The Valentine's Card (3 page)

‘Ma was very fond of your son,’ said Orla.
Her almost son-in-law
. ‘In fact, she adored him.’

‘We all did,’ said Lucy crisply. ‘Any other hangers on?’

Orla swallowed that. Made allowances. Counted to ten. ‘My – our – friend Juno. She’s on the list, I suppose?’

‘Never heard of her. Send me her details. Anybody else?’

‘Have you invited Patrick? And Emily?’

‘Who are they?’

The friends he kept away from you in case you froze them out or embarrassed him with your pissed carry-on
.

‘Friends. From drama school. They really should be there. Oh, and his tutor. And—’

‘It’s not a party!’ snapped Lucy. ‘It’s the funeral of a senator’s son. We can’t invite just anybody. There are security issues. Now, are you definitely coming?’

The brusque question deftly demoted her. Orla felt her head spin. ‘Of course I’m coming.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Lucy, listen … If you need somebody to talk to. Because we both lost him, didn’t we? I don’t mean I know how you feel but—’

‘True. You can’t know how it feels to lose one’s only child. So please, no platitudes. Now. I’m sorting out his things in the basement tonight. I’m turning it into a studio. You know how Simon adored my art.’

Nobody else called him
Simon. Even Sim’s father had got with the programme and referred to him as Simeon. Only Lucy had refused.
You were christened Simon
, she’d told him.
After my father. I don’t care if there’s already a Simon Quinn in Irish bloody Equity. To me, you’re Simon.

‘Oh God, his stuff.’ Orla pictured Sim’s flat, its exquisite cornicing and high spec finish quite overwhelmed by its tenant’s ability to generate clutter. She remembered Ma, back in 2001, dealing with Da’s side of the wardrobe, knee deep in sober suiting, sobbing her heart out over a cardigan. ‘I’ll help.’ Orla glanced down at her pyjamas, covered in islets of dripped tea. ‘What time?’

‘I don’t need any help.’ Lucy seemed surprised and, as was her habit, insulted. ‘The family can manage, thank you.’

‘Of course.’ Orla was both respectful of the woman’s grief and rather frightened of her. Lucy’s sharp tongue was legendary. ‘But, you know,’ she went on, with caution, keeping her voice warm, ‘I loved him too and I’d like to help.’ She glanced at the valentine.

‘If you’re worried I will mix his things up with your own, there’s no need. I’ve already whisked through and put your belongings in a bag. You can pick them up any time you want.’

There would be no companionship in bereavement.

‘I’m not worried about that at all, Lucy. I just want to do something to help. And honestly, it would help
me
to see Sim’s flat again.’

‘You’d only hold me up. It’s a busy time and everything,
d’accord,
is on my shoulders. I have to sort out the apartment in London, too. I’ll send the housekeeper over to do that, I think. Maria’s more than capable. I’ll see you at the funeral, Orla. I know Sim was fond of you, but please, respect the family’s privacy at this time.’

Fond
? Orla remembered the
rub of his skin against hers, the ferocious and tender feel of him inside her. There had been no privacy between her and Sim. Together
they
were family
.
If Sim had died just one day later, Lucy would be
unable
to talk to her like this.

‘His valentine arrived the day he died.’

This seemed to wrong-foot Lucy. ‘Did it?’

‘I haven’t read it. But I know what it says.’

‘All valentines say the same thing.’ Ice clinked in a glass.

‘It’s a proposal, Lucy. Sim and I were going to be married.’

Lucy’s snort tapered off. ‘Read it to me,’ she snapped.

‘I can’t. I can’t bear to open it. But we both knew that when he got his big break he’d—’

‘Orla,’ there was a discreet gulp and Orla pictured Lucy’s well-coiffed head thrown back as she downed her G and T, ‘I’m sure your valentine will say some very lovely things. My son was a sweetheart and you were a lucky girl, but as for your little … fantasy? Believe it if it helps but my advice to you is, burn the thing. For the good of your psychological health.’

‘It’s not a fantasy.’

‘Orla, I must go.’

The line went dead. No goodbye, no soft word of any kind.

Just one more day, one phone call, one word and she’d have been able to fight Sim’s corner and stop his funeral turning into a travesty. She’d have a role, a purpose.

Biting her lip helped keep the tears at bay. Orla was so sick of crying. She let her eyes rest on the portrait of her drawn by Year Two which Sim had framed and hung on her kitchen wall.
They’ve caught your very special beauty
, he’d lisped. Miss Cassidy had green hair, three eyes and a very, very, very long neck.

She sighed. It was time to
get back to work. Year Two wouldn’t bother to psychoanalyse Lucy, they’d declare her an evil witch.

As a grown up, Orla felt obliged to be more generous.

She’d missed them, with their skinned knees and their super-tidy ponytails and their general air of wriggliness. Year Two had missed Orla too and let her know with hugs and bouncing and shouted questions about her absence.

‘On the carpet! On the carpet!’ After a week away, Orla was Miss Cassidy again, using her special teacher voice. ‘
Now
, please, ladies and gents!’

Thirty-one bottoms collapsed to the rug. Legs were crossed, a
shushing
finger applied to each pair of lips.

‘That’s better. I’ll answer your questions one at a time.’

Orla had wanted to be ‘Miss’ since for as long as she could remember, following in her father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, the third teacher in the family but, as Da had been proud to point out, the first female one. She shied away from the word ‘vocation’, as she shied from anything pompous or ponderous, but it came closest to describing the fervour she felt for her job, the deep nameless pleasure it gave her.

So her reluctance to leave the house this morning had puzzled her. Her dry mouth and fidgety unease had increased on the short drive over the stone bridge and down the main street. Now, standing in front of her class, Orla had to concentrate hard to keep frantic negative thoughts at bay.

‘Miss! Miss!’ The most zealous child in the class, the one who barged to the front in the milk queue and took the tortoise home at Easter
and
Christmas, waggled his hand.

‘Yes, Niall?’

‘Did your boyfriend really die, Miss?’

Gentle, funny Miss Cassidy, beloved
by all the Year Twos that had passed through her classroom, Miss Cassidy who could answer questions about how babies are made with aplomb and was a practised peacemaker in plasticine disputes, was lost for words. Niall’s query had confirmed something Orla had suspected since the school bell had rung at nine that morning. It was too soon.

‘I’ll just be a moment,’ she said as she left the classroom. It was the first proper lie she’d ever told the children.

Sim’s journal

21 October 2011

Been here a week and feel like a native. All the things I love about this city would make O tut. (She’s big on tutting. It’s an Irish thing. Her Ma has awards for it.) I love London’s crowds, the buzz, its 24-hour, up-all-night energy. Its potential for adventure.

Rum to have Juno on my side for once. ‘Go with him, Orla! Wouldn’t have to ask
me
twice to run off to London,’ she said. That woman is ripe for an affair.

And here’s something I can only share with my journal. It’s kind of exciting to leave O behind. She’s so
certain
about stuff, about right and wrong. Without her I can let out my belt and burp.

Chapter Three

She addressed the valentine.

‘This one he sent from a shoot
for a butter commercial.’ Orla held up a postcard of Ballymaloe. ‘He had to say, “It’s so golden the leprechauns want it back,” and run away from a computer animated goblin he couldn’t actually see. On the back he wrote,
Did Laurence Olivier have to go through this? It’ll be worth it one day, won’t it, when we’re married and living in the Hollywood Hills?
And he put too many kisses to count.’

The valentine didn’t respond.

‘Who are you talking to?’ Ma bustled in from the kitchen, yellow Marigolds flapping, apron corset-tight around her black chain store bought-for-the-funeral dress.

‘Nobody.’

‘Thanks be to God the funeral is behind us. They’re heartless, that bunch.’ Ma went to the mirror above the mantelpiece to check her iron-stiff curls, not from vanity but because she needed to look neat. ‘All the money in the world but not a shred of common decency. They didn’t introduce you to anybody and some foolish fecker from the senator’s office did the reading! Funerals are part of letting go. Of saying goodbye. They
matter
.’ Ma’s pointed nose, today’s careful powdering worn off with the effort of spring cleaning, shone with indignation. ‘A few sandwiches in the kitchen with his best mates would have been more appropriate. That boy had no airs and graces.’

Orla smiled at her mother’s loyalty, but
airs and graces? Her ‘boy’ had had plenty. She recalled the critiques he’d habitually make of her mother’s hospitality as they drove away from her bungalow. (‘Findus Chicken Kiev? I mean,
seriously
?’). As soon as Sim had hit the ground on Saint Valentine’s Day his beatification had begun. As far as Ma was concerned, he was now and would forever remain, Saint Sim, Patron Saint of Brilliant Boyfriends. If Ma had been privy to the goings-on in her own spare room last New Year’s Eve she might have asked for the halo back.

‘That owld bag knows he meant to marry you.’ Like a boat loosed from its moorings Ma roamed the room, searching out mess. She rarely stayed still for long, a trait her daughter shared, when not KO’d by grief. ‘You should have had pride of place. You’re practically a widow!’

‘Ma.’

‘Sorry. I get meself worked up, I know. But all the same.’ Ma punched a cushion into submission.

Orla knew Lucy was hurting, she knew that people in pain don’t behave very well, and so she resisted Ma’s easy dislike. Orla wanted to believe in essential goodness. She needed kindness and small joys in order to plot a course away from her current state of mind. But most of all she needed Sim.

‘You finished with that mug?’ Ma held out her hand. She was on a mission to cleanse and scour and improve. Orla knew this to be a symptom of helplessness: Ma’s response to the Grim Reaper was to tidy around him. It was a brave retort, in its way, and it made Orla smile. ‘When are you back to school? Could you try again day after tomorrow maybe?’

‘Mr Monk is very understanding. He said there’s no hurry.’ Orla chickened out of sharing her plan.

‘A job is precious these days. More
than ever. That’s all I’m saying.’

Fear fizzed through her mother’s veins and all her life Orla had fought to resist Ma’s pessimism. Jobs can be lost. Colds can be caught. Gloves can be left on buses. People can drop down dead
just like that
.

And planes can crash. Novenas were said throughout the long sleepless night before any of Ma’s brood boarded an aircraft. It hadn’t stopped Brendan backpacking or Caitlin moving to New York, but Sim had blamed it, in part, for Orla’s reluctance to join him in London.

Orla relived those conversations with scalding regret. ‘How can you possibly know you hate London when you’ve never been there?’ he’d asked, still grinning, still patient at midnight or later. ‘Maybe it isn’t dirty and unfriendly and dangerous and ugly.’

‘Do I have to visit Hell to prove it’s too hot?’

She was clinging to wisps. It disturbed her when a memory changed or went hazy, she was desperate to firm them up and render them as solid as the man she’d loved for three whole years. ‘Tell me, Ma, does it ever get better?’

Ma perched on the arm of the sofa, empty mug in one hand, smeared plate in the other. ‘It does, hen.’

‘Ma, I love you but you’re a terrible actress.’ Orla carefully replaced the cards, one of top of the other, in the box.

‘No, really. It does. Sure, just look at me.’

Orla looked at her. Ma had never regained the two stone she’d lost after her husband’s death. She’d given up dying her hair. She was, Orla knew, afraid of solitude and the thoughts it brought, so she filled her days and nights with her children and her grandchildren, often exclaiming how they reminded her of ‘my Christie’.

‘OK, Ma, I believe you.’

‘Trust me. There’s always
light at the end of the tunnel.’ Ma stood up. ‘Although sometimes it’s a feckin’ express train.’ She nodded approvingly as Orla fitted the lid on the striped box. ‘About time you put the cards away, love. They upset you.’ She pointed at the cerise envelope. ‘You missed one.’

‘No, that’s one staying out.’

‘Tear it up, Orla.’ Ma had a superstitious dislike of the card. ‘It’ll only bring you unhappiness.’ She meant well, Ma Cassidy. She was an old hand at mothering. Orla was her fifth and last and still her baby girl, even at thirty-three years old.

‘Ma, you promised not to go on about it.’

‘Give.’ Ma held out her hand. ‘I’ll tear it up for you, like I used to with them owld chain letters when you were at school.’

‘It’s coming with me, Ma.’

Her mother sat back down again. ‘Where are you going?’

It had been a po-faced affair, more like a send-off for a statesman than an actor’s funeral. Nowhere under the cathedral’s soaring dome, in the Latin hymns and the scripture readings, had Orla found a trace of her irresponsible, party-going, people-magnet lover.

He’d once said – leaning back, Guinness in hand, legs apart, back when death had seemed a distant thing – that, ‘When I die I don’t want you wearing black. Wear your funkiest clothes!’

In her scarlet coat, Orla had been glad of the buffers either side of her, Juno on her right in chic black leather, Ma on the left, frumpily formal. She’d had a whisky beforehand, at Ma’s urging, and it had made her giddy and a little sick.