Aisling Gayle (6 page)

Aisling wandered up and down the aisles in one of the big stores, unable to enjoy things as much as she would have liked. The heated, whispered conversation with her mother over breakfast had really disturbed her. When would her mother ever see her as a grown woman instead of a young girl?

“You all right, honey?” Jean asked her as they looked at a rack of brightly coloured summer coats. “You seem a little quiet this morning.”

“I’m grand, thanks,” Aisling said quickly, lifting a duck-egg blue coat with a white collar and cuffs from the rail. She smiled at her aunt. “I’m just overwhelmed by the choice of things . . . I don’t know where to start looking. I really love all your shops.”

Jean touched her arm. “Don’t mind your mom, Aisling . .
. it’s just her way. Being brought up in Ireland back in the thirties and forties was tough. I still have problems with it . . .”

Aisling turned and looked at her aunt. The heated argument between herself and her mother must have been overheard. Aisling felt herself flush with embarrassment. It was just so rude of them to have been arguing in her aunt’s house. Then, as Jean lightly squeezed her hand reassuringly, Aisling suddenly felt as though she was going to burst out crying.

Thankfully they were both distracted for the moment as they caught sight of an ecstatic Maggie making her way towards them, holding up a pile of fancy towels.

“I – I think I might try on this coat,” Aisling murmured, turning towards the changing room.

They stopped off for lunch at a ‘Western’ restaurant with ranch-style doors, where they were served steaks, salad and French fries by waiters wearing cowboy hats and check shirts with neckerchiefs.

“This is more like the America we know from the films,” said Declan, taking in all the decorative whips and spurs which adorned the walls. “I only hope there’s no Red Indians ready to leap out on us!”

As they left the restaurant, Aisling heard her mother say to her father, “I’m enjoying the change with the food and everything, but the only thing is, we haven’t had a decent spud since we left Ireland. It’s all chips, chips, chips and salad with everything.”

Declan had nodded in agreement. “Only the Yanks would think to put a cold salad with steak. They don’t seem so fond of the oul’ cabbage and turnips, do they?”

Maggie nodded, her tightly-permed hair sitting as perfectly as the day it was done just before leaving for the holiday. “All I can say,” she sighed, “is thank God I brought plenty of the tea over with me. The potatoes I can live without, but a decent cup of tea is the least any of us can ask for.”

Declan clapped her on the shoulder, and winked over at Aisling. “We’d have been shagged altogether, Maggie, if we had problems with both the spuds and the tea!”

The day was glorious, so Bruce suggested that they stop off at a country park to make sure that Declan got his daily walk in the shaded greenery, rather than just the concrete pavements of the towns. Refreshed, they moved on to the next town which was another hour’s drive away.

Although she felt annoyed with her mother, Aisling was pleased to see that, in spite of the niggles over potatoes and cabbage, her parents were actually getting great pleasure
from the beautiful scenery and the lovely weather.

“Dublin won’t hold the same attraction for me, after being in all these lovely big department stores,” Maggie stated to no one in particular. “I never realised we were so behind the times in Ireland.”

Aisling smiled to herself, for her mother and father were lucky if they travelled up to Dublin once a year.

When they reached the town of Binghampton, Jean suggested that they all might like to have an hour or two on their own to look around. “Some of the shops are kinda small,” she explained, “and it might be easier for you to get around in ones or twos than the five of us together.”

Declan went off with Bruce to look at a shop that sold old-style saddles and cowboy boots, and Jean took Maggie off in search of a wool shop that might just have some stylish knitting patterns she wouldn’t find in Tullamore.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own, honey?” Jean checked, as Aisling went off with directions to the Town Bookstore that Bruce had been telling her all about. It was a fairly big shop, and one that might have some of the books Charles had asked her to find for him.

“Oh, that one could get lost in a book shop,” Maggie told Jean as they walked along at a nice, easy amble, “and when she’s reading, you might as well talk to the wall – she’s in another world altogether. She’s always been the same, since she was a child.” She shook her head. “Strangely enough, they’re all great readers. Pauline could s
it all day with a book or magazine . . . and of course Charles
spends half the time with his nose stuck in one. Weird kind of books he reads, about the oddest things.”

“But you were fond of reading when you were a girl,” Jean reminded her sister. “Those American books and comics our Auntie Philomena used to send over from Boston. You were mad about them.”

Maggie raised her eyebrows. “True,” she said thoughtfully
. “Now that you say it . . . it’s quare how we change over time without hardly noticing it. I suppose it was after I got married, that I got out of the way of reading. Now, I’d never think of starting a book – I’d be too guilty about doing nothing. It’s never-ending, between the shop and the house.”

“You have a full and busy life, Maggie,” Jean said softly, “and as long as what you’re doing makes you happy, that’s all that counts.”

“The only time I really sit down is when I’m knitting or sewing, and even then, there can be times when I’m up and down like a fiddler’s elbow.” Her voice dropped. “I think that’s what made me decide to come over here for the wedding. It was a good excuse to make me have a break . . . to be honest, I think I really need it.”

Jean took a chance, and put her arm around her older, frosty sister in the middle of the street – and was surprised when she didn’t flinch. “I’m delighted you came, Maggie,” she said, “and we’ll make sure you have the best holiday ever.”

* * *

On her way to the Town Bookstore, an unusual dress in a shop window caught Aisling’s eye. It was very different from the sort of dresses she would normally have bought at home – kaftan-style, in a mixture of pinks and mauves. She went inside and tried the dress on, and when she looked in the mirror she felt as though a stranger was looking back at her. A beautiful, blonde stranger who bought what she pleased, and wore what she pleased.

A blonde stranger who had never known Oliver Gayle.

Before she knew it, Aisling was walking out of the shop with two of the dresses wrapped in tissue-paper in fancy paper bags with the shop’s name on it. One for herself and one for Pauline, who was much more adventurous with fashion than Aisling. She smiled when she thought of the surprise on her sister’s face when she opened the package back in Ireland.

The Town Bookstore was a wonderland. It seemed to go on for miles, with corners turning here and there, revealing yet more shelves stacked from floor to ceiling with every sort of book imaginable. Within minutes, Aisling had picked out several titles by American authors that she had been looking for. She hugged them to herself, delighted with her finds. She found one of Charles’s books on space exploration, and then she picked out a nice fashion book for her friend Carmel. After that, she headed into the children’s section where she found two
Bobbsey
Twins
books and an illustrated copy of
Little Women
to take back to school.

On her way out, armed with her gift-wrapped parcels, she spotted a book on American fishing that her father might like. She was reaching on tiptoe for it, when she suddenly felt someone watching her.

“Can I do anything for you, ma’am?” a deep male voice said.

Startled, she turned to find a man standing close to her. Standing too close for comfort.

“No . . .” Aisling said, stepping back to a more comfortable
distance. “I’m grand . . . thank you.”

He looked her up and down, then he flashed a smile of perfect white teeth, showing under a well-trimmed moustache. “ I would agree with that statement, ma’am – you sure look grand.” He spoke in a slow American drawl, which sounded to Aisling as though he were mimicking a film star.

Instinctively, Aisling found herself moving away from the shelf, and away from the man. He looked to be in his late thirties and almost six foot tall, dark-headed and quite good-looking in an obvious sort of way. He was dressed in a Hawaiian-style shirt and shorts, and Aisling wondered at a shop-assistant being dressed so casually. He looked more suited to the beach than working in a bookshop.

Aisling hurried off to the pay-desk with the American fishing book, feeling horribly self-conscious under the man’s gaze. She wondered had she taken too long choosing her books, and was this the shop’s polite way of hurrying people up. She paid for her book, and this time declined the saleslady’s offer to gift-wrap it. She didn’t want to loiter around in the shop with the weird salesman, and anyway – her father
wouldn’t care how the book came. He would just be grateful she had even thought of him.

Out in the sunshine of the main shopping area again, Aisling drew a deep breath, and looked around, deciding which way to go next.

She turned down a quiet side-street and she wandered along it, coming to a standstill outside a ladies’ lingerie shop. The window display drew Aisling’s gaze to it like a magnet.

Delicate lace and satin underwear peeped out of antique chests of drawers and pink and yellow and white-painted baskets. A row of tiny polka-dot knickers with matching bras hung on a piece of white rope as though on a washing-line. Aisling had never seen anything so feminine and lovely. Not even in the bigger stores in Dublin did they have anything like this. Underwear was a most discreet, serious business there, and certainly not something to be flaunted in the front window of a shop, under the gaze of all the men passing.

In a few seconds she was standing inside the shop.

“Good day, ma’am,” a middle-aged shop assistant greeted her, “would you like some help or would you like to browse?”

“Thank you,” Aisling said, blushing, “I’m just having a little look around.”

“You just go straight ahead,” the lady told her, smiling. She motioned to a space at the side of the counter. “You can leave your parcels here, and it will leave you free to have a good look at the merchandise.”

And that’s exactly what Aisling felt – free. Free to wander about on her own, and free to look at these, delicate, feminine things that she would love to own. She moved about the shop, gently fingering the silky garments.

There was a time when she would have loved Oliver to see her in skimpy little things like these, but not any more. Especially after finding another woman’s brassierre under the seat of his car when she was cleaning it out last year. A much fancier sort of brassiere than the type she wore herself. Since then, Aisling had constantly been aware of being in competition with someone else.

Even when they were staying in the hotel at their anniversary, she found herself covering up in pyjamas and long nightdresses – unwilling to have her body compared to another woman’s.

Her hand lingered now over a beautiful, sleeveless, Victori
an-style nightdress. It had thin blue ribbon threaded
through broderie-anglaise cotton, and had rows of delicate lace stitched down the front and hem. This was something that she could happily wear in front of her mother and father, and it was perfect for the lovely, warm weather in America.

She picked a nice cotton brassiere and matching knickers, and one of the polka-dot sets. Then she left them, along with the nightdress and a matching dressing-gown she’d spotted, for the lady to wrap, while she wandered around picking up a heart-shaped nightdress case for Carmel and some small lace lavender-bags as gifts for the women teachers.

As she walked out of the shop, childishly examining the beautifully wrapped contents of yet another attractive American carrier bag, a familiar voice stopped her in her tracks.

“Buy anything nice?”

The hairs stood up on the back of her neck. It was the man from the bookstore. She turned around, and there he was – just standing looking at her. And just like before, he was moving too close for comfort. She backed off now – realising that he must have been watching her while she was inside the shop, watching her as she walked around looking at all the lovely underwear, watching her as she picked up brassieres and knickers and nightdresses, watching her as she held the nightdress to her body, and looked at herself in the mirror.

Watching her do things that she would never even want her husband to see her doing. Even at the best moment in their relationship, she would have felt embarrassed choosing underwear in front of Oliver.

But this wasn’t Oliver. This man who had been watching
her was a complete stranger. And he had been watching her and waiting for her outside the shop.

This time Aisling did not make any pretence of being polite. Instinctively she knew she should not acknowledge him – that this was not a normal, friendly encounter. For all she knew he could be a rapist or even a murderer. The street was almost empty and he could easily grab her and drag her into one of the parked cars. He might even have a gun. You often heard in the news of people being shot in America.