Everyone nodded, though I’m sure they didn’t.
‘I was in the Grill Room that day for lunch with two agents and one of them said, “Did you hear they released the hostages? “And the other guy says, “Released it? I didn’t even know they’d started shooting it. “It’s that kind of place. Hey, Mr Walsh,’ Shay urged, ‘tell the snooker story.’
‘Will I?’ Dad asked shyly, acting like he had a crush on Shay.
‘Ah, do,’ we all urged, so Dad told the story of the only day in my entire life that he persuaded me to do something wrong – to take a day off school sick because he’d got tickets to the snooker final and no one to go with – and how it ended up being on the evening news. Really, it did; as the champion potted the winning shot, right behind him, clear as day, clapping like an eejity seal, is me. I am more in focus than the champ and the clip got shown on the six o’clock news, again during sports round-up, then a longer piece on the nine o’clock news, and even though I didn’t see it myself, I’m told it was on the late news too. It got run on the following day’s lunch-time news, then at the weekend when they were doing a review of the week. Even at the end of the year, when they were showing the year’s sporting highlights, once again I could be seen. In fact, only about a year ago, when the player announced his retirement, they ran the clip again and there I was, the fifteen-year-old me, with my terrible fifteen-year-old hair, grinning and clapping happily. Everyone in the whole country saw me at least twice, and included in their number were my teachers. Some were sarcastic – ‘Feeling better now, Maggie?’ – but more of them were confused. ‘I’m surprised at you,’ several said. ‘You’re normally so good.’
Dad told the story so well that we were all crying with laughter.
‘I’m terrible at being bad,’ I agreed, wiping my face. ‘Every time I do something dangerous I get caught.’
I couldn’t help it. I looked at Shay and he was looking at me and our smiles kind of faded. I looked away, and the next thing there was a right kerfuffle as a cordon of people surrounding another person moved as one well-oiled machine between the tables.
‘Celebrity alert,’ Emily said.
The whole restaurant was trying to look without seeming as if that’s what they were doing, then a word began to ripple, almost as if it was being carried on the wind. Faint and whispery at first, ‘… hurll… hurll… hurley… lishurley… lishurley… Liz Hurley.’
‘It’s Liz Hurley,’ Emily hissed, and that was our cue to dislocate our necks looking. It was hard to see through the wall of minders, then one of them moved slightly, the light from a lantern caught her face and it was! It was Liz Hurley.
‘Does anyone dare me to go over there and ask for her autograph?’ Helen asked.
‘Does anyone dare me to go over there and tell her to wear more clothes?’ Mum asked skittishly.
Shay shook his head admiringly. ‘I’m not daring you, Mrs Walsh, because I know you’ll do it. You’re a wild woman.’
‘The nerve of you. I’m a respectable married Catholic.’
‘You’re a wild woman.’
As Shay and Mum twinkled at each other, I watched with bittersweet amusement. Mum and Dad were mad about Shay. What would my life have been like if I’d married him instead of Garv? A lot easier with my family, that was for sure. Mind you, Helen didn’t seem to like him any more than she’d liked Garv.
‘OΚ GUYS.’ The waiter was back, doing his interpretation of the dessert list. ‘Fat-free ice-cream, anyone?’
‘Ice-cream?’ Shay asked me softly.
Mutely I shook my head.
‘Some other time,’ he said. It sounded like a promise.
It was a nice night, apart from the row over the bill. Shay tried to pay it and Dad nearly had a fit, then Emily threw her oar in, insisting that the evening was on her. Eventually, some kind of compromise was reached and we made our way to the car valets.
They brought Shay’s car around first, and next thing Mum piped up, ‘We were very cramped in Emily’s jeep coming up. Would you be able to drive one of us home?’
‘Sure.’ Shay offered her his arm. ‘Shall we?’
But there was no fear of that.
‘I’d better go with himself,’ Mum nodded at Dad. ‘Why don’t you bring Margaret.’
‘No, I–’ I started.
‘Ah, do.’
I was acutely embarrassed. Even more so when Helen said loudly, ‘I was reading a thing in the paper about some country where mothers sell their daughters. Where was it again? It began with “I”.’
‘India?’ Anna said.
‘Yes! Or was it Ireland?’
I was perspiring from every pore. I wished the ground would open up and devour me whole, then Shay smiled at me, a smile packed with sympathy, understanding, even amusement. He knew exactly what was going on and he didn’t seem to mind.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll go.’
As we drove away, I said, ‘I’m sorry about Mum.’
‘No problem.’
But he said nothing else, so eventually I asked, ‘How long more are you in LA for?’
‘Until Tuesday.’
‘Long time. You must miss your wife.’
‘Ah,’ he shrugged easily, ‘you get used to it.’
I didn’t know what next to say, and we maintained silence –not entirely comfortable – until, in an astonishingly short space of time, he was pulling up outside Emily’s, the engine still running.
‘Thanks for the lift.’ I reached for the door handle.
‘You’re welcome.’
I already had the door open when, out of the blue, Shay asked, ‘Do you hate me?’
I was so shocked I gave a funny bark of laughter. ‘Um, no.’ I tried to recover myself. ‘I don’t hate you.’ I couldn’t have told you what I did feel, but it wasn’t hate.
But if we were asking leading questions, I had one that I’d wanted the answer to for years.
‘Do you ever think about him?’
Shay paused for such a long time, I thought he wasn’t going to answer. ‘Sometimes.’
‘He’d be fourteen now.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Nearly the same age as when we first met.’
‘Yeah. Look, Maggie,’ he flashed me a quick smile. ‘I’ve got to go. Early start in the morning.’
‘Even on a Saturday? Tough schedule.’
He was handing me a business card. ‘I’m staying at the Mondrian. Out of office hours,’ he scribbled quickly on the card, ‘you can get me at this number. ‘Night.’
‘’Night.’
Then I was out of the car and standing in the humid, flower-scented night, listening to the screech of his tyres as he drove away.
42
Irang him in the morning, as soon as was civilized. I’d been awake since six, my arm itching like crazy, but made myself wait until five past nine before calling. Shay answered, sounding asleep.
‘It’s Maggie.’
Silence.
‘Garv… Walsh,’ I explained.
‘Oh, hi,’ he laughed. ‘Sorry, I haven’t had any coffee yet, brain not engaged. So, ah, last night was good fun.’
‘Yeah, it was. Listen. Shay–’ I said, at the same time as he said, ‘Look Maggie –’
We managed a laugh and he said, ‘You go first.’
‘OK.’ My blood was pounding in my ears and I plunged into what had to be said. ‘I was wondering… can I see you? Just for an hour or so.’
‘Today’s not so good. Or tonight.’
‘Tomorrow? Tomorrow night?’
‘OK, tomorrow night. Call here around seven.’
‘See you then. Thanks. And what were you going to say to me?’
‘Oh, nothing, doesn’t matter.’
My agitation calmed. I’d see him tomorrow night.
When Emily got up, we went to the supermarket for more supplies (mostly wine). As usual the raggedy man was in the parking lot, and when we abseiled down he yelled, ‘Interior shot. Night. Jill
takes a box from under her bed and opens it. Camera lingers on the gun inside…’
‘Oh my God, Maggie,’ Emily clutched my shoulder. ‘Listen to him.’
‘What?’
‘Can’t you hear it?’ ‘What?’
‘He’s doing a pitch. He’s pitching a movie.’ She was walking over to him and I was hurrying behind.
‘Emily O’Keeffe,’ she stuck her hand out.
‘Raymond Jansson.’ He extended his filthy hand with its long black fingernails and gave her a good firm shake. From a yard away I could smell him.
‘Is that your movie you’re pitching?’
‘Yeah. Starry, Starry Night! His eyes were bright in his smeared face.
‘Has someone picked it up?’
‘Yeah, Paramount, but the producer got fired, then Universal did but they closed that division down, then Working Title came on board but they couldn’t get the financing.’ Suddenly he didn’t seem at all mad, until he said, ‘But I’ve got some meetings set up and I think I’m gonna get another deal real soon.’
‘Good luck with it,’ Emily said, linking me and moving away.
‘Jesus,’ she muttered, tears filling her eyes and overflowing down her cheeks. ‘This is an awful town. Is that what’s going to become of me? Going loopy from disappointment and pitching to the fresh air. That poor man, that poor, poor man.’ She wept all the way through fruit and veg, breakfast cereals, baked goods and dried pasta and didn’t stop until we reached savoury snacks.
Back home, we were unpacking the groceries (mostly wine) when the phone rang.
Automatically I went to answer it and what happened next was like the bit in a film where a child is about to get run over by a car, and the hero flings himself, in tortuous slow motion, into the road and an echoey ‘Nooooooo!’ is heard. Emily threw herself bodily across the room and screamed, ‘Noooo, don’t answer it! I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’ll be Larry the Savage and I need the weekend off.’
But it was another hang-up. ‘Definitely a stalker. I’m a fully fledged LA woman now.’ Emily sounded cheered.
‘We’re wilting in this heat,’ Mum gasped, flinging herself on to Emily’s couch and waving her hand in front of her face.
Anna, Helen and Dad trooped in behind her, their faces pink from the five-minute walk from the hotel.
‘It’s very oppressive,’ Emily agreed. ‘I think we might be due a thunderstorm.’
‘Rain?’ Mum sounded alarmed. ‘Oh God, no.’
‘Sometimes in Los Angeles you can have a thunderstorm without any rain,’ Helen said.
‘Is that a fact?’ Mum asked.
‘No.’
Shopping at the Beverly Centre was on that afternoon’s agenda.
‘Let’s get going.’ Emily jingled her car keys.
‘I’ve been practising my signature.’ Helen flexed her hands. ‘For all the credit-card slips I’ll be signing.’
‘Go fecking easy,’ Dad barked. ‘You’re up to your neck in debt as it is.’
‘I don’t know why you’re coming shopping,’ Mum said to him. ‘You’ll have an awful time.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Oh, but you will,’ Helen promised. ‘D’you know what I’m thinking?’ she asked dreamily. ‘I’m thinking underwear. Lots of revealing, lacy underwear. Half-cup bras and thongs and…’
‘He doesn’t know what a thong is,’ Mum said. ‘To be honest,’ she admitted, ‘neither do I.’
‘Let me explain,’ He len said, and launched into an eager exposition. ‘… no VPL and though everyone says that they’re like bum floss –’
‘Oh, those ones,’ Mum said sourly. ‘I’ve washed plenty of them. When did they stop being g-strings?’
As it happened, the Beverly Centre lift disgorged us not at an underwear shop but at the next best thing – a swimwear shop. In we all tramped, Helen leading, Dad bringing up the reluctant rear.
It was a class act: not just swimming togs, but coordinating wraps, sarongs, overshirts, hats, bags, sandals, sunglasses… Not cheap, mind. The bikinis cost more than the week in the sun they’d be bought for, the changing-rooms were bigger than my bedroom and the shop assistants were those determined, terrier-like helpful ones that you couldn’t fob off by murmuring, ‘Just looking.’ The type that riposte, ‘For what? An all-in-one? We have some great Lisa Bruce pieces that would be perfect on your figure.’ And before you know it, they’re frogmarching you to the changing-room, sixteen wooden hangers belonging to sixteen different pairs of togs clanking in their arms. These women were the type who’d squeeze in the door of the changing-room to get a gawk at you. The sort who’d double-bluff you by saying that one didn’t suit you – so you thought they were honest – just to tell you that the next one (the more costly one, of course) was wonderfully flattering. And if they saw you were in any way unconvinced, they’d call five or six of their fragrant, Twiglet-thin colleagues to press the message home.
I knew this to my cost. There was a boutique in Dublin with the same air, where I’d ended up buying an expensive chiffon skirt – that I’d never once worn – just to get out of the place. And I wouldn’t mind, but I’d only gone in because it had started to rain and I’d no umbrella/hood/hat/nice hair that looked better after it had been drenched in rainwater. I’d have been better off going to the small chemist’s next door and buying thrush ointment (or something else that involved a time-wasting question-and-answer session).
However, despite all of this, I felt an adrenalin rush as soon as we entered the swimshop; everything was so beautiful. Helen, Anna, Emily, Mum and I instantly split up and spread out, alighting on our favourite colours like bees on flowers. Dad hovered by the door, staring at his feet.
Within seconds, I was well on my way to talking myself into a swimsuit-wraparound skirt-visor ensemble, when my attention was caught by an exchange at the cabana-hut-style changing-room. From the number of discarded bikinis and fluttering assistants in evidence, a choosy customer was within.
‘Maria,’ a laden assistant called over the straw door, ‘is the DKNY totally great on you?’
‘Totally great,’ Maria’s disembodied voice said. ‘But my breasts are still too high.’
Too high? All of us out-of-towners ceased our browsing and turned, as one, to exchange what-on-earth? looks. What did she mean, ‘too high’? Too big?
We regrouped in the centre of the room – even Dad – and Helen went to the cabana hut for a gawk. ‘Too high,’ she confirmed on her return. ‘So lifted, her nipples are almost on her shoulders. A halter-neck is her only hope.’
‘Ah here,’ Dad murmured, squinting up from his feet, ‘I think I’ll just go to the pub and have a pint and read the paper.’
‘There aren’t any pubs round here,’ Emily said. ‘Just some strip joints.’
‘Don’t let any of the girls sit with you,’ Anna advised. ‘You’ll be charged for it.’
‘No,’ Mum said firmly. ‘Find a coffee shop, that’s good enough for you.’
‘It’s Saturday night tonight. I’d love a bit of glamour, girls,’ Mum sighed. ‘Where’s a good place to go?’
‘There’s the Bilderberg Room,’ Emily said doubtfully, but I shook my head. I knew where to bring Mum. I’d known it was her sort of place the first (and only) time I’d gone there: the Four Seasons, Beverly Hills.
Dad refused to go. ‘Feck this for a haircut, I’m sick of getting dickied up. I want to watch sport and eat peanuts.’
‘Fine. Stay at home then, we don’t care.’
I needed the horse-hair wax to fix my hair for the Four Seasons, so I picked my way through Emily’s bomb-site bedroom.
‘It’s on the dressing table,’ she said.
But the dressing table was crammed with stuff and when I lifted the wax, I dislodged a heap of photos, which slithered to the floor. ‘Sorry.’ As I gathered them up, I saw that they’d been taken at a party eighteen months before, when Emily had been home. Instantly intrigued – I love looking at photo
s – I shuffled through pictures of Emily and her friends in various states of disarray. One of her winking, another of me and her blowing kisses at the camera – ‘The state of us,’ I held it out to her. ‘And we thought we were gorgeous’ – Emily with Donna, Emily with Sinead. One of me, waving a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, my pink, shiny face and red, Satan eyes happy and carefree; me again, slightly more demure; then a picture of Emily with the cutest man. He had lovely cheekbones and shiny, dark hair flopping over his forehead and he was laughing mischievously into the camera.
‘Christ, who’s he?’ I asked in admiration. ‘He’s yum!’
‘Hahaha,’ Emily deadpanned.
Before she’d even finished, I’d recognized the man – of course I’d recognized him – and I started to shake with reaction. Emily was staring carefully at me. ‘Did you really not know who he was? Or were you joking?’
‘Joking,’ I said. ‘Of course I knew who he was.’
It was Garv.
I was almost afraid to turn to the next photo, because I suspected I knew who it was of – and it was: Garv and me, head-to-head, together and happy. And for a second I could remember what that felt like.
‘Come on, then,’ I said, my heart rate returning to normal. ‘Fix my hair.’
Mum loved the Four Seasons, fingering the swagged curtains and saying with respect, ‘I’d say they didn’t come cheap.’ Next to be admired was the couch. ‘Isn’t it a bee-yoo-tiful shade?’ Then she asked in awe, ‘Would you say those statues are antiques?’
‘Pretty old,’ Helen said. ‘Not as old as you, obviously, but good and old.’
When the waiter came, Emily, Helen, Anna and I ordered Complicated Martinis and urged Mum to have one too. ‘Should I?’ Her eyes were alight at her daring. ‘All right, so. Lord above!’ Her attention had been hooked by a pair of high, enormous breasts, which had walked past attached to a child’s body. ‘She’s very well developed.’
Maybe it was because it was Saturday night, but the breast-implant girls were out in force.