An Unexpected Guest

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T
ime rained down on Clare. 8:30 a.m. on the clock hanging above the breakfast alcove. Twenty-five years of pretending Ireland never existed.

She would have to step again into that air terminal. Stare into the dark waters of the River Liffey. Look over her shoulder at every instant.

Remember.

“The ambassador has just been diagnosed with viral pneumonia,” Edward had whispered last evening, sliding his BlackBerry into his inner jacket pocket, as they entered a cocktail reception for the Franco-British Entente Cordial program. “And the permanent under-secretary’s flight touched down at Charles de Gaulle forty-five minutes ago. He’s requested the dinner in his honor tomorrow night be shifted to our place.”

“How many people?”

“Twelve. With us included.”

The permanent under-secretary could have easily asked Edward—who, as British minister in Paris, was deputy head of the embassy—to take over as host in the
Salon Bleu.
If the P.U.S. wanted dinner moved from the ambassador’s residence to their place, he was seizing the opportunity to size Edward up in his own territory. The P.U.S. was in charge of ambassadorial appointments.

She’d touched Edward’s solid wrist. “I’ve got it.” She’d given him a thumbs-up and begun mentally planning. She’d been happy.

She hadn’t yet known what country the P.U.S. had in mind.

Now she was drinking her morning coffee in the Residence’s spacious white kitchen, calmly making a list for this evening. She did not glance at Edward, reading through a pile of briefs beside his tea and toast and marmalade. She continued drinking her coffee and eating her own toast quietly, as she did every morning. She did nothing that might betray her anguish.

If tonight’s dinner went well, Edward would be named the new ambassador to Ireland.

“Word is,” Edward had said after they’d gotten home last night, unwinding his tie from his neck, “Michael Leroy is being named to Israel.”

“Michael Leroy? The ambassador in Dublin?”

“Not after August. Apparently he’s wanted Tel Aviv for ages. Not enough chaos for him in Ireland currently.”

She’d allowed her nightgown to fall over her head, obscuring her expression just long enough to erase it, and slipped in between their bed’s cool sheets, pulling them up close to her chin. Edward didn’t know with what care, during the two decades they had been married, she’d avoided stepping foot on Irish soil. He didn’t realize she’d ever even been to Dublin. Edward knew when she woke she would brush her teeth both before and after breakfast. He knew that even in the flurry of preparations she would not tell Amélie, their well-meaning housekeeper, what a pain it was to communicate in Amélie’s broken English. But Edward knew nothing about her really, because he knew nothing about her life before him. He knew only the part she’d chosen to show him.

Thanks to her serene efficiency all these years—not just in entertaining but also in deception—Edward had probably thought he was handing her a present.

“So,” she’d said, “Dublin will soon be vacant.”

Edward had kissed her forehead. “Yes, Dublin will soon be vacant.” He’d turned off their bedroom’s overhead light, and she’d heard his measured tread move down the hall towards the study. He’d have meetings to prepare for now that he would be replacing the ambassador throughout the following day.

Ireland.

“Portobello Road, number eighty-three,” she told the cabdriver after she climbed into the cab at the Dublin airport, taking care to cradle her tummy in a protective fashion. When they pulled up in front of the unmarked brown building, the River Liffey seething below, she hoisted her long frame back out of the cab in an awkward motion, almost forgetting her suitcase, and hastened over the heaving paving stones to ring the entrance bell. “I need a room,” she announced to the jug-eared red-faced boy who appeared at the door and stared at her without saying a word, looking her up and down until his eyes landed on her stomach. “I need a room,” she repeated, insisting, a sudden desperation to get the whole thing over with as swiftly as possible rising up inside her. She heard the tires of the taxi bumping away along the cobbled road but didn’t look backwards.

Edward was ready for his own ambassadorship. He’d devoted his entire adult life to the British Foreign Office and had served as the British minister in Paris, second only to the ambassador, faithfully and effectively for the past three years. He had done the prerequisite tours in hot spots—Lebanon, Kuwait, and Cairo—earlier in his career, and had spent a tour each in London and Washington, with Irish Affairs as part of his workload. He’d married her, an American woman whose maiden name was Fennelly. All that was left standing between him and the top slot in Dublin was the dinner she was now charged with hosting.

“Everything all right, then?” Edward said, taking off his reading glasses and standing up tall from the breakfast table. “Are we on course for this evening?”

“I have it all under control.”

“Of course you do.”

He kissed her, and she smiled as he closed his briefcase, and smiled as he drew on his suit jacket. She smiled until she heard the front door of the Residence click shut behind him. Then she stopped smiling and placed both hands on the breakfast table.

Here were her choices. She could put on a perfect dinner and end up moving to Dublin, where, if someone didn’t actually recognize her and call her to account, she at least ran the risk of going crazy. Already in the past couple of months, she’d begun imagining she saw Niall’s face in every crowd again.

Or she could purposefully make a mess of this evening’s event and destroy the chances of her loyal, deserving husband.

Clare checked the clock again. 8:37 a.m.

Last night at the reception, after she’d learned she had twenty-four hours to put on the dinner that could make all the difference for her husband’s professional future—but before she’d understood Ireland was the country at stake—she’d shaken hands and kissed cheeks exactly as much as necessary, then withdrawn to a powder room. Balancing against a marble sink, cupping her phone in one hand, she’d reeled off instructions with the precision of an airline hostess intoning safety measures. First to their cook, Mathilde. Then to Amélie—remembering to ask whether Amélie’s cousin might be available to offer an extra set of hands in the kitchen. Third to Yann, an embassy waiter she particularly trusted.
“Donc, vous annulez,”
she’d told him when he’d protested he already was slotted for another assignment. The butler, Gérard, was away in the south of France—unlucky timing, but they’d had nothing planned for these nights and it was his niece’s wedding. She couldn’t call him back to Paris. She would cover his organizational work, and Yann would do the greeting and managing of the guests. Amélie’s cousin would help serve. And Amélie would supervise the wine and tableware deliveries. Mathilde—she stayed in the kitchen.

Her dinner staff lined up, Clare had tapped out an e-mail to the embassy, requesting that the official plate embossed with the queen’s emblem be sent over in the morning, not too late, and then another to Edward’s secretary, requesting the guest list, with annotations about recent personal events and food preferences. She’d extracted the notepad she always carried and begun a to-do list—butcher, wine, flowers, etc.—careful to think as well of anything the butler normally would handle. Last, she’d sent an e-mail to the publication office at the Rodin Museum to say she’d likely have to delay dropping off the translation she’d just completed. This was her other job, the one she got paid for—she translated art books and catalogs.

She’d done all this in slightly over ten minutes, then returned to the reception hall in time to switch off her phone and listen to Edward give the absent ambassador’s welcoming speech. She’d kissed more cheeks amongst the circulating hors d’oeuvres, greeted more acquaintances, asked about more children, wives, and husbands. She’d been the picture of calm and competence. As she’d lain in bed later that night, trying to process Edward’s news about the embassy in Dublin, she had carefully tugged on this earlier sanguinity, reeling it back in until her breathing slowed, her heart stilled. She’d willed sleep to come to her.

Clare folded her breakfast napkin. If she could keep her cool last night, she could keep it this morning. She could keep it through the day, and through the dinner. She could even keep it in Dublin. She had experience controlling fear.

She replaced the top of the sugar bowl. She twisted the lid back over Edward’s jar of marmalade and gathered the plates from their breakfast, placing them on a tray. Mathilde would be coming in soon to start cooking. Amélie was already primping the formal living room. She tipped the remains of Edward’s pot of tea into the sink, then that of her cup of coffee.

She would not think about St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin, where rain had once splattered the remains of her humanity. She wouldn’t think about Dublin at all. She would put her all into helping Edward. She’d spent more than twenty years piling grain upon grain of obfuscation, and she couldn’t go backwards. Either she organized tonight’s dinner with the skill Edward knew she possessed or she’d have to tell him the truth about herself. She didn’t plan to tell that to anyone.