It Was Only Ever You (34 page)

‘It wasn’t a proper kiss anyway, I could see that right away. It was all for show. Us pretty girls all know how easy it is to seduce a man into kissing you. But it doesn’t mean anything. I could see right away that Patrick was playing with you. He is completely different with Ava, you can see how much he cares for her. Besides, Sheila told me she had encouraged him to do it. She was trying it out as part of the act. Make the girls swoon.’

Myrtle wasn’t as good at lying as Rose was, but she was learning fast.

Rose felt a wave of nausea. Her head was spinning. Could it be true that Patrick had been playing with her? Could it be true that he loved Ava and not her? That his kiss was all part of the act?

‘But still,’ Myrtle continued, ‘I found it quite disgusting. And so did Ava, and so, by the way, did her family, especially after all they have done for you.’

Rose was burning with shame.

‘I also saved you the trouble and filled in your room-mates, Una and Eileen, nice girls – I know them from the Emerald. Oh yes. Everybody knows what a slut you are now. Also Sister Augustine who, as you can imagine, was
thoroughly
appalled.’

Myrtle stood up and reached down beside the locker and picked up the bag Rose had travelled to America with, and handed it across to her.

‘I assumed this was your grubby little case so I have filled it with your grubby little clothes and you can run away back to Ireland to your mammy and daddy, who, by the way, also know where you are and what you’ve been up to. Tom Brogan filled them in on all the nasty things you’ve been getting up to since you arrived in New York.’

Rose stood there in shock. She did not know if she would be able to move her feet.

Myrtle shook the bag at her.

‘Are you taking this or would you like me to kick you out with nothing?’

Rose reached across and took the bag. She felt she should say something, ‘Goodbye’ or ‘I’m sorry’, but there were too many people to say sorry to and the goodbyes ran too deep.

Myrtle walked her down the front steps of the convent and watched her until she had cleared the block. Where would she go? The only other place she knew was the Emerald, but humiliation would be waiting for her there too. She stood under the awning of the apartment block and looked up and down the busy sidewalk. People rushing about, busy in their lives. Men in hats rushing to and from work, women pushing buggies towards the park, old ladies wheeling buggies full of shopping. Everyone in New York had a life. She had been clinging on to somebody else’s, trying to steal another woman’s husband, another woman’s life. Rose checked her purse. She found one five-dollar bill. As she rifled through looking for another, she pulled out the slip of paper that the taxi driver’s wife, Marisa, had given her when she first came here.

Rose had nowhere else to go, so she hailed a cab and asked the driver to take her to the address in Harlem.

P
ATRICK
SAT
in the bar of the Emerald and drank himself into a stupor for nearly three full days, under Gerry’s watchful eye. The bar manager put him in a quiet corner at the end of the bar then filled him to the brim with drink, listening, as much as his work would allow, as the young singer’s pain came roaring out of him. Tearful regrets about the beautiful family he had left behind in County Mayo, and the simple life he should have followed, taking a job in the Foxford Woollen Mills like his father. Then his own stupidity in losing his wife, and when it came to the baby, he would become crippled with a regret so heartbreaking that, once or twice, Gerry simply handed him the whiskey bottle and let him take it from the neck. When he was done crying, Patrick would rant and rave, ruing the day he had laid eyes on that wicked blonde temptress, Rose Hopkins, cursing her snobbish parents from the high-heaven. When he became too rowdy and began to upset the other customers, Gerry would call one of the doormen to help bring him down to the cellar where they would lock him in a stockroom to cool off. His fellow Irishmen set up a bed with blankets and cushions and brought him down food and coffee until, sobbing and regretful, he would go back upstairs to start again. Sheila was horrified with the ritual, but Gerry explained that it was important for Patrick to ‘drink it out’. It was like lancing a boil, Gerry explained. ‘Otherwise, it’ll fester. And once an Irishman starts to fester, you’ll never get him back the same way again.’

After three days, it was over. Patrick took his breakfast and coffee and did not go back to the bar. His hands were shaking and his head felt as if there were a dozen goblins in there, hammering. He was, in some ways, grateful for the physical hardship because it took from the emotional pain that the drink had masked, but not cured. In his dedicated grief, Patrick had, at least, come to understand with absolute certainty that his marriage to Ava was over. Her family had never fully approved of him in the first place, and, after what had happened, there would be no going back. Rose had ruined his life. He had ruined his own life then by allowing his pathetic heart to lure him into kissing her. The reality was, he was on his own in New York. All he had now was his career. Although, without somebody to share it with, that hardly seemed to matter any more.

*

‘How dare you contact the Decca scout about the kid? He rang me earlier about some deal you are trying to fix up. Who sanctioned you to get a song written for him?’

When Iggy had asked Sheila to meet him in his office, this was not what she had been expecting.

Sheila had put out her cigarette at the door and unbuttoned the top button of her new black shirt in preparation for the assignation. Iggy had been away for nearly six days, visiting his properties in Ireland and Britain, so this trip had been longer than most. She had missed him, and she knew he had missed her. Within an hour of getting back into New York her lover always took the opportunity to show her just how much. Usually prefaced by a stern invite to meet him ‘in the office’.

Except now he was giving her a telling-off? Not a sexy telling-off either – a real one.

Who sanctioned the song? Was he kidding? She knew that little bum from Decca wasn’t used to dealing with women. The fact that he had called Iggy at all was humiliation enough, without Iggy not standing up for her and telling him where to get off.

‘Nobody sanctioned the song. The kid wrote the words and I got some other kid to write the music...’ As he opened his mouth to object, she filled it with the words, ‘for free.’

‘Nobody works for free.’

‘OK – I gave him a percentage of record sales.’

Iggy put his head in his hands before looking up at her. His face was angrier than it should have been. Maybe he had had a bad flight.

Actually, it had been a great flight, and one of his favourite Aer Lingus hostesses, Belinda, had given him the number of her hotel room. He would not take her up on the offer, but it had briefly irked him that he shouldn’t, or rather couldn’t, even if he had wanted to. The truth was, he didn’t want any woman apart from Sheila. That alone gave her a power over him that made him feel uncomfortable. Iggy had no idea if Sheila felt the same way, but she acted sometimes like she could take him or leave him. The way that air hostess threw herself at him, she knew he was the boss. A man needed to be in charge of his own destiny but, in his intense feelings of fondness towards Sheila, and his growing dependency on seeing her, Iggy could feel his destiny slipping away from him.

He needed to show her who was boss. Thankfully, she had given him the perfect opportunity to do so.

‘So, tell me, how are we expected to get a record deal if you’re giving away sales percentage to some songwriter?’

‘We own half the song because Patrick wrote the words.’

‘So now you are going to tell me that Patrick owns half the song and the songwriter owns the other half. What do we get out of it?’

‘A percentage.’

It occurred to Sheila that maybe she had acted too hastily. After all, Iggy had a lot more experience in this field. He was managing and touring acts, many of whom had record deals, but she had wanted to do this on her own. She had wanted to prove to herself that she could do it alone. She certainly needed to prove to him that she was her own woman. Taking help from a man like that could lead to him walking all over you. At least losing her freedom. Just standing here, Sheila thought, is a loss of freedom in itself. He didn’t care about Patrick’s career, she knew that. He just wanted a piece of the action so he could keep her beholden to him. Well, that wasn’t going to work.

Once she had Patrick launched, a record deal secured, ‘It Was Only Ever You’ in the charts – she was out of here. And no man was ever going to tell her what to do again. Iggy could go to hell.

‘A percentage of nothing, Sheila, is not a percentage. The only percentage you can take to a record company to make them listen is a hundred. Artist on a salary, writer on a fee. When they play a venue, it’s a different story – but when it comes to recording that’s still the way it’s done.’

‘Well I think it’s fair.’

Sheila could not quite believe that she had said something so lame. But she had.

‘Fair?’ Iggy was looking at her, his eyebrows raised in amusement, waiting for what she was going to say next.

‘Look – the kid that wrote the music to this song has already bagged seven hit singles in the UK. He’s a smart kid, he’s done the math, and he’s sick of working for fees. No matter how high they are he knows he’s getting ripped off. You know it’s the song that can make or break an artist. You can put out a good band with an average song and they’ll do OK. You get a good artist and give him a great song, you can make some serious money. Sooner or later the writers will come round to hanging on to their copyright. And when they do? We’ve already set our own bar and built up a stable of material. There’s a lot of average out there, Iggy, but if you want the very best – you’ve got to pay.’

Iggy thought about it. Damn but she was making sense.

‘And this guy is good?’

‘The best. And he’s fresh off the boat from England and ready to deal.’

‘The song?’

‘It’s a heartbreaker. A real gut-wrenching ballad. It will make Patrick a star. It will change everything.’

Iggy looked at her intensely. She was so hard to read. A fat ball of smoke from her cigarette drifted up towards her eyes. They were, he noticed, glittering. Ambition? Intent? Desire? Love even? For him? Patrick? He couldn’t tell and that bothered him. When the pretty air hostess had batted her glittering eyes at him, he had known exactly what was on her mind.

‘I will call my man at Decca and try to rescue the deal.’

That sentence, Sheila decided, summed up everything that she found offensive about the world in general, the music industry in particular and, as a man and an individual, Ignatius Morrow. ‘My man’, ‘rescue’, and not her deal but ‘the deal’. No matter what she did, he would want a part of it. As long as she was here, under his roof, he was calling the shots. He was the same as every other guy she had ever worked for. Possibly worse. The fact that she had feelings for him was certainly making it worse.

‘Great,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

There was a pause before he asked, ‘See you later?’

Without missing a beat she said, ‘Not tonight, I’m afraid.’

He raised his eyebrows in surprise.

‘Other plans?’

‘Yes,’ she said. Then gave him a sharp, curt smile and left the room.

She had no plans. She never had any plans that didn’t involve him any more. She had to pull back and stop being at his beck and call. She had to start clawing back some control over her own life.

Sheila went back out into the ballroom to look for Patrick. He should be there now. It was a big night tonight with the scout coming in. She wanted to get in a few rounds of ‘It Was Only Ever You’ to make sure Patrick was on top form. Maybe the little blonde might come and stand in front of him again – that was some performance she drew out of him before.

When she got there she found him sitting on the edge of the stage. His body was as stiff as a board and he was rocking gently backwards and forwards. Something was very badly wrong. As soon as he saw Sheila he began blabbing, sucking in air between the words to stop himself from sobbing.

‘I’ve messed up so badly Sheila. I’ve got nobody left...’

Then, unable to stop himself, he began to wail like a child. Sheila tried patting him on the back but she was lighting a cigarette in a hurricane. A dead baby and a thwarted, absconded wife was a lot to deal with, even for a soft kid like this one. For a second Sheila wished she’d come down on the blonde home-wrecker, but she guessed it wouldn’t have made much of a difference in the scheme of things. At least he had stopped drinking.

‘I’ve got nowhere to live! I’ve got nowhere to go!’

‘We will fix you up. Don’t worry, everything is going to be all right.’

‘I can’t sing tonight. Please don’t make me sing. Don’t make me sing that song...’

Sheila reached for a cigarette and realized she already had one in her mouth. She lit the fresh one and gave it to him.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Just wait here.’

She was not equipped to deal with this emotional stuff, but she knew she had to look after her boy.

Sheila ran to the office, banged on the door and entered before getting a call. Iggy was on the phone.

She ignored that fact and said, ‘Patrick is having a crisis. His wife left him. He has been out in the bar, drunk, for three days, so I’m taking him home to the folks with me for a proper meal. Can you call
your
man (she couldn’t resist it) in Decca and put him off until I get this sorted.’

Before he had a chance to respond, Sheila was gone.

Dropping everything for pretty Patrick? Bringing him home? Sheila had never invited him to meet her family. In their warmer moments he had dropped hints about home-cooked meals and never having had his own family. She always found a way of ignoring him, adeptly pushing the suggestions aside in that cool way she had.

She was pouring everything into the kid, and nothing into him these days. She was using him, just hanging around to get her act on the road. She was the same as all the other women, after his money and his power; she was using it to do something else. Sheila thought she was so smart. She thought she was better at hiding it than most women, but she wasn’t.