The Copper Beech (35 page)

‘But won’t we need to know when …?’

The words remained unfinished, the sentence hung in the air – when … Richard went back to Dublin – something they all knew would happen. There wasn’t room for two partnerships in the firm. The business simply wasn’t there; even two salaries was beginning to strain Bill Hayes. Niall was the son of the family.

Surely Richard would be going back any day now.

Only Richard knew that he could never leave Shancarrig and the woman he loved.

‘I
do
love you,’ he said defensively to Gloria, as they sat smoking a cigarette by their little oil stove one cold evening in the gate lodge.

‘I know.’ She sat hugging her knees.

‘No, you don’t know. You said we shouldn’t talk of love, that I only felt it at the moment of taking you. That’s what you said.’

‘Stop sounding like a schoolboy, Richard.’ She looked beautiful as she sat there in the flickering light.

‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.

‘About you and how good you make me feel.’

‘What are we going to do, Gloria?’

‘Well, get dressed and go home, I imagine.’

‘About everything?’

‘We can’t solve everything, we can only solve things like not letting the light be seen through the windows and not getting our death of cold in all the rain.’

‘What will you say … about where you’ve been?’

‘That’s not your concern.’

‘But it is, you are my concern.’

‘Then let me handle it.’ Again he saw the warning in her eyes, and he felt frightened.

They had met in late summer and continued through autumn and a cold wet winter; soon it would be spring.
Surely some solution would have to be found.

But for Gloria spring meant that she could wear fresh yellow and white flowery dresses, and white sandals and take her lover to hidden parts of Barna Woods, to dells with bluebells and soft springy grass. Again an ache came over him. How did she know where to find such places? She hadn’t grown up in this place – had other men taken her here? Not only could he never ask, he must never think about it. He hated that the shop was doing so well, he wanted to be her provider and give her things but she would never take them.

‘What would I say, Richard? I mean I could hardly say that the handsome young solicitor who drops in to buy an inordinate amount of razor blades bought me a silver bracelet, now could I?’

But with increased prosperity Mike Darcy bought his wife jewellery. There was an emerald pendant, there were diamonds. Nobody in Shancarrig had ever known such extravagance. Quite unsuitable, Richard’s Aunt Ethel had said, shaking her head about it.

Richard agreed from the bottom of his heart but was careful not to express this.

To his surprise young Niall had the opposite view.

‘What do people work for if it isn’t to get themselves what they want?’ he asked.

‘I hope you wouldn’t throw your money away on emeralds for Gloria Darcy and her like,’ his father said in ritual dismissive vein to his son.

These days Niall Hayes answered back. ‘I’m not sure what you mean “her like”, but if I loved someone and I earned my money lawfully I would feel very justified in spending it on presents for her,’ he said.

Suddenly the room was silent and drab. Aunt Ethel looked at her son in some surprise. On her cardigan there
was no jewellery; there never had been any except the engagement ring, wedding ring and good watch. Perhaps life might have been better if Bill Hayes had visited a shop and looked at jewels.

‘Let’s celebrate our anniversary,’ Richard said to Gloria.

‘Like what? Dinner for two in Ryan’s Shancarrig Hotel, a bottle of wine?’

‘No, but let’s do something festive.’

‘I find what we do is fairly festive already.’ She laughed at him.

‘You must want more, you must want more than creeping around.’

She sighed. It was the weary sigh of a mother who can’t explain to a toddler how to tie his shoe laces. ‘No, I don’t want any more,’ she said resignedly. ‘But you do, so we’ll do whatever you like for the anniversary.’

It was hard to think what they could do. The mystery was that they had spent a year as lovers without being discovered. In a place of this size and curiosity it was a miracle.

Perhaps they could go to Dublin. He would find an excuse and she would surely be able to think of some reason to go away as well.

Before he suggested it he would plan what they would do, otherwise she would shrug and say that they might as well stay here. He wanted to take her into Dublin bars, restaurants, he wanted people to admire her and be attracted by her beautiful face and sparkling laugh. He wanted to see her against some other background, not just the grey shapeless forms of Shancarrig. In all his years there Richard had never been able to like the place, it was lit up only by Gloria and he wanted to take her away from it.

He planned the visit to Dublin, how he would meet her off the train in Kingsbridge in his car – he would have gone up the day before so that there would be even less suspicion – how he would show her the sights – she didn’t know Dublin well, she had told him. He would be her guide.

They would check into one of the better hotels. He would check out the room first, make sure it was perfect … they would walk arm in arm down Grafton Street. If they met anyone from Shancarrig they would all laugh excitedly and say wasn’t it great coming to Dublin how you ran into everyone from home.

The more he thought about it the more Richard realised that he did not want Gloria in Dublin just for one night, he wanted her there always. He didn’t want them in a furtive hotel room, he wanted them in a home of their own. Together always.

There were the most enormous difficulties in the way. The biggest, most handsome and innocent was Mike Darcy, smiling and welcoming with no idea that his wife loved another.

There were the children. Richard loved the look of them, dark boys with enormous eyes like Gloria. They had their father’s slow, lopsided grin too, but it was silly to work out characteristics and assign them to one parent or the other.

He wished he could get to know the children, but it had been impossible. If he could get to know them then they would find it easier to come as a little family to Dublin to live with him. Richard realised suddenly that he was no longer planning an illicit trip to celebrate an anniversary, he was planning a new life. He must take it more slowly.

He must not rush things and risk losing her.

The anniversary was all that he could have wanted and more.

The hotel welcomed them as Mr and Mrs Hayes with no difficulty. Gloria’s large rings did not look as if they had been put on for the occasion, they had a right to sit on her hand.

They had champagne in their room, they walked the city. He showed her places that he had loved when he was a boy, the canal bank from Baggot Street to Leeson Street. It thrilled him to be so near Waterloo Road. It was quite possible that his father could walk by on his way to the bookshop on Baggot Street Bridge, or his mother going to the butcher’s shop to say that last Sunday’s joint had not been as tender as they would have expected and the Doctor had been very disappointed.

He didn’t see his parents but he did see Elaine pregnant and contented-looking, getting out of her mother’s car. She hadn’t seen him, and under normal circumstances he would have let her go on without stopping her. But these were not normal times. He wanted to show her Gloria, he wanted her to see the magnificent woman on his arm.

He called and she waddled over.

‘Oh, Mummy will be sorry to have missed you,’ she said. He had waited carefully until her mother had driven off. He didn’t think his name was held in any favour in that family.

‘I’d like you to meet Gloria Darcy.’ The pride in his voice was overpowering.

They talked easily. Gloria asked her was it the first baby. Looking Richard straight in the eye Elaine said yes it was, she was very excited.

Gloria said she had two little boys of her own, and that you wished they’d never grow up and yet you were so
proud of every little thing they did. She was saying all the things that Elaine wanted to hear. She also told her that the old wives’ tales about labour were greatly exaggerated – it was probably to put people off having children before they were married.

‘Oh, very few of us would be foolish enough to do that,’ Elaine said, looking again at Richard.

He realised with a shock that he had been a monster of selfishness. Suddenly he was glad that Elaine had lied to him, that she had never carried his baby. But Olive Kennedy had. She had gone to England and given birth to their child. Where was this child now? A boy or girl in an orphanage, in a foster family, adopted.

How could he have not cared before? He felt his eyes water.

They had drinks in the Shelbourne Bar, and lunch in a small restaurant near Grafton Street that he had heard was very good.

He managed to meet three people he knew slightly. That wasn’t bad for a man four years in exile from the capital city. He had chosen the place well.

‘Did you love that girl Elaine a lot?’ Gloria asked.

‘No, I have never loved anyone except you,’ he said simply.

‘I thought you looked sad when you left, your eyes were full of tears … but it’s not my business. I’d be very cross with you for asking prying questions,’ she said, squeezing his hand warmly.

He could barely speak.

‘I’ll die if I can’t be with you always, Gloria,’ he said.

‘Shush now.’ She put her finger in the little glass of Irish Mist that she was drinking and offered it to him to suck. Soon the familiar desire returned, banishing for the moment the sense of loss and anxiety about returning her
to real life in Shancarrig. They went back to their hotel and celebrated their anniversary well and truly.

He never asked what excuse she had made to Mike, whether it was shopping, or a visit to a hospital, or seeing an old friend. He knew she didn’t want him to be a party to her lies. It could not have been hard to lie to Mike, his enthusiasm and simplicity wouldn’t take into account the deviousness of the world around him, a wife who would betray him, a casual friend Richard Hayes walking in and out of his shop not for the errands he pretended but to feast his eyes on Gloria, to remind himself of the last time and look forward to the next time.

Kevin Darcy was at Shancarrig school. Sometimes Richard stopped him on the road just for the excuse to talk to him.

‘How’s your mammy and daddy?’ he’d say.

‘They’re all right.’ Kevin hadn’t much interest.

‘What did you learn at school?’ he might ask.

‘Not much,’ Kevin would say.

One day Richard saw him with a cut head. He fell off the tree, Christy Dunne explained. Richard went to the shop to sympathise. Mike was out in the yard supervising the building of the new extension. Darcy’s was now almost three times the size it was when they had bought it first.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Richard, it’s only a scrape. Don’t be such a clucking hen,’ Gloria said.

‘He was bleeding a lot, I was worried.’

‘Well, don’t worry, he’s fine. I put a big plaster on him, and gave him two Crunchies, one for him and one for Christy. There wasn’t a bother out of him.’ He looked at her with admiration. How was she so calm, so good and wise a mother as well as everything else?

He was still more admiring when the burglars came the following week and stole all the jewellery that Mike Darcy had bought for his wife.

Sergeant Keane was in and out of the place, inquiries were made everywhere, tinkers had been in Johnny Finn’s pub, you couldn’t watch the place all the time.

Gloria was philosophical. It was terrible, particularly the little emerald, she loved the way it glowed. But then what was the alternative? You watched them day and night, you made the place into something like Fort Knox. It would be like living in a prison; she shivered. Richard remembered how she had once said that to be married to a suspicious husband who checked up on her would be like living with a gaoler. She needed to be free.

Maura O’Sullivan, who minded the Darcy children and cleaned the house for them, also worked in his aunt’s house. He tried to find out more about the household, but Maura, unlike the rest of Shancarrig, was not inclined to gossip.

‘What was it exactly you wanted to know?’ she would say in a way that ended all inquiries.

‘I was just wondering how the family were getting over the loss,’ he said lamely.

Maura nodded, satisfied. She always brought her son with her, an affectionate boy called Michael who had Down’s syndrome. Richard liked him and the way he would run towards whoever came into the room.

‘Daddy?’ he said hopefully to Richard.

The first time he had said this Maura explained that the child’s father had had to go to England, and that consequently he thought everyone he met was his father.

‘Daddy, my daddy?’ he asked Richard again and again.

‘Sort of, we’re all daddys and mammys to other people,’ Richard said to him.

Niall had heard him.

‘You’re very kind, Richard. It comes naturally to you. I mean it, you’re terribly nice to people, that’s why you’re so successful.’ Richard was surprised, the boy had never made a speech like this.

‘No I’m not. I’m quite selfish really. I’m surprised it doesn’t show.’

‘I never saw it. I was jealous of you of course with women, but I didn’t think you were selfish.’

‘Not jealous of me any more?’

‘Well, I only like one person and she assures me that she’s not under your spell … so …’ Niall Hayes looked happy.

‘She never was. I thought she was lovely like anyone would, but it was admiration from afar, I assure you.’

‘That’s what she says.’ Niall sounded smug and content.

‘I’m not cramping your style in work here, am I?’ Richard wanted to have it out. This seemed a good time.

‘No. No of course not, it’s just that I suppose we expected … everyone thought that sooner or later …’

‘Yes, and one day I will but … not just yet.’

‘You’re saving, I know.’ Niall was understanding.

‘How do you know?’