The Valentine's Card Page 5

  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.’

  ‘Is this just, you know, a random collision in a bedroom at a party? Or is this something more,’ asked Orla, bold with the urgency of lust.

  Beneath their unwieldy lashes, the cat eyes blinked. ‘You get heavy awfully quick, Fairy.’

  ‘If I write my number on your arm, will you use it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sim, not skipping a beat.

  Orla grabbed a pen from her chest of drawers. She wrote, in large and legible numbers, the magic formula of her mobile phone. ‘Right.’ She bit her lip, enjoying this new non-ladylike self. ‘Come on then.’

  Sim’s face split into a smile. It was not quite so handsome as the previous ones and therefore, Orla suspected, rather more genuine.

  ‘You’re a funny little onion,’ he said approvingly, before enfolding her again and impressing that autocratic, expert mouth of his on hers.

  They toppled down onto the bed. Sim seemed surprised by the passion of Orla’s response. ‘Oh yes!’ he murmured against her neck as she bit at his ear. Surprise registered once again when she resisted all attempts to rearrange her clothes too fundamentally. Rolling about, dislodging pillows and snarling up the duvet, their clinch was as much quarrel as embrace.

  ‘Please, oh please,’ begged Sim, his voice hoarse.

  ‘No. Get off. Come here.’ Orla was in charge, holding him back, giving him some slack then reining him in. A lusty terrier, she pawed him and played with him, but retained enough of her Polaroid self to refuse to give in to either his pleading or her own. There were kisses, there were touches, there were gasps and mews – but there were limits. She anticipated a next time with this man, this big strong stallion of a specimen who was as fired up as she, who was as stricken, who would, she sensed, loom large in her life.

  Finally they dozed, entwined. The room solidified in the cold light of early day. Sim yawned, a big leonine roar that drew cords in his neck and was at odds with the remains of his diva make-up.

  ‘Sounds like the party’s still going.’

  Music drifted from the sitting room. A handful of people debated drunkenly in the kitchen. Somebody somewhere was crying uninhibitedly.

  ‘They’re maniacs,’ said Orla fondly. She was fond of everybody this morning.

  ‘Look. I’d better shoot off.’ Sim leaned on one elbow and looked down at her. Even sleepy and hungover, his eyes were like laser beams. Orla felt naked. ‘I’ve got this,’ he said, pointing at the scribble on his arm.

  ‘Bye then.’ Orla felt shy.

  Sim didn’t. He kissed her a last time, hard and fast. ‘Bye, Fairy.’

  Orla knew he’d ring. She promised herself that when he did, she wouldn’t be coy. This was big, and she must embrace it honestly. She fell asleep to the lullaby of house music and that insistent sobbing.

  ‘I said, is that it?’

  ‘Oh. Sorry. Yes. There you go. Oh, hang on. That’s a euro.’

  Tears welled in her eyes, the coin bounced to the floor.

  ‘I, sorry, I’ll leave it.’ Orla pushed past the resentful queue, out onto a road she didn’t know.

  ‘Oh Sim,’ she said.

  Sim’s journal

  14 February 2009

  Fluffed my first line. Stage manager cocked up Act II props. Again. Frosty audience, had to work double hard to seduce them.

  Speaking of seduction – party afterwards at some beardy guy’s place and met the most gorgeous creature. I mean, really fucking off the scale fabulous. Mane of hair like a cavewoman.

  Elusive, though, led me a right merry dance through the party.

  Got bored of pursuit, went off-piste, and found myself in a clinch with a little sweetie. Lovely kisser. Fell asleep together in her titchy bedroom.

  And whaddyaknow? Cavewoman was still there in the morning. Boohooing over some cad. I drove her home, showered, and we had a private party à deux.

  Chapter Six

  4 July 2012

  17.14

  From: junogirl1@yahoo.com

  To: orlacassidyfairy@yahoo.com

  Subject: Two things

  1. Himself has been promoted. Cue cheers, cannons firing, glitter confetti etc etc. This means more money, bigger
car, second baby (so he thinks – good luck with that one, boyo) and EVEN LONGER HOURS. So, my bestie is in London and my other half is in the office. Honest to God, some days the most intelligent conversation I have is an earnest discussion with Jack about whether Superman has a willy.

  2. What are your summer school students like? Any hot eighteen-year-old Latin studs you can have a little rebound fun with while you teach them English? Ooh, I can hear the storm of tutting from here.

  3. (Yes, I lied, sue me, there are three things not two.) HAVE YOU TORN UP THAT SPOOKY VALENTINE YET? You’ll be guessing I’m after a ‘yes’ on that one.

  Right. I’m off. To the park. Or the fucking park, as I like to call it. AGAIN.

  Miss you.

  But don’t you dare come home.

  J xxxxx

  Orla felt the heat on her bare arms, clingy as a new lover. Propelled by snatches of music from the cars stalled nose to tail along her route, she strode jauntily like a catwalk model.

  ‘I love you!’

  Orla wheeled at the shout and rewarded the grinning black teenager in a Renault Clio with a look that was all shock but probably translated as toughness.

  ‘Sorry babes! Don’t shoot!’ He held his hands up.

  Orla walked on, strut cancelled, mortified.

  ‘Evening Sheraz.’ The familiar flat bang of the bell over the mini-mart door brought the shopkeeper up from beneath his counter. ‘Just a bottle of milk tonight.’ With one hip Orla slammed the chiller shut, mentally pixellating the sell by dates on the scotch eggs.

  ‘Why semi-skimmed, silly girl?’ For Sheraz it was all one word, silligirl. ‘Buy the full fat. Put some meat on your bones.’

  ‘Pay you Friday?’

  ‘Pay me Friday. Here, missy.’ Sheraz was peremptory. Months of selling Orla her semi-skimmed milk gives a man certain rights. ‘Take this for Maude.’ He held out a pair of pop socks in cellophane, bright purple and covered in dust. ‘Last packet. Nobody will bloody buy. And they will suit Maude.’