Three Wise Men. Martina Devlin
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An undertone implies a sense of guilt but it’s obviously not an emotion she’s familiar with.
Look at her, she can hardly wait to talk about The Revelation – Gloria’s already labelling it with capitals because it’s so sensational. She’s seething with Kate, partly because she senses a furtive glee, even as Kate claims to feel like Judas.
Kate can’t stop mentioning Jack’s name, she breathes the word lingeringly, describing the affair in bodice ripper-speak – her heart skips a beat when she sees him and her legs buckle beneath his kisses. Gloria thinks she might at least make an effort to avoid clichés if she’s determined to force her to sit through this. As far as she knows, Kate’s never read a Thrills and Swoon in her life but you’d swear she was reared on them from her engorged prose. Anyway, between the irregular heartbeats and unreliable legs, the crux of the matter is that Kate’s conscience is interfering with her big clinch close-ups.
‘I don’t want to hurt Eimear,’ Kate sighs.
‘Should’ve thought about that before you played Open Sesame with her husband,’ Gloria remarks.
Kate turns a reproachful gaze on her. ‘I didn’t come here for a lecture, Gloria.’
‘I hope you didn’t come for absolution either.’
She’s becoming increasingly incensed by Kate – she’s risking the triumvirate, measuring a fling with Jack above more than twenty-five years of friendship. And in a dark recess, a part of her consciousness she can scarcely bring herself to acknowledge, Gloria is jealous. Jack’s so glamorous: a lecturer at Trinity College, a published poet, a regular on chat shows, and to cap it all he looks like Aidan Quinn. The first time she saw him her pulse kept time with the Riverdance score but she’d never dream of casting a glad eye in his direction, not only because he belongs to her friend but because he’s too dazzling to be interested in her.
Yet here he is having it away with Kate who’s no better looking than herself. Of course Kate has the red hair, some men are pushovers for that, usually dodgy ones, Kate claims. Gloria supposes it has to be the intellectual appeal, she’s a lawyer and witty in a flippant way, with brains to burn. Mind you, Kate’s obviously set fire to more brain cells than she can spare if this stupid adventure is anything to judge by. But since when did intelligence stop people making complete eejits of themselves.
‘They don’t have kids, it’s not as if I’d be breaking up a family home,’ Kate justifies herself.
‘So you’re thinking of galloping off into the wide blue yonder with him.’
Kate drops her eyes before Gloria’s challenge and a pause drags into a silence.
‘Not really,’ she sighs finally. ‘I know it has to end but I feel as if I’ve wandered into a room with no doors marked exit. I’m fond of Pearse, it’s just that Jack is so irresistible.’
‘Pearse. I wondered how long it would take before we got around to Pearse,’ Gloria yells.
He’s the man Kate lives with, an old dear who’s knocking on a bit, but she knew that when she moved in with him. Or rather, invited him to move in with her. He lived some miles outside the city in Skerries, a seaside spot favoured by families but not much use to party animals, according to Kate. Gloria feels her friend is getting a bit long in the tooth for this goodtime girl malarkey but Kate turns huffy if she intimates as much.
The night is young and so am I,’ Kate insists after an evening out, when the others are desperate for their beds. She makes them feel like social outcasts if they attempt to slope off home at midnight.
‘Don’t worry, pumpkins are in this season,’ is her rallying cry as she tries to reconvene the team at some drinking den where staff reverse the Wedding Feast of Cana miracle with the wine served.
But back to Pearse.
‘I’d prefer to leave Pearse out of this,’ says Kate.
‘I’m sure you would but he’s part of your life,’ Gloria snaps.
‘My insignificant other.’ Kate pulls a face.
‘Behave yourself, Kate, you’re living with him, he deserves better.’
‘I know, he deserves a wonderful woman who’ll make him delirious with joy for a lifetime and I can’t do that. Even without Jack in the frame I couldn’t do it. But with Jack …’
Gloria meditates. There’s nothing romantic about Kate and Jack betraying Eimear because they’ve fallen in lust and confused it with love. However she raises the white flag.
‘Look Kate, I haven’t the energy for this, I haven’t the strength for my own problems let alone yours. Since you’re determined to confess, why don’t you get your completely insincere act of contrition off your chest as quickly as possible and give me some peace. How did you and Jack discover it was your life’s mission to have two hearts beating as one?’
‘Initially I was flattered by his interest – I’d never have imagined I could be Jack O’Brien’s type. I decided he was having a rush of blood to the head and it would simmer down but it’s been three months now and we’re still crazy about each other. Let’s face it, he could have anyone he likes,’ Kate concludes in that pathetic, tremulous voice Gloria finds so out-of-character – and so infuriating, ‘and he chose me.’
‘Come on, Kate, you can do better than that,’ she admonishes.
Kate expels air noisily. ‘I suppose Jack winkled his way into my affections at a vulnerable time. Pearse was hammering away about how we ought to get married, since we’ve been living together for four years and how he’d like to have a few kids. I said where’s your hurry, sure men can have prostate operations and hip replacements and still produce babies. But Pearse said fathering them was all very well but being able to bend over and pick them up was another matter entirely.
‘Jaysus, Glo, it was babies, babies and more babies with the man, he was obsessed. He couldn’t understand why my biological clock wasn’t ticking, like most women’s over thirty, and I said if I heard it ticking wasn’t I bloody well able to tell it to shut up. I … oh God, I’m so sorry, Gloria, I was forgetting about you – talk about insensitive.’
Gloria shrugs. ‘People can’t tiptoe around me forever,’ she manages, although a few more days of fancy footwork would be welcome.
Kate continues: ‘I was feeling harassed and then I bumped into Jack one day in Grafton Street and before I knew it we were in the Shelbourne with Irish coffees, gossiping and laughing about nothing in particular – and then all of a sudden he leaned over and pushed my hair out of my eyes and we both knew.’
‘Knew that you were about to cheat and lie and abandon a friend?’ demands Gloria. ‘You’re mad, you’re dealing with a man who thinks trust is only a word that applies to his pension plan, and you’re no better yourself, Kate McGlade.’
Gloria can’t mask her rage. How dare anyone else be happy when life has kicked her in the stomach and then aimed its Doc Marten at the side of her head for good measure.
Kate shrugs. ‘Since when did you turn judge and jury, Gloria? You must remember what it’s like to be in love. How the more you feel the world is against you, the more you cling to one another. Yes, I feel guilty, but I also feel I’m bursting with life.’
‘It’s a wonder you’ve never been caught out – people know each other’s business here, this is a city the size of a village,’ says Gloria.
‘We’re very careful,’ replies Kate, but Gloria arches a dubious eyebrow.
‘You’ll be walking up the street hand in hand one day when you’re supposed to be at a conference in Edinburgh and you’ll bump into Eimear or Pearse or both,’ she predicts.
Another silence falls between them, not the comfortable quietness among friends but a brooding stillness. Gloria ruptures it at last.
‘Why are you telling