Hush Hush (26 page)

The alleyway panned out suddenly
into a square of concrete, ringed on three sides by a chain-link
fence. A fire burnt dully in one corner. Round it sat a ragbag circle
of people, hunched in filthy clothes, snatching back their fingers
from the fire’s grudging warmth to cradle liquor bottles in
brown paper bags. There was no communal passing of the bottle round
this campfire. It was impossible to tell either ages or sexes.

No one looked up from the ebbing
heat. The winos’ passing interest in the outside world didn’t
extend to curiosity about who or what might be watching them from the
shadows.

Kate was furious. ‘This is
your idea of shock therapy, is it, Conor? You’ve got a bloody
nerve.’

Conor was just as angry. ‘And
you’re a bloody ostrich-head. Take a good look and see yourself
in a few years’ time.’

‘A nice sight and sentiment
for your son!’

‘Let
it be a warning to him, too. If alcoholism is hereditary, I intend to
make sure it begins and ends with you.’

Angela picked
up the phone, gnawing her bottom lip. This would have to be a whopper
apology
‒
without giving the game
away. The truth loomed in her mind behind a school essay title: What
Really Happened That Night Between Me and Robert.

Angela
dialled, more in sorrow than in hope. It was possible that Sadie
would never forgive or recover from the twin accusations of being a
lousy mother and a slow-burning contributor to a fatal heart attack.
Maybe she’d lose the will to live and surrender to the
sword-thrusts of arthritis. Then Angela would be responsible for two
untimely deaths, thanks to a tongue that was a fully loaded missile
without a guidance system. Goddamit, mother, answer the phone, she
thought despairingly.

Sadie let the phone ring out. She was cold. She
had no energy to lean forward and switch on the fire. Binky came to
complain about it, twining his wiry body around her stiff legs. The
rasping caress of his body against her tights was comfort of a sort,
if also a reminder that Fenton wasn’t there to put his arms
around her. When Binky began to purr impatiently, it sounded like a
murmur of compassion, and she let the tears come then, watching them
fall on her pleated skirt with almost dispassionate interest.

She rarely cried. Like a real
man, Sadie prided herself on this fact.

The last time she’d cried
was a few days after Christmas Day, when Angela had gone home,
refreshed and all cried out, but leaving Sadie exhausted by her
dry-eyed counselling role. She’d cried then out of sheer
fatigue after all that cooking and listening. It had been a relief to
know it was just a physical response to a punishing schedule.

But these tears splashing down on
Binky’s aggrieved head were big, salty pools of self-pity. She
felt helpless, worthless and ashamed.

Angela had grown up resenting her
as a punitive, unfair mother. While Sadie, complacent as you like,
had walked in the sun of a flattering self-belief, feting herself as
a strong but even-handed mother and encouraging others (especially
Fenton) to share the illusion.

Had she got things so wrong? Her
natural confidence rose up to rebuff Angela’s claims. But just
as quickly, it melted away. After all, she addressed the cold bars of
the fire, look no further than Owen. A boy showered with love who
scarpered to the New World at the first opportunity and put his
parents and sister on the long finger, dropping occasional parcels
behind the lines when guilt and anniversaries tweaked his conscience.

Oh yes, she liked to tell herself
that Owen was doing well. It had been easy to fool herself that
‘doing well’ meant shaking the dust of home from your
heels and fleeing to the other side of the world, because that was
how the Irish traditionally did well.

But Wilmesbury wasn’t a
blighted potato field. Owen had left home to get away from his
family; the parents who’d coddled and curtailed him, and the
sister he’d apparently mistreated. Sadie had read somewhere
that oppressors feared their victims more than the other way around.

She had lost her son by the time
he was a teenager, and now she’d lost her daughter, too. Or
maybe Angela had been keeping up a daughterly pretence all along,
until Sadie finally goaded her into dropping it.

Robert must indeed have got
himself so worked up that he’d brought on his heart attack. If
she’d only tried harder to see the good points in him that
Angela saw with clarity. Who was Sadie to criticise anyone, even in
her heart? A cranky old woman with clicky hips, deserted or kept at a
distance by children she had alienated. It was no less than she
deserved.

Sadie
put her head down in the fusty pleats of her skirt and cried much
harder. Alarmed by the unfamiliar noise, Binky ran for cover in the
kitchen.

‘I hate to say I told you so,’ said
Pauline across her keyboard.

‘Then don’t!’
pleaded Angela, tired eyes fixed on her screen. Her other
departmental colleagues were off sick or loitering in the kitchen. It
had been a mistake to confide in anyone at work, even the
tight-lipped Pauline. Angela had come to realise that Pauline’s
‘weirdness’, as far as the likes of Val were concerned,
was an unnatural disregard for the office traditions of sharing and
spreading gossip. At least Pauline could be trusted to keep her trap
shut. But she should’ve stopped short at confiding in Rachel.
Rachel was her true friend. Besides, Pauline now persisted in seeing
Angela as a kindred spirit, a failure in the relationship stakes.

‘Your only hope is if Kate
remarries or tops herself with a bigger OD next time. Any chance of
her falling for the hunky doc who pumped her out?’

‘I don’t wish any ill
towards the woman. Anyway, he told me in Ireland that he doesn’t
love her.’ Angela jabbed her keyboard miserably.

Pauline snorted. ‘She’s
got a bigger hold over him than love! Emotional blackmail. What if
she tops herself, and leaves a note for the kid, blaming Conor? He
can’t take the risk. He has to humour her, bend to her will,
sacrifice his heart’s desire. And that makes you the fall-guy,
Ange. He’ll have to give you up for the greater good. Nice for
him
‒
he gets to go
through life with the glow of self-sacrifice keeping his principles
warm. Not so nice for you
‒
seeing as you’re the actual human sacrifice in all this.’

‘Pauline, don’t
‒
’
Angela’s throat tightened. A treacherous tear splashed onto the
delete key.

Pauline stared, not unkindly.
‘Made it up with your mum yet?’

Oh great! A fresh can of worms.
‘No, she won’t answer the phone or her doorbell. I’ve
tried catching her at work, even waylaying her in the cemetery, but
she pretends I don’t exist. To be honest, my rehearsed,
cringing apology is unravelling at the edges. I’m beginning to
feel justified in going off the deep end in the first place. I can’t
bear sulking. My husband was a marathon sulker,’ she added as a
disloyal afterthought.

Pauline was fascinated to hear
more, but struggled to be tactful. ‘Look, I’m having a
party at my place this Saturday. More a gathering of wimmin than a
party. We sit around on scatter cushions, get rat-arsed putting the
world to rights and return an overwhelming vote that men are a bunch
of shits. Fancy it?’

‘Has your latest
relationship gone down the plughole, then?’ sniffed Angela
tactlessly.

‘I’ll give you
chapter and verse if you come on Saturday.’

Angela considered. ‘I like
the rat-arsed bit. Can I be excused from voting on men? I don’t
want to think about men for a whole night.’

Pauline nodded. ‘I
understand. Solace in the sisterhood. Bring a sleeping bag and you
can crash out for the night as well.’

Pauline only half-understood.
Angela didn’t believe in the sisterhood of wronged wimmin. She
believed they had a tendency to blame all their misfortunes on men,
going back to the patriarchal reactionaries who’d written the
creation story with that Adam’s rib nonsense. She could just
imagine the teenage Pauline haranguing a mild-mannered father with
rantings about Freud and penis-envy.

Still,
right now, Pauline and her wronged wimmin offered an umbrella of
sympathy to shelter under. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. It
sure beat sitting at home, being sad enough to pretend that he might
ring, after all, tonight. As if! He hadn’t rung now for over a
week. And who else was going to phone her on a Saturday night? Not
Sadie.

Conor was staring at Angela’s number on his
mobile when Kate appeared in the flat’s hallway, pearlescent in
a silk kimono wrap. ‘You can’t sleep either?’ she
yawned, padding on cat-like feet past him, and into the kitchen. ‘I’m
going to heat up some milk. Care to join me?’

He slipped the
phone into his pocket and followed her into the kitchen. Stealing a
moment of privacy to make a phone call was becoming an issue. Shane
shared his bedroom, the bathroom door lacked a lock, Kate seemed to
be everywhere he turned …

She passed him a mug of hot milk,
sugaring it with her smile. They sat at the small kitchen table,
echoing the few months of cosiness at the start of their marriage.
‘I’ve been thinking about that dramatic little episode on
the way home from the restaurant the other day, and I can see why you
did it.’

‘That’s a start, I
suppose.’

‘You saved my life, Conor.
I’ll never be able to thank you,’ she said softly.

Conor frowned furiously. ‘The
doctors saved your life, Kattie!’

‘You know what I mean!’
She smiled even more sweetly. ‘You haven’t called me
Kattie for years. Remember when you came to visit me after Shane was
born, and you picked him up for the first time?
“
Oh
Kattie!
”
you said
over and over again, with manly tears running down your cheeks. You
looked so sweet. Even sweeter than Shane.’

She lit one of her wispy
cigarettes, dragging in the taste with her eyes shut. She cut down
her intake when Shane was around. She’d given up altogether
during pregnancy, he recalled, and made the bi-monthly gesture of
chucking out half-full bottles. Fair play to her for that. Shane had
been a skinny rather than an underweight baby, a wizened walnut with
a critical gaze that had quickly proved myopic.

Conor drained his milk with
indecent haste, plonked down the mug. ‘The way things are
going, me and Shane will be able to up sticks soon, and let you get
back to your life.’

‘Not so fast, Mac!’
She wagged a playful finger, using his own nickname from days gone
by. ‘We still have things to discuss. Like me coming back to
England, as per our original plan.’

‘Your original plan,
Kattie. Modified by our son to mean living near each other, sure, but
not under the same roof.’ He stared at her finger. She didn’t
wear her wedding ring any more, but a circlet of pale flesh stood out
from the light tan on her fingers.

‘Shane’s been a
different person, with you and me back together,’ pressed Kate.
‘It certainly gives us both food for thought
‒
I mean, about where our responsibilities truly lie. Teenage boys
don’t always know what’s best for them.’ She stood
up first, taking him by surprise. ‘That milk has worked. I’m
feeling sleepier already. If you’ve any more trouble sleeping
…
I know that room is cramped, with you and Shane sharing it. My door,
as they say, is always open.’

She laughed softly and twinkled
in the doorway like a red-haired Celtic sprite.

‘Goodnight, Conor.’

‘See ya, Kate.’

He couldn’t ring Angela
now, could he? Not with Kate’s door standing open, a few yards
away. He moved silently around the kitchen instead, checking the
cupboard under the sink for hidden bottles. He found only a bottle of
white spirit, and reflected, with a wry smile, that Kate was a long
way off that stage.

God, it was so easy to pick up
all these old habits: the bathroom rota, harmless squabbles over
Shane’s contribution to dishwashing, and the eternal vigilance
of a spouse with an alcoholic partner. Only now, of course, he could
be a lot more forceful and open with his disapproval. Kate’s
overdose had catapulted her out of the drinking closet, and she could
no longer throw tantrums at being ‘accused’ of a nasty
habit. He sometimes thought he was really getting through to her,
making a difference.

Diving into the bathroom en route
to bed, he turned on the cold tap, sat on the edge of the bath and
pressed Angela’s number on his mobile before he changed his
mind. It rang out, and he didn’t leave a voice message. He
looked at his watch. With only five hours’ time difference, she
should have been getting up about now on a Sunday morning. So where
was she? He thought about sending a text. Then weariness and
resentment came crowding in, late-night visitors taking up what
little space was left between sink and bath. Sod it, he’d had
enough for one night. Enough for a lifetime, if anyone asked.

He
batted aside a pink shower curtain and stomped off to bed.

‘Welcome to the house of fun!’ Pauline
greeted Angela at the door. Angela stumbled inside, sleeping bag
under one arm, party-gift wine gripped in her free hand. Pauline
lived in a basement flat in a street of terraced houses, too close to
Pacelli Road for comfort and too far away from Loxton station to be
the five-minute stroll Pauline had claimed. ‘This way!’
sang Pauline, leading her down a dark hallway to a square of light
and a babble of voices escaping from under a door. ‘We don’t
stand on ceremony, Ange, so plonk yourself down on any surface except
the cat. Red or white?’

‘Er
‒
white, please,’ smiled Angela. She was pushed through the door
and into a throng, while Pauline vanished, complete with wine bottle
and sleeping bag.