But as the car door opened, even from my window I could hear the voices raised in argument. With acute disappointment, I realized the person was Helen.
‘Why do you have to drive so slowly?’ she was shouting, as she got out of the car. She was wearing a long coat and a furry hat, Dr Zhivago style. She looked stunning.
‘Because the shagging roads are icy!’ Dad shouted back, red-faced and flustered. ‘Feck off and let me drive the car my way.’
‘Stopit, stopit,’ hissed Mum, laden down with bags. ‘What’ll they think of us?’
‘Who cares?’ Helen’s voice carried on the cold air. ‘Pissheads, the lot of them.’
‘STOP !’ Mum hit Helen on the shoulder.
Helen hit her back.’ Get off! What are you so narky for? Just because your daughter is a pisshead too.’
‘She is not a pisshead,’ I heard Mum say.
‘Ooooooohhhh, language,’ Helen sang. ‘That’s a sin, you’ll have to say that in confession.
‘Anyway, you’re right,’ Helen continued triumphantly. ‘She’s not a pisshead, she’s a cokehead!’
Mum and Dad’s faces went blank and they both bowed their heads.
I watched from the window, immobile with unexpected grief. I wanted to kill Helen. I wanted to kill my parents. I wanted to kill myself.
We hugged awkwardly, the only way we knew how, and smiled. My eyes filled with tears.
Helen greeted me by saying ‘KERR-IST, I’m frozened.’ Mum greeted me by pushing Helen and saying ‘Don’t be taking the Lord’s name in vain.’
Dad greeted me by saying ‘Howdy’ At the time I didn’t pay too much attention to it.
Before a conversational lull could occur, Mum thrust a bag into my hand. ‘We brought up some things.’
‘Lovely,’ I said, sifting through it. ‘Tayto and Tayto and… more Tayto. Thanks.’
‘And Bounties,’ said Mum. ‘There should be a ten-pack of Bounties.’
I looked again. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I put them in,’ said Mum. ‘I remember doing it this morning, I’m certain of it.’
‘Ah, Mum,’ said Helen sympathetically, her little cat face the picture of innocence, ‘Your memory isn’t what it once was.’
‘Helen!’ Mum said sharply, ‘give them back.’
Sulkily Helen opened her bag. ‘Why can’t I have any?’
‘You know why,’ said Mum.
‘Because I’m not a junkie,’ said Helen. We all winced.
‘Well,’ she threatened, ‘It can be arranged.’
‘Have one,’ I offered, as she sullenly handed them over.
‘Three?’
I showed them around, proud, shy. Ashamed only when they said things like ‘This place could do with a coat of paint, it’s nearly as bad as our house.’ I saved Mum from tripping on Michelle’s My Little Pony.
‘Anyone famous here?’ Helen murmured at me.
‘Not at the moment,’ I said airily. And to my great relief she simply declared ‘For fuck’s sake!’ and left it at that.
I led the three of them into the dining-room. It was packed to the rafters and looked like the Day of Judgement. We managed to squash onto the end of a bench.
‘Waaaalll,’ said Dad in a strange voice, ‘it’s all mad purt.’
‘It’s what, Dad?’
‘Mad purt.’
I turned to Mum. ‘What’s he saying?’
‘He’s saying it’s all mighty pretty,’ she explained.
‘But why are you talking in such a stupid voice?’ I asked him. ‘And anyway it’s not. It’s far from mad purt.’
‘Oklahoma,’ Mum whispered. ‘He’s got a small part in the Blackrock Players’ production of it. He’s practising his accent. Aren’t you, Jack?’
‘Sure ay-am.’ Dad flicked the brim of an imaginary hat.
‘May-am,’ he added.
‘He has us driven demented,’ added Mum. ‘If I have to hear the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye one more time, I’m going to shoot the elephant.’
‘Get off your horse,’ Dad drawled,’and drink your milk.’
‘And that’s not Oklahoma, so it isn’t,’ Mum scolded. ‘That’s that other fella, go on punk, make my day – what’s his name?’
‘Sylvester Stallone?’ Dad said. ‘But that’s not… ah now. I’m forgetting to practise.’
He turned to me. ‘Method acting, you see. I have to live, eat and breathe my part.’
‘He’s had baked beans for his tea every night for a week,’ Helen said.
Out of the blue it occurred to me that perhaps it was not surprising I was in a treatment centre.
‘Jeeee-zus!’ Helen exclaimed. ‘Who’s yer man?’
We followed her gaze. She was looking at Chris.
‘Not bad! I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for farti… OW!
‘What did you hit me for?’ she demanded of Mum.
‘I’ll give you bed where you’ll feel it,’ Mum threatened. Then she noticed a few people were looking at her, so she gave them a bright papering-over-the-cracks smile that fooled no one.
‘It’s his legs, isn’t it?’ Helen said thoughtfully. ‘Does he play football?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Find out,’ she ordered.
We sat in awkward silence, the initial surge of joy at our meeting gone. I was ashamed that we weren’t even having the low, muttered conversations that everyone else was having.
Now and then one of us tried to kick-start a chat by saying something like ‘So, are they feeding you all right?’ or ‘February is a desperate month, isn’t it?’
All the while, Mum was looking sidelong at Chaquie, at her golden hair, her perfect make-up, her plentiful jewellery, her expensive clothes. Eventually, she nudged me and, in a stage-whisper they probably heard in Norway, hissed ‘What’s up with her?’
‘A bit louder and we could dance to it,’ I replied.
She glared at me.
Suddenly her face went white and she ducked her head. ‘Sacred heart of Jesus,’ she intoned.
‘What?’ We all twisted and stretched to see what she was looking at.
‘Don’t look,’ she hissed.’Keep your heads down.’
‘Wha-at? Whooooo?’
She turned to Dad, ‘It’s Philomena and Ted Hutchinson. What are they doing here? What if they see us?’
‘Who are they?’ Helen and I clamoured.
‘Folks your Maw and Paw know,’ said Dad.
‘How do you know them?’
‘From the golf-club,’ said Mum. ‘Saints preserve us, I’m mortified.’
‘Waall, that’s not how we first met ’um,’ drawled Dad. ‘It’s lak thee-yus. Their dog… ah mean… their dawg, ran away and we’all found the critter and…’
‘Oh God, they’re coming over,’ said Mum. She looked fit to pass out.
I was not feeling good. If she was so ashamed about me being here, I wanted to know why she had made me come in the first place.
From the terrifying saccharine smile she suddenly plastered across her face, I deduced she had made eye contact. ‘Oh hello, Philomena,’ she simpered.
I turned around. It was the woman I’d seen sitting with Chris last Sunday. His mother, I assumed. She was handling things with much more aplomb than Mum was.
‘Mary,’ she boomed, ‘I’d never have taken you for an alcoholic.’
Mum forced herself to laugh.
‘What are you in for, Philomena? The horses?’
More forced hernia-inducing cackles, as if they were at a cocktail party. Davy, the gambler, was at the other end of the table. I saw the bleak expression on his face and felt a rush of protectiveness.
‘Our son is in here,’ said Philomena. ‘Where’s he gone? Christopher?’
Definitely Chris’s mother. Good. It was no harm at all if his parents knew my parents. It might come in handy just in case he didn’t ring me when we got out. I could use the excuse of dropping a tupperware container up to Mrs Hutc
hinson, to see him. Mum was bound to need a tupperware container dropped up to Mrs Hutchinson within a day of me getting out. Mum and her friends constantly dropped tupperware containers up to each other. Gateau Diane, coleslaw, that kind of thing. They seemed to do little else.
Mum attempted to do some introductions.
‘Our daughters, Claire…’ She gestured at me.
‘Rachel,’ I corrected.
‘… and Anna, no, the other one… Helen.’
Helen politely excused herself by saying conspiratorially to Mr and Mrs Hutchinson ‘Janey, I’m bursting to make my wees,’ and sidled off. A while later I went after her. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, it was just that I didn’t… trust her.
She was sitting on the stairs literally surrounded by men. The dining-room must have been full of abandoned wives and children. One of the men was Chris. It didn’t surprise me, and it certainly didn’t make me happy.
She was regaling her captive audience with stories of her heavy drinking. ‘Very often I’d wake up and not remember how I got home,’ she boasted.
No one topped her boast by saying ‘That’s nothing. Very often I’d wake up and not remember whether I was dead or alive,’ which they would have been perfectly entitled to do.
Instead, they were tripping over themselves with enthusiastic suggestions. That she check into the Cloisters, there was room for a woman at the moment, there was an empty bed in Nancy and Misty’s room…
‘You can always share my bed if you’re stuck,’ Mike suggested. And I felt a surge of fury. His poor, down trodden, biscuit-bearing wife was only a few feet away.
Clarence tried to stroke Helen’s hair.
‘Stop that now,’ she said sharply. ‘Not unless you pay me a tenner.’
Clarence made a move to rummage round in his pocket, but Mike restrained him by putting his hand on his arm and saying ‘She’s joking.’
‘No, I’m not,’ Helen replied.
While all this furore was taking place, I jealously watched Chris’s face. I wanted to see how he reacted to Helen. Well, what I really wanted to see was that he didn’t react to Helen.
But a couple of glances passed between the two of them that I didn’t like the look of. They seemed loaded and meaningful.
I felt sick and I hated myself for always fading into insignificance around any of my sisters. Even my mother sometimes outshone me.
Like a fool, I’d thought I might have made enough of an impact on Chris not to disappear under the onslaught of Helen’s charms. But once again, I’d been wrong. I got that terrible, but oh-so-familiar feeling of ‘Who are you trying to kid?’
I stood among the men, forcing myself to join in the laughter, feeling non-existent and elephantine, simultaneously.
I was so upset that, when she was leaving, I forgot to give Helen the letter for Anna, telling Anna to come and visit me with lots of drugs. And later, when I asked Celine for a stamp she said ‘Certainly. Bring me the letter and, when I’ve read it, I’ll let you know if you’re allowed to post it.’
I was so pissed-off that I marched straight over to the confectionery cupboard, flung wide the door and waited to be concussed by the Sunday evening avalanche of chocolate. I wavered momentarily, trying to lay my hands on some will-power. But then Chris said ‘God, that sister of yours is a gas woman,’ and I was awash with the same old agony that I was me. And not Helen. Or somebody else. Anyone else, anyone other than me.
Chocolate, I thought, sick and miserable. That’ll make me feel better, seeing as there’s no drugs available.
‘She’s great, isn’t she,’ I managed to say.
I caught Celine smirking to herself, as she pretended to busy herself with the tapestry thing she always had in her hand when she was spying on us.
Unable to help myself, I picked up a bar of fruit-and-nut so massive you could sail to America on it. ‘Who owns this?’ I called.
‘I do,’ said Mike. ‘But work away.’
I finished it in about twenty seconds.
‘Crisps,’ I shouted out to the room. ‘I need something salty.’
I could have eaten the Tayto that Mum had brought me, but I wanted attention and looking after as much as a savoury snack.
Don rushed to my side with a six-pack of Monster Munch, Peter called ‘I can do you some Ritz biccies’, Barry the child said ‘If it’s a real emergency I can spare a bag of Kettle Crisps’and Mike muttered in an undertone that I was supposed to hear and that Celine wasn’t, ‘I’ve got something nice and salty in my pants you can suck on.’
I waited for Chris to offer me something, to let me know that he knew I still existed, but he said nothing at all.
33
They say the path of true love never runs smooth. Well, Luke and my true love’s path didn’t run at all, it limped along in new boots that were chafing its heels. Blistered and cut, red and raw, every hopping, lopsided step, a little slice of agony.
In the week after the party I thought of him a lot. I was so ashamed every time I remembered how badly I’d behaved. At the time I’d thought I was a femme fatale, but afterwards I felt more like a prostitute. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, the way you can’t help probing a sore tooth with your tongue.
Even though I hoped I would never clap eyes on him again, he intrigued me. His rejection had sparked an interest that I hadn’t previously felt.
Fair play to him, a part of me thought. A man with principles.
Then another part of me screamed No, wait a minute, he rejected me.
It was the Thursday night after our party and Brigit and I were as bad-tempered as a sackful of weasels.
I’d had a heavy session the night before and the comedown had been particularly severe because I was out of Valium to take the edge off it. And I hadn’t any money to restock until I got paid. I’d felt so depressed all day that I hadn’t been able to go to work. Lisdessly lying on the couch, vaguely in the horrors, feeling the slowness of my heart beating, wishing I had the energy to open my veins, was all I’d been able for.
Carlos had done another disappearing act on Brigit after he had somehow sussed at the party that Brigit had had carnal knowledge of Joey. (It might have had something to do with Gaz coming up to her with tearful respect, and saying in Carlos’s earshot ‘Jays, you’re some woman, Joey says you gave him the best blow-job of his life.’)
Brigit was distraught and I wasn’t much better. Darren or Daryl the publishing mogul, best friend of Jay Mclnerney, hadn’t rung me.
‘If I only knew where he was,’ Brigit whispered in agony. ‘If I just knew that he wasn’t with someone else I might at least get some sleep. I haven’t slept in three nights, you know.’
I made soothing noises along the lines of ‘You’re far too good for that despicable little gouger.’
‘Would you ring him,’ begged Brigit. ‘Please, just ring him and see if he answers, then quickly hang up.’
‘But how will I know? Him and his friends all sound exactly the same to me.’
‘OK, OK,’ she said, pacing up and down, breathing deeply. ‘Ask to speak to him and if it’s him, hang up.’
‘But he’ll recognize my voice.’
‘Disguise it, put on a Russian accent, breathe some helium or something. And if it’s not him, but they say he’s there, just hang up as well.’
So I rang, but all I got was the answering machine and its awful samba music.
‘Oh Jesus.’ She had her fingers in her mouth as she destroyed her good new nylon nails.’ He’s only doing this to punish me, you know.’
I suspected that Carlos wasn’t really put out by Brigit sleeping with Joey, but had just been looking for an excuse to ditch her yet again. But I murmured ‘Louser’ to let her know she had my support.
‘And it’s not like he hasn’t shagged other people,’ she anguished.
‘And pig-face Daryl hasn’t rung me either,’ I said, keen not to be outdone. ‘Please God, if you make him ring I’ll give all my money to the poor.?
??
I always said that because it was safe; I was the poor, so all I had to do was keep the few bob that I had and I was still keeping my bargain with God.
On into the night we fretted, doing all the usual things. Picking up the receiver to make sure the phone was working, ringing Ed and getting him to ring us back just to make sure we could get incoming calls, saying ‘I’m going to split this pack of cards and if the first one I see is a King, he’ll ring.’ (It was a seven.) Then saying ‘Best out of three, if the next one I pick is a King, he’ll ring.’ (It was another seven.) Then saying ‘OK, best out of five, if…’
‘SHUT UP !’ Brigit shouted.
‘Sorry’.’
Finally Brigit put her finger to her lips and said ‘Ssshhh, listen.’
‘What?’ I choked excitedly.
‘Can’t you hear it?’
‘Hear what?’
‘The sound of the phone not ringing.’ Then, to my surprise, she laughed, as if a cloud had just lifted from her.
‘Come on.’ She grinned. ‘I can’t bear it, this fecking vigil, let’s do something nice instead.’
The terrible depression that I’d been suffocating under all day stirred slightly.
‘Let’s get dressed up,’ I said eagerly. ‘Let’s go out.’ I hated being at home in the evening because of what I might be missing. That was the great thing about coke. Something glamorous always happened when you took some. You either met a man or went to someone’s party or something. Coke kickstarted my life. And the more I took, the more exciting the results.
‘You’re broke,’ Brigit reminded me.
She was right, I realized in disappointment. No chance of being able to afford to buy drugs that evening. I thought briefly about asking Brigit if I could borrow some more money from her, then thought again.
‘I’ve enough for a drink and a tip,’ I said instead.
‘When are you going to pay back that money you owe me?’
‘Soon,’ I said uncomfortably. Brigit had become strangely stingy of late.
‘That’s what you keep saying,’ she muttered.
‘Oh, please,’ I begged, ‘stop being such a miserable killjoy and let’s go out. I’ve had enough for one week of playing “Let’s pretend I’ve just met the man for me”.’ Usually when Brigit and I were poor and needed entertaining, she detailed a fantasy in which I met the man of my dreams, then I’d do the same for her. It was a game we rarely tired of.