Once in a Lifetime (50 page)

‘No,’ said Babe, fiercely. ‘No, you mustn’t do that.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Ingrid.

‘This is private,’ Babe went on. ‘The more people know, the more chance it has of becoming public knowledge. You don’t want that.’

‘But I need to find out,’ Ingrid said. ‘I’m beginning to feel I didn’t know David at all and I can’t grieve properly because of this. I don’t know who it was, I don’t know anything any more.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Babe said. ‘This must be agony for you, Ingrid, but I don’t believe that finding out more about this woman

will help you. Humans are complex beings; we can never really know another person, not completely. There must have been parts of you that David didn’t understand?’

‘I suppose,’ said Ingrid, thinking of when Ethan had first gone away travelling around the world and how David simply hadn’t grasped her pain at missing him, her anxiety, worrying what was happening. She’d hated him for that, thinking that if only he tried a little harder, he could understand. What Babe was saying was that he couldn’t, any more than she could understand how he could stay with her and sleep with another woman.

‘Yes, but the fact he didn’t always understand me didn’t mean I’d have an affair with someone else,’ she said.

‘He was a man, you’re a woman. We’re different,’ Babe shrugged. ‘For us, love is a huge part of our lives; for them, it’s a segment. They have many segments. Think of it this way: was there ever another man in your life who was a better lover than David?’ Babe said. The conversation was moving into wildly shocking waters, Ingrid thought in alarm.

‘Em, Babe …’ started Ingrid.

‘No, bear with me,’ said Babe. ‘We’ve all loved someone and thought perhaps that the previous fellow was a better lover: hopeless in every other respect, maybe a terrible friend, a terrible conversationalist, stupid, but good in bed.’

‘And …’ said Ingrid.

‘And,’ said Babe, ‘you sit there and imagine, what if this previous fellow had been like David, except better in bed …’

She stopped, seeing Ingrid’s horrified face. ‘I’m not talking about David, but it’s an idea I want you to consider.

‘A woman, makes do with the package she has. But a man wants that package plus the little bit extra that the previous

girl had.’

‘He wants it all,’ Ingrid said flatly. ‘If he can’t get it all with you, he gets an extra helping from someone else, and then he has the whole package.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Do you talk about this sort of thing in Sheltering Pines?’

asked Ingrid.

‘We talk about everything,’ said Babe. ‘Well, some of us do. The rest talk about things like young people running wild and driving too fast, and how grandchildren aren’t the way they used to be and how the money is running out. But some of us do talk about things like this, and the consensus among those still in possession of our marbles is that love is about putting up with the package you’ve got.’

‘Right.’

The waitress came with food and they both stared at it silently.

‘So, David wasn’t happy with the sex part of our package?’

Ingrid said, once the waitress had left.

‘I doubt that very much,’ said Babe. ‘That was just an example. Perhaps another woman gave him one other thing that you couldn’t. But she still wasn’t you, and that was why he stayed with you.’

‘But do you know this?’ Ingrid asked. ‘Did he talk to you about it?’

‘No, he’d never share anything like that with me,’ said Babe. ‘He knew damn well how much I love you. I’d have kicked his backside for him, don’t think I wouldn’t. Ingrid, love, you’ll torment yourself forever if you try and find out why, because you can’t find out. He’s gone, you can’t ask him.’

‘But if I knew who she was ‘

‘If you knew who she was, you’d be even more tormented, thinking that she was funnier, younger, better at making muffins. Remember,’ Babe said, as a thought came to her, ‘having affairs was in his blood, you know. Blood will out.

His father, Andrew, wasn’t a faithful man.’

‘I always thought as much,’ said Ingrid, ‘but nobody ever told me for sure.’

‘Andrew was a decent man, there wasn’t a bad bone in his body, but he couldn’t keep his hand out of the sweetie jar.

He approved of you,’ Babe said, smiling, and Ingrid could see she’d gone back in time. ‘He thought you were marvellous.

There had been one other woman David was very involved with - wonderful girl, I loved her, but she probably wasn’t right for David. He needed someone like you.’

‘Kathryn, was it?’ said Ingrid. She’d heard about Kathryn, a sweet girl David had brought to many dances as a youngster.

He’d thought of marrying her, he’d said.

‘Lord, no! Not Kathryn, the one after her - Star Bluestone.’

‘I never heard him mention her,’ said Ingrid.

‘You’d have liked her,’ Babe went on. ‘Very wise, even though she was young.’

‘Do you think it could have been her?’ Ingrid said, struck by the thought. ‘He was having an affair with her?’

‘No,’ said Babe firmly. ‘But she was an interesting woman.

David’s mother said she was a white witch, could see into the future and such like. David used to get very upset when she said that. We might be a long way from the Salem trials, but the old magic still frightens the bejaysus out of most people.’

‘Was she a witch?’ asked Ingrid, fascinated. She couldn’t imagine David being involved with a woman like that. He was straight as an arrow, never so much as read his horoscope, thought Feng Shui was rubbish, and she could remember him changing channels when a woman came on the Late Late Show and talked about seeing angels.

‘No, but she had that long white-blonde hair and she was very into herbs and suchlike; that’s enough for most people.’

‘White-blonde hair?’ repeated Ingrid. ‘There was a woman like that at his funeral. I saw her: Molly’s friend Natalie fainted, and the woman was beside her, all in white - very bizarre for a funeral.’

‘She did wear a lot of white,’ Babe mused, then glanced up at Ingrid, who looked bleak.

‘I keep finding out more things about David that I never knew,’ Ingrid said sadly. ‘What else will I find out?’

Babe shook her head. ‘You knew the real David,’ she said briskly. ‘People have secrets, that’s all.’

‘I don’t have secrets,’ Ingrid countered.

“Course you do! We all do,’ Babe said. ‘Just think how boring we’d be if we didn’t.’

Nineteen

The Past

As soon as he heard her name - a name he hadn’t heard spoken for many years - the hairs stood up on the back of David Kenny’s neck.

‘The woman who makes them is called Star Bluestone,’ said Lena, smoothing a tapestry out on the table in his office. ‘She’s a fascinating person and the tapestries are just beautiful.’

Lena was telling him about her newest find, a craftswoman who lived on the outskirts of Ardagh in a windswept cottage on the coast, where she ran a small business producing exquisite tapestries.

‘She started off making the dyes herself,’ Lena explained, detailing the production process as she would for any new line she was trying to sell to David. ‘Like woad, for example.

Did you know it’s not some mythical paint people put on their faces in pre-Christian times, it’s actually a dye made out of this cabbage-like flower. She grows it in her garden - she showed me. She’s so knowledgeable, it’s fascinating to hear her talk about it all. As the range expanded, making all the

dyes became too difficult and time-consuming, so she buys some from abroad now. But they’re still handmade,’ went on Lena, ‘there is nothing synthetic in Bluestone tapestries, so that’s very good from a “green” point of view. As you can see, the tapestries themselves are lovely. Sort of mystical, aren’t they? She’s incredibly creative. What do you think? I’ve got some more to show you, if you want to see them?’ Lena said.

‘That would be great,’ David said, managing not to sound even a little shocked at the mention of Star’s name. He didn’t want anyone to know about their involvement in the past.

Keep yourself to yourself was a good motto; not one that his father had taught him, but one that David had learned along the way.

The tapestry Lena had unrolled on to the table was a seascape, a rendition of the Twelve Apostles, the rocks that jutted out of the sea near Star’s home. David had seen them many times and here, with her wonderful embroidery, Star had made them look almost like sea creatures rising out of the foam.

‘I took a picture of the house and of her,’ Lena went on.

‘I was just thinking that we could do a brochure. You know: make it a little bit different from the way they sold them in the craft shop. It’s very cute, the craft shop, actually,’ she said.

‘Lots of pottery, a few horrendous paintings, some nice watercolours, but nothing else we could use, nothing like this. These are the gems.’

David nodded and pretended to look at the second tapestry, which showed a little house hidden in the woods, but all the while his eyes were drawn to the pictures Lena had laid down on the table. The pale blue shingle house he could remember so well and the picture of Star herself shook him. She looked as if she hadn’t aged. There was still something very exotic about her, even though she was dressed in faded jeans and an old T-shirt - clearly what she’d happened to be wearing when Lena had called in.

‘She didn’t want to pose, I can tell you that,’ Lena said.

‘But I begged her. I said that at Kenny’s we believe art is about the artist, too.’

‘Absolutely,’ David said. ‘I like her work; I think it would be good to stock these tapestries. Can you talk to her about terms?’

‘Don’t you want to meet her yourself?’ Lena asked, surprised.

‘There’s no need,’ David said. ‘You’re a director now, Lena.’

It was just after Lena had been appointed to the board, and he made it sound as if this was part of her new brief, rather than his trying to avoid meeting someone.

‘Of course,’ Lena said, pleased.

When Lena had gone, David still felt unsettled.

It had been well over thirty years since he’d seen Star. So much had happened since. He’d taken over Kenny’s, he’d married Ingrid and had two beautiful children. Molly was in her first year of college, Ethan was playing lots of sports at school and not doing much else, and Ingrid - well, Ingrid was one of the most recognised people in the country. So David had done well for himself.

But buried inside him was a sense of shame about the past, a feeling that he hadn’t done the right thing by Star Bluestone.

He’d loved her, no doubt about that. Adored her. Back then, he used to write poetry, inspired by her beauty, her wisdom, her wild sexual energy.

But he’d known they were too young and too different.

Their sort of love wouldn’t have coped with being poor and struggling to pay a mortgage, waking in the night with a colicky baby. He couldn’t imagine Star doing anything so mundane, even though she was pretty practical around the house and grounds that she and her mother owned. That was how he remembered her: hair flying as she helped her mother in the garden, the pair of them digging away at some plant,

hatless no matter what the weather, laughing, rejoicing, even if it rained. While everyone else David knew hurried indoors as soon as the first drops began to fall, Star and her mother enjoyed rain, the same as they enjoyed sun: as though it was a gift, a gift they had no control over but enjoyed all the same. Elemental, that was the word for them.

‘She’s a lovely girl, son, but she’s different, isn’t she?’ his father had said all those years ago.

Andrew Kenny had a way of speaking without raising his voice or sounding angry yet leaving you understanding his meaning just as strongly as if he’d yelled it from a megaphone.

Star was too different for their world. With Star, David would stay writing poetry under the moonlight, and would never be the man to take over Kenny’s. Not that he wasn’t able, but Andrew Kenny had invested far too much of his life in the store to let anyone take over the running of it if his judgement wasn’t true.

David understood the subtext of his father’s remark: Choose Star or choose Kenny’s. You can’t have both.

Thirty-five years ago, he’d chosen Kenny’s, but at least once a week for six months after he’d told Star it was over, he found himself driving along the sea road towards her home with the intention of telling her he’d made the wrong decision.

His father could keep the store.

But each time he had turned for home before the cottage came into view.

It was a couple of years after the split with Star that he met Ingrid. Nobody had said, This is the sort of girl you should marry; she’s clever, ambitious, ethical, strong and passionate - all the things that Ingrid undoubtedly was. No, he’d fallen in love with her all by himself. With her passion, her energy, her beauty. It was a very different sort of beauty to Star’s rather wild attractions. Ingrid was classy, and now that David was working in Kenny’s there was a part of him that appreciated her elegance, style and charm.

His mother, Sarah, who was delicate and highly strung, had adored Ingrid from the start. She’d only met Star a few times and she’d liked her - everyone liked Star, that innate kindness meant you couldn’t not like her - but David’s mother saw in Ingrid the sort of woman she would have liked to have been.

Ingrid never flattered her or fawned, but nor did she discount Sarah Kenny, which other people were prone to do.

Some women, knowing she was what was euphemistically known at the time, as ‘bad with her nerves’, even flirted with Andrew Kenny in her presence. David had seen it happen many times.