A Perfectly Good Man by Gale Patrick

Author:Gale, Patrick [Gale, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2012-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

It was inevitable that they would meet sooner or later. Knowing this, she had it all worked out, how she would simply deny it was his, tell some fib about a new man she’d been seeing on and off. But she met him completely outside his expected context, on a visit to the Tate. He was with a Eurasian-looking little boy, six or seven, whom he introduced as his son. The child was clearly impatient to visit the gallery shop, so he let him slip ahead and turned back to Nuala while her defences were down.

‘You look so well,’ he said.

‘I feel like a galleon,’ she said. ‘I can hardly fit in the driving seat.’

‘Is it kicking yet?’

‘And how.’ And without thinking she grasped his hand and placed it on her belly. The baby wasn’t kicking just then but the sudden warmth of the connection gave him permission to ask.

‘Is it a boy or a girl or haven’t you asked?’

‘It’s a boy,’ she said. ‘I just found out. Hung like a horse, they told me.’

And he laughed. ‘Is it mine?’ he asked quietly, taking back his hand as people passed them on the stairs.

‘Yes,’ she said, all lies forgotten.

‘I’ll tell Dot,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask her for a divorce.’

‘But you love her,’ she reminded him. ‘You love her deeply.’

‘Yes, but …’ At which point his son came back to find him because he needed his money and Nuala escaped upstairs into the gallery. Her mind was now anywhere but on art. As she walked through the rooms, her eyes slid, uninvolved, over paintings and sculpture and a great curving wall of Bernard Leach pottery, as her thoughts churned over. She found she was becoming almost angry so gave up and stalked downstairs.

He was waiting outside, his son playing on the beach with friends.

‘I don’t want a husband,’ she told him straight out. ‘Really not. Never again. And I don’t want him to have a father if it means hurting other children and your wife.’

‘But don’t I—’

‘Have a say? No.’ She was surprised at the strength of her own feelings. ‘Really not. I’m not letting you martyr yourself and them for this and if you do anything stupid, like tell your … tell Dorothy, I swear we’ll just vanish so you’ll have hurt her for nothing.’

He was looking stricken.

‘Barnaby, I’m very happy, honestly. We’ll be happy. We’ll be fine. And of course you’ll be able to see him and know him. Only …’

‘Not as a father.’

‘No.’

‘Can I …? Will you bring him to me to be christened, at least?’

She smiled at that, at such an easy, meaningless thing to grant. ‘Of course I will,’ she said. ‘If you like I’ll do it while Niamh and my mum are still staying. They’ll like that. Now. Please, Barnaby. Step away from the foxy pregnant lady. We live in a goldfish bowl.’

He obeyed her and walked slowly down the steps onto Porthmeor Beach, where he was absorbed by the Easter holiday crowds yet remained entirely visible and apart from them, in his incongruous black.

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