Chapter 3 #3
Then Brian appeared and changed all that.
She had met him when she was working for a couple of months as a vegetarian cook at a retreat centre in Galway.
He had come to do a weekend workshop and Kate had been instantly smitten.
He was so attractive, so gregarious and charismatic.
Amazingly, the attraction was mutual, and they had started going out together.
Kate had expected it to follow the familiar pattern of her previous relationships and spent the first few weeks waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Only when they had been together for about six months did it dawn on her that Brian was her boyfriend and she was finally in a proper relationship.
But they had been together for almost two years now, and she didn’t want to drift any longer.
She loved Brian, but the three months in Africa, as well as doing wonders for her figure, had given her new self-confidence.
Being away from her family had helped. She had always felt like the runt of the litter, never quite measuring up to her dazzling siblings.
In Africa, she had felt powerful, sexy and confident, among people who knew her in her own right rather than as the youngest and least significant of the O’Neills.
She wasn’t at all confident about how Brian would react to her ultimatum.
He strongly disapproved of possessiveness, but Kate was tired of trying to be cool and detached and wasn’t prepared to do it any longer.
In reality, she was fiercely possessive of Brian and gut-wrenchingly jealous of the other women who were always hanging around him – his little coven of workshop junkies with their serene smiles, their homespun jumpers and their vegetarian shoes, who looked down on her because she worked for a living while they made a virtue of living off the State while pursuing their hobbies – writing poetry, throwing pots or making incomprehensible art.
Their scrubbed-clean faces always wore an air of self-righteous superiority, as if they were somehow saving the world by not wearing makeup or nice clothes.
Well, she could give them a run for their money, Kate thought defiantly, applying a slick of deep red lipstick to her full mouth.
Despite his principles, Brian was not averse to a bit of glamour.
She surveyed herself in the mirror, twirling to inspect every angle.
She looked fantastic. Luckily she had commandeered one of Rachel’s army of beauticians to wax her legs yesterday, and they were wonderfully smooth and brown.
Brian’s acolytes would never dream of waxing – they preserved their leg hair with the same zeal they applied to saving the rainforest, as though the entire ecosystem of the planet depended on it.
She was just putting on the big bead earrings she’d bought in Africa when she heard the buzzer.
Seconds later, Freddie rapped on the door. ‘Three minutes to curtain,’ he called.
It was one of the advantages, Kate thought, of living on the fourth floor of a building with no lift that you were never caught unawares – or perhaps the only advantage, she amended.
There was just one problem, she thought, looking at herself in the mirror.
The sleeveless dress was far too light for an Irish summer’s evening.
Scanning the room for inspiration, she spotted Will’s dinner jacket hanging with her bridesmaid dress on a hook over the door – the only things she had managed to unpack so far.
She pulled it on, checked it in the mirror and was pleased with the effect.
Rather than detracting from the glamour of the outfit, it lent it a slightly decadent, morning-after look, as if she was on the way home from a dinner dance.
She took it off, so that Brian would get the full effect of the dress, and settled down to tweaking her hair and makeup for the final few minutes.
* * *
Brian was ensconced on the sofa, with Freddie grilling him mercilessly about yesterday’s workshop. ‘So, how do you teach people to scream?’ he was asking eagerly. ‘Do you do a course or something?’
‘I wasn’t teaching so much as facilitating,’ Brian explained, always happy to talk about his work to anyone who would listen. ‘I was giving people permission to scream and providing a safe space where they could feel free to let go. It’s very cathartic.’
‘I’m sure.’ Freddie nodded vaguely.
‘As children we express our emotions so directly,’ Brian continued expansively, on a roll now. ‘When we’re angry or scared or outraged, we just come right out and scream. Then we grow up, become socialised and lose that spontaneity.’
‘Right,’ Freddie concurred. ‘So it was sort of temper tantrums for the over-twenty-fives.’
‘It was actually very moving,’ Brian continued, refusing to rise to Freddie’s bait. ‘Some people really opened up.’
‘Deafening, too, I imagine,’ Freddie said. ‘Your ears must be ringing.’
‘You’d be surprised at how little screaming there actually was. We’re all so inhibited. People find it incredibly difficult to make that noise, often for the first time since they were children – in some cases, the first time ever.’
‘Like this, you mean?’ Freddie opened his mouth wide and let out a blood-curdling shriek that wouldn’t have been out of place in a schlock horror movie.
At that moment Kate emerged from her bedroom and glanced worriedly towards the door, expecting the neighbours to be pounding on it at any minute.
‘Okay.’ Brian laughed. ‘Obviously you’re the exception.’
‘Oh, I’m just a screaming queen,’ Freddie quipped.
As Kate joined them, the look in Brian’s eyes was flatteringly appreciative and lustful. ‘Wow, you look amazing!’ he gasped. Kate rarely went in for such full-on glamour, which made the effect all the more stunning when she did.
‘Thanks.’ She smiled into his eyes. ‘Were you giving Freddie a crash course in screaming?’
‘He doesn’t need any help in that department. I was just telling him about my workshop yesterday.’
‘Was it good?’
‘It was very powerful. There was one woman who couldn’t make a sound all day, but in the last five minutes she screamed for about a minute solid. It was a real breakthrough for her.’
‘Amazing!’ Freddie breathed.
‘Suzanne, I suppose?’ Kate said caustically.
‘As a matter of fact it was.’
‘Who’s Suzanne?’ Freddie asked, sensing tension.
‘She’s Brian’s shill,’ Kate told him.
‘You have a shill?’ Freddie asked Brian, regarding him with new respect. Maybe the guy had hidden shallows, after all.
‘No, I do not have a shill.’
‘So who is she then?’
‘She goes to all Brian’s workshops and groups, and she always has a breakthrough. No matter what the theme is – co-dependency, childhood trauma, buried memories, survivor guilt, you name it – Suzanne always has a breakthrough and bursts into tears, and Brian is guaranteed at least one big success.’
‘Sounds like a shill to me.’ Freddie nodded.
‘She’s not a shill,’ Brian said. ‘She’s a very courageous woman who’s embarked on a difficult journey.’
Kate blushed. She hated it when Brian talked like this.
‘Wow, where’s she going?’ Freddie asked disingenuously.
‘You know what I mean, Freddie.’
‘The journey within,’ Freddie intoned portentously. ‘The most difficult journey of all.’
‘You should try it yourself some time,’ Brian said, apparently needled by Freddie’s tone. ‘You should come to one of my men’s groups.’
‘Oh, I don’t think I’d really fit in, do you?’
‘Come on, you’re not the only gay guy in the world.’
‘Sometimes it just feels that way,’ Freddie said tragically.
‘Seriously, I think you could make a valuable contribution,’ Brian said, looking at Freddie with interest now. ‘We explore all aspects of the male journey. You’re so open and in touch with your feminine side – the group could learn a lot from you.’
It was the source of Brian’s charisma that he could make anyone he was talking to feel like the most fascinating person on the planet. He had a way of focusing on whoever he was with that made them feel really special and interesting.
‘Do you have a shill in the men’s group?’ Freddie asked eagerly.
‘Oh, I’m sure Suzanne’s got it covered,’ Kate said. ‘No doubt she’d be there exploring her masculine side or getting in touch with her penis envy or something… Well, I guess we should be off,’ she said, standing up and putting on Will’s jacket.
‘Whose is that?’ Brian frowned.
‘Will’s,’ Kate told him absently, pulling her hair free of the collar and shaking it loose. ‘I forgot to give it back to him last night – luckily as it turned out. I really like it – I’m considering nicking it.’
‘I’m sure he won’t miss it,’ Brian said. ‘I expect he’s got dozens.’
This constituted severe criticism from Brian, who considered it immoral to own more than one jacket at a time – especially if none of them came from a charity shop. Kate made a mental note to keep the designer label hidden – if he saw it he’d think Will was beyond redemption.
‘It looks better on you anyway,’ Freddie chipped in. ‘So, where are you two off to?’
‘It’ll have to be somewhere cheap,’ Kate warned Brian. ‘I’m broke and I don’t have any job lined up.’
‘Oh, I forgot to tell you,’ Freddie said. ‘Will gave you a great plug in his speech, so you might get some work out of that. He said you were available and gave your cooking an absolute rave review.’
‘Oh,’ Kate said, pleased, ‘that was nice of him. I don’t know how he could rave about my cooking, though. He hasn’t had anything I’ve made in yonks.’
‘I suppose he remembers what a brilliant cook you are from when he lived with you.’
‘I guess so,’ Kate said. ‘Okay, let’s go.’
‘You lived with Will Sargent?’ Brian asked accusingly. ‘You never told me that.’
‘What? Oh no!’ Kate gasped, realising he’d misunderstood. ‘I didn’t live with him – I mean, not in that way. He stayed with my family for a year. It was a long time ago,’ she added. Will had impinged on her consciousness quite enough for one weekend. She didn’t want to think about him any more.