"But you kept coming here every night, doing that one-shoe thing. I realized you didn't know I'd apologized. I thought I'd better tell you."
"Take your shoe back." I slid it over to him. I no longer wanted it, it had been leached of all magic.
I'd miss it tonight on my pillow but I was going to have to get used to sleeping on my own at some stage.
Twenty-seven months later
I was on the tube when I saw a man I recognized. For a moment I couldn't remember where I knew him from. Oh yes, I used to be married to him, didn't I?
I couldn't say it was nice to see him, it would never be nice to be reminded of my stupidity, but I was certainly able to be civil.
I inquired after Hayley. Unfortunately she was well. She and Steven were still together.
"And you?" Steven said. "You'll meet someone else too."
"I already have."
"Oh?" He looked a little shaken. "Is it . . . um . . . serious?"
"Yes. I'm very happy. Here 's my stop, I have to go now."
I jumped off the train, thrust back briefly into those terrible, terrible days when I was as mad as a cut snake, fixated only with single shoes. When getting through a whole day was out of the question, when even an hour was unmanageable, when I'd had to break the process of endurance down to each individual second. Hard to believe how hopeless I'd felt then, convinced utterly that I'd never meet someone else.
But I did. This time through an ad in Time Out. Her name is Jenny. Like me, she 's short and like me, she loves high heels. Won't wear anything else. It 's only been a couple of months but already it 's been a great success (two pairs of boots, one knee, one ankle, dull but worthy navy work shoes and some whimsical little pumps) and I certainly don't anticipate having the same trouble with her as I did with Hayley.
First written for BBC's End of Story, 2004
Precious
H e was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen.
Granted, I was only twenty, and not much of a judge, but all the same.
I was three weeks into my first "proper" job and I'd just come back from the bar after a frustrating attempt to buy a post-work round of drinks. Not only had it taken forever to get served but then the barman had seemed disinclined to believe I was over eighteen. That 's how young I was—desperate to look older.
I banged a glass in front of Teresa and another one in front of my chair and I blazed indignantly, "If they went any slower, they'd be taking drinks back from people and refunding them their money!" He laughed and I fell silent. Where had he come from? This creature with his dark wavy hair and skin so pale it almost had a bluish hue.
My colleague—and as it happens, new best friend; you bond quickly at that age—Teresa introduced us. "Orla, this is my friend Bryan."
Suddenly Bryan, second only to Nigel in the pantheon of dorky boy names, blossomed into something violently romantic.
He was small and slight, but not boyish. More like a fully grown man who'd been reduced by, say, 20 percent. And the thin wrists that stuck out beneath his white cuffs were covered with fine black hair.
I was convinced he was foreign, perhaps of Russian ancestry. No Irish man could be so elegant and delicate. But when I mumblingly asked him what nationality he was, he sounded surprised and said, "Irish."
Was he sure? I pressed.
Quite sure, he said. His mother was from Limerick, one of the Limerick McNamaras, and his father's family had lived in Meath since time immemorial.
The next day at work, Teresa delivered the news that almost caused me to levitate. "Bryan likes you."
To my dumb, idiotic face she expanded, "He was asking all about you."
Eventually I released the question which tormented me. "Have you ever, you know . . . with him?"
"Bryan?" She laughed a laugh I didn't understand. "Nah, he 's a bit too"—another laugh—"mysterious for me."
I wasn't inclined to believe her. How could she not want him? How could anyone not want him?
That night we all went out again. This was when I discovered I was taller than him.
His movements mesmerized me. He did everything—lit cigarettes, fiddled with his glass—with a hard, easy grace. Next to him I was a lumpish peasant and my coarse unworthiness rendered me mute.
"Are you all right?" Teresa's voice was innocently surprised. "It 's just that normally you're so . . . lively."
"Fine," I insisted, a sickly smile nailed to my face.
He looked as if he 'd spent his childhood as a pale face at a bedroom window, watching sadly while the other cruder, more robust children rough-housed with one another on the grass. But it turned out that he 'd been very good at football.
When he wasn't answering questions he was a man of few words. He didn't bother with small talk, which impressed me no end and served to silence me further. "I wonder . . ." he said at one stage. "I wonder what it 's like to be a loofah."
"Yeah, I wonder . . ." I tried to make my voice sound musing, although until that very moment I hadn't entertained an atom of curiosity about the inner workings of a loofah. "Scratchy, I suppose."
"Scratchy!" He acted as if I'd said something profound and I nearly burst with pride—and relief.
Being kissed by him was like being pelted with marshmallows and I was so grateful that he wanted to sleep with me.
But my inadequacy burgeoned. He was just too beautiful, too perfect, too refined, too self-contained. Then I discovered I was six months older than him. It made me worse. I somehow felt like a horny-handed, meaty pervert who was taking advantage of him.
Waiting for him to discover that I wouldn't do became unbearable, so I hastened it myself. I watched his exasperation grow with my awkward, giggly silences. It was like seeing an out-of-control truck speed down a hill, directly towards me. I was powerless to stop it and powerless to get out of the way.
Every night when he dropped me home I swore to myself that next time—if I was lucky enough to get a next time—it would be different. I'd talk, I'd laugh, I'd make him laugh. But when the next time came, my words would disappear on me and we 'd end up going to bed more out of needing something to do.
From the beginning I'd known he was moving to New York and that the most I would ever get with him was a couple of months. Even while I fantasized about him staying for me, I knew he wouldn't.
So he went, just as expected. The only jarring note was that he was going to work for a bank.
And I never got over him. Sometimes I used to say it. I liked the sound of it. "There was this bloke when I was twenty and I suppose I"—brave smile, deep breath—"never got over him."
It was actually a relief when he was gone. I was sick and crazy, but it was easier to deal with when he wasn't around.
Teresa wouldn't let me be heartbroken. "I like him," she said. "He 's my friend, but isn't he a bit precious?"
For a long, long time I thought calling someone "precious" was a compliment.
Perhaps six months after he 'd left news filtered back from New York that he was going out with a painter. When I'd recovered from the initial kick-in-the-stomach shock, I thought, Oh, but of course.
A painter, a tormented artist. What else? I could see her. Neurotic and sexy, with an elusive, quicksilver quality which held Bryan in her thrall. She was tiny—she 'd have to be, to be worthy of him. Skinny with childlike buttocks, but nothing childlike about her sexuality. She never ate, but subsisted on cigarettes and black coffee. She dressed entirely in black, her black polo neck covered with paint stains which she never noticed. Sometimes she deliberately cut herself with the scalpel she used on her canvases. While the rest of the world slept she prowled around her loft, flinging paint at canvas and exclaiming with insomniac despair. I scorned my own regular seven-hour slumbers—how stolid, how embarrassingly stable.
Time passed and I went out with other men, and did my very best to let them break my heart. Some of them made quite a good stab at it too, but not enough to wipe out his memory.
"I'm sorry,
" I said more than once. "You see there was this bloke when I was twenty and I"—brave smile, deep breath—"never got over him."
Most of them bought it. Some were quite sympathetic, some were hurt, some angry and one of them told me I had an overactive imagination and that I'd want to cop on to myself.
The day I heard he was marrying the neurotic, insomniac painter, I thought I took the news quite well. Until I was on the bus on the way home and, with a sweaty rush of hot and cold, realized that if I didn't get off at the next stop, there was a good chance I'd vomit.
And somehow it was ten years since he 'd left Ireland, Teresa was getting married, and Bryan was coming home from New York for the wedding, bringing Danielle his wife with him.
From the moment I heard they were coming, I became clenched and oxygen-deprived with waiting.
And I wound ever tighter as the big day hurtled towards me. You'd swear it was me who was getting married.
The morning of the wedding I spent a long, long time on my appearance, prepared to embrace any small setback—a chip in my nail varnish, a missing earring—as a major disaster.
I didn't see them in the church, but when we got to the hotel and saw the seating plan I couldn't decide if I was glad or appalled to find I was at the same table as them. But my friend Jennifer was also at the same table, she 'd provide a buffer.
I was twisted up, tight as a walnut, my eyes working the reception room. Then I saw him. Patiently I waited to see if I'd fall in a faint or break out into a sweat or rush to vomit. Nothing happened.
At the same time he saw me and came towards me, as my heart knocked ever-louder echoes into my ears. We smiled and our greeting was the height of polite, apart from the fact that he had forgotten my name. Still "not quite of this world," I thought. Then I focused on the woman next to him. I'd seen her already: she was impossible to miss. She didn't look the way I expected Bryan's wife to look. For a start she was tall, taller than him. About my height, actually. And her hair was bright yellow. Not exactly blond, more like the Day-Glo dazzle of yellow Opal fruits. Glorious. Her dress was also yellow, but not quite the same shade. How brave, I thought, suddenly angry with my own tweely coordinated look.
She wore lots of red lip gloss, as if she 'd fallen into a patch of raspberry jam. And I was surprised that she didn't look as if she subsisted on just cigarettes and coffee. One or two square meals got past those raspberry jam lips. I could see no obvious scalpel scars on her bare arms, either.
"How's New York?" I asked him.
"Fine," he said.
"Good," I said, "I was worried about it."
No, I didn't actually say it, but I thought it. To be fair, I didn't exactly set the conversation alight either. Even ten years on he could deprive me of the power of speech.
During the meal she was very loud and drank a lot. Of course she drank a lot. Most creative people had a drinking problem. Tossing back the yellow hair that didn't quite go with her yellow dress, she seemed to like Jennifer. During one break in conversation she confided loudly into Jennifer's face that her cellulite was so bad she could see Calista Flockhart 's profile in it.
As I discreetly checked beneath the table for scars on her legs I couldn't help but notice that her legs were quite hairy. For a second this didn't fit with my picture of her, then it all made sense. She was a free spirit, thumbing her nose at convention. My respect for her went through the roof and I felt ashamed of my own smooth, waxed legs. I was nothing but an unimaginative slave.
After the speeches all the smokers stampeded out to the lawn. En route, Jennifer got me in a headlock. "Christ in the marketplace, that Bryan is so boring! Getting conversation out of him is like trying to get blood out of a turnip. Where 's Al? I need a light."
Al was my escort, my "plus-one." Actually he was the man who'd told me that I had an overactive imagination and that I'd want to cop on to myself. I'd grown quite attached to him. I liked his plainspokenness. The fact that he spoke at all was very attractive, I suddenly acknowledged, as I eyed Bryan across the table and realized conversation would be nonexistent until one of the smokers returned.
Time dragged, then next thing Jennifer catapulted at high speed across the room. A liver-colored patch crawled up her neck and her eyes were bright with indignation.
She pulled me away from the table. "You know that Danielle?" Her voice had a tremble. "She 's just tried to start a fight with me in the ladies'. Nasty, drunken piece of work."
"Well, she 's an artist." I shrugged. "They're temperamental."
"What are you talking about?" Jennifer asked. "She 's a painter."
"Yeah, an artist."
"No," she corrected impatiently. "She 's a house painter, a painter and decorator. She 's drunk and shouty and awful."
A house painter. Not a picture painter, a house painter. Of course it was a shock. Until I began to process it. How cool was that? A woman in a man's world, confounding expectations, bucking the trend . . .
Abruptly, I stopped. That was enough. As if on cue, across the room came Al, homing straight at me, looking so so happy to see me, even though he 'd only been gone ten minutes. I began walking towards him.
First written for BBC Radio, broadcast December 29, 2000
Soulmates
"So was it a disaster?" Peter begged Tim. "Did they try to kill each other?"
Watched by seven avid pairs of eyes, Tim shook his head sorrowfully. "They got on like a house on fire. They're going to do it
again in July."
A murmur of Isn't that marvelous? started up.
But Vicky couldn't take any more. In despair, she put her face in her hands. "How do they do it?" she whispered, echoing everyone 's sentiments. "How do they bloody well do it!"
Georgia and Joel were born on the same day in the same year in the same city—though they didn't meet until they were twenty-six and a half, while moving and shaking their way around a launch party for a Japanese beer. When Joel discovered the momentous connection, he declared, above the clamor. "We 're twins! Soulmates."
Georgia was called the golden girl, an inadequate attempt to convey how fantastically energetic, gorgeous and nice she was. In every group of human beings there 's a natural leader and she was one. Only a very special man could keep up with her: Joel was the per fect candidate. The kindest and best-looking of his good-looking group of prototype New Lad friends, how could he not help gravitating to Georgia, the deluxe version of her coterie of glossy, shiny girlfriends?
And now she had a soulmate. She would, her best friend Vicky thought, with shameful envy. Georgia was always the first. With the first ankle bracelet, the first wedge sandals, she had an unerring instinct for what was good and new and right. Some years back Vicky had tried to trump her with a pair of boots she 'd joyously ferried back from New York. This time I'm the winner, Vicky had thought, breathlessly ushering her new boots ahead of her. But Georgia had beaten her to it. Again. By wearing a similar pair of boots—similar, but better. The heel was nicer, the leather softer, the whole elan simply much more convincing. And she 'd only bought them in Ravel.
Soulmates. It was the start of the nineties and new age stuff had just started being fashionable. Katie had recently bought four crystals and dotted them about her flat, but four crystals couldn't hold a candle to a real live soulmate. It was about the best thing you could have—better than a tattoo or henna-patterned nails or a cappuccino maker. Quickly others followed their example by claiming that they too had found their SM. But it was only a spurious intimacy based on chemical connection, which dissolved just as soon as the cocaine or ecstasy or Absolut had worn off.
"We 're twins," Georgia and Joel declared to the world, and paraded their similarities. A crooked front tooth that she 'd had capped and that he 'd had knocked out in a motorbike accident and replaced. Both had blond hair, although hers was highlighted. Indeed rumors circulated that perhaps his was too.
Within weeks they'd moved in together and filled their flat with a succession of peculiar
things, all of which assumed a stylish luster the minute they became theirs. But no matter how much others tried to emulate their panache it was never quite the same. The liverpurple paint which Georgia and Joel used to such stylish effect on one room in their south-facing flat never survived the transition to anyone else's wall. Especially not Tim and Alice 's northeast-facing living room. "I can't bear it," Tim eventually admitted. "I feel as though I'm watching telly inside an internal organ."
Georgia and Joel spent money fast. "Hey, we 're skint," they often laughed—then immediately went to the River Cafe. On receiving a particularly onerous credit card bill they tightened their belts by buying champagne. Attached to them, debt seemed desirable, stylish, alive. "Money is there to be spent," they claimed and their friends cautiously followed suit, then tried to stop themselves waking in the night in overdrawn terror.