Once in a Lifetime

Besides, the women she’d helped in her life were almost like children to her. Star’s talent for collecting lost souls had given her mothering instinct a powerful outlet.

She dressed with speed, her clothes the colours of the garden she loved: pastels in spring, warm rosy hues in summer, golds when the leaves were turning in autumn, and the cool shades of a snowy landscape in winter. Today, it being February, she dressed in a cream woollen dress with a grey fitted coat and black high boots. She swept her hair up off her face and fastened it in a low knot at the base of her neck. Her everyday uniform was very different, loose skirts or jeans and T-shirts, but today, she needed to appear the smart businesswoman.

Kenny’s department store was an institution. The word had become a cliché, but Kenny’s truly was one. Established in 1924, when Europe was recovering from the Great War and Ireland was emerging on to the world stage, after the ravages of the Civil War, Kenny’s became the local byword for style. It was the place where all were welcomed, the moneyed classes and those who hoped one day to belong to the moneyed classes. Old Mr Kenny’s dictum was that every customer was to be treated with courtesy, working man and titled lady alike. Its combination of elegance and egalitarianism contributed to its success.

Over the years, so much of Ardagh had changed: entire streets had been transformed as old family businesses made way for high street chains and big conglomerates. The Classic Cinema, where Star and her friends had eaten popcorn and screamed their way through Jaws, was now a car park, and the Soda Pop where they’d drunk cheap coffee and occasionally had enough money to indulge in the house speciality–a banana split–had been demolished and a supermarket built in its place.

But Kenny’s never changed. It had been updated, with plenty of money spent, but the place looked and felt essentially the same: a graceful old-style Edwardian shop front that took up an entire block, with glossy small-paned windows and swing doors ornamented with shining brass fittings. A curlicued sign hung over every door: Kenny’s–Established 1924.

Star left her car in the car park behind Kenny’s, walked around to the delivery door at the back and pressed the bell. It was over an hour to opening, and most of the staff wouldn’t have arrived yet, but Lena had promised to be at the delivery door at eight. The door buzzed and Star pushed it open, pulling the small wheelie trolley, with its precious cargo of tapestries, behind her. The place was dark and there was nobody visible, so Star wasn’t sure who’d buzzed her in, but she began to walk in the direction of the back stairs to the offices, looking around for signs of life. The doors to the stairs were locked when she tried them. The only bit of light was coming from the double doors that led on to the shop floor. Perhaps that’s where Lena was.

Star pushed open the doors and breathed in the magical scent of Kenny’s.

After the gloom of the delivery area, it was like entering a beautifully lit jewel box. In the distance, she could hear the faint drone of a vacuum cleaner. The lights were on in the shop and the scents of perfume mingled with the smell of furniture polish and a faint hint of warm pastries wafting down from the café upstairs. She left her trolley against a wall and began to walk through this paradise, enjoying the sensation of being there all on her own.

Lena often chatted about the various departments. How David Kenny, the current owner, had said he wanted a very distinctive jewellery area, with unusual pieces from local craftsmen and women as well as the big brands. It was the same in the fashion department: there was a small section where young, just-out-of-college designers could display their clothes. The perfume and cosmetics halls, the most valuable space per square metre in any department store, were filled with all the usual brands, but pride of place went to Organic Belle, a range of skin products made entirely in a small village in West Cork.

‘David has a great eye for the next big thing,’ Lena confided. ‘Nobody had heard of Organic Belle when he brought them in two years ago; now they’re big in Los Angeles and some famous hotel chain wants the range in all their spas. They’re going to be huge. You should try the products. We’ve a lovely woman who works there, Charlie Fallon. She could help you.’

Star sensed that Lena thought she was the epitome of an eccentric artist, partly because she lived in such a remote spot, and partly because Star had said she rarely visited Kenny’s. Lena, who lived and breathed the store, and didn’t see how anyone else could fail to adore the place, was shocked.

‘You mean, you don’t shop there?’

‘I was there twice last year,’ Star pointed out.

‘But that was to see me,’ Lena said.

Consequently, she did her best to sell the notion of Kenny’s to Star, highlighting bits she thought Star might like, which included anything vaguely natural.

Passing the Organic Belle counters, Star inhaled the subtle scent of the brand’s best-selling balm: an instantly relaxing combination of lemongrass and lavender.

Star had seen Charlie, the woman Lena had spoken of, on one of her earlier visits. Although she didn’t exactly resemble her mother, Star was pretty sure that Charlie was the younger daughter of Kitty Nelson, a stalwart of the women’s feminist movement in the seventies and someone Star had known many years ago. It was the eyes: ever so slightly cat-shaped. But while Kitty’s eyes had been feline in every respect, particularly when it came to men, Charlie’s were soft and gentle. She would be a very different sort of woman to her feisty, femme fatale mother, Star instinctively felt.

Beyond the Organic Belle counters, lay the entrance to the food hall, and even though all the boxes of sweets and cookies were packed away, the lingering aroma of caramel and butter filled the air.

‘I love the food hall,’ Lena had explained, determined to make Star into a Kenny’s fan. ‘We sell proper food there. David realised there was a vast market for ready-to-eat gourmet food and since we’ve started selling the locally produced “I Made It Myself, Honest” range, sales have been enormous.’ People loved the food, Lena went on: simple produce expertly cooked with zero additives.

On her previous visits, Star had been into the homes department, which sold Irish pottery and glass. Star could never resist pottery, but she hadn’t been into the lingerie department, despite Lena explaining about their biggest seller: a range made by a former home economics teacher from Dublin who was fed up with trying to get comfortable suck-it-all-in underwear for women over size 18, and had designed her own range.

‘Fabulous idea,’ said Lena. ‘She made it all on her sewing machine, but when she went round the shops trying to get business, David was the only one to bite. And now look at it. We can’t keep it on the shelves and all the big stores in London want it too. What other man would see that there was a need for that?’ Lena asked.

Star smiled. Lena would have died with embarrassment if she’d thought she was implying that slender Star needed control pants.

‘And it’s not as if he has any experience with a wife at home looking for control pants every time she needs to dress up,’ Lena went on. ‘He’s married to Ingrid Fitzgerald, for heaven’s sake–she’s only a size 12. Has an incredible figure. So it’s pure business sense on his part. You have to admire that, don’t you?’

Star rarely watched television. She had one, but it was ancient and she really only turned on for the news. Even so, she knew who Ingrid Fitzgerald was. In a world where many political television interviewers were male, Ingrid stood out as the best of them all: highly intelligent, poised and adept at getting answers to the hard questions. And beautiful, too. Not the fleeting type of beauty that came from fluffed-up hair and a carapace of make-up, but a real, deep-down kind–lovely bone structure, intelligent eyes and an expressive, warm face.

And the thing was, Ingrid looked as if she was as lovely inside as she was out. Star had always been a very good judge of that. They were similar in age too, although Ingrid might be younger, Star thought. In another world, they might have been friends. Ingrid had two children, grown-up now, and her daughter, Molly, shared a flat with a girl Star had known when she was just a baby. Natalie was twenty-three now: Star kept count.

Natalie had nearly been born in Star’s house, and Star would never forget the frantic dash to hospital with Des, while Dara lay on the backseat howling in pain. Star had been one of the first people to hold the tiny baby with the head of curly dark hair and she’d felt what she always felt when she held a newborn–that they knew all the wisdom of the world.

Star had been part of Natalie’s world for little more than three years before Dara had died. Star, like everyone else in Dara’s circle of friends, had sworn to abide by Dara’s rules about her little daughter.

‘Let me go, don’t try to hold on to the past,’ Dara had insisted, fearing that the memory of her dead mother would darken Natalie’s future.

‘She deserves to know who you are,’ Star had pleaded. ‘Were,’ she amended sadly.

Dara had shaken her head fiercely. ‘It’s better this way,’ she said. The past could destroy people, and she didn’t want that for Natalie. What she wanted for her daughter was a new life with her father. ‘Des is wonderful, he’ll bring her up so well. Perhaps he’ll marry again, and they’ll be much happier without me like a spectre in the background.’

And so everyone who loved Dara had promised her that they wouldn’t be a part of little Natalie’s world, telling her how like her mother she was or recounting tales of the days before she was born. Though Star had only known Dara a few years–since that rainy day she’d found her lying in utter despair on the coast road–she was one of the few people who’d heard the heartbreaking story of Dara’s earlier life.

‘The past hurts,’ said Dara, determined to spare her beloved daughter the pain.

‘But knowing can bring about healing,’ Star replied. ‘You can transcend the misery: you have.’

But Dara was firm. For Star, who lived on instinct, staying out of Natalie’s life as she grew up had been one of the hardest vows she’d ever kept.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the double doors on to the street swinging shut. A blast of icy February air whirled in, along with a man in a long grey overcoat, the collar turned up. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and he walked at speed, as if there wasn’t enough time to do all he wanted in life.

From her position beside a display of jewelled clips and silk-flower hairclips, Star watched David Kenny pass though his department store. He didn’t survey his surroundings the way she imagined he normally did, those clever eyes noting every detail and marking it down in his memory if something needed to be changed. His eyes were focused on something else entirely, something inward. The closer he got, the more she could see the tension in his face. His hair was greying, salt and pepper around the temples. Distinguished, Star thought; that was the word for it. He reached the stationary escalator in the centre of the store and instead of climbing up, showing how fit he undoubtedly was, he jabbed a red button. The escalator hummed to life and he stood in perfect stillness as it bore him up to the next floor.

Star had heard that David Kenny, like his father before him, made a practice of walking through his beloved store every day, making sure all was well. All might have been well in the store this morning, but watching him now, Star was certain that all was not well with David Kenny.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed. Only someone who knew him well could detect the strain on his carefully composed face. Once, she’d known David Kenny better than she’d known any other human being. Now, the closest she got to him was when she reached a hand out in her garden and touched his tree, a rowan that had grown tall and strong in the thirty-five years since she’d planted it. She hadn’t talked to him since then, though she was sure he was well aware that she was Bluestone Tapestries. Lena’s initial attempt to arrange an introduction had been gently brushed away, with Star explaining that she ‘didn’t do corporate stuff’.

‘Oh, but David meets everyone,’ Lena said.

‘Not me,’ Star replied, smiling to show that she was happier that way. And she was grateful that David appeared to accept this, for he had made no attempt to meet her.

It wasn’t that she was angry with David. No. It hadn’t ended that way at all. It just wasn’t meant to be for her and the passionate young poet who’d written verses to her beauty, and made love to her as if he’d found his life’s meaning when their bodies were together. No, she wasn’t angry with him. Her life had worked out in its own way. Until now, she’d imagined David’s had too.

But seeing how tense he looked, she wasn’t so sure.

An old saying of her mother’s came to mind: ‘What’s meant for you will find you.’ Many people took that to mean good things, but Star was enough of a student of the universe to know that it could mean bad things too.

Whatever terrible sadness was touching David, Star hoped he was able to deal with it.

1 (#ulink_f7eacbc8-d0e7-58d6-8427-4ba38aa57273)

Be kind to other women. It really works–most of the time. And even on those days when it doesn’t, it’ll make you feel better inside.

That night, Ingrid sat at the beautifully laid dinner table in a grand old house, with her husband David and eleven other elegantly dressed couples, and wished with all her heart that she wasn’t there. The scent of the freesias in the crystal bowl in the centre of the table fought valiantly with the women’s perfumes, which were predominantly musky with the odd note of sharp florals. Ingrid loved scent, but she hated the heavy, cloying perfumes so many women wore at night, as if they were using pheromones to attract a caveman rather than attending a civilised dinner party with their husbands.

She reached across the snowy white tablecloth and pulled the bowl closer to her, leaning forward to smell the pure, clean flowers. Instantly, she was transported to her terrace on a late spring day, where she would sit revelling in the seclusion as she read the morning papers. Pity she wasn’t there now. Stop, she told herself. The evening wasn’t going to grow magically shorter by wishing it was over.

The problem was that these people were David’s friends. Odd how a couple could be married for thirty years and still have such disparate friends. They shared some, people they’d known all their married life, but their careers had brought them a collection of acquaintances from two completely different worlds.

Tonight was a night for David’s people, in particular their host, the owner of a large transport company, useful to Kenny’s. Three other businessmen whom David knew were also present: wealthy men with glamorous wives; women with beautiful hair and nails and wearing diamonds of every possible cut.