Chapter 11

John drove home with a lot on his mind. There was the usual male thing, feeling a fool that he had turned down a night with Jessica who, everyone knew, was not only strikingly beautiful but a tigress in bed. He laughed at the thought that she was one tiger he wouldn’t have minded eating! Then he wondered who ‘everyone’ actually was.

He smiled to himself as he thought of Carol scurrying round all their friends, putting right the wrongs she had created, and inciting them to rehabilitate him.

Then this last effort on her part, offering him a beautiful and athletic woman with a reputation for wild and satisfying sex. How could he take Jessica to bed knowing that Carol had so generously set it up?

Then he wondered with a mental groan, why couldn’t he? Of course deep down he knew the answer to that one.

He arrived home and went straight for the whisky. He opened the patio door and sat at the table. The thunderstorms earlier in the day had wetted the ground thoroughly and everything smelt fresh and clean. The sky was dark with a tinge of greenish blue in the north west where the sun had set an hour or more before.

He reminded himself it was only a week to the longest day. Midsummer. He had a vague memory of parties to celebrate Midsummer’s Day, and wondered how he would celebrate it, probably alone at home.

He suddenly felt tired, and to be sure it was nearly midnight, so he shut up shop and went to bed, promising himself to think about Carol’s campaign at more length in the morning. Of course he went to work and forgot.

On the Friday meet at the Griffin, Carol was not there. John noticed her absence and felt cheated; he wanted to talk to her about Jessica.

Leo, Dan and Flynn were there though.

“No Dermott tonight?” asked John.

“He’s been a bit off with us,” said Leo. “Moody, you know. Didn’t want to come.”

“Ryan and Karen are hosting this year’s Midsummer’s party,” Dan said to John, “You going?”

“Do I know them?” John asked. “The names don’t ring a bell.”

“Of course,” said Leo, “you won’t know them. They came on the scene just after you went to London. I think it was Liam that knew them and they came to a party with Dermott. Nice couple. They’ve bought a hotel down Stockport way. It’s struggling at the moment, but it won’t stop them throwing a big party. They’ve got the room.”

“Yeah,” said Flynn, “you should go, it’ll be a gas. There’s going to be a marquee in the beer garden, a barbecue and a hog roast. Dancing in the marquee and club dance floor till very late.”

“Not been invited,” said John.

“That’s not surprising if they don’t know you!” said Tom with a smile. “They may have heard of you, but they don’t know you.”

“I’m sure they won’t mind,” said Flynn. “There’ll be a lot of folk there: just turn up.”

“They know Carol?” John asked.

“Yeah,” said Leo. “She was with Liam then and he knows them.” He looked uncomfortable at bringing up Carol’s time with the man.

“And Carol is definitely going to be there,” Dan added. “I’m sure she’d like to see you there with all our crowd.”

“No Flynn, you’re forgetting, I’m the one everyone hates, at least the ones Carol hasn’t talked to. It’s only the ones Carol has got to who have changed their attitude, like you Flynn.”

“Oh, come on, John,” pleaded Leo, “You’ll be fine. Carol will be there, I heard her telling Susan.”

“No way,” said John doggedly. “I’ll not go if I’m not invited.”

The group knew better than to argue, shrugged and the conversation turned to other things.

John did the usual Saturday chores: shopping for food for the rest of the week, cleaning his car (he never used a car wash, not trusting them to do the job thoroughly enough for him), and doing his washing and minimum ironing.

In the evening he phoned his parents, to be told they were leaving next weekend for their extended tour of Europe, and, would see him in the Autumn.

“Come over for lunch tomorrow, son,” invited his mother.

“Love to,” he said.

Saturday evening he settled with a novel, a handy bottle of whisky and Mozart, but before long his thought drifted away from the story onto Carol.

The more he thought, the more he admired her tenacity. He knew perfectly well that she had been deceived and set up, but he could not get over her refusal to talk to him, and the violence of her rejection of him.

He felt resentful at the loss of their relationship and of their marriage. The memory of his three years in London and on his assignments, when to all intents and purposes he was busy, successful and sexually satisfied, but where in all his quieter moments he longed for his ex-wife, made him burn with anger that he was never given a chance with her.

Now he knew she had been enjoying life with another man in another man’s bed, though she had said she’d longed for him until she thought he was beyond her.

He could now look back on those feelings and let them go, but he wondered about the real character of the woman he had once loved. Once loved? Yes, he thought, once.

He was feeling depressed when he went to bed, and the empty house seemed to echo and amplify his own solitary state.

After lunch on Sunday, he and his father were sitting out on their terrace drinking their coffee and supping their cognacs.

“Something on your mind?” asked his Dad.

“Carol,” John said, and no more. He knew his father and trusted his wisdom.

“Mum said you were trying to get her to see her mistake.”

“I did.”

“So?”

So John told him everything about the evidence he had accumulated, Carol’s distress and his ultimatum.

“So you gave her what you thought was an impossible task?” His father laughed at this and took another sip of his cognac.

John nodded sheepishly.

“But was it?” his father raised an eyebrow. John realised, not for the first time, how perceptive he was.

“No Dad, it wasn’t.” He went on to describe the invitations and apologies, all choreographed by Carol, and finally the evening with Jessica.

“Got to admire her,” his dad said, sitting back with a gentle smile. John nodded, but his brow was furrowed.

“I just find her response when she thought I was guilty, vicious and violent. I mean not even letting me know what I was guilty of?”

His father was relaxed. “Why would she react so strongly? Shock? Upset? Why?”

“That’s what’s puzzling me.”

“Look at it another way. Why are you still so angry, so upset? Why is she and what she’s doing, taking up so much of your attention. Why are you still so deeply involved with it all? You’ve been divorced for a long time.”

His mother was emerged from the house on her way to the bins.

“That’s easy,” she said with a laugh. “I’m surprised you can’t see it, John. Perhaps you’re too close to it, perhaps you are too wrapped up in the hurt of it.”

John looked at her, puzzled.

“Love, darling! Love!” she said on her way back and disappeared inside.

John sat still and thought.

His father was still smiling as if to say, ‘You’ll get there in the end!’

He remembered something Carol had said. He had glossed over it, but somehow it had lodged in his unconscious mind. What was it? She went overboard with hatred because she loved him so much? Didn’t she say she missed him the whole time?

She had kept Liam at arm’s length until she thought John had settled with another woman? If that was so, she had loved him all the time, even if it was a weird way of showing it.

“I see you’ve got it,” his father said. “Another thing, son. Don’t forget she’s a victim too. Malley and her brothers manipulated her. They orchestrated everything, and kept you away from her.”

It triggered another memory of what she said. When she learned he was in hospital she wanted to run to him, and, yes, Liam dissuaded her. John frowned with anger.

“What’s up, son? You’re angry. Remembered something?”

“Not Clare, that toe-rag Liam. She wanted to visit me in hospital and he turned her away from the idea. If she’d come and talked I’m sure we’d still be married, I really am sure of that.”

“Did you say ‘we’d still be married’ son?” his mother said, as she emerged from the house again with more coffee.

“Well, yes, she divorced me Mum, not the other way round. If I’d known the evidence then, I could have convinced her. We’d still be married.”