dublin saying, apparently. Listen to this one …’ ‘Delphine,’ warned Mary-Kate. ‘Virginia didn’t come out tonight to listen to your depraved mind. How about you Virginia? How was your day?’ They ate, drank and listened to the Springtime Girls run through an entire Tammy Wynette/Patsy Cline catalogue about love, men and how they always let you down. ‘I thought we came here to be cheered up?’ Mary-Kate said after yet another sad song about a woman with a fatal tendency for the wrong sort of man. ‘I’m going home to have more muscle relaxants if this doesn’t get happier.’ Delphine, who couldn’t hold her drink very well and was already deeply merry after four glasses of Guinness, burst into hysterical giggles.

‘Can you send a bumper packet of those over to my mother? She really needs them,’ she chuckled, before suddenly growing maudlin. ‘I phoned home today and she would barely talk to me.’ ‘Ah sure, with Pauline, that’s a blessing in disguise,’ Mary-Kate tried to cheer her up. ‘My sister would talk the hind legs off a donkey,’ she added for Virginia’s benefit. ‘And you, my girl.’ She patted Delphine’s knee. ‘You need more nights out with normal people so you can remember that not everyone is as narrow-minded as your mother. I think it’s time we revived the Macrame Club?’ Delphine perked up. ‘It’s been out of commission since Aggie left Redlion but we could start up again.’ She turned to Virginia, ‘Aggie was one of the founder members,’ she explained. Virginia was mystified. ‘Macrame? I wouldn’t have put you two down for arts and crafts.’ Mary-Kate and Delphine exchanged looks. ‘The major craft is learning how to make the perfect martini,’ Mary-Kate said solemnly. ‘Think Witches of Eastwick,’ added Delphine. ‘Only I get to be Cher and I want Jack Nicholson to myself,’ interrupted her aunt. ‘We’ve got to reconvene after Christmas. You will come, won’t you, Virginia?’ ‘What should I bring?’ Virginia asked, wondering if she could do crochet instead of macrame. ‘Gin,’ suggested Delphine. ‘Vodka maybe. Handicrafts are the last thing that go on there. It’s a letting your hair down sort of night.’ ‘And where did you come up with the name?’ Mary-Kate beamed. ‘We didn’t even have a name for it originally. It was just a group of us meeting up to relax and chat, you know. But when Finula Headley-Ryan moved to the village, she was desperate to get involved and none of us could stand her, so we told her it was a handicrafts night. I thought macrame sounded suitably off-putting. Finula wouldn’t be interested in anything so pedestrian. And the

name stuck. It came in handy for keeping my sister, Pauline, off the scent too. Pauline would have seen it as an opportunity to hear all sorts of dirt and personal stories, and that wasn’t the point of the club at all. Oh look, it’s Hope,’ Mary-Kate added as the Parkers came into the pub by the side door. ‘Matt is the latest convert to the Kerry school of creative scribbling and Hope is his wife,’ she explained to Virginia and Delphine. ‘She’s lovely. I think she could do with a bit of macrame too.’ Virginia watched the newcomers with interest. It was nice not to be the newest person in the village any more, so she watched the people who’d taken her place. Hope and Matt did not fit the normal artistic community bill. For a start, Hope was dressed in very normal black jeans, chambray shirt and navy windbreaker instead of the sort of flamboyant flowy stuff that the awful Finula Headley-Ryan always wore. Virginia had met Finula in the chemist on one occasion and had not felt as if she’d met a kindred spirit. Hope was also pretty in a subdued, old-fashioned way, although she was cast into the shade by her marvellously handsome husband. ‘He’s a fine thing, isn’t he?’ Delphine said of Matt, admiring the tall, dark man with the chiselled jaw and soulful eyes. ‘He can fill a pair of jeans. Is he the latest eejit to fall under Mrs HR’s spell?’ ‘Afraid so,’ said Mary-Kate sorrowfully. ‘I don’t think poor Hope knows what’s hit her. She’s very lonely, God love her, and embarrassed to admit it.’ ‘So you know her well?’ Virginia asked Mary-Kate in surprise. Delphine laughed. ‘Know her well? If Watergate had happened in Redlion, Mary-Kate would have been Deep Throat.’

‘Isn’t this nice?’ Hope said, looking around happily. She liked the pub. It was so pretty with its dark beams, cosy corners and all the bric-a-brac dangling from hooks everywhere.

If you were tall you were in danger of being concussed by hanging lobster pots, storm lanterns and farmyard implements from another era. Matt was so tall he’d already narrowly missed being strangled by a bit of wayward fishing net. ‘We could have gone to Finula’s,’ Matt pointed out. ‘She was making boxty, which is some sort of traditional Irish dish.’ ‘Well, we can have traditional Irish food here,’ said Hope, smiling in a forced manner. They’d had a mild argument earlier when Matt had tried to renege on his promise to take her for dinner in the pub by saying that Finula had just invited them to her place for dinner. ‘That was nice of her but I hope you told her we’d arranged to go out,’ Hope had said, gritting her teeth and thinking of the hassle she’d had getting a babysitter. ‘Well, no …’ ‘Phone her then,’ snapped Hope, sitting down heavily on their bed to do her minimal makeup. ‘I will, I will. Keep your hair on.’ Matt was subdued when he came back from phoning Finula. ‘I’m sorry about that, Hope,’ he said. ‘I should have told her no in the first place. Now, she’s cross with me and you’re cross with me…’ Immediately, Hope dropped her mascara wand and looked up from her hand mirror. ‘I’m not cross, darling. I only wanted some time on our own, that’s all.’ ‘You’re right.’ He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. ‘I’m a selfish bastard. You need to see more of this village than Finula’s house.’ Hope smiled privately. That was so exactly what she’d been thinking. He’d been so self-obsessed for the past few weeks that she’d forgotten how clever Matt was at getting inside her head when the mood took him. ‘I’ll get menus,’ Matt said now. They both ordered mussels and garlic bread, with red wine for Hope and Guinness for Matt.

‘You should have some,’ he said taking a deep draught of the inky black pint. ‘You’d love it.’ ‘Give me a taste. Ugh, horrible,’ she said, wishing she could spit it out. They sat in companionable silence for a while, looking around and breathing in the atmosphere. People were settling themselves in for the night, buying lots of drink and looking as if they planned to be there till closing. It was an interesting mix of people. Two men with jumpers and wild beards were staring moodily into their pints in one corner, while a very glamorous blonde woman in a suit, whom Hope had noticed rushing in and out of the estate agent’s, was beside them talking furiously to an abashed looking man who’d removed his suit jacket and had damp patches under his arms. Definitely a couple having a row, Hope decided. She could also see Mary-Kate with two other women, one young and exotic with flaming red hair, the other older and quietly elegant, with silver hair, sad eyes and a ladylike look about her. Hope would have liked to say hello but she didn’t want to butt in. ‘How did the writing go today?’ she asked Matt tentatively instead. She hadn’t asked him much about the novel, sensing that Matt didn’t want to talk about it. ‘OK,’ said Matt guardedly. ‘You’re great at that sort of thing, you’re so creative,’ Hope said. ‘Remember that terrible pension plan ad when the clients rejected eight different ideas and you still came up with a ninth.’ ‘Hell, yes,’ laughed Matt. ‘Those clients were a nightmare. But it’s not quite the same. Ad campaigns and novels are very different things, or so I’m finding out.’ ‘Tell me,’ said Hope. ‘Tell me all about it.’ She let the fingers of her right hand entwine with those of his left under the table. Matt gripped hers tightly in return. ‘Let’s not talk about work,’ he said, tucking a wayward curl behind her ear. ‘I know you didn’t want to come here,’ he added gently, ‘but it’s been good for us, hasn’t it? This

place has a good effect on us, it makes us better. If we were at home, I’d probably only be getting back to Makings Lane now and you’d be worn out with working all day and having the dreaded quality time with the kids.’ She nodded ruefully. ‘And I’d be angry with you for being so late home because the dinner would be burned to a crisp and I’d had nobody to have an adult conversation with all evening.’ ‘And then you’d go to bed because you were shattered and I’d stay up watching Sky Sports because I didn’t want to get into bed and face the icy cold of your back turned towards me.’ Matt grimaced at the memory. ‘My icy back in my stay-away-from-me pyjamas, don’t forget,’ Hope laughed, thinking of the winceyette passion-killers she’d worn on purpose on those nights when Matt had annoyed her. That had been her idea of letting him know she was annoyed. Easier than saying anything outright, she’d hoped he would realize why she was angry without her having to tell him. The food arrived and Matt dug in, eagerly scooping out delicious garlic-flavoured mussels with one hand, still holding onto Hope with his other hand. He dunked a bit of bread into the mussel juice and held it to her mouth. Hope bit off half, leaving the rest for him. ‘It is good for us here,’ he said with his mouth full, ‘isn’t it?’ Hope nodded. ‘It’s just a bit hard to fit in because I feel as if I don’t have a role here. Sorry,’ she said apologetically. ‘But I feel a bit lonely. I’d love to have a part-time job or something. I love being with the children every day but I never get to see anyone, it’s terribly lonely …’ She broke off. She felt guilty even saying it. She’d spent so long dreaming of the fantasy world where she’d be able to be with the children all the time, but it was hard to be so isolated from other people during the day. In Bath, she’d have had friends nearby; lunch with Betsey, a night out with Yvonne and Denise from work, Sam coming down on the train for a long weekend; here, she had nobody.