The Valentine's Card (6 page)

‘Listen to it all day every day and it’s not so sweet.’

‘Say something nice about him, Ju. He looks like a mini George Clooney but you never big him up. You’re unnatural, you are.’ Orla echoed Juno’s mother.

‘Shut up, you. You know what I’m like. I don’t do gooey, but I’d throw myself in front of a train for little Jackster. And I’d do the same for you. You know that, don’t you, lady?’

‘I do.’

‘I have
a favour to ask.’

‘I can’t babysit tonight if that’s what you’re after.’

‘Listen to me, Orla. Please stay in London and have an adventure on my behalf. Use this feckin’ journal as an excuse if you need to, but don’t come home and decompose in Tobercree like the rest of us.’

‘Isn’t Jack an adventure?’

‘Of course, but he’s not a reckless, dirty, filthy one like the one you should have. You’ve had freedom forced upon you, may as well not waste it.’

‘It doesn’t feel at all like
freedom
, Ju.’ More of a cell. ‘I’m not like you. I don’t have your courage.’

Juno chafed against the manifold luxuries of her life, even though she’d chosen them. A rising star copywriter in Dublin’s incestuous advertising fraternity, Juno had turned her back on her career the instant it became clear that her boss was falling for her. The relationship had accelerated – with all the speed of Himself’s Porsche – from a casual drink after work to an epic wedding. A honeymoon baby had been a step too far even for him but, lo and behold, Jack turned up a mere nine months later. Still Juno refused to learn domestic skills, railing against her adoring, indulgent husband as if he were a tyrant.

‘You’re a feckin’ tigress, Cassidy. Being with Sim blunted your nails. He was so …’

‘So what?’ Orla said, sharply.

‘Well, you know, he didn’t take criticism kindly.’ Juno said it archly, as if it was code for something more damning. ‘He was the star, wasn’t he? No room for two of
them
in a relationship. Now you can be, well,
you
.’

‘Seriously? You
choose this moment in my life to go all self-help on me? If you so much as think about telling me to feel the fear and do it anyway I’ll be on the first flight home and throttle you.’

‘
Coming, Jack!
Listen, hon, I have to dash. Call me whenever you want. Dump on me. My shoulder is there for the weeping on. But do not come home!
’

Juno was right to be suspicious. The journal, although important, was a red herring. London’s faults and failings, all accurately prophesied by Orla, were what kept her there.

Every morning when Orla awoke in the floral papered bedroom with its view of the bins she murmured to the valentine on the bedside table, ‘We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.’ London was Sim’s adopted town, and she felt closer to him here than at home. Sim had told her he felt real in London. Trying to understand the place – and in so doing, to understand Sim – Orla shared her observations with the valentine.

London’s filthy,
she told it. It struck her anew each time she stepped out of the front door to wade through apple cores, fag ends, empty cans and abandoned newspapers.
It’s noisy.
She and the valentine listened to tube trains thunder over the bridge like an inexhaustible invading army.
It’s unfriendly.
Tobercree people bade each other hello. They nodded, winked, squandered pleasantries. Sure Orla wasn’t naive enough to believe that their hearts overflowed with love for their fellow man, but she would trust them to fetch a bucket of water if she screamed ‘fire!’; the sloe-eyed man in the mini-mart, on the other hand, barely even acknowledged Orla as he took her money in his dry hand, counted the coins suspiciously into the till and handed her a receipt.
He’d let me burn,
she told the shocked card.

Homesickness
she dealt with briskly, with Juno cheer-leading from across the sea. Orla missed the grassy smell of the lane in the morning and the clean grey roofs of the town stretching away down the hill; but it wouldn’t help to leave and go back. Nothing was as simple as that in Orla’s new life. She was homesick for Sim, and Ryanair didn’t offer time-travel.

‘The torture of being in the place that killed him distracts me from the torture of doing without him,’ was how Orla had explained it to Maude earlier, as she’d helped her alphabetise biographies in the shop. ‘It’s sick, I know.’

‘Why, pray, do you despise London?’ Maude held Oscar Wilde to her heart for a moment before shelving him.

‘For starters, it’s too big. How’d you get to know people in a place this size? And nobody looks happy. And there are too many cars. Everybody’s from somewhere else, it’s like one massive bedsit. It’s cold. Cold cold cold.’

‘Me, am I cold?’ The thought seemed to amuse Maude as she aimed a Kerry Katona at the bargain bin. She was in layers of sludge-coloured cashmere and oatmeal linen.

‘No. You’re a one-off.’

‘Here.’ Maude had handed Orla a sheet of lined paper. ‘Be a darling and pick up a few bits and pieces for me.’

Out on the street, Orla scanned the list. She’d noted that every so often the kindly little dear would turn imperious and farm out a chore to the nearest human. Customers found themselves popping to the mini-mart for a bottle of milk. Maude never waited for a yes or no, she simply expected obedience.

Into
Greggs for a Danish pastry, then to the ironmonger for a packet of fuse wire; Orla made her way up the street, visiting every shop she passed. Almost as if Maude were forcing her to interact with common-or-garden Londoners.

At home, popping into the chemist could be perilous; Orla cringed at the memory of meeting a brother-in-law with a packet of maxi panty pads clamped to her chest. Here, there was no likelihood of seeing a familiar face. Orla picked out a jar of Pond’s cold cream, as per the list, and joined the queue at the counter.

False eyelashes winked from a shelf. Orla smiled – not the low calorie smile of the past weeks, but a glorious full fat grin.

It was 2009.

Dublin is the world capital of parties. The ‘little gathering’ at Orla’s new flatshare had snowballed, as friends of friends and enemies of friends knocked at the door, flashed a bottle and were admitted to the tiny space in the shadow of Christchurch. Conversation, loud and loose, battled the music. Bodies swayed, leaned, embraced, fell down. It was either a nightmare beyond imagining or the best party ever.

‘I blame
you,
Davey
.’
Orla poked a finger at the vast chest of her landlord, a rugged black-bearded character with a bottomless pit of goodwill for mankind. ‘All your bloody actor friends. One whiff of a free drink and they’re there.’

‘
Mea culpa
.’ Davey held up his meaty hands. ‘It’s like a feckin’ Fellini film in the front room. The entire cast of that new revue is here and I don’t know a single one of the feckin’ feckers.’

Orla hadn’t
seen the revue in question, but she’d read the gushing reviews. ‘One of them’s dressed as a badger.’

‘I caught him widdling in the umbrella stand. Thought I was feckin’ hallucinating.’ Davey rubbed his head. ‘I feckin’ think I might be feckin’ drunk,’ he said morosely.

‘I feckin’ think you feckin’ are.’ Since moving in she’d had to put Davey to bed a few times, but his charm and her good nature were such that it didn’t feel like a chore. ‘Have a little sit down.’

Orla shouldered through the assault course of arms, shoulders and arses that was her hallway. When the Valentine’s Day party had been mooted, her knee-jerk response was to rant about the degrading commercialisation of romance in the modern world, the idiotic annual pressure to conform by being in ‘a relationship’ (clawing air quotes around the words), eating an overpriced meal in a pink-lit restaurant, buying a rose from an uninterested oik touring the tables with freeze-dried Kenyan blooms, declaring love for the nearest halfway acceptable male.

‘It’ll be an anti-valentine party,’ she’d asserted.

‘I take it nobody’s ever sent you a valentine card?’ was Davey’s reply.

‘Shut up. And no.’

With the party at full throttle, Orla had reached her tipping point. The lively atmosphere became claustrophobic, the music was just noise and the faces around her looked freakish in their animation.

‘Hey.’ A hand shot out from the scrum and caught Orla’s wrist. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

‘And
you’ve found me.’ Orla peered closer at the man she’d flirted with earlier. His pupils, black as liquorice, blotted out his irises. A film of sweat sat on his upper lip. His too-tight striped blazer was ridiculous. In the hour since they’d made eyes at each other he’d taken something and she’d sobered up. ‘Can’t stop!’ she mouthed as the music soared.

‘I’m not letting you escape again.’

‘Oh, but you are!’ smiled Orla, trying to pull away.

‘No, come on. You’re shit hot. Stick around.’

The paucity of the compliment depressed Orla profoundly in a way it wouldn’t have if she had been sober or the music less loud. Modern men expected modern women to feel flattered by a fusion of expletives and Paris Hiltonisms – it dashed her spirits. She didn’t say this. She just looked at him.

A partygoer behind Orla butted in. ‘Is this lout bothering you?’ The voice was deep. and accompanied by an arm that snaked over her shoulder and reached down to unfurl the fingers around her wrist.

‘He’s fine,’ said Orla, taking in the red lacquered fingernails on the strange hand.

‘Oi, Simeon, back off. Me and this lady are getting on like a house on fire.’

‘Consider me the fire brigade.’ Sim held Orla’s arm, leaned in close and whispered, ‘Come with me.’ The accent was a silky mixture of romantic Ireland and moneyed England.

Half turning, Orla saw tiger eyes, locked on hers like a sci-fi tractor beam.

‘You and I,’ continued Sim, ‘are going somewhere quiet to kiss.’

‘Hang on.’ Orla looked haughtily at the hand on her shoulder. ‘We’re certainly not going to kiss. I don’t know you. And besides you’re …’ She looked him up and down.

‘Dressed
as a woman?’ Sim kicked open a door marked KEEP OUT YOU BASTARDS! with one gold stiletto. ‘After you.’

‘I’m only going in here,’ said Orla, ‘because it’s my bedroom.’

‘I see. Not to do this?’ In the darkness Sim bent and placed his glossed red lips on Orla’s. He kept them there, not breathing, not moving, for a strange, lovely moment. Then he leaned back, his backcombed wig brushing her face. ‘You look like a fairy,’ he whispered. ‘A rather cross fairy.’

Orla wasn’t sure what to say. This stranger was many things. Six foot four with a high forehead, a straight nose and a classically square chin; broad shouldered, narrow hipped; wearing an emerald green sequinned gown slashed to the thigh, and as outrageously presumptuous as she’d expected the revue’s much-discussed star to be. She blinked, and pulled away from the arms wrapped around her. Orla was no groupie.

‘Out!’ She used the tone she’d perfected on Year Two.

‘You couldn’t be so cruel.’

‘Are you for real? You drawl,’ she noted, wonderingly. ‘You actually drawl, sexily, as if you’re acting the part of an actor.’

‘I am quite quite
quite
real.’ Sim infused his words with animal desire that lit something inside Orla. This close, in this light, his eyes were amber. Even heavy with false lashes they were provocative and clever, and they reflected Orla back to herself: she was no fairy. She was his prey, and she didn’t struggle as he ate her up.

Sim’s kiss started slowly – barely a touch – but the tempo built, naturally and inevitably. Greedy, his mouth played with Orla’s lips, until he parted them with the expertise of a virtuoso and they were locked together. The rhythm picked up, became more urgent, charging along like the dance tune banging through the walls.

With an
effort, Orla pulled away. Her face was smeared with lipstick and blusher. In a moment of clarity she saw this for what it was: a small woman apparently kissing a glamorous giantess. ‘This isn’t me!’ she said, a piece of dialogue she would regret ever after and which Sim often quoted with a hammy hand to his brow.

‘Sweetheart, this isn’t me either.’ Sim stepped back and curtsied in his figure-hugging gown. ‘Is it the frock that’s bothering you? I can take it off.’ His hands went to the zip.

‘No!’ As a child, Orla had struggled with telling right from left. As an adult, she appeared to be having similar trouble with yes and no. The thought of this strange man naked but for green tights was at once wondrous and absurd. She turned away, her hands over her face.

Self-control was important to Orla. She always thought of herself as a mature, poised woman who chose her path with care, who never said ‘squee!’, who didn’t Google kittens, who wouldn’t cry in front of others. Above all, she was level headed about men: snogging trannies was a no-no.

Now in her late twenties, Orla had notched up only two relationships worth the title. She’d liked Man A a lot but he’d moved to Belfast; she’d believed herself in love with Man B until the petty irritations piled up and she’d neatly ended the affair. Neither lover had provoked this feral response. Orla wanted to devour this man. Instead she bit her knuckles, eyes shut in the darkened room, hoping he’d just dissolve in the same way he’d just appeared. Orla’s response to all things sexual was largely head-led: now her loins were in charge and they were in party mode.

With a
flash of insight that wasn’t entirely welcome, Orla realised that she’d never truly fancied the pants off anybody before. That was quite a revelation for the drunken small hours, and it made her uncomfortable. She wheeled round.

‘Tell me something about yourself.’

‘What do you need to know?’ Sim pulled off his wig and rubbed his scalp. ‘Jesus, these things are itchy. Um, I’m Simeon Quinn. Call me Sim. I’m thirty-two. I’m unattached. You?’ She nodded. He continued. ‘Good. I’m an actor. I came straight here from the Canal Revue and yes, I was singled out in the reviews thank you for asking. I’m allergic to penicillin. My favourite flavour crisp is smoky bacon. And my feet are killing me.’ He kicked off his platforms. ‘That’s better. How do you women cope? Although,’ he looked down at Orla’s black satin heels, ‘they do
great
things for
your
legs.’