Always and Forever. Cathy Kelly

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      Saturday afternoon crept into Saturday evening and hunger hit. The pub did great traditional Irish potato crepes called boxty, so huge plates of boxty and more drink were ordered. The crowd swelled from the original three girls and four rowers to a big clatter of students. They took up a whole section of the Shaman’s, laughing and joking and swapping stories on how unprepared they were for the new term. Still Alex sat beside Daisy.

      Warmed up by the two hot whiskys Alex had bought her when she finished her half-pint, she told him that she loved clothes but had come to the painful conclusion that she wasn’t much good at designing, something she’d only told Jules and Fay up to now.

      ‘It’s desperate,’ she confided. ‘When I think of how hard it was to get on the course, and now I’m here I can see that it’s a mistake.’ She could picture her mother’s face when she heard. Her mother had pushed for Daisy to do a secretarial course in Carrickwell so she’d always have a steady income. In one of the few battles she’d attempted with her mother, Daisy had said no. She’d been the best in her class at school at art and had dreamed of design college since she knew such a thing existed. There weren’t many of Daisy’s dreams within reach – being beautiful, thin, adored by her mother – she couldn’t let this vaguely achievable one escape.

      ‘Really, Denise, you disappoint me,’ her mother had said in deeply betrayed tones. Her mother tended to call her Denise, rarely Daisy. It was her father who’d called her ‘my little Daisy’, the nickname that had somehow stuck. ‘After all we’ve been through surely you’d see the need for a sensible job, not a rackety one like your father had. I thought I’d taught you that at least. But do what you want. Don’t think about what I want.’

      Nan Farrell, as thin as the long cigarettes she chain-smoked, took out her cigarette case and flicked it open. It was silver and engraved, the one good thing she had left from her previous life as part of the Carrickwell élite. That life had ended when she’d got pregnant with Daisy – as she never ceased to remind her daughter – and had hit the real world with an almighty bang, married to a man who loved to enjoy himself and wasn’t interested in either roots or hard work.

      ‘It’s not as if my opinion has ever mattered to you.’

      If only, Daisy thought. Her mother’s opinion was like the pyramids in relation to Cairo – huge, unyielding and no matter where you stood, you could still feel their presence, even if you couldn’t see them.

      The memory of the row and the glacier that still existed between herself and her mother took away the happy glow Daisy had been experiencing from talking to Alex. Forgetting for an instant that Alex was a gorgeous man and that she should have been puce with embarrassment just to be talking to him, Daisy leaned her head on her hands on the scratched pub table in the Shaman’s. ‘How can you have messed up your whole career when you’re twenty?’ she mumbled.

      ‘All the best people do,’ Alex said, patting her arm. He let his fingers roam to the back of her neck where he touched her gently, stroking the soft caramel curls that had escaped from her ponytail. It felt gorgeous, so sexy. Daisy gulped and sat up, forcing Alex to move his hand. She could have stayed there for ever but a man’s attentions, the sort of thing that regularly happened to the likes of Jules and Fay, were not what she was equipped to deal with.

      He didn’t appear to notice her jitteriness.

      ‘At least you know what you wanted to do. I didn’t, still don’t,’ he said. ‘A business degree was the obvious choice for me but it doesn’t light my fire. It’s not on kids’ top-ten lists of brilliant jobs, is it? What do you want to be when you grow up, son? Oh, Dad, I want to sit behind a desk and toil through spreadsheets for ever.’

      He told her that he often felt like giving up college if it weren’t for the fact that his course guaranteed a good job at the end of it all. Money was important to him. Daisy got the impression, never voiced, that there hadn’t been much spare cash in the Kenny household. She could empathise with that. There hadn’t been much money in her house either. She and her mother lived in a small terraced house in the centre of Carrickwell, not physically far from the big house where her mother had grown up, but miles away socially. Daisy had been raised not to discuss money.

      Nobody was to know that the gas heater was to be used sparingly, or that Sunday’s meat could be made to last until Wednesday if enough imagination was involved.

      ‘We’ve got our pride,’ Nan insisted.

      Despite this, Daisy didn’t believe that money made you happy. Her mother had come from money and there was no proof anywhere that she’d ever had a happy family life, although she was probably more miserable without it than she had been with it.

      Love, Daisy felt, was what mattered in life. Not money.

      When Alex went to the bar in the Shaman’s to get her a drink, Daisy watched him and knew she must look like a spaniel trailing sad eyes after a departing master. Being aware of how others saw her was Daisy’s biggest failing. She couldn’t walk into a room without wondering if people thought she looked like a whale in whatever she was wearing, and when she spoke during classes, she measured her words as carefully as she measured silk when she was cutting a pattern. Today, though, she wasn’t measuring her words or angling her thighs on the seat so that she looked thinner. That was the effect Alex had upon her.

      And so they began to go out. They appeared an unlikely couple: the handsome, popular Alex, who could have hooked up with any girl he wanted, and Daisy, who was sweet and pretty certainly, but why didn’t she do something about her weight?

      Other people didn’t see that gentle loving Daisy gave Alex security. Steady, warm, like hot tea in front of a fire, Daisy made the dynamic Alex Kenny feel as if he’d come home.

      

      Daisy tried the Tiffany necklace on. Silver suited her. Gold could make redheads look brassy, she knew. Her mother, who had genuine blonde hair, had warned her so often enough.

      ‘It’s beautiful,’ breathed Daisy, turning to hug Alex again.

      ‘I’m glad you like it,’ he said woodenly, sitting down wearily on the end of the bed.

      ‘Oh, love, don’t be like that,’ said Daisy. ‘I know you’re nervous, I am too, but this is so important to us.’

      ‘Daisy –’ he began.

      ‘We can do it,’ she interrupted. For so long she’d hidden just how important a child was to her; now she had to convince him. ‘Alex, I want a baby so badly. I don’t talk about it but it haunts me.’ She sat down on the bed beside him and held his hands in hers. ‘When I go into work and Paula’s there, pregnant and so happy, it hurts me so much. Not that I begrudge her a moment of her happiness, but I want that for me, for us. There are babies everywhere you look, did you know that?’ She squeezed his hand for support. ‘In the shop, on the streets, in Mo’s Diner sitting in high-chairs staring around with big eyes. I never thought I’d feel this broodiness because it’s not as if I was madly into babies or eager to babysit all the time when I was growing up.’ Daisy’s words were tumbling out now. ‘If I’d had brothers or sisters, I’d maybe have had experience with younger children but I didn’t, so I didn’t think I was that maternal, but then whomp! It hit me.’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Alex, I think about having a baby all the time. Every month, I feel I’ve failed when my period comes. We’ve been trying to have a baby for five years now, that’s over sixty times of feeling I’ve failed. I feel…’ she searched for the right word, ‘I feel empty, not quite a proper woman. Only half a person. It’s СКАЧАТЬ