Читать книгу The Book of Love - Fionnuala Kearney - Страница 8

THEN – December 1996

‘Because without love, you’re screwed,’ Seamus Fitzpatrick, Fitz, to his friends and audience, announced.

Erin felt Dom squeeze her hand, followed his nervous glance across the table. Seeing her new mother-in-law’s pinched lips, she looked away and focused instead on a wet ring mark on the paper tablecloth.

‘We’ve another way of saying that in Ireland, you know, “screwed”, but when in Rome and all that.’ Fitz laughed; a soft, uneasy sound.

Oh God, thought Erin. Please don’t swear. Sit down now, Dad. Sit. Please.

She swallowed hard as his voice filled the small room. It was a private space at the back of the King’s Arms located right across the street from the registry office. It wasn’t the sort of place she’d imagined her wedding might be. Like almost every small girl, she had, once upon a time, pictured herself in an elegant gown saying her vows in a quaint village chapel. At a grand reception, there would have been a feast followed by a practised first waltz by the bride and groom to ‘their song’.

A room in a pub, slightly sticky underfoot, with smoke-scented flock wallpaper, worn velvet seating, loops of stringy tinsel and Christmas lights with missing bulbs had never been part of the dream. And she and Dom hadn’t known one another long enough yet to have ‘a song’. Erin rubbed her hand over her belly as a familiar anxiety began to gnaw. They’d known each other long enough to create the human being that danced inside her, but not long enough to have a song. It was only Dom’s hand on hers that calmed her doubts, reminding her that she had got the most important thing right. Dominic Carter was a prince among men.

‘See, without love,’ her father continued, ‘you’re just two people roaming through life, wandering around in a valley of … a valley of tears.’

Resisting the urge to pull on his sleeve, instead she prayed to her mother. Make him sit down, Mam, please.

‘So, it does fill me with joy …’

She looked up and her face crumpled as Fitz started to cry.

‘It fills me with joy,’ he sniffed, ‘to see that you two really do love each other, so bear with me while I say,’ he peeked at her and Dom over the rim of his oval, steel-rimmed spectacles, ‘keep hold of that love and you’ll be grand.’

Erin’s mouth twitched as she attempted a smile.

‘Finally, let’s raise a glass to the bride and groom. I wish you both health and happiness and family that will love and anchor you.’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ she touched his arm, his new, but ill-fitting, suit as he sat down.

‘Your mam would have been so proud of you today,’ he smiled.

‘Thanks, Dad,’ Erin repeated and stared at her bump. There had been no way or no gown to hide it and everyone who was there knew anyway.

‘Was it alright?’ Fitz asked.

She told her father that his speech had been perfect as she, once again, looked across the circular table towards her in-laws. Sophie was scooping imaginary crumbs from the table. Gerard smiled, gave a small nod in her direction.

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have—’ Her father leaned into her as he drained his glass. She crooked an arm around his neck and kissed his cheek.

‘I told you, Dad, it was really perfect. Thank you.’

Three round tables of ten people squeezed into the room created the background noise that she and Dom needed. ‘You wanna get out of here?’ her husband whispered.

‘You know we can’t.’ She felt his sigh in her ear and shivered. There was nothing she wanted more than to get back to the flat and curl up in bed with this man and their bump.

‘Okay, we’ll stay a bit longer,’ he agreed. ‘But no one really expects us to hang around drinking, love.’

‘Let’s circulate, give it another half hour,’ she said. Pulling herself to a standing position, she dismissed thoughts of the absent music and first dance, reminded herself to be grateful to Dom for putting this together so quickly – on his own, without much help from her or anyone. ‘I’m going for a quick pee,’ she whispered before heading to the back of the function room towards the corridor and the loos. Just as she was about to turn the corner, a voice she recognised stopped her in her tracks.

‘She’s shameless.’

Erin’s hand automatically protected her stomach. Every nerve ending in her body told her to turn around; that she had no business listening, but her feet had rooted to the tacky carpet.

‘You’re tired. We’ll go soon.’

‘Gerard, do not patronise me! I’m not tired. I simply can’t stand the girl.’

‘That “girl”, as you call her, is carrying our grandchild. Keep your bloody voice down.’

Erin backed herself up against the wall. She tried to edge each vertebra, one by one against it, suddenly caring little for the off-white dress she had carefully chosen in a small vintage shop near Putney. Closing her eyes, she willed herself invisible.

‘Is she?’ Sophie hissed. ‘We don’t know that, do we, and he’s too besotted to care!’

‘Stop!’ her husband snapped. ‘You want to go, we’ll go, but this is not the time or the place for a scene.’

She should walk on up there, Erin told herself. Just walk on up that narrow, dirt-brown corridor, make her way slowly past them, brandishing her bump between them. She should smile sweetly at her mother-in-law, and widen her grateful eyes at Gerard, the man who thankfully seemed to have donated most of Dom’s character. Erin knew what she should do but, instead, she pleaded with her bladder and backed into the room to mingle with their friends as best she could.

‘You look angelic,’ Lydia whispered.

‘Divine,’ Hannah agreed.

‘Well, I would,’ Nigel, Dom’s best man grinned. ‘Seriously, there’s something very sexy about pregnant women.’

And with one eye on Sophie emerging from the corridor, Erin laughed.

Later, as they were leaving, everyone made a guard of honour to an out of tune ‘Here Comes the Bride’. It was only as Dom steered her underneath, past Fitz and her brother Rob, that Erin saw Sophie waiting at the very end. She would be waiting to whisper that he’d always have a home if he changed his mind. Erin stooped low. Dom was not going to change his mind. Dom loved her. He hadn’t stopped smiling since she’d told him about the baby. And even though she had never asked it or expected it of him, Dom had asked her to marry him within days of the news. Dom had married her. Because he loved her.

He pulled her through the arch and as she stood, she leaned into Gerard’s kiss, matched her mother-in-law’s air kiss, and gripped her new husband’s hand. At the door, she was pulled into another hug as Dom tried to help her with her coat.

‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ Lydia squeezed hard. ‘Get some sleep.’

Erin nodded. It had been a long day, but she hugged her sister-in-law back.

‘Look after that brother of mine.’ Lydia smiled. ‘He’s the only one I’ve got.’

Erin nodded, pulled Hannah, her other bridesmaid, into the hug and scanned the room until her eyes rested on Fitz and Rob, who, hating goodbyes, had moved away from the door. When her father placed his fingers on his lips and blew her a kiss, and her only brother winked, Erin nodded and fought back tears.

Nigel handed Dom the car keys and smiled at Erin. ‘It’s outside and all warmed up for you, love.’

‘Thanks, Nigel,’ she whispered. Sometimes it was the small acts of kindness from people that made her fill up. She looked at Sophie, who was wringing her hands. And sometimes, she thought, it was cutting words that did it. Against all her better instincts, she turned back to her mother-in-law and whispered. ‘I love your son and he will always know that. Always.’

Her response was the tiniest nod, a minute jerk of the woman’s disapproving head, a cold but noticeable acknowledgement.

In the car, they both shivered. Dom reached over and rubbed her arms with his hands. ‘Who the hell gets married in December?’ he asked, laughing. ‘Right, let’s get you home to bed.’

She closed her eyes briefly, wanting to commit that moment to memory – his desire to keep her warm, to get her back safely. At twenty-seven, Dom’s wedding night should have involved honeymoon sex, lots of it. Part of her felt she should apologise – not just for the lack of wedding night love-making but the whole thing. The whole ‘meet a girl and within seven months find out she’s pregnant and five months later marry her’ thing. Whirlwind didn’t cover it.

He placed a hand inside her coat and squeezed her knee, bare but for the flesh-coloured tights she’d worn with her short, fitted, lace dress. ‘Never more,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘How did you know what I was going to ask?’

‘Because I can read your mind. Plus you ask me every night if I’m happy.’

She stared out the window at the shadows of the icy fir trees that lined the edge of the street. ‘Just making sure …’

‘Erin?’

‘Uh-huh?’ She leaned forward towards the heated air coming from the front vents.

‘Promise me something?’

‘Anything.’

‘Believe that I’m happy. I wouldn’t be here with you, with you both, unless I wanted to be. So, after today, no more making sure, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise not to ask you if you’re happy again, unless I’m really unsure for a very good reason.’

Dom shook his head. ‘Negotiating already! Christ, what have I done?’

Minutes later he pulled the car to a stop just outside the building they lived in. ‘Thank you, parking fairies,’ Erin whispered. 27 Hawthorn Avenue had, in Victorian times, been home to single families; gentile people whom Erin often imagined roaming through the rooms. Today, the building was divided into three flats and she and Dom lived in the high-ceilinged rooms of the ground floor, giving them access to their own private garden. Despite having Gerard and Sophie Carter as landlords, Erin loved living there; loved the original ornate cornice and ceiling roses, loved the stone fireplace in the living room, the picture rail in their bedroom, and the groaning wooden floors with years of story in every creak. Having come from a sixties-built, two-up two-down that her parents had mortgaged to buy from the local council, Erin loved the fact that she could feel the history in this house.

‘Right,’ he said, putting an arm around her and locking the car with the remote. ‘How are we going to do this?’ he asked as they neared the main front door. ‘Is this the threshold or is it the door to the flat?’

‘Dom, no, it’s too awkward, I’m too—’

Before she could finish the sentence, he handed her the keys and scooped her up into his arms, carrying her with one arm under her back and the other under her knees. She opened the door laughing. ‘That’s enough!’ she cried.

‘No! We have to do the other one too. Just in case. It might be bad luck!’

After entering the flat, Erin was lowered to the floor. And as Dom feigned an injured back, rolling on the hard, varnished wooden planks, his hand hitting against their three-foot plastic tree with its red and green baubles, her own hand rested on the moving child. Their baby was laughing too.

It was, according to things she’d read on the subject, nature’s way of preparing her but Erin was tired of being tired, of not being able to sleep at night and having to snatch catch-up naps during the day. She shook the kettle on top of the Aga and moved it to the centre of the heat, careful to stand there as it came to the boil; the thing had a high-pitched whistle and she didn’t want to wake Dom.

As she stirred a camomile teabag in a large mug, she walked past the sink, towards the pile of presents sitting on the kitchen table. Her empty teacup from this morning, when she’d been a single woman, sat upside down on the draining board. She took a seat at the head of the table – solid oak, country style with carver legs and a cutlery drawer at one end – it had been a present from the Carter family. They had offered to pay for a wedding; probably somewhere like Erin had dreamed of, but neither she nor Dom had wanted to accept, sensing a disapproval of Erin that was never discussed.

She ran her hand over the array of gifts. There was only one in the tall mound that she was interested in opening, one she knew Dom wouldn’t mind her getting the first look at. Fitz had wrapped it in old newspapers, bound it with blue ribbon.

The box was flat, A4 size and inside it, amongst layers of tissue paper, lay a leather-bound notebook. A bitter chocolate colour, soft nappa leather, with an opening flap like an envelope. From the point of the flap came a single strand of leather to tie around it. Picking it up, it felt lighter in her hand than she’d imagined. Her forefinger traced the embossed words on the front:

What am I?

I am The Book of Love,

The pages of truth with its light and shade.

I am Love,

And if real, I will never fade.

Opening it, a card fell to the table and on the back, her father’s handwriting:

Erin and Dom, your mother and I used to do this. I’d swear it rescued us from many sticky times so this is a ‘borrowed’ idea for your gift. I hope you use it like we did – to talk to one another – to write down whatever it is you can’t bring yourselves to say. In years to come, this book will be a place where you’ll look back and read about the things you were possibly too young or naïve to understand. Only two rules – First, don’t do it too often, it’s a route to talking about difficult things, not the only place to mention them. And second, when you write something, start and end it with love, like ‘My dearest Erin/Dom’ etc. and always, ALWAYS end it with a reminder to each other that you love each other and why e.g. ‘I love you because …’

Erin appreciated the thought in the gift but still replaced it in its box shaking her head, unable to imagine a time when she and Dom couldn’t simply say exactly what they wanted to one another.

The sound of the soft pad of his feet on the tiled floor made her turn around.

‘Come to bed, love.’ Dom, wearing striped pyjama bottoms but bare chested, rubbed one of his eyes.

‘I can’t sleep.’ From behind, she felt both his arms circle her waist.

‘It’s three a.m.’ he yawned. ‘What’s in the box?’

‘A gift from Dad.’

Dom pulled a chair up beside her, took a sip from her mug and grimaced. ‘No wonder you can’t sleep. That stuff is powdered shit.’ His head jerked towards the gift. ‘So, what is it?’

‘It doesn’t matter – just one of Dad’s hare-brained ideas.’

Dom took her hand. ‘You remember when we first met, Mrs Carter?’

She laughed. ‘It was only a year ago. Of course.’

‘Lydia’s New Year party. The first time I saw you, you were dancing, all five-foot-ten of you.’ He stroked the downy hair on her arm. ‘You were doing that weird hippy-sway-thing you do, those long limbs of yours flailing about.’

‘You called me Tree-Girl and I hated you.’

‘You fancied me.’

‘Okay, I fancied you a little. I hated the nickname.’

‘I knew I’d marry you, right then, that first moment I saw you.’

‘You did not.’

‘I did so.’

Erin cupped his stubbled chin in her hands, focused on the amber speckles in his tired brown eyes. ‘Really?’

‘Really,’ he nodded. ‘Mind you, if I’d known I’d be awake at three a.m. on my sexless wedding night, I’d have left you there, bopping away in the living room.’

‘Ouch.’

‘I’d have turned right around and never looked back.’

‘Liar.’

‘You know me so well,’ he smiled.

She stared back at the box. ‘You reckon we’ll always be able to talk to one another. Like this? Just spit out whatever’s on our mind?’

‘Sure. As long as it’s not always at three a.m. It’s been a long day, love, come back to bed?’

Erin sighed, stood up with him and slipped into the crook of his arm, knowing he wouldn’t sleep again unless she tried to.

Seconds later, when they climbed into bed, she shivered in the cold sheets. She curled her body into a foetal position, slipped gratefully into his spoon, instantly feeling his body warm hers; feeling his quiet mind soothe hers; feeling his love melt from his pores into hers, nourishing her. In the slivers of light angling through the Venetian blind, she caught sight of the third finger on his left hand where, rather than a ring, he’d had ‘Erin forever’ tattooed. His mother had almost had a coronary when she saw it. Erin had loved it, unable to believe that any man, especially this man; this man who had such passion for everything, had stamped himself as hers.

Her hand squeezed his. With her free hand, she reached back and touched his cheek, the scent of leather still lingering on her fingertips.

‘I am Love,’ she whispered.

‘You too,’ he said softly.

She smiled and closed her eyes.