This Charming Man (47 page)

Then the agenda moved to the menu.

‘Like it matters.’ Mrs Croft sighed.

‘Excuse me?’ one of the angle-grinders said.

‘Like anyone eats the food at these things.’

The angle-grinder stared. ‘That’s hardly the point, Rosalind. We still have to have an innovative menu.’

‘Of course, Arlene, you’re absolutely right. How about partridge?’

‘Done. Only last week.’

‘Poussin?’

‘Done.’

‘Woodcock?’

‘Done.’

‘Duck?’

‘Done.’

‘Pheasant?’

‘Done.’

‘Chicken?’

‘Done.’

‘Grouse?’

‘Done.’

‘Why hasn’t someone invented a new bird?’ one of the angle-grinders whined. ‘This bloody country, I tell you.’

In a suite in the hotel, Nkechi helped Rosalind out of her committee clothes and into her luncheon outfit. The hairdresser did a quick change of style, then it was down to the ballroom for the lunch.

Hellish. A hundred and fifty clones of the women who’d been at the committee meeting. It was like a nature programme about a colony of breeding seagulls. The
noise
.

Once the women on either side of me discovered that I was unable to
discuss the terrible traffic in Marbella or the drop in standards in private schools, they turned their respective backs on me. I didn’t care; I zoned out and fantasized about a warehouse full of uncountable numbers of cigarettes. Shelf after shelf, so many you had to drive along on a mechanical platform thing to view them. A cigarette universe. Cigarettes by the million. Although I’d have been happy with just one.

At 2.30 on the dot, the PA poked Rosalind and Rosalind got to her feet like an automaton and the cavalcade was off again. To be honest, I was shattered and I couldn’t understand why. I’d done nothing all morning, except make snide remarks in my head.

Our next stop was a yoga lesson with a man who was often on telly. Another change of clothes, then on to dress fittings in Brown Thomas. Then back out to the house in Killiney for her amatsu practitioner, followed by a quick break for tea and victuals – ricecakes for her and handmade biscuits, spookily similar to the ones you find in posh hotels, for me.

‘Have a biscuit,’ I said, as I watched her tuck into the styrofoam discs. ‘Those things taste of nothing.’

‘Thanks, love, but I’m on one thousand two hundred calories a day, have been for the past nine years, since Maxwell made it big – if I can’t fit into size ten ballgowns I’m a goner. But you eat up.’

She opened a massive desk diary. ‘You’d like to see my calendar for next week? Take a look.’

It was awe-inspiring: acupuncture, committee meetings, hospice visits, cranio-sacral treatment, photocalls, colonics, Pilates, teeth-whitening, Christmas gift-buying for her army of staff, lunches, teas, business breakfasts…

‘… and always, balls, balls, balls,’ she said, her tone suddenly and unexpectedly bitter. ‘Sorry,’ she said quietly.

‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘It can’t always be fun.’

As far as I was concerned, it would never be fun. If by some bizarre quirk of the universe – like the plots in
Quantum Leap
– I ended up as a society wife, they’d have to fish me out of the canal.

Then something happened – I didn’t know what it was but it made her hands clench and her knuckles flash white. ‘Maxwell’s home. My husband.’ She flicked her wrist to see her watch and said, ‘He’s early.’

I’d heard nothing.

As if her switch had clicked from medium to extra-fast, she was gathering
her sheets of paper and banging them on the desk. ‘We’ll have to finish for today, Grace.’ She was standing up, tugging down her skirt, moving towards the door.

‘But…’ My brief had been to shadow her untilbedtime.

‘Rosalind, Rosalind!’ a man’s voice yelled in the hall.

‘In here!’ She dived to open the door but, before she got there, someone outside thrust it inwards. A narky-looking man. Maxwell Croft.

‘What are you doing in here?’ he asked Rosalind.

‘I didn’t expect you for another hour –’

He looked past her and stared, without warmth, at me.

‘Grace Gildee,’ Rosalind said. ‘She’s doing a piece for the
Spokesman,
about the charity balls.’ She spoke quickly, almost hiccuping over her words.

‘Maxwell Croft. Nice to see you.’ He gave me a brief glance. ‘Rosalind will have your car brought round.’

Any protests I’d been about to make died in my mouth. My will was no match for his.

‘What did she give you?’

‘Nothing. How’s Oscar doing?’

‘Fine, fine. She gave you nothing at all?’

‘No.’

‘She probably didn’t think there was any point. Why give you an Hermes handbag? It would only make the rest of you look worse.’

‘Jacinta, would you mind not being quite so insult –’

‘It’s not too late. Maybe when the piece comes out, she’ll send something. Now, I take it you’ve seen the contract?’

‘… Yes.’

Jacinta had promised the Crofts copy approval, which never happens, not even for Tom Cruise. Therefore my profile of Mrs Croft would be an absolute rave.

Good job I’d liked her.

I was the one who introduced them: Paddy and Marnie. It was the July I turned seventeen and I’d got a summer job as a lounge girl in the Boatman, where Paddy was working as a barman.

It was actually the night of my seventeenth birthday – also Marnie’s.

Marnie dropped by with Leechy when I’d finished work; we were on our way out to celebrate the only way we knew how: drinking heavily.

‘Come and meet Paddy,’ I said, with a little pride.

Paddy was cool. He’d already finished school, had worked in London for a year on a building site and was starting university at the end of September to study law.

Marnie and Leechy had heard all about him – as had Ma, Dad and Bid – because he was the only barman who was nice to me. From the moment the rest of the staff discovered I lived on Yeoman Road, they had regarded me with hostility. They mistakenly thought I was from a well-off family and set out to torment me, starting on my very first night, when Micko, the manager, said, ‘There’s a phone call for Mike Hunt, ask around and see if anyone has seen him.’ It was only Paddy’s intervention that stopped me wandering around the pub calling plaintively, ‘My cunt? Anyone seen my cunt?’

‘They do it to all the new girls,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t take it personally. There’s a bet on to see how long before they make you cry.’

‘They won’t make me cry,’ I’d said, filled with resolve – for about five minutes. Then I decided to leave and get a job somewhere else.

‘They’re afraid of you,’ Dad explained. ‘You’re educated and different. You’re just passing through, but that’s their career. Have compassion.’

‘Don’t leave,’ Ma agreed. ‘Being despised is character-forming. Think of Gandhi.’

‘Fuck them,’ Bid said. ‘Ignorant knackers. Work in McLibels instead, you can get us a family discount.’

In the end, because the tips were good and the place was only round the corner, I’d decided to stick it out. What would have happened if I hadn’t?

‘Paddy,’ I called. He was loading glasses into a dishwasher. ‘This is my friend Leechy. And this is my sister, Marnie. My twin sister.’

He said hello to Leechy, then I waited for him to express the obligatory surprise about Marnie – your
twin
? You’re so different!

But he said nothing and for a baffled moment I wondered what was wrong. But when I looked at him, he was staring open-mouthed at Marnie and she was gawking back in the same stupefied fashion. Something was happening – you could actually feel it. Shivery, snaky sensations zigzagged over my scalp. Micko turned from doing something clangy with a metal
barrel, his face confused, because he didn’t know why he was looking. Even a very drunk man and woman, curled up in a booth, left off their slurred accusatory conversation and stared at us.

Instantly Paddy and Marnie aligned their lives. Within fourteen hours Marnie had handed in her notice in Piece’a Pizza, where she and Leechy had both had jobs, and started working instead in the Boatman where she charmed Micko into synchronizing her shifts with Paddy’s.

Despite her living on Yeoman Road, the other barmen treated her with tenderness and affection; that was the effect Marnie had on men. Also she was a protectorate of Paddy’s and despite being educated and ambitious, everyone loved Paddy.

Marnie couldn’t stop thanking me. ‘You found him for me.’

I’d never seen her so joyous, and it was a relief because I couldn’t breathe easy if Marnie wasn’t happy.

But all of a sudden I was the extra wheel. We’d had other boyfriends in the past, but this was different. Not that I was abandoned and alone. Leechy was almost like another sister, she lived only five doors up and was always in our house. Then there was Sheridan, Paddy’s best friend since infant school. It was as if, at the age of four, they’d selected each other because they knew that when they grew up they could go womanizing as a pair: they were about the same height and build (vital for womanizing pairs, you just can’t take them seriously if one is six inches shorter than the other) and both very good-looking.

In fairness, though, handsome as Sheridan was, with his clean, Nordic looks, Paddy had something extra. Sheridan was foisted on Leechy and me, accompanied by a little lecture from Paddy that Sheridan was practically his brother and that we were to take good care of him. Together the three of us formed an uncomfortable little gang of leftovers.

The funny thing was that I had as much contact with Paddy as if he’d been
my
boyfriend. I saw him all the time at work and I saw him all the time at home. It felt like you couldn’t walk into a room without finding him already in there, crotch-to-crotch with Marnie, his hand up her T-shirt.

Ma and Dad had always encouraged us to bring our boyfriends home, but their famed tolerance ran out within days.

‘I go down to the kitchen to cut myself a slice of cake,’ Dad raged, ‘and there they are… at it.’

‘
At it?
’ Ma asked anxiously. Liberal as she was, this was not welcome news.

‘Not that sort of at it. But kissing. Sucking face. Whatever dreadful expression is currently in vogue. He’s always damn well here. And when he does bother going home, she spends half the night on the phone to him. What do they talk about? He gives me the creeps.’

‘The creeps! Why?’

‘He tries too hard to be liked.’

‘No he doesn’t!’ Ma and I were in unison.

‘He’s only a boy!’ Ma said. ‘You can’t attribute such cynicism to someone who’s only a boy.’

‘He’s nineteen. He’s too old for her.’

‘It’s only two years.’

‘Two years is a lot at this age. And they’re never apart. It’s not healthy.’

But Ma couldn’t resist taking Paddy under her wing. She was a sucker for any waifs and strays and Paddy was perfect: his mother was dead; his father was rarely at home; there was never any food in his house. The least she could do was feed the poor creature.

‘You think it’s bad now,’ Bid said to Dad.

‘Yes, I do actually, thank you very much,’ Dad said.

‘You wait till he goes to college in September. That’ll be fun and games in earnest. He’ll have no time then for the likes of our little Marnie,’ Bid predicted.

‘Our little Marnie’ must have been on the same page as Bid, because when September rolled around, a series of emotional upheavals kicked off and set the tone for the next three years:

‘It’s all ruined!’ The sound of Marnie yelling came through the wall. ‘This summer has been the most perfect time of my life. Now I have to go back to school and you have to go to college. Don’t go!’

Ma winced and muttered, ‘She shouldn’t have said that.’

Ma, Dad, Bid, Leechy, Sheridan and I were sitting in the kitchen, while the shouting match played out in the next room. It was impossible not to hear them. Initially we’d tried to keep a pretence of a conversation going, but in the end we just gave up and listened.

‘But I have to go,’ Paddy cried. ‘This is my future, my life.’

‘I thought I was your life.’

‘You are! But I have to get qualifications so I can earn a living. How else can I take care of you?’

‘But you won’t want to. You’ll meet all these other…
girls
! You’ll fancy them and you’ll forget about me.’

‘She’s right,’ said Bid. ‘I’ve always thought she was a bit thick, but she’s right.’

‘I won’t!’ Paddy shrieked. ‘I love you, I only love you and I will never love anyone else.’

‘Well, well, if I had a pound for every time a man said that to me…’ Bid murmured.

‘Sssh, sssh, I can’t hear,’ Bid said.

‘What’s it about this time?’ Dad asked.

‘Not sure.’

‘ “Let’s fight until six, then let’s have tea,” ’ Dad said. ‘Tweedledum to Tweedledee. Page eighty-four, ‘
Alice in Wonderland
.’

‘Ssssh!’

‘Paddy, what’s wrong?’ Marnie was pleading.

‘If you have to ask,’ he accused, ‘there’s no point telling you!’

He had arrived, cold, imperious and very angry, and a nervous-looking Marnie had quickly closeted him in the living room.

‘I tried ringing you last night… but the phone was engaged… you’re meant to keep the line free from eight till midnight…’

‘But Paddy, other people live in this house, they might have made a call.’

‘But it wasn’t other people, was it? It was you. Look, I know, Marnie, you can stop lying to me.’

‘I’m not lying!’

‘I
know
who you were on the phone to.’

‘Who was it?’ Ma asked.

‘Graham Higgins,’ Leechy said. ‘His mum made him ring her, to get Marnie to explain Yeats’s poems to him, because she’s afraid he’ll fail English.’

‘Tall chap? Plays rugby?’ Bid said. ‘How does Paddy know who she was talking to?’

‘Leechy told me!’ Paddy yelled. ‘I know everything!’

Shocked, Ma, Dad, Bid, Sheridan and I whipped around to look at Leechy.

‘I didn’t know that he didn’t know,’ Leechy wailed. ‘He rang me. He tricked me into telling.’

‘How?’

‘Shut up! I can’t hear!’