The Valentine's Card Page 3

  Orla smiled at her mother’s loyalty, but airs and graces? Her ‘boy’ had had plenty. She recalled the critiques he’d habitually make of her mother’s hospitality as they drove away from her bungalow. (‘Findus Chicken Kiev? I mean, seriously?’). As soon as Sim had hit the ground on Saint Valentine’s Day his beatification had begun. As far as Ma was concerned, he was now and would forever remain, Saint Sim, Patron Saint of Brilliant Boyfriends. If Ma had been privy to the goings-on in her own spare room last New Year’s Eve she might have asked for the halo back.

  ‘That owld bag knows he meant to marry you.’ Like a boat loosed from its moorings Ma roamed the room, searching out mess. She rarely stayed still for long, a trait her daughter shared, when not KO’d by grief. ‘You should have had pride of place. You’re practically a widow!’

  ‘Ma.’

  ‘Sorry. I get meself worked up, I know. But all the same.’ Ma punched a cushion into submission.

  Orla knew Lucy was hurting, she knew that people in pain don’t behave very well, and so she resisted Ma’s easy dislike. Orla wanted to believe in essential goodness. She needed kindness and small joys in order to plot a course away from her current state of mind. But most of all she needed Sim.

  ‘You finished with that mug?’ Ma held out her hand. She was on a mission to cleanse and scour and improve. Orla knew this to be a symptom of helplessness: Ma’s response to the Grim Reaper was to tidy around him. It was a brave retort, in its way, and it made Orla smile. ‘When are you back to school? Could you try again day after tomorrow maybe?’

  ‘Mr Monk is very understanding. He said there’s no hurry.’ Orla chickened out of sharing her plan.

  ‘A job is precious these days. More than ever. That’s all I’m saying.’

  Fear fizzed through her mother’s veins and all her life Orla had fought to resist Ma’s pessimism. Jobs can be lost. Colds can be caught. Gloves can be left on buses. People can drop down dead just like that.

  And planes can crash. Novenas were said throughout the long sleepless night before any of Ma’s brood boarded an aircraft. It hadn’t stopped Brendan backpacking or Caitlin moving to New York, but Sim had blamed it, in part, for Orla’s reluctance to join him in London.

  Orla relived those conversations with scalding regret. ‘How can you possibly know you hate London when you’ve never been there?’ he’d asked, still grinning, still patient at midnight or later. ‘Maybe it isn’t dirty and unfriendly and dangerous and ugly.’

  ‘Do I have to visit Hell to prove it’s too hot?’

  She was clinging to wisps. It disturbed her when a memory changed or went hazy, she was desperate to firm them up and render them as solid as the man she’d loved for three whole years. ‘Tell me, Ma, does it ever get better?’

  Ma perched on the arm of the sofa, empty mug in one hand, smeared plate in the other. ‘It does, hen.’

  ‘Ma, I love you but you’re a terrible actress.’ Orla carefully replaced the cards, one of top of the other, in the box.

  ‘No, really. It does. Sure, just look at me.’

  Orla looked at her. Ma had never regained the two stone she’d lost after her husband’s death. She’d given up dying her hair. She was, Orla knew, afraid of solitude and the thoughts it brought, so she filled her days and nights with her children and her grandchildren, often exclaiming how they reminded her of ‘my Christie’.

  ‘OK, Ma, I believe you.’

  ‘Trust me. There’s always light at the end of the tunnel.’ Ma stood up. ‘Although sometimes it’s a feckin’ express train.’ She nodded approvingly as Orla fitted the lid on the striped box. ‘About time you put the cards away, love. They upset you.’ She pointed at the cerise envelope. ‘You missed one.’

  ‘No, that’s one staying out.’

  ‘Tear it up, Orla.’ Ma had a superstitious dislike of the card. ‘It’ll only bring you unhappiness.’ She meant well, Ma Cassidy. She was an old hand at mothering. Orla was her fifth and last and still her baby girl, even at thirty-three years old.

  ‘Ma, you promised not to go on about it.’

  ‘Give.’ Ma held out her hand. ‘I’ll tear it up for you, like I used to with them owld chain letters when you were at school.’

  ‘It’s coming with me, Ma.’

  Her mother sat back down again. ‘Where are you going?’

  It had been a po-faced affair, more like a send-off for a statesman than an actor’s funeral. Nowhere under the cathedral’s soaring dome, in the Latin hymns and the scripture readings, had Orla found a trace of her irresponsible, party-going, people-magnet lover.

  He’d once said – leaning back, Guinness in hand, legs apart, back when death had seemed a distant thing – that, ‘When I die I don’t want you wearing black. Wear your funkiest clothes!’

  In her scarlet coat, Orla had been glad of the buffers either side of her, Juno on her right in chic black leather, Ma on the left, frumpily formal. She’d had a whisky beforehand, at Ma’s urging, and it had made her giddy and a little sick.

  Sitting on the far side of Juno, Jack had squirmed and fidgeted against the pew. Young children at funerals aren’t unusual in Ireland, where the old guard respect the rituals of death. Juno, however, was vehemently new guard, free of the heavy hand of Irish Catholicism, and Orla knew she’d only brought him for her benefit. Orla had held her arms open.

  ‘Give him to me.’ Orla had taken Jack onto her lap for the rest of the service. He had turned out to be the best buffer of all.

  Gravely looking about him, a miniature man in a miniature suit, he’d whispered to Orla, ‘You’re not really my aunt.’

  ‘No. But I’m as good as.’ Orla normally folded Jack up in her arms, blew raspberries on him, but sitting in that church she’d wondered how she ever found the energy.

  ‘Mammy says you’re eating your heart out.’ Jack sounded fascinated by such an activity. ‘Is it all gone yet?’

  ‘Almost,’ whispered Orla, peering down at her chest. ‘Still enough left to get by, though.’

  ‘I ate a bogey I found once.’

  ‘Jack!’ Juno had hissed, eyes flickering around the congregation. ‘You never did.’ She’d whispered to Orla. ‘He makes this stuff up.’

  I did, mouthed Jack.

  Orla had kept her eyes devoutly on his thumbprint of a face, rather than the wooden oblong in the aisle draped in the Irish Tricolour. The coffin was bulky proof that Sim’s life was over.

  Orla’s breakfast had risen in her throat at the thought of him inside that box. Passing the coffin before Mass began, she’d placed a hand on the wood and left it there, unable to move. Juno’s compassionate, ‘Come away,’ only made her burst into tears.

  The first time Sim’s ever been mute at a get together. Orla had comforted herself with the absurd. At her feet, in her ‘best’ bag – a birthday gift from him – lay the valentine.

  The service inched on, prayers and responses flying up into the thick air like dry leaves. Orla had recognised nobody, knew none of the hymns. The Mass was an endurance test and she’d found no solace in it. Rather, she’d felt even more keenly her impotence against an indifferent force that could snuff out a person at random, caring little if that person took the hopes and dreams – the very future – of another with him.

  The disquiet on Jack’s perfect little face as he took in her raw eyes and grimly clamped mouth had been perhaps the worst part of the day.

  He’d never seen grief before.

  ‘Let’s not go to the reception.’ Juno had said this casually as they filed out of the cemetery, Ma taking up the refrain with equally strained breeziness. They’d held Orla up, one either side, as ropes lowered all that was left of Sim down into the ground.

  ‘I have to go.’

  They’d gone along with her decision believing that she was doing it for Sim, and they were half right. But only half. Orla was on a mission.

  In the exquisite hotel function room, Orla had moved among the guests in search of her prey, her coat bright ami
d the black. Nobody here would miss Sim. Their expressions were masks. Nobody here had ever really known him.

  On one side of the room, moving among the guests with his customary finesse, Senator Quinn looked tired. On the opposite side entirely his wife’s careful make-up couldn’t rewind the decade she’d aged in the last twelve days. Orla noticed they never came together.

  ‘Orla.’ Lucy had tilted her chignon benignly. ‘You’re wearing red? How individual.’

  ‘Sim’s orders. Lucy, I’ve been thinking. I want to help.’

  ‘That’s kind, but everything’s under control.’ Lucy had smiled at somebody over Orla’s head: she was a tall woman, and always wore heels.

  ‘I recognise that smile. I use it too, since … since Sim died.’

  Lucy had looked puzzled.

  ‘This one.’ Orla had mimicked Lucy’s expression. ‘Nostalgic. Sentimental. Rueful but brave. For a smile, it’s horribly sad.’

  Lucy took a sip of her champagne. She hadn’t demurred.

  Orla pressed on, excited that she might be reaching Lucy woman to woman. ‘Do you walk into a room, forget why you’re there and just say to yourself, Oh Sim …?’

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘The dot-dot-dots never lead anywhere,’ said Orla, quietly.

  ‘I have to greet the Minister for Education, Orla. Excuse me.’

  ‘Hold on, Lucy. I won’t keep you long. Like I said, I want to help. I’ll go to London for you, clear out his apartment there.’

  ‘Maria is—’

  ‘This feels right. Remember Sim wanted me to go with him, live with him there.’

  ‘And you refused.’

  ‘Yes, and I regret it now.’ Orla had hesitated, scared she would expose herself too much. ‘This is my way of making amends.’

  ‘Orla, I really must see to my guests. I’m having trouble getting hold of a key for the London property but as soon as I do, Maria will go.’

  Orla held up a bronze door key. ‘Sim sent me this.’ She flourished her ticket. ‘And this. My flight leaves at 6.10 a.m. on the twenty-fourth. I am doing this, Lucy,’ Orla had held Lucy’s gaze, ‘but I’d prefer to do it with your blessing.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘It shouldn’t take longer than an afternoon,’ said Lucy. ‘He took very little. If you find his grandfather’s watch, it’s a Longines, inscribed.’

  ‘I know it well. I’ll bring it home safely to you. If I find his journal, may I keep that?’

  For a moment it had seemed as if Lucy might say no. Orla held her breath. So far Lucy had done everything in her power to deny Orla even the smallest keepsake. The journal had taken on a new significance. Yes she had teased him for his diligence about keeping a diary (a diligence notably absent from any other area of his life), but now it represented a conversation of sorts. The only conversation left to an almost-widow.

  ‘Yes, all right.’ Lucy had turned to wave at a new arrival. ‘You may.’

  Sim’s journal

  14 October 2011

  Ryanair Flight FR112

  Mid-air

  Watching her grow smaller and smaller as I walked through the departure gate brought on a wintry sadness like when the olds used to dump me back at school for the autumn term.

  How can such a soft woman be so HARD? She should be beside me. She could get time off work if she wanted. Like I said to her she’s just a primary school teacher. Even I could do that!

  Focus, Simon. Simeon. I need to focus but nobody touches me like O. I already miss her take on everything. And I’m only on the bloody plane!

  Chapter Four

  Movement helped. Packing a suitcase, running for her flight, watching the clouds from the window of the plane, all helped with the weight in Orla’s chest. The valentine was carefully tucked between the covers of a W. B. Yeats anthology Sim had given her their first Christmas together. The card was retracing its sender’s last journey. Knowing this was an odd comfort; Orla was beginning to appreciate odd comforts.

  Stepping out of the taxi, Orla double-checked the address.

  ‘Jaysus,’ she breathed to herself. ‘Really, Sim?’

  I love this place! he’d enthused, in email and on the phone. It’s so me!

  In that case, the London Sim was a very different creature. Orla had expected something chic, something louche, not three storeys of sooty brick, sandwiched between a railway bridge and a 24-hour mini-mart. Dublin Sim would have taken one look and bolted to the nearest five star hotel; this crossing of wires made a stranger of him, here where she’d come hoping to commune with him for the final time.

  A tube train charged across the bridge, rattling the sign for MAUDE’S BOOKS that swung above the shop on the ground floor. A figure waved frantically through the shop window, as if drowning.

  Wheeled suitcase trailing her like an awkward pet, Orla passed a man in a hard hat breaking the paving stones with a pneumatic drill, and negotiated the crawling traffic. She passed the mini-mart with a wince for the death rattle cough of the homeless man downing a can of lager in its doorway. Ladbroke Grove is the real London, very cosmopolitan; Sim had conjured up an art deco cocktail bar, not a fluorescent hovel where you could buy Pringles at 3 a.m.

  The bell above the door of Maude’s jangled and delivered Orla into a place where books ruled. They tottered in piles in the window, stood to attention along white shelves on the bare brick walls, lay brazenly open on the tatty sofa. Hard backs, paperbacks, cloth covers, massive art tomes, flimsy children’s wipe clean stories, new books, old books, raggedy, over-loved books, they almost obliterated the whitewashed floorboards.

  The shop was peaceful despite its location on a busy stretch of high road. In the midst of all these stories was a pepperpot of a woman with a bushy white bun of hair and a smile that squashed her eyes into vivid half-moons.

  ‘Maude?’ asked Orla.

  ‘And you’re Sim’s Orla! Every inch the colleen, just as he promised.’

  Every elderly lady of Orla’s acquaintance crossed themselves and murmured ‘Lord have mercy on his soul’ at the mention of Sim’s name. It was both scandalous and a relief that Maude rattled on at full pelt without paying her respects.

  ‘Look at you with your black hair and your green eyes. You’ve walked out of a fairy tale! Oh, freckles too, we must count them one evening when we’ve nothing better to do.’ Maude’s face beneath her Belle Époque puff of hair was lean and brown and handsome with clever eyes the colour of damp hyacinths. The woman’s weathered beauty made Orla shy as she took in Maude’s linen dress and rakish velvet scarf. Some how Maude had grown older without losing any of her juice.

  ‘Thanks for letting me stay,’ said Orla.

  ‘But darling the telly people have paid the rent until the end of April.’ Maude took an arm; it was as if a bird landed on Orla’s sleeve.

  ‘I’ll just sort out Sim’s stuff and then get home. One night should do it. Then I’ll be out of your way.’

  ‘No, no, no.’ Stern, Maude was still playful. ‘Tonight we talk. All night. With a bottle of wine on the table. And we cry a bit. Probably. You can’t make a start on the poor sod’s stuff until tomorrow at the earliest. So. At least two nights, yes? Agreed?’ Maude stopped suddenly and picked up a book. ‘Do you like W. B. Yeats?’

  ‘Yes.’ Orla could have sworn the valentine bristled in its bookish nest deep in her luggage.

  ‘Have this.’ Maude pressed the small, linen covered book into Orla’s hand. ‘Yeats could be a terrible old fraud at times, but his poems about the agonies of love are right on the button. This way!’

  Maude was away through an arch, one foot on the stairs, shouting over her shoulder, before Orla gathered her wits to follow. ‘Dare say you need the loo. A nice little wee always sets me up when I arrive somewhere new.’

  After the prescribed nice little wee, Orla joined Maude in a pale modern box of an attic, furnished with angular teak and floored in limestone. It was tranquil and impressive and Sim’s enthusiasm for
his home-from-home began to make sense.

  ‘What a beautiful space.’ It looked like the pages Orla tore from interiors magazines.

  ‘It was remodelled a year ago when I had the bright idea to take in lodgers. I wanted arty-farty types, you know, so I thought I should tempt them in with clean modern lines. Here, drink that. Never met a Celt who didn’t take their tea strong and often.’

  Orla accepted the proffered mug with the first genuine smile of her trip. ‘Thank you.’ Small kindnesses reared up at her these days, magnified and meaningful. ‘Just what I wanted.’

  ‘Sit. Sit. Sit.’ Maude flapped her arms. The scent of patchouli flooded the room.

  ‘Gosh. White sofas.’

  ‘Highly impractical but very beautiful. And I might die tomorrow so I insist on beauty.’

  Die glittered between them like barbed wire.

  ‘Thanks for the wreath, by the way. It was glorious.’

  ‘I’ve given up funerals. I thought about him on the day instead. And those anthuriums and heliconia were not a wreath.’ Maude held up a bony forefinger and shuddered. ‘Such a godawful word. Sim wasn’t a wreath kind of boy. It was an arrangement. Ah, you’re smiling, dear, why?’

  ‘Hearing you call him a boy. He was thirty-five, after all.’

  ‘Trust me, that chap was destined to be a boy if he lived to, well, my age.’

  ‘True.’ Orla recalled her boyfriend’s bounce. His hair had been gold and his eyes had been tawny and, yes, he had been a beautiful boy. Her beautiful boy.

  ‘Anyway.’ Orla slapped her lap. ‘So.’

  These days she could tolerate other people for a short while before craving solitude. And then hard on the heels of the need for solitude came the renewed craving for company. It was tricky, this grieving business.

  Maude took the hint. ‘Ah. You want to be alone, dear. Well, alone with Sim’s things.’ She stood up, crossed to the door, cocked her head when Orla didn’t follow. ‘Come on then! I’ll take you down to his flat.’