I would have loved a couple of sleeping tablets. Or Valium. Anything to calm the terrible fluttery anxiety about Luke that so tormented me. It was inhumane to expect me to get through such heartache without chemicals to ease my pain, I thought in anger. No one should be expected to suffer this way. In the real world no one would put themselves through this. Abstinence had gone too far in the Cloisters.
I knew it wasn’t fair to ask the poor addicts to do without when people like me who didn’t have a problem were imbibing freely. It wouldn’t be right to wave temptation under their noses. But all the same…
I could hear bangs and thumps and screams and laughter as the others played their musical chairs in the room below me.
When Chaquie came up to bed she was flushed and happy-looking.
Briefly.
‘I didn’t see you at Mass this evening,’ she said, purse-lipped.
(A priest came every Saturday to say Mass for those who were interested.)
‘That’s right, you didn’t,’ I said cheerfully.
She glared and I grinned brazenly.
Then she started on another of her hobby-horses. This time it was the evil of mothers who work. I made a great show of pulling the covers over my head and saying ‘Goodnight’. But it made no difference. Chaquie had some things to get off her chest and she didn’t care who knew it.
‘… And the husband comes home after a long day in the office – or the beauty salon…’ she allowed herself a little tinkle at this ‘… And the house is a shambles, the kids are screaming…’
‘There’s no dinner on the table,’ I interrupted from under my blankets, deciding to beat her to it.
‘That’s right, Rachel,’ she sounded pleasantly surprised, ‘There’s no dinner on the table.’
‘His shirts aren’t ironed,’ I called up to her.
‘That’s ri…’
‘The children come home from school to an empty, cold house…’
‘That’s ri…’
‘They eat crisps and biscuits instead of a hot, nourishing meal…’
‘Exac…’
‘They watch pornography on the telly, they indulge in incest, the house burns down and their mother isn’t there to stop it and they all die!’
A silence followed that and eventually I peeped out from under my blankets.
Chaquie was staring at me in confusion. She strongly suspected that I was taking the piss, but she couldn’t be sure.
I had thought I hated her before that, but then I knew that I really, really hated her.
Fascist cow, I thought to myself. I knew her sort. She was a member of Right-wing Catholic Mothers Against Pleasure, or whatever they were called.
Shortly after that, in grim silence, Chaquie turned off the light and got into bed.
Mercifully, due to great exhaustion, I fell asleep.
20
Sunday. Visiting day!
Except not for me. I would have loved some contact with the outside world. I’d even have been glad to see my mother. But I hadn’t been in for the required week yet, although I already felt as if I’d been there for several years.
The first thing I thought of when I was woken by Monica’s flashlight, was Luke. I was tormented by thoughts of what he might have got up to the night before. Might still be getting up to. After all, it was only three a.m. where he was. Saturday night was only getting going.
I wanted to ring him. I wanted to ring him so badly it was almost unbearable. But he probably wasn’t even home yet. Unless he was in bed with someone. Perhaps he’s in bed with some girl right now, I thought, frantically. Maybe he’s just this very second having an orgasm with another woman. I realized that this was how people go mad. That I really would need to go to a loony bin if I didn’t watch myself.
I had to talk to him, I decided. I’d have to ring him. But I did a quick sum and realized I’d have to wait until at least three o’clock, when it would be ten in the morning in New York. Oh, why can’t I do it now ? Fecking time difference! Bitterly, I cursed the curvature of the earth.
In my heart of hearts I knew ten on a Sunday morning was probably still too early, probably by several days. But I didn’t care. It would do.
After breakfast ended, Chaquie launched into frantic preparations for Dermot’s arrival. To my surprise she asked me to help her to choose what to wear. That touched me so much I forgot I hated her.
And I was wildly grateful to have something to do. I didn’t stop thinking about Luke, but it reduced the agony to a background-noise type of ache. It wasn’t as bad, just omnipresent.
Chaquie had her entire, very large wardrobe spread around the very small room. Which reminded me that I really must get round to asking her would she mind making room for some of my stuff which was still in my suitcase on the floor.
‘What do you think, Rachel?’ she asked. ‘The Jaeger suit with the Hermès scarf?’
‘Er, maybe something a little less formal,’ I suggested tentatively. ‘Have you any jeans?’
‘JEANS!’ she hooted with laughter. ‘Sacred Heart! I do not! Durm’t would die if he saw me in jeans.’ She gave at the knees to see herself in the (tiny, age-spotted) mirror and bobbed her hand around her perfect hair.
‘Jeezus, Mary and holy Saint Joseph,’ she declared, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m like the wreck of the Hesperus.’
Of course, she was nothing of the sort. She looked immaculate.
‘It’s very important to look good for your husband,’ she confided, as she put on a tailored skirt and a cardigan with beads and things appliquéd to the front. Awful stuff.
With jerky movements she back-combed her hair. She was nervous, really nervous about Dermot’s visit.
‘You look lovely,’ I said, even though I thought she looked a right state.
I looked at my watch – midday. Only three more hours and I’d be talking to Luke! ‘When Dermot comes, would you like me, to, er… you know?’ I magnanimously offered Chaquie, as I made vamoosing type movements with my hands.
‘What?’
‘Would you like to have the room to yourselves so that you can, ahem, you know…?’
She looked disgusted. ‘What? Have intercourse, do you mean?’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’ The language of romance.
‘Sacred Heart, no!’ she said. ‘The only good thing about being in here is not being pestered by him and his flute when I’m trying to read my book in bed. Anyway, we’re not allowed to have visitors up to our rooms.’
‘Not allowed to have people up to our rooms?’ It was my turn to look disgusted. ‘Surely even in prison people are allowed their conjugais?’
Chaquie kept going to the window and eventually at half past one she said ‘Here he is.’
It was almost impossible to describe her tone of voice. Admiration, relief and hatred in equal measures.
‘Where?’ I rushed to the window to get a look at him.
‘There, getting out of the new Volvo.’
I stared down in fascination, hoping he’d be horrible. But from a distance he didn’t look too bad. With his deep, deep tan and suspiciously black hair, he could be described as the kind of man ‘who looks after himself’. He was wearing a denim shirt, a blouson leather jacket and a pair of chinos with the waistband up almost around his chest, one of the tricks tubby men use in a pointless attempt to hide their big stomachs. From the look of Dermot, Chaquie wasn’t the only one to enjoy a Bacardi and coke from time to time.
As I stared at him, searching for faults, I noticed that he had small hands and, worse again, small feet. You could barely see his shoes under the cuffs of his trousers. I hated men with small hands and feet. It made them seem very unmanly, like imps or gnomes. Helen used to insist that men with small hands were her favourite, but that was only because she had a really small chest, and the smaller a man’s hands were, the bigger her tits in comparison.
Chaquie hurriedly sprayed herself with almost an entire bottle of White Linen, then, smoothing
her skirt and her hair, left the room to greet him.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to be alone, so I decided to go downstairs to see what was happening. I bumped into Mike on the landing. He was gloomily looking out the window the way Chaquie had been a few minutes ago.
‘Hello,’ I said, keen to talk. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Come here,’ he said, and pointed out the window.
A woman and three children straggled up the drive, through the rain. They looked exhausted and frozen.
‘That’s my wife and kids.’ His tone of voice was weird. First Chaquie, now Mike, they were all at it.
Mike’s wife had a holdall over her shoulder.
‘See that bag,’ muttered Mike, pointing at it.
I nodded.
‘That’s for me,’ he said.
I nodded again.
‘Full of fucking biscuits,’ he said bitterly. And off he went.
‘What use are biscuits to me?’ he roared back over his shoulder.
‘I don’t know,’ I said nervously.
A while later I made for the dining-room. The corridor was full of happy children hurting each other and breaking things.
To my horror, I tripped on a My Little Pony and went flying. But, like a video of a dynamited tower block being run in reverse, I managed to spring back up before my knees had barely glanced off the floor. I looked around furtively to make sure that neither Chris nor Misty O’Malley had seen me. Two revolting, freckled little boys pointed at me and laughed until they cried.
As I went into the dining-room, Misty O’Malley was on her way out and she rudely pushed past me. It wasn’t just a brief brush, but more like a hefty shove. She didn’t apologize. I stared after her and even though I couldn’t see her face, I knew she was smirking. Having a good laugh at me.
Tears filled my eyes. What had I ever done to her?
The dining-room was packed with the inmates and their visitors. Apparently when the weather was good, they could all walk around the grounds. But on wet days like today, they had to crowd, ten-deep, into the dining-room and watch the windows steam up.
I found Chaquie and Dermot and brazenly sat down near them, so that Chaquie was forced to introduce me. Dermot made eye contact and gave me the once over automatically. Not because he found me attractive, but because he wondered what I thought of him. Up close, you could see hundreds of broken capillaries lurking beneath his sunbed tan. I could understand why Chaquie was so keen to escape the attentions of Dermot and his flute. He was vile. And the obvious care he took of his appearance made him even more vile. He kept touching his hair, which, as well as being dyed to within an inch of its life, was blowdried, flicked and rigid with spray. It had so much fullness it was nearly like a beehive.
I watched him with blatant amusement. I knew his sort. A frequenter of wine bars, a buyer of drinks, the kind of man who, shortly after he had introduced himself would ask ‘What age do you think I am? No, go on, tell me. Another drink?’
The funniest thing was seeing Dermot and his ilk trying to dance. And they always seemed to drink girly things like Campari and soda or Bacardi and coke. Sweet, fizzy, undemanding drinks. Brigit and I had met his like countless times. They’d buy us drinks all evening, then at closing time we ran away on them. Memories of the pair of us roaring, laughing, hiding round corners, saying ‘You’d better get off with him’, ‘No, fuck off, you’d better’, came rushing back.
You could tell just by looking at him that Dermot was the kind of man who lied about being married. (Probably even to his wife.) The kind of man who gave some elaborate excuse to get out of inviting you back to his flat. The kind of man that I would end up being grateful to snag if I didn’t step on it, I thought, sunk into sudden gloom.
Chaquie turned her back on me and engaged Dermot in a low, muttered conversation. Not that that indicated discord or anything. The room was full of people having low, muttered conversations. They had no choice. Next week when Mum and Dad came to visit, we too would sit at the table and have a low, muttered conversation. The air was so full of the sounds of low, muttered conversations that I began to feel sleepy. The only thing that kept me from nodding off was the sounds of people tripping in the corridor and Mike occasionally shouting ‘Willy, you little bastard, knock off trying to kill everyone with Michelle’s Little Pony yoke!’
I felt better that Chaquie’s husband was so awful. Until I looked round the room and saw Misty O’Malley leaning against the radiators, having a low, muttered conversation with a tall, blond, sickeningly gorgeous man and I felt lonely and jealous. I hated that there was such injustice in the world. Millions of men were mad about Misty and she was such a rude, unpleasant little bitch, and not even that beautiful, really, if you thought about it. While I was so nice and hadn’t anyone.
I mooned around, killing time until three o’clock, trying to radiate orphanhood. I hoped to catch someone’s eye so that I could smile bravely. I wanted everyone to wonder why I had no visitors and nudge each other and say ‘Who’s that poor child? Give her some chocolate.’ But no one had any interest in me. Neil was sitting with a plain-looking woman and two little girls. He looked up and gave me a lovely, warm smile, then went back to his wife. They looked as if they were discussing dampproofing the garage.
When I eavesdropped on the third conversation involving a man pleading to his wife ‘It’ll be different this time, I promise,’ I had to get out of there.
I went to the front door and half-heartedly stood on the front steps in the rain, and looked out at the mournful, dripping trees. I had meant to go round the grounds and find the gym and do an hour or so of body sculpting, but I just couldn’t be arsed. Oh, now, now, I berated myself, this won’t get the thighs narrowed.
So I screwed up my will-power and my resolve and determination, I squared my shoulders, set my jaw and swore, promised, vowed – I could almost hear the celestial trumpets and see the sun break through the clouds – ‘I’ll start tomorrow!’
Back I went to the dining-room and in my head rehearsed what I’d say to Luke. (‘Hiiiii! Great! How are yooouuu?’)
I saw Chris sitting with two people who looked like his parents. They were about the same age as mine and seeing the three of them sitting huddled together, awkwardly trying to make conversation, filled me with a strange grief. I couldn’t help but notice the absence of a girlfriend-type figure hanging round him.
Good.
Stalin dragged me over to meet his Rita, a husky-voiced chain-smoker. She looked like a man in drag and more likely to break Stalin’s ribs than the other way round. I was comforted by that.
At ten to three, I couldn’t wait anymore so I found the counsellor on duty – the Sour Kraut – and asked her if I could make a call. She stared at me, as if I’d asked her for the loan of a thousand quid, then in silence led me towards the office. We passed Bubbly in reception. How manky to have to work on a Sunday. From Bubbly’s resentful expression it looked like she agreed with me.
‘Gif me the number,’ Sour Kraut said.
‘Em, it’s a number in New York,’ I said nervously. ‘Is that OK?’
She glared at me through her John Lennon glasses, but she didn’t say it wasn’t.
‘It’s ringing,’ she said, and handed me the phone.
Heart pounding, scalp tingling with sweat, I took the phone.
I’d practised my speech all day. I had decided to be breezy and chatty, rather than whingey and condemnatory. But my lips trembled so much I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to compress them and actually speak when the time came.
I heard a click and my heart plummeted with acute disappointment – the answering machine. I decided to leave a message, anyway. Maybe someone would pick up the phone when they heard my voice. Patiently, I waited to hear the first verse of ‘Smoke on the Water’.
But it wasn’t ‘Smoke on the Water’!
They’d changed their message to some Led Zeppelin song.
When Robert Plant started shrieking
something about red-hot mommas and what he was planning to do to them as soon as he got home, I became seized with fear, convinced that the new message was symbolic. That Luke was trying to tell me ‘Out with the old, in with the new’. It hit home with devastating force that life in New York was going on without me. What else had happened that I didn’t know about?
I listened to the mad, energetic gee-tar break and as it neared an end I tried to stop shaking and poised myself to speak. But no! There was a second verse. And Mr Plant was off again, yelling and screeching and promising hot love left, right and centre. Then there was more frantic guitar playing. Finally Shake’s voice said ‘Do the message thing, man.’ But I completely lost my nerve. I remembered how angry Luke was with me, how deeply nasty he’d been. He wouldn’t want to talk to me, so I leant over and hung up.
‘Machine,’ I muttered at the Sour Kraut, who had been sitting there all along.
‘You haf used vun off your two calls even though you did not speak.’
By five o’clock all the visitors had left. Everyone was subdued and sullen. Except me.
I was suicidal.
After tea, I opened the dining-room cupboard, foraging for chocolate I’d seen earlier in the day, and was nearly brained as an avalanche of biscuits, cakes, buns and chocolate fell out on top of me.
‘Jesus!’ I complained, as a bag of mini-Mars bars nearly took my eye out. ‘What’s all this about?’
‘Guilt money,’ said Mike. ‘They always bring sackloads of sweets. Except for that yoke of Chaquie’s. He just gave her a bag of mandarins. Did you clock his rug?’
‘Dermot?’ I asked in astonishment. ‘He wears a wig?’
‘How could you miss it?’ laughed Mike. ‘It was like a badger asleep on his scalp.’
‘And what do you mean, “guilt money”?’ I asked. That made me feel unaccountably anxious.
‘Our families feel guilty for putting us in here.’
‘But why would they feel guilty?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t it for your good?’
‘Is that what you really think?’ Mike asked, his eyes narrowed.