Twenty-four

Anna’s house was such that some of its habitual residents rarely met. Rory and Alex, for instance, hardly ever encountered Ludmilla, who came after they had left for school and work and was gone by lunchtime. Luz Mar sometimes met Ludmilla, if she were not at class, but did not often meet Alex, since she was officially free most nights from six o’clock, and went off with her friends before he got home. Anna, and the cat, were the only members of the household who were in daily contact with all its other members.

She knew the chances of Ludmilla mentioning her pregnancy to Alex were very slight, not because Ludmilla would not like to mention such a thing, from feelings of delicacy or loyalty. She was neither delicate nor likely to be loyal to Anna. But she would never get an opportunity. She never talked to Alex because he was never there at the same time as her. And if she did encounter him, it was unlikely that she would immediately take the opportunity to discuss his wife’s pregnancy with him.

Telling Ludmilla, then, had really put Anna under no particular pressure to reveal her condition to Alex. But nevertheless it was very soon after her disclosure to the house-cleaner that she decided to let him in on the secret.

Alex had been working even harder than usual since Christmas. He was finalising another important property deal; Anna was uninterested in the finer details, but knew that he had sold off almost all his equity and was sinking everything into a new venture, an entire block of apartments in one of the new south Dublin suburbs, which, although not top of the market at present, were predicted to rise exponentially in value, since the area had been designated one of the new transport hubs of the city: close to the dart, the proposed Luas extension, and the M50. Around such hubs, the new satellite dormitory suburbs – even Alex would not abuse the language by calling them towns – were going to mushroom in the next phase of development. So they said in the property supplements.

Anna did not know why it took so long to sell some buildings and buy others. But it did. Alex was not lying. He worked sixteen hours a day, telephoning people and writing letters and signing forms and seeing lawyers. It was not the sort of work someone like Anna, who usually saw a product for her labours, could really appreciate. In the end, of course, Alex would see a product: money. (The apartments were not a product, in his view, they were a means to an end. They could have been anything, trucks or animals or works of art or shops or hotels. They were apartments not because he felt people should have new and better apartments, but merely because new apartments were now the most profitable investment for any businessman.) But for long stretches he lost money, gambled money, and saw nothing for his efforts except his own weariness.

He came home at about nine o’clock now, usually, an hour after Rory had gone, disappointed, to bed. The first thing Alex always did was to go upstairs and look in on Rory, and give him a kiss. Since Rory was asleep, it didn’t register with him, at least not consciously, but it comforted Alex. He missed his son more than he missed Anna, and every night had to console himself with the thought that they would meet at breakfast and perhaps he would give Rory a lift to school – although in practice the latter part of the arrangement seldom materialised, since Alex always had to leave earlier than Rory needed to.

Anna had prepared a decent dinner, something she had not bothered doing since Christmas. They were having prawns Marie Rose, an old-fashioned starter that was Alex’s favourite, and coq au vin, the sort of hearty French peasant dish Anna liked: cooking it, smelling it, eating it, made her feel she was in Provence, not in Killiney. She had cooked it for six hours, so that it was a delicious, disintegrating mess by now. There was even a home-made dessert: fruit salad. As a rule, Anna was too lazy to chop up all the fruit but today she had made a special effort.

A chilled Chablis accompanied this meal. She allowed herself a glass, although she recalled that when she had been expecting Rory, she had never drunk any alcohol. She was not sure that she could force herself to be so abstemious this time round. It seemed to her that alcohol had become much more a part of everyday life than it had been even eight years ago. Now Alex would think it strange if they did not have wine with dinner every day, whereas then it had been a weekend treat, or something you had on a special occasion. This was how it was in the Kelly Sweeney house anyway, though, like sex, or quarrels with your spouse, you could never know for sure if your private customs were the same as most other people’s, or if they were unique or unusual. And there were still questions you could not ask, even at the book clubs or the writers’ groups.

She had placed a vase of white freesias on the table, and filled the house with daffodils. They were at their peak and her garden had thousands. Into vases she had crammed thirty or forty at a time, so the house had, she felt, a cheery, fertile air. Matching her condition.

She waited until they had almost finished the main course to tell him. She did not want to waste the coq au vin – she had had a craving for it for days. During the meal, they had talked about Rory and his progress. He had joined a local football club and was enthusiastic about the game. He was having some problems with spelling and Anna was wondering if, like Ultan, he had become a bit dyslexic. She thought perhaps they should see a specialist.

‘But he used to be a champion speller,’ Alex objected.

‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘He used to be. But that’s changed in the last few months, for some reason.’

‘I don’t think he could have become dyslexic in the last few months,’ said Alex. ‘I don’t think that can happen to anyone. There must be something else wrong. I don’t know. I hardly ever see him these days.’

He sighed, thinking of all the work he had to do. He never liked to talk much about what went on there but he told her something about the problems he was encountering: one of the banks was causing difficulties about loans because the project was delayed; he had had to apply elsewhere for a loan to replace the problematic one, and the interest rate was unacceptably high. But not to worry, everything would sort itself out soon, he said. There were always hiccups during a transition period like this.

He was always in transition, though, Anna thought. As soon as one project was finished, the money pocketed, he would move on to another one.

He was considering resigning from the two arts boards he was on, he said then, to her surprise. They were taking up too much of his time or else he was missing meetings, which made him feel guilty.

‘But you enjoy those, so much,’ Anna said, remembering how he had liked going to Áras an Uachtaráin.

‘Yes, sometimes,’ he admitted. ‘But I take them seriously, which I know is a mistake. I hate to see the messing around that goes on. All the pointless bureaucracy.’

‘Well, you probably help them to do less than they would otherwise.’

‘Not really. Everything will all go on happening no matter what I say,’ he said. ‘I’m on those boards really to be a sort of financial adviser, I know it. But they never take my advice. They do their own thing no matter what.’

‘There’s always a bit of wastage, I suppose, everywhere,’ she said.

‘More in this country than most places,’ he said. ‘There’s a culture of carelessness. But I’m not going to change it.’

‘They admire you for trying,’ she said.

He drank some wine. ‘I’m not so sure.’ But he looked pleased. She hardly ever complimented him on anything.

This was the moment she chose to deliver her bombshell.

‘Alex, I have something to tell you,’ she said.

He put down his glass. His face was set, implacable. He was still wearing his dark-grey work suit and snow-white shirt, which made him look invulnerable, as if he were dressed in a suit of armour, but strangely fragile as well.

‘What is it?’ he asked, in a thin voice.

She felt frightened and for a second wished she could withdraw her statement. There was still time to have an abortion. But she could not think of anything to say now except the truth.

‘I’m pregnant.’

She waited. She had no idea what would happen next.

He got up, came across to her side of the table, and kissed her. His face was relaxed, wreathed in smiles. ‘That’s fantastic,’ he said.

‘Em …’ She patted his head.

‘When is it due?’ he asked.

‘September,’ she said. Would he be able to calculate?

‘So you are three months gone,’ he said. ‘And I never noticed a thing. I’m so unobservant.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You are sometimes.’

Chekhov came to the glass door and she got up to let him in. But Alex forced her to stay seated and opened the door instead. He even got the cat food from the fridge and filled the cat dish.

‘Stay where you are,’ he said. ‘You must feel tired. Are you … ok? Have you seen the doctor?’

So she carried on the conversation any couple would have about their latest pregnancy. Doctors, tests, gender, reaction of Rory, were all discussed lovingly by Alex, for whom this was the best news he could possibly have imagined.

Now she had two fathers for one baby.