It Was Only Ever You (20 page)

Ava was his talisman too because when his shift was over, Gerry had come and told him that the owner of the club had been in and heard him sing. ‘No promises,’ he said, ‘but he liked your style and wants to try you out as resident band singer.’

Patrick nearly kissed him.

‘Don’t get too excited,’ he said. ‘Same salary and we still need you behind the bar.’

‘I won’t let you down,’ Patrick said.

Ava was the girl that had made that happen for him.

But Patrick also knew that the relationship which had begun with that kiss must end with it too. Ava was engaged. Plus her family were big shots, and even though he was from a good family himself, if he wasn’t good enough for Dr Hopkins, he certainly wouldn’t be good enough for Ava’s family. He knew that Tom Brogan was a decent man, not a snob. However, he had been inside their house and seen the luxury in which Ava had grown up. They had two television sets and carpet on their walls. The Brogans would never accept their daughter taking up with somebody like him.

And yet, here she was. Waiting for him.

The bar closed at one a.m. and Patrick quickly went to the staff area and changed out of his uniform. When he returned, the band was finishing up with the Irish national anthem. As they came down on the last bar, everyone moved towards the wide double doors but Ava remained where she was. As he walked towards her he saw her face blanch as the fluorescent lights came up and she momentarily lost sight of him. By the time Patrick reached her table, ‘hello’ seemed too small a greeting somehow, so he said nothing. She stubbed out her cigarette and then, unable to hold his eye, simply looked down at her hands. He could see how nervous she was. Without saying a word Patrick simply took her hand. She led him out to her father’s car in a corner of the parking lot. When they were both seated she looked at him and smiled, that glorious open smile, and they kissed for the second time. As the parking lot emptied, they moved into the back seat and made love.

Afterwards, Ava was surprised at how little shame she felt. In fact, she felt perfectly wonderful. Liberated. It was as if, for the first time, her body felt wholly alive. All those years of dancing, had, she now realized, merely been her body going out in search of this truth. And now she had found it. This was love. An infinitely bigger and more seductive feeling than the simple camaraderie she had enjoyed with Dermot.

Ava was not a girl any more. She was a woman. And she liked it. Gathering herself, she began searching around for lost buttons, while Patrick found himself half trapped in his own trousers. They laughed at the shocking recklessness of what they had just done.

Looking out on the empty car park, they talked.

They talked about Patrick’s dreams of being a singer. He told her about the beautiful town of Foxford, in County Mayo, and his family.

‘Mammy and my sisters cried and pleaded with me not to leave them but I knew I had to come. I knew I had to make it in America...’

He didn’t mention Rose or Dr Hopkins and Ava didn’t ask how he got the money for his flight. Patrick was relieved about that but then realized why she hadn’t. Rich people didn’t worry about things like that. He told her, then, in great detail about his boss in the golf club, embellishing his antics to make himself sound slightly heroic.

‘I told him, “I will not work another day in this lousy place” – and I walked straight out the door without looking behind.’

Even though Ava knew he had effectively run away, and that it had been her introduction to her father that had saved him, Ava told herself he was just showing off, which was what men did when they were trying to impress you. Some men. Her father rarely showed off and neither did Dermot but then neither of them had been that bothered about impressing her. As Patrick talked, Ava looked at the dusting of hair under his open shirt, his firm square chin toughened with the day’s stubble, his glittering blue eyes, his fine head of black curls, and she wanted to reach over and sink her fingers into them again, and tear back his head and engage him in a savage kiss. He was magnificent and he had been the first man to make proper love to her. He was her hero now. There was no going back.

‘I know now I can be a big singer,’ he said.

‘You were wonderful,’ she said.

He smiled and stopped short of thanking her. He had thanked her already. She knew how grateful he was. He did not want to diminish himself in her eyes.

‘I know I can be a big star,’ he said, ‘and I won’t stop trying until I get there.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said, smiling.

Patrick was so excited that he could have talked all night about himself. Making love was wonderful, but the thing he had missed most about Rose was having someone to share his dream with. Now he had met somebody else. He put the thought of Rose to the back of his mind and reminded himself that Ava was different. Not a girl like Rose, but a mature woman. Sure, hadn’t they just gone the whole way? He had never gone that far with Rose. Rose was just a girl. A woman was what he needed now.

‘What about you, Ava?’ he asked. ‘What do you dream of?’

Ava had never thought about dreams in that way. She loved life itself, not dreaming about it. Life was life and dreams were dreams. She enjoyed dancing, but had never been foolish enough to imagine she could make a life out of it. She had always hoped for marriage and children but being engaged to Dermot had never felt like a dream come true. It felt like the fulfilment of an expectation.

Of course, like all women, Ava had dreamt of romance. Of being held in the arms of an impossibly handsome man and told she was beautiful, even though she knew she wasn’t in real life. It was this knowledge that made her the practical girl she was. Having dreams of being beautiful and experiencing romance would only lead to pain. And yet, here she was, being romanced by the most handsome charismatic young man in the whole of New York.

‘Nothing really,’ she said, ‘except this evening feels unreal somehow, don’t you think? As if we were in a dream?’

Ava immediately regretted saying it. She felt foolish. Immediately she wished for him to tell her that she was beautiful, that this was a dream come true for him. He hadn’t a clue what she was talking about but as he saw her face fall, he quickly said, ‘It is surely.’

Ava tried not to look disappointed and changed the subject.

‘So how do you suppose you are going to become a famous singer?’

Patrick thought he detected a slight barb in her voice but then he looked at her sweet face and he knew that couldn’t be the case.

‘I shall just charm all the ladies of New York in the way that I have charmed you,’ he said.

‘Is that so? And it will be as easy as that?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps I will need some help, aghrá...’ and he leaned over and kissed her again.

They drove around the city all night. Parking in different places; kissing, talking, making love.

When Ava got home that morning she found her parents sitting in the kitchen waiting for her. There was nothing either of them could say. They knew where she had been and who she had been with. They did not need to ask what she had been doing all night. She was not their little girl any more. They had known the time would come, one day, that she would leave them. Nessa had hoped that she would simply pass her on to another good family, into an easy, domestic life that she could share with her. Tom had only the father’s hope that his little girl would never grow up at all.

Ava and Patrick continued to see each other. Shortly after that night, Ava moved out of home into a small apartment in the Upper East Side of the city. It was small and poky but near her father’s office, where she continued to work. Tom bought her a second-hand car, and arranged a driving test for Patrick, greasing the right palms to ensure he passed it. On the day she moved out, Tom also took a day off work and helped her move in her things. Nessa had not spoken to Ava since their confrontation. However, she did leave a box of crockery and kitchen utensils at the back door. As her father lifted the box into the boot of his car Ava asked him, ‘Will Mom ever come round, do you think? I love Patrick and I know I did the right thing in breaking it off with Dermot. Do you think I did the right thing, Da?’

‘Now, Ava – you know there’s not a man in the world good enough for my favourite girl.’

‘Even Dermot Dolan?’

‘Even Dermot Dolan.’ He smiled warmly at her. ‘Your mother will come around, one day, although I can’t say when. She’s stubborn – like you.’

*

After Ava left that evening, Dermot stood in his hallway, unable to move for what seemed like ages. Time stood still. Even though he had intuited her affection for another man, even though he understood her reasons for ditching him for somebody more exciting, the shock was terrible. Not so much that she had left him for another man, more the shock of what she had left him with. Which felt like nothing. Of course, he had always hoped that one day, he would find a wife. But he had never been prepared to compromise. He wanted to share his life with a woman, not simply take on a glorified housekeeper, which, as far as he could see, was what marriage meant to many of his successful lawyer friends. Dermot compromised a great deal in his work, defending gangsters who were sometimes guilty of the crimes he got them off on. He had to pretend to like people he despised. He never wanted to do that at home. He could have got married a dozen times over. He knew that as soon as news of his break-up with Ava became public the cream of respectable Irish motherhood would be throwing their daughters at him again. But he didn’t want to compromise. He loved Ava. He had been disbelieving that she might love him back. But not so disbelieving that he had been prepared for her to leave him. When they had got engaged, Dermot had thought that his life had come together so wholly, he had taken his eye off the ball. Was there anything he could have done to have stopped her from running off in this way?

His thoughts were interrupted when the theme tune for
Search for Tomorrow
came on the TV. He wandered in to the living room to switch it off and as his hands reached towards it he wondered if this would be the week that Dick finally got together with Jane. He smiled to himself. It was Ava’s favourite TV show. He had only bought this set to keep up with her. It was the best TV money could buy. It was going to go into their home together.

Dermot turned the knob and watched the picture disappear into a tiny white dot. As the screen went black, he sat down on his settee, put his head into his hands and cried.

A
FTER
THAT
first night, Ava was very careful. She travelled across town to find a drugstore where nobody knew her and stocked up on contraception. It was embarrassing introducing the biscuit-coloured balloons into her relationship with Patrick, certainly not romantic in any way. But Ava knew how important it was that she did not get pregnant. Not until they had decided what was for the best.

Patrick kept his room in the apartment he shared with six other lads. It belonged to his boss and the rent was negligible as long as you were working for him. The boss was Ava’s father’s business acquaintance, Ignatius Morrow. He had seen Patrick singing the night she got him on stage, and was so impressed, Patrick said, he had promised to make him a star. It was great news, but it also meant a longer day, as rehearsals were in the afternoons and went right up until his night shift in the bar began. However, Patrick spent every spare moment he had with Ava.

Ava loved him. Or rather, she was a passionate and voracious lover. Since that first full night together, Ava felt as if the floodgates had been opened. She was hungry for Patrick in a way she used to be hungry for dancing. She would get home from work every night and prepare the house, and herself, for his arrival after the evening work shift. More often she would be half asleep in bed, and feel him crawl in next to her. Already naked, his hands would seek her out in the darkness. After they had made love she would get up and pull back the curtain, and under the blue lights of the city she would trace the fine features of his face with her fingers and wonder how she had come to be making love to a boy so handsome and sweet.

There was a boyish innocence about Patrick that enchanted her. He was so different from the confident, pragmatic men that she knew. She felt he needed her to look after him and that made her feel wanted.

Two months after they had established this comfortable routine, Ava took sick.

She woke up one morning feeling nauseous and headachy. She vomited, something which she never did. Shocked, she stayed in bed for the day and found that she was fine later that evening. Patrick came round as usual and they made love. She got up before him, as she always did, but as she was applying her make-up, she vomited again.

Morning sickness.

Ava was not stupid, but she was so terrified that she tried to push it to the back of her mind and soldiered on. It was another three days before she went to the doctor. By that time the sensible, pragmatic side of Ava had already counted ten weeks back to that first night in the back of her parents’ car. The other, wishful, optimistic side of her burst into tears when the doctor told her.

Ava and Patrick married within days.

Her parents did not object. This was, after all, the only way forward and at least she was getting married. Nessa had come to feel that this new Ava was a complete stranger to her. She had visions of Ava becoming one of those renegade ‘beatnik’ girls she read about in the magazines. She might decide to live in sin and have the baby out of wedlock. Where would they be then! When news of her pregnancy and impending marriage threatened to unhinge her, Tom pointed out that they should be grateful that Ava was not running wild. Patrick, too, was a Catholic, and so, in some part, his decision to marry Ava had been made the night he made love to her in the back of her father’s car. You didn’t go all the way with a girl like Ava and then abandon her.

When she told him she was pregnant, Patrick was not as upset as he imagined he would be. In some ways, he was relieved. He had held off on asking Ava to marry him because he felt he was still engaged to Rose. Perhaps, he had been thinking, he should make more of an effort to contact her, break it off properly, even though he felt certain it was over from her side too, otherwise she would have found a way of getting in touch. He thought about telephoning Rose from the office at work. He felt sure they would allow him to do it if he explained it was a family emergency. But then, he would have to find her telephone number. He supposed he could ring the exchange in Foxford and asked to be put through, but then they would know who he was – and it all seemed so very confusing.