Initially, when Colin Moore, the photographer, had entered the nursery, she had moved forward to stop him, then changed her mind. This was a room waiting in anticipation. Somehow, it seemed appropriate to photograph it.
She had painted the nursery herself, a pale yellow shade that gleamed like gold when the sun struck the walls. Before returning to bed, she entered the room and trailed her fingers over the cradle. It had been an extravagant purchase, a replica of a Victorian cradle with a canopy of white gauze. She had bought it at a craft fair, along with the mobile of stained glass seahorses that now hung above it. She sat in a wicker rocking chair and swayed slowly back and forth. Her baby moved, a hard defiant kick that advised her to savour her tranquil moments. They would be gone soon enough. She cradled her stomach as she watched the city drift asleep and tried to imagine herself and Robert as parents.
They had so little in common, or so their friends had claimed when they first met. Bets had been laid on how long their relationship would last. Carla smiled, remembering that first meeting when Raine, in the aftermath of another fashion show, shouted their names across the table in Sheens on the Green to introduce them. Robert had lifted his eyebrows and smiled ruefully at the noise dividing them. Under normal circumstances, he told her later, he would have refused point blank to attend a fashion show. He had never shown any interest in the glitter and glamour associated with his sister’s career but this was a charity event to raise funds for breast cancer research. Gillian, his mother, had insisted he support it – not just financially, but physically, by accompanying her.
Gillian, frail but defiant in a red bandana, had the translucent pallor of someone who had stepped close to death. Carla noticed how attentively her son listened when she spoke, as if he appreciated the second chance he had been given to cherish her. She studied their faces, seeking similarities, and found them in their intense blue eyes and the generous width of their mouths. They shared the same bone structure. Cragginess would come to him with age but his features would never sag. The restaurant lights glinted off his black hair. Gillian’s lips would have been voluptuous before illness drained their fullness and her son had inherited that same lush curve. A mouth made to be kissed, Carla thought, and Robert, as if attuned to her thoughts, reached out and held her in his gaze. In that single glance, something indefinable passed between them. Carla would later acknowledge it as love and he would agree, his expression still bemused by the suddenness of their attraction. Love at first sight – as romantic as it was ridiculous. If any of her friends had described the sensation, Carla would have laughed and called it a chemical hit. But it had carried them into marriage and would soon carry them into parenthood.
The night-time traffic had slowed. Only an occasional car passed, casting brief, surging shadows across the walls. The mobile tinkled above the cradle and the circle of seahorses, translucent mauves and luminous greens, flashed and danced lightly, as if they sensed her intrusion.
Susanne
‘Why seahorses,’ I asked Miriam when I travelled to Maoltrán for the first time to be interviewed for the position of marketing manager.
‘Why not seahorses?’ She had sounded amused. ‘The female of the species is intelligent enough to enjoy the delights of courtship and the male gallant enough to carry the consequences.’
She picked a seahorse from a plinth and held it up for me to admire. The shade was a delicate coral that gleamed like mother-of-pearl and deepened to a glistening salmon when the spotlights caught the glass and played with it. She smiled and stroked her index finger over the protruding belly. ‘Would that our men were so obliging,’ she added, and we laughed together, the kind of conspiratorial laughter women share when we discuss our men.
She handed the seahorse to me. I tapped it with my nail. The tinkling sound was as pitched as a tuning fork. I imagined a shoal of pregnant males, their slender exclamation-mark spines camouflaged against wavering sea grasses, their taut, tight bellies pulsing with life.
Her seahorses have names and personalities. Some are exquisitely etched and encrusted with gems. Others have a more practical design and can be used as bookends, framed on walls or attached to bathroom mirrors. The mobile is one of the most popular items in her collection.
Carla Kelly has one hanging in her nursery. I saw it in Pizzazz. That magazine may be devoid of intelligent content but old habits are hard to break and I buy it every month. I used to check it regularly to see which of my clients had been included when I worked for Carter & Kay. Sometimes they didn’t make it. Not prestigious or interesting enough. The editor was ruthless when it came to deciding who should feature on her pages. Carla Kelly now obviously fits this profile.
She wrote a ‘before and after’ feature about the house in Ranelagh where she and her husband live. The before shots look horrendous but the after photography is pure Pizzazz and allows her to do what she does best. Her face leaps from the pages and dominates them to such a degree that the furnishings and décor are insignificant props in the background.
That night at the fashion show, she shuddered when I mentioned Edward Carter’s name. She covered it up but I watched her composure slip for that instant and I knew she was back there again, with him, intent on destroying what they had so wantonly and carelessly created. I wonder if her husband knows. Probably not. There’s something hard and unforgiving about his eyes.
No sign of him in the Pizzazz shoot. It’s not his kind of magazine. Gloss and dross. Back in those days, apart from the advertisements, Carla Kelly never appeared in her own right. She was just another face, another model climbing on the backs of the older ones, juggling for space in the tabloids. Titbits and gossip, she loved the camera and it loved her. Then she got her lucky break with the lingerie campaign. She’s changed now, of course. Pregnancy has given her credibility. Celebrity and credibility, an unbeatable combination.
She painted the walls yellow for her baby, a neutral colour to suit either gender. A white cradle sat in the centre of the room, muslin curtains trailed the floor. She sat by the window in a white wicker chair, her hands resting below her stomach, her face in profile. Outside the window, a tree was visible, bronze leaves beginning to turn. Her expression was serene, her head bent slightly so that the light streamed through the blonde tendrils. The eternal Eve. I almost expected a serpent to coil from the branches behind her. Signs and omens, they keep appearing.
The whispering voices awaken me at night and insist that I listen to the tinkling call of the seahorses that Miriam fuses in the raging heat of her furnace room; the molten globs are suspended, swelling, mutating. It has to be more than a coincidence.
Carla
November 1993
Shortly after their marriage, Carla was crossing O’Connell Bridge on her way to a luncheon fashion show when she saw her husband at work. The wind, blowing harshly off the Liffey, tossed her hair across her face, and he had almost passed her by before she became aware of him. A junkie, she thought, summing him up in a glance, his baggy tracksuit bottoms, the grubby trainers minus laces, and the way he hunched into his nondescript anorak, his pale face protected by the hood. More like a dealer, she decided, as his eyes, darting and shifty, sized up everything around him. For an instant, she was swamped in his gaze as his eyes flashed with recognition. Then he was gone, swiftly absorbed in the crowd.
Shocked, she leaned over the balustrade and gazed into the Liffey. The tide was low, the walls of the river dank and brown. She pretended she had not recognised him, knowing he would be furious with himself for dropping his guard, even for an instant. Strange that she, who knew his body intimately, had not noticed his height, nor could she remember