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?’
‘Well, you never go anywhere, you only have a shabby car. You don’t buy jazzy suits.’
‘That’s right,’ Richard admitted. ‘I’m saving.’ This was his cover, he realised. He was putting together a stake to buy a practice in Dublin.
The months went on. Gloria bought him a silk tie.
‘You said no presents.’ He fingered the cream and gold tie lovingly.
‘I said you weren’t to buy me any, that’s all.’
‘I want to buy you a piece of jewellery. Not an emerald, a ruby – a very small ruby. Let me,’ he begged.
‘No, Richard. Seriously, when could I wear it? Be sensible.’
He bought it anyway. He gave it to her in the gate lodge.
Their Wednesday afternoons there were totally secure. Major Murphy walked with his uncle rain or shine, and Leo had got a job working in the office of one of the building contractors’ firms in the town. It seemed an unlikely job, but Gloria told him that she heard Leo was still in touch with that mad Foxy Dunne, who was going from strength to strength on the building sites in England. The word was that he would come back and set up his own firm. The word was that he and Leo had an understanding.
‘Foxy Dunne, son of Dinny Dunne?’
‘Oh, Foxy Dunne is like the papal nuncio in terms of respectability compared to his father. You know him falling out of Johnny Finn’s most nights.’
‘Well, well, well.’ He realised he was getting a small-town mentality; he was finding serious difficulty in believing that Major Murphy of The Glen would let his daughter contemplate one of the Dunnes from the cottages. He was glad however that it meant Leo worked far away. It left the coast much more clear.
Gloria looked at the ruby for a long time.
‘You’re not angry?’
‘How could I be angry that you spent so much on me? I’m touched, but I’ll never wear it.’
‘Couldn’t you say …?’
‘We both know there’s nothing I could say.’
‘You could wear it here with me.’
‘Yes, I will.’
She took the ruby away and had it made into a tie pin, then she gave it back to him. ‘I’ll put on a chain to wear it when I am with you, but for the rest of the time you keep it. Wear it on the tie that I gave you, then you’ll think of me.’
‘I think of you always,’ he said.
Too much perhaps.
It was the beginning of the withdrawal. He saw it and blinded himself to it. He feared that someone else had come to town, but he knew there could be no one. She didn’t dream up schemes to meet him for five minutes any more, and although she lay and took his loving she didn’t implore him to love her as she once had, begging, encouraging and exciting him to performances that he had thought impossible.
He felt it was the place, it was getting too much for them. There had been endless complications about builders’ suppliers, and the building of the extension, and the hostility of the Dunnes who said that they weren’t anxious to build the place that was going to be direct competition with them. There had been delays over the insurance money for the jewellery. There was a problem about the newspaper delivery they planned, Nellie Dunne had created difficulties.
In his uncle’s office Niall was restless and urging that he be involved in more cases, have consultations with clients and barristers, and in general learn his trade. Richard felt he was putting him off at every turn.
It was time to take Gloria away.
He began to explain it and for once he wouldn’t listen when she tried to stop him. ‘No, I’ve shushed enough. We have to think. It’s been nearly two years. We must have our own home, our own life together. I don’t wish Mike any harm but he has to know, he has to be told. He’s a decent man, he’ll agree to whatever we suggest. Whatever’s for the best … he can come to Dublin to see the boys, we’ll never hide from them who their real father is … he’d prefer to be taken into our confidence from the start … well, not exactly from the start but from now …’ His voice trailed away as he looked at her face.
They sat in the gate lodge. They hadn’t undressed. Their cigarettes and the little tin they used as an ashtray and cleaned after each visit sat between them on the table. It was an odd place to be talking about their future. It was an odd expression on her face as she listened. It showed utter bewilderment and shock.
He thought first it was the enormity of what they were about to do … coupled with the disruption for the children. He must reassure her. ‘I’ve been looking at houses in Dublin, a little out of the city so that we could have privacy and so that Kevin and Sean would have a local-type school, not somewhere huge like the big Christian Brothers in the city …’ He stopped. He had not read her look right.
She didn’t want reassurance, she wanted him to stop talking straight away. ‘None of this is going to happen, you must know this. Richard, you must know.’
‘But you love me …’
‘Not like this, not to run away with you …’
‘Why have we been doing all this …?’ He waved his hand wildly around the room where they had made love so often.
‘It had nothing whatsoever to do with my leaving here. That was never promised, never on the cards.’
He was the one bewildered now, and confused. ‘What was it all about?’ he asked, begging to be told.
She stood up and walked around the room as she spoke. She had never looked more beautiful. She spoke of a happy time with Richard, how he had made her feel wonderful and needed, how she had given him no undertaking, no looking ahead.
She said that her future was here in Shancarrig or very possibly another small town. They might sell up to the Dunnes and move. She and Mike liked starting a place from scratch. They had done that in other places. It was a challenge, it kept everything exciting, new.
Richard Hayes listened amazed as she spoke of Mike with this respect and love.
She was totally enmeshed with Mike in a way Richard had never understood. Her concern had nothing to do with a fear that Mike might be hurt or made to suffer. It was much more an involvement, a caring what he would do and decide and where he would want to go.
‘But you don’t love him!’ he gasped.
‘Of course I love him, I’ve never loved anyone else.’
‘But why …?’ He couldn’t even finish the sentence.
‘He couldn’t give me everything I wanted. No one can do that for anybody. I love him because he lets me be free.’
Richard realised she spoke the truth. ‘And does he know…?’
‘Know what?’
‘About me, about us. Do you tell him?’ His voice grew angry and loud. ‘Is this what gets him excited, your coming home and telling him what you and I did together?’
‘Don’t be disgusting,’ she said.
‘You’re the one who is disgusting, out like an alley cat and then pretending that you’re the model wife and mother.’
She looked at him reproachfully. He knew it was over.
In the years when he had wriggled out of relationships and escaped from affairs he had not been as honest as she was being, he had been devious and avoided face-to-face contact except when it was utterly necessary. His heart was heavy when he thought of Olive Kennedy, and the way he had disowned her in front of her parents.
If only he could have his time all over again. He hung his head.
‘Richard?’ she said.
‘I didn’t mean it about the alley cat.’
‘I know you didn’t.’
‘I don’t know what to do, darling Gloria. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Go away and leave this place, have a good life in Dublin. One day I’ll meet you there, we will talk in a civilised way like you and the girl in Baggot Street, the one who was having the baby.’
‘No.’
‘That’s what you’ll do.’ She spoke soothingly.
‘And if you go to another town will you find someone new?’
‘I won’t go out looking for anyone, that I assure you.’
‘And will he … will he put up with it, turn the other way …?’ He couldn’t even bear to speak Mike Darcy’s name.
‘He’ll know I love him and will never leave him.’
There was nothing more to say.
There was a lot to be done.
He would go back to the office and telephone some solicitors’ offices in Dublin. He would ask his mother if he could go back to the basement flat in Waterloo Road. He would work day and night to clear his files, and leave everything ship-shape for Niall. He could shake off his years here and start again.
They tidied up the little house that they were visiting for the last time. As usual they emptied the cigarette butts and ash into an envelope. They straightened the furniture to the way it had been when they first found the place. They left by the window as they had always done. They rearranged the branches that hung to hide it.
She wouldn’t bring anyone else here after he had gone, he felt sure of that. With a little lurch he wondered had she ever brought anyone before.
But that was useless speculation.
‘Now that we’re legitimate we can walk home together,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ She was easy and affectionate, as she was with everyone.
‘The long way or the short way?’ He offered her the choice.
‘The scenic route,’ she decided.
They went up past the open ground that led to the Old Rock, and back through the woods, past Maddy Ross’s house where she sat at her little desk, maybe writing letters to that priest who had gone to the missions, the one that she might have fancied. Richard felt a huge wave of sympathy for her. What a wasted love that must have been. Compared to his own great passion.