Past Secrets (42 page)

‘Where has my big bro been hiding you?’ he said to Maggie.

‘Leave her alone,’ said Ivan, goodnaturedly. ‘Leon’s always wanted everything of mine,’ he added to Maggie. ‘Trains, toy soldiers, whatever.’

She was about to say, sharply, that she didn’t belong to Ivan, therefore it was immaterial whether Leon wanted her or not, but for some reason she didn’t. Instead, she talked to the cousin on the other side, a seventeen-year-old boy who’d brought along his girlfriend but who was clearly desperately shy, amidst all these idolised big cousins.

It was a wonderful day. Maggie normally enjoyed weddings about as much as she enjoyed twenty-four-hour migraines, but this one was different. Despite the bridal party stylefest, everyone else at the wedding was comfortingly ordinary. Most people were out to have fun - a few mad uncles throwing shapes on the dance floor, somebody grabbing the mike from the DJ to belt out ‘Fever’ off key and a gaggle of wildly sophisticated young girls, dancing together, looking horrified at the carryings-on of the older generation.

‘Appalling!’ Maggie heard one of them mutter. ‘What will people think?’

‘Were you like that once?’ Ivan asked Maggie, watching her watching the girls dancing.

She was startled: she hadn’t realised he was so close to her. People had moved seats after the meal and she’d turned hers so that she could look at the dance floor, which meant that she didn’t really have to talk to anybody.

‘No,’ she said, caught off her guard. ‘I was the ultimate uncool girl.’

‘Really?’ he said. ‘Yeah, really,’ she said.

‘What about you?’ she asked, just to shift the subject slightly.

‘It seems so long ago, I can’t remember,’ he said thoughtfully, and Maggie figured out it had

probably been great for him. People who didn’t remember generally had enjoyed good school days. The awful stuff you didn’t forget.

He added, ‘I’m a few years older than you, thirty-seven next birthday.’

‘Is your biological clock ticking then?’ Maggie asked wickedly. ‘Well, that’s what thirty-six-year-old women get asked, it seems only fair to return the compliment.’

‘I’m a mechanic,’ Ivan said gravely. ‘If anything starts ticking, I fix it, you know that.’

He persuaded her up to dance, but she only said yes because it was a fast dance, one where they could move without touching.

Not that there was something wrong with Ivan. In fact, there was absolutely nothing wrong with him from the top of his cropped dark head to his surprisingly elegant leather shoes. She was sure plenty of women longed to be in her place and she’d seen a few eyes cast enviously in their direction during the day. Well, they could have him, no matter how gorgeous he was. He wasn’t for her.

She didn’t want any man.

‘I hope you enjoyed yourself,’ he said that night as he dropped her home.

They sat in the car outside her house, the engine growling while Maggie picked up her small handbag from the floor. ‘Yes, I did. Thank you for asking me.’

‘I wondered because you seemed to be in another place a lot of the time,’ Ivan said gently. ‘I hope everything’s all right. If there is anything I can do to help …’ His voice trailed off.

Maggie felt embarrassed that he’d noticed. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to spoil the party.’

‘You didn’t spoil it,’ he said, smiling at her, those dark eyes glinting under the streetlights. ‘You were lovely, they all liked you.’

‘Who are they?’ she asked.

The smile turned wolfish, like Leon’s had been, and she could certainly see why the envious looks had been cast in their direction all day. When he smiled like that, sexily, Ivan was pretty irresistible.

‘All my relatives. They were watching you surreptitiously. You didn’t happen to see the big notice board in the hall with people giving you marks out of ten on performance, deportment, dressage ‘

‘Stop it,’ she said, laughing. ‘OK then, how did I score?’

He appeared to think about this. ‘Pretty good from all I hear, although there was some talk about the fact that you didn’t throw your arms around me or kiss me enough. Or that we didn’t dance any slow dances together.’

Maggie felt embarrassed again, this time for a different reason. ‘We weren’t going as a couple,’

she reminded him, although she felt strangely pleased that he might have wanted this.

‘I know that,’ he agreed, ‘but you can’t stop the relatives talking, can you? Any woman who appears

on the horizon, they’re hoping I’ll slip a wedding ring on her finger. And don’t forget, as you’ve pointed out yourself, my biological clock is ticking.’

‘Oh, shut up, Ivan,’ laughed Maggie and she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, her lips brushing the faintest hint of stubble. ‘I’ll talk to you soon,’ she said, and got out of the car.

He didn’t drive off until she’d opened the door, stepped inside and waved at him from the lit hallway. He was a gentleman, he hadn’t tried to pounce on her, he behaved exactly as he said he would behave, she thought. She liked Ivan and, as Faye said, she could do with a friend. But for the moment, she told herself firmly, as she got ready for bed, that was all.

The night before she went to see Carey Wolensky, Christie cooked the most beautiful dinner for her husband she had ever cooked in her life. She put everything into it that he loved, along with herbs, carefully tended from her own garden, and thirty-five years of love, affection, kindness and gratefulness.

As she cooked, Tilly wound herself around Christie’s ankles, clearly in one of her ‘pet me, pet me’ moods, making little whimpering noises occasionally.

Christie bent and stroked the dog’s pansy soft head many times. She adored Rocket but had to admit that Tilly was, ever so slightly, her favourite. Tilly loved Christie above everyone else in the world and there was something so very wonderful about any creature who loved you with that unconditional love.

She felt a little like a white witch cooking up a spell of love in her kitchen with her familiar, gorgeous Tilly, weaving in and out of her ankles, and her modern cooker in place of the kind white

witch’s fireplace. Was she cooking up a meal to ask forgiveness for what would happen afterwards or to ward off anything bad happening at all?

Christie didn’t know which.

‘Wow, that all smells amazing,’ said James, coming downstairs and dropping his report on the kitchen table. Going over to the cooker, he put his hands around Christie’s waist and leaned over her shoulder, giving her a gentle kiss on the cheek, before peering down to see exactly what she was making.

‘Is that roast vegetable soup?’ he said. ‘I love that, but you said it’s such a pain to make.’ ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Christie, ‘it’s just a little timeconsuming, that’s all. I felt like making soup today.’ ‘Absolutely,’ agreed James, leaning over a bit further so he could inhale the rich scent, ‘and why not. It’s a gloriously hot, sunny day and roasted vegetable soup is exactly the sort of thing I had on my mind tonight.’

‘Brat,’ she said, laughing. ‘I cook you one of your favourite things and you don’t appreciate it.’ ‘I’m teasing,’ he said. He moved away, stifling a large yawn. ‘I’m wrecked. If we don’t get this report finished soon, I’ll retire early, I’m telling you.’

He sat down in his usual seat at the kitchen table and picked up the newspaper which was folded at the crossword.

‘I got most of it done earlier but I’m stuck on eleven down,’ he said. ‘I’m having a mental block - it’s the name of that Nathaniel Hawthorne novel: Hawthorne’s red message, the clue is …’

‘The Scarlet Letter,’ said Christie faintly, thinking of Hester Prynne forced to wear a big red A on her chest as a sign of her adultery.

‘Ali, that’s it!’ James said. ‘Thank God I married a clever wife.’

‘Yes,’ she said. How did people do it - conduct full-blown affairs without dying of pain and guilt and shame? It was beyond her.

She had set up a table outside in the garden and they ate on the terrace with the dogs at their feet, the scent of Christie’s flowers mingling with the scent of the food. After the roasted vegetable soup came dressed crab, another of James’s favourites and a rarity in the Devlin house because crab was expensive and Christie didn’t like to buy it dressed, preferring to do it herself. It was cheaper but there was still a lot of palaver about it.

‘You’re not leaving me are you?’ joked James, when pudding arrived and it turned out to be creme brulé, his absolute, all-time favourite.

‘No,’ said Christie, managing a smile. She’d recovered her equilibrium somewhat thanks to two glasses of lovely wine. ‘I just can’t wait for the exams to be over and life can go back to normal.’

‘So this is the almost-the-end-of-exams party?’

James teased.

‘Yes,’ Christie replied, as if it had all been perfectly obvious. ‘And can I not cook you a beautiful meal without there having to be a reason?’ she

demanded. ‘Are you implying I am such a slatternly housekeeper that you have beans on toast every night, unless I’m running off with the milkman?’ There, she’d made a joke about it.

‘No darling, sorry,’ James said. ‘I didn’t mean that at all. You’re amazing, you know that? I always think you’re an amazing woman, Christie, and I hope I say it often enough - after thirty-five years it’s easy enough to forget to say it, but you are. It was a lucky day, the day I met you.’

‘Oh, stop,’ she said, afraid she might burst into tears.

‘No, I mean it,’ James said gravely.

When dinner was over, they sat in the garden for a while, talking, finishing the bottle of wine, watching dusk darken into night. Then they cleared up and went up to bed. Christie loved their bedroom. As a child, she and Ana had shared a cold hard little room with bare walls because their father hated nails knocked into the walls in case they damaged the plaster. So nothing could ever be hung to offset the pale-blue gloom. There had never been any money for furbelows, either, so the curtains were basic bits of cloth to keep the light out, and the furniture did nothing more than hold clothes. There was no beauty, no piece of art just for the sake of it, like a pretty vase or a picture.

By contrast, this room was a comfortable, beautiful room full of lovely pieces with no use whatsoever except to be looked at, like the driftwood Christie and James had found on a beach in Connemara thirty years ago and hung on one wall, or the vintage fan that dangled from the mantelpiece as if just left there by some elegant lady of the past.

Dominating this bower of lovely comforting things was a huge bed, where Christie had sat with her sons and James, all cuddled up in the mornings.

It was where she’d lain with baby Shane and breast-fed him, Ethan sitting on the bed, playing with his toys, grumbling about not getting enough attention sometimes. Other times, he’d tried to cuddle up on top of Shane and Christie, making her laugh and making baby Shane squeal in outrage. And in this bed, she and James had made love countless times over the years.

James was very laid-back about decor and had always left it up to Christie, saying he hadn’t minded whatever she did. Now, the room was full of rich autumnal colours, with a huge patchwork spread in rust, copper and old gold made up in satins and velvets swathing the bed. Tonight, they pulled back the covers, sank into the sheets and James pulled her into his arms. Christie had never, or rarely, felt like crying when she made love.

Sometimes the intensity of the moment would make her eyes well up afterwards as they lay there and she thought of how wonderful it was, that perfect closeness from being with someone you loved. But tonight, every caress, every kiss, every erotic touch, made her long to cry with the meaning of it all.

Because this might be the last time she and James ever made love.

When he traced a line down from her neck to the softness of her breasts - once so full and high and now, a lifetime and children later, lower, less firm, but just as beautiful in his eyes, or so he always said - she felt as if she would start to weep and not stop. As he kissed her, she felt the unbearable poignancy of doing something she loved and might lose. The last kiss, the last caress, the last time his familiar body entered hers. She knew the noises James made when he climaxed, the same way she knew her own face in the mirror, the same way she was sure he knew the small sounds she made in passion.

And then they held each other, and the tears came. She couldn’t help herself, she couldn’t hold them back. She’d been holding everything back all evening, thinking everything was the last time.

‘Darling, are you all right?’ asked James. ‘I’m fine,’ Christie said, her face against his shoulder, their bodies still joined. ‘I’m fine, just, that was so beautiful.’ And they lay there, holding each other until eventually she could hear her husband’s breathing getting heavier and she knew he had fallen asleep.

She slipped away from him gently, so as not to wake him, and went into the bathroom to clean her face and wipe away the ravages of the tears.

Looking in the mirror, she saw a woman who had everything and didn’t deserve it. In that moment she hated herself. Sometimes, the ordinary and the everyday was boring. When she was younger, Christie used to long for the extraordinary, something different to happen in Kilshandra, something to shake them all up and make life thrilling.

Yearning for excitement was definitely for young people, she decided, as she closed her door the next morning and looked out across Summer Street to the park. Once you had tasted extraordinary and the dangers it brought, you longed for the familiar and you thought how precious that was.

Today, she yearned for the mundane because today, she was going to see Carey Wolensky.

She walked more slowly up Summer Street than usual because she was wearing high heels. Against all her better judgement, she had decided to show off her still-good legs in high shoes and her figure in a wrap dress that clung in all the right places, with a necklace of larger-than-life pearls that hid the creping at her throat. She wondered if he’d think her beautiful still or would he think that time had been very cruel.

‘Hello, Christie, how are you?’ yelled Una Maguire from her front garden where she was directing operations, with Dennis on his knees, weeding. Poor Dennis hadn’t a clue about the garden, Christie knew. It was only sheer love of his wife that had him out there at all, poking around in the earth with all the vision of a mole.