Foreign Affairs (9 page)

‘I wanted to get my hair done today.’ She ran her hand through brown curls that were beginning to show faint traces of grey.

‘Wash it when you’re ready and I’ll set it for you,’ Helen offered.

Maura brightened. ‘Thanks, Helen, sure that’s as good as going to the hairdresser. I’m really glad you’re able to spend Christmas with us. It’s a big treat for us
and Paula’s in the seventh heaven because her favourite aunt is here.’

‘It’s a real treat for me too, Maura. A real treat and thanks for having me. You and Pete. I’m lucky to have you.’ Helen got up from her little seat and leaned across and
hugged her sister.

Maura hugged her back tightly. Helen and she had always been close. It was a closeness that had sustained her all her life. ‘You’re a great sister, Helen.’ She smiled, giving
Helen a squeeze. ‘You’re so good to my children and they all adore you. I hope this will be one of your best Christmases ever.’

Helen lay wide-eyed, watching the magnificence of Pete’s Christmas tree with pleasure. In a minute she would hop out of bed and switch off the lights. But it was so
delightful to lie in her comfortably made up bed toasting her feet against the hot-water bottle that Maura had filled for her. It reminded her of childhood Christmases, being in this room with the
garlands lacing the ceiling and the rich red and green holly adorning the pictures on the walls. Maura’s shining old-fashioned candlesticks held two red candles on the mantelpiece and between
them Christmas cards lay along the top, giving it a most festive air.

Helen sighed. She hadn’t bothered to decorate her home in Dublin this year. It just hadn’t seemed worth it. Anthony was going to his mother for Christmas and she had made the
spur-of-the-moment decision to go to Maura and Pete’s. To hell with it, she’d thought. After spending Christmas with the Matthews, it would only be an anticlimax coming home to her
silent elegant house.

She wondered how her husband was getting on. Poor Anthony, he’d felt so bad about spending Christmas with his mother and leaving her. But there was no point in her going with him.
Stephanie Larkin couldn’t stand Helen and had never given an inch from the moment she had married her son. In her eyes Helen was not of the same social class as the affluent Larkins, and
never would be. She was an intruder who had wormed her way in. Stephanie always referred to her, in the most disparaging of tones, as ‘the country girl.’

Helen had made a tremendous effort for her husband’s sake, enduring the snubs and rebuffs and downright rudeness of her mother-in-law.

Anthony had rebuked his mother sternly, several times, because of her treatment of Helen but this had only increased her antipathy towards her only son’s wife. In the end Helen had called
a halt and told her husband that she was no longer going to visit Stephanie and that he could go alone. He had to agree that it was the best solution. Mrs Larkin was delighted to have her son to
herself and told the rest of the family that ‘that awful country girl couldn’t even be bothered to visit her mother-in-law.’

Stephanie lived with a housekeeper in a big house in Dalkey and Anthony visited her twice a week, on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings. About two weeks before Christmas she got a bad dose
of flu and convinced herself and everyone else that she was dying. She pleaded with Anthony to come and spend Christmas with her, just this once, as she was sure it was to be her last. When he
suggested that she come and spend it with him and Helen, she recoiled as though he had struck her.

‘I’ll not go where I’m not wanted and that wife of yours doesn’t want me in your house. I’ll stay here with Vera where I’m not a nuisance to anyone. Thank you
very much!’ Anthony was fit to be tied.

‘I don’t mind having her, honestly, Anthony,’ Helen assured her husband, lying through her teeth.

‘I know you don’t, darling, and I really appreciate it. But you know my mother.’

Only too well, Helen thought grimly. In the end, seeing how troubled he was and knowing the pressure Stephanie was bringing to bear, she told him to go to his mother’s for Christmas. That
way neither of them could ever reproach themselves in the unlikely event of Stephanie’s sudden demise.

‘I can’t leave you on your own for Christmas,’ Anthony announced but she felt it was only for form’s sake. Anything for a quiet life was Anthony’s motto. Her
husband was not a man to wear his heart on his sleeve or be overly demonstrative. He loved her in his own quiet way. And she supposed she loved him too. Although there were times she cast an
envious eye on Maura and Pete’s marriage, envying them their spontaneity and fun and earthy lust for each other.

She was nineteen when she met Anthony. She had been staying with a schoolfriend who was living in Dublin and they had gone to a dance in the local tennis club. Because it was all so new and
exciting and sophisticated, Helen had a ball. She was exceptionally pretty and vivacious and she did not lack for partners. A tall dark-haired man smiled in her direction and she smiled back. He
was a good deal older than she was. In his late twenties at least.

‘Who is he?’ she nudged her friend Breda.

‘That’s Anthony Larkin, isn’t he gorgeous? People say he’s stuck-up but I think he’s just shy. He’s a stockbroker.’

‘Is he going with anyone?’

Breda giggled. ‘I don’t think so. Do you fancy him?’

‘Of course not. I don’t know him. He just smiled at me, that’s all. It’s probably because I’m a new face in the crowd.’

‘It would be just typical of you to come up to Dublin and swipe the most eligible bachelor in the club right from under our noses.’ Breda grinned.

‘Fat chance,’ laughed Helen.

But he did ask her to dance. The last dance. And he asked to see her home. Breda’s eyes were out on stalks. ‘Told you,’ she whispered as they queued for the ladies just before
leaving.

‘Give over, Breda, do I look all right?’ Now that he had asked her she was beginning to feel a bit nervous. What on earth would she talk to a stockbroker about?

Helen smiled to herself in the half-dark remembering that first date. Anthony had been more nervous than she was and it was she who did most of the talking, telling him about her family and her
job as a clerk in a shipping office in Waterford. For the rest of her holiday he squired her around Dublin. And brought her to concerts and the theatre and art galleries and restaurants. Going back
to St Margaret’s Bay a week later, Helen knew she would never settle there again. She wanted to live in Dublin. Wanted to be part of the buzz and excitement of the capital. She began to apply
for positions advertised in the national papers and, after several interviews, landed a job in a big insurance company.

Her parents had not been too happy when she told them she was moving up to Dublin. Her father went so far as to forbid it but she went, too restless and bored to stay in her home village any
longer. Her father got over his daughter’s defiance of him, eventually, and she was glad of that because they were a close family and it wasn’t nice having bad feelings between
them.

Helen took to life in the city with gusto. Before long she met Anthony again at another tennis club dance which she went to with Breda, with whom she was now sharing a flat. He had been so
pleased to see her, much to her delight and surprise. She never expected someone as cosmopolitan and urbane as Anthony to be interested in someone as unsophisticated as she was. But he
was
interested. He found her very easy to relate to. Less than a year later they were married, much to his mother’s chagrin.

Helen stretched out her limbs in the bed and gave a deep sigh. She supposed as marriages went they were happy. It was always the same, though, when she came back to St Margaret’s Bay and
saw how close Maura and Pete were, the fun they had, and the joy they got from their young family. These visits always left her feeling vaguely dissatisfied.

She had a very good life in Dublin. She had plenty of friends. She did a lot of entertaining and was in turn entertained. They travelled regularly. Went skiing every February. She had a husband
who appreciated her, a beautiful home. Everything . . . except a child of her own. It was her greatest grief. The doctors had told her they could find nothing wrong with her and so she had
tentatively suggested her husband go for tests. He freaked out and told her angrily that there was absolutely nothing wrong with him, going for tests was out of the question. She begged him over
and over to go to be tested and he always stubbornly refused. He wouldn’t consider adoption either and it was causing enormous tension between them. He was like a bloody ostrich with his head
in the sand, refusing to face the fact that their childlessness might be his fault. There were times when Helen felt that she hated her husband for putting her through this misery and expecting her
to take the blame for it in the eyes of their families and friends.

When Anthony said he couldn’t leave her alone for Christmas, she instantly thought of Maura and her family. She actually felt glad that he had given her an excuse to get away. What a joy
it would be to share her darling Paula’s excitement. How she loved that child. The exquisite perfection of her. Those beautiful big blue eyes, that soft golden hair. From the moment she had
picked her up out of that wicker basket when she was only a day old, Helen felt for that baby as deeply as she would feel for a child of her own. That feeling had grown stronger over the years. Her
biggest joy was to have her precious niece stay for a few days with her in Dublin. It wasn’t that she didn’t love the others. She did, of course. How could she not? But Paula was
precious, her little darling.

Maura had let her fill her stocking tonight. She couldn’t describe the happiness she felt as she watched her beautiful niece fast asleep, one hand tucked under her face, her little cheeks
rosy in the torchlight. She’d filled that stocking with all the goodies Maura handed her and vowed to herself that as long as she was alive Paula would have everything her dear little heart
desired.

Drowsily, Helen remembered the Christmas tree lights and slid reluctantly out of bed to switch them off. She was tired, but very happy. Maura had said she hoped it would be one of her best
Christmases ever. Well it looked as if it was going to be just that.

Chapter Seven

Paula lay very still in the dark. Her heart was thumping so loudly she could hear the rush of blood in her ears. Slowly, cautiously, she stretched down her left foot. Yes! Yes!
there was something there all right. Something hard and deliciously heavy on top of her toes. Something that felt like a box or a parcel. Her eyes widened. She could hear Joseph shouting something
in the other room. Something about Santa. She wriggled her toes again. After all the waiting and wondering, the morning had finally arrived. Santa Claus had left something for her on the end of her
bed. Paula savoured the moment, knowing that it would be another three hundred and sixty-five days before it could happen again. She felt Rebecca stir beside her in the double bed.

‘Santa’s come,’ she whispered, still too scared to get up and find out what he had brought her. He could still be in the house for all she knew. Paula was sure she could hear
the reindeer’s bells tinkling on the roof. Rebecca shot up in the bed, and in the white beam of the lighthouse, Paula thought she looked like a scarecrow with all her hair sticking up on her
head.

Then Joseph and John exploded through the door, waving their bulging stockings and yelling, ‘What did you get?’

‘Did he come to everyone?’

‘Ya should see Thomas’s train set. Daddy is getting up to play with it. He’s coming to see what ya got. Wake up, wake up.’ Joseph was hopping up and down, his
cow’s-lick sticking out even more than usual, as he delved into his stocking and pulled out three bright shiny pennies. ‘I’m going to buy trillions of sweets,’ he declared.
‘See did you get some, Paula. Quick, look.’ John tried to say something but his cheeks were bulging with toffees and he couldn’t speak.

Rebecca leaned down the bed, yanked up her stocking and pulled up the big box that lay against her side. Paula reached down tentatively and poked the box which was lying on her toes. It felt
very mysterious. Slowly she got out of bed and walked down to the bedpost where her stocking was. Last night when she had hung it up, it had been limp and empty. Now it was full to the brim. Her
little hands traced the outline. Down in the toe there was something round. Along the middle something rustling. Something soft up near the top. Her blue eyes wide with wonder and excitement, she
pulled out a shiny tin with ladies in long dresses on the lid. She opened it and saw that it was full of toffees, all wrapped in papers of different colours. A tin of sweets! All for herself. What
luxury. Two red and white balloons fell out. Her daddy would blow them up for her. A white lacy handkerchief came next and then a packet of crayons and a colouring book. Another book fell out and
Paula gave a squeal of pleasure. It was a cut-out doll book with different outfits. Emily Leahy had one and would never share it. Paula could only sit and watch her playing at dressing up her
dolls. Now she had one for herself.

She delved deeper and pulled out an apple, and right down in the toe, a little orange, and then she heard the clink of coins and triumphantly curled her fingers around her shiny pennies.

‘What else did he bring?’ Paula heard her daddy ask. He was standing at the door with her mother and they were smiling in at the scenes of delighted discovery. In her excitement
Paula had forgotten her big box. Rebecca and Louise had already opened theirs and Louise was parading around with her shiny boots on her bare feet under her nightdress. She had got a matching
shoulder bag as well and she thought she was the bee’s knees. Rebecca was entranced with her easel and painting-by-numbers kit and couldn’t wait to get started on a picture.

‘Open up your present, Paula,’ she heard her mother say and, suddenly brave, she tore at the wrappings on the rectangular box. Eyes wide, she discovered a white apron with a red
cross on the front of it, a navy cloak, white armbands and a white nurse’s hat. In a separate section there was a stethoscope, thermometer, nurse’s watch and a notebook and pen. Paula
was ecstatic. She loved nurses and what fun she was going to have pretending to be one.