The Valentine's Card (38 page)

‘I fall in love with barman,’ said Bogna, flicking a feather duster over the erotica. ‘From day two I do not ski. It is pants.’

‘And your brother?’ asked Orla, dropping to the arm of the sofa to wrench off her wet boots. That sounded airy, she hoped. Yes. She’d pulled it off. Definitely airy. ‘How’s he?’

‘Why are you so interested?’

There was a full answer to that.

Because I love your brother. I can name it now – it’s love. Perhaps I didn’t recognise it because, poor me, I’d never truly felt it before. I regret not saying it to him. I regret withholding. I regret losing him. I love Marek Zajak. There, I said it.

The answer Orla gave was more succinct. ‘Just wondering.’

‘He is in bad, bad mood every day of holiday. Your fault. I don’t know what you do to him but it cut him, deep down. I tell him: only way is get new lady double quick.’

Gee thanks, Bogna.

‘On New Year’s Eve,’ Bogna carried on, feathers pointed accusingly at Orla, ‘he gets drunk. Stupid drunk. My brother
never
does this. He make sick on balcony and stay in bed all next day.’

Even though she loved Marek, and wanted only the best for him, these details thrilled Orla. Her hope – a pathetic creature, grooming itself in the corner – did a little jig and its fur stood on end like a ruff. So she had some power over him, enough to make him drink to forget her. That could be construed as a start.

‘After this he is in better mood. As if he vomit you up and is over you.’

Reappearing with a rattling tray of mugs, Maude was brisk. ‘Nobody could get over our precious Orla that easily. And Bogna, dear, take care with your metaphors.’

‘Tell him,’ said Orla carefully, ‘I said hello.’

‘No,’ said Bogna.

Wet socks squelching, a demarcation line of damp mid-way up her jeans, Orla hobbled upstairs with her mug.

She’d been waiting for Marek to make his move, but he’d made it long ago. More than once.

The bathroom filled with steam, all the
better to obliterate the stupid woman in the mirror as Orla ran a bath that was slightly too hot.

Marek had made
all
the moves in their relationship.

*

‘I’ve no Skype on the computer – Himself kept the snazzy one – so I’ll describe the new flat to you.’

‘Are you moved in already? I didn’t send you a card.’

‘No matter. Yes, as of the twenty-first January, 2013, I live at fourteen Zelda House, Sweeney Avenue. And I love it, Orla! I can’t stop jumping up and down in the sitting room.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘You know the block I’m talking about? The new build, yeah? We’re on the third floor. As I look around I see magnolia paint, Orla, a
lot
of magnolia paint. And it’s got that new-carpet smell. The communal hall has a bike in it which me and Jack
always
fall over. Hideous kitchen. And it’s small. Small, small, small.’

‘You and small don’t really go. Your old en suite was big enough to host a bar mitzvah.’

‘This whole flat could fit in there. It’s plenty big enough for me and the little fella. And listen – I’m going back to work!’

‘Come off it!’

‘I swear to God. I woke up one morning, rang my old boss, you know, the randy little sod with the wig, and hey presto, I’ve got three days a week.’

‘But you hated work.’

‘You and your elephant’s memory. I’m not going overboard, just the three days and Himself is paying for a childminder.’

‘How
is
Himself?’

‘It hasn’t hit him yet. He thinks
I’m playacting at being independent. He’s humouring me, you know? Hoping I’ll come to my senses.’

‘I know what it’s like to live in hope. Be kind to him, Ju. He’ll be confident one day and then gibbering the next, in case all his hopes are false.’

‘Is that what you’re going through? Marek is coming back. I can feel it.’

‘I can’t. It’s been too long. Things have changed.’

‘D’you know what? These conversations belong to our teens. We don’t need men, Orla Cassidy. We’re strong independent women. Feck ’em.’

‘I agree, we don’t
need
men. But I
want
that man.’

‘Oh Orla, you poor thing. This is like when Sim died, when you—’

‘No, Ju. It’s nothing like when Sim died.’

‘OK. Sorry. Oops. Stepped on a corn there in me size eights.’

‘Has Rob stopped pestering you?’

‘Yes. At last. He’s in bits. I’m toxic, truly I am. I never should have encouraged him. It fed my ego, that’s all. And now I look back at the wedding, our house, all the Bang and Olufsen and the architect-designed conservatory and I think yuk! I’m ashamed, genuinely ashamed that I thought those things were important.’

‘Don’t be too ashamed.’

‘Oh, I’m not. You know me. I felt ashamed for half an afternoon and now I’m over it. But I should have been honest with Himself. We weren’t on the same page. He was in it for love and now he’s hurting.’

‘D’you know, you could be Sim talking about me!’

‘God, yes. Oh, yuk again. I
don’t want to be like Sim.’

‘Well, you’re not any more. Sim didn’t live long enough to evolve. With a few more years perhaps he would have grown out of that feeling that there’s a better party somewhere else and he had to find it.’

‘Poor Sim.’

‘Yeah. Poor Sim.’

Two weeks to go and cardboard hearts crowded shop windows.

For anybody close to Sim, Saint Valentine’s Day was a grim anniversary, its significance at odds with flowers and bonbons.

For Orla, besides being an anniversary of his death, the fourteenth of February marked four years since they’d met, and the end of a year unlike any other, one in which she and Sim had gone through more drama with one of them dead than they had while both were alive.

After twelve months of change and revelation, Orla was in negative emotional equity: she’d found Marek and lost him again. The clean efficiency of her cackhandedness was impressive.

There was shelter to be found in daydreams. On the tube, she’d loll in her seat and plan their perfect Valentine’s Day, the one they’d be looking forward to if she’d made the right choice at Christmas.

She’d cook: he’d appreciate it, manfully finish his plate, but be candid in his summing up. She’d buy him something small, elegant, definitely nothing ‘themed’ – no teddy holding a polysatin heart for Orla and Marek.

‘Even you, Orochi?’ All
the students, even Orochi who was infamous for his excuses, handed in their work on time.

‘I like this exercise,’ he said, his straight brows serious and beetle black. ‘I am in love.’

‘Aw.’ Orla smiled benevolently. She’d asked the class to write a love letter: it was impossible to completely ignore Saint Valentine. ‘I never realised how romantic you all are.’ For Orla, this day was as much about gravestones as it was about roses.

I can change that
. The thought let itself in without knocking. It didn’t even wipe its feet. And once in, it made itself at home.

She was waiting, passive as a damsel imprisoned in a tower, for Marek to declare himself, to gallop over the horizon on a white charger.

What’s with the passivity?
There was no history of inertia in Cassidy women; if Cassidy men could get a word in, they’d dolefully confirm this. Orla had always been a do-er, a practically minded person who got on with it, whatever ‘it’ might be.

Sitting on the radiator, pretending to listen to Abena’s letter, Orla experienced something that Pilates had promised but never delivered. She felt taller.

She was done with waiting around. Where had it got her? She’d sat back like a geisha when Sim had trashed her Christmas and New Year when she should have had it out with him. She’d kept her head down around Lucy Quinn in case she let slip with a
Jaysus
or a
feck
when she should have been the red-blooded Irishwoman her parents had brought her up to be. And now she was hanging around like a schoolgirl waiting for Marek to come find her.

Why should he?

How could Marek trust her with his emotional well-being? He didn’t even know that she loved him. He didn’t know that she saw through the sophisticated exterior to the vulnerabilities beneath. He didn’t know that she wanted to protect him, just as he’d tried to protect her.

A road forked ahead of her. By taking the correct path, Orla could leave behind a lot of burdensome baggage.

‘Please, are you listening?’ Abena was affronted.

‘Of course.’

‘You don’t look like you are listening. You look like you are making evil plot.’

‘Please carry on, Abena.’

Abena’s letter, to a man who owned a garage back home, was long, filthy and ended with her promise to ‘bear many children and keep the house clean’.

‘But you want to be a teacher when you go back!’ Orla was dismayed at the collapse of Abena’s feminism in the face of love.

‘I do not tell him this,’ said Abena, a guarded look on her face. ‘He will find this out when he marries me and it is too late!’ She cackled, all her chins bouncing, and the room cackled with her. Being loved by Abena would be like standing in the blast of a jet engine, thought Orla. She rather envied, and rather pitied, the garage owner.

Listening to
the declarations of love from her pupils, Orla scribbled one of her own on her notepad.

Dear Sim, I forgive you, love Fairy x

Hale and hearty, Maude switched roles and became the nurse, watching her patient for symptoms. ‘We’re a week away from you know what, dear,’ she said as the two of them shared a horrible cake that Sheraz had thrown in free with the weekly delivery. ‘How should we spend it? It’s horribly sarcastic, marking an anniversary of a death on a day when the whole world is celebrating love.’

‘I have something I must do,’ said Orla. ‘Something …’ She looked for understanding from Maude. ‘Something
private
.’

‘Very well.’ Maude patted her hand. Orla loved the papery feel of her skin. ‘I’m here if you need me.’

‘Thanks, Maudie.’ Orla
knew that Maude had stepped in and shut down Bogna’s planned Valentine’s Day window display: she’d seen the tissue paper hearts in the bin. ‘I’m going to mark the day in my own way.’

Sim’s journal

14 February 2012

5 a.m.

Saint Valentine, you soppy bastard, I need all the help you can give me.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Pre-dawn, lamps lit against the mauve dregs of the night, the flat felt special, like a house on the day of a wedding. The sugar-coated valentine hysteria beyond the front door was not responsible for this electricity: it was of Orla’s making; it was bespoke. She was nervous, exhilarated and quite terrified.

Click. Off went the radio. The avalanche of gooey requests she could withstand but a proposal of marriage via the good offices of the idiot DJ was too much.

At times like this, Orla wished she smoked. Her hands needed something to do. She’d risen far too early, because the occasion had seemed to demand it, but now she prowled her abbreviated set of rooms, wondering where she’d be and how she’d feel by the time the next dawn rolled around.

London roused itself and
hit its stride, oblivious of her agitation. The tops of the buses that passed Orla’s windows went from empty to half full to sardine tin. Motorbikes whined. The crossing signal cheeped. The drunk – still there, still drunk – sang.

And the doorbell rang.

Orla took the stairs slowly and pulled open the door. She’d never seen that many red roses in one place before. They bristled slightly, then moved to one side to reveal the smiling man holding them.

His smile drooped. ‘Oh. I thought it would be—’

‘Maude? Come in, George.’ Orla stepped back and the man–bush hybrid bustled past her. ‘This is a surprise.’

‘I’ve been thinking. I’m a silly old fool.’

‘No, it was a natural response,’ said Orla.
This
was the stuff of Valentine’s Day, not an email to Radio 2 requesting Celine Dion. At last
,
the real deal: the triumph of Cupid over logic. ‘She’s worth the trouble, I promise.’

‘Does she like roses?’

‘She adores them.’

‘Will I be welcome? Did you tell her about our conversation?’

‘That was between us. You’ll be very welcome. Top floor. Knock hard.’

Watching George climb the stairs in his tightly belted raincoat – really, how did he breathe? – Orla was glad that Valentine’s Day was working its magic for Maude, and rueful already about her eager belief moments before that somebody else might be at the door.

The phone rang. She believed again and overtook George in an awkward manoeuvre on the top stair.

‘Orla, love, it’s Ma. Are y’ in bits? Are y’ on the floor? Don’t go to work today, love. I’ll ring them for you.’

‘Ma,’ said Orla, eyes closed, leaning back against the dresser. ‘
Ma, Ma, Ma.
No, I’m not in bits. I’m happy, actually.’

‘I said a prayer for Sim, and
I lit a candle and Father Gerry gave out his name at early Mass. I’ll go to the grave later.’

Shuddering, Orla thanked her mother.

‘That’s very sweet of you, Ma. I’m remembering him, in my own way.’

‘Good, good. We won’t see his like again,’ sighed Ma.

One day Orla would tell her the whole story. But not yet. Ma enjoyed a nice anniversary. ‘No, I guess not. Listen, Ma, I need to keep this line clear.’

‘Why?’

In case he calls. In case this day explodes into a shower of sparks. In case it’s my turn.

‘Work, you know.’

‘Oh. Right. Now if you get tearful just offer up a quick prayer to Saint Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes. He’s your man.’

The phone trilled again, as soon as Orla pressed the little red telephone symbol.

‘Juno. What can I do for you this fine Valentine’s morn?’

‘Just touching base to make sure you’re OK.’

I might be, if the entire Republic of feckin’ Ireland would stop ringing me
.

‘Thanks.’ Orla softened. She was lucky she had women, strong decent women who cared, checking up on her. ‘I’m on an even keel.’