Putting Out the Stars (6 page)

Laura’s arm had gone to sleep. She often woke lying on her stomach, with her right arm a dead weight under her head. Now she could hardly move it, it was so full of pins
and needles. She manoeuvred it awkwardly out from under her head, and waited. After a few seconds she could wriggle her fingers. When the arm was fully back to life she gave it a shake, then pulled
Donal’s pillow over to her and snuggled back down with it into the warmth – bliss.

Donal was convinced that if she could work from her bed she would, and she had to admit that the idea sounded very tempting. She loved this time of the day – still half-asleep, tucked up
cosily while the rest of the world hurried out to work. If she heard the rain drumming against the window, so much the better.

She opened an eye and checked the clock radio: twenty past eight. Donal would be halfway to the university, flying past the queue of cars on his bike. She pictured him pedalling out the Dublin
road, jacket that he rarely closed flapping behind him.

He’d been on the bike the evening they’d met in The White House. When he asked if he could take her home after she finished clearing up, she of course assumed he meant in a car. She
was twenty-one; he was clearly a fair bit older. He’d been chatting to her for about an hour, since he’d arrived in on his own and walked to the counter and ordered a pint.

She gathered in the empty glasses the other barperson was piling onto the counter. ‘You don’t even know where I live; it could be the other side of the city from you.’

He pretended to consider. ‘Hmm. Yes, that’s true. I may have to go – let’s see now – a whole three miles out of my way.’ He smiled, a lovely crinkly-eyed
smile, and picked up his pint. ‘I think I’ll risk it.’

When she’d finally finished up, they went outside and he walked over to the bike, chained to a pole.

She laughed, sure he was joking again. ‘OK, where’s the Merc?’

‘This is much better than a Merc.’ He fished a key from his pocket and began to unlock the bike, not a bit put out. ‘Like they nearly said in Animal Farm, four wheels bad, two
wheels good.’ Then he turned back to her, chain in his hand. ‘Listen, as you know, I’ve had a few pints. Aren’t two wheels safer than four when your chauffeur’s not
completely sober?’

And she had to agree that they probably were. Anyway, to tell the truth, she was charmed – she hadn’t gone home on the bar of a bike for years. He got on and looked over at her
questioningly, patted the bar in front of him.

She walked across and perched up on it, feeling faintly silly, and grabbed onto his jacket as the bike wobbled slightly. ‘Hey, watch it – you’ll have my father to answer to if
anything happens to me.’

‘Right, I’d better keep Daddy happy then. Hang on tight and you’ll be fine.’ He shifted slightly to accommodate her weight, and she was conscious of his nearness –
their faces were inches apart – and the musky scent of him.

‘What’s the aftershave?’

He grinned, raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Essence of Donal. Guaranteed to pull the best-looking girl in the pub. Works every time; even without the Merc.’

And right from the start, it had been easy between them. She’d always scoffed at the notion of love at first sight, but now she knew that there
was
such a thing. Maybe it
wasn’t love, not straightaway, but certainly
something
had happened that night, to both of them. She had known, she’d been certain that he’d ask to see her again; and she
knew she’d say ‘yes’ without thinking. It was as easy as that.

And when he asked her to marry him, just four months later and a week before her twenty-second birthday, she wondered what had taken him so long. He’d taken a piece of his spaghetti
– they were in the basement of her favourite Italian restaurant – and made a ring out of it and slid it onto her wedding finger, and she’d looked up from it, laughing, and
he’d said ‘Will you?’ Not laughing at all, for once. And when she realised that he was really . . . that this was really . . . oh my God – she stopped laughing and started
crying, tears pouring down her face and frightening the life out of him until he realised what they meant. When she’d recovered, and everyone had stopped looking over at them, she put a hand
up to touch his face. ‘Thought you’d never ask.’

‘Thought you mightn’t have me, with only a spaghetti ring and all.’ He lifted her hand from his cheek and kissed her palm, and she felt the tears threatening again.

And when the bill was paid they’d gone back to his house in Westbury and she’d missed lectures for two days.

From the start, Donal and Laura’s father had got on fine, were relaxed in each other’s company, even if Donal did most of the talking. But Cecily was adamant in her disapproval of
Laura’s choice; in her opinion, fifteen years was too big a gap. Of course, she congratulated them both when they broke the news to her and Brian, shook hands with Donal, offered him a cool
cheek to kiss – but she lost no time in voicing her opinion once she had Laura on her own.

‘He’ll be fifty-five – well into middle-age – when you’re just out of your thirties. Have you thought of that?’

Laura
had
thought of that; she’d thought of everything. She’d pushed away the horrifying fact that he would probably die before her, and she would have to find a way to
survive the agony of being without him. But she adored him and so she ignored her mother, whom she did not adore, and married him.

It was Donal who encouraged her to go freelance as soon as she left the Art College.

‘But I’ve no portfolio, apart from the bits and bobs I did in college. I’ve absolutely no experience. Who’d take me on?’ They were sprawled on the couch after a
lazy Sunday brunch of soft poached eggs sprinkled with chopped chives, and buttery crumpets. (She’d never tasted a crumpet until she met him; he couldn’t last a weekend without a stack
of them, getting up to make the batter while she lay in bed with the paper.)

They’d been married six months, and she would have walked barefoot to the moon if he’d asked her.

‘What do you mean, who’d take you on? Who in their right mind wouldn’t? My darling girl, you’ve got talent coming out of those beautiful ears.’ He took her face in
his hands and she gazed back at him, drinking him in. ‘Listen; some of the stuff you did in college is as good as any I’ve ever seen.’

‘But you’re prejudiced, because you adore me.’ She pushed her hand through his tousled dark hair, ran her fingertips over the Sunday-morning stubble on his chin, felt her way
down along his faded black t-shirt to rest on one blue-jeaned leg thrown over hers. Her stomach flipped; six months after their wedding, he was still making her stomach flip.

‘True, I’m totally prejudiced; but I’m right too.’ He traced her cheekbone with a finger. ‘And you know what? I’d say Tony and Marie might use you.’
Tony was Donal’s friend, a sales rep until the company he worked for relocated to Korea, and now in the process of setting up a wedding planner service with the help of his about-town wife
and his redundancy cheque. ‘They’ll need someone to help with the design side of things; that’d be right up your street.’

She looked at him and thought about creating an image for a totally new business venture. That would be some undertaking; and the idea that she might be capable of doing it took her breath away.
But Donal seemed to think she could – and even if he
was
a bit biased, maybe he was right too. She
had
got on well in college; her tutors had often praised her work, and she
was secretly proud of the various pieces she’d selected for her portfolio. She’d done that kind of stuff all the time in college: why couldn’t she do it for real now?

Donal’s hand travelled into her hair, twining a single auburn curl around his finger. ‘OK, what about this? If you offered to help them out with an overall look for the business, in
return for their showing your designs for wedding invitations, or church booklets or whatever, to prospective clients – they’d probably jump at it.’

She smiled at his enthusiasm. ‘Donal, it’s great that you have such faith in me, but even if I managed to come up with something they liked, I have no idea about business – I
could be taken to the cleaners and not realise it. I mean, I wouldn’t have a clue what to charge for a wedding invitation design, or booklet, or whatever.’

‘Then you can learn as you go along, like a lot of people do. Tony’s got a head for business like you wouldn’t believe – I’d hate to have to drive a bargain with
him. If you were in his camp you wouldn’t go far wrong.’

He put a hand on each side of her face, forcing her to look straight at him. ‘Look, love, you have to start somewhere – and you’ve got what it takes to be your own boss;
I’m convinced of that. All you need is a bit of confidence. I really think you’d be a fool not to at least give it a try. Couldn’t you get in touch with some freelancers and talk
about money? I’m sure the college could give you a few names.’

He held on to her face so she couldn’t look away. ‘At least give it a few months – give it six months, till the end of the year. You’re barely twenty-three – a slip
of a thing still. You can always look for a job somewhere afterwards if it doesn’t work out.’ His eyes slid to her mouth. ‘If it came to it –-’ he traced her top lip
with his thumb ‘– I suppose I
could
support you for a while till you got going . . .’ she opened her mouth and tasted butter on his thumb ‘. . . provided that you
paid me back in sexual favours of my own choosing. What do you think?’ He bent his head and kissed the side of her mouth. ‘Will you give it a try?’

She spoke softly, pressing closer to him. ‘Hmm, sexual favours . . . I don’t know . . .’ He kissed the other side of her mouth, and she closed her eyes. ‘. . . I suppose
we could work something out – but you know I don’t come cheap. You’d have serious supporting to do if that was how I was paying you back.’ As he moved his head down towards
the side of her neck – the first of her erogenous zones he’d discovered – her hands crept around his back, slid up under his t-shirt.

He spoke with his mouth on her throat; his words vibrated deliciously against her. ‘You’re worth every cent, young one. Just promise me you’ll think about it.’ Then he
lifted his head and she opened her eyes reluctantly. ‘Let’s meet Tony and Marie for a drink and talk to them; you can show them your portfolio.’

She pushed his head down into her neck again and buried her hands in his hair. ‘I’ll think about it, I promise. Now, where were we . . . ?’

And a few nights later, over drinks in Jury’s bar, the four of them had come up with a few jokey ideas for the wedding planner business. And a while after that, she and Marie had got
together and sorted out a few more serious ideas.

‘Kiss the Bride’, Limerick’s first wedding planner service, had slotted beautifully into the market gap. Marie and Tony included Laura’s designs as part of their overall
package, and from then on she was rarely out of work – christening invitations inevitably followed the wedding ones; restaurant menus happened through a contact of Donal’s in the
catering trade; company brochures came along now and again. Orders for various leaflets and booklets trickled in steadily. And now, thanks to a contact in the Art College, there was a potentially
very lucrative schoolbook contract in the offing.

Not all the work appealed to her – illustrating leaflets for the likes of boiler companies, manufacturers of computer components or general hardware stores she found pretty
soul-destroying. A few times she was asked to design a brochure for the kind of holiday centres she knew she’d run a mile from. Sometimes she had to work with writers who had quite definite
design ideas of their own, and weren’t too happy if Laura begged to differ. She stayed up one entire night trying to make a block of horrendous apartments look inviting enough for someone
actually to want to live in one.

But every now and again the fun jobs came along: a boutique needing to update its logo, invitations to a children’s party, a seaside-themed mural for a fish restaurant owner who was quite
happy to let Laura have her way. And sometimes, whatever she was working on, she would find herself stopping and smiling, and thanking whatever lucky stars were responsible for her being able to
make a living doing what she loved.

Eventually she found herself sharing a studio with two of her friends from Art College. It was small for three of them, and cold in winter, with not as much natural light as they would have
liked, and the rent climbed steadily in return for a glimpse of the Shannon in the distance; but they got on well and had a laugh, and rounded off each week with a few beers in the pub two doors
away.

Sometimes, especially when the jobs were plentiful, she felt guilty that it had all been so easy. Donal laughed when she confessed this to him.

‘My darling girl, it’s your skill that’s got you where you are – not luck. You’re a talented illustrator, but not any luckier than anyone else – apart from
the fact that you’re married to me, of course.’ She lifted her head from the sketchpad in front of her, but his face was expressionless. ‘That was a lucky night, when I walked
into The White House and put my eye on you.’

She grinned. ‘Yeah, lucky for you, managing to snag the glamorous young barmaid. Be serious, though – you know what I mean. Look at Andrew, slaving away in that horrible computer
company five days a week: two weeks off when someone else decides. Same old routine, day in, day out – it must drive him mad. Every day is different for me; unless I’ve a tight
deadline, I can get up when I want, go into the studio or stay and work here, stop when I’ve had enough. Every job is different from the last one. Why should my lot be so much
better?’

He shrugged. ‘Look, love, he’s your brother and I’ve nothing against him –’

She shot him a disbelieving look. ‘Really?’

He smiled. ‘We’ll never be best buddies, but I can take him or leave him, you know that. And you and I both know that Andrew likes the easy life: he’ll be at that desk in that
office till the day he retires. And who’s to say that he doesn’t enjoy it? I know it would kill you to have to sit in front of a computer screen all day, and it certainly wouldn’t
be my idea of fun, but it might well suit Andrew – he’s obviously got some affinity with computers. And I’m sure he’s bringing home a healthy cheque at the end of all those
boring weeks – programmers are well looked after.’