Yesterday's Weather

Grove Press

Contents

Until the Girl Died.........................................1Yesterday's Weather.........................................13Wife........................................................25Caravan.....................................................33The Cruise..................................................45Natalie.....................................................53Here's to Love..............................................65Honey.......................................................77Switzerland.................................................89What You Want...............................................101The Bad Sex Weekend.........................................111Della.......................................................121Green.......................................................131Shaft.......................................................139In the Bed Department.......................................147Little Sister...............................................157Pillow......................................................169Pale Hands I Loved, Beside the Shalimar.....................181Taking Pictures.............................................193The House of the Architect's Love Story.....................203Men and Angels..............................................211(She Owns) Every Thing......................................221The Portable Virgin.........................................227Indifference................................................235Historical Letters..........................................245Luck Be a Lady..............................................251Revenge.....................................................261What Are Cicadas?...........................................269Mr Snip Snip Snip...........................................277Seascape....................................................285Felix.......................................................293

Chapter One

Well, what was that to me? The girl died. And it was nothing to do with us, with either of us. She died the stupid way that people do - in a car crash, in Italy. Where, presumably, she was driving on the wrong side of the road.

Silly twit.

If the girl had not died then she would not have mattered in the slightest. She would have been a lapse; my husband is prone to lapses - less often of late, but yes, once every couple of years he does lapse, after the office party say, or travelling on business. I don't think he visits prostitutes - I mean, some men do, some men must. Or quite a lot of men must, actually - but my husband doesn't. And I know, I know, I would say that, but ...

I've thought about this a lot over the years; things catch my eye in articles, in magazines. I have wondered, What makes them go and what makes them stay, what do they want, men? It's the great mystery, isn't it? What men 'want.' And the damage they might do to get it.

The things you read in the papers.

'Oh, sure they're all the same.' Isn't that what your mother used to say? 'They're all the same.'

But they're not. They have their reasons and they have their limits. They have hearts, too. And I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that my husband is not the kind of man to buy sex in the street. He likes intimacy. That is what he craves. My husband is the kind of man who will always look you in the eye. He loves women - even older ones. He loves to talk to them, and make them feel good, and he loves to kiss them, and be a little dangerous; he loves the melancholy of all that, it makes him feel so young. And he also loves me.

He is not a bastard, that is what I am saying. I am saying that he is a fantastic man. My husband is a fantastic man. And until the girl died, beetling along in her little Renault Clio on the wrong side of a road in Tuscany, until the girl died, that was enough for me. To be married to a fantastic man who loved me, and was prone, once in a long while, to a little lapse and a lot of Catholic guilt about it. Oh, the bloody bunch of flowers and the new coat in Richard Alan's sale. Isn't it worth it? I used to say. Isn't it bloody worth it for a trip to Brown Thomas's and a long weekend with the kids, all of us together in Ballybunion, walking the winter beach, a couple of bottles of wine and more conjugal antics than is decent at our age, with my wonderful husband, home again after his little lapse; some overambitious young one who will Shortly. Be. Fired. Thank you darling and, no, I know you will never do it again.

But actually I hated it. It was like living on a page of some horrible Sunday newspaper. Horrible people. Horrible people with their horrible sex lives and their horrible money.

No.

He works hard, my husband. And I have always been a great asset to him. And we are ordinary people. And I am proud of that too.

Ke ... I can't say his name. Isn't that funny?

It is quite an ordinary name, I say it fifteen times a day. Mind you, he never calls me anything back. Isn't that the way of it? What do men call their wives. 'Em ...' Like every woman on the planet was christened Emily.

'Em ... is that shirt clean?'

The girl was called - listen to this - Samantha.

Not that I knew this at the time. Not that I knew anything at the time.

And she was only called 'Samantha' because she died. If it hadn't been for the car crash she would have been, and always remained, that young one in IT, or even that slapper over in IT. O'Connell Street might be full of slappers, but if one of them slaps off, pissed, in her mini skirt and high heels, and gets herself run over, then she's - what? - she's a fine young woman, who liked to wear white.

I'm sorry.

But.

The poor child, who thought it was a laugh to sleep with my husband - and it is a laugh, God knows I have laughed enough myself - the poor child, who thought it was a laugh to sleep with the father of my three children, did something worse than all that. She went and died on him too. She went and died on us all.

Of course, I didn't have a clue.

He came home - when I think about it, it must have been the day he'd heard the news - and he sat in the sofa, and for the first time since his mother's funeral, I saw him cry. The children saw him cry. I had no idea what he was crying for. I felt like calling an ambulance. Then I put two and two together and realised he must be lapsing again, he must be midlapse. And I panicked.

I know that. I did panic. And it's not like me. He lifted his head to speak to me and I said,

'I don't want to know.' That was all. 'I don't want to know.' And I said it really fast, like I was talking off the record, here. Like what was happening was not actually happening. Or he'd better make bloody sure it wasn't happening because I wasn't having the mess of it all over my beautiful, hard-won house. And he pushed his face around to clear away the tears - not hot tears, not outraged, grief-stricken tears, just that leaky, worn-out water you find on your face sometimes, when you are sick or defeated - he wiped the tears away and then he just sat.

My fantastic man.

The first time it happened, at a guess, was when the children were small. I was up to my tonsils in nappies and mayhem, falling asleep before my head hit the pillow, fat as a fool. Anyway. They feel 'excluded', fathers; isn't that what the articles say? They have the weight of the world on their shoulders, and after...