yourself, Kate, you’re living with him, he deserves better.’
‘I know, he deserves a wonderful woman who’ll make him delirious with joy for a lifetime and I can’t do that. Even without Jack in the frame I couldn’t do it. But with Jack …’
Gloria meditates. There’s nothing romantic about Kate and Jack betraying Eimear because they’ve fallen in lust and confused it with love. However she raises the white flag.
‘Look Kate, I haven’t the energy for this, I haven’t the strength for my own problems let alone yours. Since you’re determined to confess, why don’t you get your completely insincere act of contrition off your chest as quickly as possible and give me some peace. How did you and Jack discover it was your life’s mission to have two hearts beating as one?’
‘Initially I was flattered by his interest – I’d never have imagined I could be Jack O’Brien’s type. I decided he was having a rush of blood to the head and it would simmer down but it’s been three months now and we’re still crazy about each other. Let’s face it, he could have anyone he likes,’ Kate concludes in that pathetic, tremulous voice Gloria finds so out-of-character – and so infuriating, ‘and he chose me.’
‘Come on, Kate, you can do better than that,’ she admonishes.
Kate expels air noisily. ‘I suppose Jack winkled his way into my affections at a vulnerable time. Pearse was hammering away about how we ought to get married, since we’ve been living together for four years and how he’d like to have a few kids. I said where’s your hurry, sure men can have prostate operations and hip replacements and still produce babies. But Pearse said fathering them was all very well but being able to bend over and pick them up was another matter entirely.
‘Jaysus, Glo, it was babies, babies and more babies with the man, he was obsessed. He couldn’t understand why my biological clock wasn’t ticking, like most women’s over thirty, and I said if I heard it ticking wasn’t I bloody well able to tell it to shut up. I … oh God, I’m so sorry, Gloria, I was forgetting about you – talk about insensitive.’
Gloria shrugs. ‘People can’t tiptoe around me forever,’ she manages, although a few more days of fancy footwork would be welcome.
Kate continues: ‘I was feeling harassed and then I bumped into Jack one day in Grafton Street and before I knew it we were in the Shelbourne with Irish coffees, gossiping and laughing about nothing in particular – and then all of a sudden he leaned over and pushed my hair out of my eyes and we both knew.’
‘Knew that you were about to cheat and lie and abandon a friend?’ demands Gloria. ‘You’re mad, you’re dealing with a man who thinks trust is only a word that applies to his pension plan, and you’re no better yourself, Kate McGlade.’
Gloria can’t mask her rage. How dare anyone else be happy when life has kicked her in the stomach and then aimed its Doc Marten at the side of her head for good measure.
Kate shrugs. ‘Since when did you turn judge and jury, Gloria? You must remember what it’s like to be in love. How the more you feel the world is against you, the more you cling to one another. Yes, I feel guilty, but I also feel I’m bursting with life.’
‘It’s a wonder you’ve never been caught out – people know each other’s business here, this is a city the size of a village,’ says Gloria.
‘We’re very careful,’ replies Kate, but Gloria arches a dubious eyebrow.
‘You’ll be walking up the street hand in hand one day when you’re supposed to be at a conference in Edinburgh and you’ll bump into Eimear or Pearse or both,’ she predicts.
Another silence falls between them, not the comfortable quietness among friends but a brooding stillness. Gloria ruptures it at last.
‘Why are you telling me all this, Kate? Eimear’s my friend as much as you are. Do you expect me to keep a secret like this from her?’
Kate twists her mouth – it could be a smile, it could be a grimace.
‘That’s your business, Glo. I confided in you but if you choose to go to her …’ her voice tails off.
Gloria is amazed. A thought is materialising in her dazed brain and she can’t quite acknowledge it: it’s as if Kate wants her to tell Eimear, then the decision will be out of her hands.
There’s a rattle at the door and the afternoon cup of tea and two dull-dull-dull digestives arrive (have they never heard of Mikado biscuits?) delivered by Mary, one of the domestics. Gloria has yet to catch her without a smile as wide as the street, despite the fact she has breast cancer – everyone has their story to tell and there are no secrets in a hospital. She winks and leaves a second cup for Kate, although she’s not supposed to supply visitors.
‘What should I do?’ asks Kate, as soon as they’re alone.
‘Break it off and keep your mouth shut, there’s no point in salving your conscience at the expense of Eimear’s peace of mind,’ Gloria orders. ‘Nor Pearse’s,’ is an afterthought.
‘You’re right.’ Kate nods, adding sugar to her tea, although she hasn’t taken it since she gave it up for Lent sixteen years ago. They all abandoned sugar at the same time to subjugate fleshly desires (Sister Xavier’s idea) and leave them as thin as rakes for Easter (Eimear’s contribution).
They chat desultorily for ten minutes more, then Kate lifts her coat. Impulsively Gloria delays her.
‘Tell me, Kate, is it worth it?’
Her face is radiant. ‘God, yes. I’m miserable and torn and full of self-loathing but I also feel extravagant, exhilarated, energised.’
‘Sounds as though you’re high on Es,’ Gloria puns – but Kate doesn’t notice.
‘I feel as though anything and everything’s possible. A kiss from Jack is a hundred times more exciting than full-blown rumpy bumpy with Pearse, though he’s the most loyal man a woman could ask for. He could find me spread-eagled in bed with Jack sweating on top and still he’d try to believe the best. Like Jack drugged me or he’d walked through the wrong front door and mistaken me for Eimear. I despise myself. But not enough to want to stop.’
‘You are going to stop, though, aren’t you?’ Gloria insists, more stridently than she intends, but here’s her own world knocked to kingdom come and Kate’s having sex with someone she shouldn’t be and relishing every humpingly fantastic minute of it.
‘I must stop, I know that,’ Kate agrees and, blowing a kiss, she’s gone.
Shortly after 5 p.m., Mick turns up. She contemplates telling him about Jack and Kate but dismisses it on the grounds that he might blurt something out or even turn whistle-blower deliberately. Men don’t feel the same way about keeping secrets as women do.
Instead she talks about the mastectomy faced by Mary, the cheerful trolley lady, and once he’s worked out which one she is he’s suitably interested. It’s astonishing how much you can know about a person you don’t know.
She watches him defy the shape of his mouth to decimate one of the digestives she saved for him in a single bite and wonders how she’d feel if he were having an affair.
Provided
