Chapter 31
Sorcha nibbled at a piece of toast and reread the article dominating the front page of The Daily Telegraph.
AMERICANS WALK ON THE MOON
Sorcha stood up and placed her plate, cup and knife in the sink. She looked out of the kitchen window across the immaculately manicured lawns and sighed.
A beautiful house in Hampstead, overlooking the heath, a rich, successful husband that thousands of women the world over dreamt about at night, and more money than she could ever imagine spending.
Yet she felt miserable and unfulfilled.
Why, oh WHY did I turn down that contract?
She sighed.
Con had been thrilled when she had told him of her decision to go to the States with him.
As the adulation for The Fishermen grew, and Con found himself mobbed by screaming girls everywhere he went, Sorcha was sure she’d made the right choice.
She knew she could trust Con – it was the women she was not so sure of.
One night, the two of them had arrived home at their flat in Hampstead in the early hours to find a young girl in their bed. Stark naked. Con had managed to get her to leave with an autographed photo and one of his old unwashed T-shirts.
This had prompted them to move to somewhere more secure. After they returned from the States, they’d rented a flat in Chelsea with twenty-four-hour porterage, very near to Todd and Lulu.
The Fishermen had gone from strength to strength.
Another two number-one hits had followed in that first year.
The time seemed to fly as she and Con were wined, dined and fêted by all that met them.
It had been huge fun in the beginning: jetting off all over the world, staying in the best hotels, meeting the kind of people that Sorcha had only read about in magazines or seen on the television.
And Con was always attentive and loving, apologising if he had to leave her in the hotel room to go off for an interview or a rehearsal. He’d furnish her with money to go shopping. Sorcha had a wardrobe filled with expensive clothes bought from all over the world.
Then, slowly, the constant travel and screaming fans had started to take their toll.
Sorcha would never have believed that she could grow tired of shopping, but that was the truth.
Lulu had been there to keep her company at first, but as her career as an actress had taken off, she’d spent less and less time on the road with Todd.
Sorcha had begun to yearn for some stability and a break from the endless rounds of packing and unpacking suitcases.
So, two years ago, they’d found a lovely Victorian house on the edge of Hampstead Heath.
It needed major renovations, and Sorcha had elected to stay at home more often to oversee them.
Refurbishing the house had been a challenge she had relished.
She only wished Con was home more to enjoy it.
His absences, however, did not deter his fans.
There were always three or four young girls on vigil outside the front gate, desperate for a glimpse of their hero.
The high wall surrounding the house now boasted an ugly necklace of barbed wire to keep out Con’s unwanted admirers.
On more than one occasion, girls had spat at Sorcha when she drove out of the gates in the little Austin that Con had bought her for her birthday.
She hated the animosity, the uncomfortableness of being disliked not because of who she was but because of whom she was married to.
Running the gauntlet of the fans outside caused Sorcha to think twice before she went out anywhere.
Consequently, she spent more time than was good for her closeted inside the house.
Lately, she’d begun to feel a little like a prisoner.
She’d talked to Con about it, and all he could suggest was that she start to travel with him more often. However, the thought of hanging around in endless hotel rooms was even less appealing than staying at home, where she at least had her comforts.
Subsequently, she’d seen less and less of Con in the past few months.
Is he happy? she wondered to herself, then felt horrified that she didn’t know the answer. Con was her husband. They lived in the same house, shared the same bed, and yet she had felt lately that they were somehow drifting apart.
‘If only, if only the baby would happen,’ she whispered.
Despite two years of letting nothing stand in their way, Sorcha had not yet fallen pregnant. She thought how ironic it was that when Con and she had first met, she’d been completely terrified of conceiving a child. And now, when it was so very much what she wanted, God would not oblige.
Maybe this was her punishment.
For some reason, lately she’d been thinking a lot about the past, and Ballymore.
Her mother still wrote monthly, enclosing press cuttings of Con that she thought her daughter might have missed.
Sorcha thanked her profusely each time she wrote back, not having the heart to tell her that The Fishermen had their own press department which collated news about the supergroup from the four corners of the earth.
Her mother included news of her father in her letters – of how his business was thriving, of the fact that he was now head of the Ballymore Board of Trade and Commerce.
It was obvious from her mother’s letters that Seamus had still not softened in his attitude towards his daughter.
She had accepted the fact that she’d probably never see her father again.
Sorcha busied herself around the kitchen even though she knew Miriam the cleaner would be in tomorrow, which made her own domestic energies pointless.
Sorcha sat down abruptly at the table, polish in one hand, duster in the other. That was exactly it.
She was totally surplus to requirements.
If she decided to go to bed today and stay there for a week, the only person who might notice, or indeed care, was Con. And she wasn’t even sure that was guaranteed.
Abandoning her own fledgling career, Sorcha had known she was dedicating her life to her marriage. She had decided to be positive about it, embracing the lifestyle and wanting to support him in any way she could.
But Con now had a team of staff that looked after his every need. The only territory that was hers alone was in the bedroom. And she wasn’t providing what they wanted in there.
But if she was honest, it wasn’t really any of those things that was the nub of the problem. They were surmountable. But Con had begun to change.
She could hardly bear to admit it to herself.
At first, she’d blamed it on the pressure he was under.
There were no courses or books to tell you how to deal with the whole world wanting a slice of you.
He’d seemed to cope very well to begin with; they’d laughed together about the underwear and the photographs of naked women offering their bodies, and the interest the media had in the minutiae of his life.
And then, a few months ago, as his fame reached seismic proportions, it had started to get to him.
When he was home, he was morose and short-tempered.
He’d sit in front of the TV news, swearing about the situation in Northern Ireland, or becoming steamed up by the war in Vietnam.
He’d started to air his views in public, even attending peace rallies and marches.
Sorcha hadn’t minded initially. If these causes gave him an outlet for his frustration, she’d accept it.
But lately, it had begun to take over. Sorcha had recently voiced the opinion that it was all very well to sit in his big Hampstead house with his nice cars and more money than he knew what to do with and air his left-wing views, but wasn’t he being a touch hypocritical?
Con hadn’t spoken to her for three days.
She checked her watch. Almost eleven. Time to wake him up. She’d heard him arrive home in the small hours last night, from some anti-war protest in central London.
Sorcha stood up and put on the kettle. This weekend there was nothing on. She brightened considerably at the thought. A small oasis of time for the two of them to be together.
Ten minutes later, she entered the bedroom, still swathed in darkness against the bright sun. She looked at Con, an arm thrown above his head, his expression, for once, peaceful. She set the tray down on the table at the end of the bed and kissed Con on the lips.
‘Morning, darling.’
Con stirred, then smiled, his eyes still closed. His arms wound around her and he pulled her onto the bed to kiss her.
‘Morning, Sorcha-porcha. This is a nice way to wake up.’ His hand snaked under her blouse.
She looked down at him. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’ He tried to pull her back towards him but she resisted.
‘Con, I was thinking I’d come to New York with you when you fly out for your next concert. I could do with a break from this house.’
‘That’s a grand idea, Sorcha. New York will cheer you up.’
‘And, Con, you have nothing on this weekend, do you?’
‘Er, well . . .’
‘I know you don’t. I looked in your diary. I was thinking maybe we could go away for the night somewhere. It seems ages since it was just the two of us.’
‘Maybe. I’m sure you could persuade me.’
‘I will certainly try,’ she smiled.
Con pulled her down towards him.
‘Morning, all! Thought I heard stirrings.’
Sorcha sat bolt upright as Lulu, her eyes heavy with sleep and wearing a T-shirt that only just covered her modesty, entered the room and bounced onto the bed beside them.
Sorcha could have wept.
‘I didn’t know you were here,’ she said quietly.
‘It was so late when we arrived back from the protest that I crashed in the spare room. Went well last night, didn’t it, Con? Should make the front pages today.’
‘You should, anyway,’ quipped Con. ‘“Well-known actress attacks policeman at rally.” Do you know how lucky you were to avoid being arrested?’
‘I wish I had been. The only reason I wasn’t was because the little shit was kicking the crap out of a poor defenceless student at the same time as I was jumping on his back to stop him. That would go down really well on the front page of the Express. Got any cigarettes?’
‘Try my pocket.’ Con pointed to the heap of clothes on the floor by the window.
Lulu jumped off the bed, rifled through Con’s pockets and pulled out a packet of Embassy. She lit one up and climbed back on the bed.
‘Does Todd know you’re here?’ asked Sorcha.
‘No. And I have no intention of telling him. We had a bit of a barney before I left for the protest. He doesn’t think it’s good for his image to have his wife portrayed as a militant.’
‘Even if you are,’ smiled Con.
‘It’s not my fault that I care what happens to this stinky old world. Read the papers this morning, Sorcha?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything in there about last night?’
‘Not that I saw. I think the fact Neil Armstrong made it to the moon took precedence.’
‘Damn! Why did it have to be last night? The papers’ll be full of nothing else for days now. We might as well have not bothered.’
Sorcha climbed off the bed. ‘Well, I’m interested in it if no one else is. I’m going down to the see the pictures on television. Are you coming, Con?’
‘Let me wake up a while, Sorcha, will you?’
‘Okay. Shall I go and see if I could book somewhere for tonight?’
‘Tonight? You’re not thinking of going away, are you?’ said Lulu.
‘We were, yes.’ Anger burned in Sorcha’s eyes.
‘But, Con, they’re holding a candlelight vigil outside the American embassy. It would really help if you turned up and—’
Sorcha walked out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her.