Despite the Angels (45 page)

“You sound like a counsellor yourself.”

“Yes, don’t I? After all, I did go to nearly all the lectures on the counselling course. I could have passed the exams. Pity I can’t practise, just sit here trying to get across to people. Marian sometimes hears me, that’s fun.”

“Well, can you work on her hearing you and tell her to help Lucy realise what’s going on?”

“You sure you want her out?”

“Never surer.”

Lucy walked slowly up Grafton Street, thinking over what Marian had said and what she should do next. Three more visits on my own with Marian and then ask Martin again if he’ll come. I really don’t want this to fail, she thought. I have to have another baby. My gosh, what am I saying? Another baby? What on earth for? I have my girl and my boy - the gentleman’s family, they say. We can’t afford another, well I can’t afford another, not to mention taking time off to have it. And when would we conceive it anyway?  He’s interested in me once every two months if I’m lucky. Or unlucky, seeing as it’s always for him and never for me, those drunken fumblings. But I have to try. I can’t just give up without trying.

“Don’t see why not. Plenty of people do, why should you have such high standards? Ruddy nuisance, you are, wanting to do your best all the time. Cut and run, Lucy, cut and run.”

Lucy broke into a trot and jogged her way up the street, weaving between the ambling crowds. At Stephen’s Green she stopped, a little puffed, and wondered why she was in a hurry. She walked more sedately across the road and went into the Green, passing the duck-pond on her way across to Earlsfort Terrace and the clinic, where Clodagh was holding the fort. As she did with Fuzz, Lucy envied the ducks their unconcern, their absorbing interest in the moment, as they upended in the endless search, as Beatrix Potter had put it, for their lost clothes. She smiled, remembering the picture of the guilty kittens being ticked off by their mother and then stopped smiling as she realised that that was the expression Martin had adopted when she had asked him to come to the counselling.

“I think he treats me like his mother. I realised last week, when I saw the ducks.” Lucy looked at Marian, glad she had explained. Marian looked a bit bewildered, not making any quick connection between ducks and filial piety.

“Tell me more about that,” she asked. So Lucy talked and as she did she began to realise things about herself as well as about Martin. How she had allowed herself to become the bread winner, ‘because I always want things to be right, and after all, I could earn money’. How she for reasons she could not explain, wanted to have another baby.

“But that is crazy. My marriage is terrible and I’m talking about babies. How can I even think it?”

“Maybe we will get your marriage better and Martin will get a better job and then you can have the time to have one. Let’s wait and see. You aren’t old, you have time to spare.”

“But if Martin won’t come to see you, how can it improve? He just looked hangdog at me when I said I’d been here and then talked about something else. I’ll try again, but I don’t know.”

“So, I thought I’d better come and put you straight.” Martin sat back in his chair and looked at Marian. He had been talking for twenty minutes, ever since the start of the session. Lucy had said nothing, while Martin explained to Marian, as though to a stupid child, exactly why his business was not yet making any money, why he had needed to go with his friends to rugby matches in Wales, Scotland and Italy this year, as well as attending local matches nearly weekly. He had told her what a wife’s duties were and how he had agreed to let Lucy work – ‘I’m a feminist really, wouldn’t force my wife to stay at home’ - and how he bathed the children at weekends, ‘rugby permitting of course.’ Then he explained how his brother and sister had fallen out with him and how that was affecting his ability to concentrate and had reduced his self-confidence so badly his work might suffer if he did not have a secure family background.

Marian smiled at him, so calmly that Lucy was amazed and had to hide her own amusement, then announced that they would now work through his points one at a time and that she would ask Martin to stay quiet while he listened to Lucy’s comments.

“Good for you, if you can achieve that,” Roki said, from his place on the windowsill, “He talks a lot. I mean, I don’t ask much of him, just to listen occasionally, but he talks through me every time. You hear, Marty? Listen to these women now, just for practice.”

“Let’s go for coffee and I’ll tell you what that Marian needs to learn,” Martin was in full flow again, “come on, I’m buying.”

“What an offer. I can’t resist,” said Lucy as she followed him into Bewley’s and prepared to be told in full what was wrong with this experienced counsellor.

David let himself into the house, humming under his breath. He felt energised by the evening, as he always did, moving to music was a good idea. Trust Clare to think of something useful. But the Samba this evening had been a bit of a disaster in dancing terms. He had discovered his third foot and put it everywhere he shouldn’t. His partner had been highly amused, ‘in hysterics’ she had said, wiping her eyes. It was her third year of dancing classes and she knew what to do. I’ll get the hang of it, David said to himself, like I did with the other dances. Eventually. He went into the livingroom, sat down at his piano and stroked the smooth wood before lifting the cover and starting to play a waltz, one he had danced to earlier that evening. So wonderful to have a piano at last. Unlike those holidays, I have it every day, it’s not just a memory. His body swayed with the rhythm of the tune and he didn’t hear the door opening. Clare came in quietly and sat on the couch. The waltz ended and David sat still, the last notes dying away.

“That was lovely, Dad.”

David spun around, gasping.

“Clare, you put the heart across me! Don’t creep up on me like that!”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t actually creep. You were too absorbed to notice. Good class? Any girls yet?”

“Why do you want me to meet a ‘girl’? There’s lots of women there. All very nice. Thought my samba was a riot.”

“Wow, you learning the samba? I’d like to see that! Why was it a riot?”

“My first time, I don’t know the steps, got them wrong, nearly fell over. Carmel was in hysterics.”

“Oh, ‘Carmel’? My idea is working, then? First name terms?”

“Carmel is over seventy. She always grabs me as a partner, says I remind her of her nephew. She dances well, so I don’t object.”

“But you should object, Dad. I sent you to the class to meet a girlfriend, not a granny. Dance with someone else next week.”

“No, not after all my hard work getting Carmel to monopolise you. Just learn to dance. We’re working on Lucy.” Jotin was sitting on the piano, where he had been enjoying the vibrations from the music.

“Well, I do try. There is a shortage of men, like you said. None of the women stands out. I’m happy enough for the moment, it gets me out of the house and back into the music. I missed the music, all the time you were small.” He turned back to the piano and started to play again, very quietly. Soft notes escaped gently from the wooden case and gathered around him and he escaped from the moment,
back across the years to the lyre and the fiddle and the many other instruments he had mastered, tunes he had loved and lovers he had wooed with them
, to a gentle place within himself where he was totally at peace.

“Hi Lucy, how was the holiday? We had a great one, loads to tell you,” Jen was in full flow on the phone, “We all got so brown, and that hotel was just great. You should go next year.”

“Maybe I will. Ours was okay. We got half way down France and stopped in a really nice campsite with a pool. The kids were in heaven. Robbie can almost dive, Ash can swim the whole length of the pool underwater. And she tried eating a snail! It was good to be away from the clinic and the house. But I’ve a huge Visa bill now, it’ll take me till Christmas to clear it. I’m trying not to think about it, not to lose what I’ve gained.”

“Did you gain, Lucy? Was it good for you?”

“It was fine. It’s great watching the kids have fun and they encourage me. I mean, I’d never have played mini-golf except I was bullied into it and it was a laugh. Robbie won, because we gave him such a big handicap and he cheated.”

“And you and Martin?” Jen was hesitant, “how did that side of things go? Did any of the counsellor’s tips work?”

“We didn’t actually fight. But we didn’t miss having no baby-sitter, if you know what I mean. The kids are a great buffer.”

“Poor kids. Did they notice?”

“I’m not sure. They didn’t say.”

“Of course they didn’t say, Lucy. They don’t really understand what they’re seeing. But they do know things could be different. They’ve been in Marge’s house, after all.”

“Well, are you free to come over at the weekend? We’d love to show you our photos and we brought home a bottle of the most amazing hooch, you have to try it. It stops all pain.”

“I could do with that. But do you mind if I come on my own? It’s hard at the moment, Martin is inclined to tell everyone we meet about the counsellor and what an idiot she is. He nabbed some unfortunate English people on the campsite and went on and on about it to them. Funny really, it turned out the man was a clinical psychologist. I’d love to know what he actually thought of Martin’s lecture!”

“No, you come. You’re my friend, Lucy, it’s you I want to see, really. You bring whoever you want.”

“Just me.”

“This time.”

“Half seven Saturday okay? Okay, seeya.”

David was sitting on a sun-lounger in the back garden, with a beer on the stool beside him. He had spent a couple of hours dead-heading the roses, generally tidying up the messy growth and was feeling a little tired but quite happy. The sun was warm on his skin and small birds were twittering nearby, giving him the illusion of being in the countryside. The fifth summer in a row that I haven’t been away anywhere. The peace of it. I wonder how long it will take, before I want to go away again? No more beaches, ever again, if I don’t want and at the moment, I certainly don’t want. What is it with beaches, everyone else seems to be addicted to them and I can’t be bothered. And barbeques. It’s great living in a climate where you don’t have to have barbeques all the time. They never light properly, you spend ages fussing round them, burning your fingers on the matches and in the end, you’ve got a petrol flavoured burger. Crazy.

“Only because you’re still nervous of open flames. No need to have barbeques, stick with the grill. Why revisit the scenes of your deaths? Though it really is curious why you are all so fussed about how you died, when you know perfectly well when you’re on this side that being dead is not the problem. I mean, neither the wave nor the fire actually hurt you, it was so quick. I’m so glad I put you to sleep on that train. It would have been a pest if you’d been afraid to get on a train this time round, with all those trips.”

And no more train trips, coach trips, plane trips even. Nothing. Just sit here and get old.

The phone rang inside the house. David grumbled a bit, but got up and trotted inside, assuming it would be one of the twins. It was Carmel.

“Hello, David? Hope you’re enjoying the sunshine, isn’t it lovely? Well, some of us are missing the classes and we’re getting a group together to go to the tea dance next Sunday in the Grantham hotel. We’d love you to come.” She reeled off the list of participants and David could see why he was needed. There was only one other man.

“I’d be delighted, Carmel. So long as it isn’t another gorgeous day, I wouldn’t like to be indoors on an afternoon like this.”

“It won’t be. When do we ever get two good weekends in a row? So will we see you there? It’s at four o’clock.”

David enjoyed the tea dance, it was good to move with the music again after a couple of months of holidays and even his samba wasn’t too bad, just a little rusty. Over the tea, Carmel started to quiz him. How such a nice young man was out without a wife. David explained, leaving out anything that made him sound too sour, just the bare facts.

“She just up and left? The hussy!” Carmel’s views on the world were straightforward. “Did she have another man?”

“No, just realised that her wanderlust was too strong.”

“She’ll come back, so, when she gets it out of her system. Can she dance?”

David explained that Kathleen would not come back and that if she did, he would not want her to live with him. He told her about the divorce papers from America.

“Don’t worry, David, she can’t get rid of you like that. There’s no divorce here and that’s how it should stay,” Carmel patted his hand.

“I’d like to be divorced properly,” said David, “I have a legal separation, but it doesn’t feel finished. The American divorce is no use here. If I wanted to remarry, it wouldn’t count.”

“Would you want to remarry?” Carmel’s voice rose to an indignant squeak.

“Yes, if I met the right woman,” David looked at Carmel, who was staring at him, astonished, “I don’t think I know what it feels like to be married, not really. I’d like a chance to.”

“Are you proposing?” Carmel was trying to cover her confusion. “I think I’m too young for you, you know.”