The Dress (30 page)

‘He sent you to come sneaking about the apartment when I wasn't here? Anyway, what did he want with my dress?'

For one glorious moment, Joy imagined Frank had taken it as a memento of her, that finally he had come to understand that The Dress was a testament of her love for him.

‘He said it was the property of Miss Conlon. You were asleep on the settee, at the time. I did not trouble to wake you.'

Joy was speechless with hurt and shame. Stronger than that though was the knowledge that she needed the money embroidered in that garment; needed it to buy drink.

‘I want that dress back, Jones, it is encrusted with my family jewels.'

She could tell that he did not believe her.

‘You'll have to take that up with Mr Fitzpatrick, I'm afraid.'

The scheming bitch, Honor, had her husband and her fortune, now. The dressmaker had pretended she had not known the jewels were real, but she must have had them valued. Honor had won. Without The Dress and its jewels, Joy had no income. Frank was obviously freezing her out until she agreed to give him a divorce. She could fight him, but she had no lawyer, and nothing to pay a lawyer and, in that moment, no heart and no energy for a fight.

‘Jones, would you please go and tell Mr Fitzpatrick that I will give him whatever he wants.' Jones closed his eyes and nodded, and as he stood up she added, ‘I have no lawyer, at present Jones. So would it be possible for you to come back and present Frank's proposal to me yourself?'

She could not even lift herself up from the sofa to see him out. Jones eyes filled up.

‘I won't say it will be a pleasure, ma'am, but it will, as ever, be my honour to serve you.'

*

Frank was not in a generous mood when his butler relayed his conversation with Joy. She was bluffing, he was sure, and had her own fortune hidden away. However, he needed the divorce to go through quickly. He was surprised when Jones engaged him in a polite, but nonetheless firm negotiation, after which he agreed to give Joy a modest, liveable income, in exchange for her agreeing to sign the papers immediately.

Jones returned the following week to find Joy in an even worse state than the one he left her in. She was shaking so badly that he had to hold her hand steady while she signed the papers. In them she agreed to move from Fifth Avenue into an apartment in one of Frank's brownstones and live on a modest monthly income. It would be enough to keep her in drink, cigarettes and food and would cover the rent for the apartment, including utility bills.

Jones took a week's annual holiday, during which he secretly packed up all of Joy's things. While his mistress lay virtually unconscious, paralyzed with drink and grief, on her beloved Eames settee, Jones took all her personal belongings and moved his mistress into her new home – a small, but clean apartment in Midtown, or ‘Social Siberia' as she would have called it in her heyday.

He left her sitting at a Formica-topped table with a bottle of whisky in front of her. It was all he could do to stop himself from staying there and looking after her, forever.

The day Frank Fitzpatrick married Honor Conlon was the happiest day of his life.

He flew her parents, John and Claire, over from Ireland and put them up in a suite at the Plaza a few days beforehand. Frank felt good that he had brought the family together and was thrilled by the look of sheer joy on Honor's face at being reunited with her parents.

She had been continually anxious, during the pregnancy, even though he had done everything in his power to reassure her that once they were married everything would fall into place. Honor was unhappy – about the pregnancy, about their betrayal of Joy – there was no getting away from it.

Frank knew Honor had no interest in money; it was one of the things that he loved about her. She had no desire for trinkets, or fancy furniture, or showing herself off around town in couture clothes. However, there were other ways in which money could buy happiness, and flying her parents in from Ireland, for the wedding, was one of them.

Honor had not wanted her parents to know about Frank, and she had told him that.

‘This has been such a shock,' she said. ‘I need time to think about all of this.'

Frank knew better. There was nothing to think about. It wasn't ideal that she was pregnant before they got married, but at least it had pushed things forward, to their inevitable end. Frank had become a success in life by seizing opportunities, by pushing things through. Honor was talented, creative, and ambitious and Frank admired all those things but, at the end of the day, she was a woman and women liked to sit around and ponder life. Men made things happen.

So, without consulting Honor, Frank had contacted John and Clare Conlon and told them of their plight. He and Honor were in love. He was divorced and she was pregnant, so it wasn't ideal. However, he loved their daughter very, very much. He was from Bangor himself; they might remember him as Francis Fitzpatrick. He had made good on his ambitions in America and was now a man of substantial means. He would welcome the opportunity to make good on his past behaviour towards their family and it was his intention to look after their daughter and grandchild, in great style. He had not told Honor about his plans, because of her delicate condition. The doctors were concerned, lest as an older first-time mother at almost twenty-five, she be caused undue stress.

‘It would be a pleasant surprise,' he told the Conlons, ‘for her to see you.' Then he thought and added, ‘As it will also be a pleasure for me to pay you back, for the kindness you showed me as a boy.'

He enclosed tickets and details of how they could contact his secretary, who would iron out any problems. A week later he got a short acceptance note, cursory and impersonal but then, Frank reasoned, it was a lot to take in.

He only told Honor on the morning they were due to arrive and although she was furious at first, by the time they got into the car, she was excited by the thought of seeing them.

Frank knew then that he had been right to take control.

The Conlons looked older than he had remembered, and smaller. Frank felt an old familiar love, as he saw the bearded schoolteacher in his shabby corduroy jacket and his wife, in her simple woollen coat, come through the arrival gate. On seeing Honor, they both rushed immediately to greet her, with tearful embraces.

Frank was disappointed that John greeted him with no more than a handshake and a formal thanks, and even Clare, although she made more of an effort to smile at him, seemed aloof. He reasoned that they were obviously still in shock. After all, their only daughter had become pregnant by a married man and, even though he had left his wife to be with her, he was still a divorcee – a sinner. In time, they would surely come to understand the terrible suffering he had endured in his marriage and the deep gratitude he felt for their daughter in saving him. They would come to accept him as a son.

The wedding itself was to be small, no fuss – that was what Honor wanted. While Frank was ready to shout their love from the rooftops and to hell with the pre-emptive pregnancy and Joy, he didn't really care how they got married, as long as this woman pledged to spend the rest of her life with him.

The only guests, aside from the Conlons, were Breton, Colette and Frank's secretary, Nina, whom Frank had leaned on heavily during the last few months. Nina ran the office, kept Joy off the switchboard and even made sure that Honor went to her doctor's appointments.

‘Frank loves you,' she kept saying to Honor. ‘He wants to look after you.'

Honor heard a tone of reassurance in her voice. Nina probably knew Frank better than anyone else, and understood too, perhaps, that he could be controlling sometimes.

‘He just wants what's best,' she said to Honor. ‘Go with it, he's a good man. You're lucky.'

‘I know,' Honor always said. ‘I love him very much.'

Nina wondered, sometimes, from the way Honor looked at her, if that could really be true. There had been so much hurt, so much pain and confusion, so much drama around their meeting. Nina knew Honor was no gold-digger but at the same time, she didn't seem like Frank's type. Her boss liked to be in control and Nina could tell that Honor, although she seemed mild-mannered, was a career woman, which had to mean she was feisty. Joy had a mouth on her and she liked to drink, but she was always compliant with Frank's wishes. Joy was a trophy wife and Frank liked his trophies. Honor was the opposite of that and Nina, who was fond of Frank, worried sometimes, about how it might all pan out with this rushed second marriage.

They got married in City Hall. Honor wore a simple cream dress which Colette had run up for her a few days beforehand, and carried a specially commissioned bouquet of Irish wildflowers, that it had taken Nina half a working day to source from the best florist in New York, on Frank's instructions. Frank wore his collar open and a corsage of cornflowers, a plant he himself remembered, from growing up in the bogs of Bangor Erris, Mayo.

John and Clare Conlon did not notice or appreciate these touches, designed to impress them, but remained somewhat distant towards him, even after the register was signed and they were back at the Plaza for their wedding lunch.

Honor, however, was overjoyed her parents were there and, as they were seated at their table in the Palm Lounge, she took Frank's hand under the table and whispered, ‘Thank you,' to him.

Breton and Colette were charmed by the Irish guests and sat between John and Clare, flirting with them.

‘I can see where sweet Honor gets her pale, exotic beauty from,' Breton murmured to plain-faced Clare.

‘But my own father was a schoolteacher, in Provence,' said Colette, coquettishly, to a delighted John.

Meanwhile, Nina was ordering champagne from their waiter, making sure he understood that, although their wedding party was small and being held as a low key affair, in the public restaurant, their host, Frank Fitzpatrick, was nonetheless a hugely important man.

‘So, Frank, you married your whore!'

Frank nearly jumped out of his skin. It was Joy.

‘Surprise! Hey, Honor, sorry I didn't
formally
reply to the invite...'

Frank stood up suddenly, knocking over a glass of water, but Nina held his arm, reminding him not to act hastily.

‘Glad to see you're not getting married in the dress that you stole from me.'

Clare Conlon flinched and reached over to her daughter, who was crying out, ‘Joy, please, I'm sorry...'

‘Ah, she's sorry,' she said, her voice a hiss of sarcasm, ‘but not too sorry to steal my husband and my
fucking fortune, you whore!
'

Nina had to run to get the waiter and two large doormen who easily lifted Joy up and removed her, still spitting, cat-like, from the room.

Clare moved to sit next to her distraught, weeping daughter, while Frank followed the doormen and Joy out, his back stiff with rage. He returned a few moments later and apologized, with the kind of formality that implied he would never, ever recover from the humiliation he had just experienced. He could not even look at John Conlon. Well, at least his in-laws now knew what sort of a woman he had left for their daughter. In fact, he thought, while Joy had done her best to ruin their day, perhaps she had done him a favour, in showing his new family what a dreadful woman he had been married to. Maybe they would have more sympathy, now, for his loving of their daughter.

‘What is an Irish wedding without drunkenness?' said Breton, lightening the mood.

‘Joy always was a bit of a handful,' said Colette, to John Conlon, and then, ‘So how do you celebrate weddings in Ireland?'

‘Actually, by getting extremely drunk,' said John.

‘Speaking of which,' Nina announced, ‘here comes the champagne!'

They drank and laughed for the rest of the afternoon. Honor was shaken but after lobster, a large steak and plenty of champagne, she felt encouraged to put Joy's outburst aside. Having her parents there, Frank saw that his new wife seemed as happy as she had been the fateful first night, when they had met in Frank's redstone.

They were staying in a suite at the Plaza, until Frank found a new home, one suitable for all three of them. They made gentle, careful love, then, while Honor was sleeping, Frank stood and looked out over the city. He lit a cigar and thought how, despite everything, this, indeed, had been the happiest day of his life so far. His life had come full circle. At last he could look back, without fear, on his past, on his childhood, knowing that life had dealt him this strange second chance, by putting him in touch with the Conlons. Honor was his saviour and the giver of this new life, his legacy. His boyhood dreams of being part of a strong, stable family were finally coming to fruition and nothing was more important than that.

When he had smoked his Cohiba, Frank returned to the bedroom, planning to look at his new wife while she was sleeping, when he saw that the bathroom door was open and the light on. He moved towards it, hearing a strange muffled noise.

‘Honor,' he called out.

When he opened the door, he saw his new wife lying on the bathroom floor, crying softly, her white silk robe covered in the sticky scarlet carnage of her own blood.

*

‘You rest now, Mrs Fitzpatrick,' were the last words Honor had heard, as her new husband softly stroked her face.

She had been very shaken up by Joy's appearance at the wedding lunch, but gradually, with the help of her parents' reassurance and Frank's kindness, she had shaken off the terrible feelings of guilt and pain that contact with Joy brought up in her. She fell asleep, with the soft happy feeling that things were as they should be. A short while later, she woke, with a terrible pain searing through her abdomen, something pressing against her bowel, and she ran to the bathroom, all the time fearing, knowing, praying for it not to be...

‘Dear God,' she said, ‘dear God, don't let this happen – don't take my baby.'