To calm the girls down I led them through half an hour of Italian cities, then let them take out their knitting. It was while I was unravelling the mutant toe of Angela Gainey’s mohair slipper that it occurred to me: I didn’t particularly want to be a teacher any more. The whole point of my good secure job was to provide a solid base for Cara to rush out from and change the world. But now she had changed her world for another, what was I doing this for? No one actually needed me. Immac could offer my job to one of those eager little subs who would be much better at licking up to Big Dom. Mr. Wall could move into a bachelor flat and have fellow librarians over for tea to help him with the crossword. My own family might hardly notice the difference; sad, but true.
I could run away in the morning. I could visit all the places I used to leave to Cara. I didn’t have to be anybody’s rock any more.
I let my class put their half-crafted slippers away three minutes before the bell, so they could run for their buses. I liked the sound of their thudding heels and farewell calls; it was like loosing a herd of antelopes. I sat in the classroom for a few minutes after they had gone, listening to the silence. Wiping the Geography notes from the board sent chalk powder floating through the air; I banged the duster against the board, for the hell of it.
As I was passing the assembly hall, the draught sliding through the convent opened the swing door slightly. The choir were staying behind for an extra practice, poor kids. All I remembered of choir was hysterical, stifled laughter at the double entendres we managed to hear in any lyrics. The very best was ‘Jesus had appeared on the mountain’, which, I remembered Kate Wall had interpreted as ‘Jesus had a period on the mountain’, and repeated in a piercing whisper. Somehow the thought of Jesus having to struggle with tampons was the funniest thing ever. So crammed together on the benches were we, the whole block of us shook. I remembered Kate on the bench below me, her sharp shoulder-blades not six inches from my knees.
I glanced in the swing-doors now. Lines of red jumpers swayed in obedience to the new music teacher’s urgent hand. But the songs hadn’t changed since my day. ‘Sweet vale of Avoca how calm would I rest’ …I remembered the words still. Had we sung them as earnestly as these children? Theirs was meant to be a flippant generation, raised on Australian soap operas, but they sang the end of the verse as if they had little time left to live.
Where the storms that we feel
in this cold world should cease
And our hearts like thy waters
be mingled in peace
I hoped no one ever took them to Avoca on a school trip; I didn’t want them to discover what a disappointment the Vale was. Better let them keep imagining.
I walked out the main door and down the steps, switching my bag to my other hand. I could not free myself of the illusion that I was never coming back. The afternoon was warmer, but still cloudy. Weekend. Though that gave me nothing to look forward to, the word still triggered an automatic rise in my spirits. I leaned against Minnie’s side, rummaging for my keys. My possibilities were limitless. So why was it that all at once all I wanted was to be face down on a sheet with somebody fucking my brains out?
A good hard swim would be the best thing for me; besides, I had promised to meet Kate at the pool. I wheeled Minnie out between the gateposts, not looking at the ivy-covered stone where after the occasional jaded Friday afternoon I used to find Cara waiting for me with a choc-ice.
No Reversing Under Any Circumstances said a sign at the mouth of a small cul-de-sac. I had never noticed it before I stared at it, wondering if it had a cosmic meaning or was I just losing my grip.
I hadn’t been to the swimming pool in months. I turned sharply down the old road where the tarmac was sprouting emerald and copper moss. When I saw Kate leaning against the outside wall, the broad shoulders of her tangerine jacket sharp against the pebbledash, I faltered. But I couldn’t turn back now, she might have recognized the dark green car already. Why hadn’t I thought to tell her to meet me in the pool itself? I loathed undressing in front of strangers, especially strangers I had fallen for at the age of fifteen.
It occurred to me now that I had never been in love since, at least in the falling sense. Cara was something I stepped down into, an inch at a time. And as far as I was aware, no one had ever fallen in love with me. It wasn’t something I seemed to need.
I waved briefly at Kate’s upturned sunglasses to show that I had noticed her, and parked the car. At least there were individual cubicles with plastic curtains, not like the shared benches in that health club I went to once, with unknown women talcing their behinds and showing each other their Caesarian scars. Kate lent me a fifty-pee coin for the locker. ‘Am I remembering right?’ she asked. ‘In our day you could just leave your stuff in your cubicle, if you covered anything pricey-looking with your towel.’
‘That’s right.’
In our day: what a funny phrase, as if each generation had only one day in which they truly lived. Though in the case of Kate Wall and myself, there really was only one day we had shared, because apart from the time we bumped into each other at this pool and she asked me home for tea, I couldn’t remember her having paid me any particular attention.
Our feet were trying to remember how to walk without shoes now; our hands were tugging the edges of our togs down in the traditional gesture of modest discomfort. I caught just the briefest glimpse of us in the mirror as we picked our way towards the shower: Kate narrow but muscular in her sister’s blue, beside me in my comfy old green. Our bodies had changed in the doubling of years since we met here in the water. How our fourteen-year-old selves would have been frightened to see us; how carved and lined and over-ripe we would have seemed to them.
Mostly I liked the way I was, my to-hell-with-you-all shape. But now as we passed another merciless slab of mirror, its background full of teenagers whose heads lifted to gawk, I could not see myself as anything but Nessie, all lime-green billows. Kate stalked on, but I hung back in the disinfectant shower for a minute. You’re not ugly, I told myself in the habitual formula, you’re a grand girl. (Hey, I was doing ‘affirmations’ long before they called them that.) But just for a moment I wanted to be a blank and underfed child again, with no choices made, no deposits laid down, no unhideable flesh. A knot of adolescents shivered by and I was alone in the shower again. I cupped one breast in my hand. Cara called them the Many-Splendoured Things. Used to. Don’t think about her now, push her back into the changing-room, she can curl up in the cubicle and take a nap while you’re swimming.
I had always found a refuge in water. Most times I came here I climbed in at the steps and only gradually worked up to diving, but today I felt like showing off how much I had learnt over the years. I walked straight to the deep end, found a clear space, bounced on my toes a little, my eyes scanning for her dark head. Always that moment of terror, when I thought I had forgotten how. Then the entry, fairly clean today, but with a good crash of water just for fun.
I came up gasping thirty feet away, near where the dark head had been, but was no longer. My throat stung; Grace’s claws had left their mark this morning. I began swimming lengths in my usual breast-stroke, my head held up like a meditative turtle.
Alongside me, going a little slower, were two women, their hair still dry on top, chatting between kicks. Probably wife-and-mothers, sharing a babysitter for the afternoon. I glanced back; they were looking straight forward, their mouths wide with the amusement of whatever they were talking about. I imagined their fingertips touching for a second, under the skin of water. Kate, doing a speedy crawl, emerged on my left and pulled ahead of me. She turned on her back for a few strokes, and I caught a glimpse of her chin, jutting up towards the glass roof.
After a few conscientious lengths I let my face sink into the silky water. I hung there for a while, limp as a suicide, my shoulders sloughing off the weight of the week. My thighs drifted in the wash of a passing swimmer. My breasts floated free of gravity. Then someone grabbed my shoulder, and I
came up spitting.
‘Are you OK?’ Kate’s face was twisted in concern.
‘Of course.’ Treading water uncomfortably, I spoke more sharply than I meant.
‘Sorry. I wasn’t sure.’
‘I just like to hang there sometimes,’ I told her.
‘Sure. Race you to the end?’ she suggested, her voice suddenly fifteen.
I was taken off guard, so I let her get a head-start, but I soon caught up, with the overarm crawl I hardly ever used. It felt good to be pounding up the pool with no room for anything in my head except how to keep my body going. Our hands slapped the bar in a flurry of water; we couldn’t tell who won. I dangled monkey-style, squeezing water out of my eyes. My legs drifted towards hers, and one of my feet brushed against one of hers, cold and light. I doubled over, sending my legs out behind me.
Kate slid off again. I stayed by the bar, stretching my back and watching her do another six purposeful lengths. Letting air out in tiny bubbles, I sank down towards the blue floor of the pool and stayed there, absorbing the silence. The water pressed gently on my eyes but I kept them open. In this pale green light there was nothing binding my body. Nothing could follow me down here.
When I kicked my way to the surface, lungs bursting, Kate was beside me. I gasped for a breath. My flailing arm struck her hand; for a moment she held me up, till I got my balance. ‘You’re pretty fit. How do you stay so fit?’ I gabbled.
‘Swim every morning at six in a health club. We have corporate membership.’
‘Before breakfast? God help us. For me the best bit of swimming is this,’ and I showed her how I liked to spin like a dolphin, round and round till I was dizzy.
Kate looked bemused. ‘You know swimming has little or no aerobic value unless you keep it up without stopping for fifteen minutes?’
‘Yup,’ I said, queenly, and kicked off down the pool. She wouldn’t have said that when she was fifteen. Something scathing, maybe, or at least sarky, but nothing as pompous as that. What had they done to her in Boston?
I put my face in the water and made my legs do all the work, letting my arms float out behind me like seaweed. When I raised my dripping face Kate was at the shallow end of the lane, standing against the wall, adjusting her goggles. I swam straight towards her but her eyes, dipped in concentration, didn’t register me. I had never kissed this woman and never would. But it still gave me some obscure pleasure that the same water was on both our lips.
After the showers, Kate slung a towel around my shoulders and complained that she still reeked of chlorine. She peered at the grazes on my throat: ‘You should get those seen to. Is he often vicious?’
‘Ah, Grace is just a bit unhinged at the moment,’ I protested, ‘probably picking up the house vibes.’
On the way home in the car, I looked across at her dark curls a few times, as they gradually sprang back from their weight of damp. When I held the hairdryer for her, that day she invited me to tea after swimming, her hair had copper highlights in it, but she seemed to have grown out of them.
As we were coming up to the cluster of shops, she asked, ‘Could we get some chips?’
‘You mean your chips like crisps or our chips like french fries?’ I asked, smiling at the language gap.
‘Irish chips aren’t like ordinary fries. I know it sounds stupid, but I’m starving.’
‘No problem,’ I told her, making a quick left into a parking space.
‘Dad always used to buy us chips after swimming,’ said Kate while we were waiting at the counter, ‘even though Mom hated the smell of vinegar in the car.’
‘Minnie loves the smell of vinegar,’ I reassured her.
The Italians always gave huge portions, so we asked for a bag between us. The big-eyed daughter offered salt and vinegar with a tremendous smile. We watched her pour them on and didn’t say stop. In the car, I popped in the first chip and shifted it around with my tongue, puffing out so it wouldn’t burn me. Kate made an incoherent sound of pleasure. ‘God, this brings me back,’ she said at last. ‘How have I survived without these for fourteen years?’
‘Lord knows.’
‘They taste like they’ve been cut from real potatoes.’
‘No!’ I said in theatrical disbelief.
‘And the little crispy bits are totally soaked in vinegar,’ she added to the litany.
We put our hands into the translucent bag at the same time. I grabbed the big one Kate was picking; it broke and released a wisp of steam. Laughing, she raised her torn half to her mouth. ‘Just as well these aren’t available in Boston; I can’t imagine the calorie count.’
‘Yum. Just as well I’m fat already.’
The chip paused, halfway to her mouth. ‘Do you have to knock yourself like that?’
‘I wasn’t.’
Kate was shifting in her seat. ‘Well, the word does tend to get used as a – a disparagement.’
‘That’s not how I was using it,’ I told her silkily. ‘For me it’s a positive description of the shape I happen to be.’
Her head bent as she finished her chip.
‘Ah well,’ I said, relenting, ‘I may be no supermodel but at least I’d live longer than you if a plane dropped us into the freezing Atlantic.’
Kate looked up, dog-eyed. ‘I’m not getting at you, honestly. I think, you know, in that fringed shawl of yours, you look magnificent.’
I had no idea what to say, so I said ‘Thank you’ like my mother taught me. I kept my eyes on the wall in front of the car, feeling pink. ‘Free Nicky Kelly,’ said the splatter of paint, a Republican graffito from years back. We talked about the likelihood of more rain. The last few chips were stuck to the bottom of the bag when Kate surrendered it to me; I had to dig into its slick recesses. I licked the grains of salt off my fingers, one by one, then wiped my hands on a tissue and started up the car. Seeing a truck come towards me, I realized that I was well over the white line. Kate said nothing when I swerved to the left.
When I turned into the drive and shut off the engine, the car ticked softly. Kate stared out her window. ‘I love my apartment, but I miss having a yard to sit in,’ she said.
‘What would you want to sit in the yard for? It’s full of dustbins.’
She looked confused, then said, ‘Sorry, you’d call it a garden. The green bit.’
‘Ah, right.’ I added, ‘It looked wonderful a couple of years back when there was snow.’
‘What, a whole inch?’ Kate mocked.
‘Several.’
‘Hey,’ she said, turning towards me so her seat-belt twisted, ‘there was quite a big snowfall my last year at school, I don’t suppose you remember?’
‘Don’t think so,’ I said, recalling the white crystals hanging in her fringe.
‘We couldn’t believe it. As soon as the bell rang we all ran out and pelted each other. And Sister whatshername, the one in charge of fourth year –’
‘Dominic.’
‘– when we trooped back in after breaktime, she was announcing over the intercom, “Will any girl who threw a snowball please report to my office immediately.” Just imagine if we all had.’
I put back my head and laughed. ‘A queue of six hundred miscreants, dripping up the stairs all the way to her door.’
‘She didn’t really expect us to turn ourselves in, did she?’
‘Not at all. Dom’s the head of the Junior School now, you know; she’s my boss.’
‘No!’
‘That thing about the snowballs is typical; not a real order, just a way to make us feel doubly guilty.’
‘Well, it worked.’ Kate sighed. ‘The odd night when insomnia hits, I compose postcards to her in my head “Dear Sister, as you probably knew I did throw a snowball, but I was not the only one…”’
‘“Dear Sister, it was not exactly a ball of snow, more like a wet handful,”’ I contributed.
‘“Dear Sister, it’s not like I crammed it down the back of some small child’s shirt.”’
‘“
Dear Sister, what’s the harm in a wee snowfight anyway?”’
‘“Dear Sister, I’m not even a Catholic any more, get off my case.”’ We were laughing so hard it bent us double. Kate was leaning on her seat-belt, gasping for breath. Her head hung a few inches from mine. Below her curls I could see the curve of her open mouth.
And then Jo’s face appeared at the window. I snapped open my seat-belt and got out. ‘Hi,’ I said, over the car.
‘Hey.’ Jo was wearing a fawn business suit; she looked like somebody’s mother. ‘Just thought I’d drop in as I was passing, to make sure you were coming to the wake.’
Kate was opening her door; Jo stepped back out of the way and gave her a friendly nod. ‘So,’ she resumed, ‘can you two make it tomorrow afternoon?’
‘I’m afraid I’m flying out in the morning,’ said Kate.
‘Actually, you know, Jo, I don’t think it’ll be my kind of thing.’ My eyes were flicking to follow Kate across the lawn to the doorstep, her suit and towel swinging.
‘Really?’ she asked
‘Well, songs and rituals and stuff, I think to be perfectly honest it’d stick in my craw.’
‘You went to the funeral,’ she said, hands on tailored hips.
‘That was different,’ I snapped. ‘Besides two in one week…’
Jo leaned her elbows on Minnie. Her pale blue eyes had creases round them in this thin sunlight. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t my idea, but actually I think it’d be good for all of us.’
‘Go ahead, I’m not stopping you.’
‘But it might do you some good too. And it’ll be all wrong if you’re not there.’
‘I thought Sherry was organizing it. Doesn’t the most recent lay get to be principal mourner?’ I couldn’t believe such bile was spewing out of my mouth.
Jo straightened up and looked at the yellow roses for a second. ‘All I’m going to say right now is that you’ve got the whole thing arseways.’
‘If you say so.’ Then, guiltily: ‘You coming in for a cuppa?’
‘Thought you’d never ask.’ Her grin caught the sun as we turned towards the front door.