This Charming Man

  ‘And had you given Mr de Courcy reason to think you might sleep with him?’

  ‘Probably. Yes.’

  I couldn’t do it. Not because I thought Paddy was in the right – far bloody from it – but because Damien would find out what had been going on. I’d lose him. And with that, I knew I was fucked. I had to suck it up. I had to take it. I had to keep my mouth shut.

  I sat down again, feeling like I was going to rip open with helplessness and frustration and fuckedness. This is what it means to implode, I thought. This feeling of bursting but no relief. I clapped my left hand – the one he hadn’t burnt – over my mouth and shrieked into it. I screamed until tears burst from my eyes and my head began to clear and I saw what I had to do.

  I had to go back to work.

  No grand gestures. No taxi-hailing. No commands to be taken to the nearest police station. No ringing declarations that I wanted to report a crime.

  I just had to do the do and act normally and go back to work.

  But how am I going to explain my face? My hand?

  What am I going to tell people?

  What am I going to tell Damien?

  I tried to piece a story together. Someone bumped into me? Someone was running and came flying at me and knocked me over? But then I’d have fallen backwards, no? And hit the back of my head? Not the side of my face?

  Okay, how about, someone ran into me from behind? Yes. Better. I’d have fallen on my face.

  But how would that explain the burn on my hand?

  I searched and searched in my head and eventually thought, Okay, how about this? I’d tripped on a loose paving stone, I’d tumbled and banged my face, I’d dropped my cigarette and my hand landed on it?

  It was crap but it would have to do.

  I tried it out on the motherly woman working in the chemist in Dawson Street.

  ‘Those footpaths are a disgrace,’ she said. ‘You certainly took a nasty tumble. The wound in your face might need a butterfly stitch. You should go to out-patients.’

  No. It wasn’t that bad. I wouldn’t let it be that bad.

  ‘Could you just put a plaster on it?’ I asked. ‘Some Savlon and a plaster? Just to stop the bleeding.’

  ‘It’s up to yourself. I’m only saying it because I wouldn’t want it to scar, a lovely-looking girl like you.’

  I would have wept at her kindness, ifI’d been that sort of person.

  She wiped some antiseptic along my cheek. ‘You’re a brave one,’ she said. ‘I thought that would sting.’

  It had, but I didn’t want to show it because – yes, I knew it was stupid – I felt Paddy would be winning yet another round.

  ‘Your cheekbone,’ the woman said. ‘It obviously took a hard crack there. It’ll bruise up in a day or so. Black and blue for the next week. Just so as you know. Cancel any photo-shoots!’

  Back at work, TC, Jacinta and the rest of them weren’t exactly compassionate – they just found it too funny – but they blithely accepted the loose-paving-stone explanation. So by the time I saw Damien at home that evening, my story was smooth, well-rehearsed and obviously convincing because he was concern itself. He cooked dinner, he went out and got a DVD, he opened a bottle of wine and, after a couple of glasses, I became giddy with unexpected elation.

  Damien and I were okay.

  Damien and I had been saved.

  I’d been so stupid. I’d been infected with de-Courcy-itis, I’d run the most idiotic, incredible risk, but it was over now, it had passed, and Damien and I were safe.

  I wouldn’t think about what Paddy had done to me. I wouldn’t even let myselfbe angry. I would simply be grateful that I still had Damien.

  The alarm clock rang and I woke with a jolt, plunged right into the horror of the previous night – the spectacular failure of the confrontation with Paddy, Marnie’s cold rage, Damien’s questions…

  My entire body, even the soles of my feet, felt like it had been beaten up. The adrenaline of the past few days had taken its toll. I stretched out a weary arm. Damien’s side of the bed was empty. It wasn’t even warm. He’d obviously reset the clock and left ages ago.

  It felt like an omen.

  In the cold light of day, I knew, full and terrible and certain, that Damien was going to find out about Paddy and me. I’d known it last night, but it seemed worse, truer, today.

  Marnie was so angry, she’d probably tell Damien.

  Christ, maybe she’d already told him? Maybe she’d called him at work? Maybe, even now, he knew? My heart almost seized up in my chest at the thought.

  And if Marnie didn’t tell, de Courcy would. Again, maybe he’d already done it? After last night there was bound to be some sort of comeback from him. He would find some way to hurt me – to punish me – and the easiest thing would be to take away the person I treasured the most.

  The whole appalling scenario played in my head like a horror film – Damien’s pain, his grief, his bitterness at having been betrayed by me. He wouldn’t be able to forgive me, I was certain of it. It was such a stretch for him to trust people and once that fragile trust was broken it couldn’t be repaired. I was panting, actually panting, with fear. This couldn’t happen. But I had no way of stopping it.

  One thing I was sure of – I couldn’t let Damien find out from someone else. I’d have to tell him myself.

  Maybe tonight?

  But, oh my God, the thought of it…

  I was trapped in a nightmare. And the thing was, this entire situation, it was no one’s fault but mine.

  I’d made it happen, hadn’t I? Quite apart from my carry-on with Paddy, I hadn’t had to get involved when Damien told me about the Press and their story about Dee, had I? I didn’t have to appoint myselfas Dee’s unofficial investigator. I didn’t have to start poking my nose into secret newspaper deals. I didn’t have to start rounding up Paddy’s old girlfriends.

  But I had.

  I liked Dee, I admired her, and any sort of injustice fired me up. But, when the chips were down, what was Dee to me?

  A connection to Paddy, that’s what she was. Probably the reason I’d asked to interview her all those months ago; why I’d been so pleased when she invited Damien and me over for off-ends pasta. And definitely why I’d got embroiled in this political skulduggery.

  But what the hell was wrong with me? I’d had the audacity to get irritated with poor Marnie’s long-lived attachment to Paddy, but was I any better? I knew what he was capable of, and I still thought I could take him on. And now – big surprise – my life had blown up in my face.

  Last night, Dee had tried to be ‘Art of War’ about the disastrous showdown.

  ‘We can learn from our mistakes,’ she said.

  But I didn’t believe in that sort of thing. I preferred not to make mistakes in the first place. And ifI did make them I’d rather cover them up and pretend they’d never happened.

  God, I’d been so wrong about Leechy; I was certain she’d have a cigarette scar on her hand. Because she’d been the person who’d persuaded Christopher Holland to sell his story about Dee I’d made the mistake of thinking she was just another of Paddy’s lackeys. Herselfand Sheridan running around, ordering the world to Paddy’s vision, no better than Spanish John.

  But maybe Paddy treated Leechy like an equal, maybe they’d come up with the idea together, as a team. Maybe Paddy had found the one woman he didn’t need to abuse. Maybe he really did love her.

  I was almost an hour late for work and I was wondering what excuse I’d give Jacinta. As I crossed the office to my desk, she was embroiled in some sort oftussle with TC.

  Good. Maybe I could just slip in and pretend I’d been there all along…

  ‘I can’t do it,’ TC was saying, in a high panicky voice.

  ‘You have to,’ Jacinta said, her voice steely and calm.

  TC saw me and his face lit up with hope. ‘Grace!’

  Well, there was my cover blown.

  He darted out from behind Jacinta. ‘Will you do it
, Grace? Please, Grace.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Interview Zara Kaletsky. I’ve lost my nerve. I love her too much.’

  ‘I – ’ Christ, could things get any worse?

  ‘TC, you begged for the job,’ Jacinta said with a sort of amused contempt. ‘So go and do it.’

  ‘Please, Grace?’ TC thrust his beautiful red binder at me. ‘I’ll cover all your work. I’ll stay late. I’ll have sex with Damien. I’ll do whatever you want.’

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Jacinta demanded of me. Then she switched back to TC and yelled, ‘Why should Grace do it?’ She was in her element, having two people to shout at simultaneously – probably as enjoyable as those four-hands massages where two therapists rub you at the same time. (Not that I’d know.) ‘For God’s sake, TC – ’ her tone dripped with scorn – ‘be a man.’

  It was that sentence – the unnecessary disparagement of it – that changed my mind. She was such a bully and right at that moment I’d had a bellyful of bullies.

  ‘Which hotel?’ I asked TC. ‘Where’s this thing going down?’

  ‘The Shelbourne.’

  They had nice biscuits there. I hadn’t had any breakfast. I’d like some sugar.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ I scooped up the red folder of loveliness and headed for the door.

  ‘I’ll decide who does what around here.’ I could hear Jacinta yelling after me, but I was already gone.

  A grim hotel corridor; disgruntled journalists lining the walls; the customary impenetrable selection process – business as usual. I parked myselfin a plastic seat and prepared to endure. No one spoke. Seconds took hours to pass. Despair circulated instead of oxygen. Hell’s waiting room might be a bit like this, I thought.

  TC had compiled a volume of research notes weighty enough to rival War and Peace but everything seemed so pointless and stupid that I could bring myselfonly to glean the bare bones about Zara Kaletsky. Her life was such a cliché, it was almost parodic. She’d been a model, who’d crossed over to acting. A few years ago she’d moved to LA and fallen off the radar and the Irish press would have been faster to interview a zinc bucket. Then she’d got a part in a Spielberg film and suddenly all Irish outlets were clamouring like hungry dogs for a piece of her.

  The terribleness of last night – the hubris, the failure, Marnie’s anger, Paddy’s easy victory – had imbued me with wretched hopelessness, with a sense that life on earth was a miserable business, that goodness was always trumped by bad, that those with power would never cede any of it, that the little person would never win even the tiniest of victories. It felt immoral to celebrate a woman who earned a shockingly large amount of money from the frivolous business of pretending to be other people.

  ‘Grace Gildee? The Spokesman?’

  I got to my feet. I’d only been waiting two hours and seventeen minutes. That must surely count as a record.

  ‘Thirty minutes,’ the clipboard maven hissed malevolently as I passed her to enter the sanctum. ‘Not a second more.’

  ‘Grand,’ I hissed back. I took a moment to gather more spittle on my tongue – proper hissing requires a good deal of it – then, like air leaving a burst tyre, said, ‘Csssertainly, missssss. Not a sssssssecond exsssstra. Thanksssssssss for your assssssssissssssstancsssssse.’

  I was pleased with the way I’d managed to think of so many words with sibilant sounds. No notice. Just off the top of my head. With a perky – but, I hoped, unsettling – smile at her, I closed the door. Then – I just couldn’t stop myself– I opened it again, thrust my chin at her, gave a quick, snaky, ‘Ssssss!’ and closed the door once more.

  She’d think she’d imagined it.

  Zara was alabaster pale, with a cap of short shiny hair and eyes so dark and soulful they were almost black. She rose and smiled. Six foot tall and thin as a whip.

  I waved her back into her seat, ‘Don’t get up, no need,’ whipped open my notebook and clattered my tape recorder onto the table.

  ‘I didn’t catch your name,’ she said.

  ‘ – Oh? Grace. But it doesn’t matter. We’ll never meet again. And you don’t need to end every sentence with my name to convince me of your sincerity. I’m already convinced!’

  She looked a little alarmed.

  ‘So no publicist sitting in and monitoring our every word?’ I asked.

  ‘… No. I thought – think – it makes everyone uncomfortable.’

  ‘Grand.’ It just meant she wasn’t proper really-weird-with-many-perversions A-list. ‘Okay, Zara, let’s do us both a favour. You must be sick of doing interviews and I’m not really in the mood either. We’ll make this quick. Wheat allergy?’

  ‘ – What?’

  ‘Wheat allergy?’ I repeated, louder this time. ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘… No.’

  ‘Really? Lactose intolerant, then, yes?’ I scribbled on my pad. ‘No? Sure? Okay. You might want to sort that out, ifyou don’t mind me saying. Yoga? Saved your life?’

  ‘Meditation, actually.’

  ‘Same difference,’ I muttered. I’d done neither but why let the facts get in the way?

  I scanned TC’s notes. ‘Middle child,’ I said. ‘Let me guess. Parents more interested in your siblings, blah, you started singing and dancing, blah, to get their attention? Yes? Yays? Good girl. Let’s see. Six foot tall at the age of twelve, ugly duckling, blah, swan, beauty queen, Miss Donegal, so far so blah. Anorexia?’

  ‘… Um.’

  ‘Bout of anorexia?’ I said. ‘As a teenager? Yes?’ I nodded along with her. ‘But you’re grand now, great appetite, always stuffing your face, just a very high metabolism.’

  My glance leapfrogged further down the page. ‘Lalala, let’s see, Irish soap. Big success. Mmmmmm, had gone as far as you could go in Ireland, yes? Yes? Yays. Good. Went to LA, hoping to make the blah-time? Struggled initially, then got lucky when Spielblah saw you in something or other.’

  Tell me, why did these people bother having lives at all? When they’re not capable of one original action? When everything has already been pre-scripted in the pages of Hello!

  ‘No, wait, whoops, nearly missed that. You went to South Africa first, then you went to LA. Why’d you go to South Africa? Since when did they have a film industry?’

  ‘Fancied a change of scene,’ she said, in a strained voice.

  ‘Grand,’ I said breezily. ‘Don’t tell me, I don’t care. Whatever it was, bankruptcy, plastic surgery spree, your secret’s safe with me. So what else can we discuss? Men? Let me guess. No one special, you’re having fun at the moment, but you hope to settle down at the ancient age of thirty. Yays?’

  ‘I’m already thirty-three.’

  Was she? Looking good on it. That’d be all the poison she injected into her forehead, I presumed. ‘You’d like two children, a boy and a girl. You’re based in LA now but Ireland will always be home? Yes? Yays. Excellent! Let’s call that done!’

  I got to my feet and stuck out my hand. ‘Pleasure, Ms Kaletsky.’

  She wouldn’t take my hand. Uppity diva.

  ‘Come on,’ I cajoled. ‘No hard feelings.’ I thrust my hand at her again.

  She looked at it but wouldn’t hold it, trying to shame me into letting it drop.

  ‘Have it your way,’ I said. ‘Nice meeting – ’

  ‘How did you get that mark?’

  ‘… What mark?’

  It was then that I realized she wasn’t refusing to shake my hand, but that her attention had been caught by something. She took my right hand between both of hers and uncurled my fingers. ‘That mark,’ she said.

  We both looked at the circle of pink shiny skin in the middle of my palm. ‘… I–’

  Then we looked at each other. Something passed between us, information that was fully articulated without having to even say his name. My fingers tingled.

  ‘Snap.’ In one lithe movement she splayed the fingers on her right hand, flashing her scar like an ID.

  I couldn’t speak. I wa
s literally struck dumb.

  ‘Let’s see.’ Zara surveyed me. ‘Always considered yourselfa bit of a firebrand. Yes? Edited the school magazine. Got up a couple of small petitions. Nothing too controversial. Decided not to go to college but to learn at the university of life. Yes? Worked hard news until you found you didn’t have the stomach for it. At some stage crossed paths with Paddy de Courcy, thought you’d be the girl to change him, but ended up with a faceful of bruises and a burnt hand for your presumption. Yes?’

  I opened my mouth. Sentences floated and danced in my head but none of them emerged as sounds.

  Finally I said, ‘He’s the reason you left Ireland?’

  ‘I made the mistake of going to the police. He was so angry I thought he was going to kill me.’

  She went to the police?

  ‘And was he, like, charged?’ How had he kept that out of the press?

  ‘Not at all.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘These two fat eejits showed up in their yellow jackets and as soon as they’d established it was “only” a domestic, they told us to kiss and make up, then were off down the road to buy chips and batterburgers. All I could do was apply for a barring order – which would take twelve weeks. By then I was long gone.’

  ‘Why South Africa?’

  ‘It was the furthest place I could think of.’

  Why hadn’t I thought of Zara? I didn’t know. Perhaps I’d assumed that Paddy wouldn’t hurt glamorous women, those who might be listened to.

  Excitement began to build. An idea was taking shape ‘

  ‘It’s not just you and me,’ Zara said.

  ‘I know – ’

  ‘There’s Selma Teeley.’

  ‘The mountaineer?’

  ‘Retired. He broke a bone in her hand that never healed properly.’

  ‘What? Really?’

  ‘She rang me when I started going out with him, trying to warn me. By the time I discovered she wasn’t some mad stalkery ex-girlfriend, he’d made me come off the pill, got me pregnant, made me have an abortion, then raped me the same day.’ She paused, then added, ‘Among other stuff, of course. But that’s the one that stands out most.’

  ‘Christ,’ I breathed.

  ‘Did you go to the police?’ Zara asked.