Aidan spins round to me. I am suddenly ashamed of my faded dungaree dress and striped T-shirt from two summers gone, the puffy lettering crumbling off the front of it from the washing machine. ‘Come on and I’ll race you to the bridge,’ he says before bolting ahead, his long legs beating off the tarmac. I run after him, though I haven’t a hope of winning the race. When I reach the humpback bridge, he’s already perched on top of it with his arms folded, and making a big show of looking at his Casio watch. I slow down to a patter and bend over, trying to catch my breath. My ribcage presses up and down and my heart pumps forcefully underneath. My brain tingles from the exertion, and pins and needles bloom in my fingers.
‘Why did you want a race?’
‘I didn’t really want a race. I only wanted peace and quiet.’ His face is bright and flushed, his tousled thick hair soaked with sweat. ‘I’d prefer it being just the two of us.’ The air around us is changing colour. There are forces at play beneath the surface. There are invisible filaments reaching out from me and sparking with the invisible filaments emanating from Aidan. I can feel the energy rolling off the trees and fields, and see prisms of light dancing on the river. I imagine myself hovering above my body and seeing the two of us, not even a metre from the other. And then we hear the shouts from far away, snapping us back into staidness, back to the old humpback bridge, the dull brown water, the oppressive warmth, the odour of hot tarmacadam. We peer over the road and Evelyn and Peadar are running towards us, and along comes Maeve, lagging behind, huffing and sucking her cheeks, and wearing the wrong shoes entirely for summer weather. I feel the interference as they make their way towards the bridge. Evelyn is marching now, the peach sundress twisted about her torso. I feel the biting twinge of inadequacy, the rise of frustration, because Evelyn has a hand in all I do.
‘What’re ye at here?’ she demands.
‘Nothing. We only had a race.’
‘We got bored of ye shitin’ on,’ musters Aidan.
‘Where are your glasses, Katie? Why aren’t you wearing them?’ Evelyn enquires, tilting her head and pursing her lips.
‘I have them in my pocket.’
‘What good are they doing you in your pocket?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I bet you’re not wearing them because they’re for boys.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’ve a bar across the top of them. That means they’re for boys.’ You’d think she would have told me before now. I’ve been wearing boys’ glasses and didn’t know it.
‘It doesn’t bother me. I don’t care,’ I say, humiliated. I haven’t the right clothes, I’m no good at running, and to top it off, I’ve been wearing glasses for boys. Aidan won’t think much of me now, if he ever did at all, and as for Evelyn, I think she said what she said on purpose. I’m sure she was storing it up.
The following summer, and Mammy and Daddy have the idea to send me to the Gaeltacht for the full month of July. I suppose they’re hoping I’ll make a few new friends out of it.
The Irish school is a spartan set-up in Connemara, accommodating two hundred boys and girls from twelve up to sixteen. Eight girls including myself sleep under faded bedspreads in a dormitory room in a local house, and we’re served cheap sausages and chips out of a deep fat fryer at teatime. The girls in the dormitory are only alright. There’s a girl from the Midlands whose accent is incomprehensible. The other girls are aloof towards me. I feel it keenly. They’re a different sort of creature to myself, and down from Dublin. Evelyn has told me two things about girls from Dublin: they think they’re better than girls from the country, and they’re thick.
On the first night, a girl called Gwen cries over missing the qualifiers for the Dublin Horse Show. How could her parents do this to her. Isobel commiserates. She says parents are evil. Gwen keeps me up all night with the crying, and Isobel wets the bed, and the girl from the Midlands whistles through her nose in her sleep.
There are Irish classes in the morning, and then we’re all herded out to play Gaelic sports in the afternoon. There are céilís in the evening time, and we’re taught how to hup-two-three and hup-two-three in parallel lines. You prance towards the person opposite you, and then you prance backwards, and forwards again, and then you clasp hands and spin each other around until all the colours whip together.
I slip away from the céilí and go and sit on a stone wall, and I suck on sweets, longing for the time to pass. I spend long hours thinking about all that I’m missing out on at home. I imagine Evelyn and Peadar and Aidan and Maeve traipsing over the roads under the humming telephone wires, rambling along the railway track and finding things to do at their leisure.
The girl from the Midlands sits up next to me on the stone wall. ‘I’m fed up. Are you?’
‘I am,’ I admit. The girl from the Midlands, Oona, is worn out having to speak slowly to the other girls in the dormitory, not to mind speaking in Irish the rest of the time. I allow her to pluck my eyebrows, and she makes a dog’s dinner of them. It’s a misadventure in the strongest sense of the word.
I post a letter to Evelyn every week, and send my regards to Maeve. I make out that I’m having a whale of a time. I tell them there’s all sorts of carry-on happening at the Gaeltacht, and I’m meeting people from all over Ireland, and I’ll have to buy a big wad of stamps when I get home because I’ve an eager new set of pen pals.
All the girls and boys cry on the last day. The crying is infectious. Even the older boys are crying. I’m not sure what I’m crying for. I’m only crying because everyone else is crying, but I feel hollow on the inside. I hug people I haven’t even spoken to, and sign their shirts, and scribble my address into people’s notebooks. Gwen writes ‘Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened’ into my notebook with a neon biro. I haven’t had one letter from Evelyn in all the time I’ve been away.
Upon my return to Glenbruff, Evelyn informs me that herself and Maeve have been practising telepathy. Maeve sits under the humpback bridge, and Evelyn uses chalk to draw symbols and shapes on the tarmac above. Maeve shouts up a guess of what the drawing is, and she’s often right, or so they let on. ‘She guessed my initials, and a smiley face, and she guessed yin and yang,’ says Evelyn, searching my face.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Suit yourself,’ she says.
The next stunt is the pair of them claiming to have had the same dream the night before. I pretend not to care, but it bothers me that I’m the outsider and not having the dreams. I suspect that Evelyn isn’t wholly pleased with me for going off to the Gaeltacht without her, and this show between herself and Maeve is a punishment. I’m not to go off without her again.
A letter arrives from the girl from the Midlands. It’s badly written, in loopy, exaggerated handwriting slanting downward along the page, and it’s the sort of letter a person sends when they want to get a good one off someone in return, but only send a poor excuse of a letter themselves.
Well Girl,
How’s things? How are you since? Do you miss me? Not got much news. Write back soon with all your news and gosip.
Keep in tutch.
Oona.
PS. I haven’t spoke a word of Irish since I came home!
There’s no use wasting time on a person who sends tedious letters. A friendship with Oona would do more for her than it would for me. I can’t see the use in having boring friends, and in any case, I’m still bearing a grudge over the eyebrows. It goes without saying that the letter remains unanswered.
It takes a while for things to return to normal between myself and Evelyn and Maeve. At the school sports day in September, we sign up for the three-legged race. When Evelyn and Maeve’s legs are tied together, the whole lot goes arseways and they tumble down in the grass. When myself and Evelyn have our legs tied together, we run in time with one another, and come in in first place and get a medal apiece.
Evelyn has the ability to slip in and out of boldness. She takes cosmetics from
Crotty’s Chemist without paying for them, sliding tubes of make-up and lipstick up the sleeves of her school jumper. She doles out the stolen things to myself and Maeve. I know stealing isn’t right, but I’ve no money for buying cosmetics, and it’s important to have a few bits and pieces to smarten myself up. ‘You’re unreal. Thanks Evelyn,’ I say, feeling the objects heat up in my hand. Maeve yanks the lid off an orange lipstick and applies it haphazardly. The instinct burns within me to rise to Evelyn’s rank of daring, and to slip into boldness myself.
‘It’s your go next,’ she says abruptly. ‘I’m always doing the hard work.’ That takes the goodness out of it.
Cora Crotty catches me heading out the door with two scrunchies and a comb. ‘Come back here, you bold girl. I see you. I know your father,’ she bellows, curling her finger at me. There’s something hypnotic about the curling finger. Cora instructs me to stay put in her back kitchen, and she phones Daddy from the black plastic telephone on the counter by the cash register. ‘She’s inside in the kitchen, Mossy. She’s as sorry as a caught thief.’ I sob quietly in Cora’s drab kitchen, roiling with rage and humiliation. I haven’t even the need for scrunchies and combs.
Daddy lands down like a shot and he even keeps the car engine running out on the street. He hands Cora ten pounds to cover the stolen items. It takes a while for him to say anything on the journey home. ‘Who put you up to it?’
‘No one.’
‘Was it Evelyn Cassidy?’
‘No. It was my own idea.’
‘Myself and your mother want you to keep your distance. You’re too attached to her.’
‘I am not. That’s strange talk.’
‘The likes of Evelyn Cassidy will never have to work for anything. It’s people like us who have to buckle down and get serious. You must start thinking about your own future, and less about what Evelyn Cassidy is doing.’ In the days to follow, Daddy goes about the town asking if there are any part-time jobs going for a sixteen-year-old. I suppose he wants to fill up any free hours I have, and keep me out of trouble. I get a job working in Angelo’s Chip Shop on Friday nights. The chip shop is operated by a man by the name of Pascal Hamrogue, a middle-aged bachelor from over in Kiltane. He has a greased-up Teddy Boy hairstyle, and holds his arms in such a way that reminds me of a trussed-up chicken: elbows stuck out either side, the fronts of his hands flat against the small of his back.
I like the job. It’s good to have money of my own, and I’m excited to ring up the items on the cash register. I’ve never had power like it. Evelyn and Maeve and Peadar and Aidan call up to Angelo’s from time to time on the Friday nights. ‘What are ye up to?’ I have to project my voice over the sound of hot, crackling oil. I can see Aidan outside the window in his school uniform, skilfully rolling a football under his feet. Maeve stands under the lamp post, her eyes fixed upon him, a camogie stick resting against her shoulder.
‘Arrah, this and that,’ Evelyn says, yawning, her forearms resting on the glass counter. She’s wearing a fashionable tracksuit with popper buttons along the sides of the trouser legs. ‘Will you be coming out with us after?’
‘I won’t be out until one o’clock. I’ve to clean up.’
‘You’re always stuck in here. You’re missing out.’ I think she’s the one missing out. I have a great sense of eminence out of minding a chip shop on my own. Peadar lights a cigarette outside, and the four of them amble away up the street.
As the last of the sun’s rays come down, the countertop and the tables gleam golden. I get to thinking about Evelyn and the way our lives are intertwined. We’re not completely certain as to where we’re going, but we’re going to go together, bolstered by the other. It’s what we’ve always said to one another.
After the chip shop is shut for the night, I cycle home in the dark. The hushed air wills me along. I can hear the gentle spin of the wheels, the subtle rhythmic catch of the pedals. Cycling is as close to flying as you can get. You’d forget there was a bike beneath you at all. I bear down on the handlebars. One day I’ll show them all who I am and what I’m made of. One day we’ll show them all. I have a big ball of white fire beneath my ribs just thinking about it.
Myself and Evelyn and Maeve are out walking in Glenbruff of a Saturday afternoon when we hear the scratch and whomp of hip hop music emanating from the community centre. We stick our heads round the door to see Pamela Cooney dancing alone on the varnished floor next to an enormous ghetto blaster. Her copper ponytail whips the air as she flicks her long arms and kicks her long legs. She even drops into the splits without a flinch. What does it take to be her? I wonder. What does it involve? Do I have it in me?
When Pamela’s out dancing in front of the monument, the adults clap heartily and fling coins and even a five-pound note onto the chipboard. Peadar remarks that Pamela is a fine filly, and Evelyn is badly rankled by it, withdrawn for the whole rest of the day. Thereafter, Pamela dances at the vintage rally, the fundraiser for the levelling of the surface of the football pitch, and the blessing of the humpback bridge.
Pamela came down from Dublin with her mother and brothers as part of a rural resettlement scheme. She attended the primary school in Saint Malachy’s Parish for a time, and then the family relocated back to Dublin for one reason or another, but they’re after coming down again, and she’s in my English, history and home economics classes. I’m not a lesbian, like Geraldine Dobson’s auntie who was asked to leave the nuns, but there’s something about Pamela that makes my heart race. She’s like a doll fresh out of a box: upturned nose, bright brown eyes and shiny copper hair in a ponytail over her shoulder. She has straight, even teeth, like perfect gleaming baby shells, and pale skin with a lilac hue.
Evelyn says she’s fed up to high heaven of seeing Pamela Cooney doing the hip hop dancing. She’s fed up of Pamela continually being paraded around. Even Mammy makes a fuss over Pamela Cooney. ‘That girl is a real bobby dazzler. She has real class. The same as her mother Maureen.’
‘She’s alright.’
‘She’s better than alright, Katie. She’s gifted. Who does the dance lessons with her?’
‘She only has an aul videotape with the dances on it.’
‘She learned all that off a tape. I might get a tape myself and surprise ye all.’ Mammy laughs long and hard at her own joke, revealing her milky grey fillings and bright pink tongue, and the clip-on earrings wobble on her earlobes.
When Dan Cassidy comes into Angelo’s, himself and his pals hang over the counter and have a good eyeball at me and talk about me as if I’m not there. There’s Eugene Gormley sucking his gut up into his chest, Paddy Brannigan with his bristly bottom on display above the workman’s trousers, and Jarlath Quinlan, the sergeant in Adragule whose tight white curls resemble a head of cauliflower. How is it they think they’re attractive, or that any woman would look at them twice, not to mind a young girl like myself.
While I’m counting out the change for Dan, I drop the coins on the ground and have to kneel down and pick them all up. My face is flaming with embarrassment. ‘Would you say she’d be often down on the knees?’ Dan remarks.
‘Oh, I’d say she does be.’ All four of them are laughing like slobbering hyenas.
‘I’d say she does be praying for you, Eugene. I’d say she’s praying for your withered soul,’ says Jarlath.
‘That’s not all that’s withered,’ Dan quips.
Dan lets on that I gave him the wrong change, and I know that I haven’t. I gave him the exact right amount. ‘You’ll have to come here now and give me a kiss to make up for it.’ I only wish I had the smart answers ready, but I never do.
Pascal is coming in the door with the cash box and the men filter out. ‘Did they give you any trouble?’ he asks me, popping open the register and rifling through the notes.
‘N-no,’ I stammer. ‘They were fine.’
‘I’ll drop you out home.’
‘There’s no need. I’ve the bike.’
‘It’s called synaesthesia. It�
��s like a crossover between the senses. When I listen to classical music, I can see things floating in front of me in the air,’ says Evelyn. We’re lying against the hillside behind Maeve’s house, propped up on our elbows with the breeze ruffling our school skirts. We can see the steeple of the church, yellow ragwort catching over the hills and the white nubs of old houses built too close to the road. We can see all the way as far as the quarry, five fields over.
‘Like what?’
‘Streams of colour. Patterns.’
‘Ah here.’
‘Lots of the classical composers had it.’
‘That sounds lovely,’ says Maeve, her eyes cast up to the sky. ‘I wish I had euthanasia.’
‘It’s synaesthesia, Maeve. Euthanasia is when you kill someone who can’t cope with being alive.’
‘Sorry,’ says Maeve.
‘I’m trying to really harness the synaesthesia. I’ll be getting started on my portfolio soon and I want to blow their minds.’ Evelyn has decided that she wants to go to art college after we finish school and become an artist. Specifically, a famous artist.
‘You will blow their minds,’ I tell her. When I’m generous with Evelyn, she’s generous with me. ‘Don’t you think there’s something special about Glenbruff? It’s interesting. Someone should make a film here or something.’
Evelyn sits up and rests her jaw on her fist. ‘No fucking way. It’d be a shite place to make a film. There’s nothing going on here worth filming. The whole point is to get out of here. You go to where the action is happening. The big cities.’
‘Okay. Alright.’
‘You can stick around if you want but I’ll be long gone.’ She lands a soft punch on Maeve’s upper arm. ‘Have you decided what you’re going to do, Maeve?’
Maeve’s tugging stems of grass out of the ground and laying them in a pile. ‘I don’t have much of an interest in anything.’
You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here Page 3