2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie (19 page)

“Okay,” she says, mouth hardening. “I’ll go if you want me to.”

“And you can take that stupid cat with you. He gets on my nerves. Always slinking around the place following you as if you’ve done something wrong.”

This is amazing! He’s paranoid, like myself. He’s my very own soul-brother! We should suggest coffee some time. We agree on fish, on Nicole’s painting, on Max. We’ve both been treated as asswipes from the same roll. Such a lot in common, it’d be a shame not to follow it up, to laugh a little together about life and its unexpected fate turns and quirky ironies.

One thing suddenly occurs to me, though.

What will Nicole do if she’s kicked out? Where will she go? Some hostel for the homeless? I don’t think so.

She will want to be with Ronan.

“Harry,” I begin, starting to panic again.

“What do
you
want?”

“I want to clarify something about this whole issue. I think it will help.”

“Help. Of course, you’re the great Florence Nightingale.”

“I’m sorry?”

He sniggers at my etiquette. “You, who’ve taken it upon yourself to pick sluts up off the road and bring them to hospital.”

I don’t want to get sidetracked, but I’m afraid I can’t help it.

“AH it was, Harry,” says I, with the utmost charm, “is that I was passing outside your house yesterday and I saw that Nicole was bleeding…”

“Your time’s up,” he replies, pointing to the door behind me.

“…so I thought I’d stop to inquire after her health.”

“She can take care of herself.”

“I thought it best not to leave her semi-crippled on the pavement.”

“We have a real Mother Teresa here,” he jeers.

“No, just ordinary human decency.”

“Julianne,” Nicole whispers.

I admit it, I have this irreversible designer defect: it consists in the fact that, like Sylvana, I can’t bear giving pricks the upper hand.

Harry is glaring at me now, rubbing his chin, though not as intelligently as Ronan is accustomed to rub his chin. Harry’s gesture has something ill-mannered and stupid about it, completely lacking in Ronan’s
savoir faire
.

“What was I supposed to do? Walk past her and say: “Is that blood I see dripping from your face? Are they bruises? How interesting! Well, have a nice day.””

He appears to be studying me with a measure of doubt. “Harry, you deserve to know the truth about Nicole,” I say with perfect condescension, but he’s too thick to pick up on it.

Nicole sits down suddenly on the couch, clasping herself like a tender wounded mammal. Through watery, anguished eyes she stares up at me, her apocalyptic face white as a sheet.

“I hardly know Nicole,” I begin. “I met her yesterday for the first time. Being honest, she’s not even my friend.”

I glance at her sunken, crushed posture.

“My own husband cheated on me. So I know what it feels like. It cuts you apart. I have no sympathy for women who do this and the last thing I’d want would be to protect them.”

Nicole is trembling like a tractor.

“I took Nicole to hospital yesterday because I saw her outside, injured. She was shaking and confused and in panic. She kept telling me she couldn’t understand why someone would try to split you and her up like that. She insisted there was no other man. She was in such a state of shock she could hardly speak. People tell the truth in that state. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true.”

He takes a sip of vodka.

Jesus, the things I have to do.

“Nicole told me she couldn’t understand why you beat her like that, when you were the one she loved. Yes, that’s right: she told me she loved you.”

Both Nicole and Harry stare at me with something approaching astonished bafflement.

“You’re lying,” he says.

Lying. It’s such fun! Being a barrister, I get a lot of practice. An important part of the technique is the following assurance. “I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true.” Then you dive on to your king-size-bedded orgy of truth suppression and mass perjury, and have a whale of a time.

“I swear to you, Harry, on my mother’s grave…” (She’s not dead yet.) “…that I’m telling you God’s honest truth…” (I haven’t been to Mass in a while.) “…I really am.”

The atmosphere in the room is suddenly clogged up with extreme awkwardness.

“Nicole,” I command, “did you not tell me yesterday in the hospital that you loved Harry?”

She lowers her head.

“
Didn’t you?
”

She nods. She’s got no choice.

Harry to Nicole: “I don’t believe you.”

Me: “Tell him it’s true, Nicole. Go on.”

Pause.

She looks up into his hard eyes, nods her head almost imperceptibly and affirms out loud that that is precisely what she told me.

Harry snorts phlegm up through his nostrils.

His way of saying that he is reconsidering events.

The room is a morgue of silence.

I open the door fully, step out and close it very, very quietly behind me.

I should demand top consultancy rates.

W
hen I left Nicole’s I came straight into town. I’ve been in Brown Thomas, doing what all jerked-on wives are supposed to do: purchasing strictly unnecessary merchandise.

More precisely, I’ve been on a revenge witch-hunt courtesy of Ronan’s Mastercard, which I borrowed earlier from his wallet. I’ve been cunningly copying his signature, R. Fitzgerald, and I’ve had a terrific time: the lot came to just over one and a half thousand pounds.

I bought myself three pairs of black leather shoes, two pin-striped suits, a black leather jacket, jewellery including a new solid-gold watch strap (the metallic one I had gave me allergies), a floppy black hat I know I’ll never use, new silk sheets, a new bathrobe and (believe it or not) a lemon-yellow Wonderbra to see if I get a response from him.

This time with matching knickers.

Having dumped the bags in the boot of my MG in the nearby car park, I am now on my second binge of the day. I am sitting in Bewley’s café, lounging on one of its soft red-wine benches underneath a high stained-glass window and opposite a huge painting of white, blue and green surf, dunking my face into an enormous cup of cappuccino, eyeing my plate whereon reside a load of these utterly decadent cream cakes. There’s a coffee eclair and a chocolate eclair with cream seeping out of them like two fat sidelong grins. Both as yet untouched. There’s a strawberry cheesecake, already ransacked by my good self. And a chocolate fudge gateau, third-munched. Oh, and one caramel slice.

I called Sylvana but she informed me that she had a man by the balls and that it was the wrong time to let go, so could I perhaps call later. I was unclear whether she was at a business meeting or whether she was in bed, but I felt it best not to press the point at such a critical juncture in her life.

I could have called my other acquaintances for some succour and relief – and to help me with all these cakes, which I’ll never manage on my own – but I have told nobody else about my marital indignities. Only Sylvana.

So what do I do? I call my mother.

“I’m only calling you, Mother, because I’m in Bewley’s and I’ve bought more cakes than I can chew, and I was wondering if you’d care to join me.”

“What cakes?”

“So whether or not you decide to meet me in here depends on what cakes I bought.”

She grunts.

I tell her what I bought.

“You’re bingeing,” she concludes and this from the woman for whom eating pastries is a religion.

“So?”

“It’s a sign of depression.”

“Good.”

“Sorry, Julie, I can’t meet you.”

“Would you have preferred a better selection of cakes?”

“It’s not that. I’m expecting a delivery.”

“The fish tank?”

“No, it’s my baby grand piano.”

I mull over the enormity of what she’s just said. “Mother, there’s no room for a baby grand piano.”

“It’s organized. There’s no way I’m leaving it in the house for the new people: it’s a valuable antique.”

“Mother, it’s an ancient relic.”

“You learnt to play on it.”

“But it won’t even fit through the door.”

“The men assured me it would. Sideways.”

“Ronan will have a fit.”

“Well, it’s a pity about him.”

“He happens to co-own that apartment.”

“Then why has he been avoiding me like the plague all day? I go into the lounge, and he gets up and goes into the kitchen. I follow him into the kitchen and he slips back out to the lounge, or escapes me altogether to the bedroom. With him it’s all artificial politeness. It’s no wonder you find it hard to live with him, what with the fish tank episode, et cetera.”

“So you’re moving in your piano to antagonize Ronan, is that it?”

“The point is, if he thinks he can survive in that apartment and pretend I don’t exist, wait till he sees the piano.”

“Mother, I don’t want to predict what’s going to happen if you do this.”

Before she says ‘goodbye, I love you so’, she gives me strict instructions to carefully wrap the chocolate and the coffee eclairs (her personal favourites) in a separate tissue and bring them home to her. I am not to touch them, she says, because they’ll make me break out in all kinds of nasty spots and I’ll put on a stone in weight.

She hangs up without giving me a chance to defend myself.

I order another cappuccino.

I wrap the chocolate eclair in tissue and discreetly place it in one of my bags beneath the table. No one saw that.

While I’m waiting for nobody to arrive and keep me company, I just stare miserably at my other eclair. Things are going very badly indeed. I take a sip of coffee and I sit back in the warm comfort of the soft bench.

I stick my hand in my jacket pocket and pull out the booklet on
Feng Shui
. The one I coolly ripped off from Nicole’s sitting-room. On each little page are scribbled a few lines of wisdom on a particular subject. There’s a table of contents. I look up ‘cats’.

According to the page on cats, they have the inner capacity to ward off harmful spirits. Also, they can counteract passive
yin
energy, which develops in your home when you’re out all day at work. Fine. ‘Jasmine’. She’s right: jasmine is known as the plant of friendship. ‘Magnolia’: known to the Chinese as the secretly smiling flower, this plant increases a woman’s beauty. Must try it some time.

‘Colours’: yellow. Yellow stimulates mental energy, and the expansion of wisdom and consciousness. Nothing about yellow on front doorknobs. It is appropriate, the booklet says, to paint the walls of your relationships area (?) or your children area (?) in yellow. Green represents harmony and peace to troubled minds. When mixed with red it can encourage travel. And jealousy.

‘Money’: be careful of it. Money has powerful energy, but it comes with the danger of taking you over completely when it’s out of balance. A fast way of losing money, apparently, is to keep your toilet seat up. So there.

‘Fish’: very auspicious. Place a tank of lively guppies in the northern corner of your living-room and your career will come alive. Okay.

‘
Feng Shui
in the bedroom’: never sleep opposite a mirror – the reflections suggest the presence of a third party. How ironic. Ronan and I sleep opposite a mirror.

‘The turtle exercise’: sit down and close your eyes, let your chin drop to your chest. Inhale – slowly raising your head again – then exhale while tilting your head back.

Right now, I’m sitting in the middle of Bewley’s crowded Oriental café, doing the turtle exercise with my eyes closed.

“Julianne, what are you doing?”

The cheerful voice makes my heart somersault.

It’s Nicole.

She’s in her red dress, out of breath, all smiles. Hurriedly I drop the
Feng Shui
booklet between my legs, close it and slide it surreptitiously into my bag beneath the table.

“I was just reading the Bible,” I reply, pushing the coffee eclair towards her. “What on earth are
you
doing here, Nicole?”

“I’m meeting Ronan at four in Temple Bar. Isn’t this an amazing coincidence? Julianne, I love the leather jacket.”

“I’ve just charged it to my husband’s credit card, along with all these shoes and suits and things, and I also bought a lemon-yellow Wonderbra with matching knickers, just for the hell of it.”

Not a flicker from her. “I’ve just bought a dress myself. Will I show it to you?”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s peach,” she insists hopefully.

“Charming. Enjoy your coffee eclair, Nicole.”

She sits down opposite me and starts picking at the eclair (Mother will be furious). After ordering a coffee from one of the waiters she turns to me all earnest, grave.

She says she realizes I just put myself on the line for her back there in front of Harry. She says she is extremely grateful to me for saving her life, and that owing to me, she no longer lives in danger of being thumped. Thank you so much, Julianne.

“You’re welcome, by the way, Nicole…” I’m playing with my lower lip. “I’d love to meet Ronan.”

“You would?”

“Yes. I was thinking: what about an introduction?”

“You mean, this afternoon?”

“It can’t hurt.”

“I’d like that.” She smiles.

“I’m just curious to see what a jerk he is. Only joking.”

She tells me, in effect, that, at four o’clock she’ll introduce me to my husband of two years’ standing.

“Hands off, though.” She laughs. “He’s
mine
, okay?”

This is her concept of a joke, like.

“You have no idea, do you?”

“How do you mean?”

“Forget it.”

She flicks her hair back and takes another forkful of cake. She’s beginning to look tired. She’s lost the happy glow she had when I called up to her place earlier. That thing with Harry must have traumatized her, poor thing.

I take a bite from my own cream-orientated gunge, take several sips of my coffee and turn to her. “Nicole, can I say something?”

She nods earnestly at me.

“You probably won’t like this, but do you have any idea what you constitute in Ronan’s eyes?”

“How do you mean?”