I didn’t call Garv – and to the great disappointment and confusion of my parents, he didn’t call me either. In a way it was a relief, but a relief that somehow managed to be an unpleasant one.
Anna was also in the house a lot – she was devastated about Shane. We hung out furtively, because when Mum saw us together her mouth would squinch like a cat’s bottom and she’d enquire, ‘Is it a rest home for fallen women I’m running here?’ As best we could, we talked about our respective break-ups. What had happened for her was that Shane had set up a computer business making on-line music, and out of nowhere he became a bread-head. ‘He got his hair cut. At a hairdresser’s. He bought styling wax, then I knew it was all over. I suppose,’ Anna sighed, ‘he wants to grow up and I don’t. So what about you and Garv?’
‘Oh, you know…’ I couldn’t tell her about Truffle Woman. Whatever energy would have been required to pull those words out of my gut and into the open just wasn’t there. ‘Mostly I feel nothing,’ I managed. ‘It’s a horrible sort of nothing, but… you know… that can’t be right. Shouldn’t I be roaring crying?’
Shouldn’t I be breaking into Truffle Woman’s house and planting grass in her carpets and prawns in her curtain rails? Shouldn’t I be making plans to cut the arms and legs off all Garv’s clothes?
‘I haven’t even rung Garv to say I miss him.’ Even though a spasm of longing for him jack-knifed me roughly once every waking hour. ‘My life is ruined and all I feel is nothing.’ My future was a roped-off area – I managed occasional fleeting glimpses of the sadness, but they didn’t stay. It was as if a door into a noisy room opened and immediately slammed shut again.
‘You’re depressed,’ Anna said. ‘You’re very depressed. Is it any surprise, after all you’ve been through?’
But that didn’t sit comfortably. ‘I’m not a depressive.’ (I know because I did a quiz in Cosmopolitan.)
‘You are now. And Garv probably is too.’
She’d said something interesting, maybe even important, but I couldn’t hold the thought. I was too weary.
Unlike me, Anna couldn’t sleep. At least, not in her own bed, so she wandered the house at night, moving from bed to bed. She often got in beside me, but was usually gone when I woke, leaving the faint residue of a wraith-like creature who sighed a lot and smelt of Bacardi Breezers. It was like being haunted by a benign ghost.
Occasionally she was still there when I woke. One morning I came to to find one of her feet resting on my ear and the other in my mouth; for reasons best known to herself, Anna had decided to get into bed upside-down.
Another night I emerged from sleep feeling absurdly happy: warm, safe, cherished. Then, going into hollow freefall, I realized what it was – Anna was snuggling into me, nuzzling and mewing, ‘Oh Shane.’ Deep in sleep, her arm tight around me, I’d thought she was Garv.
Sometimes Anna and I could provide comfort for each other. She developed a theory that our lives were so awful because our guardian angels had gone on sabbaticals, and that currently we were being minded by temps who took no pride in their work.
‘They do the bare minimum. We won’t get our hands caught in a mincing machine, but that’s all they’ll do for us.’
‘What’s my real angel called?’
‘Basil.’
‘Basil?’
‘Henry, then.’
‘Henry?’
‘How about Clive?’
‘He’s a boy angel?’
‘Oh no, they’re neutral.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘He smells of Turkish Delight and he’s pink.’
‘Pink?’
‘With green spots.’
‘You’re not taking this seriously.’
‘Sorry. What’s mine called?’
‘Penelope.’
‘Favourite food?’
‘Carrots and parsnips mashed together.’
‘Best bit about being a guardian angel?’
‘Helping people find the right dress and shoes for their Christmas party. What’s Clive’s best bit?’
‘Finding lost earrings.’
… And sometimes we couldn’t provide comfort for each other.
One bad morning, Anna got in beside me and we both lay on our backs, staring miserably at the ceiling. After some time she said, ‘I think we’re making each other worse.’
‘I think we are,’ I agreed.
‘I’ll go back to my own bed, will I?’
‘Ok.’
Unlike me, Anna occasionally left the house – if only in response to a request from Shane.
‘He says he wants “to talk”.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’
‘He really means he wants to have sex. That’s what’s happened the last three times. It gets my hopes up, then leaves me feeling even worse.’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t sleep with him any more,’ I suggested.
‘Maybe,’ she said vaguely, unconvinced.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t even meet him.’
But the next time he rang and said he wanted to see her, she agreed. ‘Don’t worry,’ she promised me. ‘I’m not going to sleep with him.’
But as I went to bed that night she wasn’t back. Mind you, it was barely nine-fifteen and she’d only been gone half an hour.
Some unknown time that night, I woke into darkness. I wondered what had disturbed me – and then I heard it, a noise I remembered well from my teenage years: a scraping and scratching from the front door. One of my sisters – Anna in this case – was having trouble getting her key in the lock. It went on for so long that I was just about to get up and let her in when the door was finally pushed open, then I heard the reassuring crash as she bumped into and knocked over the hall table, followed, a few minutes later, by the disgusting smell of baked beans heating in a saucepan. Just like the old days, I thought dreamily, as I sank back into sleep. It’s yesterday once more…
Some time later I jumped awake again. The fire alarm was beeping in a fussy frenzy and Dad was hopping about the landing in a wild-eyed, pyjama’d panic. ‘How do I turn this shagging thing off?’ Grey smoke was swirling around the hall, the beans and saucepan were burnt to a crisp and Anna was slumped over the kitchen table, deep in sweet slumber.
We put her to bed, but sometime later she got in beside me, reeking so strongly of drink that if I’d been awake, I’d have passed out. As it was, her incendiary breath had the effect of smelling salts, and woke me up.
Later that same night, the whole house was once again woken – this time by an almighty thump; it sounded like a ceiling had fallen in. Closer investigation revealed that it was nothing quite so exciting. All that had happened was that Anna had tried to get into bed beside Helen, and Helen, who objected to sleeping with ‘a one-woman brewery’, had pushed her out on to the floor.
‘But at least I didn’t sleep with him,’ Anna said the following morning, as she inspected her bruises. ‘OK, I drank myself into a coma and nearly burnt the house down, but at least I didn’t sleep with him.’
‘It’s progress,’ I agreed.
At some stage during the second dreadful week, I needed something, but there were so few options open to me.
‘Go for a walk,’ Dad suggested. ‘Get some fresh air.’
I’ve never really understood the concept of Going for a Walk. And not even at my sportiest did I get the appeal of Going for a Walk in suburbia. But I was bad enough to give it a try.
‘Take a coat,’ he advised. ‘It might rain.’
‘It’s June.’
‘It’s Ireland.’
‘I haven’t got a coat.’ Well, I had, but it was in my house, Garv’s house, you know the one I mean. I was afraid to go there in case he’d moved the girl in. Perhaps that sounds like a wild overreaction, but my instinct was warning me that anything was possible.
‘Take mine.’ Dad’s anorak was red, nylon, awful, but I longed for affection and I couldn’t resist letting him help me into it.
&nb
sp; Off I went. Nothing too ambitious. I walked a couple of hundred yards to the green and sat on a wall, watching some kids do whatever kids do on greens: surreptitious smoking; trading inaccurate information on sex; whatever. I felt horrible. The sky was mushroom grey and stagnant, even the bits that weren’t directly over me. After a while, when I didn’t feel any better, I decided I might as well go home again. It was bound to be time for some version of ‘Girlfrien’, you ain’t so all that.’ No point in missing it.
I was traipsing back down the hill when someone flickered across my vision and vaguely alerted me. I looked properly. It was a man about fifty yards away, lifting things out of a car boot. Oh my… God. Shay Delaney. Well, for a second I thought it was him, then it was clear that it wasn’t. There was just something about the man that reminded me slightly of Shay and even that was enough to unsteady me.
But as I continued, with a whoosh of dizziness I saw that it was him. Different, but still the same. The change was that he looked older and this gave me some pleasure, until it dawned on me that if he looked older, then so would I.
He was lifting stuff from the boot of a car and stacking it at the gate of his mother’s house. How could I not have instantly known it was him? He was outside his own house. Well, the house he’d lived in until he’d left to go away to college fifteen years ago. Fifteen years. How? I’m young now and I was grown-up then, there isn’t room for fifteen years. Dizzy again.
I couldn’t meet him. Not now, not with all this shame. A powerful impulse almost had me marching away in the direction I’d just come from and, after a frantic, weighing-up session, only the fear that he might notice stopped me.
But of all the times to bump into him, I thought wildly. Of all the times to have to play the game of How Did Your Life Turn Out? Why couldn’t I have met him when I’d had a marriage I was proud of, when I’d been happy? Of course, I didn’t have to tell him how wrong everything had gone. But wouldn’t he guess, wasn’t it obvious…?
My hollow legs continued leading me down the hill, straight into his path.
For years I used to fantasize about meeting him again. Time after time I comforted myself with meticulous plans. I’d be thin, beautiful, trendily dressed, expertly lit. I’d be poised, confident, on top of my game. And he’d have lost his appeal. Somehow he’d have shrunk to about five five, his dark-blond hair would have fallen out and he’d have put on a ton of weight.
But from what I could see, he still had his hair and his height, and if he’d bulked out a bit, it had the unfortunate effect of suiting him. Meanwhile, look at me – the trackie bottoms, the air of failure, the way my face had gone a bit funny and immobile. It was nearly laughable. The only thing I had going for me were the floodlights in my hair – I’d been uncertain when the ‘dresser first suggested it, but now it was clear it was a godsend.
Closer I got. Closer. He’d no interest in me, not at all. It seemed as if I could escape with my raw, white face, my dad’s anorak, my air of recently separated bleakness. Then I was right up beside him, passing him by and still he wasn’t looking. And with a strange defiance I decided that if he wasn’t going to speak, then I would.
‘Shay?’
He looked, I have to say, gratifyingly shocked.
‘Maggie?’ He froze in the act of lifting something from the boot, then stood up. ‘Maggie Walsh?’
‘Garvan,’ I corrected shyly. ‘Maggie Garvan now, but yeah.’
‘That’s right,’ he agreed warmly. ‘I heard you got married. So, ah, how’s Garv?’
‘Fine.’ A little defensively.
All was still – and mildly uncomfortable. Then he rolled his eyes playfully to indicate shock. ‘Wooh, Maggie Walsh. Long time. So!’ Before he even asked it, I knew he was going to. ‘Any kids?’
‘No. You?’
‘Three. Little monkeys.’ He made a face.
‘I bet. Hahaha.’
‘You look fantastic!’ he declared. He was either blind or insane, but such was his enthusiasm that I tentatively began to half-believe him.
‘How’s your mum?’ As if he was genuinely interested. ‘How’s the cooking?’
‘Ah, she gave up on it.’
‘She’s some gal,’ he said admiringly. ‘And your dad? Still driven mad by the lot of you?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And what are you up to these days?’
‘Paralegal stuff.’
‘Yeah? Great.’
‘Yeah, great. You?’
‘Working for Dark Star Productions.’
‘I’ve heard of them.’ I’d read something about them in the paper, but couldn’t remember what exactly, so I said, ‘Yeah, great,’ a bit more.
And then he said, ‘Well, great to see you,’ and stuck out his hand. I looked dumbly at it – only for a second: he was expecting me to shake it. Like we were business colleagues. As I rubbed my palm against his, I remembered that he used to hold that hand over my mouth. To muffle the sounds I was making. When we were having sex.
How weird life is.
Already he was moving off. ‘Tell your mum and dad I was asking for them.’
‘And Garv?’ I couldn’t help it.
‘Sure. And Garv.’
As I walked away I was fine. I couldn’t believe it. I’d finally met him, and spoken to him, and I was fine. All those years wondering about it and I was fine. Fine. On a huge high, I danced towards home.
The minute I was inside the house I started to shake. So badly I couldn’t get my fingers to undo the zip of the anorak. Too late, I remembered that I shouldn’t have been nice to him. I should have been cold and unpleasant, after the way he’d treated me.
Mum appeared in the hall. ‘Did you meet anyone?’ she asked, her antipathy to me wrestling with her social curiosity.
‘No.’
‘No one at all?’
‘No.’
She’d loved Shay Delaney. He’d been a mother’s dream, already manly looking and with a golden-stubbled jaw while the other youths were still raw and unformed. This she put down to the fact that Shay’s father had left them, and Shay had to be the man of the house. The other lads in the gang – Micko, Macker, Toolser, even Garv – were sullen around adults; they found it impossible to maintain eye contact with anyone more than a year older than them. But Shay, the only one of his contemporaries to be called by his real name, as I recall, was perpetually good-humoured. Almost, at times, flirtatious. Claire, who was a couple of years older than him, used to say wryly, ‘I’m Shay Delaney and I always get what I want.’
But I was too busy for one of Mum’s avid interrogation sessions. (‘Had he a big car?’ ‘I believe his wife’s very glamorous?’ ‘Did the father ever leave the floozie and come home?’) I had to lie on my bed and tremble and think about Shay.
He’d been in the same year in school as Micko, Macker, Toolser and Garv, but he wasn’t fully part of their gang; his choice, not theirs, they’d have been delighted to be first best friends with him. He’d seemed to float between several factions and was welcomed by all. He was just one of those people who had – although I wouldn’t have known the word for it in those days – charisma. Claire had articulated it best by saying, ‘If Shay Delaney fell into a pit of shite he’d come out smelling of Chanel No. 5.’
Not only was he noticeably good-looking, but he had the decency not to rub people’s noses in it, so he got a rep as a nice person into the bargain. And of course, the tragedy of his father having walked out on the family generated a lot of sympathy for him. Because he looked older and had the confidence and charm to blag his way past doormen, he went places that we didn’t and inhabited different worlds to ours. But he chose to return to us, and he managed never to sound like he was boasting when he regaled us with stories of drinking crème de menthe in a nurses’ residential or going to some horsey girl’s twenty-first party in Meath. Of course, he’d always had lots of girlfriends; they’d usually left school and were either working or in college, which impressed the other lads
no end.
Anyway, I’d been going out with Garv for about six months and I was perfectly happy with him – then Shay Delaney began to pay me attention. Giving me warm smiles and one-on-one conversations so low they excluded everyone else. And it seemed like he was always watching me. We’d all be there, hanging around a wall, smoking, pushing each other – the usual messing – and I’d look up to find his gaze upon me. If he’d been anyone else I’d have assumed that he was flirting, but this was Shay Delaney, he was way out of my price range. And then, after a week when he’d cranked up the intensity of his smiles and intimate conversations, there was a party. A fluttering in my gut let me know that something was going to happen and sure enough, when Garv had been sent out to buy more drink, Shay headed me off as I emerged from the kitchen, then pulled me into the cupboard under the stairs. I protested breathlessly but he laughed and shut the door behind us and, after some half-teasing compliments about how I was driving him mad, tried to kiss me. Squashed up against his bigness in the dark, confined space, finally knowing that I hadn’t imagined his interest in me, I felt him move his face down to mine, and it was like every dream I’d ever had had come true.
‘I can’t,’ I said, turning my head away.
‘Why not?’
‘Because of Garv.’
‘If you weren’t with Garv would you let me?’
I couldn’t answer. Surely it was obvious?
‘Why me?’ I asked. ‘Why are you bothered with me?’
‘Because I am. Big time,’ he said, pulling his thumb along my mouth and making me dizzy.
I never really got to the bottom of why he wanted me. I was nothing like as good-looking as his other girlfriends, or as sophisticated. The best I could come up with myself was that as his father had left them and his home-life was a bit chaotic, I represented stability. That my normalness was the most attractive thing about me.
So, shallow cow that I was, I broke it off with poor Garv. We kind of pretended that it was a mutual thing and insisted that we’d stay friends and all that other crap you talk when you’re a teenager, but the truth of the matter was that I dumped Garv for Shay. Garv knew it as much as I did. From the moment Shay had decided he wanted me, Garv hadn’t stood a chance.