It Was Only Ever You (37 page)

‘You know how careless delivery men are.’

She was grinning now. Her face lit up like a beacon when she did that.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I heard you were back home and—’

‘It’s OK,’ she said. And, to her surprise, Ava realized that it was.

‘Can I take you out to lunch?’ he said. ‘It doesn’t have to be anywhere fancy...’

‘Now?’

‘Well, if it’s...’

She put him out of his misery.

‘Great,’ she said. ‘Let me run upstairs and get changed.’

She left the flowers on the hall table. Tom came back out and picked them up.

‘Ah – I get to put them in a vase at least.’

Dermot smiled. He felt he should be saying something to Tom, explain himself somehow. He just wasn’t sure what that was. He broke the silence anyway by saying, ‘Ava is upstairs getting changed...’

Tom was staring at him intently.

‘...I am taking her out...’

Too intently.

‘To lunch...’

Then Tom said it. What he had been bottling up for weeks.

‘Ava is very delicate right now. If you hurt her...’

‘I understand—’

Dermot knew what he was trying to say and wanted to spare him, but Tom would not be interrupted.

‘If you hurt her, so help me God, I don’t know what I’ll do.’

Tom’s face was tight with contained rage. Dermot recognized the feeling because he also channelled his masculine anger through the filter of reason. It was how respectable men did things.

‘I would never hurt Ava,’ Dermot assured him. He would have added more about how he felt about the likes of Patrick Murphy and how he would welcome the opportunity to protect Ava from such men in the future, but she came down the stairs.

*

They drove as far as Getty Square and had lunch in a diner. Nowhere fancy, just somewhere impersonal and cheap where they were not likely to run into anybody they knew. They talked as easily as they had always done. No mention of Patrick, or lost babies. Dermot told her about his disastrous meeting with Joe Higgins and the Balducci brothers, and Ava was horrified, and impressed, but mostly – amused. She had forgotten how much Dermot made her laugh. What he lacked on the dance floor or in dashing good looks, he more than made up for in personality.

‘Actually, I’ve got a confession,’ he said. He took a chance and told her about nearly running into her and hiding in the confessional box. He made it sound so funny that Ava actually wept with laughter, although he didn’t tell her about confessing his love for her to the priest. That would have been too much and he needed to hang on to some semblance of dignity.

Once or twice during the lunch Ava felt her hand wanting to creep across the table and take his. She was grateful that he did not reach out in the same way. It would have been too much. But, at the same time, she felt perhaps, if he had it might have felt as if they had never been apart.

After they had eaten and Dermot had settled with the waitress, Ava said, ‘Shall we go for a stroll? I’ve hardly been out of the house for weeks.’

Dermot felt ludicrously happy. He was trying to keep himself in check but his spirit was soaring. This afternoon was going better than he could have ever expected. She was as warm and loving towards him as she ever had been. And, he believed, he had cheered her up and made her happy. Making Ava happy gave him more joy than anything else. Could it possibly be that they were starting again?

As they walked, Ava took his arm. As he felt her hand settle on the crook of his elbow he reached down and rested his own hand on top of it. She did not move away.

They walked in companionable silence, not taking much notice of what was going on around them. Dermot was lost in a reverie of romantic love. He was afraid, in fact, to open his mouth in case he said something foolish like ‘Shall we get married?’ or ‘I love you’ and of course it was way too early for that. Dignity was the thing now. Dignity and respect... and then Ava stopped walking.

Dermot rejoined the world and his heart gave a jolt when he saw where they were.

They were standing outside the Emerald dance hall and in front of them was a huge poster advertising, ‘Patrick Murphy sings his debut single, “It Was Only Ever You”. Saturday, 8pm.’

Dermot began to panic. Ava seemed paralysed. Her hand loosened on the base of his bicep.

Dermot did not know what to say. Did she expect him to say something? There were any number of barbed comments forming in the back of his mind, the most obvious of which was to simply mutter the expletive ‘bastard!’

But he was too much of a gentleman to do that. So he simply put his hand over Ava’s again, and picked up the stroll. He kept the talk going with silly chit-chat but inside his head he was saying, ‘You stupid idiot! You led her straight to him! Stupid, stupid idiot.’

They went back to the car and Dermot drove her home.

The spell had been broken but then, as she was getting out, Ava turned, looked him in the eye and said, with all sincerity, ‘Thank you for a lovely afternoon, Dermot. It was really good to see you.’

‘Maybe we can do it again?’ he said.

She looked at him, seeming to pause, then said, ‘Maybe sometime, Dermot. I’m glad we are friends, but...’

‘I understand,’ he said. Then he smiled, said, ‘Goodnight,’ and pulled the door shut.

He had given her his heart and, for the second time, she had broken it.

‘But’. Dermot knew exactly what that meant. But you are not handsome. But you are not exciting. But you are too nice. Too funny. I love you
but
I am in love with somebody else. Let’s just be friends.

All the way back to the city Dermot worked himself up into a rage. He knew he could make Ava happy, but if she was going to persist with being ‘in love’ with this cad, well then, he was going to have to do something about it.

He had had enough. There were going to be no more ‘buts’ for Dermot Dolan.

It was time to man up and take action. Dermot ran up the stairs to his apartment and grabbed the phone book from the hall table. He found the number he was looking for and dialled.

A woman’s voice answered.

‘Is that Myrtle Milligan?’

‘Yes.’

‘Myrtle – this is Dermot Dolan. I need your help.’

R
OSE
PUT
the finishing touches to her illustration. It was a lavish party table with platters of vol-au-vents and steaming apple pies laid out on a gingham tablecloth with the logo ‘Molly’s Party Platters’ emblazoned across the top in copperplate typescript. She was still learning to measure out the stencils, but it looked even to her.

She straightened the A1 sheet on her drawing board and waited while Christopher, her boss, the creative director in Gimble Advertising, checked it over.

Man, this girl was good. In just two months she had picked up the basic rules of advertising design, in addition to being able to draw, always to the brief and close to perfection.

When his sister Marisa had rung Christopher and asked him if he could find a job for some Irish girl she knew, he was sceptical. She did not have an art education or any art training, but Marisa rarely asked him for anything, even though he knew she and Donnie were hard up, so he couldn’t say no. The pretty, blonde, demure creature, clearly middle-class, was very different from what he had been expecting. But Christopher took his sister’s word that she was ‘needy’ and put her to making coffee and buying in lunches for the art studio. The kid got lucky on her fourth day in the job. The studio was snowed under with deadlines when a last-minute pitch for a new brand of cigarette came in from the sales team. Chris had no one else, and decided to give her a tryout. It turned out he was the lucky one. Rose had a rare talent for drawing. Less than an hour after he gave her the brief she came back with a life-like drawing of a Hollywood doyenne, smoking with such style that the client bought it straight away. From day one, Christopher had found Rose to be the most efficient, accurate artist he had ever worked with. She was his shining star. Unlike many of the brilliant illustrators who earned a fortune in advertising, Rose was not arrogant or demanding. She was not only an excellent employee but a popular member of the team. The men were all a little bit in love with her, and, because she was so young and innocent to the ways of the big city, the women all felt protective of her. Rose had a bright, friendly way about her, doing the secretaries’ jobs for them and always anxious to be helpful and cooperative. She now shared an apartment with two of the secretaries on the Upper East Side. As a fine artist, Rose’s salary had already outstripped that of Christopher’s brother-in-law Donnie. He felt bad about that, but he had to pay her union rates for the job she was doing. Marisa told him that Rose called around to them every week, without fail, with gifts for the children and themselves. Marisa would not take any money off Chris, so he was thinking of recruiting Rose in his efforts to get his sister set up in a hair salon as soon as this next baby was born. He was beginning to consider her a friend.

‘Looks great, Rose,’ he said now, leaning into the picture and marvelling at the detail. ‘I’d like you to come into the client meeting after lunch.’

Rose loved her work. Christopher telling her what to draw all day long, and having to produce drawings to a deadline, was the perfect job for her. Not least because it offered her constant distraction. Rose needed distraction more than anything else.

‘You’re my lucky charm, Rose,’ Chris said. ‘Go out for lunch and I’ll see you in the boardroom at two.’

Rose smiled sunnily and said, ‘See you then!’

She knew she had been lucky. A whole life in New York. In just two months she was settled into a great job and an apartment in the city. She was making new friends and a whole world was opening up to her.

However, Rose felt that if she was charmed, it was by the devil. She had intended to run away from all the bad things she had done in the past few months. From stealing the money from her parents and leaving them to go out of their mind with worry about her. Impulsively chasing across the world to find Patrick and determinedly pursuing him even though he was now married to somebody else. Lying to Ava and encouraging him in the deceit was the worst of all. She might have been the cause of the loss of that baby, she had certainly been the cause of a broken marriage.

From the vantage point of her new, lucky life, Rose could see the hardship and pain that she had caused. Not only could she see it, she could feel it now. Every day, not one minute went past when Rose was not filled with regret at the intense, determined madness that had overtaken her in her pursuit of Patrick Murphy. Because that was all it was. Madness. When they said ‘madly in love’ was that what they meant?

She had come to the taxi driver’s home in Harlem in a very different mood from the one she had left it in. Almost immediately she confessed to Marisa the terrible things she had done since she had left them. Marisa had not thrown her out on the street, but offered a kind, sympathetic ear and contacted her brother.

The ease with which Rose had fallen into this new life, and seemingly been forgiven for her sins, far from making life easier for her, was making it harder. Aside from the time when she was lost in her work, she felt guilty all the time. A sick dread clung to her conscience. The inescapable knowledge that she was, despite her pretty looks and polite ways, a bad person. Rose hated herself for what she had done and was beginning to hate herself for the person she was because of it. Everybody liked her, but that was because they thought she was a nice person. Only she knew that she was not a nice person. She was a bad person masquerading as sweet. She was a fake and she knew it.

As soon as Rose had begun her new job, she had written to her parents. She had kept it brief, apologized for all the worry she had caused them, and promised to pay back all of the money she had stolen.

She received a letter shortly afterwards from her father, apologizing himself for having chased Patrick away. He assured Rose that while he had forgiven her, he was still trying to persuade her mother that it was a good idea for Rose to stay in New York for a while. Her mother was still very anxious that she come home and missed her terribly.

Reading between the lines, Rose understood that her mother was suffering from depression. She knew that if she was not entirely the cause of it, the disappearance had certainly been a catalyst.

Short of returning home, there was nothing she could do to comfort her parents. She also knew that if she did return home, there would be no comfort for her.

In the meantime, she had to try and enjoy this new life, despite the terrible things she had done to Patrick and Ava. She knew that apologizing to them would not be as simple as it had been with her parents. She had caused a lot of pain and it was better for her to leave them alone to deal with it. To try and offload it on to them would be a selfish act. At the same time, she wanted to try and find a way of living with it, of living with herself, with more comfort.

The offices had been so busy lately that she decided to get out on her own, get some fresh air and try to clear her head. There was a corner café that she liked two blocks from the office, midtown towards Hell’s Kitchen. She took a window seat and ordered herself a salt beef sandwich on rye bread and a coffee. Rose gazed out the window, watching the world go by, feeling a little sad at how separate she felt from it all.

As the waitress laid down her coffee she paused with her hand on the cup and looked off into the middle distance as a song came on the radio.

I ask myself are you the one I dream of night and day

Are you the reason why this yearning never goes away...

‘Turn that up, Freddie!’ she shouted out.

The music became louder, as the waitress sauntered to the next table, slowed down by the romantic, crooning voice:

I ask myself are you the one whose face I can’t forget

Your name hangs gently on each breeze I still can hear it yet

Rosie felt her stomach turn inside out. It was Patrick, singing that song. Their song. The song he had written for her, telling her, ‘It was only ever you.’